Confession must ordinarily be the least-enjoyed sacrament—other than, I suppose, last rites—but over the subsequent weeks, I began to look forward to it with increasing anticipation, until I had to admit I was not using the ritual as intended, more interested in asking questions about Petrarch than on my own mundane sins. But as I thought about it, I started to worry that they were no longer so mundane, and found myself unable to sleep, wondering if I were on the cusp of imperiling my immortal soul. The time had come to confront Father Cambio, who, when I next came to him, listened to my concerns, then spoke in a tone of quiet reassurance.
“You are not making bad confessions, Mina, but you are right that we should separate our discussion of books from the sacrament. Here is what I propose: after we are finished here and you’ve made your Act of Contrition, we will take a turn around the church and discuss Petrarch.”
We adopted this practice, and after a few weeks had finished with De vita solitaria. Father Cambio lent me his copy of Cicero’s speeches. I found his powerful rhetoric deeply moving. After that, we moved to Plato, then Aristotle. Both fed my infinite curiosity. From there, I suggested The Decameron, which caused the good father to furrow his brow and shake his head.
“There is no denying the satisfaction that comes from reading a good story, and Boccaccio gives us many, but they are not something I would consider appropriate for a young lady.” His reaction did not surprise me—I had read enough of my oldest brother’s copy to know it contained more than a few ribald bits—but I blushed nonetheless, suddenly aware of a warm and not altogether unpleasant sensation coursing through me. Father Cambio made no mention of my crimson cheeks, but set me to reading excerpts from St. Augustine’s Confessions, starting with the story of the pears.
Augustine, before possessing any interest in becoming saintly, ran with a group of friends that reminded me very much of the unruly gangs that had marauded through Florence until the city’s merchants convinced the government that unchecked violence was bad for business. For whatever reason, despite having no interest in eating them, Augustine and his friends decided to steal pears from a tree and then fling them to some nearby hogs.
“Did you give me Augustine as a rebuke for my having wanted to read The Decameron?” I asked the following week.
“No,” Father Cambio said, “but it is worth giving consideration to how you occupy your mind.”
“If you force me to keep reading Augustine, you may find you’re pushing me into Satan’s waiting arms. Has there ever been a more smug saint? I find him repellent. What right has he to ask us to be holy from the beginning when he had all those years of fun?”
“We are not supposed to enjoy sin, Mina.”
“Perhaps, but it’s naïve to believe people don’t.”
“Augustine didn’t want the pears,” he said. “He knew stealing them was wrong. I would argue he didn’t enjoy any of it a bit.”
“Maybe if he’d done something more interesting than taking pears for which he had no desire, he would have found pleasure in it.”
“I’m afraid this conversation is taking a dangerous turn. Next week, let’s turn to Thomas Aquinas, his commentaries on Aristotle’s ethics.”
I muddled through Aquinas for more than a month. It did not speak to my soul. Even so, the discussion it catalyzed awakened something in me, something that had budded with my contempt for Augustine and now began to blossom. Father Cambio did not tolerate nonrigorous argument, holding me to the highest standards of both logic and rhetoric as he taught me the art of expression. He made me explain why I despised Augustine and then insisted that I defend my position, pushing me to revise and polish it until no obvious weaknesses remained. The exercise stimulated my mind like nothing before. I so enjoyed the art of persuasion that I no longer viewed Augustine as irritating, but rather a much-welcome starting point for biting criticism. No matter what we read, I could find within it either a position to defend or one to savage, and I was good at it. So very, very good at it.
My newly honed skills proved beneficial at home. My brothers were no longer able to trick me into taking their sides in arguments. I could persuade my parents to allow me to do more of what I wanted. And, most significantly, I convinced my slave, Alfia, to stop reporting my behavior to my mother. She now believed that I was a better judge of what was acceptable than the mistress of the house.
And what was the result of my newfound freedom? Did it lead to personal and moral disaster? In fact, it did. In ways I could never have imagined.