The Abacus And The Cross Part 6

Plate 2 The dedicatory page from Saint Bernward's evangelary. Making books was a monk's sacred duty. Here, Gerbert's contemporary, Bernward of Hildesheim, places a book on the altar, symbolically presenting it to the Virgin Mary (who is shown on the facing page in the ma.n.u.script).

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Plate 3 This ill.u.s.tration from a thirteenth-century Turkish ma.n.u.script shows Aristotle teaching his students how to use an astrolabe, the most popular astronomical instrument in the Middle Ages. Gerbert seems to have learned how to make and use an astrolabe while he was in Catalonia, and must have taught it at Reims. The first Latin text on the astrolabe was most likely written by his student, Constantine of Fleury.

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Plate 4 The arqueta presented to Gerbert's patron, Count Borrell of Barcelona, by the Islamic caliph of Cordoba between 961 and 976. The box of wood, gold-plated with silver decorations and pearl accents, was signed by a Jewish artist and is now at Girona cathedral, affording proof, not only of exchanges between the Christian and Muslim kingdoms, but of the inclusion of Jews in the culture.

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Plate 5 A copy of Gerbert's abacus board, possibly made by his student Gausbert before 993 and rediscovered in 2001. Arabic numerals appear in the smallest of the arches, fashioned somewhat differently than they are today. Originally meant to be spread on a table and used with counters marked with Arabic numerals to make calculations, the abacus was cut down to a size of almost 24 inches wide by 16 inches tall and re-used as the pastedown in the binding of a large Bible. A second student later wrote notes on music across the bottom of the page, and on the back are notes on logic.

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Plate 6 A model of the universe drawn in about A.D. 1000 to ill.u.s.trate an astronomy text. The earth, sun, moon, and five planets are surrounded by the zodiac. Note that while Earth is at the center of the universe, only the moon has a circular orbit. The orbits of the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn around Earth are eccentric, while Mercury and Venus circle the sun.

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Plate 7 A map of the world made at the monastery of Fleury during Gerbert's lifetime. The captions explain that only one hemisphere of the globe is being shown, and refer the student to Eratosthenes' method for measuring the circ.u.mference of the earth. The map also predicts that there is inhabitable land in the southern hemisphere matching that known in the northern hemisphere.

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Plate 8 The coronation of Otto III as Holy Roman Emperor in 996, from a Gospel book made for the emperor at the monastery of Reichenau. The older cleric on the left-with his hand on the throne-could be Gerbert, who was Otto's secretary and chief counselor at the time.

PART THREE.

FROM ABBOT TO POPE TO POPE.

This event will accomplish what I have always wished, have always hoped for, by making me his inseparable companion so that we can guide the exalted empire for him. What, therefore, could be sweeter?

GERBERT OF AURILLAC, 997.

CHAPTER IX.

The Abbot of Bobbio.

The death of Archbishop Adalbero of Reims in 989 ended Gerbert's career as a schoolmaster. But his scientific studies had been "interrupted for a time," as he put it, once before-"though always kept in mind," he added.

Nine years previously, in 980, the fame of Gerbert's school at Reims had aroused the envy of Otric, the schoolmaster at Magdeburg in Germany. A favorite of Emperor Otto II, Otric was acknowledged as the supreme intellectual of the Holy Roman Empire. He sent a student-a monk who "seemed capable of the mission"-to infiltrate Gerbert's school.

Otric's spy returned to Magdeburg with scandalous news. Otric warned the twenty-five-year-old emperor that this upstart "knew nothing about philosophy" and should not be permitted to teach. Otto II was skeptical. He had become emperor upon his father's death in 973, a year after Gerbert had left court, and remembered his former Latin tutor fondly. He summoned Gerbert to court, not explaining why.

Thanks to Otric's envy, Gerbert's life changed: He won fame and fortune and imperial favor. Otto named him abbot of Bobbio, the Italian monastery renowned for its library-where he quickly found himself slandered and in danger of his life. Though he escaped and took refuge with Adalbero at Reims after three years, he never again could devote himself wholely to science: He was distracted by imperial dreams. From 980 to 989, his time was increasingly taken up by politics. From 989 until his death in 1003, he was totally embroiled in the games of kings. Who knows how science might have flourished if he had remained a simple schoolmaster? We do not know if Gerbert had learned about the astrolabe by 980, or written his treatise on organ pipes. What else might Constantine have convinced him to write if he had stayed out of politics? Yet if he had not come under the emperor's eye in 980, Gerbert would not have become pope-and we might never have heard of him.

