Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  Sorrow and years had taken the last audacious red from his whitened hair and his brows, and his face was creviced with sorrow and pain and there was a faint but constant tremor about his wide firm mouth. But he walked upright and strongly on his bowed legs and his glance, despite his afflicted eye, was still leonine and commanding, and his voice held an imperious note still, and a fascination, which seized men’s attention. None held a lukewarm opinion about him. He was fiercely and devotedly loved, or as fiercely and devotedly hated, in the Church. Rebuking, chastising, exhorting, condemning, praising, loving, explaining, teaching, converting, comforting, laughing or weeping, jesting or scorning, he journeyed apparently without fatigue, his eyes sparkling or blazing or tender, in accordance with the occasion, his manner abrupt, violent, impatient, conciliatory, depending on those he encountered. If he marveled often at the blind stupidity of man and the sin and error in which he appeared confirmed, embracing the death of the soul which so terrified him, himself, Saul also saw the piteous predicament of man, the hopeless sorrow, the bewilderment, the anxious pain, the infirmities, and he marveled anew that so frail a creature possessed also a fortitude and an endurance and a desire for truth and certitude which must move the hearts of angels.

  Once he said to Lucanus, “If I were to be permitted but one word to describe a man I would say he is brave. For he is brave in spite of his intelligence which makes him aware of a hostile world and environment, and which seemingly is without hope and surety or help for pain, and is heavy with loss and sadness and disappointment. Animals are not aware of these things, so they have an animal courage for the day’s needs. But a man knows the years and the memory of them, and he knows that the coming years hold out to him no promise of splendor and satisfaction but only a repetition of yesterday, and in spite of that he has the bravery to endure, and we must salute him.”

  His compassion grew as he journeyed to the harsh shores of Lystra, to golden Ephesus, to Macedonia, to Philippi of the gray stone mountains and the scarlet poppy plains. It was in Philippi that the Romans—becoming more and more exasperated by the Christians—and having heard that he was a turbulent man who insulted the gods and desecrated their temples and aroused rebellion among slaves and freedmen and the rabble, and had commanded them to rise against Rome and their masters, seized him and threw him into prison, there to await trial and probable execution as a traitor. This, was done on a day when Lucanus and Timothy were absent.

  The Romans brought him before a magistrate to be cited before his trial. He said to the magistrate with his old pride, “I am a Roman citizen, not by purchase, but by birth, and I demand a jury of my peers. For I am blameless of the spiteful charges you have heard against me, the lies and the calumnies. I came in peace. I would depart in peace.”

  The magistrate was impressed both by Saul’s manner and speech, and by his claim to Roman citizenship. So he had the manacles removed from his wrists and ankles—restraints but for slaves and subjects—and ordered a goblet of wine for him, and bread and cheese and meat, to be served to him three times a day in his cell, while awaiting his formal trial. The magistrate would have released him, but for a number of years the excesses of the more zealous among the Christians had vexed him, in spite of his Roman tolerance, and there were complaints from the people of Philippi against them, and the priests of the temples also complained that as so many were being converted to this Jewish sect they were losing revenue and the temples were full no longer. As the temples paid a portion of that revenue to Roman taxgatherers for the maintenance of the Roman garrisons in the city, this was a serious matter. There was also a rumor that some of the younger Christians, and the more passionate, had a disagreeable habit of openly scorning the gods of Rome, and refusing to do them honor.

  And Saul was rumored to have come to Philippi to cause greater disturbances and more inflammatory rebellion, and it was also rumored that he had written letters to the Christian community to resist Roman laws and ordinances even before his arrival. The magistrate, on questioning Saul, came to the conclusion that all this was lies, but as the feeling in the city was intense against him he had no other choice but to incarcerate him and remand him for trial.

  “It is a mortifying thing for a Roman citizen to be held in prison on the word of mere freedmen and rabble who have no claim on Rome at all,” said the magistrate to his colleagues. “But we know how passionate the rabble is, and how easily incited to riot and incendiarism, and so we must pacify them, though the gods know why! I do not. I only obey my orders from Rome.”

