The Abacus And The Cross Part 8

The sides in the conflict, however, had been chosen long ago: They were the friends and enemies Gerbert had made as a scientist and scholar. Leading the fight against him was his old enemy, the loquacious and exasperating former schoolmaster who considered himself a "doctor of the abacus" and master of (at least) five of the seven liberal arts, the fierce reformer and protector of monks' rights, Abbot Abbo of Fleury. On the other side was Bishop Arnulf of Orleans, the confidant of Hugh Capet who had so quick-thinkingly s.n.a.t.c.hed up Emperor Otto's sword in Rome, the friend and patron of Gerbert's beloved Constantine.

Arnulf and Abbo were themselves fierce enemies. Arnulf, as bishop of Orleans, was technically Fleury's overlord; Abbo refused to acknowledge it. Recently they had come to blows over control of a vineyard. To defend his monastery's rights to the grapes, Abbo had raised a "clamor," a specific and highly public form of request for saintly aid. First, he and his monks covered the floor of their church with sackcloth. They doused the candles and stripped the altar of crucifix and reliquaries, setting them on the floor in disgrace. Then the monks threw themselves face down while a priest called out: "Rise up in our aid, Lord Jesus! Comfort us and help us overcome our attackers, and crush the pride of those who afflict us and your monastery." The relics thus roused, Abbot Abbo marched them out to the disputed vineyard, where Bishop Arnulf had posted men to prevent the monks from harvesting the grapes. Confronted with superior holiness-or at least an effective spectacle-the bishop called off his men.

It wasn't the end of the dispute. Later, on his way to Tours to celebrate the feast of Saint Martin, Abbo was waylaid by the bishop's men. Swords were drawn. Some of Abbo's retinue were killed.

In 991, at the monastery of Saint-Basle outside of Reims, Bishop Arnulf and Abbot Abbo faced off again, this time over the archbishopric of Reims. The bishop accused Arnoul of treason. Abbo defended him.

In a spectacular conflict of interest, Gerbert served as the official secretary during the dispute. We have no copy of his original notes, only a revision he called The Acts of Saint-Basle The Acts of Saint-Basle, which he sent to the pope's legate in 995. He described the council again at the end of that year in a long letter to an adviser of Otto III.

Richer of Saint-Remy (who was not present) also told the story in his History History, writing between 996 and 998. According to Richer, the priest Augier confessed that he had unlocked the gates of Reims on Arnoul's orders. Arnoul himself was asked "a great many questions; some of which he answered, and some refused," wrote Richer. "Finally, defeated, he succ.u.mbed to the logic of the argument and publicly confessed himself guilty and unworthy of the archbishopric."

King Hugh and his son Robert then joined the council. "'Prostrate yourself before your lords and before your kings, whom you have unforgiveably offended,'" Arnoul was commanded, "'and confessing your own guilt beseech them for your life.' And prostrating himself in the form of a cross and crying aloud, he so supplicated for his life and limbs that he reduced the entire synod to tears." Out of pity, Hugh and Robert spared him.

According to Gerbert, Arnoul was more wicked than pitiful: He "engages in arson, sedition, betrayals, disgraceful acts, captures, and thefts from his own men, while he plots his kings' destruction, and betrays his land to the enemy." He "confessed to those crimes," Gerbert points out, and is therefore "dead forever as a priest." Abbo of Fleury's efforts to have Arnoul reinstated as archbishop (and Gerbert removed), Gerbert claims, are due only to "consuming envy and blind cupidity."

But the biggest hole in Richer's story is his failure to mention the debate about the power of the pope-and Gerbert would have helped himself immensely if he, too, had omitted it from his account of the event.

Abbot Abbo, defending Arnoul with numerous citations of precedents and laws, did not contest his betrayal of Hugh Capet. But treason, Abbo said, was no grounds for defrocking an archbishop. (Five years earlier, Adalbero and Gerbert might have happily agreed with him.) Nor did a council of bishops have the right to do so for any reason for any reason. Only the pope could make or unmake an archbishop.

To Bishop Arnulf-and King Hugh-that idea was absurd. The pope! Who refuses even to answer the king's letter? The bishop responded with a speech so vehemently antipapal that it was once thought to be a forgery inserted by Protestants in the sixteenth century. "Deplorable Rome! ... What spectacles have we not witnessed in our days!" he began, and regaled the council with papal deeds of debauchery, treason, violence, and murder-including the very recent kidnapping of Peter of Pavia by a rival pope. "Can bishops," concluded Arnulf, "legally submit to such monsters swollen with ignominy, lacking all sciences, both human and divine?" Just because a man sits on a throne, "resplendent in his purple and gold," should we listen to him? "If he is lacking in charity, if he is not filled with and supported by science, he is the Antichrist sitting in the temple of G.o.d. ... If he is neither supported by charity nor held upright by philosophy, it is a statue, an idol in the temple of G.o.d. To ask it anything is to consult marble." To call the pope the Antichrist-or a marble statue-was rather extreme, and Gerbert (if not Arnulf) would come to regret it. But on the whole, Arnulf's accusations were true.