The emperor's summons was for Christmas at Ravenna; so, late in the year, Gerbert accompanied Archbishop Adalbero south. At Pavia, Italy, they caught up with Otto and the young Byzantine princess who was his wife. Empress Theophanu was the one to impress; her wishes, more than anyone's, would shape Gerbert's future.

The imperial party traveled by barge down the Po River, past orchards and pine forests, to Ravenna. To Gerbert the city would have seemed shockingly Byzantine. Its great stone basilicas were lavishly decorated with mosaics. Knots and laces, diamonds and circles, swirls of figure eights and intricate images-a ring of dancers, a shepherd and his flock-adorned the floors in black, white, and red cut stones. On the walls and ceilings the colors were vibrant: gold and sparkling pearl, turquoise and peac.o.c.k, red, magenta, orange, pink. The panels, made of twinkling bits of gla.s.s and sh.e.l.l, were alive with doves and deer, leaves and flowers, sparkling stars, the Lamb of G.o.d in every possible setting, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, the Burning Bush, Daniel in the lion's den, the Madonna and Child, the Three Wise Men, the baptism of Christ (a heretical version that showed him naked and fully human), the resurrection of Lazarus, the Last Supper, the four evangelists (represented by their traditional symbols: angel, lion, eagle, and bull, and the four Gospels in a tidy bookcase), the twelve apostles, fifty-five saints, the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and Christ Triumphant, seated on a blue globe. In the great basilica of San Vitale were portraits of the artists' patrons: Emperor Justinian, clad in purple, who ruled from 527 to 565, and Empress Theodora, as stern and lovely as a G.o.ddess, leading a train of court ladies with large, dark, deep-set eyes. Otto's Byzantine wife would have seen herself in their faces-and admired their lush, shimmering gowns.

Theophanu was not the "purple-born" princess Otto the Great had wanted for his son. According to Thietmar of Merseburg, who wrote his Chronicon Chronicon between 1013 and 1018, Theophanu was not born in the purple room of the imperial palace as the daughter of a reigning emperor; Thietmar implied that the Byzantines had swapped the promised princess for a girl of lesser rank. But, if not born to the purple, Theophanu faked it well. In the Byzantine court, the emperor and his men were always balanced by the empress and her women; she held female rites to match his male rites, and joint ceremonies could not take place if the empress was missing. Theophanu insisted upon the same treatment in the West. Unlike most Western queens, she accompanied her husband on all his travels. Medallions, ivory carvings, and ma.n.u.scripts all presented the two as equals. between 1013 and 1018, Theophanu was not born in the purple room of the imperial palace as the daughter of a reigning emperor; Thietmar implied that the Byzantines had swapped the promised princess for a girl of lesser rank. But, if not born to the purple, Theophanu faked it well. In the Byzantine court, the emperor and his men were always balanced by the empress and her women; she held female rites to match his male rites, and joint ceremonies could not take place if the empress was missing. Theophanu insisted upon the same treatment in the West. Unlike most Western queens, she accompanied her husband on all his travels. Medallions, ivory carvings, and ma.n.u.scripts all presented the two as equals.

She had been crowned on her wedding day, aged twelve. She did not have her first child, Adelaide, until five years later; then came Matilda and Sophie and, in 980, Otto III and a twin sister, who died. Knowing only Greek when she arrived, Theophanu learned Latin and the local languages so well that she was known as ingenio facundam ingenio facundam, "a genius of eloquence" (or, by a not-so-kind monk, unpleasantly talkative). Another praised her moderation and good manners (adding that "this was exceptional for a Greek"). Her mother-in-law, on the other hand, referred to her, dismissively, as "that Greek woman."

From Byzantium she had brought "a splendid entourage and magnificent gifts." We don't know if any Greek books were among her treasures (though she did choose a Greek-speaking tutor for her son). What later ages recalled were the chess pieces and perfume bottles cut from precious stones. The ivory carvings in an oddly realistic style. The bold wall hangings and robes of silk-one pattern bore golden lions ranked on a plane of royal purple. Theophanu wore a necklace made like a sparkling net of gold, with six rows of nine jewels across; each jewel had another dangling from it.

