The Abacus And The Cross Part 1

The Abacus and the Cross.

The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages.

by Nancy Marie Brown.

INTRODUCTION.

The Dark Ages.

In the Year of Our Lord 999, the archbishop of Ravenna sat down to answer a letter. He set a sheet of parchment on his tilted writing table, a sc.r.a.p, off-square, too small to use in a formal ma.n.u.script. He crumbled a cake of oak-gall ink, moistening it until it liquefied. He sharpened his goose-quill pen, and sat, and pondered.

In nine months the world would end. There had been famines, floods, comets, eclipses, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wolves in churches, rains of blood-so many signs and wonders that they could not be counted. Gog and Magog, in the form of Vikings, Magyars, Saracens, and Huns, besieged Christendom on all sides. Tears flowed from a holy cross. The Virgin Mary appeared in a stone. The cathedrals at Orleans and Mont Saint-Michel were destroyed by fire.

The archbishop of Ravenna knew his Bible: "And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal upon him, that he should no more seduce the nations till the thousand years be ended."

But Saint Augustine warned that to guess the mind of G.o.d, to think we could predict when those thousand years would end, was blasphemy. Antichrist would come, the dead would rise, Christ would save the good and d.a.m.n the evil, the earth would be destroyed by fire: "All those events, we must believe, will come about," Saint Augustine wrote, "but in what way, and in what order they will come, actual experience will then teach us with a finality surpa.s.sing anything our human understanding is now capable of attaining."

The archbishop of Ravenna's good friend, Abbot Adso of Montier-en-Der, had taken up the question in about 954. Adso sought to soothe the queen of France, who feared the End of the World. Citing the apostle Paul, who had written, "for that day shall not come, except there first come a falling away," Adso argued that "this time has not yet come, because, though we see the Roman Empire destroyed in great part, nevertheless as long as the kings of the Franks who hold the empire by right shall last," the earth would endure.

But the line of Charlemagne failed in 987. The archbishop himself had recorded a "falling away" of churches: Those of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and the heart of Spain, not to mention Africa and Asia, no longer recognized Rome's oversight.

The archbishop's worst enemy, Abbot Abbo of Fleury, had warned the king of France that rumor of the End Times "filled almost the entire world." In his youth, Abbo wrote, he had heard a priest in Paris claim that the Antichrist would be loosed in the year 1000, heralding the Last Judgment. "I resisted as vigorously as I could to that preaching, citing Revelation and Daniel," Abbo said, but despite his efforts, the rumors would not be suppressed. "Conflict grows in the Church," he warned. A council should be called to decide how to calm the fearful.

"Greed is on the rise and the end of the world is imminent," wrote a scribe.

"Fire from heaven throughout the kingdom, demons appearing," noted an annalist.

"Satan will soon be unleashed because the thousand years have been completed," predicted a chronicler.

"Clear signs announce the end of the world," others concluded: "The ruins multiply."

It was the darkest year of the Dark Ages. Yet the End of the World was not oppressing this archbishop's mind. He was driven to his writing desk by a very different obsession. To his friend Adalbold, he wrote: You have requested that if I have any geometrical figures of which you have not heard, I should send them to you, and I would, indeed, but I am so oppressed by the scarcity of time and by the immediateness of secular affairs that I am scarcely able to write anything to you. However, lest I continue mentally disobedient, let me write to you what error respecting the mother of all figures has possessed me until now.

In these geometrical figures which you have already received from us, there was a certain equilateral triangle, whose side was 30 feet, height 26, and according to the product of the side and the height the area is 390. If, according to the arithmetical rule, you measure this same triangle without consideration of the height, namely, so that one side is multiplied by the other and the number of one side is added to this multiplication, and from this sum one-half is taken, the area will be 465. ... Thus, in a triangle of one size only, there are different areas, a thing which is impossible.

On the eve of the Apocalypse, the archbishop of Ravenna and his friend are discussing the best method for finding the area of a triangle.

It is the last letter we have from this archbishop, Gerbert of Aurillac, before he became pope in April 999 under the name Sylvester II. Before Gerbert's death in 1003, Adalbold would pester the busy man again, this time concerning the volume of a sphere.

For Sylvester II was "The Scientist Pope." To tell the story of his life is to rewrite the history of the Middle Ages. In his day, the earth was not flat. People were not terrified that the world would end at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 999. Christians did not believe Muslims and Jews were the devil's sp.a.w.n. The Church was not anti-science-just the reverse. Mathematics ranked among the highest forms of wors.h.i.+p, for G.o.d had created the world, as scripture said, according to number, measure, and weight. To study science was to approach the mind of G.o.d.

Gerbert of Aurillac, Pope Sylvester II, left us over two hundred letters and a handful of scientific treatises. He is mentioned in the letters or chronicles of several men who lived during his lifetime. They make it clear he rose from humble beginnings to the highest office in the Christian Church "on account of his scientific knowledge"-not in spite of it. They call him a man of "great genius and admirable eloquence," possessing "incomparable scientific knowledge." He "surpa.s.sed his contemporaries in his knowledge," was "acutely intelligent," and "deeply learned in the study of the liberal arts." He was the leading mathematician and astronomer of his day.

