Scholarium by Claudia Gross

In this city everyone had a secret. The apprentice had something to hide from the journeyman, the journeyman from the master, the master from his wife and she from her mother. The city exuded an aura of secrecy, and rumours gathered like dense clouds above its hundreds of rooftops.

One man had failed to come home last night, and was feared to have been attacked by robbers; another had been seen creeping along Lintgasse, dragging a club foot and cursing angrily to himself, while a third had apparently fallen into the Rhine, for it was said that his corpse had been sighted farther downstream...

People knew perfectly well that no more than half of all this talk, conjecture and tittle-tattle was true. But this deterred no one from relating what they had seen, heard, smelled or sensed.

From the day when Pope Urban VI had granted the city's petition to found a studium generale, people had had a new subject for their gossip: its Faculties. Truth to tell, none of them had a very clear idea of what went on there, except that it involved a great deal of teaching and studying. Of course teaching took place at monasteries and cathedral schools too, but the universitas was not quite the same. It seemed to consist of a huge conglomeration of scholars who spent their time arguing about how many angels could perch on the point of a church steeple without falling off. The city fathers loved their studium generale because it filled the coffers and raised the prestige of the city; but to the ordinary burgher those fine fellows, the students, brought little benefit. And so it was not long before the most outlandish rumours began to circulate concerning the universitas and its halls and colleges. They were trying to prove that God existed, some declared, even though everyone, man or woman, knew that God's existence was not a matter of proof. Perhaps, whispered others, they were all unbelievers whose studies served merely to mask their ungodliness. And yet the Pope himself had paid tribute to the high renown of each of the Faculties, and this had set tongues wagging all the more. Could it be that those learned gentlemen, the philosophers, were required to provide proof of God because in fact he did not exist at all?

Meanwhile each citizen of Cologne anxiously guarded their own secret, be it some trifling matter unlikely to cause a great stir, or one that might have the direst of consequences if dragged out into the light of day. Behind every house-front lurked a cloven hoof, behind every wall a pair of illicit lovers, at every confessional a motley gathering of tormented souls threatening to cast off the burden of their furtive sins and load it instead on to the heart of the listening priest.

Those priests ministering to their flock were true artists in the handling of life. Obliged to bear home with them such mountains of personal confession, and powerless to do more than instruct the penitent to say a rosary, they guarded each confidence like a priceless treasure and quickly tried to forget where they had found it. But these were treasures that they would have preferred not to find at all, so distasteful, so absurd, or so dreadful were they. There was little harm in the cheating husband who visited a gemeyn doichter, a harlot; nor in the widow engaging in an amour with a man twenty years her junior and lasciviously rejoicing in a second springtime. Far graver were the wicked acts of heresy into which a hitherto blameless burgher might have strayed before finding his way back to the fold; or the offence of an alchemist who had thought to find God in wine, even though everyone knew that wine might bring forth truth - in vino veritas! - but nothing more.

Still worse things were told, sins that were enough to make the father confessors' ears curl. A man might admit to having killed his friend. Respectable women confessed to unsatisfied lusts of the flesh. Men of supposed good character talked freely of their amorous dalliances. The priests could only exhort them, one and all, to do penance.

In the evening they bore their heavy burdens homewards. Then darkness descended, bringing with it a little peace and quiet. But appearances were deceptive. As night fell, mischief grew. By the light of flickering torches people felt safe from watching eyes, since little could be seen but shadows flitting from one dark corner to another. Most murders were committed at night, and most acts of adultery too - anything that needed to be done stealthily and surreptitiously was carried out under the cloak of darkness. Night took charge of all secrets, she held them safe and carried them with her to the grave. And the morning pretended to have seen nothing at all.