  “In less easy and decadent days, we should merely have set upon rabble at the first sign of rebellious and dangerous behavior,” his colleagues said with a sigh. “But now all is conciliation, understand, smiling tolerance, excuses and a light hand on the sword. This will mean the death of Rome. If law, and the authority of law, is flouted, then barbarism follows, and chaos.”

  Saul sat in his cell and fumed. He was not afraid for himself, but he was distressed that his mission was delayed, and that it might even be destroyed. Lucanus, a Roman citizen also, was permitted to visit him and to bring him blankets and other small comforts, and the Romans were struck by the aspect of the Greek and his voice and his profession.

  “Alas, that you find me here,” said Saul, and immediately asked about the Christian community. Lucanus did not tell him that it was like all the young Christian communities, lacerated by dissensions and threatened schisms and doctrinal quarrels, and even suits against members in the Roman courts, and avid youths who spoke of “the sword of God.” Instead, he told Saul that the community was large and flourishing—which it was—and that many converts were being made among the Gentiles. He assured his friend that he would soon be cleared of false charges, and released, though he was not certain of this, himself. As for Lucanus, he must go alone now on his own journeys as an evangelist.

  The two friends embraced, encouraging each other. Saul, through the bars of his cell, watched Lucanus retreating down the wet stone corridor. He fell on the blankets and wept, and the passing Roman soldiers observed this and wondered, for Saul had impressed them with his courage and his calmness.

  Saul was stricken anew by the thought that all he loved had died: His son, Boreas, the wife and children of Boreas, Elisheba bas Judah. Why should I, he thought, old and worn and tired and despairing, live and the young and beautiful die? For they have dreams and hopes that no longer haunt me, and lovely illusions spun of rainbows and moonlight and their eyes are sunlit and they carry banners with wonderful insignia and march to the sound of drums that never were, but which are glorious to their ears. What they have is illusion—but how sweeter it is than this bleak reality with its intimation of bones and imminent decay! Alas, when I think of my young beloved’s deaths, Heaven, itself, seems less shining, less desirable, for what a child suffers in agony at the hands of man must mar the radiance of the hereafter eternally for him.

  Alas, alas, he said to himself, I think and grieve as a man for I am nothing but a man and my heart is nothing but a wound. Would that I die tonight!

  “The Christian rabbi weeps,” said the soldiers to each other, “but for sorrow and not for himself.”

  Saul thought of his old wry teacher, Aristo, and even in his tears and in the midst of his pain he began to smile. “Ah, Aristo,” he murmured aloud, “one day in my childhood you threatened me that I should find myself imprisoned because of my temper and other imperfections of character, and I laughed gleefully in your face, for in those glowing years the world was before me like an opal, filled with delicate shadows and fiery light and endless breathing colors, and set ablaze by the Presence of God. Yet you find me here now, dear friend. I cannot believe that you are not in Heaven, for all teachers must rise there at once, considering their pupils, so look down from the blue and blazing battlements and send me comfort—if you will.”

  The soldiers yawned at the end of the narrow stony corridor. Saul occupied one of the cells which had a high little window looking out up
on the city, for he was a Roman citizen and so could not be consigned to the dungeons below, airless and black. He was also the only prisoner on this corridor. The soldiers squatted by the light of a lantern and torch and began to dice and to sing to pass the dull hours of the night. Some drowsed with their backs against the huge damp stones of the walls, wrapped in their cloaks. Some ate their rude military rations and drank their ordinary wine and talked of girls; a few engaged in boxing or wrestling matches. Saul could hear their young boisterous voices, their hoarse laughter, and he was filled with love for them, these youths who did not know as yet what it was to be old and tired and anxious and bereaved.

