The Abacus And The Cross Part 9

Nilus the Hermit was outraged. He marched on Rome protesting Philagathos's treatment. Ninety years old and skeleton-thin, this ascetic was revered as a living saint. Otto and Gregory begged to kiss his hands. He refused. He called down the wrath of G.o.d on them. No one knows who, if anyone, had approved the antipope's torture and mutilation, but the eighteen-year-old Otto was distraught. He had known Philagathos and loved him. He was ultimately responsible for the horror-for not upholding the kingly, and Christian, principle of mercy. Through an intermediary-probably Gerbert-Otto begged Nilus to a.s.sign him penance, but the hermit would not hear him. "If you do not forgive him whom G.o.d has delivered up into your hands, neither will the heavenly father forgive you your sins," Nilus replied, and promptly left Rome.

When Pope Gregory died of malaria a year later, at the age of twenty-eight, Nilus's biographer claimed he had been poisoned-and that his eyes were ripped out beforehand in revenge for Philagathos.

Otto, having decided upon his own penance, was making a barefoot pilgrimage to Nilus's hermitage south of Rome when news came of his cousin's sudden death. Strangely, one of the first things Otto did was to heap honors on Count Berthold of Breisgau, who had captured and mutilated Philagathos. Berthold was the first German layman allowed to hold a market on his own estate, to mint coins, and to collect tolls. He was the emperor's stand-in, entrusted with the golden crozier, when Otto's sister Adelaide was installed as abbess of Quedlinburg following the death of their Aunt Matilda. These rewards show that Otto, though he regretted Berthold's means, understood his ends. The emperor's power in Rome-and his right to choose the pope-had to be upheld at all costs.

Then Otto appointed Gerbert pope.

Pope Gregory had made Gerbert the archbishop of Ravenna in April 998, in that harried time between Crescentius's beheading and Philagathos's mutilation. It was the only way to appease his cousin the emperor, since Gregory no longer had the power to restore Gerbert to Reims. Giving Gerbert the archbishopric of Ravenna-second only to Rome among the churches of Italy-allowed pope and emperor to call a truce; it also meant Gerbert's sentence of excommunication was lifted.

It came just in time. It might have been awkward if the new pope could not say Ma.s.s. Yet doubtless Otto would have found a way around it.

Many of Gerbert's successors were even less likely popes: John XVII was married with three children (he lasted less than six months). John XVIII (1003-1009) was the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of a priest. Sergius IV (1009- 1012), known as Peter Pig's Snout, the son of a shoemaker, was indeed a bishop; he had been Gerbert's papal librarian. But Benedict VIII (1012-1024) was a layman, son of the count of Tusculum. Benedict ruled Rome alongside his brother Roma.n.u.s, who was consul and senator and then pope, in his turn, as John XIX (1024-1032). Neither Benedict nor John were churchmen. Both were elevated to the priesthood after after becoming pope, so that they could perform their duties on the eighty-five days a year when the pope made his grand procession through the streets of Rome, trailed by clergy, commoners, and pilgrims from every Christian land, to preside at one or another of the many churches in the Holy City. Eighteen times a year, the pope was solemnly crowned during Ma.s.s. becoming pope, so that they could perform their duties on the eighty-five days a year when the pope made his grand procession through the streets of Rome, trailed by clergy, commoners, and pilgrims from every Christian land, to preside at one or another of the many churches in the Holy City. Eighteen times a year, the pope was solemnly crowned during Ma.s.s.

Such rituals were meant to reinforce his rank as spiritual lord of the city-and his superiority over other bishops, who weren't nearly so splendid. Yet the papacy in Gerbert's time was just one more center of power. The bishop of Rome's authority over other bishops and archbishops-as the long fight over Reims ill.u.s.trates-depended on the situation, and especially on the backing of kings, emperors, and Roman n.o.bles. Over the next century, thanks to reforms begun by Abbot Abbo of Fleury and (oddly) Gerbert himself, among others, the power structure of the Church would be completely transformed. From 1099 through the end of the Middle Ages, the pope would represent a spiritual and political force that kings and bishops could ignore only at great peril.

The peril in Gerbert's day (as he knew well) was not so very great. He had been excommunicated by the pope himself and was still welcomed at both the French and German courts. King Robert the Pious, himself excommunicated, shrugged it off for five years. (When it became clear that his beloved Bertha was not going to produce an heir, he demoted her from queen to mistress, took a new, proper bride, and was admitted once again into Christian fellowship by Gerbert, his former schoolmaster.) In the balance of power between emperor and pope, the pope was decidedly weaker at that time. Faced with an offended emperor, as Philagathos and others before him had learned, the pope was powerless.

Gerbert had no intention of offending Otto, or even of thwarting him, as Otto's cousin Gregory had. Gerbert saw no point to a pope and an emperor working at cross purposes. He had seen church and state cooperate in Catalonia, so many years ago. He believed-and had taught Otto-that kings should be philosophers, ruling through reason and law. Both he and Otto agreed on the necessary structure and hierarchy of empire, led by an emperor who worked G.o.d's will on earth. Both believed in learning and logic as the antidotes to force and pa.s.sion. Only when the kingdoms were at peace, the empire secure, they knew, could the Church prosper and fulfill its primary mission: worshipping G.o.d and his creation through the study of number, measure, and weight.

To signify his willing partnership with the emperor, Gerbert took the name Pope Sylvester II. It may have been Otto's choice, for the young emperor prized his gold-initialed copy of the life of Saint Sylvester. This Sylvester and Emperor Constantine had converted the Roman Empire to Christianity; the second Sylvester and Emperor Otto would renew that empire and extend its jurisdiction to the ends of the earth. Renovatio Romani imperii Renovatio Romani imperii, read the new insignia with which Otto sealed his letters; it had been Charlemagne's seal as well: To Renew the Roman Empire To Renew the Roman Empire.

"Ours, ours is the Roman Empire!" Gerbert had enthused, and on the eve of the year 1000 his wish seemed to be coming true. The brilliant young half-Saxon, half-Greek, known as the mirabilia mundi mirabilia mundi, the Wonder of the World, was matched with the Scientist Pope, the foremost intellectual of his day.

