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No surprise, then, that fourteenth-century Avignon was also a crossroads of artistic talent. Within Avignon’s walls, popes, cardinals, and nobles rubbed shoulders with gifted painters and poets. Several famous figures from Avignon’s glory days play prominent roles here in this book. Nothing here contradicts the historical record, though their actions in these pages do — admittedly, exuberantly and occasionally wickedly — go considerably beyond the bare-bones record history offers us.
Francesco Petrarch — the prolific poet and philosopher whom some historians call “the father of humanism”—bitterly criticized the Avignon papacy and the Babylonian captivity, even as he lived off the tithes and other proceeds collected by the “whore of Babylon.” Petrarch’s decades-long adoration of the unattainable young noblewoman, Laura — an infatuation that continued even after she died during the Black Death of 1348—is one of history’s most famous unrequited romances. Petrarch wrote reams of sonnets to and about Laura; even at the time, though, some critics wondered if he was more in love with the idea of being in love — more smitten with himself as tragic hero — than with the actual, flesh-and-blood Laura: a woman whose lips he never even kissed.
Painter Simone Martini did, indisputably, paint a small portrait of Laura for Petrarch. Alas, that portrait — the world’s first commissioned portrait, say art historians — has been lost; if it could be found, it would surely fetch millions on the auction block at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Little is known about Simone’s personal life. He married into a family of Sienese painters; he and his wife, Giovanna, moved to Avignon in 1335 or 1336, and the couple had no children. When Simone died in Avignon in 1344, he left behind surprisingly few works from his time there, besides four frescoes (now undergoing restoration) in the portal of Avignon Cathedral and the sinopia studies for two of those frescoes: the powerful portraits of Mary and Jesus, that I — like Brockton and Miranda — found myself captivated by within the Palace of the Popes.
The Palace of the Popes, Europe’s biggest Gothic palace, was begun in 1335 by Pope Benedict XII, who — prior to becoming pope in 1334 and taking the name Benedict XII — was named Jacques Fournier. In his six years as a cardinal in Avignon, Fournier was indeed known as le Cardinal Blanc, the White Cardinal, because of the white Dominican habit he always wore, even after he was entitled to far more sumptuous vestments. Fournier is a fascinating and (to me, at least) frightening study in contrasts. Immune to most of the temptations of luxury (except, apparently, food and drink), he built the fortress-like papal palace at least partly to safeguard the 17,500,000 gold florins amassed by his shrewd predecessor, Pope John XXII.
During Fournier’s years as a cardinal in Avignon and, earlier, as a bishop and inquisitor in southwest France, he was driven — I’d say obsessed, in fact — by the pursuit of heresy and the prosecution of heretics. Fournier became bishop of Pamiers in 1317; the following year he embarked on a systematic and thorough inquisition in the mountain village of Montaillou, whose entire population, astonishingly, had been arrested and charged with heresy a decade before, in 1308. Fournier reopened the matter and spent the next eight years interrogating villagers, shepherds, widows, and others whom he suspected of holding heretical views. He kept meticulous transcripts of his interrogations; Latin translations of those transcripts — called the “Fournier Register”—are bound in three immense volumes that are housed in the Vatican Library (Latin manuscript number 4030). Fournier judged many of Montaillou’s inhabitants to be guilty of heresy, although he condemned “only” five to be burned at the stake. One of the five was Agnes Francou, the widow who is mentioned in chapter 17; Fournier interrogated Agnes repeatedly in 1319 and 1320, and eventually condemned her for refusing to swear an oath of truthfulness (despite the fact that Agnes pointed out to him, with some scriptural authority behind her, that “God has forbidden all swearing”). Several English-language translations of Fournier’s interrogations — including his sessions with Agnes — can be found on the website of Professor Nancy Stork (http://www.sjsu.edu/people/nancy.stork/courses/c4/), a medievalist who teaches a course on Fournier at San Jose State University. A rich portrait of daily life and inquisitorial interrogation in Montaillou is presented in the book Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (what a great name, Emmanuel Le Roy: Emmanuel means “God With Us,” and Le Roy means “The King”!). Ladurie’s book, which is considered a pioneering ethnographic study, is based on the Fournier Register: the wealth of information Fournier gleaned from the “heretical” villagers of Montaillou. I feel an obligation to be crystal clear about a key difference between historical fact and this work of fiction: Although Jacques Fournier — the inquisitor who became a pope — was obsessed with heresy, and put at least five suspected heretics to death, the medieval murder attributed to him in these pages is purely speculative.