  One or two strolled down to converse with him, for they found him witty and his laughter as rough and loud as their own, and he often had strange tales to tell, concerning his Deity who had died in Jerusalem on a cross for inciting the people to riot against the Romans. They listened in fascination to his account of his vision on the desert to Damascus, and were awed, but not touched by faith. They believed him without question. It was a magnificent story. The Jewish God was no less beautiful and puissant than their own, and no more to be believed. But, it was a magnificent story and they had awe for the man who had seen the vision. “He is a poet,” they said. “A veritable Homer.”

  They told him they could not understand the Christians, who had no desire to be soldiers and did not lust after the things of the belly, nor after girls, and did not engage in the pleasant ways of barter and cheating in the marketplaces. Were they not men, and did they not have the parts of men? Or, did they hate the ways of men and so men, themselves, for disdaining the pleasures of the world? They listened to Saul, but shook their young heads. They had no hatred for the Christians, for who knew which god was the most powerful? But they were commanded to keep the peace, and the Christians were not always peaceful, but they openly denounced the gods as “idols” and refused, in the courts, to swear by Apollo that they would speak the truth and swore only by their own God, Who was not recognized among the hierarchy of the Divine as yet. So, who could trust their testimony and their promises? Saul explained, over and over, but as he spoke in a context totally strange to their ears and their minds he was not successful. However, they were kind to him and gave him of their own wine and fruit. After all, a wise man, even though a prisoner, was not to be despised, particularly a Roman citizen.

  They said to him tonight, “Why do you weep so loudly, Rabbi?”

  They leaned against the bars of the cell and gazed between the bars at him with earnest youthful faces, for Saul had not seemed to them the kind of man who would weep.

  He looked at them by the light of the dim lantern they held and he said gently, trying to halt his tears, “I had a son, and he had a son and a beautiful wife and a little daughter, and my son and all his family died—in a fire. Therefore, I weep.”

  “Ah,” said one of the soldiers, with sympathy. He held his leather flask of wine to Saul, between the bars. Saul did not want the wine but he desired more not to hurt the feelings of the lad, so he thanked him and drank a little, restraining a grimace at the vinegary smart of it. The soldier said with the wisdom of youth, “It does nothing to weep for the dead. They have passed to Pluto’s realm or they are in the Elysian Fields or on the Blessed Isles, and they know us not any longer nor care for us.”

  Saul said, “It is a good and worthy thing to pray for the dead, and to ask their prayers in return.” As always, he baffled them. “Their prayers,” said Saul, “are more efficacious than the prayers of the living, for they are closer to God.”

  The soldiers nodded gravely in polite affirmation but did not believe it in the least. These Jews were very curious. They wandered back to their companions. Saul watched their going. I have no power, he thought sadly. These lads listen to me each night and day yet I do. not move them.

  He sat on his blankets and listened to the noisy laughter and voices of the soldiers, and mourned in the darkest part of his soul for his dead. Then all at once he became conscious that there was utter silence beyond his cell, not even broken by the patrolling footsteps of the guard. He listened acutely. It was deathly quiet as if he were incarcerated in the blackest womb of the earth where no man lived but he. He rose achingly from his blankets and thrust his head as far as possible between the bars and looked down the corridor.

  He saw an incredible sight. The soldiers were not sleeping but they were frozen like statues in the very acts and postures in which they had been engaging. Some sat rigidly against the walls; some were stilled in the movements of dicing, some were standing with their flasks to their mouths, others were caught in the very motion of chewing, others had been stilled, as if they had seen Medusa, herself, in the gestures of boxing and wrestling. One young soldier was immobilized in the air just above the back of his comrade, who had thrown him over his shoulder, and another stood, knees bent, helmeted head averted, with his fist against the mouth of another soldier.

  Saul could not believe it. He saw that the soldiers were not unconscious, for he caught the dim glitter of their open, glaring, terrified eyes by the flickering red light of a torch thrust into the wall and the lantern attached to a stone. Only their eyes were aware and in motion, and their young faces were running with sweat as they strove to shake off the invisible stone that encased their bodies.

