‘God is great!’ I said spontaneously.
‘God protect us from all the sultans!’ the Pope went further, his expression suddenly joyful.
That day, the interview went no further. Leo X promised to call me again. On returning to my cell, I found that new directives concerning me had been issued: my door would no longer be locked before nightfall, and I could wander as I pleased within the walls of the castle.
When I saw the Pope again a week later he had prepared a serious programme especially for me. Henceforth my time was to be divided between study and teaching. One bishop would teach me Latin, another the catechism, a third the Gospel and the Hebrew tongue; an Armenian priest would give me Turkish lessons every morning. For my part, I had to teach Arabic to seven pupils. For this I would receive a salary of one ducat each month. Without my having expressed the slightest protest, my benefactor admitted with a laugh that it was a refined form of forced labour, adding however that this programme was proof of his own enthusiastic interest in me. I thanked him and promised to do my best to show myself in no way unworthy.
Henceforth, he would summon me each month, alone or with my teachers to test the state of my knowledge, particularly of the catechism. In his mind the date of my baptism was already fixed, as well as the name which I should bear.
My year’s captivity was thus without pain for the body and highly profitable for the mind. From one day to another I felt my knowledge increase, not only in the subjects which I studied but equally from the contact with my teachers, and with my pupils, two Aragonese priests, two Frenchmen, two Venetians, and a German from Saxony. It was the latter who first mentioned in front of me the increasingly bitter quarrel which had set Leo X against the monk Luther, an event which was already threatening to cover the whole of Europe with fire and blood and which was going to bring upon Rome the most heinous of calamities.
The Year of the Heretics
926 A.H.
23 December 1519 — 12 December 1520
‘What is the Pope for? What are the cardinals for? What God is worshipped in this city of Rome, entirely given over to its luxuries and pleasures?’
Such were the words of my German pupil Hans, in religion Brother Augustine, who pursued me right into the antechamber of Leo X to win me over to the doctrines of the monk Luther, while I entreated him to keep silent if he did not wish to end his days at the stake.
Blond, bony, brilliant and obstinate, Hans would take a pamphlet or a brochure out of his bag after each lesson, which he would begin to translate and comment upon, pestering me incessantly to know what I thought about it. My reply was invariably the same:
‘Whatever my feelings might be, I cannot betray my protector.’
Hans seemed upset, but not at all discouraged, and would return to the charge after the next lesson.
He realized that I listened to his words without annoyance. To certain of them at least, which sometimes brought back to my memory a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and blessings upon him! Does Luther not commend the removal of all statues from places of worship, considering that they are objects of idolatry? ‘The angels do not enter into a house where there is a dog or a figurative representation,’ the Messenger of God has said in a well-attested hadith. Does Luther not say that Christianity is none other than the community of the believers, and ought not to be reduced to a Church hierarchy? Does he not affirm that the Holy Scripture is the sole foundation of the Faith? Does he not hold up the celibacy of the priesthood to ridicule? Does he not teach that no man can escape from that which his Creator has ordained for him? The Prophet has not said otherwise to the Muslims.
In spite of these similarities, it was impossible for me to follow my own rational inclinations on this subject. A ferocious struggle was taking place between Leo X and Luther, and I could not give my support to someone unknown to me at the expense of the man who had taken me under his wing and had treated me thereafter as if he was my progenitor.
Of course I was not the only one to whom the Pope said ‘My son’, but he said it differently to me. He had given me his two first names, John and Leo, as well as the name of his distinguished family, the Medicis, all with pomp and solemnity, on 6 January 1520, a Friday, in the new basilica of St Peter, still unfinished. On that day it was crammed with cardinals, bishops, ambassadors and numerous protégés of Leo X, poets, painters, sculptors, glittering with brocade, pearls and precious stones. Even Raphael of Urbino was there, the divine Raphael as the admirers of his art used to call him, not seeming in any way weakened by the disease which was to carry him off three months later.
The Pope was triumphant beneath his tiara:
‘On this day of Epiphany, when we celebrate the baptism of Christ at the hands of John the Baptist, and when we also celebrate, according to Tradition, the arrival of the three Magi from Arabia to adore Our Lord, what greater happiness could there be for us than to welcome, into the bosom of Our Holy Church, a new Magian King, come from the furthest corners of Barbary to make his offering in the House of Peter!’
Kneeling facing the altar, clad in a long white woollen cloak, I was bemused by the odour of incense and crushed by so many undeserved honours. None of the people assembled in this place was unaware that this ‘Magian King’ had been captured on a summer night by a pirate on a beach in Jerba, and brought to Rome as a slave. Everything which was said about me and everything which was happening to me was so insane, so immoderate, so grotesque! Wasn’t I the victim of some bad dream, some mirage? Wasn’t I really in a mosque in Fez, Cairo or Timbuktu, as on every Friday, my mind affected by a long sleepless night? Suddenly, in the heart of my doubts, the voice of the Pope rose again, addressing me:
‘And you, Our well-beloved son John-Leo, whom Providence has singled out among all men…’
John-Leo! Johannes Leo! Never had anyone in my family been called thus! Long after the end of the ceremony I was still turning the letters and syllables over and over in my head and on my tongue, now in Latin, now in Italian. Leo. Leone. It is a curious habit which men have, thus to give themselves the names of the wild beasts which terrify them, rarely those of the animals which are devoted to them. People want to be called wolf, but not dog. Will it happen to me one day that I shall forget Hasan and look at myself in a mirror and say: ‘Leo, you have shadows under your eyes?’ To tame my new name I soon arabized it; Johannes Leo became Yuhanna al-Asad. That is the signature which can be seen under the works which I have written at Rome and at Bologna. But regular visitors to the papal court, somewhat surprised by the belated birth of a brown and fuzzy Medici, immediately gave me the additional surname of Africanus, the African, to distinguish me from my saintly adoptive father. Perhaps also to prevent him making me a cardinal as he had done for most of his male cousins, some at the age of fourteen.
On the evening of the baptism, the Pope called me to him. He began by telling me that I was henceforth a free man, but that I could continue to live in the castle while I found lodgings outside, adding that he was anxious that I should continue to pursue my studies and my teaching with the same assiduity. Then he took a tiny book from a table which he placed like a host on my open palm. As I opened it I saw that it was written in Arabic.