CHAPTER XXVIII.
Durazzo lies upon a promontory stretching out into the Adriatic. Thewalls which surrounded it at the time of our story, told, by theweather-wear of their stones, the different ages during which they hadguarded the little bay that lies at the promontory's base. A youngmonk,[63] Barletius, to whom Colonel Kabilovitsch introduced thevoyagers, as a travelling companion for a part of their journey,pointed out the great and rudely squared boulders in the lower courseof masonry, as the work of the ancient Corcyreans, centuries beforethe coming of Christ. The upper courses, he said, were stained withthe blood of the Greek soldiers of Alexius, when the Norman RobertGuiscard assaulted the place, hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
Indeed, to the monk's historic imagination, the world seemed stillwrapped in the mists of the older ages; and, just as the low lyinghaze, with its mirage effect, contorted the rocks along the shore intodomes and pinnacles, so did his fancy invest every object with thegreatness of the history with which the old manuscripts had made himfamiliar.
While Morsinia listened with a strange entertainment to his rhapsodicnarrations, Constantine was busy studying the graceful lines of theVenetian half-galley that lay at the base of the cliff, and upon whichthey were to embark; her low deck, cut down in the centre nearly tothe water's edge; her sharp, swan-necked prow raised high in air, andbalanced by the broad elevation at the stern; the lateen sail that,furled on its boom, hung diagonally against the slender mast; the rowsof holes at the side, through which in calm weather the oars wereworked; the gay pennant from the mast-head, and the broad banner atthe stern, which spread to the light breeze the Lion of St. Mark.
They were soon gliding out of the harbor of Durazzo, at first underthe regularly timed stroke of a score of oarsmen. Rounding thepromontory, the west wind filled the sail; and, careening to theleeward, the galley danced toward the south through the light spray ofthe billows which sung beneath the prow like the strings of a zither.
Perhaps it was this music of the waves--or it may have been that thewind was blowing straight across from Italy; or, possibly, it was thebeauty of the maiden reclining upon the cushioned dais of the sterndeck--that led the weather-beaten sailing master to take the zither,and sing one after another of Petrarch's love songs to Laura. Thoughhis voice was as hoarse as the wind that crooned through the cordage,and his language scarcely intelligible, the flow of the melody toldthe sentiment. Constantine's eyes sought the face of his companion, asif for the first time he had detected that she was beautiful. Andperhaps for the first time in her life Morsinia felt conscious thatConstantine was looking at her;--for she generally withstood his gazewith as little thought of it as she did that of the sky, or ofKabilovitsch. Even the monk turned his eyes from the magnificentshores of Albania, with their beetling headlands and receding bays, tocast furtive glances upon the maiden.
The monk's face was a striking one. He was pale, if not from holyvigil, from pouring over musty secular tomes. He had caught the spiritof the revival of learning which, notwithstanding all the superstitionof ecclesiastics, was first felt in the cloisters of the church. Hisforehead was high, but narrow; his eyes mild, yet lustrous; his lowerfeatures almost feminine. One familiar with men would have said, "Hereis a man of patient enthusiasm for things intellectual, a devotee tothe ideal. He may be a philosopher, a poet, an artist; but he couldnever make a soldier, a diplomat, or even a lover, except of the mostPlatonic sort. Just the man for a monk. If all monks were like him,the church would be enriched indeed; but, if all like him were monks,the world would be the poorer."
Among other passengers was a Greek monk, Gennadius. This man's fullbeard and long curly forelocks hanging in front of his ears, were inodd contrast with the smooth face and shaven head of the Latin monk.Though strangers, they courteously saluted each other. However sharpmight be the differences in their religious notions, they soon feltthe fraternity such as cultured minds and great souls realize in thepresence of the sublimities of nature. They studied each other's faceswith agreeable surprise as the glories about them drew from their lipsvivid outbursts of descriptive eloquence, in which, speaking the Latinor Greek with almost equal facility, they quoted from the classicpoets with which they were equally familiar.
As the galley turned eastward into the Corinthian gulf there burstupon them a panorama of natural splendor combined with classicenchantment, such as no other spot on the earth presents. Themountainous shores lay about the long and narrow sea, like sleepinggiants guarding the outflow of some sacred fountain. Back of thenorthern coast rose, like waking sentinels, the Helicon and Parnassus,towering thousands of feet into the air; their tops helmeted in iceand plumed with fleecy clouds. The western sun poured upon the trackof the voyagers floods of golden lustre which lingered on the stillwaters, flashed in rainbows from the splashing oars, gilded with glorythe hither slope of every projection on either shore, and filled thegreat gorges beyond with dark purple shadows.