After her death a nun saw her in a vision, weeping and begging for prayers. Theophanu had been d.a.m.ned for having brought a taste for silks and jewels to the women of the West-d.a.m.ned like another Byzantine bride who had offended the Almighty with her vanity. According to an eleventh-century churchman, "such was the luxury of her habits" that she did not deign "to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two p.r.o.ngs and thus carry to her mouth." It is the first mention, in the Christian West, of a fork.

Praised or d.a.m.ned, Theophanu attracted notice. Her husband did not. Otto II was generally dismissed as not the man his father was. Says Thietmar, "As a young man he was noted for his outstanding physical strength and, as such, initially tended towards recklessness." After "enduring much criticism," he learned to restrain himself and to listen to his elders. "Thereafter, he comported himself more n.o.bly." Possibly his lessons with Gerbert in Socratic disputation helped him here.

He may also have picked up from Gerbert a love of books. His visits to monasteries were universally feared. At Saint-Gall, the Life of Meinwerk Life of Meinwerk records, Otto asked to see the library's finest books. "The abbot hesitated, knowing well the king would take some. Unable to refuse, the abbot showed Otto the books and Otto did take some. Only after considerable correspondence did he return a few." records, Otto asked to see the library's finest books. "The abbot hesitated, knowing well the king would take some. Unable to refuse, the abbot showed Otto the books and Otto did take some. Only after considerable correspondence did he return a few."

In addition to books, Otto enjoyed a rousing scholarly debate. To stage one between Otric and Gerbert, he thought, would wonderfully liven up the usual Christmas festivities. To Ravenna in December 980, therefore, he summoned a great number of schoolmasters and scholars. They gathered in his palace under the glittering mosaics a few days after Christmas. The emperor and empress mounted their thrones, and Otto called Gerbert and Otric before him. He still had not told Gerbert why he had been summoned. "He hoped that if Gerbert were attacked without warning, he would pour more pa.s.sion and fire into contradicting his adversary," writes Richer of Saint-Remy.

According to one of Gerbert's friends who attended the debate, the emperor set the stage with a few flowery words about how learning en-n.o.bles the spirit. Then Otric stepped forward and laid out his complaint: Gerbert was teaching physics as if it were a subdiscipline of mathematics, whereas every educated person knew that physics and mathematics were two different and equal fields of study. Gerbert knew nothing about how knowledge was organized.

This was no "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" exhibition, but a serious attempt to categorize the sciences. Professors today hold the same debates: Twenty-first-century academics are at odds over whether archaeology is a type of history or should be taught as a science. Yet according to Richer, Otto and his court considered this esoteric scholarly joust to be fine Christmastime entertainment. The battle of wits went on all day, with point and counterpoint, questions from emperor and audience, and lengthy citations from Plato, Boethius, and other authorities.

Physics and mathematics were, of course of course, two separate fields of study, Gerbert responded. Otric's spy had misunderstood. Math and physics (which included medicine), together with theology, formed the theoretical side of philosophy. The practical side, as Boethius had written, included ethics, politics, and economics.

Having lost that point, Otric seized on an aside and asked, "What is the purpose of philosophy?"

"To allow us to understand all things human and divine."

"Why do you take so many words when one is enough?" quibbled Otric (though he did not say which word he had in mind).

Answered Gerbert, "Not every answer can be reduced to one word." How do you explain what creates a shadow in one word? The cause of a shadow is a body placed in front of a light. If you say, "The cause of a shadow is a body," your definition is too general. If you say "a body in front," the definition is worthless, for many bodies can be placed in front of other things without causing a shadow.

Beaten again, Otric changed the subject: Which is more comprehensive, the rational or the mortal? Gerbert seized on the question with delight. His sentences "flowed on in abundance" until finally the emperor called a halt and proclaimed Gerbert the victor.

He was "covered in glory." Otto granted him "rich presents" and appointed him abbot of the monastery of Saint-Columban in Bobbio. The post gave Gerbert the rank of a count and required him to swear fealty to the emperor and empress as his liege lords. Gerbert prided himself on never breaking that oath, or making another. From then on, his future was shaped by his duties to the empire.

Otric, however, lost favor at court. A few months later, the emperor vetoed his election as archbishop of Magdeburg and chose another. Otric took sick and died.

