Knowledge of Angels

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘My eminence is as an engineer. I think it no shame to use my hands, although usually my weapon is a pen. I admit at once that it was the height of folly not to wake the boy first.’

  ‘And taking the tiller in the first place? For a prince you have a strange disposition towards menial tasks.’

  ‘He was drowsy, sirs. He had that long-limbed look that boys get when they spurt in height, and for a while outgrow their strength . . . I have a son at home of just such an age as he . . . In short, I was tender to his sleepiness.’

  ‘So what would you say if we pointed out to you that any vagrant rogue might devise a story such as yours to defraud charity?’

  ‘I would say this is a blessed island, if vagrant rogues here can converse in Latin with learned men like yourselves.’

  Once more the adjudicators exchanged glances.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Fra Felip, ‘in the end it is not this farrago of the man’s arrival that need concern us; let us get to the point. Fellow,’ he said to Palinor, ‘there is written on your warrant the claim that you are an atheist. A confusion, no doubt. No doubt you are a gentile of some kind, a pagan of some kind?’

  ‘I do not believe in God,’ said Palinor.

  ‘Sometimes people get confused, and confess that divine matters are beyond their understanding, and call themselves unbelievers,’ said Fra Felip. ‘We would have no quarrel with a gentile; we would attempt his instruction, but let him depart in peace, converted or unconverted. It might be possible to treat an unbeliever as an unconverted pagan. But only a servant of the devil could be an atheist. You should think carefully before you reply to this.’

  ‘Is there an appeal?’ said Palinor. ‘I am a free man in my country, where in matters of conscience all are free, even the least of us. I appeal.’

  ‘There is no appeal from us except to the cardinal prince himself.’

  ‘To him, then.’

  5

  The roads out of Ciudad radiate across the plain like the spokes of a wheel. Most of them are straight, or fairly straight, and bear the names of their destinations among the little towns. Only the road to Sant Jeronimo and beyond in the high mountains fails in directness, and that lies on the mighty slopes that it gradually and painfully ascends like twine that has fallen from a shuttle, turning and returning in the sharpest of bends, making many miles and a tolerable gradient up the face of the mountain. The roads are dusty, but not neglected – breaking stones and filling holes being given as a customary penance to able-bodied sinners. One road leads along the foot of the mountain some distance, and then turns abruptly between two mighty free-standing peaks, great volcanic plugs with sheer sides rising to flat-topped crests, and, passing below them in a narrow and spectacular gorge, enters an intramontane valley. The valley floor is occupied by an ancient fig orchard, with wheat spreading beneath the armies of trees. A torrent, violent in spring and dry in summer, cuts a serpentine gully full of stones alongside the road. There are no villages here, although there are barns and byres – the whole valley belongs to the monastery of Galilea, which stands on an eminence at the northern, remoter end.

  Those who founded the Galilea sought solitude, and the monastery originally occupied a group of caves and ledges in a cliff-face. The fame of its austere and pious founder spread; pilgrims made the two-day journey from Ciudad; by and by the ledges were fronted with sheltering arches, the caves opened to balconies and porches with outlooks down the valley, and eventually at the foot of the cliff, beside the monastery church, a cloister and a library spread out below the vertiginous structures clinging to the cliff wall. After the first century and a half of the monastery’s existence, the abbots had been able to build alongside the original church a grander and larger one, but piety and love of the founder forbade abandoning his church, and the two naves shared an aisle and opened into one another.

  Remote as it was, the Galilea was a centre of learning. Every priest on Grandinsula had sat for some months daily on the benches that occupied the older church and learned theology from one or other of the famous teachers of the order. There was also an oblate school, at which any clever boy, however poor, could get an education in exchange for a promise to enter the order if God called when the time was ripe, and at which the princes of the island could taste discipline, from fearless masters. There, long ago, Severo had been beaten for mistakes in Latin grammar and had learned humility. There the great scholar Beneditx, who had shared an oblate’s bench with Severo, now sat at the window of one of the highest painted caves, bent over the works of the fathers, day by day, indifferent to his fame for sanctity and learning, having long withdrawn from teaching and disputation, devoting himself single-mindedly to his great treatise on the knowledge of angels.

