Part 2 (2/2)

Stranger is the fact that both names are puns.

Gerbert's signature is very fine, deeply carved, its edges still sharp after all these years. It is about three inches in height and breadth and shaped like a cross: GER (s.p.a.ce) BER, with the T above the s.p.a.ce and the US (written in Latin as VS), twined around each other, below.

MIRO is as long but not as high as GERBERTVS, and not as well carved, and it is backwards: Miro backwards: Miro in Latin means to look in a mirror. in Latin means to look in a mirror.

Gerbert couldn't find an equivalent Latin pun for his name: It is Germanic. So this twenty-year-old monk matched his friend's playfulness with a set of intensely intellectual puzzles. Pieced together, they reveal how he thought of himself as a young man-and how his sojourn in Spain had affected him.

To make his name into a cross, Gerbert pulled out T-V-S, recognizable to any medieval churchman as the Trinity, Thevs Verb.u.m Spiritvs Thevs Verb.u.m Spiritvs, or Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The letters could also stand for Tav Votvm Solvi Tav Votvm Solvi, ”I have accomplished my vow to the Cross.” He constructed the cross itself with one letter, two letters, and three plus three letters. According to the accepted mathematical theory, one, two, and three were the basis of G.o.d's creation of the universe, making number the key to wisdom. Finally, the letters were to be read left to right, then up to down, making the symbol known as the chrismon, still used in baptisms. The chrismon is the sign of the emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and the one who moved the capital of his empire from Rome to Constantinople.

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Graffiti carved by Gerbert at the cathedral of Elne. Like his friend Miro's signature, which is backwards, Gerbert's autograph is a pun, signifying church, wisdom, and empire.

To read GERBERTVS was thus to summarize the three great forces acting on Gerbert's life: church, wisdom, and empire. The Church would be his home, the search for wisdom-through numbers-would be his pa.s.sion, and the restoration of the empire, and its return to Rome, would be his lifelong goal.

CHAPTER IV.

The Schoolmaster of Reims In December 970, Gerbert left Spain, accompanying Count Borrell and Bishop Ato on a mission to Rome. Winter seems an odd time to attempt crossing the Alps, but there are many stories of similar expeditions. Odo of Cluny crossed in January. As the custom was, he hired local guides-Muslims, who from their fortress at Saint-Tropez on the coast had ruled the Alpine pa.s.ses for almost a hundred years. Even then, the road was perilous. A blizzard struck at sunset. ”We were so covered with snow and our limbs so frozen that we could not speak,” one of Odo's companions wrote. ”Suddenly, the horse on which our father was sitting slipped sideways and they both fell together down the steep slope. Letting go of the reins Odo raised both his hands to heaven as he fell, and immediately his arms found the branch of a tree from which he hung suspended until those in front turned back at his cries and rescued him. ... The horse was never seen again.”

River crossings could be chancy at any time of year. Odo was in midstream once when ”one of the horses kicked at another and struck the side of the boat in a place where there was a knot in the planking. As soon as the side of the boat was pierced, so great a torrent of water came in through the hole that the boat was quickly filled.” Odo reached sh.o.r.e only ”by the manifest help of G.o.d.”

Richer of Saint-Remy wrote of reaching a bridge on a rainy night at dark. It was ”pierced with holes so large and so numerous that [we] ... would have had difficulty pa.s.sing it even in the daytime.” His escort, an experienced traveler, had a plan. ”Over the gaping holes, he placed his s.h.i.+eld for the horses to step on, or one of the loose boards that were lying around, and sometimes bending, sometimes straightening, sometimes on tiptoe, sometimes running, he succeeded in getting the horses and me across.”