After his dazzling performance, the new abbot of Bobbio accompanied the emperor and Archbishop Adalbero to Rome. There, at an Easter synod, Gerbert saw his Catalan friend Miro Bonfill, bishop of Girona.

Leaving Rome after the synod to return to their churches, Adalbero and Miro could have kept company with Gerbert north to Piacenza-where Count Gerald the Good had once bribed the ferryman to take him across the Po River. There Gerbert left the group and turned west toward Bobbio, a day's journey away. The glowing green fields gave way to hills, a blue haze hinted of higher mountains beyond. A castle on a hill-ramparts and a round tower stacked up from yellow stone-looked down on the river Trebbia, wide and low and stony. The road wound into the narrow river valley: The tops of the hills turned to bare rock; the river now sported rapids. Crossing a ridge of rugged hills, he finally reached Bobbio.

The town huddled beside the Trebbia, between two round knolls. Its humpbacked Roman bridge, the ten gray-stone arches each a different size, spanned a rocky narrows. The same gray stone was laid up into a drystone wall ringing the town. It paved the narrow streets and lined the channels by which a hilltop cascade was steered downhill to a water-wheel. The monastery, the cathedral, the blocky castle on the hill-all were made of the same gray stone. Bobbio was a fortress of a town-organized, protected, safe, strong, a center of administration in this untamed corner of Italy.

At first Gerbert reveled in the immense library of 690 books. He found there Boethius's On Astrology On Astrology, "some beautiful figures of geometry," and other volumes "no less worthy of being admired," he wrote. But Bobbio was more than its books: It was the largest landowner in northern Italy. Its holdings stretched from Genoa on the Mediterranean north to the lake region, south into Tuscany, and east along the valley of the Po. Gerbert's task here was not to enlarge minds. He was an administrator. As abbot and count, he was required to provide soldiers and support for Otto's wars. He was not up to the task.

Gerbert was bitterly aware of his failure. Writing to a former student, he riffed ironically on a phrase of Cicero's that Otto had quoted in the diploma appointing him abbot: "In proportion to the greatness of my mind, my lord has enriched me with very extensive properties. For what part of Italy does not contain blessed Columban's possessions? This, indeed, our Caesar's generous beneficence provided. But fortune decreed otherwise. For, in proportion to the greatness of my mind in proportion to the greatness of my mind, she has honored me with enemies everywhere."

He was lost in a world of intrigue. It was at Bobbio that Gerbert first began saving copies of his correspondence, to protect himself from the "foxes" who crawled the imperial palace at Pavia, flattering Otto, whispering and plotting, shamelessly slandering the new abbot as a stud horse, "as if I had a wife and children, because of the part of my household brought from France." Incidentally, this comment is the closest we come to knowing if Gerbert had a s.e.x life: His enemies suspected it and spread rumors to that effect. Bobbio could not pay its dues to the emperor, they intimated, because of the luxury in which the new abbot and his family lived.

Gerbert replied in high rhetorical style: "I prefer to carry joyful rather than sad news to the most serene ears of my lord. But, when I see my monks wasting away from hunger and suffering from nakedness, how can I keep silent? ... The storehouses and granaries have been emptied; in the purses there is nothing. What, therefore, am I, a sinner, doing here?"

Bobbio, indeed, had been stripped of its wealth before Gerbert arrived. The problem, he explained to Otto, was the "little books," or libellarii libellarii , a phenomenon unique to northern Italy. These were written contracts, valid in a court of law, by which the abbot gave the use of an estate, vineyard, or hayfield to a local lord in return for a percentage of the profits. Little books were intended to last twenty-nine years. Yet Gerbert's predecessors had renewed those that expired, and the lords had long considered them hereditary. As a result, when Gerbert arrived, much of Bobbio's land was in the hands of the Obertenghi, the descendants of "the ill.u.s.trious Count Oberto," a family that supported Otto II when it pleased them. Otto expected Gerbert to redistribute this land to more loyal knights. , a phenomenon unique to northern Italy. These were written contracts, valid in a court of law, by which the abbot gave the use of an estate, vineyard, or hayfield to a local lord in return for a percentage of the profits. Little books were intended to last twenty-nine years. Yet Gerbert's predecessors had renewed those that expired, and the lords had long considered them hereditary. As a result, when Gerbert arrived, much of Bobbio's land was in the hands of the Obertenghi, the descendants of "the ill.u.s.trious Count Oberto," a family that supported Otto II when it pleased them. Otto expected Gerbert to redistribute this land to more loyal knights.