Tenth-century popes were not the powerful religious leaders of today. They were political p.a.w.ns. Many were not even churchmen. For much of the century the papacy was influenced by the mercurial Roman n.o.blewoman Marozia. She was mistress of Pope Sergius III (904-911), murderer of John X (914-928), and mother of John XI (931-935). Her grandson, John XII (955-963), was both pope and Prince of Rome until he double-crossed Otto I, whom he had just crowned emperor. At a synod in Saint Peter's, John XII was accused of sacrilege, simony, perjury, murder, adultery, and incest, and then deposed. He excommunicated the members of the synod, and when he caught three of them, he flogged one, cut off another's right hand, and the third's nose and ears. Otto I marched on Rome, but before he arrived John was "stricken by paralysis in the act of adultery" and died.

Otto's appointee, Leo, wasn't even a priest. The Romans chose Benedict, a deacon, who was well qualified. Pope Benedict was "attacked by Leo, aided by the emperor," Arnulf claimed. "Besieged, made prisoner, and deposed, [Benedict] was sent in exile to Germany," and Otto appointed John XIII, a bishop and, incidentally, Marozia's nephew. Pope John XIII was captured by a rival faction, but escaped. The emperor hanged the conspirators, and John XIII went on to have a successful papacy. Bishop Arnulf found nothing ill to say of John XIII (at least in the version Gerbert recorded); this was the pope whom the young Gerbert, fresh from Spain, had impressed with his mastery of mathesis mathesis.

His successor, chosen by Otto II, was strangled by supporters of his rival, Boniface VII. This was the antipope who fled (first robbing the Vatican treasury) when Otto invaded the city, returned when Otto died, and threw Peter of Pavia into the Castel Sant'Angelo. When Boniface VII himself died a year later, his body was dragged through the streets of Rome by a mob.

The n.o.bles of Rome, led by the Crescentians, replaced the antipope with a Roman n.o.bleman, who became Pope John XV. By the time of Archbishop Arnoul's treason, John XV had reigned six years. He would last another five by carefully balancing the desires of Crescentius of the Marble Horse, Prince of Rome, with those of the empresses Theophanu and Adelaide.

Abbot Abbo made sure John XV heard Bishop Arnulf's antipapal diatribe.

Incensed, the pope dispatched his legate, Leo, to fling the "Antichrist" and "marble statue" insults back in the French bishops' faces. "You are the Antichrists, who say that the Apostolic Church is governed by an inert statue, by an idol resembling those of the pagans. Is there a single Christian who can listen in cold blood to such blasphemy? What! Because the vicars of the blessed Peter and his disciples study other masters than Plato, Virgil, Terence, and the rest of that troop of philosophers ... you conclude that they are not worthy of being promoted to the ranks of doormen because they ignore the poets?"

Over the next five years, six more church councils met-in France, in Italy, and in Germany-to debate whether Arnoul or Gerbert was the true archbishop of Reims. The struggle was no longer between Arnoul and Gerbert (if it ever was), but a contest between king and pope, bishop and monk.

King Hugh Capet supported Gerbert.

Pope John XV supported Arnoul.

The French bishops supported Gerbert (and King Hugh) against the pope, whom they pointedly addressed as "the bishop of Rome." They considered him only "first among equals," not of superior rank to themselves.

The French monks, led by Abbot Abbo, supported Arnoul (and the pope) against the French bishops (and King Hugh). Their recalcitrance was so extreme-and even violent-that the bishops excommunicated the entire monastery of Fleury, and King Hugh called Abbo to task for fomenting French monks to riot against their lords.

The teenaged Emperor Otto III supported the pope. Gerbert had fallen from favor at the imperial court when Otto's mother Theophanu died in 991 and his grandmother, the aging Empress Adelaide, became regent. Adelaide had never forgiven Gerbert for his arrogant letter from Bobbio. He was also tainted by his close a.s.sociation with Theophanu, "that Greek woman" whom Adelaide had always despised. Abbot Odilo of Cluny, taking Adelaide's side, wrote, "While that Greek empress could be quite helpful and pleasant to herself and others, things were different where her august mother-in-law was concerned." He claimed that Theophanu once boasted, "gesturing with her hand as she did so, 'If I live another year, Adelaide's power in this world will be small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.'" "Divine judgment," Abbot Odilo continued, "guaranteed that her ill-considered words would come true: Before four weeks had pa.s.sed, the Greek empress pa.s.sed away from the light of this world, while the august Adelaide remained behind, safe and sound."

The pope, with the young emperor behind him, felt strong enough to challenge King Hugh and the French bishops directly. He used his direst weapon: He excommunicated Gerbert.

It was not as terrible as it sounds. As a young monk at Aurillac, remember, Gerbert had faced excommunication if he was proud, haughty, angry, jealous, or begrudging, or-and this was his current sin-he did not defer to his elders. The pope considered himself "elder" to any bishop or archbishop. The council of French bishops insisted he was not-he was just a bishop himself, no more senior than any other, and so could not excommunicate Gerbert unless they concurred-which they did not. Excommunication was, in any event, a temporary chastis.e.m.e.nt. If Gerbert showed the necessary contrition-at Aurillac, that meant prostrating himself before the chapel door, face to the ground-the pope would lift the sentence. Here, the pope demanded Gerbert give up the archbishopric of Reims; the king of France forbade it.

