The University of Bologna was the most famous centre of learning in southern Europe. Its rivals were Oxford and Paris. It taught the codification and administration of the laws on which the Church had survived for a millennium. It ignored theological speculation. Religious thought, which would have been only an illusion in the lives of these fledgling canon lawyers, had no substance. Theology was theoretical. The law took its nature from the material opportunities it represented. The student lawyers would graduate as doctors of canon law, then go on to become prelates bishops, archbishops and cardinals of the Church, stoically unaware of the spiritual side of the extraordinary complex they served, yet preserving and extending it by the attributes of their legal practice.

By banishing theological speculation from its curriculum, the university also banished all heresy to which such speculation gives rise and extinguished all interest in the purpose and meaning of the religion which the young lawyers were being trained to serve. The scholastic year lasted from October to the end of the following August. We needed to write no lies about Cossa's scholastic accomplishments in the letters which I dictated to Father Fanfarone for forgery into Cossa's hand. Cossa was renowned as a scholar.

Bernaba had brought her own money and a small collection of jewels. Spina had been generous. She thanked Cossa for his offer of hospitality in the same spacious, well-furnished house as we occupied, which Palo had found, four streets from the university. She told us she had to leave to get her business organized. `It's always hard to get started,' she said, `'but. I did it before and this looks like a pretty lively town.'