From their writings and his own, Gerbert's biography has been known to historians for hundreds of years. Some overlooked it. Some twisted it to their own ends. Others suppressed it-for the picture Gerbert paints of the Dark Ages is lovely and surprising. His world was one in which our modern tensions-Christianity versus Islam, religion versus science-did not yet exist.

Born in the mountainous Cantal region of France in the mid-900s, Gerbert entered a monastery-the only elementary school of his day-to learn to read and write in Latin. He studied Cicero, Virgil, and other cla.s.sics. He impressed his teacher with his skill in debating. He was a fine writer, too, with a sophisticated style graced with rhetorical flourishes.

To further his education, his abbot sent him south to the border of Islamic Spain, then an extraordinarily tolerant culture in which learning was prized. In the library of the caliph of Cordoba were at least 40,000 books (some said as many as 400,000); Gerbert's French monastery owned fewer than 400. Many of the caliph's books came from Baghdad, known for its House of Wisdom, where for two centuries works of mathematics, astronomy, physics, and medicine had been translated from Greek, Persian, and Hindu and further developed by Islamic scholars under their caliph's patronage. During Gerbert's lifetime, the first of these science books were being translated from Arabic into Latin through the combined efforts of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars. Many of those interested in the new sciences were churchmen, and some became Gerbert's lifelong friends and correspondents.

A professor at a cathedral school for most of his career, Gerbert was the first Christian known to teach math using the nine Arabic numerals and zero. He devised an abacus, or counting board, that mimics the algorithms we use today for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing-it has been called the first counting device in Europe to function digitally, even the first computer; in a chronology of computer history, Gerbert's abacus is one of only four innovations mentioned between 3000 B.C. and the invention of the slide rule in 1622.

Like a modern scientist, Gerbert questioned authority. He experimented. To learn which rule best calculated the area of the equilateral triangle that he had sent to Adalbold, he cut out identical little squares of parchment and measured the triangle with them. To learn why organ pipes do not behave acoustically like the strings of a lyre or harp, he built models and devised an equation. He made sighting tubes to observe the stars and constructed globes on which their positions were recorded relative to lines of celestial longitude and lat.i.tude. He (or more likely his best student) wrote a book on the astrolabe, an instrument for telling time and making measurements by the sun or stars-you could even use it to calculate the circ.u.mference of the earth, which Pope Sylvester and his peers knew very well was not flat like a disc but round as an apple. Gerbert made an armillary sphere-a primitive planetarium-to explore how the planets circled the globe of the earth; he even knew Mercury and Venus...o...b..ted the sun.

For his royal patrons he built siege weapons and pipe organs, dabbled in poetry and astrology, and organized scholarly debates. But most of all, as a sought-after teacher, he spread the science of Islamic Spain throughout Christian Europe. He taught future abbots, archbishops, kings, popes, and emperors.

Brilliant, curious, systematic, and high-minded, Gerbert was less successful in politics. Though he climbed to spectacular heights- abbot, archbishop, tutor and counselor to emperors and kings, even pope-his progress was erratic. Twice he was accused of treason, each time to be rescued by the sudden, suspicious death of his king. Twice he was forced to flee for his life, once under sentence of excommunication.

From Spain he had gone first to Rome, where he impressed the pope and Emperor Otto the Great with his learning. He was a.s.signed, briefly, to tutor the emperor's son, Otto II. Ten years later, happy as a schoolmaster at the famous cathedral of Reims near Paris, Gerbert came again to Otto II's attention. Now emperor, Otto II appointed him abbot of the monastery in Bobbio, Italy. Bobbio had the best collection of books in Christendom, but politically it was a snake pit. When Otto II died three years later, Gerbert abandoned Bobbio and fled back to Reims.

He longed to resume his scientific studies; instead he became enmeshed in intrigues. He wrote persuasive letters and worked as a spy. His machinations gave imperial rule to the three-year-old Otto III and his Byzantine mother, Theophanu, in place of their bellicose challenger, Henry the Quarreler. His efforts ended the dynasty of Charlemagne, raising Hugh Capet to the French throne. A grateful King Hugh made Gerbert archbishop of Reims, when the post became vacant, but the pope refused to acknowledge him. Pope and king fought over him for seven years. Excommunicated by the pope, Gerbert was abandoned by King Hugh's son and successor. He fled again, this time to Otto III's court, where he dazzled the teenaged emperor with his scientific brilliance.

Otto took Gerbert on as his teacher, then as his friend and counselor. Gerbert's excommunication was reversed by a new pope, Otto's cousin, who made him archbishop of Ravenna. When that pope suddenly died, Otto III advanced Gerbert to the papacy itself. On April 9, 999, Otto's army saw Gerbert installed as Pope Sylvester II.

