Baudolino by Umberto Eco Page B

of the empire.
    "There. And these cities have appropriated all of my rights. But they lack any sense of what is just and good! What demon so clouded their minds?"
    "My dear nephew and emperor," Otto interjected, "you are thinking of Milan, of Pavia and Genoa as if they were Ulm or Eu. The cities of Germany were all born at the command of a prince, and from the beginning they have recognized themselves in the prince. But for these cities it is different. They arose while the Germanic emperors were engaged in other matters, and they have grown and taken advantage of the absence of their princes. When you speak to the inhabitants about the podestà, the governor that you would like to impose on them, they feel this
potestatis insolentiam
is an intolerable yoke, and they have themselves governed by consuls whom they themselves elect."
    "But don't they like to have the protection of princes and share in the dignity and glory of an empire?"
    "They like that very much, and for nothing in the world would
they deprive themselves of this advantage. Otherwise they would fall prey to some other monarch, perhaps the emperor of Byzantium or perhaps the sultan of Egypt. But the prince must remain distant. You live surrounded by your nobles, so perhaps you are not aware that in their cities relations are different. They do not recognize the great vassals, lords of field and forest, because fields and forests belong to the cities—except perhaps for the lands of the marquess of Monferrato and a few others. Mind you, in the cities young men who practice the mechanical arts—who could never set foot in your court—administer, command, and are sometimes raised to the dignity of knight."
    "So the world is upside down?" the emperor cried.
    "My good father"—Baudolino held up a finger—"why, you are treating me as if I were one of your family, and yet yesterday I was sleeping on straw. What of that?"
    "It means that, if I wish, I will make you a duke, because I am the emperor and I can ennoble anyone by my decree. But it does not mean that anybody can ennoble himself on his own! Don't they understand that if the world is turned upside down, they are also hastening towards their own ruin?"
    "It seems they don't, Frederick," Otto replied. "These cities, with their way of governing themselves, are now the places through which all wealth passes. Merchants gather there from all over, and their walls are more beautiful and solid than those of many castles."
    "Whose side are you on, uncle?" the emperor shouted.
    "Yours, my imperial nephew, but for this very reason it is my duty to help you understand the strength of your enemy. If you insist on obtaining from those cities that which they don't want to give you, you will waste the rest of your life besieging them, defeating them, and seeing them rise again, more proud than before, in the space of a few months; and you will have to cross the Alps to subdue them once more, whereas your imperial destiny lies elsewhere."
    "Where would my imperial destiny lie?"
    "Frederick, I have written in my
Chronica
—which through some
inexplicable accident has disappeared and now I must set myself to rewriting it, may God punish Canon Rahewin, who is responsible for its loss—that, some time ago, when the supreme pontiff was Eugene III, the Syrian bishop of Gabala, who visited the pope with an Armenian delegation, told Eugene how in the Extreme Orient, in lands very close to the Earthly Paradise, there is the prospering realm of a
Rex Sacerdos,
the Presbyter Johannes, a king certainly Christian, even though a follower of the heresy of Nestor, and whose ancestors are those Magi, also kings and priests, but depositaries of very ancient wisdom, who visited the infant Jesus."
    "And what is the connection between me, emperor of the holy and Roman empire, and this Priest John, may the Lord long keep him king and priest down there wherever the devil he may be, among his Moors?"
    "You see, my