Its the year 1553. From the Italian village of Ancona, young Benjamin and his tutor, the Portuguese anatomist and physician Amatus Lusitanus - both ot them Jews coerced to convert to Christianity by the Holy Inquisition - are summoned to Rome by the renowned artist Michelangelo Buonarroti for a secret meeting. There, at the hub of the Catholic Church, both are caught up in a plot that will take Benjamin to France and what is now Switzerland, passing through the intellectual ferment of the Sorbonne, the College Royal in Paris, the Gymnasium in Strasbourg and the rigorous regime in Protestant...