The two, emperor and pope, shared a dream. Gerbert encouraged Otto to see himself as a second Charlemagne-one with royal Byzantine blood. Otto could reunite Rome and Constantinople, expanding the Holy Roman Empire (then just parts of Germany and Italy) to recreate the vast unified realm of the Caesars. Otto and Gerbert brought two of the scourges of Europe-the Vikings in the north and the Hungarian Magyars in the east-into the Christian fold. They established the Polish Catholic Church and sent missionaries to the Prussians, Swedes, and other pagan tribes; they strengthened the empire's ties with Spain and made overtures to Constantinople. But Otto died in 1002, just twenty-two-and Gerbert a year later, some say of grief.

Their plans for a Christian empire based on peace, tolerance, law, and the love of learning died with them. The Great Schism of 1054 permanently divided the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and the First Crusade in 1096 redefined the relations.h.i.+p between the Christian and Muslim worlds. Just before the crusade, Gerbert was branded a sorcerer and devil-wors.h.i.+pper for having taught the mathematics and science that had come to Christian Europe from Islamic Spain. Instead of lovingly collecting, copying, and translating the wisdom of Islam, the monks of Christendom began mutilating scientific ma.n.u.scripts, erasing pages of what they now considered useless information and writing over them. The interests of the Church had changed. Science had lost its central place. Much of what Pope Sylvester knew would be forgotten for hundreds of years.

But Gerbert's teaching, and the books written by his pupils and peers, enabled scholars during the Renaissance to rediscover the math and science he knew so well. Given his tarnished reputation, they did not think to credit him or his sources. Consequently, most people have no idea that our modern technological civilization depends on the science of Baghdad's House of Wisdom, brought to Spain by Muslim scholars and spread through the West-by visionary Christians such as Gerbert of Aurillac-before the year 1000. To tell his story is to look back a thousand years and see an opportunity that was missed. During Gerbert's lifetime, science transcended faith and faith encompa.s.sed science: The pope studied the stars and found G.o.d in numbers.

PART ONE.

FROM SHEPHERD BOY TO SCHOOLMASTER.

Equally in leisure and in work we both teach what we know, and learn what we do not know.

GERBERT OF AURILLAC, 985 (quoting Cicero) (quoting Cicero)

CHAPTER I.

A Monk of Aurillac.

The castle of Aurillac crowned the hill above the river Jordanne, keeping watch over the monastery at its feet. From his keep Count Gerald the Good could look north to the jagged Cantal peaks, snowcapped as late as May. South of the mountains, themselves the southern edge of the Ma.s.sif Central of France, his holdings stretched a hundred miles toward the Mediterranean, from high mountain plateaus through rumpled hills and river gorges to steep, secret valleys. He owned villas and churches, vineyards and forests, pastures and quarries. Many of his estates were worked by slaves, though here and there a parcel was farmed by free peasants, heirs of Roman colonists. All were interspersed, patchwork style, with the estates of other knights and castellans-his enemies.

Gerald did not want to be a count. He wanted to be a monk. But as his n.o.ble father's only child, he was compelled, says his medieval biographer, "to be occupied in administering and watching over things." It was "more holy and honest," he was told, "that he should recognize the right of armed force, that he should unsheathe the sword against his enemies, that he should restrain the boldness of the violent." He could not be a monk.

But he could found a monastery.

Tales of Count Gerald, the spiritual, monkish knight who one day would be a saint, were among the first stories, outside the Bible, that Gerbert of Aurillac heard. Growing up in Saint-Gerald's monastery, young Gerbert learned to see the good count as a hero, a role model for a man of G.o.d in a lawless age.

By Count Gerald's day, in the late 800s, the king's justice was a fond memory. Five hundred years after the fall of the Roman Empire, the old Roman law was still revered in Aurillac, a town named for Marcus Aurelius. Count Gerald could cite the laws of Caesar Augustus-but he could not enforce them outside his own county. The king was far off and feeble. The grandsons of Charlemagne had split up his empire, and their successors were weak-willed and short-lived.

Viscounts promoted themselves to count, counts to duke, and anyone who could afford it built himself a castle and called himself a castellan. No king curbed their ambitions or their feuds. The rampaging troops of Duke William I of Aquitaine (called "the Pious") looted and lay waste to whole regions. Knights fired fields, rustled livestock, and ransacked churches; a priest who objected had his eyes put out; a peasant who refused a trumped-up tax saw the same done to his young son. A neighboring castellan issued from his motte-and-bailey fortress like a wolf in the evening to attack pa.s.sersby. Robbers haunted the woods.

To right such wrongs, says his medieval biographer, Count Gerald the Good was "kept in the world." He chose nonetheless to live like a monk. He learned his letters and Latin grammar. He chanted the psalms. He ate little and never drank to excess. He allowed no chattering or buffoonery at table or (G.o.d forbid) music of harp or lyre, but took pleasure in conversations on practical or spiritual topics and in the reading aloud of books. Three days a week he ate no meat. Throughout his life he remained chaste; he never married. Once he had built the monastery at the base of the castle hill, the count ornamented its church with saints' relics, and bequeathed it most of his property. He went often to Rome and gave generous alms along the way. He fed and clothed the poor. He himself wore only wool or linen-no silk-and as for jewels, but one gold cross.