It was not to be. In the parlance of the time, it was not G.o.d's will. The empire of reason would last only three years. A fever claimed Otto's life in 1002. Gerbert died shortly afterward, his hopes shattered. For Europe, a great opportunity was missed.

The Scientist Pope accomplished nothing specifically scientific while in office. He did not install an astronomical observatory in one of the churches of Rome, for example, as Pope Clement XI did, seven centuries later. Thirty of Gerbert's official papal doc.u.ments remain in full; another seventy to eighty existed as recently as the eighteenth century or are alluded to in other writings. They say next to nothing about science or mathematics. Adalbold of Liege, whom Gerbert, as archbishop of Ravenna, had taught to find the area of a triangle, asked him a question about the volume of a sphere, but we do not have his reply. Gerbert's epitaph for Pope Gregory is a chronogram, a puzzle concealing the number 999; to solve it, you replace each letter of the alphabet with a number, add them, then divide by the sum of the number of letters in each line. Even his favorite subject, books, Gerbert mentions only once, revealing the poor state of the papal library: "Concerning the matter on which you sought our advice, we have postponed answering you for the reason that we do not have the authority in books here in Rome. We remember having left in France those very books in which we read the particular opinion."

His most famous papal acts exist in legend-the doc.u.ments are missing, but it was during his papacy that Christianity triumphed over paganism in Europe. Gog and Magog were defeated, not through battle, but by baptism. Gerbert wrote letters to Vladimir, prince of Kiev, and to Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway, supporting their efforts to convert their countrymen (and commanding the Nors.e.m.e.n to cease using Viking runes and to write in Latin like civilized folk). He confirmed the ecclesiastical arrangements Pope Gregory had made with Boleslav Chobry, duke of Poland. To King Vajk of Hungary, baptized as Stephen, he sent a papal blessing and a royal crown (the very one, so it is said, now in the National Museum in Budapest), and he established the first Hungarian archbishopric at Gran. He sent another bishop (soon to be a martyr) to Prussia, and encouraged missions to the pagan Magyars, Liutizi, Pechenegs, and Swedes. By the time of Gerbert's death, the Roman Church stretched from Greenland east to the Black Sea, where it met its Byzantine counterpart, and talks were underway to reunite the Eastern and Western churches.

Most of Gerbert's acts as pope were more routine. He tidied up some practical matters that had bothered him throughout his career: Who should receive taxes, abbot or bishop? He subst.i.tuted the French system of fiefdoms for the Italians' "little books" where he could, helping to codify the feudal system. He settled petty disagreements among the higher clergy-or tried to.

One feud that took up an inordinate amount of his time was instigated by Otto's older sister Sophie. Partly, it was a question of church structure. Who owned the convent of Gandersheim? Who made the decisions-and collected the income? Who judged its disputes, the pope or the German bishops? At bottom, though, the problem was personal: Who had the right to tell Princess Sophie what she could and could not do?

Sophie was Theophanu's second child. She had been made a nun at age ten or twelve, but had rebelled. She frequently left the convent of Gandersheim to rejoin the court. Her abbess's complaints were silenced by Willigis, archbishop of Mainz, who felt a princess should be given some lat.i.tude. In 996, age eighteen, Sophie traveled with Otto III and Gerbert to Rome and saw her brother crowned emperor by her cousin Pope Gregory. There her un-nunlike behavior was remarked on by Bernward, who as bishop of Hildesheim oversaw the convent of Gandersheim. Sophie took criticism badly-and she held a grudge. When it came time for a new church at Gandersheim to be consecrated, Sophie arranged for the more tolerant Archbishop Willigis to do the honors. Bishop Bernward, snubbed, objected. He arrived on the appointed day, but was met by armed guards. Having brought knights of his own, he persevered, and in spite of the nuns' attempts to stop him, held the ceremony. When he reached the offertory part of the Ma.s.s, the nuns threw their offerings at him and cursed him. Then they had Willigis reconsecrate the church the next Sunday. Bernward set off for Rome to complain.

Bernward is known to posterity as an extraordinary artist. He designed and cast the magnificent bronze pictorial doors, with their aggressive lion-head knockers and poignant scenes from Christ's life, that still adorn the church of Hildesheim. Inside the church is more of his work, including a seven-ton bronze pillar patterned on Trajan's column, with the Savior's life story spiraling in bas-relief up its curves. Two of his bronze candlesticks, each fourteen inches high, grace the altar: From lion-claw feet rise winged dragons bearing nude men; they fly up toward ma.s.ses of foliage and flowers, from which peer devils, a snake, a lion, eagles, and angels, along with more nudes, eating grapes. Three salamanders hold the grease cup. Supposed to represent Nature striving to escape the darkness of evil and ascend toward the light of G.o.d, these candlesticks are a riot of imagination.

It was Bernward, as a boy, who tagged along with Thangmar, the schoolmaster of Hildesheim, as he ran errands, making up verses, arguing points of logic, and being read to as they rode along. Bernward had later been Willigis's student, but their friendship had dissolved over a quarrel. The emperor himself had been Bernward's student from age seven to thirteen. Otto felt such tenderness toward his old teacher that, when he heard of his coming to Rome, he rushed out of the palace to greet him. He pressed presents on the bishop: a splinter of the True Cross, a handsome onyx vase, bundles of spices and medicinal herbs, and the arm of Saint Timothy. He kept the bishop by his side as long as possible, and convinced Gerbert to confirm in writing Bernward's rights to Gandersheim (including the convent's taxes and t.i.thes). When it came to a choice between his sister Sophie and Bernward, Otto chose his beloved teacher.

Gerbert sent a papal legate north. The pope's message gave total control of the rich convent to Bernward. Sophie's champion, Willigis of Mainz, was not impressed. He belittled the legate's fancy Roman saddle and ornate purple saddlecloth. He refused to read the pope's letter and, when it was read aloud to him in a gathering of churchmen, dismissed it as nonsense. Willigis had been an archbishop when Gerbert was a mere monk. He had been Otto III's guardian when the emperor was a toddler of three. For thirteen years, he had been the most influential churchman in Germany, adviser both to Empress Theophanu and to her mother-in-law, Empress Adelaide. He knew the German n.o.bles were losing patience with Otto, who seemed to spend all his time nowadays in Italy, propping up the pope. When Bernward and the papal legate tried to enter the convent of Gandersheim, they were barred by a small army; they returned, defeated, to Rome.

