Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [191]
“And this explains the Thirty Years’ War?” Belbo asked.
“Beyond any doubt,” I said. “Richelieu receives privileged information from Naude; he wants to have a finger in this pie, but he gets it all wrong, tries armed intervention, and makes matters even worse. There are two other events that shouldn’t be overlooked. In 1619 a chapter of the Knights of Christ meets in Tomar, after forty-six years of silence. It had met in 1573, only eleven years before 1584, probably to prepare, along with the English, the Paris journey, but after the business of the Rosicrucian manifestoes it meets again, to decide what line to take, whether to join the English operation or try a different path.”
“Yes,” Belbo said, “these are now people lost in a maze: some choose one path, some another; some shout for help, and there’s no telling if the replies they hear are other voices or the echo of their own...They all are groping. And what are the Paulicians and the Jerusalemites doing in the meantime?”
“If we only knew,” Diotallevi said. “But consider, too, that this is the period when Lurianic cabala spreads and the talk about the Breaking of the Vessels begins...And the idea that the Torah is an incomplete message. There is a Polish Hasidic document that says: If another event takes place, other combinations of letters will be born. But remember this: the cabalists aren’t happy that the Germans chose to jump the gun. The proper succession and order of the Torah have remained hidden, and they are known only by the Holy One, praised be He. But you make me talk nonsense. If cabala becomes involved in the Plan....”
“If the Plan exists, it must involve everything. Either it explains all or it explains nothing,” Belbo said. “But Casaubon mentioned a clue.”
“Yes. Actually, it’s a series of clues. Even before that 1584 meeting fails, John Dee has begun devoting himself to the study of maps and the promotion of naval expeditions. And who is his associate? Pedro Nunes, the royal cosmographer of Portugal...Dee has a hand in the voyages to discover the Northwest Passage to Cathay; he invests money in the expedition of a certain Frobisher, who ventures toward the Pole and returns with an Eskimo, whom everybody takes for a Mongol. Dee fires up Francis Drake and encourages him to make his voyage around the world. However, he wants the explorers to sail east, because the East is the source of all occult knowledge, and at the departure of one expedition—I forget which—he summons the angels.”
“And what does this mean?”
“Dee, I think, isn’t really interested so much in the actual discovery of places, as in their cartographic depiction, and for this reason he consults Mercator and Ortelius, the great cartographers. It’s as if the fragments of the message in his possession have convinced him that the final whole will be a map, and he is attempting to discover it on his own. Indeed, I’ll say more, like Signer Garamond. Is it really likely that a scholar of his standing would have missed the discrepancy between the calendars? Perhaps Dee wants to reconstruct the message himself, without the other groups. Perhaps he thinks the message can be reconstructed by magic or scientific means, instead of