Q by Luther Blissett (poetry books to read txt) 📕
The final blow: 'Omnia sunt communia, sons of whores!'
His head flies into the dust.
* * *
The houses are being ransacked. Doors smashed in with kicks and axe-blows. We'll be next. No time to lose. I lean over him.
'Magister, listen to me, we've got to go, they're coming... For the love of God, Magister...' I grasp his shoulders. He whispers a reply. He can't move. Trapped, we're trapped.
Like Elias.
My hand clutches my sword. Like Elias. I wish I had his courage.
'What do you think you're doing? We've had enough of martyrdom. Go on, get out while you can!'
The voice. As though from the bowels of the earth. I can't believe he's spoken. He's moving even less than be
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- Author: Luther Blissett
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I’m old. Perhaps that’s all it is. I’ve lived ten different lives without ever stopping, and now I’m tired. Despair stopped visiting me some time ago, as though my mind had closed itself off from suffering, and could now see things from a distance as though reading them in a book.
And yet, from those pages there rises still the Black Shade that has always walked with me, telling me that no amount can pay your bill, that you never stop paying and that there is no safe hiding-place. This is a game that demands to be played to the end; if that is the case, then so be it. All my loved ones are safe. I’m the only one left. There’s just me and the ghosts that go with me. All of them.
Including Lodewijck de Schaliedecker, alias Eloi Pruystinck: burned extra muros on 22nd October 1544.
Basle, 18th March 1545
‘You can get lost in Venice, mate, even when you think you know it well, capito? You can find yourself completely at the mercy of this city. A maze of canals, alleyways, churches and buildings that appear in front of you as though in a dream, without any apparent connection to anything you’ve seen before.’
Pietro Perna, as usual, is losing himself in his talk about Italy, as he uncorks a bottle of ‘the best wine in the world’. From the window of Oporinus’ back room, the sky of Basle is of a grey tending to white as though someone had drained it of colour, but whether it’s the smell of the wine or the Latin accent of my interlocutor, I feel as though the room is flooded with sunlight.
‘Weren’t you just talking about the alleged authors of the Benefit of Christ Crucified, Pietro?’
‘That’s right,’ he answers, wiping his moustache with the back of his hand, ‘let’s not lose sight of the main issue. The book is officially anonymous, while unofficially it’s said to have been written by brother Benedetto Fontanini of Mantua, and in the underground it’s claimed that it is the work of minds not a million miles away from the English cardinal Reginald Pole.’
I immediately interrupt him. ‘I don’t imagine you’ll mind if I ask you for a bit more information about what’s happening in Italy, because what you’ve just said about cardinals quoting Calvin doesn’t make sense to me. And maybe wine isn’t the best thing to be drinking if we’re to have this discussion.’
He opens his eyes wide and pours himself another glass. ‘This is wine from Chianti, my good man, you drink as much of it as you like and it will seem as though your head keeps getting lighter. My parents bottle it, in a farm near the village of Gaiole. It’s a wine that has honoured the table of Cosimo de’ Medici, capito? An in-im-it-ab-le beverage!’
He notices my gesture and continues. ‘Let’s get to the point, my friend. The Spanish doctor Michael Servet described the Italians as being different from each other in every respect: government, languages, customs and physical characteristics. The only thing that links us, he says, is our dislike of each other, our cowardice in war and our haughtiness towards people from across the Alps. Where faith is concerned, you might almost say the same thing: on the one hand there are those adopting a conciliatory position towards the Lutherans, on the other there are those who give absolute precedence to the war against heresy and want to dust down the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Hatred of priests is very widespread among the people, hence the sympathy for what everyone calls the “German faith”. But you could say the opposite too, capito? Just as you could say that many peasants don’t know what the Trinity is, but they still take communion and confess at Easter to keep the parish priest happy, and the rest of the year they live on their superstitions.’
I try to imagine the country described by Pietro Perna, as I sip the second glass of his exquisite wine. Italy: maybe it’s true that I can’t die without having been there. However I do have a sense that much of what I’ve been through started there, not least the killing of Eloi and the Free Spirits, identified by the Inquisition, who identified them to Charles V as heretics, dangerous citizens and infidels.
Meanwhile Perna hasn’t drawn breath, accompanying each sentence with eloquent gestures.
‘The Schmalkaldic League set up by the Protestant princes has an ambassador in Rome, capito? And loads of people would be delighted if Lutheran ideas triumphed in the Serenissima Repubblica of Venice. But you can’t afford to lose a city like this one, comrade. Thanks to commerce, they’ve got everything a rich man could wish to buy, everything that a curious spirit could wish to see, everything that the flesh could ask of the capital of prostitution, where one women in five is or has been, however irregularly, engaged in the profession. Finally, thanks to books, there is a way to fill your purse, as long as you’ve got a bit of that courage which, it would seem, only we Italians lack.’