The fight over Gandersheim dragged on. The German bishops met in a synod. Like the French bishops in the debate over Reims, they did not recognize the pope's authority. Nor were they impressed that Bernward had the emperor on his side. They ruled in favor of Willigis-and the princess Sophie. Again and again, Gerbert insisted that Gandersheim belonged to Bernward. Again and again the pope's p.r.o.nouncements were ignored. Not until 1007, four years after Gerbert's death, was the ownership of Gandersheim decided-in favor of Bernward-by the forceful intervention of Otto's successor, King Henry II.

Gerbert was, however, able to settle two church disputes that had plagued him personally: those over Bobbio and Reims. He confirmed Petroald as abbot of Bobbio and-one suspects with great sarcastic glee-Arnoul as archbishop of Reims. He wrote to Arnoul, "To the apostolic pinnacle belongs the duty not only of advising sinners, but also of actually lifting up those who have lapsed." How good it must have felt to lord it over his rival. "Therefore, we have thought it fitting to a.s.sist you." Arnoul was justly deprived of his post, the pope explained, "because of certain excesses." But "because your abdication lacked the a.s.sent of Rome," Gerbert, "through the gift of Roman compa.s.sion," would reinstate him. In addition, no one (excepting the pope, who was doing exactly thus in his letter) "shall in any way presume to allege the crime of your abdication against you or to break out into words of reproach against you." Instead-here's the final twist of the knife-"everywhere our authority shall protect you, even when a feeling of guilt shall seize your own conscience even when a feeling of guilt shall seize your own conscience."

Only occasionally (as here) does Gerbert's voice shine through the papal mask. Another fine example is his rebuke of the bishop of Asti, who backed the rebellion of Margrave Arduin of Ivrea against Emperor Otto: "The whole world cannot endure the stench of your obscene infamy. ... You prefer to putrefy midst your dung with the beasts of burden rather than to shine among the pillars of the Church." (In this case, Gerbert might have been better off remembering his missteps at Bobbio and tempering his language; upon Otto's death, the margrave would become King of Italy and so Gerbert's overlord.) Several of Gerbert's papal acts concerned Spain. Replacing charters that burned when al-Mansur the Victorious pillaged Barcelona and Girona in 985, Gerbert confirmed the rights that bishops and monks claimed to "manors, manses, manor houses, castles, cottages, vineyards, lands and various estates, cultivated and uncultivated, with their tenths and first fruits, male and female serfs and slaves and free farmers," churches with their t.i.thes and offerings, hermits' cells, fortifications, walls, water rights, market tolls, court fees, pasturing fees, port dues and anchorage fees, and "the tax paid by the Jews."

And while Gerbert had, at Reims, championed a bishop's right to control the nearby monasteries and convents, as pope he saw things a little differently. He agreed with his enemy Abbo of Fleury that some monasteries, at least, should obey the pope alone. The issue to him was not monks' rights but papal power.

To Adelaide, new abbess of Quedlinburg and eldest sister of Otto III, for example, he declared that "this same place of Quedlinburg (located, it appears, on a mountain) may manage its own affairs" and be "immune from the yoke of obedience" to anyone but the pope. (Perhaps he should have tried this tack with Sophie at Gandersheim.) The abbot of Fulda could be judged only by the pope-the same privilege Abbo of Fleury had acquired from Gerbert's predecessor. "No bishops, archbishops, nor, by chance, patriarchs, may celebrate the solemnities of the ma.s.s on an altar under your protection ... but let the church of Fulda, always free and secure, zealously serve the Roman see alone." Above all, he warned, "No one shall carry off or give to anyone any of the revenues and incomes or t.i.thes and other donations" to the church, as had happened to Gerbert at Bobbio.

The odd thing about the Fulda privilege, to modern eyes, is the date: "Given on the 31st of December ... in the first year, with G.o.d's favor, of the pontificate of Lord Sylvester the Second, pope, with the pacific Otto III ruling, in the fourth year of his reign, the thirteenth year of the indiction." Indiction years were periods of fifteen years used in Rome for tax purposes. Christians counted indictions from September of the year the Emperor Constantine was converted, or A.D. 313, which makes this date without question December 31, 999.

On the very day the world was destined to end, Gerbert was bestowing a privilege upon the abbot of Fulda and his successors, in perpetuity and his successors, in perpetuity.

Did he not fear the End of the World? No. The Terrors of the Year 1000 is a myth. The idea that all of Christendom quaked and cried in fear that the world would come to a crashing end precisely at midnight on December 31, 999, was made up by later historians hoping to brighten their own age by darkening the ones that came before. In no medieval text was the Apocalypse exclusively connected with the year 1000. The phrase "Clear signs announce the end of the world; the ruins multiply" had begun appearing on church charters in the seventh century and was still popular in 1035. Ralph the Bald recorded signs and wonders prophesying the End of the World from 956 until his death in 1046. Most medieval writers did not even use the Anno Domini system-and so did not know when the thousand years were ended and the devil would be loosed upon the world. Like Gerbert, in this example, they referred to the pontificate, the emperor's reign, or the indiction years. When they did use A.D., they disagreed on which dates were correct. Abbo of Fleury thought the real "Year 1000" since Christ's birth was our 979.

That said, the End of the World was never far from Gerbert's mind.

Otto III was crowned emperor wearing a robe embroidered with scenes of the Apocalypse. Elaborately ill.u.s.trated copies of a commentary on Revelation by the eighth-century Spanish monk Beatus of Liebana were crafted in Catalonia while Gerbert was there. Otto himself commissioned a majesterial volume now known as the Bamberg Apocalypse; made in the monastery of Reichenau, it was not finished until after his death.

The Apocalypse, the end of the world we know and its transformation into the kingdom of Christ, was the ultimate goal of Christianity, the concluding vision of the Bible. Without it the Church lost much of its clout. Who would abjure sin if there were no Judgment Day? At the same time, Christians like Gerbert did not only fear the Apocalypse, they desired it as an end to fear and suffering, the longed-for arrival of lasting peace. They hoped to be among the Chosen lifted by the hand of Christ straight into Heaven.