Yet, even with the king and the council of French bishops insisting Gerbert's excommunication was invalid, the pope's word carried weight. At Reims, Gerbert was shunned. As he wrote, "Not only my knights, but also the clerics conspired that no one would eat with me, no one a.s.sist in the sacraments. I keep silent about the vilification and contemptuousness." He appealed the pope's sentence. "The deepest grief overwhelms me as I learn that I have been removed from the fellowship of your very sacred apostolate," Gerbert wrote to the pope.

Yet he would not give up. In a letter to the French queen, he argued that the decision of a council of many bishops overruled the p.r.o.nouncements of a single bishop-even if that one were the bishop of Rome. He wrote, "The church which I was charged with governing by the decision of the council of bishops I am unwilling to relinquish except by such judgment."

In February 996, he learned that his enemy, Abbot Abbo of Fleury, was on his way to Rome to see that Gerbert was finally, permanently, evicted from Reims. Gerbert, writing to his friend and solace, Constantine, said, "I am greatly amazed at the mission of venerable Abbo. ... All of these things are not troubles, but the beginnings of troubles. Greater is his complaint and what he seeks than am I, who am humble and of little account." Abbo was seeking no less than to nullify the power of all bishops, to completely reorganize the hierarchy of the Church and make the pope's word supreme. "Even the kings themselves will appear as sinners," if Abbo wins, Gerbert said. "Let no one be pleased by the shattering of something while he himself remains unharmed."

Deciding his only hope was with the empire, Gerbert left Reims. He met Otto III's court at Ingelheim ten days later and traveled south with the young king of Germany to Rome in hopes of countering Abbo's accusations. Before they reached the city, Pope John XV died of fever. Things would turn out much differently-and much better-than Gerbert could have imagined.

CHAPTER XI.

The Legend of the Last Emperor King of Germany since age three, Otto III had gone to war against the Slavs at six, carried along as a sacred object to inspire his soldiers. On the battlefield, he received the homage of the Polish prince, who gave him a camel. He led armies at age twelve. Upon Empress Theophanu's death in 991, the hordes of Gog and Magog had descended on Germany. Otto marched three times against the Slavs in 993, then turned to face a Viking attack in 994. In August 995, his war-leader, Henry the Quarreler, died. Nonetheless, when Pope John XV called for his aid against the Crescentians, the fifteen-year-old emperor bravely marched on Rome. He left his grandmother, Adelaide-now no longer regent-in charge of Germany. When he had come of age, at fourteen, Otto had begun to question her policies. Meeting Gerbert at Ingelheim, he remembered him as his father's tutor and his mother's spy. He took no notice of Gerbert's excommunication. As they traveled south to Rome, the two became fast friends.

Otto III would be King Arthur to Gerbert's Merlin or, in the a.n.a.logy of the day, Alexander the Great to Gerbert's Aristotle. Son of a Saxon king and a Byzantine princess, Otto was born to reestablish the Roman Empire, to rejoin East and West into one great Christian kingdom, from Constantinople to the islands of Britain and beyond. He was, at the very least, a new Charlemagne in the making.

Symbol of the Last Emperor, this grand processional cross of gold and gemstones on copper may have been a gift from Otto III to Charlemagne's cathedral at Aachen, where it remains. At its center is a cameo of Caesar Augustus, representing empire; on its back is an etching of Christ crucified-one of the earliest images of the suffering, human Jesus, instead of the all-powerful King of Heaven.

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His father and grandfather had dreamed that dream, of a Christian empire spanning the cosmos. A legend popular in Byzantium during his mother's childhood, and which quickly spread through the West, foretold "a king of the Greeks and Romans" who would call all pagans to Christ. He would defeat the forces of Gog and Magog, loosed from the North. "Then the Earth will sit in peace and tranquility such as has never been seen nor ever will be any more, since it is the final peace at the end of time." The Last Emperor would travel to Jerusalem and hand his crown to Christ himself.

It was quite a burden for a sixteen-year-old. Otto's official doc.u.ments betray a sense of sadness and urgency and of the crushing weight of duty. His strangely intense spirituality-when upset, he fled the palace, barefoot, in rags, and walked to a monastery-reveals a mind under heavy stress.

Otto was precocious, fanciful, impatient, rash, severe in judgment, and quick to repent. From his father's side, he inherited "fiery glowing eyes which sent forth a gleam like a flash of lightning" and the conviction that he, a king, could divine G.o.d's will. From his mother's side-from his Greek blood-came all his faults, it was said. He kept unkingly friendships. A boy named Tammo was "so intimate and dear to the king," says a medieval writer, "that they wore each other's clothing and often used a single spoon when eating." In an age when kings were walled off alone, austere, stern, and unapproachable, Otto opened himself to friendship: Like Gerbert, he wanted to be loved. Unlike his father, he had the mind of a scholar. He was delighted by Gerbert's learning, and immediately engaged him as his secretary and counselor. He agreed to back Gerbert's case before the pope and have his excommunication, at least, lifted.

His chance to help his new friend came sooner than expected. Celebrating Easter in Pavia, Otto learned of the pope's death. a.s.serting his right as emperor (though he had not yet been crowned) to choose the pope, Otto sent his cousin Bruno off to Rome to take John's place. Only twenty-five, Bruno was an ordained priest and well-enough educated to qualify as a bishop-even the bishop of Rome. A sizable army accompanied him, to make sure the fractious Romans accepted Otto's choice. On May 3, 996, Bruno was elected Pope Gregory V.