Many books and blogs have been written about the Shroud of Turin, Christianity’s most revered relic. I won’t attempt to summarize those here; suffice it to say that ever since its appearance in Lirey, France, in the middle of the fourteenth century, the Shroud has inspired both devotion and controversy. Those only intensified in 1898, when photographer Secondo Pia published the ghostly black-and-white photo negative he saw materialize in his photographic darkroom. That watershed moment marked the beginning of modern scientific scrutiny of the Shroud — scrutiny that culminated in 1988, when laboratories in Zurich, Oxford, and Tucson conducted independent C-14 tests to determine the age of the Shroud’s fabric. The Tucson lab put the linen’s age at 646 years, +/- 31 years; the Zurich lab, at 676 years, +/- 24 years; and the Oxford lab at 750 years, +/- 30. Averaging the three and taking the margins of uncertainty into account, the scientists responsible for the tests concluded — with 95 percent statistical confidence — that the Shroud of Turin was made sometime between 1262 and 1384. Almost immediately, die-hard believers in the Shroud’s first-century authenticity — including scientific believers — began casting doubt on the findings. One theory that was offered claimed that a “bioplastic” coating on the fibers had skewed the results. Another, more creative theory claimed that the image had been formed by a burst of radiation at the moment of Jesus’s resurrection, and that the radioactivity had skewed the quantity of C-14 level in the fabric. Still another claim held that the fabric samples had been snipped from an “invisible patch” woven into the Shroud during a sixteenth-century repair. One scientist who criticized the C-14 findings wrote, “It is simply not known how the ghostly image of a serene, bearded man was made.” In a similar vein, other believers have claimed, countless times, that there is no technique known to artists — in medieval times or even modern times — that can produce an image with all the properties of the ghostly image on the Shroud of Turin. That assertion is simply not true, as Dr. Emily Craig demonstrated nearly two decades ago.
Emily — a medical illustrator turned forensic anthropologist — is lifted straight from life and transplanted into chapter 3 of our story. In 1994, while earning her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee, Emily and UT textile scientist Randall Bresee published a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology (volume 34, number 1, 1994; available online at http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/craig.pdf) titled “Image Formation and the Shroud of Turin.” That article explained and demonstrated how a simple dust-transfer technique — using materials and techniques artists have used for thousands of years — could easily have been used by an artist to produce the image during the Middle Ages, the heyday of religious relics.
One other note on the Shroud of Turin: The passages in this book that discuss the Shroud figure’s stature and proportions are, like Emily Craig, lifted from life. If the Shroud really were a direct, life-size imprint of Jesus’ body, Christ — more than six feet tall — would have been a veritable giant back in the first century, when people were far shorter than they are today. If Jesus had been a head taller than his followers and his foes, it seems odd that none of the Gospel writers bothered to mention
that detail. Also factual are the unusual, storklike proportions — the long legs and short, narrow trunk — that Dr. Brockton observes in the figure on the Shroud.
Last but not least, Eckhart, our “zhondo”: Meister Johannes Eckhart — a prominent Dominican theologian and mystic — was indeed charged with heresy by the archbishop of Cologne around 1326. Eckhart appealed his case directly to Pope John XXII and walked 500 miles to Avignon to mount his defense. The pope put former inquisitor Jacques Fournier, le Cardinal Blanc, in charge of handling Eckhart’s case. After journeying to Avignon, Eckhart seems to have dropped from sight; all we know is that he died sometime before March 1329, when Pope John issued a papal bull criticizing a number of Eckhart’s teachings…and claiming that Eckhart repudiated his errors before dying.
The circumstances and date of Eckhart’s death are shrouded in mystery. So are the location and fate of his remains. What’s not in doubt is this: He was a renowned teacher and beloved preacher, but he was perceived as a threat by the high priests who held the reins of power; trumped-up charges were filed against him, and he died while trying to clear his name. As Miranda says, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
— Jon Jefferson
A black-and-white, photo-negative version of the face on the Shroud of Turin. The actual image on the Shroud is a faint reddish-brown. The dramatic negative was first seen in 1898, when Italian photographer Secondo Pia noticed the haunting, lifelike quality of the image he developed in his darkroom. Far more powerful than the positive image faintly visible on the fabric, the negative has arguably supplanted the Shroud itself as the main object of devotion.