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The Last Judgment from the Bamberg Apocalypse, a ma.n.u.script commissioned by Emperor Otto III and created at the monastery of Reichenau. The book was not quite finished when Otto died in 1002.

Otto III knew exactly the part he was to play in that scenario. He had read Adso of Montier-en-der's Book of the Antichrist Book of the Antichrist. It was Adso who, in 954, linked the End of the World to the Legend of the Last Emperor. Apocalypse could not come-never mind the year 1000-"as long as the kings of the Franks who hold the empire by right shall last." Only when the Last Emperor handed his crown to Christ upon the Mount of Olives would the End be achieved. That emperor might be Otto, as he hoped, or Otto's son-negotiations for a Byzantine bride for the twenty-year-old emperor were continuing.

So while Gerbert plunged into the administrative mora.s.s of the papacy, Otto made himself ready for his impending interview with Christ. Hearing, as Thietmar of Merseburg records, "of the miracles which G.o.d was performing through his beloved martyr Adalbert," Otto made a pilgrimage to Gniezno, Poland. He entered the city barefoot, wearing sackcloth, and "weeping profusely," prayed before Adalbert's tomb.

The Polish prince, Boleslav Chobry, arranged a great pageant of warriors and n.o.bles wearing furs and fine cloth ("not linen or woolen," according to the twelfth-century chronicler known as the Anonymous Gaul), embroidered with silver and gold. "By the crown of my empire," said Otto (according to the Gaul), "that which I see far exceeds what rumor had reported." He took the imperial crown from his own head and placed it on Boleslav's, gave him a nail from the Cross and the lance of Saint Maurice, and established a Polish archbishopric. "In return, Boleslav gave him the arm of Saint Adalbert."

From Poland Otto marched to Quedlinburg to celebrate Easter with his sister, the new abbess. By the end of April he was in Aachen, where he performed the astonishing act that symbolizes his short reign: He opened Charlemagne's tomb.

Four sources before 1050 tell the tale. Some sound horrified, some are matter-of-fact, others seem in awe. The Annals of Hildesheim Annals of Hildesheim, written after Otto's death (and not by his beloved teacher Bernward), condemned the act as "against holy religion and destined to bring upon its doer vengeance for ever more."

Thietmar of Merseburg, who often traveled with the emperor, wrote simply: "As he had doubts regarding the location of the bones of Emperor Charles, he secretly had the pavement over their supposed resting place ripped up." He uncovered Charlemagne, seated on a throne. "After taking a gold cross which hung around the emperor's neck and part of his clothing, which remained uncorrupted, he replaced everything with great veneration."

A monk recorded the words of an eyewitness, the count of Pavia: "So we went into Charles. He did not lie, as the dead otherwise do, but sat as if he were living." His fingernails had penetrated through his gloves. "A strong smell struck us. We immediately gave Emperor Charles our kneeling homage, and Emperor Otto robed him on the spot with white garments, cut his nails, and put in order the damage that had been done. Emperor Charles had not lost any of his members to decay, excepting only the tip of his nose. Emperor Otto replaced this with gold, took a tooth from Charles's mouth, walled up the entrance to the chamber, and withdrew again."

Ademar of Chabannes told the fullest version. A dream told Otto to find Charlemagne, whose tomb had been lost. After fasting three days, Otto knew where to look. They found the emperor "sitting in a golden throne ... crowned with a crown of gold and gems, holding a scepter and sword of purest gold, the body itself uncorrupted." They took his corpse from the crypt. "A canon of that church ... who was enormous ... compared his leg to that of the king, and his was found to be smaller. Immediately afterward, by a divine miracle, his leg was fractured." Anxious not to anger the sacred king further, Otto re-buried Charlemagne behind the altar in "a magnificent golden crypt." It "began to be known by means of many signs and miracles," like the tomb of a saint.

Otto's odd and apparently sacrilegious act could be explained, in fact, as the first step toward canonizing Charlemagne as a saint. Or perhaps Otto thought he was, like so many heroes of story, descending to the Underworld to ask advice of the ill.u.s.trious dead. We don't know what Gerbert thought about it; he never mentions this episode so apparently against all reason and logic. Yet for a Saxon-Greek who knew his Virgil and who believed that the world would not end so long as "the kings of the Franks who hold the empire by right shall last," it was not so totally illogical to acquire the blessing of the greatest of those kings.

It didn't help. Otto had not won the hearts of the Romans. They did not agree that Otto held "the empire by right," or that Charlemagne's heir shielded them from the Apocalypse. They did not like his choice of Gerbert as pope. As soon as Otto and his German army went north, they rebelled.

In June 1000, Gerbert called for help. Unfortunately, he chose a messenger who had already joined the other side. "Many facts that you heard garbled through lying rumor, I have entrusted to Gregory of Tusculum," he wrote Otto. "But I protest that what happened to us at Orte during the sacred solemnities of the Ma.s.s should not be accepted lightly." Unnamed persons had incited a riot in the church while Gerbert was presiding. "Within the holy of holies swords were drawn, and we withdrew from the city amidst the swords of frenzied enemies."

Otto raced back to calm Rome, but revolt soon broke out in nearby Tivoli. Otto surrounded the city, built earthworks and siege engines, and interrupted the water supply-again Gerbert supposedly put his technical skill to work. At the last minute, Otto allowed Gerbert and Bishop Bernward to mediate. They were "joyfully" welcomed into the city, says The Life of Saint Bernward The Life of Saint Bernward. The next day they returned to Otto's camp in "a n.o.ble triumphal procession. All the leading citizens of the city followed them, naked but for loincloths, carrying in their right hands a sword and in their left a rod." They surrendered to the emperor, "excepting nothing, not even their lives." Otto praised the peacemakers, Gerbert and Bernward, "and at their request pardoned the guilty."

The ceremony was staged. Like all medieval acts of submission, nothing was left to chance. Gerbert and Bernward had guaranteed the emperor's forgiveness. The public ritual of surrender, "excepting nothing, not even their lives," was meant to restore the emperor's honor. Everyone involved knew the emperor would not refuse his pardon.