Miracles happened. When he was forced to fight, "Count Gerald the Good commanded his men in imperious tones to fight with the backs of their swords and with their spears reversed. This would have been ridiculous," admits his biographer, if he had not been invincible.

On one occasion a neighboring count attacked the castle of Aurillac in Gerald's absence and stole everything he could carry away. The next time he was not so lucky: Gerald was in his chapel. His knights, hearing the outcry, begged to go fight, but Gerald insisted they finish Ma.s.s. The gates, providentially, were shut, and the attackers, finding nothing else to steal, took seven horses. Soon after, sixty of the attackers' own horses died. Terrified, they returned the seven from Aurillac.

Then there were the blind and the lame, said to be healed by the water in which Gerald had washed his hands.

Count Gerald-Saint Gerald, as he would become-was the model of a perfect, gentle knight. The Life of Saint Gerald of Aurillac The Life of Saint Gerald of Aurillac, written by the influential Abbot Odo of Cluny shortly after Gerald's death, became the foundation for the medieval code of chivalry. To it can be traced Gerbert's deepest values and yearnings: for holiness allied with strength, and law backed up by learning.

Gerbert was born in Gerald's domain about forty years after the count's death in 909-no one knows exactly when or where. Folklore places him in the hamlet of Belliac, a cl.u.s.ter of low stone cottages beside a spring, the castle of Aurillac within sight to the south, a motte-and-bailey fortress around a bend to the north. Since the 1400s, a house in Belliac has been called "the house of the pope." A c.o.c.k crowed three times when Gerbert was born there, the story goes, and the noise carried all the way to Rome.

Another tale names Gerbert a pastor pastor's son: In medieval Latin, pastor pastor often refers to an abbot or bishop. Celibacy was not required of the higher clergy in Gerbert's day: They took no such vows. Though they could not marry-for economic reasons-they had "housekeepers." Their children, who could not inherit, were often given to a church, as were the b.a.s.t.a.r.d children of kings and n.o.bles. The father need only draw up a contract and, before witnesses, wrap it and the infant's hand in the church's altar-cloth: The child was committed, for life. often refers to an abbot or bishop. Celibacy was not required of the higher clergy in Gerbert's day: They took no such vows. Though they could not marry-for economic reasons-they had "housekeepers." Their children, who could not inherit, were often given to a church, as were the b.a.s.t.a.r.d children of kings and n.o.bles. The father need only draw up a contract and, before witnesses, wrap it and the infant's hand in the church's altar-cloth: The child was committed, for life.

But pastor pastor literally means "shepherd." Gerbert could have been the son of a shepherd, a free peasant who had inherited his land and worked it without any obligations except his t.i.the to his church and taxes to the local lord. Free peasants were still numerous in this part of France in the mid-tenth century. Society there remained divided into two cla.s.ses: free or not free. Feudalism, which broke society into three groups-churchmen, n.o.bles, and serfs-was only just beginning to catch on. Not until the next century would the aged Bishop Ascelin of Laon, once a student and sometimes-friend of Gerbert's, codify the new rule: Just as G.o.d is three-in-one, here on earth some pray, some fight, and some work. "These three are one, indivisible," the bishop wrote, "for each one supports the work of the other two." literally means "shepherd." Gerbert could have been the son of a shepherd, a free peasant who had inherited his land and worked it without any obligations except his t.i.the to his church and taxes to the local lord. Free peasants were still numerous in this part of France in the mid-tenth century. Society there remained divided into two cla.s.ses: free or not free. Feudalism, which broke society into three groups-churchmen, n.o.bles, and serfs-was only just beginning to catch on. Not until the next century would the aged Bishop Ascelin of Laon, once a student and sometimes-friend of Gerbert's, codify the new rule: Just as G.o.d is three-in-one, here on earth some pray, some fight, and some work. "These three are one, indivisible," the bishop wrote, "for each one supports the work of the other two."

Free peasants disappeared under the new feudal code. Slaves, the un-free, were better off, having gained at least some rights. But peasants lost rights they had long held. True, a peasant with horse and armor-plus the youth and strength and character to fight-could become a knight, and thus a n.o.bleman, under the new feudal system. But a peasant who was too poor or old or meek lost the right to bring a lawsuit to court or bear witness for a neighbor; he lost even his land, bartered to a castellan in exchange for protection by (or from) his knights. As feudalism took hold, the peasant was demoted to a serf. No longer permitted to leave his farm, he was deprived even of the right to marry off his children unless his lord permitted the match. If the land was sold, the serf and his family went with it. This societal s.h.i.+ft was already beginning in Count Gerald's lifetime and would continue throughout Gerbert's.

