Pope Sylvester II, who was also known as Herbert, retained his reputation as a magician for two reasons. Firstly, he was an extremely educated and gifted man. Secondly, he apparently underwent training in Spain, in Cordoba or Toledo. And at that time, Spain was ruled by the Moors or Saracens and was considered in Europe the heir of eastern magic and wisdom. This is exactly what the legend is about.
In the service of the Moor wizard
The Spanish pagans were considered world-renowned masters of the art of magic. Herbert lived in the house of one of them. This magician had a magic book. She, as a means of subordinating the forces of the devil to the will of the owner of this book, had no analogues. Herbert really wanted to take possession of this relic, but the Arab philosopher did not part with it for a moment and even hid it under his pillow at night.
Herbert still managed to discover the cache with the book during lovemaking with the beautiful daughter of a Saracen. After this, Herbert got his master drunk, stole the book and ran away. But the magician was also no stranger. He began to pursue the thief and, since the Saracen knew astrology well, he could use star charts to know Herbert’s location both on land and at sea. For some time, Herbert still managed to deceive the sorcerer, hiding under the bridge in such a way that he did not touch either the ground or the water. As a result, the fugitive managed to safely reach the sea coast.
Sylvester II and the Devil (medieval drawing)
Herbert opened the book and, using powerful spells, summoned the main demon. The spirit easily transported him to the opposite bank. From that moment on, Herbert never looked back. He believed that he had defeated a very strong opponent and now his path lay to the papal throne.
Contract with the Devil: *Fear Mass in Jerusalem*
To achieve his goal, Herbert sold his soul to the devil, and in return received the throne of the Pope. Now Pope Sylvester II shamelessly used his position for personal gain. Contemporaries claim that Herbert entered into a carnal union with the devil. He was accompanied everywhere by a spirit in the form of a black shaggy dog. Many believed that he was capable of blinding his enemies and using necromancy to find hidden treasures. It was considered dark side his activities.
But nothing lasts forever and Sylvester really wanted to know how long he could hold such a high position. As it turned out, until he celebrated the Divine Mass in Jerusalem. It was this event that he should have avoided in every possible way.
He who is forewarned is forearmed. Sylvester II immediately issued a decree that forbade him to visit the Holy Land. Well, then he took up his favorite pastime - he devoted himself to vicious and luxurious life. But those who are on the same footing with the devil must always be on their guard. When Herbert Sylvester II performed the rite of communion in some Roman church unfamiliar to him, he suddenly felt that his strength was quickly fading. And he immediately saw that he was surrounded by demons on all sides.
Devil serving Sylvester II (modern drawing)
As it turned out, this church was called the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem. Dad realized that he had been tricked and had very little time left to live. The stress that Sylvester II experienced radically undermined his self-confidence. He publicly began to repent of his sin and expressed the most touching and solemn warnings against alliances with evil demons.
When Sylvester II was on his deathbed, he left the following order to his followers: they would have to cut his body into pieces and place it on a stretcher made of green wood. These stretchers will have to be carried by two horses, one black and one white, that have not known stallions. The horses had to be without a coachman, and where they stopped, a grave had to be built and his remains buried.
Restless Dead
However, the incredible happened at the Pope's funeral. It is difficult to even imagine what feelings the witnesses of this event had when a rather strange funeral procession approached the Lateran Church and when suddenly loud groans and screams were heard from the coffin. After this there was dead silence, and Pope Sylvester II was buried in this cathedral.
Tomb of Pope Sylvester II in the Lateran Cathedral. On the eve of the death of the next Pontiff, it begins to ooze water
But it cannot be said that his spirit calmed down, since he doomed himself to lead the life of a ghost, foreshadowing death with his groans. As soon as they were approaching last days the next pope, groans were heard from the grave of Sylvester the second, and his bones rattled and loudly hit each other. And yet, it is unlikely that he was condemned to hell forever. It is believed that it was God's providence that brought the horses with his remains to the holy place.