He tried, and the Obertenghi ignored him. Worse, they refused to pay him even what the contracts called for. Some sent payment to Gerbert's predecessor. Abbot Peter, from a n.o.ble Italian family, had become bishop of Pavia and Otto's chancellor, in charge of his treasury and correspondence. (He would soon advance to a still higher post: pope.) He apparently neither refused the gifts nor pa.s.sed payment along to Gerbert. Peter had designated a monk named Petroald as his successor-before the emperor pulled rank and installed Gerbert as abbot-so some of the local lords paid Petroald, who was also from a well-known, n.o.ble Italian family (he may have been Peter's nephew). Like Peter, Petroald did not, at least at first, pa.s.s the money on to Gerbert.

a.s.suming Otto II would back him, Gerbert fought for Bobbio's rights with bl.u.s.ter and outrage underlain with threats. The castellan Boso felt himself ent.i.tled to a church and a hayfield. To him, Gerbert writes: "Let us avoid superfluous words and keep to facts. Neither for money nor for friendship will we give to you the sanctuary of G.o.d, nor will we consent if it has already been given to you by anyone else. Restore to Saint-Columban the hay which your followers took if you do not wish to test what we can do."

Writing to Bishop Peter of Pavia, Gerbert is equally strident: "You demand interviews yet you do not cease from thefts from our church; you, who ought to compel the complete restoration of what has been distributed, are yourself distributing our possessions to your knights as if they were your own. Steal, pillage, arouse the forces of Italy against us; you have found the opportune time. Our lord is occupied with the strife of war."

Gerbert's earnestness is admirable; it is also naive. The thirty-year-old abbot is blunt, uncompromising, zealous, and impulsive, without any pretense of flattery; he is disrespectful, sarcastic, and, worst of all, clumsy.

He made grievous political errors. For instance, he rebuked Empress Adelaide, mother of Otto II, who wished him to give monastery lands as a benefice to her favorites: "I pray my lady to remember what she intimated to her servant-that she was about to ask in behalf of many persons more favors than could be granted." All the lands had already been a.s.signed. Her favored knight, Grifo, had come too late. "If we give the whole away, what shall we keep? As far as it lies in our power, we shall do something for Grifo, but we will grant no benefice."

Even Emperor Otto felt the rough side of his tongue. Visiting the palace in Pavia while Otto was absent, Gerbert wrote to the emperor like teacher to student: "Why do the mouths and tails of the foxes here flatter my lord? Either let them depart from the palace, or let them present for judgment their satellites, who disregard the edicts of Caesar, who plot to kill his messengers, who compare even him to an a.s.s. I keep silent about myself about whom they whisper in a new kind of talk.... The dispossessed have no sense of shame. O the times, O the customs. ..."

Otto, understandably, was disappointed in Gerbert. He wanted shrewd administration, not lectures. He needed men-at-arms.

His hold on Italy was precarious. He was king through his mother, Adelaide, whose first husband had been one of several pretenders to the throne. When he had died, the seventeen-year-old Adelaide had been captured by "a man fierce and greedy, who would sell all justice for money," writes the medieval chronicler Widukind. When she refused to marry his son, he locked her in a tower. "Her flowing hair was pulled out," notes Odilo of Cluny, "her body frequently struck with blows from fists and feet." She escaped, hiding in a swamp for days until she was rescued by a fisherman.

Otto I, then king of Germany, took an interest in the beleaguered queen. "Hearing of her beauty and laudable reputation, [he] pretended that he was going to Rome," writes Thietmar of Merseburg. Pa.s.sing through northern Italy, he secretly sent Adelaide a message. She agreed to his proposal, and they married in Pavia as soon as he had conquered it.

With Adelaide as his queen, Otto the Great soon ruled Italy from the Alps to Rome. He made a pact with the pope, who proclaimed him Holy Roman Emperor in 962. From Naples south, however, Italy was in the hands of Greeks and Byzantines (in principle, va.s.sals of the Byzantine emperor), and, increasingly, Arabs-the writers of the time called them Saracens-expanding northward from their kingdom in Sicily.

