The Heretic

Kitāb al-insān (Book of Man)

Editor’s Note: The Kitāb al-insān (Book of Man) is a treatise purportedly written by Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, the great Khwarazmian Iranian polymath (c. 973 – 1050 AD). The work, if genuine, is perhaps one of the earliest works of ethnography in history. The author documents the stories of various individuals, communities, and cultures that reached him in Bukhara, as well as those he visited in person – particularly during his time in India. It is thought the work entered Latin-Christendom via the Jewish translators of Toledo sometime in the 12th century.

The following chapter was self-evidently not written by al-Biruni himself, but was instead a later addition, either via a translator or transcriber, who for reasons unclear wished to have this little-known tale preserved for posterity.

Giovanni of Ferrara was burned at the stake at four o’clock in the afternoon on the 11th of December 1348. 

Coincidentally, this was the precisely the same time he would have ordinarily exchanged his study among the dimly lit corridors of the College of Navarre for his daily walk through the estate’s gardens. It had been on one such walk two years earlier that his incendiary demise had had its beginnings. 

After a long day spent leafing through the correspondence of his former teacher and one-time bishop of his hometown, John of Jandun, and famed author of Defensor Pacis, Marselius of Padua, the rector needed the mental refreshment that only trees can bring. He was still pondering the words of the Christian Averroists and their ideas on the plurality of forms and the unity of intellect, when, upon idly tracing the flight of a young crow with his eyes, Giovanni accidentally looked directly into the sun.

So blinded was he that he sat down right where he stood, under the boughs of a magnificent oak, blinking stupidly. Even after some seconds the spots spoiling his vision would not abate, no matter how much he rubbed his eyes. In fact, they grew larger. Soon his entire vision was given over to a void-like darkness, embellished only by dancing blobs of colour that swam before his eyes.  

In panic, the professor could only watch as the lights coalesced into a swirling vision – a vision of a raging inferno. Fires licked and writhed before his eyes in a dance unceasing until he could see nothing else.  

And in those flames he saw things no one man has ever seen before or since: he saw the original white-hot ball of heat from which the universe first began; he saw the immolation of stars — not bright orbs of gas and flame like thought, but instead openings in the great cosmic wheels that reel around the universe; he saw the first fires used by early humans, more apes than men, after the bush in which they scavenged a living was set ablaze by lightning; he saw the fires of civilisation illuminate the first monstrous ziggurats; he saw the flame of Pharos warn ships of hidden reefs; he saw the inferno engulf both the Great Library and the Yuanmingyuan; he saw early believers burned by pagans and the bonfires of heretics murdered at the stake; he saw the furnaces of death camps, choking with smoke; he saw rain set afire, loosed from flying machines upon straw-hatted men; he saw the smouldering bellow of a great mushroom, ruining the sky; he saw in those flames all the fires that had ever been, and all the fires yet to come; he saw the Great Flame of the Creator, who burned beyond all thought and time. Then all went black.

When he came to, the theologian found himself returned once more to the quiet garden of Navarre. Birds skittered overhead and wind rustled through the tree under which he sat. It was as if nothing had happened at all; but the significance of what he had seen was not lost on Giovanni: those visions can only have come from God himself.

From that day, Giovanni was a man possessed. Great reams of parchment were bespoiled by his scratchy hand. A deluge of ink was unleashed in holy fury as letters were sent off to all corners of Europe, to all echelons of the Church. Of course, Giovanni knew what would happen; that by telling of his experience, of the Truth now revealed to him, he would likely die. He knew his fellow churchmen would not be able to abide his heresy, but he knew it better to face death in the blinding light of divine revelation, than suffer living a dark falsehood. 

When the day came, Giovanni was not afraid. In fact, he went gladly. He had enough credit stored up from his years as a diligent rector to be offered a quicker death, an end by the sword. But Giovanni had seen what was required of him and so declined.

Upon his burning pyre they asked him to repent. 

One fire is all fires, he said, and fire is all things. We were born of the Flame, and to the Flame we return. 

Then the heat reached his skin and the screaming began.