Letters:
| [Written in academic Latin, with halting inclusions of Emilia-Romagna, on a many-folded piece of parchment. Dated: Spring 1220]: |
| My dearest friend, Congratulations on your appointment to the Faculty of Arts in that most illustrious studium that is our alma mater. May you survive all trials, so that in a few years time I must address you as Magister. If the many nations of Bologna have among them students like you and I, you shall be sorely tested indeed. Without your tender care for my rhetorical shortcomings, I would never have achieved the modest successes I accomplished there. However, you must not forget your own lesson: that three is not the only number of the divine, one neglects the four at their own peril! I swiftly received your news and the manuscript you sent to me , as I had reason to myself be in Harco this past month. I am deeply interested in reading more of this man Leonardo's work. His tremendous faculty with the more flexible numerals, of which he is a most fantastic proponent, is astounding. I have made attempts to integrate his ideas into my own stumbling into the arithmetic realms. His work is like a great fixed star, without which we have been fruitlessly wandering the sea. That you did not appreciate it as I do, however, does not surprise me. It is superficially a method at odds with the classical mode we were taught and continue to teach. This is a fundamental misapprehension of his intent, and of the substance of the work. The Modus Indorum is a transfiguration that harmonizes the Artes elevating all of its component parts by their juncture: through its methodology he has brought us a coherent grammar and rhetoric OF arithmetic and geometry. You must continue to send to me any material written by this man, so that I may perhaps make another attempt to grasp the ideas posed in the latter half of this text. Many of their implications surely exist beyond the reach of mortal ken entirely, but I also suspect that a few of the slippery concepts elude me for the more usual reasons of authorship. I mentioned briefly above that I had reason of late to be in Harco. When my period given by my master to learn at university ended, I left the house in Bologna to return home. I have never explained fully to you the nature of my adoptive family, and I cannot do so now. You know from our time together that we are a wide spread group of merchants and academics, banded together by our mutual eccentricities. I have always been bound by filial oaths and a debt of gratitude to my master who raised and arranged for my education, just as a student at university to their master. My baccalaureate may be the end of my formal accomplishment within the academy, but while you stood examinations for your Magisterial degrees, I continued in the mode of my people and have finally completed the trials that signify full membership and freedom from apprenticeship among us. I came to Harco because our elders have decided to finance the creation of outposts and embassies in Africa, to extend the wide net of our efforts across that southern continent. I have joined this expedition, for I share their hope that we might increase our collection of both knowledge, oddities, and odd people like myself in those torrid lands. We are not many, but with the resources placed in our hands by the long, quiet stewardship of our organization, we stand a chance of achieving those goals in the coming decades. My plans are to take residence near Tunis, where I and a few others will endeavor to establish a trading house. I dream already of a great school rising above the cliffs, where the brightest at university may converse freely with the indic scholars freely, kept apart from the tedious politics of collegiate squabbling. If I do indeed settle there, I will be among the closest of my peers to familiar lands, but still I fear that we may never again meet in person. You may continue to give over your correspondences to that house in Bologna. Take care to instruct my friends there that I am now to be found in the Mahgreb, they will know how to locate me. If you find yourself with superfluous coinage have your letters sent to Harco bearing the same address, for our letters take a route through Harco and oft spend time languishing in Bologna before beginning their journey. Anything given directly to one of my people who wear a red cap is sworn to privacy, and will not be opened until it reaches my hands wherever I may be. I will pay for the cost of this journey, never concern yourself with it, my friend. If you find yourself in great need of haste, deliver with your letter into the hands of one wearing a red cap, and include with it a chess piece, a pawn of either color. Carve into its base a circumscribed equilateral triangle. In this way, you will signify a debt to be paid upon its receipt, and not a minor one. Such a letter will ensure fast passage to my hand. I will gladly shoulder such a debt if it means that I may come to the aid of my dearest friend any sooner. I await return correspondence with further details of the turmoil in Bologna, and of your doubtless impending successes there. As always, Klaudios Bonisagi |