All we know for certain about Gerbert's rank is what he tells us himself. Writing years later, he sounds amazed that he could ever have been elected archbishop of Reims: "I do not know, I repeat, I do not know, why I, dest.i.tute and an exile, aided neither by birth nor wealth, was preferred to many persons who were wealthy or conspicuous for the n.o.bility of their parents, unless by Thy gift, good Jesus, who lifts up the poor out of the dunghill to sit with princes."

If he was indeed a peasant boy, Gerbert's luck changed one day when the abbot of Saint-Gerald's monastery stopped by the meadow at Belliac, says another folktale. Chatting with the shepherd lad, the abbot (also named Gerald) was so impressed by his intelligence that he offered Gerbert a place in the monastery school. Or so the story goes. One way or another, Gerbert did enter the monastery. It was the only way he could get an education: The Church ran the only schools.

Gerbert loved his years at Saint-Gerald's. Many monks lamented the tedious days hunched over books, the endless cold of the scriptorium, the teachers who smacked their wrists with a rod, the strain of getting out of bed for nighttime prayers; Gerbert never complained. In the 233 letters he left us, he never once mentions his parents or kin. Yet of Abbot Gerald he writes: "Happy day, happy hour, where I am permitted to know a man the remembrance of whose name alone suffices to make me forget all my pain. If I could only see him oftener I would be the happier."

All monasteries in Gerbert's day were Benedictine, guided by the sixth-century Rule of Saint Benedict. According to the Rule, a monk was to be content with the poorest and worst of everything. Yet to a peasant boy in tenth-century France, sleeping alone in a bed with a pillow, a candle burning all night, was luxurious. He would not have despised a monk's clothes: a light s.h.i.+ft with wide sleeves, a woolen tunic, a pair of trousers, a thick wool cowl for winter and a lighter one for summer, shoes and socks, a fur cap, winter boots and mittens, two heavy cloaks (of leather and fur), and a leather belt. Coa.r.s.e and cheap, they were nevertheless adequate-and when they were outgrown or torn, they were replaced. Nor would he have minded (if he was like a modern boy) having a bath only three times a year.

The food at the monks' table would have delighted him. It was no hards.h.i.+p to eat one hot meal a day in winter and two in the summer, when the days were longer, along with any fruits or vegetables that were in season, a pound of bread, and as much wine as the abbot thought he needed, sometimes spiced or sweetened with honey. Every Sunday, each child got a cup of milk. A common supper was made of five eggs and cheese, cooked and served with a side of fish-for each person. On fast days, beans and vegetables replaced the eggs and cheese, but the fish was still allowed. Salmon, pike, trout, eel, lamprey, and squid were on the menu, seasoned by mustard seed and vinegar brought around on a tray by a serving-monk. Though monks ate red meat only when they were sick, few peasants could afford it even then. And having the allowance to be be sick-and be nursed in the monastery's infirmary-must have amazed him. sick-and be nursed in the monastery's infirmary-must have amazed him.

In terms of behavior, however, the monastery at Aurillac was strict, hewing closely to the Rule-which should better be called the "Rules," for it contains many of them. A monk was not drowsy, not lazy, not a grumbler, but obeyed his superiors without hesitation, delay, or objection. He did not speak until spoken to, going about his business always with head bowed and eyes on the ground. When he did answer a question, he did not laugh or raise his voice, but answered humbly, in a few sensible words, for "a wise man is known by the fewness of his words," the Rule said.

The rule of silence was a signature of the Benedictines. Only during two short periods, morning and evening, was conversation allowed. At all other times, the monks used sign language-what one called "the language of the fingers and the eyes." At meals, waving both hands in a circle, with thumbs and two fingers raised, meant pa.s.s the bread pa.s.s the bread. For fish, wiggle one hand like a swimming fish. For milk, touch the lips with a little finger. For wine, bend your finger and then touch it to your lips. For honey, lick your fingers. For pancakes, ruffle your hair. There were signs for clothes and bedding, books and blessings. "Pillow" combined the sign for "sleep" (a hand against the jaw) and the one for "Alleluia": "Raise your hand, bend the tips of your fingers, and move them as though for the purpose of flying," says the lexicon lexicon, or sign book, of the monastery at Cluny, because the angels in heaven sing Alleluia (and, presumably, their feathers stuffed monks' pillows). Even ideas could be conveyed with signs. For "hearing," hold a finger against your ear. For "I don't know," wipe your lips with a raised finger. To signal that someone (else) is telling a lie, "place your finger inside of your lips and then draw it out again." To say something is good, place your thumb on one side of your jaw and your fingers on the other and stroke down. For "bad," spread your fingers over your face and pull them away, fast, like the claws of a bird.

The rule of silence permitted monks something few had at the time: solitude. Privacy was rare in medieval life. Peasant families (and their cows and chickens and pigs) slept and ate and worked in one-room huts. Townhouses were small and tightly packed inside town walls. Knights crowded into halls with their wives, children, servants, kinsmen, neighbors, dogs, and hangers-on. A monk, too, was rarely out of sight of another monk. But in the quiet of the cloister, he could at least be alone with his thoughts.