  He had copied into his papers ‘Boethius says: through Himself alone God disposes all things’ when, looking up, he saw the rider, far below, on the road up the valley. It was early evening, and the amphitheatre of mountains which towered around was an overlapping sequence of outlines in greens and blues, the shadowy masses dissolved in light as though translucent. The little dust cloud raised by the rider caught the sun and showed like a trailing halo behind him. He was riding fast and coming late, where pilgrims, walking, came early, but Beneditx had no curiosity to spare for him. He returned to his book.

  ‘To the contrary, Gregory says, “In this visible world nothing can be disposed except through invisible creatures.”’ Beneditx laid down his pen and closed his eyes. He saw visions of angels at work in every moment of creation. Their hands flexed the tops and branches of the trees to raise the wind; their hands carried each single snowflake in the myriad storms and laid it softly down; their delicate fingers unfurled the scrolled leaves on the fig trees and silently opened each blossom on the almond boughs. They poured the springing torrent where it flowed, they stirred the sea and raised the breaking waves, they drew the curtain of nightfall across the sky and lit the lamps of heaven, day and night.

  When reluctantly he opened his eyes again – did angelic fingers lift his lids for him? – the rider was just entering the gate. He wrote, ‘Moreover, Origen says, “The world needs the angels, who rule over beasts, preside over the birth of animals, and over the growth of bushes, plants, and other things . . .”’

  His was among the highest of the ancient troglodyte cells, reached by a veritable Jacob’s ladder of stone steps and narrow passages criss-crossing the ancient cliff-face behind the perched curtain of walls and arches. Below him he heard the slap of running sandals on the stones. Someone ascending in haste. A lay brother on an errand . . .

  ‘But even in rational creatures an order can be found,’ he read. ‘Rational souls hold the lowest place among these, and their light is shadowy in comparison with that of the angels . . .’

  A lay brother stood at his cell door, breathless from the climb. He held a paper in his hand. Sighing, pushing aside his interrupted volume, Beneditx took it and read:

  ‘A hard thing must be decided. Come to me. Severo.’

  The news that Beneditx was preparing to depart ran like wildfire through the warren of the Galilea’s cells. A thousand whispers broke the vows of silence that were supposed to possess the night. Even the little boys in the oblate dormitory learned in the light of the flickering candles that kept night-frights at bay that the great scholar was leaving them. No more could they hope that the great man, passing them in the cloister and seeing tears, would take the smudged slate from their hands and write the lesson clearly, explaining in soft words. The news cast down the lowliest scholars in the place, their hopes blighted if Beneditx was gone. Not that he taught them, nowadays. Not that they knew anything about him except that their teachers held him in awe. But as any one of the churches of the island valued its holiest relic, so the Galilea valued Beneditx. As pilgrims came to venerate holy relics, so scholars came to the Galilea, seeking out the remote valley on the distant island to find Beneditx and talk to him. The wisdom of Paris and Padua, of Monte Olivetto and Oxford fl
owed in the discourse that ensued; the exquisite discernment of the Galilea’s great scholar travelled to the ends of the earth when the visiting learned men departed. Naturally, some of them wished to depart with Beneditx himself. But it was the work, not the glory and influence it could bring, that Beneditx desired. The abbot of the Galilea knew very well that only the books in those famed and far-off libraries could tempt his great man to leave; in a dozen scriptoria in as many countries, monks laboured to copy for him so that Beneditx would want for nothing.

  It never ceased to astonish the abbot that Beneditx was humble. Not a trace of scorn disfigured his soul for any, even the stupidest student. He would sit on the bench beside any baffled novice and sweetly and eagerly expound, explain, resolve the most elementary difficulties, his face luminous with joy at his powers of clarity, as though the dullest bovine pupil had been one of the visiting mighty scholars. When once the abbot had commented on that, Beneditx had said that reason, even at the height of its powers, was like the mounting block at the monastery gate – it served to give a leg up to faith. ‘Many a rider who struggles to mount, once in the saddle rides like the wind,’ he had said.

