Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper (19 page)

EDGAR CANTWELL AWOKE shortly before four in the morning in a miserable state. It was just as well that the incessantly clanging college bells were rousing him from his fitful sleep. He had never been so cold in all his life. His window had ice on the inside, and he could see his own breath when he emerged from under his thin coverlet to light a candle. He had retired wearing all his clothes, even his cloak and his soft leather shoes, but he was still frigid as an icicle. In self-pity, he looked around his tiny room, as basic as a monk’s cell, and wondered what his friends at Merton would think if they could see his wretched circumstances.

Montaigu was living up to its reputation as hell on earth. Better if he were in prison, he thought. At least then he would not have to read Aristotle in Latin and suffer the whip if he failed to memorize a passage.

It was a bleak existence, and he was only weeks into it. The term would run until July, which seemed a lifetime away.

The mission of Montaigu College was to prepare young men to become priests or ordained lawyers. Under the absolute rule of Principal Tempête, a conservative Parisian theologian of the most venomous ilk, Montaigu strictly controlled its pupils’ moral lives. They were forced to search their consciences in regular public confessions of their sins and to denounce the behavior of fellow students. To keep them in the proper repentant state of mind, Tempête kept them in a perpetual fast, with coarse food and small portions, and in the winter made them suffer the cold without succor. Then there were the merciless beatings at the hands of ruthless tutors and, at his pleasure, Tempête himself.

Edgar had to be up at four o’clock to attend the morning office in the chapel before stumbling off to his first lecture in a near-dark classroom. The lectures were in French, which Edgar had learned at Oxford, but now, painfully, he was forced to use it as his primary language. Mass was at six o’clock, followed by communal breakfast, its brevity assured by the fact that all they were served was a slice of bread with a dot of butter. Then came the
grande classe
on the topic of the day—philosophy, arithmetic, the scriptures, done in a format that Edgar dreaded.

The
quaestio
was a one-man disputation a member of his class had to endure each day. Tutors with whipping rods ready posed questions based on a passage of reading. The student would answer, eliciting in turn, another question et cetera, back and forth, back and forth, until the underlying meaning of the text was thoroughly explored. For the keen student, the process meant a continually stimulating creative involvement. For Edgar, it meant blistering beatings on the shoulders and back, insults and belittlement.

Dinner followed, accompanied by readings from the Bible or the life of a saint. Edgar had the advantage over some of his less fortunate classmates of being one of the rich
pensionnaires,
who were fed at a common table where there was a minimum standard of daily rations.
Les pauvres
had to fend for themselves in their rooms, and some were close to starvation. As it was, Edgar’s daily fare barely kept him going—bread, a little boiled fruit, a herring, an egg, and a piece of cheese, washed down with a jar of the cheapest wine, a third of a pint topped off with water.

At twelve o’clock, the students had an assembly, where they were questioned about their morning’s work. This was followed by a rest period or a public reading, depending on the day. From three to five o’clock, they were back in the classroom for afternoon classes, then off to the chapel for Vespers, immediately followed by a discussion of their afternoon work. Supper consisted of some more bread, another egg or a chunk of cheese, and perhaps a piece of fruit eaten to the accompaniment of droning Bible readings. The tutors had one more opportunity to interrogate their charges before final chapel, and at eight o’clock it was bedtime.

Two days a week there was time in their schedules for an interlude of recreation or a walk. Despite the temptation for escape, albeit brief, the environs around the College were such that students mainly stuck to the Pré aux clercs, the college recreation ground. The other side of rue Saint Symphorien was a stinking nest of thieves and vermin who would gladly cut the throat of a student for a cloak pin or a pair of gloves. And to make matters even more unsavory, the sewers of Montaigu discharged directly onto the street, making for unhealthy and unwholesome circumstances.

