Jan already knows this. His men on the street have told him that the mood toward the clergy has shifted. They should have seen it coming, but the Church was looking the other way. The pope insisted that the threat was from Acre, from Constantinople, from Moors at the gate. While they were busy raising levies and armies, funding knights under Christian banners—Deus vult!—they failed to see the quiet threat festering at home. It came back from the Holy Land in bolts of silk, in jars of spices. The hubbub and babel of markets and ports, of couriers and tutors. The bishops looked up from the crusades and suddenly, merchants were everywhere. And merchants must read, and reading, they question.
The bishop sighs. “The merchants are demanding we repay their loans.”
The accountant nods quickly. “Yes, Your Grace. They see that the knights are almost all come back. The patrons hope to recoup their investments.”
“We are unable to pay them.” The bishop states a fact he already knows.
The accountant stares hard at the ledger as if a miracle might change the bottom line. Then he adds, reluctantly, “Your Grace, this morning someone asked to return his relic. He complained it didn’t cure his gout. He wants his money back.” The accountant looks up at the bishop, eyes worried. “He doesn’t believe it’s real.”
“Who doesn’t believe?” The bishop puts up his hand as soon as he speaks. It doesn’t matter. It could be any of them. Half the town is challenging the legitimacy of the Church, grousing about corruption. Meanwhile, the other half grows ever more pious, wailing about the coming apocalypse and looking for his clergy to grant miracles on demand, as if it were in their power to conjure favorable winds and healing waters. He’s not sure which half is worse, the doubters or the believers. The bishop gives a puff of exasperation. “Never mind. Just exchange it.”
“For?”
“Give him one of Ursula’s kneecaps.” There are half a dozen in the storeroom.
The bishop runs his hands through his thick curls. When did everything become so difficult? It used to be manageable, just the monasteries that run themselves and send lovely fruit brandies at Christmas and joints of lamb at Easter. A handful of quiet nunneries for spare daughters of the nobility. And, of course, the diocesan parishes he oversees, with their biddable priests whose names he can never recall. Jan Smet supervises all of it, a scarlet-clad king with a peaked cloth crown. Clerks scurry at his whims. Sovereigns weigh his opinions. He has spiritual dominion over a city of nearly forty thousand souls, or so his friend the mayor brags. Granted, they’re not as cultured as Paris or as powerful as Venice, but men call Brugge the market of Europe for good reason. Wool. Most of Europe’s wool is made or sold in his diocese. The city may be laced with canals, but it is built on wool. Fleece comes in on barges, wool goes out in carts. The cloth of Flanders is famous for a weave so dense and a nap so soft that it draws merchants from Germany, Genoa, France. In Brugge, they sell to princes. Shame he can’t tax them.
The bishop squints into the dimly lit chamber. He should have had them light the candles. Even at noon, the manor is in permanent twilight. He looks toward the window. No, it’s not so simple anymore. Everyone is questioning the Church. Everyone wants something from him. He taps his ring on the table before him, impatient.
Just the other day, his own brother was in here asking for money. Lukas, head of the Franciscans of Brugge, one of those new preaching orders that shuffle around in their robes and sandals, flaunting theirvita apostolica, claiming to live as Christ’s apostles. The friars’ gaudy poverty makes even his most impoverished clergy look flush. They tell his people it’s not enough to have nuns pray for their salvation, not enough to be baptized, to tithe regularly and confess rarely. No, they must actually live like Christ. Extremists.
If their father had lived, he’d have bought Lukas a bishopric, and that would have been the end of that. The banker had intended to seed two bishops, buying a promise of heaven and permission on earth in one fell swoop. No sooner had he secured Jan’s seat than he dropped dead. From an excess of blood. Too sanguine. Cheerful as a chicken. Who dies of sanguinity? Jan knows his own humors are tempered by choler. He lifts a glass to himself; his ruby winks in the light. Choler makes the sun go round. Too bad Lukas lacks any spice to balance all that damp melancholia. No fun at a banquet. Not much of a preacher.
Mother always treated Lukas like she’d birthed a saint, fawning over his prayers. “How lovely,” she’d sigh, and raise her chin to heaven, while Jan burned in a furious boyish hell beside her. Mother, with her soft eyes and hard glances, had made perfectly plain which son she preferred. No matter. He had his father’s approval and his purse. It irks him how Lukas wants it both ways now, how he parades his poverty, then comes calling with his hand out. He loves his brother, but it’s too much. Those ghastly open sandals. You can see the man’s toes. Jan curls his feet within his slippers.
He’s not alone. All the bishops of Europe are plagued with wandering preachers. Friars are suddenly everywhere, sprung from nowhere, like weevils in a sack of grain. There are not just one, but two sects infesting all of Europe: the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The pope finds them useful. They make good inquisitors, since the people see them as honest brokers. If the pope tolerates them, then his bishops must, too. But the friars stir up the people with their notions of apostolic poverty, with the idea that they, too, might get close to God. That the Church has grown too fat. And then Rome expects its bishops to tamp down the religious fervor and raise money at the same time. The pope wants it both ways. Friars to keep the Church honest, bishops to keep the Church profitable. Bless him.
The accountant looks at him with blinking eyes.
“Go on, then. Tax some moneylenders. Just not the wool merchants.” The mayor won’t like that. “And send Willems in.”