As Morsinia reclined with her head resting on Constantine's shoulder,and drank in the gorgeous, yet quieting, scene, the two monks stoodwith uncovered heads and, half embracing, chanted together in Greekone of the oldest known evening hymns of the Christian church. In freetranslation, it ran thus:--
"O Jesu, the Christ! glad light of the holy! The brightness of God, the Father in heaven! At setting of sun, with hearts that are lowly, We praise Thee for life this day Thou hast given."
"I love that hymn," said Gennadius, "because it was written longbefore the schism which rent the Holy Church into Latin and Greek."
"We will rejoice, then, that by the inspiration of the Holy Father,Eugenius, and the assent of your patriarch, the wound in the body ofChrist has, after six centuries, at last been healed," repliedBarletius.
"I fear that the healing is but seeming," said the Greek. "I was amember of the council of Florence, and know the motives of the men whocomposed it, and the exact meaning of the agreement--which meansnothing. Your Pope cares not a scrap of tinsel from his back for thetrue Christian dogma; and while his ambition led him to desire tobecome the uniter of Christendom, his own bishops, who know him well,were gathered in synod at Basil, and pronounced him heretic, perjurerand debauchee."
"But you Greeks were doubtless more honest," said Barletius, with atone and look of sarcasm.
"Humph!" grunted Gennadius, walking away; but turning about quickly headded,
"How could we be honest when, for the sake of the union, we assentedto a denial of our most sacred dogmas by allowing the _Filioque_?[64]It is not in the power of men living to change the truth as expressedthrough all past ages in the creed of the true church. Our emperoryielded the points to the Latins; but holy Mark of Ephesus and PrinceDemetrius, our emperor's brother, did not. They retired in disgustfrom Italy. Why, the very dog of the emperor, that lay on hisfoot-cloth, scented the heresy to which his master was about tosubscribe, and protested against the sacrilege by baying throughoutthe reading of the act of union. And I learn that the clergy andpopulace at Byzantium are foaming with rage at this impiety of ourLatinizing emperor. I am hasting thither that I may utter my voice,too, in my cell in prayer, and from the pulpit of St. Sophia, againstthe unholy alliance."
"Yet," said Barletius, with scorn, "your emperor and churchauthorities subscribed. What sort of a divine spirit do you Greekspossess, that prompts you to confess what you do not believe?"
"I feel your taunt," replied Gennadius. "It is both just and unjust.Have not some of your own prelates lately taught that the endjustifies the means? The union, though wrong in itself, wasjustified--according to Latin ethics--by the result to be secured, thesafety of both Greek and Latin churches from being conquered by theTurks. Our Eastern empire, the glory of the later Caesars, has alreadybecome reduced to the suburbs of Byzantium. The empire of Justinianand Theodosius has not to-day ten thousand soldiers to withstand themyriads of the Sultan. There must be union. We must have soldiers,even if we buy them with the price of an article of the creed--nay theloan of the article--
for the union will not stand when danger haspassed. Conscience alone is one thing: conscience under necessity--Ispeak the ethics of you Latins--is another thing. But I abhor thedeceit. Your bishop, whom you call Pope, has no reverence from ourhearts, though we were to kiss his toe. You are idolaters with yourimages of Mary and the saints. _Filioque_ is a lie!" cried the Greek,giving vent to his prejudice and spite.
Barletius in the meantime had felt other emotions than the holiestbeing kindled within him by these hot words of his companion; and whenthe Greek had flashed his unseemly denunciation at _Filioque_, theLatin's soul burst in responsive rage. But he was not accustomed toharsh debate. Words were consumed upon his hot lips, or choked in hisfury-dried throat. His frame trembled with the pent wrath. His handsclenched until the nails cut into the flesh. But alas for the bestsaintship, if temptation comes before canonization! The thin hand wasraised, and it fell upon the holy brother's face. The blow wasreturned. But neither of them had been trained to carnal strife, norhad they the skill and strength to do justice to their noble rage.Constantine, who leaped forward to act as peace-maker, stopped tolaugh at the strange pose of the antagonists; for the Greek hadvaliantly seized the cowl of the Latin, and drawn it down over hisface; while Barletius' thin fingers were wriggling through Gennadius'beard, and both were prancing as awkwardly as one-day-old calves aboutthe narrow deck, with the imminent prospect of cooling their spiritsby immersion in the water.