Third glass: ‘While you’re on the subject of money, Pietro, I’ve got an idea for you. Write a book about Venice, to fill the notables of Europe with the desire to visit the city, and tell them where to eat, where to drink, where they can find female companions, where to sleep. I’m sure the book would be very successful, and that the owners of the places you listed would pay you for the mention.’
He stretches his hands out on the table and takes mine before I have time to draw them back. ‘Listen, my friend, you’re wasted up here. Basle, as you know better than I do, is the city where the most innovative thinkers, the most dangerous heresiarchs, the most rebellious minds of Europe come to shake off their traces, to rest, to breathe quietly for a bit. None of this, be honest, is for you. You’re a man of action.’
‘Maybe. But my last injury was too recent, the skin hasn’t grown back yet.’
‘Then drink, comrade, there’s no better balm for it.’
Fourth glass: my head really is light.
Basle, 28th March 1545
Johann Oporinus’ house is big enough to hold us all. The community of fugitives here in Switzerland numbers about twenty people, more or less illustrious Protestants, wild cards who have known the best minds of the Reformation: friends of Bucer, Capito and Calvin who, here in Basle, published the first edition of his Insitutio Christianae Religionis.
Many of these learned men don’t agree with the fathers of the Reformation about the constitution of a new ecclesiastical organisation. The decision of Bucer in Strasbourg and Calvin in Geneva, to transform the capitals of the Reformation into city churches, isn’t welcomed by everyone. Many of those who have fled down here have been ostracised by those same masters, who are now busy rebuilding a new church to replace the old one: new doctors to take charge of catechistic education, new deacons, new pastors and old men keeping an eye on the religious and moral life of the faithful.
Discipline is the watchword that now echoes from one end of the reformed countries to the other. A word that leaves these free thinkers dissatisfied : awkward people for those who aspire to order and hierarchy.
Oporinus summoned us here to talk to us all, he wouldn’t say what about, but I think it has something to do with rumours that are going about the place, to the effect that the Ecumenical Council announced several times by the Pope is actually going to happen this time, at the end of the year.
The only famous face is David Joris, until a few months ago the leader of Dutch Anabaptism. He’s down here with a few followers, fleeing the crushing vice of the Inquisition. Bocholt, August ‘36: the council of Anabaptists; Batenburg against everyone else, against Philips and Joris, I remember it well, sword against word. I don’t think he’ll recognise me, almost ten years have passed.
I see Pietro Perna slipping towards a chair clutching a few books, which he is now flicking through, bored, shaking his head to himself as though finding his worst suspicions confirmed.
I sit down too, slightly apart from the rest. I have no suspicions, no expectations, particularly about Oporinus and his circle of friends. I appreciate the work of our friend the printer: Paracelsus, Servet, Socini are all authors who could do damage, cause trouble, people that Calvin is willing to sacrifice just in order to become a new Luther. But courage of that kind isn’t enough on its own, and even if it’s all that the times can give us, I’ve been fighting too hard to get worked up over a theological dispute.
Our host nods to us to stop chattering, he wants to speak.
‘My friends,’ his voice is mild, his tone peaceful, ‘I’ve summoned you here today because I think an exchange of ideas about the forthcoming event could be useful to us all.’ He raises his voice. ‘You will probably have heard that a council is to be summoned in which the whole divided Christian world will participate, with a view to finding a point of agreement and reconciling all the different parties.’
He reads agreement in the faces of everyone present, Perna yawns in a corner, perched on a chair that’s too high for him, his legs dangling.
Oporinus continues: ‘Well, we can’t stay aloof from so major an event, we can’t just be silent onlookers. In all likelihood, in order to facilitate the intervention of the best doctors of Lutheran Protestantism, the place chosen for this Council will be the neutral city of Trent, between Rome and the German lands, not too far from our own city of Basle.’
‘Are you going to get us all invited to the Council?’ The tone is halfway between irony and disbelief, the joke comes from one of the chairs opposite Oporinus.
The printer shakes his head. ‘That’s not what I’m saying. But it might be useful to write to Geneva to inform Calvin and his men that we don’t want to be left out, that we too want to have our say, maybe even publishing something, even if it’s only a document that can be read before the Catholic cardinals. We could drop a line to Servet in Paris, who might write us something for the occasion…’
From the second row a pale, thin man gets to his feet, he has a French accent. Oporinus must have introduced him to me, but I can’t remember his name.
‘You don’t really believe that Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin are going to participate in this Council?’
‘Why not? If the cardinals have decided to call a Council, it means they’re worried that the Reformation will spread, and they’re up for a compromise, they might even be open to certain requests…’
Leroux, that’s his name, speaks excitedly: ‘If Luther attends the Council, he won’t come back. And the same is true of all the rest of them. If the Papists can get them all within firing range, they won’t be able to resist the temptation. They’ll get hold of them and burn the lot…’
Heads
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