A warlock, or a scientist and engineer?
What else is Sylvester II remembered for? According to researchers, he was the first to introduce Arabic numerals in Western and Northern Europe. Sylvester II contributed to the widespread distribution mechanical watches. They say that the magnificent clock that he built in Magdeburg recorded not only all the movements of celestial bodies, but also the time of sunrise and sunset. It remains obvious that, along with astronomy and its sister- astrology, were precisely the sciences that young Herbert studied in Spain. At that time, these sciences especially flourished there.
Sylvester II brought back into use the Roman abacus (counting device)
This was the time of the greatest discoveries in the field of mechanics. William of Malmesbury noted that Herbert Sylvester the Second also built amazing hydraulic machines in Reims, which used water to perform wonderful arias and symphonies. The same historian further talks about his visit to the magical underground palace, which looked exactly the same when Herbert first built it. But at the slightest touch to him, he disappeared.
And a little more mysticism
In addition, this unusual Pope is considered a direct descendant of Simon Magus. And he, apparently, was the very first of the medieval sorcerers who was able to make bronze talking heads. According to stories, the heads could answer any questions and had the ability to predict the future.
But like the oracles these heads were supposed to replace, their prophecies were even more ambiguous. It was a similar bronze head that Herbert made that showed him the way to the church, which has the word “Jerusalem” in its name. And this is not surprising, since it was made with the help of the devil.
Introducing himself to Berlioz and Bezdomny as a “specialist in black magic,” Woland explains that in state library Authentic manuscripts of the warlock Herbert of Avrilak, tenth century, were discovered, and he, the only specialist in the world, came to sort them out.Woland is being a little disingenuous: Herbert was hardly a “warlock,” although such a reputation accompanied him during his life, and especially after his death; but he was definitely the Pope under the name of Sylvester II, which, of course, the prince of darkness wisely keeps silent about.
Herbert was born in the very middle of the 10th century ( exact date unknown) somewhere in central France, and in early adolescence entered service in a strict Benedictine monastery in the town of Aurillac. The young man showed either a zeal for science, or an obstinate disposition; in any case, when the Barcelona Count Borrell came to the monastery, the abbot asked him to take the young man with him for further education.
Catalonia of those times was the last outpost of the Christian world in Western Europe; then the caliphate began, Arab Andalusia. Herbert took full advantage of this position. Arab world was then incomparably more enlightened and sophisticated than the European one: while the largest European book collection hardly numbered a thousand books, in Cordoba, the capital of the caliphate, the library could boast of almost half a million manuscripts. Herbert studied, albeit second-hand, Arab achievements in astronomy and mathematics; in particular, he mastered Arabic-Indian numerals, and subsequently amazed his contemporaries with mental calculations. If you try to perform arithmetic operations with Roman numerals in your head, you will understand why Herbert's tricks seemed like a miracle and magic.
In Spain, Herbert became acquainted with the abacus, the prototype of the abacus, the first computer in the world, and subsequently wrote a treatise about this instrument. He also wrote about complex astronomical instruments, including the astrolabe; about geometry trying to fill the gaps caused by the poor familiarity of the Europeans of that time with the works of Euclid; about music apparently, he designed a “monochord,” an instrument with one string in the Pythagorean spirit, and used it to study the relationship between the length of strings and the pitch of sounds, that is, he laid the foundations of acoustics; he is also credited with the creation of the first hydraulic organ, in which the injection of air into the pipes was carried out using a mechanism, and not an exhausted church servant.
Going as a pilgrim to Rome with his Barcelona patron, Herbert made a favorable impression on the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I and allowed himself to be persuaded to work as a mentor to the young prince, the future Otto II. However, after several years, Herbert felt that he himself still needed to gain knowledge and, with the permission of the emperor, went to receive additional education to one of the most famous cathedral schools in Europe in the city of Reims in France.