The presence of this danger led Constantine to separate the scufflers;although his laughter at the contestants had made his limbs almost aslimp as theirs. The ecclesiastical champions stood glaring theircelestial resentment, the one white, the other red, like two statuesof burlesque gladiators carved respectively in marble and porphyry.
The conflict might have been renewed had not Morsinia risen from hercushion, and approached them. But no sooner did Gennadius realize thedanger of having so much as his gown touched by a woman, than hebolted to the other end of the galley, and sat down, with fright andshame, upon a coil of ropes. The Greek had been trained at themonastery on Mount Athos. From that masculine paradise the fairdaughters of Eve were as carefully excluded as if they were still theagents of Satan, and sent by the devil to work the ruin of those who,by lofty meditation and unnatural asceticism, would return to thepre-marital Adamic state of innocence. During the long twilight, andwhen the night left only the outlines of the mountains sharply definedhigh up against the star-lit sky, Gennadius still sat motionless; hislegs crossed beneath him; his head dropped upon his bosom. He gave noresponse to the salutation of the attendant who brought him theevening meal: nor would he touch it. When the sailors sung the songswhose melody floated over the sea, keeping time to the cadences of thelight waves which bent but did not break the surface, the monk put hisfingers into his ears. He tried to drive out worldly thoughts byrecalling those precepts of an ancient saint which, for four hundredyears, had been prescribed at Mount Athos for those who would quiettheir perturbed souls and rise into the upper light of God. They weresuch as these. "Seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above allthings vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin upon thybreast; turn thy eyes and thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, theregion of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat ofthe soul, which when discovered will be involved in a mystic andethereal light."
Barletius, equally chagrined by his display of temper before thelaity, sought relief by inflicting upon himself a task of PaterNosters, which he tallied off on his beads, made of olive-wood andsent him by a learned monk at Bethlehem.
When his punishment seemed accomplished, Morsinia asked him,
"Good father, why did you quarrel with the stranger?"
Barletius entered into a long explanation of the faith of the RomanChurch at the point challenged by the Greek.
"I understand your words," said Morsinia, "but I do not understandtheir meaning."
"It is not necessary that you should, my child. If Holy Churchunderstands, it is enough. A child may not understand all that themother knows; yet believes the mother's word. So should you believewhat Mother Church says."
"I would believe every word that Mother Church speaks, even though Ido not understand why she speaks it," said Morsinia reverently. "Buthow can one believe another's words when one does not know what theymean; when they give no thought? Now what you say about the'procession of the spirit,' and the 'begetting of the Son,' I do notget any clear thought about; and how then can I believe it in myheart."
The monk cast a troubled look upon the fair inquirer, and replied--
"Then you must simply believe in Holy Church which believes thetruth."
"And say I believe the creed, when I only believe that the Churchbelieves the creed?" queried the girl.
"It is enough. Happy are you if you seek to know no more. Beware of aninquisitive mind. It leads one astray from truth, as a waywarddisposition soon departs from virtue. Credo! Credo! Credo! Help thoumine unbelief! should be your prayer. Restrain your thoughts as thehelmsman yonder keeps our prow on the narrow way we are going. Howsoon you would perish if you should attempt to find your way alone outthere on the deep! Woe to those who, like these wretched Greeks,depart from truth, and teach men so. Anathema, Maranatha!"
"But, tell me, good father, can that be necessary to be believed,about which whole nations, like the Greeks, differ from other nations,like the Latins? I have seen Greeks at their worship, and bowed withthem, and felt that God was near and blessing us all. And I have heardthem say, when they were dying, that they saw heaven open; and theyreached out their arms to be taken by the angels. Does not Jesu savethem, though they may err about that which we trust to be the truth?"
"My child, you must not think of these things," said Barletius kindly."It is better that you sleep now. The air is growing chill. Wrap yourcloak closely even beneath the deck."
He walked away, repeating a line from Virgil as he scanned thestar-gemmed heavens.
"Suadentque cadentia sidera somnos."
Wrapping his hood close over his face, he lay down upon the deck.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] Marinus Barletius, a Latin monk of the time, has given us in hischronicles, the most extended account of Scanderbeg.
[64] Filioque; "and the Son." The Latin Church holds that the HolySpirit proceeds from the Father _and the Son_. The Greeks deny thelatter part of the proposition.
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