Otto the Great had won several battles against the Greeks and Byzantines, pushing his borders south. Otto II meant to hold onto his father's conquests. In 981-shortly after installing Gerbert at Bobbio-he called up his German troops (few Italians joined his army). By June 982, he controlled the area south to Rossano, 300 miles from Rome, in the arch of Italy's boot. Leaving Empress Theophanu to hold the city, Otto pressed south again, this time facing Arabs.

He advanced to Stilo, well into the boot's toe, where he was stopped. The Saracens had seemed to flee before his armies. Chasing them, he landed in a trap. Says Thietmar, "Quite unexpectedly, they managed to gather themselves together and launch an attack on our forces, cutting them down with little resistance, alas."

The emperor, separated from his troops, fled on foot to the sea. A knight, recognizing him, gave up his horse, and the emperor swam it out to a pa.s.sing Greek ship-which refused to take him on board. Returning to sh.o.r.e, he found the knight still there, "anxiously awaiting the fate of his beloved lord," writes Thietmar. In light of the future actions of Christian emperors, it is significant that the knight was named "the Jew Calonimus."

The emperor, continues Thietmar, "sorrowfully asked this man: 'What now will become of me?'" The Jewish knight urged him to swim the exhausted horse out to a second Greek ship. There, a Slavic knight recognized Otto. He hauled him aboard and hid him in the captain's cabin. The fate of the loyal Jewish knight is not told.

Soon, though, the Greek captain found the stowaway. After denying for some time that he was the emperor, Otto finally conceded, "Yes, it is I, reduced to this miserable state because of my sins." He would never again be king, he mourned. "I have just lost the best men of my empire and, tormented by this sorrow, can never again set foot in this land." But he had a plan: "Let us go to the city of Rossano where my wife waits my arrival. We will take her and all the treasure ... and go to your emperor, my brother. As I hope, he will be a loyal friend to me in my time of need." The captain happily agreed, certain that the emperor of Constantinople-who was, as everyone knew, no friend to Otto-would richly reward him for these royal captives.

When they reached Rossano, the Slavic knight was sent to fetch Theophanu. She immediately understood the situation and made a plan. From the harbor, the Greeks saw her approaching with a train of sumpter mules presumably bearing the treasure Emperor Otto had mentioned. Theophanu sent a bishop and a few chosen knights on ahead, and the Greeks let them board. The bishop insisted Otto take off his b.l.o.o.d.y clothing before greeting his empress, and said they had brought Otto's robes of state. Otto got his drift. He stripped and, instead of reaching for the robes, "suddenly leaped into the water," Thietmar writes, "trusting in his own strength and skill at swimming," and so escaped the Greeks. Theophanu's knights drew their swords, and, "while the Greeks fled to the other side of the ship, our people followed the emperor in the boats which had brought them there, escaping without any injury." Theophanu promptly turned her mule train around and took the emperor and their knights back to Rossano.

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The puzzle-poem, or Carmen Figuratum Carmen Figuratum, that Gerbert composed for Otto II in 983. It was presented as a booklet containing this image and thirty-two pages of explanations, but only the image itself has survived. It was copied into a music book made near Aurillac before 1079.

It was Otto's first defeat. He was astonished, his nerve destroyed. He returned to Rome and, for an entire year, did nothing but mope. The n.o.bles of Germany and Italy regrouped. They sent a messenger to Otto, writes Thietmar, "with a letter that conveyed their humble desire to see him again.... The emperor agreed to this demand." They met at Verona in May 983, and Otto III-three years old-was declared king of Germany. He was sent north in the care of Archbishop Willigis of Mainz, who was charged with seeing the toddler crowned in Aachen.

Gerbert would have been among the va.s.sals called to Verona, but he did not dare go. He feared being seen as a traitor. He had not sent the knights of Bobbio when the emperor called up his army-keeping them home to guard his hayfields instead. He felt, in some bitter way, responsible for Otto's defeat at the hands of the Saracens.

To mend their friendship, Gerbert began work on a great gift. In Mantua, in June, he met Otto and delivered his Carmen Figuratum Carmen Figuratum, or "figurative poem," and a pipe organ. Writing to Archbishop Adalbero, he seems quite pleased on his own account, though he does not mention anything specific. "What I failed to accomplish at Mantua in regard to your affairs," he says, "I can explain to you better by words when present than by letters when absent." He closes with "Only absence from you disquiets our happiness day and night."

