11 Master
Then Constantinople. Then Athens. Then Ravenna. Then – where? He had heard much of this new university at Paris, but his most recent teacher had unsettled him, and his fellow merchants reported that the bandits on the road north were hungrier than ever. Then his horse stumbled at the town gate, and he could not help but take her mishap for an omen. Having no idea where to turn instead, he sat for a long day outside the tavern by the gatehouse, wondering what to do.
Perhaps he should stay where he was. Bandits notwithstanding, Ravenna itself was safe and trade with the towns down the coast was good. Yes, he told himself firmly, stay here. He had another drink.
As he sat sipping in the shade of the spreading plane tree, between chickens scratching on one side and a nanny goat chewing nettles on the other, his mind wandered, as so often, back over his own strange life. But not to dwell on the old curse now, not to what he was doomed to be, but to something more constructive – what he could be. Perhaps now was the time for the respite from study he had long desired. Was it time to stitch his scattered reflections into a single close-fitting garment?
He hailed the serving girl again and ordered cheese and bread and another flagon.
But what sort of garment could it be?
His unsettling teacher popped back into his mind.
One late summer afternoon, Lazarus and his new teacher were wandering the new market in Ravenna – only a few hundred paces from this inn, in fact. Lazarus recalled the city from the days when the praetorian fleet was quartered here, with its quinqueremes, catapult ships and thousands of sailors. A rowdy but profitable town he had settled in for eleven or twelve years, cowering behind its impenetrable marshes in the last days of the Western Empire. But now the sea had withdrawn from this dreary little place, and the magnificent Roman harbour was no more than a swamp. Even so, it had been a real city once.
Bored with endless traipsing around his teacher’s beloved classical remnants, Lazarus halted abruptly amidst the stalls and workshops, glared scornfully up and down the overcrowded street and murmured contemptuously, ‘These fools…’
Despite their very public location, Lazarus had not thought that others might be listening in his mutterings. But the butcher to his left suddenly paused, cleaver in mid-air, and an old woman emptying a sack of dark-crusted loaves glanced over her shoulder…
His new teacher’s name was Diogenes. Or at least, that was all the name he gave Lazarus. A small, pungent ex-monk, Diogenes was said to be the master of certain still-unbroached mysteries Lazarus was eager to master. Now his teacher halted a few paces ahead, turned and gazed steadily at his pupil. But he did not speak. Instead he raised a questioning eyebrow. Only when Lazarus had mentally retreated a step or two did his teacher make his reply.
‘You despise the people for their ignorance?’ he demanded, quite loudly. He gestured about them at the listening crowd. ‘Hmm?’
Warily Lazarus glanced around, but his reply was unfortunately automatic. ‘Well. They labour in such darkness…’ Several more figures froze: not the right answer.
Again his teacher made no immediate reply. Instead he looked around, then he turned back towards Lazarus.
‘But at least they labour. And we?’
‘We also labour!’ insisted Lazarus defensively. ‘In the mind!’
Diogenes raised an eyebrow. ‘By what stretch of whose diseased imagination is thinking a kind of labour?’
Glimpsing the butcher’s faint smile, Lazarus faltered. His teacher went on.
‘Where did your last meal come from?’
‘Err… the monastery kitchen?’
‘And where did the ingredients come from?’
‘From the gardens?’
‘And how are the gardens paid for?’
‘By tithes? Alms? Donations from the monastery’s patrons?’
‘And who provides those? Who does the work that makes such gifts possible? No, don’t tell me it’s the barons and merchants.’
‘Umm… the people…’
‘Indeed. The labouring people. Now, which would you prefer – to dig turnips or have this conversation?’
Out of the corner of his eye, Lazarus caught the old bread-woman’s smile.
‘Have this conversation?’ replied Lazarus tentatively, genuinely uncertain now whether that was the right answer.
‘Me too. Now, what have you learned from this conversation?’
‘Not to despise the ordinary people?’
‘Despise them all you want, like they despise you. But at least be grateful that their labour frees you to learn. Because not one in a hundred will ever have the opportunity you have to escape mucking out the byre. Make sure that, as you rise, you see whose backs you tread on, and are grateful.’