Eighteen days later, the new pope crowned his cousin Holy Roman Emperor in a lavish ceremony at Saint-Peter's. Otto wore a mantle embroidered with scenes of the Apocalypse in gold. Other details of his dress can be guessed from ma.n.u.script illuminations depicting him on his throne (see Plate 8). His mantle is clasped at the shoulder with a heavy round brooch bearing a blue gemstone surrounded by pearls. Under the mantle (green in one painting, red in another), he wore a long-sleeved tunic, stiff with gold bands of embroidery and glittering with gems at placket, hem, collar, elbow, and cuff. Beneath it, a voluminous robe of royal blue covers his high black boots. He perches on a magnificent throne-pink marble with arms carved into animal heads-and bears three symbols of rule: a crown, encrusted with gems and rising to three crosses; a scepter, topped by a golden eagle; and the orb of the world, a golden globe marked with a silver cross.

Acting as Otto's secretary, Gerbert sent notice of the coronation to the aging Empress Adelaide. It must have amused him to write, in the imperial "we": "Because the Divinity, in accordance with your wishes and desires, auspiciously conferred upon us the rights of empire, we do, indeed, adore Divine Providence and render true thanks to you."

It was Otto's first time in Rome. He would not have noticed, in May, the mosquito-infested swamps that flanked the Tiber from the city to the sea. He may not have known the medieval poem about the notorious air of Rome that brought so many deadly summer fevers: "The sluggish earth reeks, and fetid water lies in the swampy lakes; foul vapors slowly rise from the rotting marshes." He could not know that nearly every northern king or bishop who stayed in Rome over the summer inevitably died-or watched his partisans die-of fever, probably malaria: The connection between mosquitoes and malaria was not made until the late nineteenth century; that some genes conferred protection against the disease was not known until the twentieth century.

Instead, Otto would have marveled at the enormous ruins: the Colosseum, the triumphal arches, the aqueducts (some still in use), the baths and palaces, and the brick forums, with little lean-tos scabbed onto their walls. Smoke rose from furnaces that burned marble statues to make lime for mortar. The Pantheon, stripped of its marble cladding, was now a church, its famous oculus looking down on an altar to the Virgin Mary. Trajan's column, with its lively carvings of men and beasts spiraling up to a lookout point, was owned by monks who charged a fee to climb its internal stairway and gaze out at the view.

The greatest city in the world had long ago been reduced to squalor. Rome, caput mundi caput mundi, head of the world, wrote Alcuin, Charlemagne's schoolmaster, in about 800: "Golden Rome, there remains to you now only a great ma.s.s of cruel ruins." And yet, its legend remained. "Nothing is equal to thee, O Rome," wrote the archbishop of Tours just after the year 1000, "even though your ruin is almost total; your ruins speak more eloquently than your former greatness."

A walled city built for a million, Rome now held a scant 50,000. Vast zones of the ancient city were overgrown with weeds. Vineyards and olive groves filled the valleys. Goats grazed the slopes. Monasteries crowned the seven hills. Most of the population cl.u.s.tered in the bend of the Tiber: On one side was the merchants' quarter; across the bridge was the Leonine City. Pope Leo IV had built the wall enclosing Saint-Peter's basilica after the center of Christendom was sacked in the 800s by 10,000 Sicilian Muslims. Having seen the Archangel Michael alight atop Hadrian's tomb, the pope reinforced the structure with battlements and called it the Castel Sant'Angelo.

Once inside its gates, a pilgrim could find anything he needed. Shops and foodstalls, stables and moneylenders; hostels organized by country and endowed by kings; peddlers selling pilgrim's badges, holy oil, candles, and religious icons; fountains and bathhouses; cells for hermits-they crowded up to the very doors of the huge basilica, its gigantic marble columns funneling the faithful to the tomb of the apostle, the light from oil lamps and candles glinting off the gla.s.s mosaics on the walls, off the paintings and frescoes covering every surface. From every side came the chanting of canons, the crying of hawkers, the pleas of beggars, and the ringing of bells.

A day's walk away was the second most holy spot in Rome: the basilica of the tomb of Saint Paul. Between Saint-Peter's and Saint-Paul's was the Lateran, the administrative seat of the pope, a palace rich in marble arches and glittering with mosaics ill.u.s.trating the lives of the apostles. The famous statue of Lupa, the wolf-mother of Rome, sat in one courtyard, the equestrian bronze of Marcus Aurelius (then thought to be the Christian Emperor Constantine) in another. A white marble staircase joined two luxurious feast halls graced with columns of red porphyry, the royal stone. The larger of the two halls was 220 feet long and 50 feet wide; at its center was a marble fountain surrounded by divans on which the pope's guests could recline to eat like true Romans. Two fortified towers adjoining the palace provided the pope with a safe haven and a good place from which to study the stars, if he was so inclined. Across the cloister was the basilica of Saint John, housing the official throne of the pope. Palace and church were enveloped in a maze of houses and dormitories and offices and cells for the various monks, canons, deacons, subdeacons, cardinal-deacons, cardinal-priests, and cardinal-bishops, the n.o.blemen, soldiers, artisans, bakers, butchers, brewers, and merchants who supported the work of the bishop of Rome, servant of the servants of G.o.d.