The Carmen Figuratum Carmen Figuratum-a single page in which eight hundred red or black letters are arranged into the spokes and rim of a wheel, with two overlapping squares-was only identified as Gerbert's work in 1999. Ten years later, scholars are still unraveling the poem's many meanings, for Gerbert's artistry is not obvious.

Poems like this were complex word puzzles embedded in a picture. They had been court fashion in Emperor Constantine's day, and the library of Reims had a collection by Porphyrius, Constantine's chief poet, that Gerbert would have seen. Charlemagne had revived the art; his court mathematician Hraban Maur made poems in which a carpet of letters became suddenly readable when oriented to an overlaid cross or a series of Greek letters.

The standard way of presenting such puzzles was in a booklet. The picture would const.i.tute the cover. Inside would be thirty-two pages explaining how to read the poem, and the various meanings to be derived. All this is missing for Gerbert's Carmen Carmen. Only the single cover page remains, copied to make the frontispiece of a gradual gradual, or book of liturgical music. Because it includes music for the feast day of Saint Gerald the Good, the gradual is thought to come from Aurillac. It was made between 960 and 1079, but can't be dated more precisely.

This odd piece of art seems to have nothing to do with the music following it. Yet it is not pure accident that it was preserved-unlike the copy of Gerbert's abacus in the Giant Bible of Echternach. The wheel that holds the poem is drawn by the same hand that copied the rest of the music. And on the surface, at least, the poem seems to be about music: If you spin the wheel the right way up, the first word at the top, following a big O, is Organa Organa, "organ." If you know how these puzzle-poems work, with layers and layers of acrostics and anagrams, you will soon realize that the lines of words intersect, always, at either a red "O" or a red "T." Eight O's circle the rim, with one at the hub. Twelve T's define the squares. Playing with the direction in which you read, you will come up with sixteen lines of good Latin beginning and ending with O, and sixteen lines beginning and ending with T.

Reorganized, the thirty-two lines of the wheel make eight stanzas in which the beginning and ending letters spell "OTTO." Read in order, these lines explicitly offer a pipe organ as a gift to the emperor: "This organ, which for my part I offer as a good omen, you ... will make resound throughout the vast universe.... Your devoted abbot honors you."

Gerbert's meaning does not stop there: His Carmen Figuratum Carmen Figuratum is a tour de force. To follow him further, you need to know that Hraban Maur often hid his signature in his poems, with the letters of his name making a picture or a symbolic shape. If you shuffle the thirty-two lines of Gerbert's wheel (preserving the "OTTO" motif, but not worrying if the sequence of lines make sense), you will find a complicated squiggle that reads is a tour de force. To follow him further, you need to know that Hraban Maur often hid his signature in his poems, with the letters of his name making a picture or a symbolic shape. If you shuffle the thirty-two lines of Gerbert's wheel (preserving the "OTTO" motif, but not worrying if the sequence of lines make sense), you will find a complicated squiggle that reads Gerberto Ottoni Gerberto Ottoni, "from Gerbert to Otto." The shape is a Celtic knot used frequently in decorations on ma.n.u.scripts and stonecarvings at Bobbio, which was founded by an Irish saint. In Celtic lore, the knot symbolizes the three faces of the G.o.ddess: virgin, mother, crone. In the ma.n.u.scripts of Bobbio, it is used with a Christian meaning, alluding to the Trinity. To Gerbert, it was a symbol of fidelity, of a promise.

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The Arabic numerals hidden inside Gerbert's Carmen Figuratum Carmen Figuratum. The omega spells "and Theophanu," while the Celtic knot says, "from Gerbert to Otto." Another poem is created by the letters enclosing the numerals. It lists the names of the numerals and refers to the abacus and Gerbert's textbook on geometry.

In another squiggle nearby, you will find ac Theophano ac Theophano, "and Theophanu." This squiggle is shaped like the Greek letter omega. The omega holding Theophanu's name embraces the four lines that make up the name OTTO, as if the empress were embracing her emperor. Omega is, moreover, the symbol for eight hundred: A.D. 800 was the year Charlemagne became emperor, making the omega also, in Gerbert's mind, a symbol of empire. Not coincidentally, the poem has exactly eight hundred letters.

Given these two shapes, if you know how Gerbert's mind works, you might guess what to look for next-and you will find the nine Arabic numerals, in order, shaped just as they are on Gerbert's abacus board. The Latin words embedded in the numeric shapes make a grammatically sound poem in which Gerbert asks that the "guilty one" be forgiven. It ends with the clear statement, "Gift of Gerbert to Otto and Theophanu."