Still hungry after breakfast, Edgar made his way to the
grande classe
with mounting feelings of dread. The discussion today would concern indulgences and the
Exurge Domine,
the discourse written by Pope Leo X condemning the errors of Martin Luther. It was a topic that was hot with controversy and thus, ripe for disputation. Edgar fretted that the tutor, Bedier, would call upon him as he had been spared the past week. The students, all twenty of them, took their seats at two rows of low benches, huddled shoulder against shoulder for warmth. Dawn was breaking, and a thin light seeped through the tall narrow windows of the dusty lecture hall. Bedier, fat and pompous, paced the floorboards, gripping his whipping rod like a cat about to pounce on a rat. As Edgar feared, the first words to drip from his thick lips were, “Monsieur Cantwell, rise.”

He stood at the bench and swallowed hard.

“Tell me the three ways in which we may be granted penance?”

He was relieved he knew the answer. “Confession, priestly absolution, and satisfaction, Master.”

“And how may satisfaction be achieved?”

“Good works, Master, such as visiting relics, pilgrimage to holy places, praying the rosary, and purchasing indulgences.”

“Explain the meaning of
per modum suffragii
.”

Edgar’s eyes widened. He had no idea. It was useless to guess as it would make matters worse for him. “I do not know, Master.”

The fat tutor demanded he come forward and kneel. Edgar approached like a fellow walking to the gallows and knelt before the cleric, who whipped him four times on the back with all his might. “Now stand beside me, Monsieur, as I suspect this bee will need to sting you again. Who knows the answer?”

A pale young man stood up from his place in the first row. Jean Cauvin was tall and skeletal, a hollow-cheeked eighteen-year-old with an aquiline nose and the wispy beginnings of a beard. He was the finest student at Montaigu, bar none, his intellect often dwarfing the tutors’. In preparation for university study and a career in the priesthood, he had been sent to Paris by his father from their home in Noyon at age fourteen to attend the College de Marche. After excelling in grammar, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, and mathematics he transferred to Montaigu for religious preparation. Edgar had had scant dealings with him so far. The boy seemed as cold and imperious as the masters.

Bedier acknowledged him, “Yes, Cauvin.”

“If it pleases, Master,” he said haughtily, “I have taken to Latinizing my name to Calvinus.”

Bedier looked heavenward. “Very well then. Calvinus.”

“It is an act of intercession, Master. Since the Church has no jurisdiction over the dead in purgatory, it is taught that indulgences can be gained for them only by an act of intercession.”

Bedier wondered about the boy’s use of language—“is taught” being different from “I believe,” but he let it pass as his attention was on the English boy. He bade to Jean sit down. “Tell me, Cantwell, what did Pope Leo X say in his
Exurge Domine,
concerning the souls in purgatory?”

Edgar could not remember. He had repeatedly dozed off while reading the tract, and all he could do was desperately brace himself for another beating. “I do not know, Master.”

This time Bedier went for bare skin, landing blows on his neck and cheek, drawing blood. “What did they teach you at Oxford, boy? Are the English not God-fearing? You will have no dinner on this day but will, instead reread and memorize the
Exurge Domine.
Who will answer me?”

Jean stood again and began to respond while Edgar cowered and tasted blood, which flowed from his cheek to his lips.

“Pope Leo wrote that the souls in purgatory are not certain of their salvation, and he further claimed that nothing in the Scriptures proves that they are beyond the state of meriting from indulgences.”

There was something in Jean’s tone, a note of skepticism, that unsettled the cleric. “Is this not what you, yourself believe, Cauvin—I mean Calvinus?”

Jean lifted his chin and answered defiantly. “I believe the Pope is the only one who does excellently when he grants remissions to the souls in purgatory on account of intercessions made on their behalf. For I believe, as others do, that there is no divine authority for preaching that the soul flies out of purgatory the moment the indulgence money clinks in the bottom of the chest!”

“Come here!” Bedier raged. “I will not tolerate Lutheran heresy in my classroom!”

“Do you intend to beat me?” Jean asked, provocatively. None of his fellow students could recall him ever receiving the whip, and they exchanged excited glances.

“I do, monsieur!”

“Well then, I shall make it easy for you.” Jean strode forward, stripping off his cloak and his shirt, and knelt beside Edgar. “You may proceed, Master Bedier.”

