Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [37]
“They certainly were asking for it,” Belbo interrupted. “That Saint Bernard wasn’t stupid, was he?”
“Stupid, no. But he was a monk himself, and in those days monks had their own strange ideas about the body...I said before that maybe I was making this sound too much like a Western, but now that I think about it...Listen to what Bernard has to say about his beloved knights. I brought this quotation with me, because it’s worth hearing: ‘They shun and abhor mimes, magicians, and jugglers, lewd songs and buffoonery; they cut their hair short, for the apostle says it is shameful for a man to groom his hair. Never are they seen coiffed, and rarely washed. Their beards are unkempt, caked with dust and sweat from their armor and the heat.’ “
“I would hate to sleep in their quarters,” Belbo said.
“It’s always been characteristic of the hermit,” Diotallevi declared, “to cultivate a healthy filth, to humiliate his body. Wasn’t it Saint Macarius who lived on a column and picked up the worms that dropped from him and put them back on his body so that they, who were also God’s creatures, might enjoy their banquet?’’
“The stylite was Saint Simeon,” Belbo said, “and I think he stayed on that column so he could spit on the people who walked below.’’
“How I detest the cynicism of the Enlightenment,” Diotallevi said. “In any case, whether Macarius or Simeon, I’m sure there was a stylite with worms, but of course I’m no authority on the subject, since the follies of the gentiles don’t interest me.”
“Whereas your Gerona rabbis were spick and span,” Belbo said.
“They lived in squalor because you gentiles kept them in the ghetto. The Templars, on the other hand, chose to be squalid.”
“Let’s not go overboard,” I said. “Have you ever seen a platoon of recruits after a day’s march? The reason I’m telling you all this is to help you understand the dilemma of the Templar. He had to be mystic, ascetic, no eating, drinking, or screwing, but at the same time he roamed the desert cutting off the heads of Christ’s enemies; the more heads he cut off, the more points he earned for paradise. He stank, got hairier every day, and then Bernard insisted that after conquering a city he couldn’t jump on top of some young girl—or old hag, for that matter. And on moonless nights, when the simoom blew over the desert, he couldn’t seek any favors from his favorite fellow-soldier. How can you be a monk and a swordsman at the same time, disemboweling people one minute and reciting Ave Marias the next? They tell you not to look even your female cousin in the eye, but when you enter a city, after days of siege, the other Crusaders hump the caliph’s wife before your very eyes, and marvelous Shulammite women undo their bodices and say, Take me, Take me, but spare my life...No, the Templar had to stay hard, reciting compline, hairy and stinking, as Saint Bernard wanted him to. For that matter, if you just read the retraits...”
“The what?”
“The statutes of the order, drawn up rather late, after the order had put on its robe and slippers, so to speak. There’s nothing worse than an army when the war is over. At one point, for instance, brawling is forbidden, it’s forbidden to wound a Christian for revenge, forbidden to have commerce with women, forbidden to slander a brother. A Templar could not allow a slave to escape, lose his temper and threaten to defect to the Saracens, let a horse wander off, give away any animal except a dog or cat, be absent without leave, break the master’s seal, go out of the barracks