The "servant" now enjoying such luxury and power was Otto's twenty-five-year-old cousin, Bruno. As Pope Gregory V, Bruno immediately convened a church council, which Emperor Otto III attended. Gerbert was also invited, since the question of Reims was the chief problem to be discussed. Pope Gregory did not take Gerbert's part-to the astonishment of Gerbert's new friend. Otto had expected his cousin to put an end, once and for all, to the recurring power struggles between emperor and pope by kowtowing to his every wish. Gregory had other ideas. He gave Gerbert no clear answer.

He was slightly more disposed toward a second pet.i.tioner, another of Otto's new friends, Bishop Adalbert of Prague. Where Gerbert charmed Otto with his wide knowledge, Adalbert enthralled the young emperor by purity of spirit.

Adalbert was beautiful and n.o.ble-the picture of a saint. He had studied at Magdeburg under Otric, the schoolmaster Gerbert had so soundly defeated in debate at Ravenna. He became bishop of Prague, but had soon fled his post. He was being suffocated by sin, he had complained to Pope John XV: In Prague he had found men with two wives, priests living with women, Christian captives sold to Jews, while the duke had warred against the Poles, a Christian people, and made deals with the pagan Slavs. Pope John had sent Adalbert on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but he made it no farther than the cell of Nilus the Hermit, who convinced a Roman monastery to admit him. The pope had ordered Adalbert out of the cloister and back to his post at Prague. Adalbert fled again to the monastery, where Otto III met him. They talked "day and night," a medieval source says, suggesting that something a little improper was going on between these two n.o.ble young men, both called to rule, to conquer and convert the heathens, though both preferred the peace of the cloister, where the only difficulties to overcome were bound between the covers of books.

At the council, Pope Gregory ruled that Adalbert must return to Prague and resume his duties as bishop, just as Pope John had decreed. In private, he agreed that Adalbert could perhaps risk a brief mission to the pagans in Prussia. But all Otto heard was that, once again, his cousin had gone against his wishes. Otto was annoyed. He determined to teach his cousin a lesson.

It must have given Gerbert great joy to write to Pope Gregory, in Otto's name, a few months later, when the bad air of Rome had finally come to the young emperor's attention: "I am overcome by vehement grief because the unseasonable weather has prevented me from satisfying your desires. For I am urged on by an affectionate piety towards you, but the necessity of nature, which restricts everything by its own laws, puts into opposition the quality of the Italian climate and the frailty of my body." Otto was returning to Germany for the sake of his health, of course-not to punish Gregory for being too independent. Yet a German pope would not last long without a German army in Rome, and both pope and emperor knew it. Gregory was expected to beg Otto to stay. He did not.

Otto returned to Germany, Gerbert to Reims, Adalbert to Prague. A month after they left, Pope Gregory was chased out of Rome by the Crescentians. In early 997, he was replaced by an antipope. He would not regain his seat until Otto and his army returned in 998.

Gerbert, still excommunicated, reached Reims in late summer 996; by the fall, he knew he could not stay. After reigning less than ten years, Hugh Capet, age fifty-five, died of smallpox. His son, Robert the Pious, succeeded him. Twenty-four years old, Robert was a great warrior, tall, fair-haired, with a long nose and a "gentle" mouth, "affable and pleasant," "prudent and erudite," said his contemporaries, a "man always ready for peace and respectful to all." Gerbert had taught him well at Reims: He composed hymns, read holy works, and carried his bookchests wherever he went. He was generous to churches and monasteries, fed and clothed the poor, and even-like Count Gerald the Good of Aurillac-healed the sick with the water that had washed his hands. He would be king of France for the next thirty-five years.

He and Gerbert immediately had a falling out over Bertha, the beautiful countess of Blois. The countess had just been widowed, and King Robert, who had long admired her, proposed marriage. Unfortunately, he was already married. Having failed to procure a Byzantine princess, Hugh Capet had wed his son at sixteen to Rozala, daughter of a king of Italy, widow (and mother) of a count of Flanders, and somewhat over thirty. Robert called her his "old Italian" and set her aside. Rozala's kinsmen did not recognize the divorce, since Robert refused to return her dowry, so the king was still, technically, married. There was another problem: Robert and Bertha were second cousins. The Church at the time considered such a marriage incestuous. And a third problem: Robert was already the G.o.dfather of one of Bertha's five children. This spiritual kinship, by itself, was enough to rule out marriage. Gerbert-whom Robert still considered the archbishop of Reims, in spite of the pope's sentence of excommunication-refused to perform the wedding. His chances of attaining Robert's friendship-or favor-vanished.

The king found a more pliant archbishop at Tours and married Bertha there. Pope Gregory promptly excommunicated both the king and the archbishop of Tours.

Then Abbo of Fleury, Gerbert's eternal enemy, made a suggestion to the king: Give the pope his choice for archbishop of Reims, and perhaps he will withdraw his objections to your queen. Robert liked the idea. Abbo set off again for Rome. Finding, not Pope Gregory, but an antipope in Saint Peter's chair, Abbo wandered "through deep valleys and across precipitous mountains," as he later wrote. He finally located Gregory in Spoleto, where he had hidden himself for fear of the Roman n.o.bles. What deal Abbo made we don't exactly know. Back in France, he wrote to Pope Gregory, "Venerable Father, I conveyed your views to King Robert faithfully and simply, as you bade me, fearing no enmity from the king through loyalty to you; I added nothing, cut out nothing, changed nothing. Sure evidence of this lies in the fact that Arnoul, freed from captivity, is now archbishop of Reims." The pope had gotten his choice for archbishop, but he still did not bless Robert's marriage to Bertha. The king remained excommunicated as long as Gregory V remained pope.