None knew this better than the Romans, who took it as a sign of weakness and rebelled in their turn. Their leader, Crescentius III, the son of the beheaded Crescentius of the Marble Horse, was backed by that same Gregory of Tusculum to whom Gerbert had entrusted his earlier news of rioting in the church at Orte. They trapped Gerbert in the Lateran and chased Otto from his palace to the Castel Sant'Angelo. Otto climbed to the tower and leaned out over the mob, crying: "Are you not my Romans? For your sake I left my homeland and my kinsmen, for love of you I have rejected my Saxons and all Germans.... I have adopted you as sons, I have preferred you to all others.... And in return now you have cast off your father and have cruelly murdered my friends. You have closed me out!"

His speech moved the mob to tears, according to The Life of Saint Bernward The Life of Saint Bernward. The uprising was calmed, the rioters dispersed, and with the help of Duke Henry of Bavaria, Otto and Gerbert escaped to Ravenna.

Otto holed up in the monastery of Sant'Apollinaire in Cla.s.se, surrounded by its pine forests and salt marshes. His power was waning, and he had become desperate. He came under the sway of Romuald, another ancient ascetic revered as a living saint. Romuald had spent many years at Cuxa in Catalonia, where Gerbert's friend Garin was abbot; the monks there had prayed every moment that this super-holy man would die, so that his relics (his bones) would enrich their monastery's fame. But Romuald lived on and on, and finally he returned to Ravenna.

There he obliged Otto's pleas for more and more penance. Otto fasted. He chanted psalms. He wore a hairshirt under his imperial purple. Beneath his luxurious bed-coverings was a mat of hard reeds. Romuald advised him to renounce the world and become a hermit. "I will do that," Otto promised-after he had reconquered Rome. "From this hour I promise to G.o.d and his saints: After three years, within which I will correct the mistakes of my imperial rule, I will give up the realm to someone better than I am." He would give away all his money and "follow Christ in dest.i.tution, and with all my soul."

"If you go to Rome," said Romuald, "you will never return to Ravenna." It was the one demand Otto could not heed.

Otto marched on Rome. But Duke Henry had gone back to Bavaria, and Otto's own army was too small to break down the city gates. Terrible storms disrupted the siege, and Otto returned north. He spent Christmas at Todi, then marched again on Rome. He made it as far as the castle of Paterno, 40 miles from the city. Struck down by a violent fever-probably malaria-he confessed his sins, received absolution, and died in the arms of his friend, Herbert of Koln, who had just arrived, too late, with the full German army. The Wonder of the World was dead at twenty-two. With him died the dream of all three Ottos: to renew the Roman Empire. With him died all Gerbert's hopes.

CHAPTER XIII.

The End of the World The Christian empire that Gerbert imagined could have changed the course of history. As in the Spain he had seen in his youth, men of any faith would have risen to power. Trade in goods and ideas would have flourished. Justice and law would have curbed brutality and force. Instead of the Crusades, the Schism between East and West, and the Inquisition, the medieval Church would be known today for its arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. G.o.d would still be worshipped through number, measure, and weight. Science and faith would be one.

He had been so close to success. Gerbert stayed behind in Ravenna when Otto marched on Rome. He was not at Otto's side when he died. Soon after the terrible news reached him, he heard that Otto's bride, Princess Zoe of Constantinople, had arrived in Italy. Through her, Gerbert's dream of Empire could have come true, for in later life she was heir to Byzantium. Her son and Otto's could have claimed-and fused-both empires, East and West, and recreated the Golden Age of the Caesars. But Otto, the Wonder of the World, was dead, and Zoe was sent home.

Meanwhile, Herbert's German army snuck away north-legend says the Germans tied Otto's corpse to his warhorse so the Italians would not realize the emperor was dead. Duke Henry of Bavaria, son of Henry the Quarreler, was acclaimed king of Germany through the connivance of Archbishop Willigis of Mainz, though Pope Gregory's father was heir to the throne. The rebellious Margrave Arduin of Ivrea became king of Italy. The Holy Roman Empire was shattered.

So, we can guess, was Gerbert's happiness. Grieving, impotent, his hopes gone, he would outlive his protege by little more than a year.

Rome fell into the hands of Crescentius III, son of the beheaded Crescentius of the Marble Horse, and of Gregory of Tusculum, whom Gerbert had once thought a friend. The year before, Gerbert had bestowed a large benefice on this Gregory's son-in-law. Perhaps for that reason, the pope was not strangled, starved, imprisoned, exiled, or otherwise hara.s.sed by the Romans, as so many of his predecessors had been. Neither, however, was he consulted by the Crescentians or by the new king of Italy. His connections with the German king were cut off. Gerbert returned to the Lateran palace, with its high Romanesque towers from which he could study the stars, and resumed the work of Pope Sylvester II. He wrote charters, tried to settle church disputes, and received envoys, including the son of his first patron, Count Borrell of Barcelona. What gifts did the count's son bring from Spain? A book on mathematics or astrology? An astrolabe made in Baghdad? We do not know. None of Gerbert's personal letters from his final year remain.

His enemies later claimed that the pope spent his time practicing black magic. William of Malmesbury, writing in the 1120s, gives us one such picture of Gerbert's last days. Skewed, symbolic, it was immensely popular: Most later writers reference it. According to William, Sylvester II occupied himself in Rome practicing "the black arts" to enlarge his already substantial power and wealth: "He kept up the pressure for his own advancement with the devil's a.s.sistance, so that no project which he had conceived was ever left unfinished. For instance, his skill in necromancy enabled him to clear away the rubble and discover treasures buried by pagans long ago, which he used to satisfy his greed."

In the Fields of Mars near the Pantheon was a "statue," William says. It was "pointing with the forefinger of the right hand, and on its head were the words 'Strike here.'" It was all battered with blows from men who had done the obvious. Gerbert found "quite another answer to the riddle," William writes. "At midday with the sun high overhead, he observed the spot reached by the shadow of the pointing finger, and marked it with a stake." In the Fields of Mars is, in fact, an obelisk covered with hieroglyphics. It was placed there ten years before Christ's birth by Caesar Augustus. Gerbert, walking past one day, may indeed have perceived that it was more than a giant sundial.