Lazarus glanced anxiously back towards the butcher, fully expecting a sour if not openly hostile look. But instead, his cleaver falling with a thud, the man had returned peacefully to his work. The old bread-woman nodded contentedly, and the surrounding crowd unlocked and returned to its customary ebb and flow.
That was not the end of their discussion, however. A few days later the topic returned, Diogenes suddenly said.
‘The common people are all idolaters, you know. To a man.’
They were in the basilica of Sant’ Apollinare, down in Classe, Ravenna’s ancient port. Rather than teach in one place, Diogenes preferred to wander from shrine to shrine. But only seldom did he speak of their religious significance; instead he preferred to dwell on their architectural merits. Lazarus assumed that his teacher was restless but enjoyed the shade, and in both respects agreed wholeheartedly. At the present moment, for reasons Lazarus could not fathom, they were staring up into basilica’s lofty round tower.
‘Polytheists, the whole pack of them.’
In the distance a bell began to toll. Lazarus wondered how he was expected to answer.
‘That’s why Mother Church will never be truly reconciled to her flock,’ added his teacher.
Lazarus looked cautiously about. The nave was empty and the echoes of Diogenes’ voice muffled his words as thoroughly as they amplified them, but even so! Meanwhile Diogenes was walking slowly towards the apse. There he paused to admire the great mosaic with its lambs, St Apollinaris himself – his arms raised in prayer – and its ancient jewelled cross. Behind them, high on the north wall of the nave, were further mosaics, telling the life of Christ. Among them, though Diogenes did not point it out and Lazarus did not notice, one depicted the raising of Lazarus.
‘Forgive me, Master, but perhaps we should continue this conversation outside?’ Where we can be sure we are not overheard, he continued to himself.
His teacher turned and smiled tautly. ‘Far too sultry. We will remain here. Have you noticed the excellent Abraham beside the altar?’
For another hour they circulated through the church, discussing choir stalls and entelechies, before finally returning to sunlight. Overhead seabirds wheeled and shrieked. Eventually Lazarus could restrain himself no longer –
‘Forgive me, Master, but didn’t you tell me, just the other day – ‘
‘They would happily have given you a good beating. Just be thankful that I saved you.’
‘Yes, Master,’ conceded Lazarus in a tone even he found craven. ‘I am grateful that you saved me from a beating. But how – ‘
‘You wish to teach, don’t you? Well, learn. And most of all, learn that you will never truly escape from error until you master the difference between what lies behind you and what lies ahead. It is not enough to travel the road: you must understand where it goes.’
‘Indeed, Master,’ agreed Lazarus doubtfully.
‘You believe in reason.’ It was a statement, not a question, but Lazarus nodded his agreement anyway.
‘Of course – it’s the only thing separating us from beasts. That and faith,’ added Lazarus with unnecessary caution: he had already seen enough to know that that particular addition carried little weight with his new teacher.
‘But what do the people believe in?’ demanded Diogenes.
‘In talismans,’ replied Lazarus with prompt disdain. ‘The evil eye.’ Then he added cautiously, ‘Icons.’ But icons are permitted again, he reminded himself – he found the whole issue confusing – and felt his face redden as his teacher regarded him carefully. ‘Yes… icons,’ he agreed slowly. ‘But why are such things – false?’
Too dangerous, too dangerous, thought Lazarus fearfully. But perhaps it was more dangerous not to reply. Or maybe – Round and round and round and… Lazarus shook his head fiercely, if not in realistic hope of stopping the ceaseless vacillation then at least to distract himself for long enough to –
Noting Lazarus’s anxious equivocation, his teacher decided to answer his own question. Bending down to pick up a long, oddly convoluted stick, he held it out for Lazarus’s inspection.
‘Looks like a snake, yes?’
Lazarus took the stick in his hand and turned it over a few times. No, not much, he thought sceptically, but nodded anyway and handed the stick back to his teacher.
‘If you painted on a beady little eye, d’you think you could sell it in the market as a cure for – oh, gout?’
Oh yes, he had often witnessed such foolishness.
‘A talisman reminding us of a higher truth and helps us focus our attention – that’s one thing. That would make it no different from any other painting or statue. But that’s not what the people believe, is it? They dream of amulets and snake’s skins – or the touch of the duke’s robe – that cures them of sickness. The amulet itself, rubbed on a wound, without the intervention of the Holy Spirit.’