Then there were the tolls-or bribes. Count Gerald the Good of Aurillac, on his way to Rome, was stopped at Piacenza by the cleric in charge of the ford, who ”for some reason ... was in a very bad temper, flinging angry words about.” Count Gerald ”subdued” him with some ”small gifts,” and the man not only took them across the Po River but also refilled their flasks with wine. (”Small” should be read in the context of the count's well-known generosity: The Muslim guides who controlled the Alps ”thought nothing more profitable than to carry Gerald's baggage through the pa.s.s of Mont Joux.”) Finally, the travelers had to beware of brigands. Count Gerald had just arrived at the city of Asti when a thief stole two of his packhorses. ”Coming to a river, he was not able to get them across before he was taken by Count Gerald's men.” Having retrieved his horses, the magnanimous count pardoned the man.

Count Borrell and Bishop Ato were attacked on their way home from Rome-but not by such simple thieves. They had gone to Rome to convince the pope to separate the churches of Catalonia from the archbishopric of Narbonne. The pope agreed. In a series of five papal bulls, he established a new archbishopric of Vic with Ato at its head. In revenge, the archbishop of Narbonne saw to it that his new rival never reached home: Ato was murdered in August 971.

Gerbert was not with him. He had impressed important people in Rome. According to Richer of Saint-Remy: ”The pope did not fail to notice the youth's diligence and will to learn. And because musica musica and and astronomia astronomia were completely ignored in Italy at that time, the pope through a legate promptly informed Otto, king of Germany and Italy, that a young man of such quality had arrived, one who had perfectly mastered were completely ignored in Italy at that time, the pope through a legate promptly informed Otto, king of Germany and Italy, that a young man of such quality had arrived, one who had perfectly mastered mathesis mathesis and who was capable of teaching it effectively.” and who was capable of teaching it effectively.”

Otto the Great, who had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 962, took Gerbert into his court to tutor his heir, Otto II, then sixteen to Gerbert's twenty. Otto II was not a scholar by nature. Gerbert may have improved his Latin-he mentions Otto's ”Socratic disputations” in a letter, and Otto later proved himself a book-lover-but Gerbert's mastery of the quadrivium was not appreciated until a year later, when Archbishop Adalbero of Reims came to visit the pope.

Adalbero, brother to the count of Verdun, wanted to improve the teaching of the seven liberal arts at his cathedral's school. Reims, now in the shadow of Paris, was then the leading city in France. Kings were anointed in the Reims cathedral, and the point of the cathedral school was not to turn out country priests but to train young n.o.blemen for the king's service as bishops. It's a misconception that a bishop or archbishop had to be pious. They were as much counts and courtiers as churchmen, valued for their tact and managerial skills. And for this they needed the best education.

”While he was thinking along these lines,” Richer of Saint-Remy wrote about Adalbero's plans for the school at Reims, ”Gerbert was directed toward him by G.o.d himself.” Or, as he enthused elsewhere, ”when Divinity wished to illuminate Gaul, then shrouded in darkness, with a great light,” it inspired Count Borrell to bring Gerbert to Rome, where he would meet the archbishop of Reims.

Gerbert needed a new post. After Otto II wed a Byzantine princess, Theophanu, on Easter Sunday 972, he no longer required a tutor. At the wedding, Gerbert struck up a friends.h.i.+p with Gerann, who taught the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic at Reims. Gerann had sought out the young scholar, at Adalbero's request, to recruit him. Gerbert agreed to teach the quadrivium, the mathematical arts, at Reims in return for lessons from Gerann in dialectic. Taking his leave of the emperor, he rode with Gerann to Reims and became a canon of the cathedral. When Gerann died a few years later, Gerbert was named schoolmaster, a position he held, with only a short interruption, until Adalbero's death in 989, when Gerbert replaced him as archbishop.

n.o.ble and wealthy and well aware that his diocese was the most powerful in France, Archbishop Adalbero of Reims was better called a prince-bishop, being the holder of many castles and overlord of several counts himself. His church lands stretched from the suburbs of Paris well across the border of France into the Holy Roman Empire, giving the archbishop ready access to the emperor, who likewise made sure the archbishop was his man.

