I was surprised, because it seemed to me the cellarer was answering the ritual questions with equally ritual words, as if he were well versed in the rules of the investigation and its pitfalls and had long been trained to face such an eventuality.
“There,” Bernard cried, “the typical reply of the impenitent heretic! They cover trails like foxes and it is very difficult to catch them out, because their beliefs grant them the right to lie in order to evade due punishment. They recur to tortuous answers, trying to trap the inquisitor, who already has to endure contact with such loathsome people. So then, Remigio, you have never had anything to do with the so-called Fraticelli or Friars of the Poor Life, or the Beghards?”
“I experienced the vicissitudes of the Minorites when there was long debate about poverty, but I have never belonged to the sect of the Beghards!”
“You see?” Bernard said. “He denies ever having been a Beghard, because the Beghards, though they share the heresy of the Fraticelli, consider the latter a dead branch of the Franciscan order and consider themselves more pure and perfect. But much of the behavior of one group is like that of the others. Can you deny, Remigio, that you have been seen in church, huddled down with your face against the wall, or prostrate with your hood over your head, instead of kneeling with folded hands like other men?”
“Also in the order of Saint Benedict the monks prostrate themselves, at the proper times…”
“I am not asking what you did at the proper times, but at the improper ones! So do not deny that you assumed one posture or the other, typical of the Beghards! But you are not a Beghard, you say… Tell me, then: what do you believe?”
“My lord, I believe everything a good Christian should…”
“A holy reply! And what does a good Christian believe?”
“What the holy church teaches.”
“And which holy church? The church that is so considered by those believers who call themselves perfect, the Pseudo Apostles, the heretical Fraticelli, or the church they compare to the whore of Babylon, in which all of us devoutly believe?”
“My lord,” the cellarer said, bewildered, “tell me which you believe is the true church…”
“I believe it is the Roman church, one, holy, and apostolic, governed by the Pope and his bishops.”
“So I believe,” the cellarer said.
“Admirable shrewdness!” the inquisitor cried. “Admirable cleverness de dicto! You all heard him: he means to say he believes that I believe in this church, and he evades the requirement of saying what he believes in! But we know well these weasel tricks! Let us come to the point. Do you believe that the sacraments were instituted by our Lord, that to do true penance you must confess to the servants of God, that the Roman church has the power to loosen and to bind on this earth that which will be bound and loosened in heaven?”
“Should I not believe that?”
“I did not ask what you should believe, but what you do believe!”
“I believe everything that you and the other good doctors command me to believe,” the frightened cellarer said.
“Ah! But are not the good doctors you mention perhaps those who command your sect? Is this what you meant when you spoke of the good doctors? Are these perverse liars the men you follow in recognizing your articles of faith? You imply that if I believe what they believe, then you will believe me; otherwise you will believe only them!”
“I did not say that, my lord,” the cellarer stammered. “You are making me say it. I believe you, if you teach me what is good.”
“Oh, what impudence!” Bernard shouted, slamming his fist on the table. “You repeat from memory with grim obstinacy the formula they teach in your sect. You say you will believe me only if I preach what your sect considers good. Thus the Pseudo Apostles have always answered and thus you answer now, perhaps without realizing it, because from your lips again the words emerge that you were once trained for deceiving inquisitors. And so you are accusing yourself with your own words, and I would fall into your trap only if I had not had a long experience of inquisition… But let us come to the real question, perverse man! Have you ever heard of Gherardo Segarelli of Parma?”
“I have heard him spoken of,” the cellarer said, turning pale,, if one could still speak of pallor on that destroyed face.
“Have you ever heard of Fra Dolcino of Novara?”
“I have heard him spoken of.”
“Have you ever seen him in person and had conversation with him?”
The cellarer remained silent for a few moments, as if to gauge how far he should go in telling a part of the truth. Then he made up his mind and said’ in a faint voice, “I have seen him and spoken with him.”
“Louder!” Bernard shouted. “Let a word of truth finally be heard escaping your lips! When did you speak with him?”
“My lord,” the cellarer said, “I was a monk in a convent near Novara when Dolcino’s people gathered in those parts, and they even went past my convent, and at first no one knew clearly who they were…”
“You lie! How could a Franciscan of Varagine be in a convent in the Novara region? You were not in a convent, you were already a member of a band of Fraticelli roaming around those lands and living on alms, and then you joined the Dolcinians!”
“How can you assert that, sir?” the cellarer asked, trembling.
“I will tell you how I can, indeed I must, assert it,” Bernard said, and he ordered Salvatore to be brought in.
The sight of the wretch, who had certainly spent the night under his own interrogation, not public and more severe than this one, moved me to pity. Salvatore’s face, as I have said, was horrible normally, but that morning it was more bestial than ever. And though it showed no signs of violence, the way his chained body moved, the limbs disjointed, almost incapable of walking, the way he was dragged by the archers like a monkey tied to a rope, revealed very clearly how his ghastly questioning must have proceeded.
“Bernard has tortured him …” I murmured to William.
“Not at all,” William answered. “An inquisitor never tortures. The custody of the defendant’s body is always entrusted to the secular arm.”
“But it’s the same thing!” I said.
“Not in the least. It isn’t the same thing for the inquisitor, whose hands remain clean, or for the accused, who, when the inquisitor arrives, suddenly finds support in him, an easing of his sufferings, and so he opens his heart.”
I looked at my master. “You’re jesting,” I said, aghast.
“Do these seem things to jest about?” William replied.
Bernard was now questioning Salvatore, and my pen cannot transcribe the man’s broken words — if it were possible, more Babelish than ever, as he answered, unmanned, reduced to the state of a baboon, while all understood him only with difficulty. Guided by Bernard, who asked the questions in such a way that he could reply only yes or no, Salvatore was unable to tell any lies. And what Salvatore said my reader can easily imagine. He told, or confirmed that he had told during the night, a part of that story I had already pieced together: his wanderings as a Fraticello, Shepherd, and Pseudo Apostle; and how in the days of Fra Dolcino he met Remigio among the Dolcinians and escaped with him, following the Battle of Monte Rebello, taking refuge after various ups and downs in the Casale convent. Further, he added that the heresiarch Dolcino, near defeat and capture, had entrusted to Remigio certain letters, to be carried he did not know where or to whom. And Remigio always carried those letters with him, never daring to deliver them, and on his arrival at the abbey, afraid of keeping them on his person but not wanting to destroy them, he entrusted them to the librarian, yes, to Malachi, who was to hide them somewhere in the recesses of the Aedificium.