‘Such darkness,’ concluded Diogenes. ‘Yes, that is the word. The powers that govern their lives, the talismans and curses – though they seem innocent by daylight, yet they leave their believers benighted.’
His voice tailed off into thought as he turned the stick over and over in his hand. ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Their lives are full of caprice, and they call it the Hand of God.’ He smiled distantly and added, ‘And icons. And angels. And holy water. And miracles. And an old man in the sky…’
Too much! shrieked Lazarus inwardly, and once more glanced around for ears. But the only figure in sight was a bent old woman sweeping the steps of the inn opposite. In the fresh silence, disturbed only by the gulls’ aching cries, Lazarus thought back over the centuries. Amulets and gestures and spells and lucky stones… a boundless fog of dead things fused with dreams.
His teacher was still speaking.
‘Strange, isn’t it? We philosophers strive to understand the world, but for most people the world is no a mystery. Where I was born – not sixty leagues from here, beneath the Alps – no one seemed to find the world a problem. The world contained problems – like when to sow and when to reap and how to cure a sick cow, and all those other little things that add up to staying alive. But the world itself was no secret – what it was or what it meant. What it meant to be a human being was even less of a problem. In terms you and I would recognise, that world didn’t make much sense, but fortunately – well, fortunately for them –’ he adds with an ironic grimace, ‘they didn’t realise that. In the Bible they had God’s very truth. And if you speak to our Muslim neighbours, they have their book, as do the Jews, and so do doubt does every other people – or their myth or oracle or wise women or elders or whatnot. In my little village, if we had any questions, that was where we’d look for answers – our book. Or rather, that’s where our priest would look, and then he’d pass on the answer – not always, I suspect, in completely faithful translation.
‘But we did not need priests to tell us the really essential truths. They were all around us, plain as day.
'Do you remember the other day, when we had that big thunderstorm – right out of the blue? It was very exciting – the thunder was overpowering. In fact it was so violent, you could see people quailing before it. In every doorway people cowered, all crossing themselves.
‘Well, when I was born, up there in the mountains, we knew all about thunder: it was the voice of God. No,’ he admonished Lazarus before the latter could say a word, ‘I don’t mean it was like the voice of God: it was His actual voice. It was the voice of Yahweh’s lightning inscribing the Ten Commandments. It was the voice of God telling Noah what He thought of us, what He was going to do about it, and then it was the sound of Him doing it.
‘Just imagine how something as stupendous as lightning seemed to us. So palpably divine! When you’ve seen sheet lightning over the mountains, it really isn’t hard to imagine angels battling demons. The flash! The roar! Lucifer and Michael! Who but divinities could light up the entire sky?
‘In short, we didn’t need evidence that God exists. And the same’s true for those people in the market. What could the Sun possibly be but the eye of God? Or the wind but His breath? The sky, stars, the ocean – everything demands some sort of fantastic explanation. Storms? Fire? Sickness? Famine? Birth and death? Every day He stares them in the face. How else could we possibly think about such a world but in terms of vast, ineffable divinities? Where the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse regularly appear in person, you no more need to “believe in” them than you need to “believe in” night and day. They’re just there.’
There was an angry wildness in Diogenes’ expression now that worried Lazarus, and not solely out of fear of being overheard and betrayed. In slightly desperate hope that levity might cool his teacher’s growing excitement, Lazarus made a small, cumbersome jest.
‘Maybe it is we philosophers who are the fools. Maybe imagining that the world is a problem is the mistake.’
Behind his fearfulness he found the paradox pleasing, and the faint smile that crossed his master’s lips suggested that he had at least heard my words. Yes, who but a philosopher would ask such a foolish question? But still his expression was intense and unpredictable.
‘Imagine what that means!’ he continued. ‘We didn’t understand our world. We knew things were connected but had no idea how. Instead of trying to find out about things by investigating the world itself, we just assumed that the world was run by a horde of wilful entities with motives and intentions much like our own. You know – angels, spirits, demons. So we tried to deal with the world – which is to say, deal with them – in much the same way as we dealt with each other – through words and gestures, knowing our place, and occasionally bartering of goods and services. We knew spirits had some pretty dreadful powers, so they weren’t to be trifled with, but we thought we could at least bargain with them. So – a sign here, a prayer there – and we never imagined there was anything strange about it.