  And now at dawn a horse was led out for Beneditx, and the cloister was packed with grieving brothers come to take leave of him. The abbot offered his own joined hands to Beneditx as a mounting block, and Beneditx got easily into the saddle and rode away.

  It was late when Beneditx reached Ciudad. A cell was prepared for him near Severo’s, and the cathedral clergy ran about, bringing hot water to fill a bath for him, since he came covered with the dust of the road, finding him a clean soutane, laying a breviary open at the evening office for the day. They were in awe of him, of his fame. He chastened them by making no demands, by remembering the names of those among them whom he had once taught. He asked for Severo, and they led him to a side chapel in the cathedral, screened from the nave by a heavy decorated grille, where the sacrament was reserved. There Severo, by the flickering light of devotional lamps and stands of candles, could be seen stretched out prone, arms extended, upon the floor, keeping vigil. ‘Do not disturb him,’ said Beneditx. ‘Whatever it is will keep until morning.’

  6

  It was nearly midday, however, before the friends could talk alone. There was mass to be said, communion to be given to the people, some affairs of state to be settled. At last the two men could retire to Severo’s balcony, break their fast together, and talk.

  ‘Supposing, Magister,’ said Severo, ‘there were a man who had been taught not that God exists and deserves worship, and demands obedience, but that this was a matter on which each man was free to decide for himself. Supposing he were a citizen of a country in which no absolute doctrine was promulgated to the people; in which a man might decide that there was indeed a God and worship him according to the manner of a Saracen or of a true Christian at his whim . . .’

  ‘There is no such country,’ said Beneditx.

  ‘We are to suppose that there is. It is called Aclar.’

  ‘Well, and if there be? Are we to suppose that the true faith is known to some people there and can freely be taught there?’

  ‘As I understand it, yes. But bear with me, Beneditx. There are Christians in this country, and Saracens, and Jews, and various pagans, and those of no allegiance at all. As you might expect in such a babel, there are unbelievers. But now you are to suppose that in that country there is a man who concludes that there is no God . . .’

  ‘He is a fool,’ said Beneditx.

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Certainly. Is it not written, “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God”?’

  ‘You would need to assert, not that such an opinion may be that of a fool,’ said Severo, mildly, ‘but that only a fool could hold such an opinion.’

  ‘A fool, or worse. But Severo, you did not summon me away from my peaceful labours in order to chop logic with me about imaginary countries and supposed states of mind. What is afoot?’

  ‘There is a man under this roof who calls himself an atheist. He has appealed to me. Before I see him, I need advice.’

  ‘An atheist from Aclar?’

  ‘So he says. And Beneditx, the question is, could an atheist conceivably be in good faith? If, clearly, as I understand from this transcript, he knows of Holy Scripture, but has rejected it.’

  ‘A transcript?’

  ‘Of his interrogation by the Consistory Court. But they had barely opened proceedings when he appealed over their heads to me.’ Severo put the curling papers on the table between them and waited, sipping at his wine and water, while Beneditx read.

  When Beneditx looked up, Severo asked, ‘Is this man under an obligation to accept Holy Scripture as the word of God?’

  ‘Every Saracen and every Jew on Grandinsula, and in many another place, has encountered Holy Scripture . . .’ said Beneditx, ‘but we allow that before ever they met with it, they were immersed in a contrary teaching. So that one who has been persuaded from childhood that Mohammed is the one true prophet and has superseded Christ cannot be expected to see the Gospels in the light in which they appear to the soul who approaches them free from any burden of error.’

  ‘But,’ said Severo, ‘this man seems to have met the Gospel as only one among many sacred texts. How do we judge someone who has met the truth amidst a plethora of contending claims and a clamour of voices each declaring the truth of their own message and the error of every other? Someone who knows many religious systems at once in a land where authority has abdicated and nothing is taught to the people as having a prior claim on their assent? Might that be an obstacle in the path of understanding as extreme as the prior acceptance of false teaching?’

