“What were you doing at the fair?” I asked when I felt calmer again, though I still could not meet his eyes. “I thought the monks did not attend.”
“They don’t, but Brother Philipp allowed the oblate boys to go down for a little while. We cannot buy anything, of course.”
My head was clearer now, and I concluded that there was little chance Helenger had noticed me. “Did the prior come with you to chaperone?”
“No.” Volmar shook his head. “But I hear he likes to task himself with ensuring that nothing inappropriate is sold at the market.”
I thought about the amulets against evil spirits, some of which contained wisps of dried herbs in little glass chambers melted into their centers. As if reading my thoughts, Volmar added, “People were saying that some of the herb sellers had been kicked out.”
We sat in silence for a while as the late sun broke through the clouds. On the opposite side of the sky, the pale moon had already risen. It sent my thoughts down a different track. “Do you think that stars can influence people’s health and the outcome of cures?”
Volmar frowned thoughtfully, and I was fascinated—not for the first time—by the change that seemed to come over him whenever his usual cheeriness was replaced by a more contemplative mood, and his face assumed a softness that was almost feminine. His ability to so seamlessly shift from the spirited to the sublime never ceased to amaze me. “I don’t see how,” he said at length. “People pray to saints for deliverance from illness, and sometimes their prayers are answered, but stars? I cannot see how they can help or hinder anything.”
“Medical books say otherwise.” I told him about the volume of excerpts from Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine I had read the previous winter, which the monk-translator had prefaced with a commentary on the link between the configuration of stars at a person’s birth and the therapies best suited for his illness. I had been struggling with it because I had no direct evidence—something I always preferred in the treatment of patients—for faraway bodies’ ability to exert such powers. And yet to me, the world was a whole, where every element, no matter how distant, was connected to every other element, all of them infused with the same vital energy of the creation. And since God had designed it all, who knew what mysteries were hidden beneath the layers inaccessible to our minds?
“Does Brother Wigbert believe it?”
“Hard to say. When I asked, he said he had not received training in reading astrological charts, but that many physicians swear by them, and that celestial influence over human affairs is well known. For example, the appearance of comets in the sky portends catastrophes like floods, wars, or royal deaths.”
“Does it?”
“That’s what he said.” I paused, thinking. I was often struck by the selectiveness of monastic medicine. Dioscorides dealt extensively with the healing properties of herbs, as did Medicinale Anglicum, suggesting that even in Christian England scholars used and studied them. And yet our infirmarian shied away from herbal cures, preferring surgery and bloodletting while others turned to the stars for help. It seemed that there was no unified approach to treatments; monastic physicians relied only on what they considered doctrinally safe and discarded what they deemed inconvenient or suspicious.
The blue of the sky had lost its clear summer quality and assumed a more somber color tinged with streaks of purple over the horizon. In the west, the crescent of the moon had grown whiter. “Have you ever wondered what the stars are made of?” Volmar asked.
I nodded.
“Brother Rudeger says they are made up of divine matter.”
“What’s it like?”
“Nobody has seen it since the heavens are unreachable.” Volmar’s parody of the pompous tone and self-importance of the schoolmaster made me burst out laughing. “But natural philosophers say it is more rarefied than terrestrial matter.”
“I wonder why.”
“Let’s see . . .” He racked his brain for the half-forgotten lesson. “Because the celestial region is immutable, unlike things on earth which are subject to corruption. But the sun, the moon, and the stars are always the same; they don’t change or age, and they move on the spheres with circular motion, which is perfect. It follows that they must consist of matter that is also perfect, and therefore divine.”
I pondered this. Heavenly bodies did seem the same from day to day and year to year. “But why would God take the trouble to create a different substance for the heavens if He could use the same four elements He created for the earth?”
Volmar lifted his shoulders. “Brother Rudeger would say it is not for us to question God’s design.”
I pursed my lips. “But since nobody has seen this divine matter, there is no proof that it is different, is there? So it is at least possible that the moon is made of the same thing that is under our feet.”
“It seems reasonable.” Vomar said. “Though imagine what would happen if the prior heard you say that.” He shot me that mischievous glance again.
I smiled and looked up at the sky again. My imagination had long been fired up by its mysteries. What was it really like up there? How was it all organized? If the natural order on earth, for all its fragility and—as Brother Rudeger had put it—corruption, possessed such great beauty and such extraordinary regenerative powers, who knew what marvels hid in the heavens?
I turned to Volmar. “You have access to the library through the school; did you see any drawings of the sky?”
He shook his head. “Only anatomical charts.”
“I have those. Brother Wigbert brought them for me to study.” I rose from the grass. It was getting late, although the activity on the high road continued unabated. “And yet the workings of the heavens are just as fascinating as those of the body.”
14
September 1119
I had not been studying anatomy for long when I