To King Lothar of France-already under the eye of his mother Gerberga, sister to Emperor Otto the Great, and his uncle Bruno, the emperor's brother-Adalbero, when he was elected to the post in 969, seemed yet one more imperial spy. Eventually Lothar and his son, Louis V, would use a harsher term, traitor traitor-an accusation they would extend to Gerbert, too, for Gerbert became Adalbero's secretary and confidant. To Gerbert, Adalbero was the pilot of the s.h.i.+p, the equipoise of the balance. ”We were of one heart and soul,” Gerbert wrote upon his friend's death in 989. Without him, ”one might think the world is slipping into primordial chaos.”

They were joined not only by their love of books and learning: Both were captivated by the idea of empire. The rightful order of the universe, they agreed, included an emperor, sovereign over all the Christian world, to whom the king of France would naturally pay homage. This respect for hierarchy in no way lessened King Lothar's honor, they argued. He was the representative of Christ within his realm. His dignity was reflected by the wealth and splendor of its churches.

The first thing Adalbero did upon becoming archbishop of Reims was to raze the vaulted foyer of the cathedral and make it ”more worthy” of his king, according to Richer of Saint-Remy-even though that meant destroying the ramparts built to protect the church from Viking raids. He raised a bell tower. He commissioned a cross of gold for the main altar and surrounded it with bal.u.s.trades sparkling with precious stones. He gave the church elegant new reliquaries, a seven-branched candelabrum, a portable altar with gold and silver statues of the four evangelists, marble floors, brilliant frescos on the walls, and some of the earliest stained-gla.s.s windows, or, as Richer described them, ”windows containing various stories.” Finally, he hung golden crowns over the altars, symbolically linking earthly kings.h.i.+p to the eternal throne of Christ the Lord. He hoped Lothar would rise to the occasion.

Adalbero brought order to the many monasteries under his care and cracked down on the independent canons of Reims, building a dormitory where they were required to sleep. They had to eat together in silence, take part in the night offices, and wear identical, sober clothing. We don't know what the canons had been wearing before, but the monks like Richer had to make do without their ”bonnets with long ear flaps,” their ”excessive breeches whose leggings stretch the length of six feet and yet do not protect ... the shameful parts from onlookers,” their costly tunics that were ”so tight across the b.u.t.tocks” that the monks' ”a.s.ses resembled those of prost.i.tutes,” and their tall, tight boots with up-curved toes.

Yet the rules at a cathedral were looser than those of a monastery-it was more like a gentlemen's club than a cloister. The canons of a cathedral sang Ma.s.s and celebrated holy festivals. They maintained the church buildings, the altars and ornaments, relics and vestments, and oversaw the church lands and other revenues, such as the taxes on markets, the tolls on bridges and roads, the fines from lawsuits, the collecting of the t.i.the, and the coining of money. They cared for the poor and sick, gave hospitality to travelers, and acted as go-betweens in feuds, often being the ones to ransom captives.

Being a canon, not just a monk, was a mark of status. Canons could eat meat, wear linen, and-most important to Gerbert-acquire possessions of their own. While monks were only allowed to use the word ”my” to refer to their parents or their sins, canons owned books, rings, coins, goblets, rugs, barrels of wine, Saracen slaves (according to the wills of some Spanish canons), houses, and land. Many canons came from wealthy families who had dedicated a son to the church, not only to ensure the family's salvation, but also to have influence with the archbishop. With the boy, or oblate, had come an estate: Its income was meant to support the child, in style, throughout his life, and it was the oblate, once grown, who had control of it.

Gerbert's position as master of the cathedral school likewise brought him wealth. In his letters he mentions the houses that ”at great expense we built, together with their furnis.h.i.+ng. Also the churches that we obtained by solemn and legitimate gifts,” and the vast sums he was spending on books. When he left Reims in 981 to become (briefly) the abbot of Bobbio, he scandalized the Italian monks with the number of servants and quant.i.ty of goods he brought from the north. His enemies whispered to the emperor that he must secretly be keeping a wife to require such a lavish household. After he escaped Bobbio in 983 and fled empty-handed back to Reims, he bemoaned for years the fact that ”the best part of my household paraphernalia” had been left behind in Italy. He had been fond of his treasures.