The pope, says William, returned at night with a servant and, presumably, a shovel. They quickly found themselves in "a vast palace, gold walls, gold ceilings, everything gold; gold knights seemed to be pa.s.sing the time with golden dice, and a king and queen, all of the precious metal, sitting at dinner with their meat before them and servants in attendance; the dishes of great weight and price." The palace was magically lit by a sparkling jewel; a golden boy stood opposite it, "holding a bow at full stretch with an arrow at the ready." Gerbert's servant, overcome with greed, s.n.a.t.c.hed a golden knife. At once the figures came alive with a roar. The boy loosed his arrow and put out the light. And "had not the servant, at a warning word from his master, instantly thrown back the knife, they would both have paid a grievous penalty." They covered their tracks and said no more about it.

If this story were set in Reims, it could be dismissed as utter fantasy. But Rome is built on layers upon layers of palaces and treasure halls. In 2005, archaeologists were using a coring drill to survey the foundations of Caesar Augustus's palace on the Palatine Hill. Fifty feet down, the drill plunged into a void. Sending down a camera, the crew discovered a sacred grotto-a round, domed room about twenty-five feet high and twenty-five feet across, covered with mosaics of marble and seash.e.l.l. In the soft light of the remote-sensing probe, they glittered like gold. Perhaps it was something like this that the obelisk had revealed to Gerbert.

It may also be that William of Malmesbury was making a very complicated literary allusion. Given that he was writing for educated monks, his pointing finger should have summoned up a lesson from Saint Augustine: "To those who do not understand what I am writing, I say this: It is hardly my fault if they do not understand. It is as if they wish to see the old or new moon or some faintly shining star that I am pointing at with my outstretched finger, but find their sharpness of vision insufficient even to see the finger itself."

Gerbert, like Saint Augustine, moved beyond the literal meaning of "Strike here" to the figurative: striking, not the finger itself, but what the finger pointed to. Yet, because his motives were not pure, Gerbert received no benefit from his superior wisdom. In William's metaphor, the gold Gerbert saw in the vault beneath the Fields of Mars stands for the scientific treasures that Gerbert had "dug up" by studying cla.s.sical and Arabic texts. But G.o.d did not allow Gerbert and his servant to take even one golden knife from that vault. Gerbert's sin was not the study of science (entering the vault) but his reason reason for studying it. Gerbert was concerned only with "his own advancement," says William. He did not heed Augustine's teaching that knowledge should always be subservient to the Word of G.o.d. And so he was punished. for studying it. Gerbert was concerned only with "his own advancement," says William. He did not heed Augustine's teaching that knowledge should always be subservient to the Word of G.o.d. And so he was punished.

Gerbert was so blinded by hubris and greed that, for all his learning, he saw not Truth. Such is the moral of a second of William's stories. "After close inspection of the heavenly bodies," he writes, Gerbert cast a metal head "which could speak, though only if spoken to." Asked a yes or no question, it "would utter the truth": Will I be pope? Yes. Will I die before I sing Ma.s.s in Jerusalem? No. "This answer, they say, was ambiguous and misled him," William writes. "He gave no thought to repentance, flattering himself with the prospect of a long life; for why should he go deliberately to Jerusalem to hasten his own death? He did not foresee that there is in Rome a church called Jerusalem."

So it was that on May 3, 1003, a little over a year after Otto III's death, Gerbert fell ill while saying Ma.s.s at the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem in Rome. This much is true.

William elaborates: "Sending for the cardinals, he lamented at length his own misdeeds." Then he gave orders "that he should be cut in small pieces and cast out limb by limb. 'Let him have the service of my body,' he cried, 'who sought its obedience; my mind never accepted that oath, not sacrament but rather sacrilege.'"

[image]

The Fourth Trumpet of the Apocalypse, from an eleventh-century ma.n.u.script made at the monastery of Saint-Sever, France. As Pope Sergius wrote in Gerbert's epitaph, upon his death "the world was darkened and peace disappeared."

Gerbert died May 12 and was buried, at his request, in the Lateran, the church built by Emperor Constantine for the first Pope Sylvester. His tomb was destroyed when the church was enlarged in 1648. By then William of Malmesbury's story of his death was so widely believed that a canon who saw the tomb opened was careful to report that Gerbert's body had not not, in fact, been cut up into little pieces in penance for his unholy acts of magic. The body lay in the coffin whole, he wrote, dressed in papal raiment, with ring and staff. Exposed to air, it disintegrated into dust, leaving only a sweet perfume.

The marble tombstone, saved during the reconstruction of the church, now hangs on a pillar in the right aisle. Pope Sergius IV, who had been Gerbert's papal librarian, wrote the epitaph. Through his words, we see how Gerbert's peers-the churchmen who would have been at his bedside when he died-actually saw him.

Sergius makes no mention of black arts, sacrilege, hubris, greed, or Gerbert's body being cut into bits. He wrote: "The wise Virgin and Rome, the head of the world, made him celebrated throughout the universe.... The emperor, Otto III, to whom he was always faithful and devoted, loved him greatly and offered him this church of Rome. They illuminated their time, emperor and pope, by the brilliance of their wisdom. The century rejoiced." Upon Gerbert's death, Sergius said, writing six years later, "the world was darkened and peace disappeared."

At Gerbert's death, a world did end-the world in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews could sit down together and translate works of science from Arabic and Greek into Latin; the world in which a peasant boy who had excelled in such science could end up as pope.

In just thirty years, the idea that the best candidate for pope could be a scientist or philosopher would be unthinkable. The new world-view is hinted at in a famous poetic line from Ralph the Bald's history. The earth was so relieved that the Apocalypse had not come in A.D. 1000, a thousand years after Christ's birth, said Ralph, that it "put on a white mantle of churches." And many churches were built or expanded around the year 1000, as we have seen. By 1036, when Ralph wrote this line, churches, new or old, provided the sole source of authority and comfort to the common man.

At the start of the eleventh century, the kings and counts of Germany and Italy fought for the right to succeed Otto III as emperor. The emperor and pope-or antipope-battled for precedence. Famine, drought, and flood besieged Europe. St. Anthony's Fire (the painful disease of ergotism, caused by rotten rye) reappeared. Comets, earthquakes, eclipses, unusually large whales, wolves in churches, and rains of blood and stones were taken as signs and wonders prophesying the Apocalypse still to come.