Herbert stayed in Reims for a long time (he is often called Herbert of Reims); it was there that he built an organ and built a giant abacus in one of the annexes of the cathedral. There he collected lists of learned books from all over Europe, offered the neighboring archbishop to exchange his own model of the celestial sphere for a complete copy of the ancient poem, and addressed the slow copyists in Ciceronian quousque tandem that is, “how long?!” Teaching rhetoric at the Reims school, he advised his students not to show off the beauty of style, but to hide them, which ran counter to the tastes of the time, fluctuating between barbaric primitiveness and learned floweriness; but his main merit in this field is the transfer of the center of gravity of teaching from grammar to dialectics. From this subsequently grew the entire tradition of European scholasticism.
Legends tell about Herbert's dialectical abilities, however, more reliable than other stories about his life. The fame of the Reims scientist thundered throughout Europe; the best German dialectician, Otrich, challenged him, and the philosophers agreed on an open debate (the topic was the most abstract - “on the classification of sciences”) in the city of Ravenna. The debate continued for a whole day, until the listeners Otto II and his court were completely exhausted, and the emperor, by a willful decision, stopped the discussion.
Herbert's ecclesiastical career was successful, and at the turn of the millennium, in 999, he was elected Pope, becoming the first Frenchman to hold the See of St. Peter. He took the name Sylvester II, in memory of the first Sylvester, advisor to Emperor Constantine. His papacy was restless, including due to mass unrest, which forced both himself and his pupil, Emperor Otto III, to flee to Ravenna. Otto tried three times to regain his rebellious the eternal City, but died during the third expedition. But Pope Sylvester II nevertheless returned there, but he briefly outlived his patron and died in May 1003.
So why still a warlock? But because learning, including Eastern scholarship, made Herbert a popular character in legends. According to one of them, he received his papacy by playing dice with Satan. According to another, in Spain, Herbert was a student of a powerful Islamic sorcerer and decided to steal the book in which the sorcerer kept all his secrets. The sorcerer suspected something was wrong, but the cunning Herbert seduced the daughter of his teacher, who, crazy with love, got her father drunk, took out the key to the secret chest and handed the magic book to the cunning man.
Herbert immediately ran away, taking the book with him. Waking up from his heavy sleep, the sorcerer discovered the loss and set off in pursuit. He, it must be said, had a horse that could gallop faster than the wind, and a dog that could smell everything that was above the ground, underground, above the water and under the water.
Near the town of Martorell, Herbert discovered a pursuit. He ran to the bridge and climbed under it, hanging on it from below, like on a horizontal bar. So he found himself neither above the ground nor underground, neither above the water nor under the water. Since the dog's instincts were limited to the specified limits, he lost the trail, and the sorcerer had to return with nothing, and Herbert safely took the book of spells with him.
According to another legend, Herbert had a talking head, which was given to him by the so-called “Nine Unknowns” - mystical and omnipotent secret society originally from India (the existence of which is still talked about). She knew how to answer general issues(that is, requiring a “yes” or “no” answer). After consulting his head, Herbert found out that he would die while celebrating Mass in Jerusalem, so he postponed his already planned pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But one day, after a mass celebrated in one of the Roman churches, he felt ill, and then it turned out that this church was dedicated to St. Mary of Jerusalem, and was popularly called simply “Jerusalem.” Since Herbert had a pact with the devil, he asked his cardinals to cut his body into pieces and scatter it among the Roman wells, hoping that immortal soul he will somehow win back from Satan on his own.
Legends also surround the posthumous fate of Sylvester II. He is buried in the Roman Church of St. John on the Lateran Hill, and on his marble tombstone is written bad Latin verses beginning with the words
ISTE LOCVS MVNDI SILVESTRI MEMBRA SEPVLTI VENTVRO DOMINO CONFERET AD SONITVM
That is, “Here lie the mortal limbs of Sylvester, who will rise at the sound of the coming of the Lord.” That is: Pope Sylvester II will rise from the dead when the Lord comes in his glory, to the sound of the trumpet of the Day of Judgment. But popular rumor reinterpreted these words in its own way: the coming Lord was reinterpreted as new dad, and the sounds are like the rattling of bones. Hence the legend: before the death of the next pope, something quietly rumbles in the tomb of Sylvester II.
