Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖

and always travel light.’ He spreads his arms to encompass everything around us. ‘Otherwise what would we be doing here? In Venice, the brothel of the world?’

I become more insistent. ‘Let’s get to the point, then. What do you have in mind?

He relights the stump of his cigar, and for a moment his regular features disappear behind the swirls.

‘The printing press.’ He searches for words. ‘The printing press is the business of the moment. And it isn’t just important from the point of view of profit: it conveys ideas, it fertilises minds and, very significantly, it reinforces relations between people. For a family that is important yet always under threat, like mine, and perhaps for the� Jews in general, it may be crucially important to forge connections with men of letters, learned men, recognised and credible people who can influence other members of whichever community they happen belong to. It’s a kind of interested patronage, if you like, and that’s why it isn’t only the Jewish press that attracts me. I’m already in negotiations with the biggest Venetian publishers: Manutius, Giolito. With donna Beatrice, my aunt, I’ve set up printing presses here and in Ferrara. We publish the Talmud, but also Italian writers like Lando, Ruscelli and Reinoso. We encourage a passion for literature. Donna Beatrice would happily abandon all her other activities apart from that one. I don’t doubt for a moment that she’s one of the most cultivated women in Europe.’ He leans slightly forward over the desk. ‘You’d have no trouble understanding why I’m interested in encouraging the tolerant, moderate party inside and outside the Church, and halting the spread of religious intransigence and spiritual war being waged by the Holy Office. I need people who can spot new currents of thought, works that are destined to move minds and change the course of history.’

I scan the titles of the books lined up on the shelves, Arabic, Hebrew, Christian texts, and I recognise Luther’s Bible. Then I turn back to look at him. ‘I can’t claim the field is new to me. I’m working on just this kind of operation at the moment. Have you ever heard of the Benefit of Christ Crucified?’

He looks up, rolling his eyes. ‘No. But that doesn’t mean Beatrice hasn’t.’

‘Officially, the author is a Benedictine friar from Mantua, but there are important men of letters behind it, people who sympathise with Calvin and the representatives of the moderate Roman party, known as the Spirituali. It’s a cunning little book, designed to stir up endless hornets’ nests, because it’s ambiguous in its content and expressed in a language that everyone can understand. A masterpiece� of dissimulation, and it’s already causing all manner of dissent. It was first printed three years ago, here in Venice. From that point onwards its fortune has never stopped growing. We already have fresh copies to shift, not just here, but in the territories to the west and south of La Serenissima. We reckon we can get ten thousand out there in ten years.’

With a nod of approval, he drums the table with his slender fingers. ‘Hmm. Very interesting. An ambitious enterprise that needs proper funding. You’ve mentioned the territories to the west and south of the Republic. So why don’t we think of the ones to the east and north? If we called it twenty thousand copies, that would involve additional printing presses, we’d have to bring in additional publishers to cope with the extra production. I have good connections in Croatia . Then there’s England, a place of endless possibilities. I have the ships, the network of contacts and dozens of merchants who’d turn a blind eye to the distribution of anything at all. I hope you’ll bear all this in mind. In any case I’d be delighted to have a copy of the book to give to my aunt. She’s always after the latest source of scandal.’

‘Your offers sound great. But I can’t make decisions without first consulting my partners. If we went into business with you, we’d have to extend the range of the operation to a considerable degree.’

Miquez widens his arms and his smile. ‘I quite understand. Take all the time you need. You know where to find me.’

‘So do you. And I hope I’ll have the chance to return your hospitality as well. Several of the girls had their eye on you.’

He shrugs and glances at me ironically. ‘Alas, women are often attracted by what they can’t have. Pleasure is a personal matter, it takes many different paths.’ He registers my surprise and adds: ‘But don’t worry, Duarte and I won’t deprive ourselves of the Caratello’s good food and excellent bar.’

Letter sent to Trent from the pontifical city of Bologna, addressed to Gianpietro Carafa, member of the Ecumenical Council, dated 27th July 1546.

To my most reverend lord Giovanni Pietro Carafa.

My most honourable lord, the news that has reached Bologna from Trent over the past few months can only delight this zealous heart.

Indeed, not only has the Emperor seen his own hopes of the Lutherans taking part in the Council go up in smoke, he has also been obliged to witness the definitive condemnation of the theology of the Protestants, the doctrine of original sin and justification by faith alone. Right now the Protestant princes of the Schmalkaldic League, his adversaries, are to be considered apostates and enemies of religion; and this has shattered Charles’ hopes of reassuming control of the whole of Germany and bringing the German princes on to his side to fight the Turk.