Other rules might especially tax a quick-thinking boy like Gerbert. In later life, when he was no longer a monk, Gerbert would break all of these: not to be proud or haughty, not to give way to anger, not to be jealous, not to nurse a grudge; to always defer to his elders; and, most of all, to attribute to G.o.d and not to himself whatever good he saw in himself.

Infractions incurred first a warning, then a public rebuke. If he still did not reform, the monk could be excommunicated-shunned: No other monk was allowed to eat with him, sit with him, pray with him, work with him, or talk to him, even by signs. "He shall not be blessed by those who pa.s.s by, nor shall the food that is given to him be blessed." The sentence was not lifted until the wrong-doer prostrated himself before the door of the chapel, lying face to the ground as the others came out of church, and the abbot was satisfied that his display of humility was sincere (which meant this could go on for days). Those too young or "perverse" to understand the seriousness of excommunication were whipped.

Boys Gerbert's age were also whipped for mistakes they made reciting a psalm, a responsory, an antiphon, or a lesson during one of the seven church services every day. They were whipped if they failed to get up promptly for (and stay awake during) the night offices of nocturnes and lauds, which began in the wee hours. They were whipped if they did not attend prime at sunrise, terce in mid-morning, s.e.xt at noon, none in the mid-afternoon, vespers at sunset, and compline at dark, after which they were whipped if they did not go straight to bed until nocturnes came around again. Why were the monks so strict when it came to the daily rites? This continuous conversation with G.o.d was the purpose of a monastery.

For medieval thinkers, salvation-heaven-was a matter of economics. Simple repentance was not enough; sin had to be paid for. The sinner had impugned G.o.d's honor and must pay compensation. The concept was familiar from codes of law, particularly those of the north. A Viking who stole his neighbor's horse was fined three marks of silver (worth nine yards of homespun cloth), in addition to having to return the horse; if he killed a man, he owed twenty-five marks to the next of kin. A man "who vomits on account of drunkenness," says a seventh-century penitential from Canterbury, was a.s.signed fifteen days of penance, which meant he had to fast on bread, water, and salt and abstain from taking the sacraments at Ma.s.s. s.e.x with a virgin required a year's penance; killing a man, seven years.

The Church had little power to enforce these rules; they rested on the conscience of the sinner. If you were not careful in your accounting, you could pile up several years' worth-a lifetime's worth-of penance. What happened if you died first? The thought haunted medieval men and women. Purgatory was not invented until the twelfth century. Instead, sinners of Gerbert's time were taught that good works-pilgrimage, alms-giving, endowing a monastery, and buying monks' prayers-could replace days of penance. Monks like Gerbert, with their seven daily Ma.s.ses, were surrogates for the sinners of the world.

Consequently, the cloister was not as cut off from the world as we might suspect. Young Gerbert had chances to see (if not talk to) all sorts of new faces, as Saint-Gerald's competed to attract paying sinners.

The Rule had long obligated monasteries to care for travelers, whether on pilgrimage or not. It released the abbot from his vow of silence so he could suitably entertain his guests. But what began as charity, with no payment expected, by the tenth century was an industry. To lure paying pilgrims, monasteries on the roads to Rome or Jerusalem built guest houses that were first-cla.s.s hotels, providing rooms, meals, storehouses, and stables for everyone from peasants to princes. The guest house at the famous monastery of Cluny was a palace holding forty-five beds for men and thirty (in a separate wing) for women.

But why go all the way to Jerusalem or Rome when it was just as good for your soul to visit saints' relics-and buy Ma.s.ses-closer to home? That was the thought of Bishop G.o.descalc of Le Puy, who in 951 (about the time Gerbert was born) was the first pilgrim to tread the road to Compostela in Spain, where the body of Saint James the Apostle, Santiago, had allegedly been found about a century earlier. Le Puy was a hundred miles from Aurillac, to the northeast across the Cantal peaks, and G.o.descalc's path took him from his fortress-like church, built crowning a rock called "The Needle," through the mountains to Saint-Gerald's, where the good count's bones were continuing to heal the blind and lame after his death. Hundreds and thousands of pilgrims, over the centuries, followed the route the bishop had made famous: All stopped at Aurillac. Though today Aurillac is considered the most out-of-the-way of France's provincial capitals, in Gerbert's day it sat on the central highway.

[image]

The church of Saint-Michael-of-the-Needle, from which Bishop G.o.descalc of Le Puy began his pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James at Compostela, pioneering the route that pa.s.sed through Aurillac during Gerbert's childhood.