As long as a canon made it to church for prime at sunrise and vespers at sunset, he could be ”in the world,” not cloistered like a monk, for most of the day. At some cathedrals, canons spent much of their time managing their property: their vineyards, estates, and townhouses. They were repeatedly censured for disgraceful behavior, including gambling, hunting, and the keeping of concubines. Other cathedrals were more like universities, with most of the day given over to cla.s.ses. The first universities, founded in the 1200s, were cathedral schools that had cut their ties to the Church.

Reims, through the combined efforts of Adalbero and Gerbert, developed into a proto-university. Gerbert taught all seven of the liberal arts after Gerann's death, being expert in the trivium as well as the more advanced quadrivium. Students flocked to his school from throughout France and Germany; they even crossed the Alps from Italy. Among them were sons of n.o.blemen, being readied for court life or positions high in the Church. Between 972, when he first came to Reims, and 996, when he left in disgrace, Gerbert taught, for example, thirteen future bishops or archbishops, six abbots of important monasteries, Emperor Otto III's chancellor, the secretary to Emperor Henry II, the future Pope Gregory VI, and King Hugh Capet's son Robert the Pious, who would rule France from 996 to 1031. Says The Life of King Robert The Life of King Robert, ”His mother sent him to the school of Reims and confided him to master Gerbert to be taught by him and instructed in the liberal arts in a manner in every way pleasing, by his virtues, to G.o.d.”

Not all of his students were of n.o.ble blood. Many were simply inquisitive monks and canons, wandering scholars who in the course of their education ”pillaged many schools,” in one medieval description, or visited ”masters of schools far away, like a prudent bee which goes from flower to flower collecting sweeter honey.” To attend, they needed permission from their abbots or bishops, and Gerbert and Adalbero did their best to arrange it. Adalbero writes to the abbot of Ghent, ”We have adopted one of your brothers, but you are detaining one of ours who ought to return.” To the archbishop of Trier, Gerbert says, ”If you are wondering whether you should direct students to us ... on this matter we have an open mind.”

Gerbert's letters hint at his teaching philosophy. He speaks of the importance of ”a mind conscious of itself,” of studying mathematics ”for the utmost exercise of the mind” and astronomy ”in order not to grow inwardly lazy.” To the abbot of Tours, he explains the importance of rhetoric to those who are ”busied in affairs of state”: ”For speaking effectively to persuade and restraining the minds of angry persons from violence by smooth speech are both of the greatest usefulness. For this activity, which must be prepared beforehand, I am diligently forming a library.”

And though learning required books-ever more books-teaching did not. Gerbert was an orator, not a writer. He shared what he knew through speech and demonstrations, not texts. Only very reluctantly, under pressure of a student's request, did he write things down. For instance, when Gerbert wrote his Book on the Abacus Book on the Abacus, he sent it off with a letter that began: ”Only the compulsion of friends.h.i.+p reduces the nearly impossible to the possible. Otherwise, how could we strive to explain the rules of the abacus unless urged by you, O Constantine, sweet solace of my labors?”

Constantine, who seems to have been Gerbert's favorite student, was raised in the monastery at Fleury, near the French city of Orleans. Like Gerbert, he was singled out for his intelligence and sent off to learn the quadrivium. Of aristocratic birth and said to be devastatingly beautiful, he attracted a following at Reims. When the time came for him to leave, an unknown monk (probably not Gerbert) wrote a parting ode dripping with learned allusions, Greek words, and strained grammar. Wisdom herself was Constantine's teacher. The G.o.ddess had built a temple in this ”man magnificent above others and always loveable.” That temple s.h.i.+nes with ”the excellent light of virtues,” with ”n.o.bility of merits” and ”probity of manners.” The poet's beloved Constantine is chaste as a dove, cunning as a serpent, a mirror of justice, the light of the learned. ”These pages will bring happiness when your presence cannot,” says the poet of his ”sweetest” friend.

