lord, these people are shocking,” Olivier hastened to tell him. “And they are dangerous. They do not acknowledge the church; they wrap the people round their thumbs and could make them do anything. Believe me, I am not joking. I saw the effect they were having.”
“I’m sure the same was said of Saint Francis and his followers,” Ceccani said evenly. “And who knows, perhaps these people have been touched by divine grace. Let us see, when this man arrives. Did you get his name, by the way?”
“He calls himself Peter.”
“Peter? Well, well.”
“You are taking a great deal of interest in a few lunatics, my lord.”
“A few?” Ceccani replied. “Dear me no. If there were only a few I would ignore them. A few would be no danger, and no use either. But we have had reports in from all over Provence, into Italy and France, of bands of people like these. I need to know whether they are truly dangerous or not. As you have seen for yourself, they capture the minds of the populace. But what will they do with those minds? That is what we must discover. Please go and wait for this Peter, and bring him to me the moment he arrives.”
So Olivier retired to the gatehouse and passed the next three hours working hard, reading the manuscripts that Gersonides had lent him, rereading his own ever more confusing document by Manlius Hippomanes. The contrast appealed to him: the limpid, clear thought of Manlius and the confused, noisy outpourings of the flagellants told him much, suggested to him why the old Roman had written these words. For the first time he picked up and truly understood the tone of regret, the fear in the text, how Manlius must have intended this work to be a bastion against the darkness of ignorance, and a valedictory to an age he knew was dying all around him. But he remembered also Gersonides’s words at the meeting when he had tentatively suggested that his assault on the Jews of Vaison might have been motivated by faith. “Oh, but this man was no Christian when he wrote this. And he was a bishop, as you say. So go and think yet again; what sort of man can persecute others in the name of a faith he clearly does not profess?”
He read, then reread, the section on friendship in the light of the death of Althieux, and there at least found much to comfort him. The bishop had understood about friends, loved his friends, advocated forgiving them if they erred. “For nature gives a man two eyes, two hands, two ears. If one eye weakens, the other becomes stronger in its aid; if an arm is injured, we do not cut it off; rather, the other does its work as well as its own until it is whole once more. So it is if a friend falls from virtue.”
He was thinking on this passage when Peter arrived. Olivier had to intervene, for the guards on the gate wished to deny him entrance. Then, walking ahead of him, being careful not to talk to him, Olivier led him across the vast hall and up the stairs to Ceccani’s chamber.
“I did not give you permission to sit,” the cardinal remarked as Peter placed himself on a chair, carrying it over from the wall where it stood.
“And I did not ask it,” Peter replied, sitting down anyway. “You wished to see me, not I you.”
Olivier smiled, and waited for Ceccani to erupt. His anger was a terrible sight, and he felt a small tingle of anticipatory glee at the thought of what must come next.
But it didn’t. Ceccani did not react, merely nodded and thought. “You addressed the crowd this afternoon, I gather. I heard reports of it, but not enough to make sense of it. Would you care to repeat it to me?”
Even Peter found this mild-mannered response surprising, but was not a man to turn down an opportunity to talk. “I told them that the plague is a punishment from God for the sins of the world. It is only through repentance that His vengeance can be deflected. We are penitents. We urge others to repent as well. So doing may show we are sorry for our sins, and may assuage divine wrath.”
“You are not a priest, I think.”
Peter snorted. “I come from Marseille. When the plague arrived there, the priests were the first out of the gates on their donkeys. I spent a week going round houses no one else would enter, giving comfort to the dying. They asked me for blessings, thinking I must be a priest. At first I refused, but then I knew that I had been ordained by God, if not by men. I was sent by Him, to comfort the sick and save the healthy. Who is the greater sinner? A man who gives the sacrament though not ordained, or a man who is ordained yet refuses it through his cowardice?”
Even Olivier knew the answer to that one. Many a man had been hanged for less. But again, Ceccani smiled, almost as if encouraging him to continue.
“And while this continues, what do priests do? They sit in their castles, blockaded in their towers, and give themselves over to debauchery and lust. That is why God has struck, because of the evil of the church itself, which dissipates itself in this town.”
Ceccani nodded cautiously. “You feel that the plague would abate if the pope returned to Rome?”
“The church must mend its ways and repent, and it must take action,” Peter said, looking at Ceccani with level, steady eyes. “All the world knows how this plague is being spread. Everyone knows that it is the doing of the Jews, and that as long as they exist we are all in danger of our souls. And what does the church do? Nothing. What does the pope do? Builds himself great buildings and seduces women in them. Go back to Rome? Yes. But in a spirit of repentance, vowed to sin no more. And that would be only a start. This is God’s warning, and we must do as we are told.”
Olivier almost broke in to point out that either the plague was God’s punishment or the Jews’ evil, but could hardly be both, but kept silent. It was all too incoherent to be taken seriously. And the remarks about the pope . . . many men thought such things. Few were foolish or rash enough to speak them out loud.
The interview went on for some time, Ceccani using all the formidable power of his character, skills normally reserved for princes and cardinals, to win over this filthy beggar. And when it finally came to an end he stood up and embraced him, then offered him his ring to kiss. “You have been touched by God, my friend. There are many who think as you do, but do not have the courage to act. You must be strong, and faithful. You have great work to do. I offer you my protection, and do not think you will not need it in days to come. There are many who fear you, and who hate to hear the truth.”
Peter bowed, and kissed the ring, tamed at last. “Thank you, my lord.”
“It would be as well if you were prepared to take advice, on occasion. I will send messages to you, giving you my opinion, making suggestions. Consider it well, when you receive it, for we have the same aims in mind, and together, who knows, perhaps we can bring mankind and his church to his senses before it is too late.”
He nodded that Olivier was to show him out. As they left the room Peter said, “You are lucky, friend.”
“How so?”
“To have such a man as a master.”
Olivier said nothing. He thought Ceccani had taken leave of his senses.
IN APRIL 475, the day after his encounter with the abandoned urchin on his estates, Manlius Hippomanes traveled to Arles and summoned a meeting of all the bishops from areas threatened by the barbarian armies. His insolence in doing so was extreme; the most junior of them all, and a priest who had never yet given communion, did not even know how the service was conducted; he should have spent the next decade in humble supplication before his superiors.
And yet this was why old Faustus had chosen him, and why Faustus wrote, quite independently, a covering letter to his fellow bishops instructing them to obey Manlius’s summons. So, over the next month, they assembled, some twenty-four of them in all, finding lodgings of assorted quality in the town—some severe and austere, others aristocratic and opulent. Manlius himself stayed as a guest in the house belonging to a relation, and it was in this still impressive residence that the meeting—or rather the series of meetings—took place.
For although they were leaders of their flocks, they were desperate to be led themselves through the maze of this dark and troubled world. They were now well used to raising and spending charitable donations, to looking after the poor, to getting hold of corn in times of hardness, to raising work duties to repair roads and water supplies; all the things that the civil government had once done and could do no longer. They maintained, on the whole, good relations with their brother priests and bishops both nearby and far away. But dealing with the secular powers, with generals and armies—with politics and diplomacy at a high level—was something of which few had any experience, and they were worldly enough to know that skill and dexterity in such matters was now vitally required. They were Romans and they were Catholics; the barbarians—Euric to the west, the Burgundians to the north—were neither.