  Then they, and Saul, saw the black iron door slowly opening. The soldiers had heard the creak of it, and they rolled their eyes in its direction, though this was the only part of them which could move. Their sweat fell over their cheeks like tears, dripped onto their leather-harnessed chests. Saul, as fearful and as fascinated as themselves, saw the dark aperture widening as the door opened. Then a young man in a long white tunic stood on the threshold, fair and stately as a god, and as serene and indifferent.

  He glanced with aloof amiability at the transfixed soldiers, stepped over their legs easily and moved around them. He walked down the corridor to Saul’s cell and there was no sound of his sandals on the wet stones. It was as if he walked .on air just above the floor. He paused at the bars of Saul’s cell, and looked into his face with that calm and remoteness which were more frightening than violence, and even more terrible than rage, for it was not human and what was human could not disturb him.

  Saul could see the slight luminous aura about him, like pale and shifting gold. It illuminated his large features, his robe, his hands, his feet. He smiled slightly at Saul, but not with the friendship and concern of a man. He said, and his voice echoed along the corridor like the long sound of music: “Put on your sandals, Saul of Tarshish, and take up your cloak, for I have come to release you.”

  Saul, as if stricken like the soldiers also, could not stir for a moment or two. A chill and ambiguous fear came to him, and he thought, “Is he releasing me to death, though all my work is still before me?”

  The young man said with stately peremptoriness, “Hasten,” and his eyes had a glint of impatience.

  Saul gathered up his blankets, his cloak and a scroll, and put on his sandals with trembling hands. He could not look away from his visitor during this, and he teemed with questions he knew would not be answered. Then he stood up.

  The young man put his hands on the bars of the cell and shook them, not vigorously, but as a child would shake them with the slightest effort. And at that instant the earth roared in thunder, the floor rocked under Saul’s feet so that he staggered and fell heavily against the wall of his cell, and his human heart was terror-stricken. The thunder echoed and beat through the air, and the walls swayed and the torch and lantern down the corridor blew as if a gale had seized them. The soldiers did not move, but Saul, running to the bars and gazing down the corridor to them, could not only see the dread on their young faces but the ghastly horror of their living eyes. They still had not moved, petrified into statues.

  Saul heard a clanging. The door of his cell had flown open. It hung on its hinges, broken, and not by human hands. The visitor had vanished. Saul left his cell on shaking
legs. He moved slowly down the corridor. He said to the young soldiers watching him, “Do not fear. You will soon be released.” But they only stared at him, as motionless as their own shadows.

  He passed from the prison into the dark of the city, which was illuminated only by the red flare of torches and restless lanterns which bobbed through the streets. The earthquake had done little harm, but there were agitated groups on the streets and alarmed soldiers. Saul made his way to his inn, and found Timothy there.

  “Saul!” cried the young man, rising from his bed and falling upon Saul’s neck with a groaning exclamation of joy and relief. “They have released you!”

  “No,” said Saul, “God did.”

  He put his hands on Timothy’s shoulders and said, “I was mourning and I was lost and forgotten, and God sent his messenger to lead me out of prison.”

  But as a Roman and a lawyer he knew his duty. The next morning, after a brief and peaceful sleep, he went to the magistrate who had sent him to prison. The rumor, however, of what had transpired the night before had run before him and the magistrate regarded him gravely. “I have heard the soldiers,” he said at once. “If the gods do not desire you to remain in prison and be tried, and punished, who is man to command that? If the gods believe you innocent of all charges, who am I to declare you guilty?”

  Now there was fear in his eyes, and superstition. The soldiers had told him, in their own terror and excitement, that Apollo, himself, or at least Mercury, had caused an earthquake to free Saul of Tarshish, and that they had been unable to prevent his escape. The gods, it would seem, loved the Christians. The magistrate made a mouth. “I do not admire their taste,” he said, and wrote on the records that Saul of Tarshish had been found innocent and had been delivered from prison.