As the rod landed on his flesh, Edgar saw Jean looking over at him, and he swore he saw the boy wink.

Martin Luther had never been to Paris but his influence was surely felt in that city as it was throughout the Continent. The monk from Wittenberg had exploded onto the religious scene on the day in 1517 he nailed his
95 Theses
onto the door of Wittenberg Cathedral and began railing against the corrupt state of the Papacy and the abusive power of indulgences.

In the modern era of the printing press, certificates of indulgence had become a lucrative business for the Church. Indulgence salesmen would come into a town, set up their wares in a local church, suspending all regular prayer and service. Their certificates were mass-produced, with blank spaces for names, dates, and prices, and all good Christians were obligated, for the sake of their dead friends and relatives and for their own souls, to purchase this afterlife insurance to speed the sinner’s exit from purgatory to heaven. Luther found the practice vile and replete with ecclesiastical errors and feared for the fate of people who believed that salvation could be bought. The priests in Wittenberg had a loathsome saying that sickened him, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, another soul from purgatory springs.”

After all, Luther proclaimed, Paul had written in Romans that it was God who would save us: “For in the Gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written the righteous shall live by faith.” Surely, Luther argued, men did not need the Pope and priests and all the trappings and finery of the Church for salvation. All they required was a personal relationship with God.

Luther’s Wittenberg thesis was quickly translated from Latin to German and widely published. Devout men had already been quietly grumbling about the decadence of the Church and the abuses of the Papacy. Now, it was as if a match had been tossed on the dry kindling of discontent. The fire that began to burn, the Reformation, was sweeping Europe, and even within a conservative bastion like Montaigu, smoke from the Reformist fires was wafting in. Students with open and brilliant minds, like Jean, were beginning to feel the heat.

Edgar was in his room struggling to memorize the tract of Pope Leo by the light of a small candle. He held the pamphlet with one hand and rubbed the welt on his cheek with the other. He was cold, tired, hungry, and sad. If suffering were a requirement for salvation, then surely he would be saved. This was the only positive thought he could muster. Then a knock startled him.

He opened the door and looked up at the placid face of Jean.

“Good evening, Edgar. I thought I would see how you were doing.”

Edgar sputtered in surprise, then asked Jean to come in. He offered his chair, and said, “Thank you for visiting.”

“I was only down the hall.”

“I know, but it is still unexpected. It is the first time.”

Jean smiled. “We have more in common today than yesterday. We have both been branded by Bedier.”

“Perhaps,” Edgar said glumly, “but yours was for brilliance, mine for stupidity.”

“You are burdened by the language. If I had to conduct myself in English, I would not be so brilliant.”

“You are kind to say that.”

Jean rose. “Well, old Tempête will be patrolling the yard soon, looking for candlelight. We had better to bed. Here.” He handed Edgar a piece of bread secreted in a handkerchief.

Edgar teared up and thanked him profusely. “Please, stay a short while,” he begged. “I would like to ask you something.”

Jean obliged and folded his hands on his lap, a benign and patient gesture. He waited for Edgar to wolf down the bread and finish swallowing.

“I am having great difficulties,” Edgar said. “I am no scholar. I find the curriculum at Montaigu difficult, and I dread each day. Yet I cannot leave, for my father would suffer me worse than the masters.”

“I am sorry for you, Edgar. Your soul is being tested. What can I do?”

“Help me with my studies. Be my tutor.”

Jean shook his head. “I cannot.”

“Why?”

“I do not have the time. There are not the hours in the day, for I am determined to read everything I can on the great issues of our time.”

“The Reformation,” Edgar grunted.

“We are fortunate to live in this exciting era.”

“My family is wealthy,” Edgar said suddenly. “I will find a way to pay you.”

“I have no need for money. I only thirst for knowledge. Now, I must be gone.”

“No!” Edgar said this so forcefully he surprised himself. He had to persuade Jean to help; he was at his wit’s end. He thought quickly—perhaps there was a way. It would violate an oath he had given himself, but what choice did he have? He blurted this out: “If you will help me, I will show you something that will, no doubt, fascinate you and greatly stimulate your mind.”