If anyone benefited from this deal, it was Abbo: He had triumphed over Gerbert at last. Better yet, he had triumphed over the bishop of Orleans. According to a new charter that the pope conferred on Fleury, no bishop could say Ma.s.s at the monastery-or even enter its grounds-without Abbo's invitation. If accused of wrongdoing, the abbot could be judged only by the pope himself. The charter's flowery phrases matched a bull attributed to Pope Gregory IV confirming similar privileges on Fleury in the early 800s-except that this "papal bull" was a forgery, written by Abbo himself. The abbot was not a little proud of himself. "I am more powerful than our lord the king of the Franks in these lands where no one fears his rule," he bragged.

Gerbert did not wait for Arnoul to show up at Reims to take his place. He copied some of his letters and The Acts of Saint-Basle The Acts of Saint-Basle and sent them off to his friend, Constantine, for safekeeping. He politely rejected the latest student sent for training, for fear of "evil befalling the boy because of the difficult times." To Bishop Arnulf of Orleans, still a true friend, he entrusted the property he owned, both houses (with their furnishings) and churches. Many of his books he boxed up to take with him, particularly the lavish copy of Boethius's and sent them off to his friend, Constantine, for safekeeping. He politely rejected the latest student sent for training, for fear of "evil befalling the boy because of the difficult times." To Bishop Arnulf of Orleans, still a true friend, he entrusted the property he owned, both houses (with their furnishings) and churches. Many of his books he boxed up to take with him, particularly the lavish copy of Boethius's On Arithmetic On Arithmetic, written in gold and silver inks on purple parchment, which he would give Otto III as a gift. No one knows what happened to his abacus board, his celestial spheres (including the one he was making for Remi), or his monochord; his organs were lost in Italy.

He penned a few last letters before leaving France for good. To the dowager-queen, King Robert's mother, who had invited him to join the French court, he wrote of the pope's decree: "The too wicked and almost incredible report has affected me with such grief that I have almost lost the light of my eyes in weeping, but when you order me to come to you to offer consolation-an excellent idea, indeed-you command the impossible. For my days have pa.s.sed away, O sweet and glorious lady. Old age threatens me with my last day." He was fifty years old and, he said, in poor health. "Pleurisy fills my sides; my ears ring; my eyes fill with water; continual pains jab my whole body. This whole year has seen me lying ill in bed, and now, though scarce out of bed, I have suffered a relapse, and am seized by chills and fevers on alternate days." This is a rather exact description of tertian fever-a kind of malaria, which he could have caught in Rome. Yet here it is merely an excuse. Gerbert knew he had too many enemies in the French court, and the king's mother was too weak to protect him. Poor health or no, he fled instead to Germany.

Reaching Emperor Otto's side at Magdeburg in June 997, he wrote the queen again, refusing rather more strongly to return to the French court. "It is inconceivable that my return would be without danger to my head. Even if you will not take notice of it, I ought not to doubt that this is so." He would no longer contest the pope's decision, nor "wrack your church by schism. Indeed, I am acutely aware of the cunning of these wicked men" (he doesn't need to name Abbo and Arnoul), "but if so decreed I will defend the unity of the church against all schisms by my death." He would never return to Reims.

In Magdeburg, at Otto's court, he worked his usual magic. He organized a grand debate on rhetoric, which he wrote up later as a treatise, On Reason and the Uses of Reason On Reason and the Uses of Reason. He built Otto the astronomical instrument Thietmar of Merseburg called an horologium horologium. "Astrolabe" is one possible translation, but whatever Gerbert made, it was a new and delightful toy for the court. And Otto was in dire need of diversion. There was trouble to the south in Rome. The Slavs were attacking from the east. And his beloved Adalbert of Prague had just been martyred by the Prussians in the north. According to the account by Bruno of Querfurt (who himself would be martyred by Prussians in 1009), the beautiful Adalbert stayed silent while his captors dragged him one Friday, chained, to the top of a hill and pierced him with seven lances. He fell with his arms outstretched in the shape of a cross. As he died and his soul fled, his fetters burst open.

Otto built a church in Adalbert's honor, commissioned jeweled crosses, pet.i.tioned to have his friend sainted, and planned a pilgrimage to his tomb. Rewarding Gerbert for his friendship, he gave him a magnificent German estate called Sasbach. Then Otto returned to the war against the Slavs.

Writing from the estate, Gerbert guided and supported Otto with wit, fondness, and fatherly good sense. "I am especially concerned to inform you of the wails and groans of brother W," he wrote. "That n.o.ble man bewails the fact that his brother is being destroyed by hunger near Gorze, regardless of his rank and that of his family, and this leads to everlasting disgrace." Captors must be particularly mindful of the humane treatment of their captives, he reminded the young emperor, "lest, after regaining liberty, the captives ... injure the captors or their friends."

