An Elegant Solution(60)

Two hundred years ago, in the years that Holbein’s art came to Basel, and Paracelsus’ darker art came to Basel, the Reformation also came to Basel. It came in a man. His name was Hausschein, which meant HouseLamp; for his scholarly name he took Oecolampadius, which was Greek for that same HouseLamp. And he was a very bright lamp in Basel. He came when he was thirty from Heidelburg, at the very moment that Luther was nailing his theses to the Wittenburg door, and that was the flame that lit Oecolampadius’s wick.

He preached atonement at Saint Martin’s Church and was the Reader of scripture at the University. He assisted Erasmus in that scholar’s translation of the New Testament, and disputed that scholar’s interpretation of it. Erasmus was finally bested; he admitted it himself, and Oecolampadius carried the city. Erasmus, near twenty years older, outlived him, though not for long. They’re both buried in the Munster.

Zwingli was a student in Basel when Oecolampadius was in Heidelberg, and they became friends even as one had left Basel before the other arrived. They were partners in the disputations that ranged through Switzerland those years, arguing for Luther against Rome, arguing for Anabaptism against Luther, arguing for Luther against Anabaptism, arguing against anything, against each other if there was nothing else, and fracturing Catholicism in Switzerland forever, taking the land city by city and canton by canton into the Reformation.

Oecolampadius and Paracelsus were contemporaries. I could imagine the dispute those two would have had. And if Mephisto, on leaving the Alchemist’s door, had, in the streets of Basel encountered the Reformer, that dispute would have been the greatest of all. And I’m sure who would have bested the other.

Within twelve years of Luther’s nailing, the University in Catholic Basel was so engulfed in the Reformation’s fire that the Pope suspended his charter of the school and took its scepter, its seal, its statutes, certificates, privileges, and its cash assets. Three years later, Protestant Basel reopened the school. Oecolampadius had died the year before. The University had lost its seal, but the Pope had lost his University. It had risen, the same University, but altogether changed.



My grandmother and I then walked back through Basel’s same streets to our own home and were offered no disputes or bargains. I preferred disputes in Mathematics, where ultimately a correct statement was irrefutable and an incorrect statement was indefensible. A dispute of Theology must also have truth and error, just as in Mathematics, but it seemed every man still chose for himself which was which.

And this was why there were both judgment and mercy, and why sacrifice made it possible for there to be both.

We ate in humble righteousness, which was the only kind.



“Grandmother,” I said. “I was speaking with Master Nicolaus last night.”

“Were you?” she said, nodding. “Yes, I spoke with him yesterday, also.”

“I thought you might have.”

“He called on me. He’s a very gentleman.”

“You must have had a pleasant conversation,” I said.

“He thought that you hadn’t been able to answer a question that was put to you at the Inquiry.”

“I hadn’t been able,” I said. “It was just then that Master Huldrych became ill.”

“He asked me if I knew the answer to the question you’d been asked. I told him that in his mother’s kitchen, you spoke with Knipper, and were sent to the inn for help with the black trunk.”

“Thank you,” I said. My grandmother was the wisest of women and always knew what was right and proper.



On the next, rain-soaked Monday morning, I opened the kitchen door as I always did and wondered how I’d find Mistress Dorothea. She might have been as slow as she’d been on Friday or she might have been returned to her normal whirling state. But she was neither, nor in between. She was in her normal household attire, except that she had on a black housecoat, and she was standing in the center of the room, stiff, waiting. For me. “Leonhard.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said.

“Master Johann wishes to see you.”

I looked down at my mud-splashed self. “But Mistress Dorothea,” I started.

“He said as soon as you arrived.”

“Then, please,” I answered, and followed, all brown. We went to the hall, and to the stairs, but up only one floor. The door we came to was one I’d seen only once before, when my father brought me to Master Johann at my matriculation, to discuss my Saturday afternoons. Dorothea knocked and the voice answered, but it was different, as different as brown was from black and white, as different as Monday morning was from Saturday afternoon.