From Saint-Gerald's, Bishop G.o.descalc traveled south to Conques, which held the miracle-working relics of Saint Foy. Her story ill.u.s.trates the stakes involved in monastic compet.i.tion-and the lengths to which some monks would go. In the fourth century, some 130 miles away in Agen, this thirteen-year-old Christian girl had been martyred for her faith by the Roman governor. Her relics did not arrive in Conques until 866. One story says they were sent there for safekeeping from the Vikings. Another, from The Book of Miracles of Saint Foy The Book of Miracles of Saint Foy, says that a monk from Conques came to Agen and, insinuating himself into trust, was appointed sacrist, the guardian of the relics. "One stormy night he stole them."

At Conques, Saint Foy made deaf-mutes speak, cripples walk, and the blind see. Prisoners who prayed to her were freed like Houdini from every fetter their captors could apply. But Saint Foy also had a wrathful side. When her bones were carried past in a grand procession-the monks holding crosses and Bibles and vessels of holy water, clas.h.i.+ng cymbals, and blowing on ivory horns-a girl who refused to bow was turned into a cripple. A monk who refused to wors.h.i.+p her met the saint in a dream. She beat him with a st.u.r.dy rod; he died after relating the tale. Another was struck by lightning.

News of Saint Foy's power spread. Alms rushed in, from finger-rings to manor houses. "Though the abbey had long ago been poor, by these donations it began to grow rich and to be raised up in esteem," The Book of Miracles The Book of Miracles says. Its treasury soon held a huge silver crucifix and too many gold and silver reliquary boxes to count (including one containing the Holy Foreskin), along with basins, chalices, crowns, candelabra, thuribles for burning incense, silver frontals for the minor altars, and a great golden frontal, seven feet long, for the high altar. "Few people are left in this whole region who have a precious ring or brooch or arm-bands or hairpins, or anything of this kind," reports says. Its treasury soon held a huge silver crucifix and too many gold and silver reliquary boxes to count (including one containing the Holy Foreskin), along with basins, chalices, crowns, candelabra, thuribles for burning incense, silver frontals for the minor altars, and a great golden frontal, seven feet long, for the high altar. "Few people are left in this whole region who have a precious ring or brooch or arm-bands or hairpins, or anything of this kind," reports The Book of Miracles The Book of Miracles , "because Saint Foy, either with a simple entreaty or with bold threats, wrested away these same things.... She demanded no less from the pilgrims who pour in from every direction." , "because Saint Foy, either with a simple entreaty or with bold threats, wrested away these same things.... She demanded no less from the pilgrims who pour in from every direction."

Before Saint Foy arrived, Conques had been slated to close. Already in the 700s, the king had found it too far off the beaten track, hidden in its tiny, sh.e.l.l-shaped valley, and had established a new monastery, Figeac, up on the plateau, more convenient to the royal itinerary. The relics put an end to these plans. Figeac had to come up with its own saint just to stay in business. Abbot Haigmar, who "was always eager to acquire the bodies of saints by trickery or theft," according to a tenth-century account, soon acquired Saint Biba.n.u.s. He was aided by Viking raiders who had, providentially, just sacked the city of Saintes, where Biba.n.u.s had been an early bishop. In the confusion, the Figeac monks opened the saint's grave and spirited off his holy bones.

At Conques, Saint Foy occupied a niche of her own. Her reliquary was the kind known as a "majesty": a full figure of the girl, seated on a throne, face forward, arms out, knees rigid, the whole about two feet tall (see Plate 1). Carved of wood and plated entirely with gold, it was begun in 942 and finished in about 984. As the fame of Saint Foy's miracles increased it became more and more encrusted with precious stones and cameos, many of them recycled from Roman jewelry. Her head was recycled too: It came from the golden statue of a Roman man, the only suggestion of femininity being the dainty earrings in her ears.

This very adult, mannish Foy was so popular with pilgrims that Aurillac was forced to compete. The abbey established its own gold workshop and made a matching majesty of Count Gerald the Good-by then known as Saint Gerald. The workshop may have been active before Gerbert left Aurillac as an adolescent in 967: He shows a grasp of metalworking in his later creations of scientific instruments.

The Book of Miracles praised Saint Gerald's golden likeness in 1010: "It was an image made with such precision to the face of the human form that it seemed to see with its attentive, observant gaze the great many peasants ... praying before it," says the astonished author, Bernard of Angers. To his companion, Bernard says, "I burst forth in Latin with this opinion: 'Brother, what do you think of this idol? Would Jupiter or Mars consider himself unworthy of such a statue?'" Even as they marveled at its realism, the two monks agreed it was absurd "that so many rational beings should kneel before a mute and insensate thing." It is the kind of response Gerbert might have had-he was always rational, never mystical in his approach to wors.h.i.+p. And, like Bernard, he may have felt the tension in the Church. "If I had said anything openly then against Saint Gerald's image, I would probably have been punished as if I had committed a great crime," Bernard concludes. For the cult of the saints was growing in popularity and political importance throughout the Church. Saints were, as Bernard's praised Saint Gerald's golden likeness in 1010: "It was an image made with such precision to the face of the human form that it seemed to see with its attentive, observant gaze the great many peasants ... praying before it," says the astonished author, Bernard of Angers. To his companion, Bernard says, "I burst forth in Latin with this opinion: 'Brother, what do you think of this idol? Would Jupiter or Mars consider himself unworthy of such a statue?'" Even as they marveled at its realism, the two monks agreed it was absurd "that so many rational beings should kneel before a mute and insensate thing." It is the kind of response Gerbert might have had-he was always rational, never mystical in his approach to wors.h.i.+p. And, like Bernard, he may have felt the tension in the Church. "If I had said anything openly then against Saint Gerald's image, I would probably have been punished as if I had committed a great crime," Bernard concludes. For the cult of the saints was growing in popularity and political importance throughout the Church. Saints were, as Bernard's Book of Miracles Book of Miracles admitted, good fund-raisers. admitted, good fund-raisers.

