Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

I was not to leave my bedroom until the end of that year. First I was nearly carried off by pneumonia and I had hardly recovered when my leg began to bother me again; it was so numb and swollen that I feared amputation once more. Out of rage and despair I worked and worked, day and night, and in this way I was able to finish the Arabic and Hebrew translations which I had promised the Saxon printer. I also managed to write the first volumes of my Description of Africa that year. After a few months I eventually began to get used to the advantages attached to my condition of sedentary scribe and penitent traveller, and to experience the everyday joys of my little family. But not without keeping an anxious eye on what was happening around me.

I was still between two fevers at the beginning of March when Maddalena told me the news that was already shaking Italy: the imperial troops had crushed the army of the King of France before Pavia. At first it was rumoured that François had been killed; I soon learned that he had only been captured. But the situation was only a little less disastrous; whatever the fate of the monarch, it was clear that the French would not be able to stand in the way of the emperor’s ambitions for some time.

I thought of Clement VII. He had shown too much favour to François not to suffer his part of the defeat. How would he extricate himself from his false step? Was he going to make peace with Charles V to avert his wrath? Or would he make use of his authority to gather the princes of Christendom together against an emperor who had become too powerful, too dangerous for them all? I would have given a great deal to be able to talk to the Pope. And even more so to Guicciardini, particularly after a letter from him reached me at the beginning of summer, containing this enigmatic sentence, fearful in its irony: ‘Only a miracle can save Rome now, and the Pope desires that I should accomplish it!’

932 A.H.

18 October 1525 — 7 October 1526

He was standing in front of me, a statue of flesh and iron, with a powerful laugh and enormous outbursts of rage.

‘I am the armed might of the Church.’

Men though called him the ‘great devil’, and loved him for it, indomitable, intrepid, hot-headed, taking women and fortresses by storm. They were afraid of him, and prayed to God to protect him and to keep him far away.

‘My incorrigible cousin Giovanni,’ Clement VII would say, with tenderness and resignation.

Condottiere and Medici, he was the epitome of all Italy. The troops he commanded were like him, venal and generous, tyrannical and lovers of justice, indifferent to death. That year, they had entered the Pope’s service. They were called the Black Bands, and their leader was soon no longer known as Giovanni di Medici but Giovanni of the Black Bands.

I met him at Bologna. For my first outing I had decided to go to the palace of Master Jacopo Salviati, a venerable gentleman of the city, who had showered me with kindness all through my illness, constantly sending me money, books, clothes and presents. Guicciardini had asked him to take me under his protection, and he acquitted himself of that office with fatherly diligence, never letting a week pass without sending one of his pages to inquire after my health. This Salviati was the most prominent person in Bologna, and he lived in a luxurious manner worthy of the Medicis. It is true that his wife was none other than Pope Leo’s sister, and that his daughter Maria had married Giovanni of the Black Bands. Unfortunately for her, it must be said, since she saw him very rarely, between two campaigns, two idylls, two affairs.

That day however he had come, less for his wife’s sake than for their son, aged six. I was walking towards the Palazzo Salviati, leaning on Maddalena’s shoulder, when the procession came within earshot. The condottiere was accompanied by a good forty of his faithful followers on horseback. Some passers-by murmured his name, some cheered him, others hurried past. I preferred to draw back to let him pass, as my gait was still slow and uncertain. He cried from far off:

‘Cosimo.’

A child appeared in the embrasure of a window on the first floor. Giovanni set off at a trot, and then, when he was underneath the boy, drew his sword, pointed it at the boy and shouted:

‘Jump!’

Maddalena almost fainted. She covered her eyes. I myself stood rooted to the spot. However, Master Jacopo, who had come out to welcome his son-in-law, said nothing. He certainly seemed extremely annoyed, but as if at some everyday misfortune rather than at a drama. Little Cosimo seemed no more surprised nor impressed. Putting his foot on the frieze, he jumped into the air. At the last moment, his father, throwing his sword away, caught him under his arms, held him at arms’ length and raised him above his head.

‘How is my prince?’

The child and the father laughed, as well as the soldiers in the escort. Jacopo Salviati forced himself to smile. Seeing me arrive, he took advantage of this to relieve the tension by introducing me formally to his son-in-law.

‘Master John-Leo, geographer, poet, diplomat at the papal court.’

The condottiere leaped to the ground. One of his men brought him back his sword, which he put back in its sheath while presenting himself to me with excessive joviality.

‘I am the armed might of the Church.’

He had short hair, a thick brown moustache cut at the sides and a look which transfixed me more surely than a lance. At the time, the man seemed to me most unpleasant. But I soon changed my mind, seduced, like so many others, by his astonishing capacity to leave his gladiatorial soul behind to become a Florentine, a Medici of astonishing sensitivity and insight as soon as he entered a salon.

‘You were at Pavia, someone told me.’

‘I stayed there only a few days, in the company of Master Francesco Guicciardini.’

‘I was far away myself. I was inspecting my troops on the road to Milan. When I returned the Ottoman envoy had left. And you too, I think.’

He had a knowing smile. To avoid betraying the secret of my mission I decided to keep silent and to turn my eyes away from his. He continued:

‘I have heard that a message left Paris recently for Constantinople asking the Turks to attack Hungary to force Charles V to divert his attention from Italy.’

‘Isn’t the King of France a prisoner in Spain?’

‘That doesn’t stop him from negotiating with the Pope and the sultan or from sending instructions to his mother, who is regent of the kingdom.’

‘Wasn’t it said that he is on the point of death?’

‘He is no longer. Death has changed its mind.’

As I persisted in not expressing any opinion of my own, confining myself to asking questions, Giovanni asked me directly:

‘Don’t you think that it seems like a very curious coalition: the Pope allied to François, who is allied to the Grand Turk?’

Was he trying to sound out my feelings for the Grand Turk? Or to find out what could have taken place with Harun Pasha?

‘I think that the Grand Turk, however powerful he may be, is not in a position to decide the outcome of a war in Italy. A hundred men taking part on the battlefield are more important than a hundred thousand men at the other side of the continent.’

‘Who is the strongest in Italy, in your opinion?’

‘There was a battle at Pavia, and we should drawn our conclusions from it.’

My reply evidently pleased him. His tone became friendly, even admiring.

‘I am happy to hear these words, because, in Rome the Pope is hesitant and your friend Guicciardini is pushing him to attack Charles and ally himself with François, at the very moment when the King of France is the emperor’s prisoner. In my position I cannot express my reservations without giving the impression of fearing a confrontation with the empire, but you will soon realize that this mad Giovanni is not entirely devoid of wisdom and this great sage Guicciardini is on the point of committing a folly and of making the Pope commit one as well.’