He turned, looked Lazarus firmly in the eye, and concluded: ‘Amazing. We thought we had all the knowledge we needed, if we behaved ourselves God would remember us from time to time, and generally both the world and our lives made perfect sense. We could hardly have been more wrong.’
‘It doesn’t sound like a very sensible way of trying to run the world,’ agreed Lazarus blandly, hoping that Diogenes was done now. But then his curiosity tripped him into asking, ‘What happened when it went wrong?’
‘One thing’s certain,’ replied Diogenes. ‘We didn’t learn. When our gestures had no effect, the incantations didn’t work and no one answered our prayers, we had an explanation for that too. Several, in fact. We’d made a mistake in the ritual. A demon was getting in the way. God was testing us. Or we were being chastised for our sins. Again. But never did we even imagine that our whole view of the world might be hopelessly wrong. Far from it – failure only made us more devout. All we learned was how to make up more fanciful explanations.’
‘With so much failure and self-doubt burned in,’ Lazarus replied reflectively, ‘it must have been hard to resist the feeling that you’re always in the wrong!’
‘Indeed’ agreed Diogenes. ‘Which only made us more submissive than ever. No wonder human beings invented Original Sin!’
‘Human beings invented Original Sin?’ asked Lazarus fearfully. ‘Master, please! If someone hears you, we’ll get a lot worse than a beating!’
‘Yes, of course human beings,’ answered Diogenes coolly. ‘Who but a creature so helplessly tied up and blindfolded by its own delusions would invent the idea that they were born wicked?’
Yet Lazarus could not draw away. Again he glanced around to check that no one could overhear them; then, distracted for a moment from Diogenes’ own words, a thought sprang into his head.
‘So if the people are pagan idolaters at heart, it’s the fault of their teachers and priests? Our fault, in fact?’ he added dispiritedly.
‘Well, no more theirs than ours – but hardly ours either. Most of what we call religion is just poisonous little scraps of hearsay, superstition and logic-chopping.’
Lazarus’s heart stopped. Diogenes’ tongue did not.
‘A rather sad mess of low pragmatism and high superstition.’
For a moment he looked down at an outstretched hand, as though admiring a ring long since lost. Then he fell silent, returning to study the mosaic. It was some time before Lazarus felt steady enough to speak.
‘You think we know as little as they do?’
‘Almost. But we’ve learned how to put our ignorance into gilded words. Which makes it easier to repeat the same old nonsense, of course – gold is always seductive. Chasubles and mitres carry more weight than you might imagine.
‘Perhaps it’s as well that we’ve made no real attempt to raise them out of the gutter. Not one of them dies unsure that their life had meaning, even if the meaning is vague or paltry. Many die in terror, but few imagine that they face mere extinction. Even though they fear it utterly, death does not befuddle them – well, not many of them. They already know we suffer and die because God deems it right and proper for us to do so.
‘So round and round we go, with no escape from religion, not least because life, religion and the world were so palpably the same thing.’
He continued to gaze ahead, his expression quite fanatical now. Hoping to bring his teacher back to earth, Lazarus attempted a suitably dialectical summary. But even as it came out, Lazarus could hardly believe he was pronouncing such words:
‘So: we invented religion because we were helpless and ignorant and life made no sense, and we stayed helpless and ignorant because we invented religion?’
Unable to unsay them, he could at least hope to smooth away their brutal edge. So he added, ‘Yet so many find consolation in religion.’
‘That doesn’t make religion true – or the consolation it offers any less false.’
‘Of course,’ added Lazarus with something of a conciliatory gesture, ‘some religions are less vehemently opposed to other ways of knowing the world. You can be a philosopher as well as a theologian.’
‘True’, replied Diogenes, ‘but you need a very creatively tuned inner ear to be both at once.’ Then he turned sharply back to Lazarus. ‘So’, he demanded ‘do you believe God is an old man in the sky?’
‘No,’ replied Lazarus cautiously. Diogenes nodded approvingly, and Lazarus continued with more confidence. ‘It’s a quaint picture, fit for children, but not for men of reason. God is ineffable.’ He thought momentarily of quoting St Augustine at length – or at least, ‘“Gathering in yet lacking nothing”’. But instead he repeated, limply: ‘No.’