But why, according to Woland, were the manuscripts of this versatile person discovered in the Moscow State Library? Well, there is an explanation for this too. It was at the turn of the first and second millennia that Eastern Europeans first appeared on the stage of Christendom. Pope Sylvester II actively participated in this debut: he blessed Stephen I to the Hungarian throne and organized the first archiepiscopal diocese in Poland, although he opposed the idea of Otto III to make Bolesław the Brave a full-fledged king. He also communicated with Vladimir Svyatoslavich, the “Red Sun” and the baptist of Rus'. So the foreign consultant’s legend was quite plausible.
Sylvester: Surname Sylvester, James Joseph English mathematician Sylvester, Mikael French football player Name Main article: Sylvester (name) Pseudonym Timofeev, Sergei Ivanovich (1955 1994) - Russian criminal. Sylvester... ...Wikipedia
And husband.; decomposition Seliverst, a and Silverst, a; old Silvestre, a.Otch.: Silvestrovich, Silvestrovna; decomposition Sylvestrych.Derivatives: Sylvestruchka; Strength; Siwa; Seliverstka; Selya; Silverstka.Origin: (Latin silvester forest.)Name day: January 15, 14 ... Dictionary of personal names
- (? ca. 1566), priest of the Moscow Annunciation Cathedral from the late 1540s. He had a great influence on Ivan IV from 1547. Member of the Elected Rada. From 1560 in disgrace, he became a monk. Author of a special edition of Domostroy and many others. messages. Collected handwritten ... Russian history
Forest; Siliverst, Sylverst; Silvestrushka, Silya, Siva, Selya Dictionary of Russian synonyms. Sylvester noun, number of synonyms: 1 name (1104) ASIS Dictionary of Synonyms. V.N. Trishin... Synonym dictionary
- (? around 1566), priest of the Moscow Annunciation Cathedral from the late 1540s. He was close to Tsar Ivan IV (from 1547). Member of the Chosen Rada. Author of a special edition of Domostroy and many messages. From 1560 in disgrace, he became a monk... Modern encyclopedia
- (? 1123) ancient Russian writer, abbot of the Mikhailovsky Vydubetsky Monastery, close to Vladimir Monomakh, since 1118 bishop of Pereyaslavl (southern). One of the compilers of the Tale of Bygone Years...
- (? ca. 1566) priest of the Moscow Annunciation Cathedral from the end. 1540s He had a great influence on Ivan IV from 1547. Member of the Elected Rada. Author of a special edition of Domostroy and many messages. From 1560 in disgrace, he became a monk... Big encyclopedic Dictionary
I (? 1123), abbot of the Mikhailovsky Vydubetsky Monastery, from 1118 bishop of Pereyaslavl (southern); writer. Being close to Vladimir Monomakh, he played a prominent role in church and political affairs Old Russian state. One of the compilers... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
- (in the monks Spiridon) (died before 1577), political figure, writer. From the 1540s priest. While in Moscow, he made an accusatory speech against the young tsar, which contributed to the growth of his influence on the tsar and court circles. Sylvester became... ... Moscow (encyclopedia)
Books
- , I. M. Petropavlovsky. Sylvester II, Prince Svyatopolk Chetvertinsky, Bishop of Mogilev, and his fortune Orthodox Church in the Mogilev diocese. Reproduced in the original author's spelling of the publication...
- Sylvester II, Prince Svyatopolk of Chetvertinsky, Bishop of Mogilev, I.M. Petropavlovsky. Sylvester II, Prince Svyatopolk Chetvertinsky, Bishop of Mogilev, and the state of the reception of the Orthodox Church in the Mogilev diocese. Reproduced in the original author's spelling of the 1893 edition...