Upon hearing of Otto's Slavic victories, he said, "You could make known to us, solicitous in your behalf, nothing sweeter than the great renown of your empire.... May the last number of the abacus be the length of your life."

When the previous owner of Sasbach forcibly reclaimed the estate, Gerbert (master of rhetoric that he was) let loose a stream of petulance at his young patron: I know that I have and do offend the Divinity in much. But I do not know by what contradiction I am said to have offended you. ... Would that either I might never have been permitted to receive such gifts, offered with glory by your generosity, or, once received, I had not lost them in such confusion. What should I think of this?

What you most certainly gave, you were either able to give, or you were not. If you were not able to, why did you pretend to be able to? If you were able to, what unknown, what emperor without name, commands our emperor, so noted and famous throughout the world? In what shadows is that scoundrel lurking? Let him come forth into the light and be crucified so that our Caesar may freely rule.

It was not Sasbach, however, that Gerbert wanted. He reminded Otto that he had served his father and grandfather and had offered the young emperor himself "the most incorruptible fidelity" since his birth: "For your safety have I exposed my person, however small, to raging kings and frenzied people. Through wilderness and solitude, beaten by the a.s.saults and attacks of thieves, tortured by hunger and thirst, by cold and heat, in all disturbances I stood firm so that I chose death rather than not to see the son of Caesar, then a captive, on the throne." So to the clinch: "I have seen him rule, and I have rejoiced. Would that I might rejoice to the end and finish my days with you in peace." He enclosed the purple and gold book on arithmetic.

At the same time as he was covering Otto with guilt, Gerbert wrote to a fellow bishop that he was doing quite well, thanks. "I am confident that I am being freed from Ur of the Chaldees" (Gerbert's name for h.e.l.l-and Reims). He was not really upset over losing Sasbach. "This event will accomplish what I have always wished, have always hoped for, by making me his"-Otto's-"inseparable companion so that we can guide the exalted empire for him. What, therefore, could be sweeter? What more outstanding?"

Gerbert got his wish. The letter came in October 997 from Aachen-intimate, playful, mocking, and imperious, written by the hand of Otto himself: "We wish to attach to our person the excellence of your very loving self," Otto wrote. Why? Because "your philosophical knowledge has always been for Our Simplicity an authority not to be scorned." He ordered Gerbert immediately to his side so that "your expert knowledge may be zealous in correcting us, though not more than usual, unlearned and badly educated as we are, both in writing and speaking, and that with respect to the commonwealth you may offer advice of the highest trustworthiness." Furthermore, he added, "We desire you to show your aversion to Saxon ignorance by not refusing this suggestion of our wishes, but even more we desire you to stimulate Our Greek Subtlety to zeal for study, because if there is anyone who will arouse it, he will find some shred of the diligence of the Greeks in it." As a postscript, he added, "Pray explain to us the book on arithmetic."

That peculiar reference to "Saxon ignorance"-other translations are "Saxon boorishness" and "Saxon rusticity"-has opened Otto to accusations that he was un-German, even anti-German. According to some (mostly German) historians, he was a failure who squandered his potential and died young because he turned his back on Saxony because he turned his back on Saxony to chase imperial b.u.t.terflies. And who put the fantasies of empire in the silly youth's mind? Gerbert. to chase imperial b.u.t.terflies. And who put the fantasies of empire in the silly youth's mind? Gerbert.

It is true that Gerbert dreamed of restoring the empire. As a young man in Catalonia, pa.s.sing through the church of Elne with Miro Bonfill, Gerbert had carved his name in the shape of two symbols: cross and chrismon, church and empire. The elaborate acrostics in his Carmen Figuratum Carmen Figuratum reduce to the same idea: Otto II as the new Constantine or Charlemagne. The treason of Archbishop Adalbero and the crowning of Hugh Capet served the goal of empire. reduce to the same idea: Otto II as the new Constantine or Charlemagne. The treason of Archbishop Adalbero and the crowning of Hugh Capet served the goal of empire.

Gerbert didn't hide his aspirations. "Ours, ours is the Roman Empire," he gushed to Otto III, after agreeing (of course!) to be his teacher and counselor. "Italy, fertile in fruits, Lorraine and Germany, fertile in men, offer their resources, and even the strong kingdoms of the Slavs are not lacking to us" (Otto had won the latest battle). "Our august emperor of the Romans art thou, Caesar, who, sprung from the n.o.blest blood of the Greeks, surpa.s.s the Greeks in empire and govern the Romans by hereditary right, but both you surpa.s.s in genius and eloquence."

But imperial dreams were not the snares Gerbert used to catch young Otto. Those dreams the boy had inherited from Theophanu and Otto II, Adelaide and Otto I: Gerbert merely shared them. Gerbert's snares were "the treasures of Greek and Roman wisdom" that he offered to impart to the quick-thinking young emperor. Otto wanted more astrolabes (or other instruments) to study the stars, "zealous" correction in writing and speaking, an organ like his father's (Gerbert's official t.i.tle at court would be "musician of the chapel"), and help fathoming Boethius's On Arithmetic On Arithmetic.

Accepting Otto's invitation, Gerbert complimented him: "For, unless you were not firmly convinced that the power of numbers contained both the origins of all things in itself and explained all from itself, you would not be hastening to a full and perfect knowledge of them with such zeal. Furthermore, unless you were embracing the seriousness of moral philosophy, humility, the guardian of all virtues, would not thus be impressed upon your words. Not silent, moreover, is the subtlety of a mind conscious of itself."