For some time the two men stood together, each in his own world. Ineffable, thought Lazarus. Unspeakable. Inexpressible. And so unknowable. But is the world more knowable? Yes, he must believe that. And so he did – centuries of study had taught him as much. But before, when he had been as other men? When all books were closed to him? He too had clutched a talisman to his chest and felt reassured when Senmonthis had her amulet around her neck. But they were just dreams. A thousand years of hoping that a blessed ring or a magic cloak could rule the world. A spell, a gesture. A cross, a crown.
But what his teacher was thinking, Lazarus could not guess, until Diogenes abruptly turned to his pupil and demanded, ‘So what is the difference between the beliefs of the common people and the achievements of philosophy?’
Lazarus pondered the many possible answers, unable to decipher his teacher’s question well enough to know which was expected. In the end –
‘The people believe one thing after another, like a ramshackle building. They rush about, insisting on this and then that. And if that contradicts their previous thought, back they rush to shore it up…’
‘Exactly,’ agreed Diogenes. ‘And philosophy?’
‘Well… Philosophical truths support one another, like the pillars of a great temple.’ It was an approved image, which even Lazarus felt safe with.
‘So does it not occur to you that every mathematical equation and every logical formula is a proof that God does not exist?’
Slowly Lazarus prepared his reply. No, we were beyond academic speculation now.
‘That is… blasphemy,’ he intoned slowly. Yet his voice lacked the note of scandalised condemnation with which he had meant to imbue it.
‘Undoubtedly,’ replied Diogenes. ‘But is it true?’
Lazarus stared at his teacher. Was he mad? But Diogenes only scratched his eyelid and went on, if in more measured tones.
‘Well, perhaps not proof that God does not exist, but certainly an argument that He need not. If philosophical truths all support one another and we can know and master them here below, what need is there for a divine guarantor above?’ He looked at Lazarus, but his pupil had no reply. Diogenes went on –
‘So is it not possible that, if we could complete philosophy, we could have purely worldly knowledge and forget what Revelation claims to tell us? Reason brings truth down to earth; and what more do we need than truth?’
It was a moment before Lazarus could grasp how heretical Diogenes’ words were. But again, Diogenes seemed to read his mind.
‘We need… redemption,’ replied Lazarus slowly.
Diogenes paused for some moments, though Lazarus had the impression it was to allow Lazarus time to change his mind rather than to allow Diogenes to formulate his reply. And when his reply, it was simplicity itself.
‘Do we?’
Then he turned and walked across to the tavern opposite.
Lazarus glowered stonily at his teacher’s back. In a moment Diogenes was sitting in the shade beside the tavern door, casually watching a flock of seagulls squawk and bicker over crumbs. After a minute or so, he turned in Lazarus’s direction and waved a beckoning hand. ‘Come join me!’
Turning to the serving girl, he asked pleasantly for two cups of the local wine. Reluctantly, Lazarus walked over and sat down. When the drinks had arrived and the serving girl departed, Diogenes spoke again, in a tome somewhere between confiding and reassuring.
‘Do not fret yourself, pupil. I would not say such things to just anyone. I am not a complete fool. The question is, are you?’
Lazarus frowned. It was his teacher’s right to call him a fool, but he was not obliged to enjoy it. But now Diogenes was laughing.
‘You see now why I am no longer a monk!’
They did not speak about such things again. After another month, their ways parted. Diogenes’ final words were: ‘I have taught you what I know. What you have learned, I cannot tell.’
For a long time Lazarus had had no idea what Diogenes’ blasphemies signified, or whether they signified anything at all. Was it possible to know the world without the support of religion? But how? Where would one even start? And Diogenes had really spoken only of proofs – of the self-evidence of logic and mathematics – which made up only a very small part of the world, and by no means the greater part. Truly, their necessity – the thing that made them so convincingly, so utterly true – seemed to partake of some secret organ of the soul. And it was certainly possible that such an organ, even though it must have been implanted by God in Eden, now required no divine intervention for humanity to benefit from its truths. After all, as far as he was aware, Jews and Muslims and even pagans were as capable of reasoning as Christians.
But what difference did that make? Logical and mathematics were still not knowledge of the world itself, which is always so uncertain.
The sun slipped slowly into the west. For another hour Lazarus drank and ruminated on other things, and then, as his third cup emptied, on nothing.