Constantine and Gerbert kept up a correspondence-dense and technical and including many of Gerbert's known scientific writings-on such subjects as how to make a hemisphere for studying the heavens, the solution to a seemingly insolvable problem on sesquiquartal numbers in Boethius's On Arithmetic On Arithmetic, the equally abstruse theory of super-particular numbers from Boethius's On Music On Music, and the rules of the abacus. Constantine copied and shared these scientific notes from his teacher with other like-minded monks.

Constantine also preserved Gerbert's formal letter collection. When Gerbert was forced to leave Reims, he sorted through his letters and confided a selection to Constantine. Shortly after Gerbert was named pope in 999, Constantine made a copy of these papers. Though the originals are lost, Constantine's copy still exists in the library of the University of Leiden. One page gives the pen name of the scribe, Stabilis Stabilis, meaning ”stability” or ”constancy.”

Gerbert's letter collection was carefully edited. Like Cicero, Gerbert chose letters that showed his rhetorical skill and historical importance. In some ways, he was creating a textbook on rhetoric; notably, he chose not to include any of his scientific papers. He was also writing his autobiography. His letters reveal what was important to him: Second only to lifelong learning was friends.h.i.+p, and the two were inextricably intertwined.

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Constantine made this copy of Gerbert's letter collection sometime between 999, when Gerbert became pope, and 1014, when Constantine died. Just above the large capital letter, which falls in the middle of a page, you can read: Incipit exemplar epistolarum Girbirti Papa . .. Incipit exemplar epistolarum Girbirti Papa . .., ”Here begins the copy of the letters of Pope Gerbert ...”

”I do not know that divinity has given to mortals anything better than friends,” Gerbert wrote.

Friends.h.i.+p is honorable and sacred, he told the abbot of Tours. ”Since you hold the constant memory of me among things worthy of honor, as I have heard from a great many messengers, and since you bear me great friends.h.i.+p because of our relations.h.i.+p, I think I shall be blest by virtue of your good opinion of me, if only I am the sort of man who, in the judgment of so great a man, is found worthy to be loved.”

This conflation of love and friends.h.i.+p is found throughout Gerbert's letters. Writing to a monk from Aurillac, Gerbert describes a teaching tool he had devised ”out of love” for his students: It was a ”table of the rhetorical art, arranged on twenty-six sheets of parchment fastened together in the shape of an oblong ... a work truly wonderful for the ignorant and useful for the studious in comprehending the fleeting and very obscure materials of the rhetoricians and keeping them in mind.” He closes, saying, ”Farewell, sweetest brother; always enjoy my love which is equal to thine, and consider my goods to be for both of us.”

Many of his friends received such fond treatment. To one, he writes, ”I am unable, sweetest brother, to display my genuine affection for you.” To others, ”We congratulate you, sweetest brother, ...” ”your good will, beloved brother, ...” ”your request is indeed a large order, dearest brother, ...” ”I am well aware that you understand the emotions of my mind, and on this account I love and embrace you, ...” ”your request, sweetest brother, so often repeated. ...”

All of this ”sweetest brother” stuff, like his epithet for Constantine, ”sweet solace of my labors,” sounds a little precious, even pathetic. But we should not be fooled into thinking the love Gerbert pined for was h.o.m.o-erotic. Though his sweet words were uttered monk to monk, they were also uttered king to king. The language of love was the speech of courtiers. Here is the French king, writing to the Byzantine emperors-through Gerbert's pen-asking for a royal bride for his son: ”Not only the n.o.bility of your race but also the glory of your great deeds urges and compels us to love you. You seem, indeed, to be such preeminent persons that nothing in human affairs can be valued more highly than your friends.h.i.+p.”

Love was a sign of the highest respect. One loves, as the king's letter outlines, what is n.o.ble and glorious in another person. Fondness was possible only between two virtuous souls, for true friends.h.i.+p, as Cicero said, was the love of goodness in another. Gerbert's school at Reims was founded on this Ciceronean code of friends.h.i.+p, on the mutual desire of friends to better each other. It was for love of his students in this cla.s.sical way that Gerbert ”expended quant.i.ties of sweat,” as Richer of Saint-Remy put it, on his teaching.

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