Or, as he phrased it in his treatise on reason, written soon after at the emperor's request, "In the same way that reason separates us from all the other animals who are incapable of reasoning, it is the use of reason the use of reason that makes us different from those animals" (and he doubtless had certain men in mind here) "who do not use reason." that makes us different from those animals" (and he doubtless had certain men in mind here) "who do not use reason."

It was the curriculum of the cathedral school of Reims that ensnared Otto. Only by obtaining wisdom, by endeavoring to understand "all things human and divine," could Otto live up to his duties as the Last Emperor.

CHAPTER XII.

The Pope of the Year 1000 Otto, an emperor at sixteen, did not have much time to learn mathematics and music or study the stars. But from 997 on, he kept Gerbert close. He trusted his advice. He leaned on Gerbert's eloquence to restrain "the minds of angry persons from violence," though it didn't always work. He had him write letters and erect siege engines and direct learned debates at court. And when Saint Peter's chair again came empty, in 999, the wise Gerbert was Otto's obvious pick.

For Gerbert, it was a mixed blessing. He had seen the papacy firsthand since following Otto to Rome, and found little that he desired. It was Bobbio squared, Reims to the n nth: petty politics and feuds unending, with no time to contemplate the timeless, to explore G.o.d's creation through number, measure, and weight. "What, therefore, am I, a sinner, doing here?" he might have thought.

It was dangerous to be pope in the tenth century. Gerbert's predecessor, Pope Gregory V-imperial cousin, son of a duke, great-grandson of Otto the Great-died of fever, but his life had been under threat for the past three years. After Otto III took his army back to Germany in the summer of 996, Gregory lasted only four months before he was chased out of Rome by a mob. The antipope who replaced him was John Philagathos, abbot of Nonantola, archbishop of Piacenza, chancellor of Italy, and "dear companion" of Empress Theophanu (some said even her lover). Philagathos's fate, which Gerbert also witnessed, was worse, much worse, than Gregory's.

Born in Calabria, the Greek-speaking part of Italy, Philagathos had joined Theophanu's court before Otto's birth. Some sources say he was Otto's G.o.dfather, others that he tutored the boy in Greek. In 994, Otto sent him to Constantinople to find him a royal Byzantine bride, and so he was not at hand in 996 when John XV died and Otto appointed his cousin as pope. Returning less than a year later, Philagathos felt unjustly overlooked. His traveling companion, Leo of Synada, whom the Byzantine emperor had sent to continue the marriage negotiations, agreed. Meeting with the Prince of Rome, Crescentius of the Marble Horse, the two amba.s.sadors urged him to appoint a new pope. So he did. Gregory was chased out of town in September 996. Philagathos was acclaimed John XVI by the citizens and senate of Rome (a detail missing in Gregory's election) and anointed in February 997. He would last until Otto arrived with his army.

Leo, the archbishop of Synada, was a wily trickster, as his letters show, quite willing to play on Philagathos's hurt pride. "You will laugh out loud to hear that I have elected as pope that Philagathos whom I should have smothered," he wrote to one correspondent in Constantinople. To others: "I announce to you the news that Philagathos is pope. To whom should we attribute this development? ... Rome is at the feet of our emperor, thanks be to G.o.d. And while I contributed, G.o.d directed the heart of Crescentius. ... I saw Rome, and I took bold action. If the emperor is satisfied, so much the better. If he is not, you'll take care of it.... But of this b.a.s.t.a.r.d Philagathos, may I see him brought low just as I saw him raised up."

By letter, Otto demanded that Philagathos explain himself. The royal messengers were intercepted by Crescentius, however, and Otto received no reply.

Nilus the Hermit warned Philagathos to submit to the emperor and beg his forgiveness; Philagathos agreed to do so, but his humble letter to Otto also went astray.

Furious, Otto marched on Rome. His army of Germans, led by Gregory V's father, cowed the city into surrender after one skirmish. Philagathos fled. Crescentius walled himself up in the Castel Sant'Angelo and held out for two months, until Otto's siege engines (possibly designed by Gerbert) broke through. Crescentius of the Marble Horse was beheaded and hanged by the feet from the castle walls alongside twelve of his companions.

Philagathos was captured by Berthold, count of Breisgau. "Fearing that if they sent him to the emperor, he might depart unpunished," say the Annals of Quedlinburg Annals of Quedlinburg, Gregory V's German partisans took matters into their own hands. Leo of Synada gleefully tells the story: "Now you are going to laugh, a big, broad laugh, my dear heart and soul," he begins. Philagathos, whom Leo clearly never liked, has fallen: And why shouldn't I tell you, brother, openly how he fell? Well, first, the Church of the West dealt him anathema; then his eyes were gouged out; third, his nose, and fourth, his lip, and fifth, that tongue of his which prattled so many and such unspeakable words, one by one, were all cut from his face. Item six: He rode like a conqueror in procession, grave and solemn on a miserable little donkey, hanging on to its tail.... Then they put on him the priestly vestments, back to front, the wrong way round; and then they stripped them off again. After this he was pulled along the church, right through it, and out by the front portico to the court of the fountain. Finally, for his refreshment, they threw him into prison.