Cardinal Pole’s efforts to resist the Council’s decrees endorsing the definitive separation of the Lutherans from the Holy Roman Church have proved to be in vain, and that is perhaps the greatest triumph of Your Lordship and the party of the zelanti.

I am, in fact, able to confirm to Your Lordship that the reasons of health with which the English cardinal explained his premature abandonment of Council work are merely an excuse: his withdrawal is due to the need to return to Viterbo to lick his wounds, rather than to alpine fever.

But long years in Your Lordship’s service teach me that we should not claim victory before the enemy is completely routed. Reginald Pole remains the Emperor’s favourite, the man on whom the Habsburg places all his hopes of a change of attitude towards the Protestants, and there is no doubt that he will plot to promote the Englishman’s career and fame.

For that reason the excommunication of the Benefit of Christ Crucified by the Council fathers gives Your Lordship an additional weapon to employ against the underground strategies of the Spirituali and the Calvinist sympathisers within the papal territories. The intention that Your Lordship announced to me, to make the Congregation of the Holy Office set up an Index of forbidden books, is now assuming enormous importance. Benedetto of Mantua’s dangerous little book has actually continued to circulate, and to stir up minds predisposed to heresy, so much so that possession of the work might now be enough to identify Pole’s sympathisers and indict them for heresy. I myself would already be in a position to hand them over to the Inquisition.

But there we are. Today it may be enough to enjoy our immediate victories, and wait to assess what is to be done when this enthusiasm has died down, making way for wisdom.

Imploring Your Lordship’s continuing favour, and awaiting new directives, I kiss Your hands.

Bologna, the 27th day of July 1546

Your faithful servant

Q.

Q’s diary

27th July 1546

Luther is dead.

Reginald Pole has left Trent in defeat.

The Emperor is spewing bile.

The Viterban circle and all the crypto-Lutherans are terrified.

The Benefit has been excommunicated.

Perhaps old age is the only thing that keeps me writing words that no one will read. Madness.

I am keeping a record of names and places. Cardinal Morone of Modena, Gonzaga of Mantua, Giberti of Verona, Soranzo of Bergamo, Cortese. Some doubt concerning Cervini and Del Monte. Friends of Pole, but the last two are timid, little men.

His Holiness Paul III is choosing the members of the Holy College with a scales in his hand: one Zealot for every Spirituale; one intransigent for every moderate. This policy of balance will be short-lived; there are scores to be settled. Paul III the Farnese pope is an old man, shrewd in his dealings and inclined to nepotism, with illegitimate sons to put in positions of power. The last Pope of a dying era, clinging for dear life to his throne and his ludicrous intrigues, unaware that his time is over, that new soldiers are advancing, down here as well as in the northern lands: the holy predestined people of Calvin, businessmen devoted to the cause of the reformed faith and their terrifying God; the men of the inquisition, zealous and utterly devoted to their petty little policemen’s jobs, tirelessly collecting information, rumours, denunciations.

Ignatius Loyola and his order of soldiers of God, the Jesuits; Ghislieri and the new Dominicans; and behind them all Gianpietro Carafa, the man of the future, an incorruptible man in his seventies, and an efficient leader of the spiritual war, the battle for the control of the souls of men.

And myself in the middle. I too am one of those who have paid the price of the times, of the events they have lived through. Luther, M�ntzer, Matthys. I regret not those enemies left in the battlefield, but the man who stood up to them — the man I was back then. Now a man like Pole has been sent my way, a pious and lettered man who believes that God wants to be served with honesty. He and his friends do not know what true faith is, they have never had to sacrifice others on their own behalf, or sacrifice themselves by destroying others: murder, yes, extermination, the betrayal of faith. M�ntzer, the Anabaptists, and who knows how many others; so much damned good faith, so much innocence that was lost in that madness. So much waste. But it is much worse to presume that innocence is concealed behind honesty, the easiest form of penitence. And what we end up with is Thomas More, Erasmus, Reginald Pole. Crazed fools, ready to die because of their inability to understand the nature of power: either how to serve it, or how to fight it.

You are older than I am, lost behind a dream that is as far from the papal throne as it is from the mud of the stinking horde. You sicken me, and I wish I had the stomach I once did, but I have lost it along the road that brought me here. The years do not strengthen the spirit, they weaken it, and you end up looking your enemies in the eyes, looking into them to see the void, the poverty of the intellect, and you discover that you yourself are willing to pardon stupidity.

In the middle. While these eyes are still fit for something, until they discover that your faith is abandoning you, and that it’s only when you’re drunk that you can wield the axe, like a befuddled old executioner.