But that is not the end of the puzzle. If you look closely at the sequence of forty-six letters that make up these embedded words, you will find two more verses in Gerbert's style-in very good Latin-that seem to say, "Rumors have thrown my rarest things to the dogs of darkness. Ah! Could I have known you, in your mystery, from Odo?" Here, Gerbert is being purposely cryptic. This message was meant for Otto's eyes alone. The "dogs" are the "foxes" of his earlier letter to Otto warning about flattery: the men of the court. The reference to Odo could mean the king of France, anointed in 888, or perhaps "Oto," which he uses elsewhere in the poem to mean Otto I (he also refers to "Ottto," meaning Otto III).

The "rumors" verses are meant to be unclear: They hide an anagram. Cut up and put into a grid, and expanding the abbreviations, they produce twelve more lines of poetry. These verses contain delicate allusions to Otto and Gerbert's lives. Gerbert refers to the defeat in the south of Italy. He speaks sadly of his emperor, married to a Byzantine princess, who is yet attacked by Byzantines. He speaks of Theophanu as being like Venus, born of the sea. He also makes reference to the sciences of the quadrivium, mentioning the three genres of music and the orbits of the sun and stars. He refers directly to Arabic numerals, calling them (as al-Khwarizmi did) Indian. He names himself "practically the sole master" of this "Indian wisdom of numbers." He writes, "Gerbert will clearly instruct you so that you will understand these things having to do with the ten numerals," asking the king to pay attention to "the p.r.o.nunciation of the Indian words: igin, andras, ormis, arbas, guimas, calctis, tsenis, temenias, cerentis, sipos igin, andras, ormis, arbas, guimas, calctis, tsenis, temenias, cerentis, sipos." These ten words, Gerbert explains in the poem, stand for the digits used in finger counting and the counters of the abacus board. "They are the names of my Geometry, august King Otto, but what is mine, in reality, is yours."

To those who can decipher it, Gerbert's Carmen Figuratum Carmen Figuratum is a beautiful, profound poem, full of symbolism, mysteries, and cryptic messages. Otto would have had no trouble working out its many meanings: In his presentation booklet, Gerbert had provided the key. To make the numerals, you must read the poem as a sequence of four letters "K." These stood for Constantine, Charlemagne, Caesar the Father, and Caesar the Son-Gerbert's usual way of designating the two Ottos-all spelled, as in Latin, with K. Both Ottos felt that they were heirs to Constantine and Charlemagne, destined to rejuvenate the Roman Empire. Encouraged by Gerbert, Otto III would later take this concept to extremes. is a beautiful, profound poem, full of symbolism, mysteries, and cryptic messages. Otto would have had no trouble working out its many meanings: In his presentation booklet, Gerbert had provided the key. To make the numerals, you must read the poem as a sequence of four letters "K." These stood for Constantine, Charlemagne, Caesar the Father, and Caesar the Son-Gerbert's usual way of designating the two Ottos-all spelled, as in Latin, with K. Both Ottos felt that they were heirs to Constantine and Charlemagne, destined to rejuvenate the Roman Empire. Encouraged by Gerbert, Otto III would later take this concept to extremes.

In this hidden poem, Gerbert says to Otto II, "The Empire spreads over all the cosmos." The emperor-the eight stanzas that each spell OTTO-is the guarantor not only of the poem's structure, but of the structure of the universe. And yet something is missing: number. Gerbert's point is symbolic. Without number, the cosmos becomes chaos. For this reason, when you reorganize the verses to reveal the shapes of the Arabic numerals, the lines about the devoted abbot's gift of an organ no longer make sense. If Otto concerns himself with such petty things as his servants' apologies and gifts, he will never rule the Roman Empire. To do so, Otto must learn to focus on number.

Gerbert is excusing the emperor's recent defeat in the south of Italy as a lack of knowledge. If Otto only understood numbers, Gerbert is arguing, he would be invincible. And he, Gerbert, "the master of number," can teach Otto what he needs to know.

But it was too late. Gerbert's bid to resume his place at court as the emperor's teacher and adviser failed. His poem, though happily received, had no effect. Six months later, in December 983, Otto suddenly caught a fever and died.