Churches became less famed for their libraries and schoolmasters, and more for their holy relics alone. Chartres, led by Gerbert's student Fulbert from 1006 to 1028, became the center for the cult of the Virgin (it owned the tunic she wore at the Annunciation). In 1016, a little village in Aquitaine suddenly "found" the head of John the Baptist in a cellar. Though Antioch already displayed one of John's heads, this skull was quickly housed in a jewel-covered reliquary and placed on the altar. Ademar of Chabannes, who praised Gerbert as the "scientist pope," forged ancient doc.u.ments and composed a glorious processional Ma.s.s in order to turn his church's founder, Saint Martial, from mere saint into an apostle and companion of Jesus. In 1018, a crowd waiting to touch the blessed Martial's tomb turned into a mob. Pilgrims rushed the doors "like a river flowing into the church," Ademar wrote, "by accident falling over itself, each person trampled the other." More than fifty died.

Saints' relics not only enriched their churches and excited the ma.s.ses, they brought the Peace of G.o.d to warring factions. Monks carried them on poles at the heads of parades; huge crowds gathered at these "relic jamborees," where counts and castellans were forced to swear to keep the saints' peace. "Ye ma.s.ses of commoners, give thanks to G.o.d," begins the peace hymn of Fulbert of Chartres. "He has summoned you to his aid; he puts on you the burden of peace and order. The n.o.bles, long unaccustomed to obeying the law, have made good resolutions and will keep them. Thieves submit ... travelers go about untroubled ... the vine flourishes. ... The lance is turned into a scythe, the sword into a ploughshare. This peace enriches the poor and impoverishes the robbers." Miracles occurred at the gatherings: The blind saw, the crippled walked. The meetings grew larger and rowdier and the churches more powerful as Peace! Peace! became a call to arms. In 1026, seven hundred French knights were sent on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the name of peace; the next time they would be called crusaders. Even the Ma.s.s was revised: Instead of reciting became a call to arms. In 1026, seven hundred French knights were sent on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the name of peace; the next time they would be called crusaders. Even the Ma.s.s was revised: Instead of reciting Miserere n.o.bis Miserere n.o.bis ("Have mercy on us") the third time, the monks now sang ("Have mercy on us") the third time, the monks now sang Dona n.o.bis pacem Dona n.o.bis pacem ("Give us peace"). ("Give us peace").

The Church Gerbert grew up in was gone. Churchmen who opposed this new kind of Catholicism, who repudiated the new rituals of relic worship, infant baptism, sanctification of marriage, intercession for the dead, confession to priests, and veneration of the crucifix; who saw Christ as the all-powerful King of Heaven, not the broken human sacrifice on the cross; who thought monks should demonstrate their faith, not by managing great estates and acquiring riches, but through prayer, study, and teaching-these churchmen were denounced as heretics.

Accusations of heresy soon became the best way for the Church to make its intelligentsia toe the line. The first heretics ever burned at the stake were a party of n.o.blemen and educated clerics-among them two of Gerbert's students-in Orleans in 1022. They were condemned by another of Gerbert's students, King Robert the Pious of France. One of the burned was the queen's confessor. These burnings of church intellectuals would lead to the founding of the Inquisition in the 1200s. In 1210 the reading of Aristotle, or even commentaries on Aristotle such as Boethius-the main textbook in the cathedral schools during the previous five hundred years-was made punishable by excommunication. The enlightened Dark Ages of Gerbert's time had been replaced by a much darker era, during which scientists at the newly founded universities fought with the Church to reintroduce the astronomy and mathematics that Pope Sylvester II had known.

Fear of the Apocalypse-and the corresponding hope to be among the Chosen taken by Jesus into Heaven-was not the only force behind this new religious intolerance. When Gerbert and Otto III succeeded in bringing Hungary into the Christian world, they opened a land route to Jerusalem. Walking in Jesus' footsteps soon became so popular that the Muslim ruler of Jerusalem grew annoyed by the constant stream of Christian tourists. To reduce his city's draw (and, say some sources, to bedevil his Christian mother), in 1009 he destroyed the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus had been buried after his crucifixion.

News of this outrage reached France with a strange twist: It was blamed on the Jews, rather than the Muslim emir. In Limoges, Orleans, Rouen, and Mainz, Jewish citizens were attacked and forced to convert, or expelled and their property confiscated. Before the year 1000, there were no Jewish quarters in medieval cities: Jews lived wherever they wished. Jewish landowners were not uncommon. They owned Christian serfs and owed military service to their Christian overlords. (Remember the Jewish knight who gave up his horse so that Emperor Otto II could escape the Saracens in 982?) There were Jewish artisans, merchants, and, especially, doctors. Not until after the First Crusade in 1096 were Jews forbidden to carry weapons and restricted to the sinful trade of moneylending. At Rouen, the crusaders "herded the Jews into a certain place of worship ... and without distinction of age or s.e.x put them to the sword," wrote Guibert of Nogent late in the eleventh century. At Worms the crusaders killed eight hundred Jews; additional ma.s.sacres at the end of the century were recorded at Mainz, Koln, Trier, Metz, Bamberg, Regensburg, Prague, and many other towns.

A similar act of intolerance destroyed the peace between Christian and Muslim Spain. The regent al-Mansur the Victorious, who had seized power in Cordoba in 976 and sacked Barcelona in 985, escalated the border wars in 997 by destroying the shrine of Santiago of Compostela. Fighting against Christians-particularly since he frequently won-was his way to stay in power. Upon his death in 1002, his son overstepped, claiming the t.i.tle of "caliph," not "regent." Al-Mansur's army of mercenary Berbers saw that as blasphemy-a caliph had to be descended from Muhammad or one of his family members-and rebelled, destroying not only the new regent, but the fine city of Cordoba itself. The library of 40,000 (or 400,000) books was burned. The years of conviviencia conviviencia, or tolerance among Muslim, Christian, and Jew, were over; it was time for the reconquista reconquista, the Reconquest. In 1063, on their way to fight the Muslims in Spain, Christian knights from France took the opportunity to destroy every Jewish household they found along their way-an infidel was an infidel, after all.

