00:00The world was dark. It was the 10th century. Europe slumbered under a thick blanket of
00:05superstition and fear. Knowledge was a flickering candle, guarded by a few lonely monks in scattered
00:10monasteries. It was into this world that a boy named Gerbert was born. But Gerbert was different.
00:16He was curious. He was sent to the local monastery of Saint-Geroux. For most, this would have been
00:21enough. But for Gerbert, it was only the beginning. He devoured every text he could find, his hunger
00:28for knowledge, impossible to satisfy. His abbot saw the fire in the young man's eyes. He set off on a
00:35long and perilous journey south. He was heading towards the Pyrenees Mountains, a gateway to another
00:41world. As they traveled south the very air seemed to change. This was the borderland, a place where
00:47two great civilizations met. He arrived at the monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll, nestled in
00:53the Catalan hills. Here, the library was different. It was better. In Cordoba, the largest and most
00:59sophisticated city in Europe, it had libraries containing hundreds of thousands of books,
01:04while the greatest libraries in Christendom had only a few hundred. He learned from scholars in
01:08Barcelona, and Vic, who were in contact with their Muslim and Jewish counterparts. In his France,
01:14mathematics was a clumsy affair. Yet, with it, he could perform calculations with a speed and accuracy
01:19that seemed supernatural. He studied the astrolabe, a beautiful and intricate brass instrument.
01:25It turned the terrifying, chaotic night sky into a predictable, elegant system. Musical instruments
01:31like the water organ that played complex melodies powered by hydraulics, water clocks that chimed on
01:36the hour. He learned that the world could be understood through observation, experimentation,
01:41and rational thought. As Gerbert's fame for this strange new knowledge grew, so did the whispers.
01:47They were stories told in hushed tones around monastery fires and in royal courts.
01:51The most persistent of these legends involved a Saracen philosopher. The legend says this philosopher
01:57possessed a single priceless book, a grimoire. Gerbert carefully slid the grimoire from under the
02:02sleeping philosopher's pillow, heart pounding with tension. Holding the forbidden tome, he fled the
02:09house and ran into the night. He was trapped. The sea was before him, the enemy behind. According to
02:15the legend he opened the grimoire. He read a powerful incantation from its pages. The demon spirited him
02:21away, carrying him over the sea back to Christian lands. It was a head, cast in bronze. The legend
02:27insisted that the bronze head could answer any question Gerbert asked of it. When he built a
02:32magnificent water organ for the cathedral at Raam, when he constructed what might have been one of
02:38Europe's first mechanical clocks. The head, powered by a captive demon, supposedly guided his every step,
02:45leading him from a French monastery, all the way to the throne of Rome. He asked the name of the church,
02:51the answer came back, the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. When Gerbert returned from Spain,
02:57he did not hide his knowledge, he shared it. He taught his students how to use the abacus. More
03:03importantly, he became the tutor and close friend of the young Holy Roman Emperor, Otto III. Together,
03:09they dreamed of a renewed Roman Empire. Finally, in the year 999, a year many expected to bring the
03:15apocalypse, the scholar from Aurelac was elected Pope. He took the name Sylvester II. As Pope,
03:22Sylvester II worked tirelessly to reform the church, fighting against corruption and the practice of
03:27selling church offices. Pope Sylvester II died in 1003, just four years into his papacy. With their
03:34deaths, the brief candle of their new age flickered and went out. A bizarre legend attached itself to
03:40his tomb in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. It would become damp, and the sound of
03:46rattling bones could be heard from within the marble sarcophagus just before a Pope was about to die.
03:51The tomb was finally opened in 1648. But the moment the air touched the body it crumbled
03:57instantly into fine dust. Gerbert of Aurelac, Pope Sylvester II, was not a sorcerer. He was a man of
04:04courage and towering intellect. His real legacy is not a pact with a demon, but a brave quest for
04:10knowledge that helped plant the seeds of science and learning, seeds that would one day blossom into
04:14the Renaissance.
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