“Well, then” — at this point Jerome raised his voice again — “on that question I have an argument that cuts like a sword…”
“Saint Francis, protect thy sons …” William said, without much confidence.
“The argument,” Jerome continued, “is that the Orientals and the Greeks, far more familiar than we with the doctrine of the holy fathers, are convinced of the poverty of Christ. And if those heretics and schismatics so clearly uphold such a clear truth, do we want to be more heretical and schismatical than they, by denying it? These Orientals, if they heard some of our number preaching against this truth, would stone them!”
“What are you saying?” the Bishop of Alborea quipped. “Why, then, do they not stone the Dominicans, who preach precisely against this?”
“Dominicans? Why, no one has ever seen them down there!”
Alborea, his face purple, observed that this monk Jerome had been in Greece perhaps fifteen years, whereas he had been there since his boyhood. Jerome replied that the Dominican Alborea might perhaps have been in Greece, but living a sybaritic life in fine bishops’ aces, whereas he, a Franciscan, had been there not fifteen years, but twenty-two, and had preached before the Emperor in Constantinople. Then Alborea, running short on arguments, started to cross the space that separated him from the Minorites, indicating in a loud voice and with words I dare not repeat his firm intention to pull off the beard of the Bishop of Kaffa, whose masculinity he called into question, and whom he planned to punish, by the logic of an eye for an eye, shoving that beard in a certain place.
The other Minorites rushed to form a barrier and defend their brother; the Avignonese thought it useful to lend the Dominican a hand, and (Lord, have mercy on the best among thy sons!) a brawl ensued, which the abbot and the cardinal tried to quell. In the tumult that followed, Minorites and Dominicans said grave things to one another, as if each were a Christian fighting the Saracens. The only ones who remained in their seats were William, on one side, and Bernard Gui, on the other. William seemed sad, and Bernard happy, if you can call happiness the faint smile that curled the inquisitor’s lip.
“Are there no better arguments,” I asked my master, as Alborea tugged at the beard of the Bishop of Kaffa, “to prove or refute the poverty of Christ?”
“Why, you can affirm both positions, my good Adso,” William said, “and you will never be able to establish on the basis of the Gospels whether, and to what extent, Christ considered as his property the tunic he wore, which he then perhaps threw away when it was worn out. And, if you like, the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas on property is bolder than that of us Minorites. We say: We own nothing and have everything in use. He said: Consider yourselves also owners, provided that, if anyone lacks what you possess, you grant him its use, and out of obligation, not charity. But the question is not whether Christ was poor: it is whether the church must be poor. And ‘poor’ does not so much mean owning a palace or not; it means, rather, keeping or renouncing the right to legislate on earthly matters.”
“Then this,” I said, “is why the Emperor is so interested in what the Minorites say about poverty.”
“Exactly. The Minorites are playing the Emperor’s game against the Pope. But Marsilius and I consider it a two-sided game, and we would like the empire to support our view and serve our idea of human rule.”
“And will you say this when you are called on to speak?”
“If I say it I fulfill my mission, which was to expound the opinions of the imperial theologians. But if I say it my mission fails, because I ought to be facilitating a second meeting in Avignon, and I don’t believe John would agree to my going there to say these things.”
“And so —?”
“And so I am trapped between two opposing forces, like an ass who does not know which of two sacks of hay to eat. The time is not ripe. Marsilius raves of an impossible transformation, immediately; but Louis is no better than his predecessors, even if for the present he remains the only bulwark against a wretch like John. Perhaps I shall have to speak, unless they end up killing one another first. In any case, Adso, write it all down: let at least some trace remain of what is happening today.”
As we were speaking — and truly I do not know how we managed to hear each other — the dispute reached its climax. The archers intervened, at a sign from Bernard Gui, to keep the two factions apart. But like besiegers and besieged, on both sides of the walls of a fortress, they hurled insults and rebuttals at one another, which I record here at random, unable to attribute them to specific speakers, and with the premise that the phrases were not uttered in turn, as would happen in a dispute in my country, but in Mediterranean fashion, one overlapping another, like the waves of an angry sea.
“The Gospel says Christ had a purse!”
“Shut up! You people paint that purse even on crucifixes! What do you say, then, of the fact that our Lord, when he entered Jerusalem, went back every night to Bethany?”
“If our Lord chose to go and sleep in Bethany, who are you to question his decision?”
“No, you old ass, our Lord returned to Bethany because he had no money to pay for an inn in Jerusalem!”
“Bonagratia, you’re the ass here! What did our Lord eat in Jerusalem?”
“Would you say, then, that a horse who receives oats from his master to keep alive is the owner of the oats?”
“You see? You compare Christ to a horse…”
“No, you are the one who compares Christ to a simoniacal prelate of your court, vessel of dung!”
“Really? And how many lawsuits has the holy see had to undertake to protect your property?”
“The property of the church, not ours! We had it in use!”
“In use to spend, to build beautiful churches with gold statues, you hypocrites, whited sepulchers, sinks of iniquity! You know well that charity, not poverty, is the principle of the perfect life!”
“That is what your glutton Thomas said!”
“Mind your words, villain! The man you call ‘glutton’ is a saint of the holy Roman church!”
“Saint, my foot! Canonized by John to spite the Franciscans! Your Pope can’t create saints, because he’s a heretic! No, a heresiarch!”
“We’ve heard that one before! Words spoken by that Bavarian puppet at Sachsenhausen, rehearsed by your Ubertino!”
“Mind how you speak, pig, son of the whore of Babylon and other strumpets as well! You know Ubertino wasn’t with the Emperor that year: he was right there in Avignon, in the service of Cardinal Orsini, and the Pope was sending him as a messenger to Aragon!”
“I know, I know, he took his vow of poverty at the cardinal’s table, as he now lives in the richest abbey of the peninsula! Ubertino, if you weren’t there, who prompted Louis to use your writings?”
“Is it my fault if Louis reads my writings? Surely he cannot read yours, you illiterate!”
“I? Illiterate? Was your Francis a literate, he who spoke with geese?”
“You blaspheme!”
“You’re the blasphemer; you know the keg ritual!”
“I have never seen such a thing, and you know it!”
“Yes, you did, you and your little friars, when you slipped into the bed of Clare of Montefalco!”
“May God strike you! I was inquisitor at that time, and Clare had already died in the odor of sanctity!”
“Clare gave off the odor of sanctity, but you were sniffing another odor when you sang matins to the nuns!”
“Go on, go on, the wrath of God will reach you, as it will reach your master, who has given welcome to two heretics like that Ostrogoth Eckhart and that English necromancer you call Branucerton!”
“Venerable brothers, venerable brothers!” Cardinal Bertrand and the abbot shouted.