Baudolino by Umberto Eco

start over again from the beginning. Is my law perhaps wrong? Who can tell me my law is right?"
    And, as if instinctively, Baudolino said: "Sire, if you start thinking that way, you'll never reach an end, whereas, on the contrary, the emperor exists for this very reason: he isn't emperor because he has the right ideas, but his ideas are right because they come to him, and that's that."
    Frederick looked at him, then said to Rainald: "This boy expresses things better than the whole pack of you! If these words were simply turned into good Latin, they would seem wondrous!"
    "
Quod principi plaquit legis habet vigorem:
that which pleases the
prince has the strength of law," Rainald of Dassel said. "Yes, it sounds very wise, and definitive. But it would have to be written in the Gospel, otherwise how could all be persuaded to accept this beautiful idea?"
    "We clearly saw what happened in Rome," Frederick said. "If I have myself anointed by the pope, I admit
ipso facto
that his power is superior to mine; if I grab the pope by the throat and fling him into the Tiber, I become a scourge of God worse even than poor Attila.... Where the devil can I find someone who will define my rights without claiming to be above me? Such a person doesn't exist in the world."
    "Perhaps a power such as that doesn't exist," Baudolino then said to him, "but the knowledge exists."
    "What do you mean?"
    "When Bishop Otto told me what a
studium
is, he said that these communities of masters and students operate independently: the students come from all over the world and it doesn't matter who their sovereign is, and they pay their teachers, who are therefore dependent entirely on their pupils. This is how things work with the masters of law in Bologna, and this is how it is also in Paris, where in earlier times the masters taught in the cathedral schools and hence were dependent on the bishop, until one fine day they went off to teach on the Mountain of Saint Geneviève, and they attempt to discover the truth without listening either to the bishop or to the king."
    "If I were their king I'd show them a thing or two. But even if this were the case?"
    "It would be the case if you made a law by which you acknowledge that the masters of Bologna are truly independent of every other power, whether yours or the pope's or any other sovereign's, and they are in the service only of the Law. Once they are invested with this dignity, unique in the world, they will affirm that—in accord with true reason, natural enlightenment, and tradition—the only law is
the Roman and the only person representing it is the holy Roman emperor—and that naturally, as Master Rainald has said so well—
quod principi plaquit legis habet vigorem.
"
    "And why would they say that?"
    "Because, in exchange, you give them the right to say it, and that is no small thing. So you are content, they are content, and, as my father Gagliaudo used to say, you are both in an iron-clad barrel."
    "They wouldn't agree to anything like that," Rainald grumbled.
    "Yes, they would." Frederick's face brightened. "I tell you they will agree. Only, first, they have to make that declaration, and then I'll give them independence. Otherwise everyone will think that they did it to repay a gift from me."
    "If you ask me, even if you do turn the process around, if someone wants to say it was prearranged, they'll say so anyway," Baudolino remarked skeptically. "But I'd like to see anyone stand up and say the doctors of Bologna aren't worth a dried fig, when even the emperor has gone humbly to ask their opinion. At that point, what they have said is Gospel."
    And so it happened, that same year, at Roncaglia, where for the second time a great diet was held. For Baudolino it was above all a great spectacle. As Rahewin explained to him—so he wouldn't believe that everything he saw was simply a big circus with banners flapping on all sides, standards, colored tents, merchants, and