Finally, all hope that a future Roman emperor could take a Byzantine bride and so reunite East and West, fusing all of Christendom into one cosmic empire, was dashed by three little words known as the filioque filioque-"and the Son"-added to the Roman creed in 1020. In Constantinople, the Holy Spirit came from the Father to to the Son; in Rome, it came from the Father the Son; in Rome, it came from the Father and and the Son, meaning that the three members of the Holy Trinity were not ranked, one-two-three, but coequal. This tiny change in wording led to a thirty-year argument between the two churches. No compromise could be reached, and a formal schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches was announced in 1054. It lasts to this day. the Son, meaning that the three members of the Holy Trinity were not ranked, one-two-three, but coequal. This tiny change in wording led to a thirty-year argument between the two churches. No compromise could be reached, and a formal schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches was announced in 1054. It lasts to this day.

As the medieval world changed, Gerbert's reputation changed as well. Writing during Gerbert's lifetime, the monk Richer of Saint-Remy described him as "a man of such great genius and admirable eloquence that his glory blazed over all of Gaul like a burning flame." Richer may have sought to flatter Gerbert, but the chronicler from Fleury, where Gerbert's enemy, Abbo, was still abbot, had no need to. Yet, announcing his election as pope, he wrote, "Otto, inspired by the reverence without bound that he professed for Gerbert, on account of his incomparable scientific knowledge, elevated him to the papacy." Upon Gerbert's death, said Pope Sergius IV, "the world was darkened," while in Catalonia, the son of Count Borrell of Barcelona mourned the "glorious and very wise pope Gerbert, who was called Sylvester."

Thietmar of Merseburg, writing between 1013 and 1018, remarked that Gerbert was a skillful astronomer and "surpa.s.sed his contemporaries in his knowledge of various arts." Between 1030 and 1046, Ralph the Bald-the mystic who recorded so many signs and wonders of the Apocalypse-wrote simply, "This Gerbert came from a rather undistinguished family in Gaul, but he was acutely intelligent and deeply learned in the study of the liberal arts." Between 1070 and 1100, Abbot Sigebert of Gembloux would write a chronicle calling the turn of the millennium a Golden Age of Science. "Happy the state whose rulers are philosophers, and whose philosophers rule," he said. His long list of churchmen famous for their knowledge ends with Gerbert, "who among those shining, shone exceedingly."

At about the same time, however, Cardinal Beno wrote his diatribe The Deeds of the Church of Rome vs. Hildebrand The Deeds of the Church of Rome vs. Hildebrand. Hildebrand was the given name of the sitting pope, Gregory VII, who was in the process of making the papacy the supreme power in Europe. Emperor Henry IV wanted to replace him with the more tractable antipope, Clement III. To prove Hildebrand's unfitness, Beno claimed he had been schooled by the disciples of Gerbert, celebrated for his wizardry. This Gerbert, wrote Beno, had made a pact with the devil. For what else could explain his "dazzling ascent from lowly beginnings" and the magical tricks he used to tell time by the stars? Had not Gerbert the Wizard once joked that his career had progressed from R to R to R-Reims to Ravenna to Rome? What could this be but a demonic spell? (Miro Bonfill would have thought it a charming pun; Adalbold would have made a triangle out of it.) Beno was also the source of the pernicious story that Gerbert could not die, so the devil promised, before he had sung Ma.s.s in Jerusalem. Wrote Beno, "Forgetful that the Church of San Croce was known as in Gerusalemme in Gerusalemme, he said Ma.s.s in it. Immediately after, he died a most horrible death, ordering with his last breath his hands and tongue, with which by sacrificing to demons he had dishonored G.o.d, to be cut to pieces."

Tales of Gerbert's devil grew in the telling. Walter Map, writing in the twelfth century, personified her as Meridiana, "a woman of unheard-of beauty seated on a large silken carpet, and having before her a huge heap of money." The "notorious Gerbert," Walter wrote, was "busily engaged at Reims in the effort to surpa.s.s in intellect and utterance all the students of the school, whether native or foreign, and was successful," when he made his sinful bargain. "Thereafter, free and affluent in Meridiana's gifts, he enriched himself with household goods, and a crowd of servants, gathered to him changes of raiment and money, and grew strong with food and drink: so that his wealth in Reims was like the glory of Solomon in Jerusalem, and his settled joy in love not inferior." (To be fair to Walter, this pa.s.sage echoes the complaints of the n.o.bles of Bobbio that Gerbert had brought from Reims such an extravagant household that they thought he must be keeping a wife.) Continues Walter: "Every night she, who possessed full knowledge of the past, instructed him in what he was to do by day.... Within a short time no one was his equal."

It was Meridiana, Walter says, who promised Gerbert he could not die until he sang Ma.s.s in Jerusalem. When he was struck down at the altar of the church in Rome, Gerbert saw her exultant face in the crowd. Walter omits the request for mutilation and gives Gerbert a good death: He "sincerely hallowed the short remainder of his life with a.s.siduous and severe penance, and died in a good confession." He concludes: "Though through covetousness Gerbert was held captive a long time by the birdlime of the devil, he ruled the Roman Church greatly and with a strong hand." But his marble tomb in the Lateran, Walter added, "continually sweats."

William of Malmesbury went even further than Walter Map, turning Gerbert's years of learning mathematics in Spain into a series of magical escapades with beautiful women, Saracen wizards, and secret codes hidden in the constellations. Gerbert, in this version, lodged in the house of a Saracen philosopher who "sold his knowledge" and lent Gerbert books to copy. "There was, however, one volume to which he had committed all his art and which Gerbert could by no means get out of him. On his side he was pa.s.sionately anxious to make the book somehow serve his turn. 'We ever strive toward what is forbidden.'" (It is probably true that Gerbert never saw a science book he didn't covet.) With the help of the Saracen's beautiful daughter, Gerbert stole the book. The Saracen used "the stars" to track him, but Gerbert hung by his hands under a bridge, knowing that the stars would say he was neither on land nor water. He reached the coast, summoned the devil, and had himself and the magical book safely conveyed "overseas."