Suddenly a quite new thought popped into his mind. Surely, he reflected, the world could be known with equal confidence. After all, knowledge of the world – of actions and things and events – seemed very straightforwardly bound to the body – the part of humanity that was as worldly as the world itself. And had men not known the world well enough before the coming of Christ and the Prophet? Is that not what Greece’s philosophers and Babylon’s astrologers told him? Aristotle? Cidenas? Galen? They had not merely stumbled in darkness. Indeed, was it not to them that Christianity and Islam themselves had turned to know the world?
The little serving girl arrived with his order and Lazarus, digging deep for a coin, smiled with absentminded thanks as he dropped it into her grimy hand. She bobbed a delicate little curtsey, at which he smiled more sincerely.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked with a slight slur.
The little girl blushed and ran away. Lazarus laughed a kindly laugh and returned to his ruminations.
Yes, he would write now. Write the story of the whole world. If it took a thousand years, he would write everything!
And immediately the idea of writing seemed to fall apart in his hands. Yes, the world was his to wander, to encounter and to experience as he saw fit. Yes, he could know one thing after another after another. He had endless time to travel its roads, to know its ways, to make sense of it all. It was an opportunity no philosopher had ever had, and centuries of learning had provided the perfect tools for the job. But the endlessness of his life – it was not human. Unlike other men, his life was not a journey, be it to death or eternity or anywhere else. His way was not lit by Revelation’s star or the terrible fires of judgement. But what was human existence if it was not bound to fatality and the light? How could he understand such a world? How could he be understood?
He tore off another hunk of bread and dipped it into his cup. Rebuffed by his own thoughts, Lazarus absentmindedly gathered the crumbs falling from his barley loaf and, with a single abrupt gesture, swept them in the direction of a flock of chickens. On the other side, the goat bleated anxiously until the little serving girl, scolding the beast for disturbing their one paying customer, retethered it under a tree a little further off, next to a fresh clump of nettles. After its initial protests, the goat eyed the weeds with satisfaction and set to.
But was this not also his strength – that he experienced the world by a light no other had ever seen? All philosophers fancied that they saw by the light of eternity, but all they meant was that they wrote in abstractions that would, they imagined, hold for all time. Which was why no one but other philosophers either knew or cared what they were talking about. But he would write for an eternity that was real – the truth of a hundred, a thousand, a million days. He would write not of abstract ‘being’ but of real life.
But – a new stab of anxiety. Must not such a work – a world-tale told without thought for revelation or judgement – be blasphemous? Recollecting how profoundly Diogenes had shocked him, yet how innocent his speculations had been next to Lazarus’s own reality, a shiver coursed through his bones. He took a longer gulp of wine.
But how radical was this really? If there was one thing he had noticed over three centuries of learning, it was that his fellow philosophers (and especially their students) had recently grown positively eager to probe and stretch the bounds of legitimate knowledge. Inventing all manner of tests and experiments – beyond orthodoxy, so to speak, but without quite falling into heresy. What if we assumed this? What if we magicked away that? Older masters might look on mistrustfully, but for the most part tolerated their subordinates’ little travesties.
Could he conduct a respectable experiment on such terms, and write a work that sought only to know what could be known by a human mind, a mind that lived wholly in the world? And, beyond mere knowing, what could be done in the world, outside the sphere of princes and theologians and academics? What might not be achieved if Reason’s powers were directed towards understanding the world itself – for its own sake, on its own terms? What then would he write? Of how the seasons turned? Of how the crops grew? Of how trade ebbed and flowed? Of tides and moonlight? Or how men might build roads like the Romans? Perhaps even of sickness and death? And not a word of the Will of God?
Was it possible? Would it work? Well, he reminded himself, logic and mathematics could be brought down to earth; so surely human beings could break the soil and bind a sprained ankle without the intercession of saints? And if they could, slowly but surely, humanity would one day make the earth their own.
It was a pleasing thought. Well, he was pleased. Reassured. Happy, in fact. So for the rest of the day he chatted amiably to passing merchants and vagabonds, teased and flirted with the little serving girl and drank with a quiet professionalism that faithfully matched the speed at which he befuddled himself to the speed at which he sobered up again. Pleasantly intoxicated until a full moon glimmered on the eastern horizon, he rewarded himself with a proper night’s sleep in a proper bed in the tavern.