  ‘It might indeed,’ said Beneditx. ‘Or perhaps, Severo, a worse one. Such a situation would be a scandal to the people, it might corrode the very idea of a single truth, a one true way; it might lead a man to suppose that any religion was as good as any other . . .’

  ‘Do you think it might excuse a man who said there was no God?’

  ‘It might excuse a good deal of confusion.’

  ‘We are not talking of someone who calls God by strange names or offers him barbaric worship and alien obedience, however. We are talking of someone who goes beyond doubt and declares himself certain that there is no God. And I am asking you, Magister, whether it is true that such a one must have refused grace, must have sinned against truth. Surely, the existence of God is known to natural reason?’

  ‘It is knowable by natural reason, Severo. But the reasoning in question is arduous, and many men have not the strength of mind for it, while the majority of men could never have the leisure and the freedom from worldly duties to undertake it.’

  ‘There is not an obligation to reason for oneself that God exists?’

  ‘An obligation to try is not an obligation to succeed.’

  ‘Then I need not condemn the man?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Brother, you must. We cannot talk as though a man might be without knowledge of God by some accident, as he might be without knowledge of Latin. For knowledge of God is inborn. Innate in every human soul. So powerful, so clear that in nations far from the mercy of God men are driven to worship idols, calves of gold, sticks, stones, rivers and trees, the moon and the sun . . .’

  ‘And a man who worships nothing . . .’

  ‘Has darkened knowledge; refused enlightenment. Is one who has once known the truth and has reneged on it. Is a heretic.’

  ‘But Beneditx, is it known for certain that knowledge of God is innate? Do all the doctors of the church agree on that? I cannot clearly remember the texts, the exegesis for that . . .’

  ‘Give me a few hours, Severo,’ said Beneditx, ‘and I will show you something.’

  Beneditx was gone some hours. His quest took him, not as Severo had supposed it would, to the cathedral library, but into the streets of Ciudad. And when he returned, shortly before sunset, he did not return alone. He was carrying a bundle of rags and accompanied b
y a woman. The woman was dirty and barefoot, and her clothes, which were ragged and faded and knotted together on her person, as though every lace and button had been torn from them, had once been of bright colours – scarlet and yellow and blue. She was nut-brown, with the haggard features of poverty. Beneditx strode, unhesitating, through the gates to the cloister, and the woman, uttering a faint sound of dismay, made to follow him, but the porter stopped her. In a furious tone he growled the usual prohibitions about women in a nest of clergy, and stepped in front of her, his arms outstretched to bar her way. She called frantically to Beneditx’s retreating back, ‘Master!’

  He looked round. ‘Can you cover your head?’ he asked her. She found a loose stretch of torn blue muslin about her somewhere and covered her matted dark locks. ‘Let her in,’ said Beneditx.

  ‘But, Magister, it is forbidden . . .’

  ‘Nothing is forbidden to the pure in heart,’ said Beneditx.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I command you.’

  The porter stepped aside, and the woman scurried under the arch to join Beneditx as though it were death to be parted from him. ‘Keep your eyes on the ground and follow me closely,’ said Beneditx, crossing the courtyard and opening the door to the clergy’s lodgings. As though every priest in the entire establishment, every deacon, every humble clerk had seen the little scene at the gate, as though the news could travel through the walls of the cells and offices, an appalled murmur followed them, doors were opened a crack, every pen in the scriptorium was stilled as they passed the door which stood open to admit the evening air and dilute the smell of ink. Someone ran for the canon residentiary, to fetch him to eject the unthinkable intruder; a little group of the bolder prebends, whispering in horrified tones, followed the woman along the corridors to Severo’s cell nearly as closely as she followed Beneditx, and at the gate the porter loudly complained to a pair of prebends who had come to anathematize him.