The accountant lifts the books and nearly trips over his feet in his haste to leave. Jan rubs his temples. He could have gone to a monastery and lived a life of ease as a monk. He pictures a sleepy abbey, with vineyards and pigs, a library, busy bursars counting rents. Though the monasteries are poor in theory, he knows he would have been comfortable. A monk may not own the cup he drinks from, but he will never want for wine. They own plenty of property, communally, and live long lives far from town and plague. They can pull shut their doors when God’s hand gets too near. It’s not a bad life. Guaranteed a place in heaven, better fed than most on earth. The monks are God’s field hands. It’s not for Jan, the humble life.
And the wandering friars’ humility puts the abbey monks to shame. It’s its own kind of pride, he thinks, humility. Take the beguines, those self-righteous burrs beneath his saddle. They’re as bad as spring mushrooms, popping up all over Europe, from Florence to Frankfurt. Groups of women—the bishop shudders—unsupervised women, who form their own communes and make their own living and won’t answer to the Church. They refuse to operate under papal rule. What’s worse, they’re in bed with the friars, and his own brother ministers to the largest begijnhof in Brugge. They multiply like rabbits, those holier-than-thou women who won’t answer to him. There are more beguine colonies in Flanders than anywhere else. Like lepers, he thinks. They ought to wear bells. He’s surprised the pope hasn’t banned them. He supposes Boniface already has his hands full of radicals who complain the Church is corrupt and heretics who claim it’s wrong.
Jan stretches and walks to the window looking over the cathedral square. His blue and gold flags stand at stiff attention, announcing his dominion. Even the secular church that he leads, all the parishes across Tournai, well, that used to be easier, too. It’s unfortunate how shorthanded they are. The people complain his priests are barely literate, which is true enough, but it never used to bother anyone. Few fathers read Latin, fewer still can recite the hours. Water on the forehead, dirt on the coffin. These are the services they provide, for a fee. He imagines the clink of coins in the offertory, how they slide and jostle as they gather from village to town, gathering tributaries flowing toward his cathedral. These are streams of copper, not rivers of silver. The parishioners complain that the required tithes are too high. But they aren’t enough for the Church. Rome requires gold.
If only he were in Rome. All Jan needs is one more promotion, and he could join the ranks of the curia as a cardinal and spend his time choosing the next pope and sampling the wines. He hears the Roman vineyards are extraordinary. To be promoted, he needs the favor of the seated pope. Money would help, but he doesn’t have it. He has other ideas, though.
A click of heels on the stone, a pause at the door, a cough. Without looking over his shoulder, Jan says, “Approach, Willems.”
Jan spotted Willems in a company of traveling players in the square outside the cathedral some years ago. It was a chill November day and his assistant had forgotten the furs. Jan had seen the annual mystery plays so many times that he could recite the lines of God and Lucifer and every good and evil angel. He was required to give his annual blessing. That year’s God was tiresome, overacting and heavy-handed. Jan had half a notion to sweep up onto the wagon stage and banish God before he could exile Lucifer to hell. But he was too late.
“In mischief and menace ever shalt thou abide, in bitter burning fire, in pain ever to be put.” God’s grimace was comical, reaching for the back of the crowd.
But Lucifer, a dark-haired actor dressed in black, skin so ghostly pale, delivered his reply with subtle defiance and despair: “Now I am a devil full dark, that was an angel bright.”
I could use a man like that, thought Jan. As the troupe packed the wagons for Antwerp, Jan sent for Lucifer. “I need someone,” he told Willems, “to be my eyes and ears in the market. Someone who doesn’t call too much attention to himself, but who can deliver a chill to those who require”—he cleared his throat—“chilling.”
Willems approaches through the shadowy hall with feline grace. Cloaked in black livery with the bishop’s small golden crest on his shoulder, the man retains something of hell about him. It’s most satisfying. Willems bows beautifully. “Your Grace?”
“Willems.” He does not need to be delicate with Willems, not after all these years. Their motives are aligned; Willems will come with him. The bishop will enjoy the loose Roman women. He pictures them ripe and soft as olives for the plucking. His servant will enjoy the—well, Jan doesn’t really know what Willems prefers. Some mysteries are best left untouched. Jan pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ve been contemplating the pope’s interests. The materials you apprehended.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” There is a glint in Willems’s eye. He’s been quietly purchasing contraband from back stalls in the market, the sort of goods slid behind curtains or exchanged under bridges. Yesterday, Willems produced several sheets of cheap parchment, set them on the table and stepped back quickly, fingers spread, as if even the devil found them godless. The bishop looked at his man, normally so cool, then down at the pages. Then he looked more closely. They were lettered in Dutch, the letters slanted, scrawled in haste, which was unremarkable enough—until he realized he was reading a psalm. In Dutch. Right there, on the page, in common language. The bishop sat up.
“Where did you get this?” Rome abhorred translations.Not without reason, the pope had written,did it please Almighty God that Holy Scripture should be secret. It took years of training to interpret the Bible. It was one thing to allow people their psalters and books of hours; those were carefully curated, and the people only half understood the Latin anyway. It would be another thing entirely to give them free access to the entire Bible in their mother tongue. People would start reading scripture on their own, without the supervision of a priest. The pope has clearly forbidden theseoccultis conventiculis, hidden gatherings in which people treat gospel like it was written for them. Rome wants to strangle this movement in its cradle. It didn’t end well for the translators in southern France and eastern Germany.
“I thought you should know,” Willems had said. “These are circulating in the Markt.”