The size of its church also advanced a monastery's reputation. The rush of pilgrims that followed in Bishop G.o.descalc's footsteps along the road to Compostela inspired the abbot of Conques to expand his sanctuary, adding a pa.s.sageway behind the altar to control the traffic flow to Saint Foy's majesty. The abbot of Aurillac, too, started a church-building program. A stone-carver's workshop joined the cl.u.s.ter of buildings at the base of the castle hill; it would become renowned for the detailed palmettes palmettes, interlaced knots, and beaded ribbons carved on the capitals of columns. The new church would not be finished until 972-five years after Gerbert left Aurillac-so construction was for him an ordinary part of monastery life; he could have learned much about stonework, engineering, and architecture, just by watching.

The new cathedral was built onto and around the old one. Count Gerald's original church looked like any small mountain church in southern France: a single square nave with a semicircular apse that held the altar. The church of 972 was a basilica, with a much longer nave divided into three aisles, the two side aisles having lower roofs so that light could s.h.i.+ne into the center from high clerestory windows. Where it met the apse, the nave opened out to left and right, making the shape of a cross. One arm led to a side chapel, the other to a bell tower. The walls would have been fortress-thick, of rough, unshaped stone and rubble, held together with a generous amount of mortar, like the church of the same age at Cuxa in the Pyrenees. Like the cathedral of Santa-Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, restored to its tenth-century splendor, the church had been painted with brilliant frescoes-the Lamb of G.o.d in a blazing blue dome, surrounded by swirls and curlicues of red and green, bright biblical scenes in panels on the walls below. Saint Gerald's remains in their golden majesty were placed on the altar, surrounded by other relics of saints. At Cuxa, the altar was a vast slab of white marble, seven feet long by four and a half feet wide, that had come from Roman ruins. It bore a morsel of the true Cross and eighty-nine other relics. The altar at Aurillac would have been similarly splendid.

Church building did not excuse the monks from their duties. The seven daily services went on as best they could in the old church even as it was being engulfed by the new. In between church services, Gerbert and his fellow monks washed and ate, attended chapter (during which wrong-doers were expected to confess their faults), and read. Two hours a day, at minimum, Gerbert would have spent reading-more on Sundays and during Lent, when each monk was given a book to read "straight through," the Rule says, adding, "If anyone should be so negligent and s.h.i.+ftless that he will not or cannot study or read, let him be given some work to do so that he will not be idle."

Not all the books were sacred texts. A list of 63 books handed out one Lent in the eleventh century at the Italian abbey of Farfa shows the monks read the Lives of the Saints Lives of the Saints and biblical commentaries by Saint Jerome and Gregory the Great. They also read Bede's and biblical commentaries by Saint Jerome and Gregory the Great. They also read Bede's History of the English History of the English and Livy's and Livy's History of Rome History of Rome. At Cluny, they read histories by Bede, Eusebius, Josephus, Livy, and Orosius. The German monastery of Reichenau owned 415 books in the mid-800s. Along with religion and history, there were books on architecture, medicine, and, especially, law, including Roman law, Germanic codes, and the laws of Charlemagne and his successors, the Carolingians. The largest library in the Christian West in the late tenth century was at the abbey of Bobbio, Italy. Among its 690 books were Virgil, Horace, Lucan, Ovid, Juvenal, Martial, Persius, Claudius, Lucresius, the Cycle of Troy Cycle of Troy, the Legend of Alexander Legend of Alexander, Porphyry's Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle, Boethius's On Arithmetic On Arithmetic, a book on diseases of the eyes by Demosthenes, and one on cosmography by Aethicus.

Many of these books were gifts from monks or their families. When Odo entered Cluny in 910 he brought the monastery 100 books. Odo's father was a lawyer who liked to read ancient histories, so some may have been history or law books. Odo also knew the cla.s.sics, but, according to a famous pa.s.sage in The Life of Saint Odo The Life of Saint Odo, he rejected them: "When he wanted to read the songs of Virgil, there was shown him in a vision a certain vessel, most beautiful indeed outside, but full of serpents. ... From this time onwards he left the songs of the poets, and, taught by the Spirit from on high, he turned his attention wholly to those who expounded the Gospels and the prophets."