Von Arnim looked at Werthern.
"The jurisdictional issues in regard to the Altschulerin woman, the wife of Jarvis Beasley, are negotiable. The Henneberg inheritance is an exclave, an outlier, now within the State of Thuringia-Franconia. They have naturalized the woman. Saxony can afford to lose her. It has lost many more subjects than one during this war."
Von Arnim looked at Prüschenk. "Do you agree to be silent? In voice and in print?"
Prüschenk looked back. "No. It is an abomination and I will not hold my tongue. Nor will . . ." He stopped abruptly.
Von Arnim raised his eyebrows at Carpzov.
"One more step, I think."
"In the best interests of our father . . ." Duke John George the Younger started.
". . . and in the best interests of Saxony," Duke August continued.
Dietrich and Wolfgang each moved forward and took one of Prüschenk's arms.
". . . we order your arrest and internment on charges of high treason."
Prüschenk looked at Carpzov. "Are you here to represent me?"
Carpzov shook his head. "As a member of the Leipzig Schöffenstuhl, I am here to issue the warrant. No hearing is necessary. He looked at his brothers, who began to produce paperwork out of the leather folders they were carrying."
"This is contrary to proper procedure."
"No it isn't," Carpzov said serenely. "Perhaps you missed my new book. It just came out. Practica nova imperialis saxonica rerum criminalium. Lovely title, if I do say so myself. I am now the premier authority on Saxon criminal law practice and I concur with the measures the general has decided to take. As do the consistory—" He gestured toward Hoënegg. "—and the elector's council—" He gestured toward Werthern. "Or, perhaps I should say, the sanior pars of both."
Von Arnim nodded. "Let him be interrogated in regard to that 'Nor will . . .' please."
Carpzov nodded.
"Then, if you will excuse me, Your Graces," von Arnim bowed to the young dukes, "I must return to the war we are trying to fight."
"We'll follow you in less than an hour," Duke August said. "With Wolfgang and Dietrich. We have to consult with our mother before we leave."
Grantville
Holz's next spate of pamphlets, directed at Kastenmayer, focused on the proposed confirmation of seven up-time men, betrothed to girls at Saint Martin's, without, Holz argued, sufficient instruction.
Particularly in regard to Mitchell Hobbs.
Who managed the laundry.
Where Kastenmayer had baptized the Beasley child.
Where Hobbs' fiancée worked. Who belonged to Saint Martin's even before she became betrothed to the up-timer. And came from the village where Jonas Justinus Muselius had taught school before the Ring of Fire happened.
Muselius, who was now betrothed to the daughter of the up-time woman who had spoken as an equal at the Rudolstadt Colloquy. And who, in spite of 1 Timothy 2:12, "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence," was now providing instruction in a heretofore unknown discipline called "statistics" at the University of Jena.
Where Muselius had once been a student. That was before the Ring of Fire, of course, but it probably showed something. A premonition of future decay of biblical standards, probably.
Wasn't another up-time woman, also teaching, the one at the medical school, actually living in the household of Dean Gerhard of the theological faculty?
The general theme ran along the lines of, "something wicked this way comes." There was certainly a conspiracy. Even if Holz couldn't figure out precisely what it was, he issued a ringing call for the orthodox theologians of the Universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig to call the lax and incompetent figureheads now usurping positions of trust at the University of Jena back to order.
* * *
Griep kept busy. He pounded the streets, assuring the new and potential parishioners of Saint Thomas the Apostle that Holz was behaving in a sectarian manner, had no congregation to which he was properly assigned, and should not be in Grantville at all. If they were dissatisfied with the situation at Saint Martin's, they should not turn to Holz. They should join Saint Thomas, where they properly belonged.
He had five hundred copies of the decision reached at the Rudolstadt Colloquy reprinted and distributed them for free. He also bought space in each of the Grantville papers to have the decision republished on full-page spreads with borders around them.
Which required a significant subsidy from his juristic brothers-in-law of the firm Waffler, Wiesel, and Finck.
Which also, when it appeared in the National Inquisitor, caused a considerable amount of merriment among the regular readers.
April 1635
"I postponed the dedication, just as you instructed me," Griep said. "Nevertheless, they had a really big party at Saint Martin's last week. It wasn't low-key at all."
Count Ludwig Guenther thought. Then thought a little more.
"It has been more than a month since March fourth," he said finally. "The public announcement to postpone the dedication at Saint Thomas came at the right time. It was received well. The families have been preparing for these seven weddings for a long time. The grooms are all up-timers, whose relatives participated, so it did not leave an impression that we, the down-timers, as a whole, were ignoring the grief of the . . . original Grantvillers, shall I call them here? Their grief at the deaths of the mayor, the Calvinist minister, the policeman."
"I thought you wanted to avoid this 'stress,'" Griep said stiffly.
"Sometimes, a celebration can also relieve stress," the count said.
"At least I tried," Griep said. "Holz has made no effort to relieve stress. Is it my place to ask what you propose to do about him?"
"He isn't within my jurisdiction. Or within that of my consistory."
"Whose jurisdiction is he in?"
"No one's, technically. There is no Lutheran organization within the Ring of Fire. Practically . . ."
"Yes?"
"If he's with anyone's jurisdiction, he's Tilesius' problem. But that is personal, not geographical."
"Are you sure that Tilesius thinks of him as a problem? Not as a weapon aimed to, in time, destroy the authority of the consistory of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. And, through that, and through you, to destroy the ability of Gustavus Adolphus to impose some kind of unity among the Lutherans of the USE?"
The count looked at Griep sharply.
He shrugged. "Your role in the colloquies has been a prominent one. If the compromises you have forged among Lutherans in the USE fall apart, how is Gustavus to control the Lutherans in the Union of Kalmar?"
Ludwig Guenther raised his eyebrows.
Griep shrugged again. "Ecclesiastical politics is still politics. Especially for an emperor who insists on having a state church. Who knows what Saxony will look like after everything that has happened, will still be happening, this spring?"
* * *
"Pastor Kastenmayer." Liz Carstairs, interim mayor of Grantville and West Virginia County and, in practically everyone's opinion, mayor-presumptive as well, since she was likely to win the upcoming special election, ran down the steps of city hall. "I was going to phone, but then I looked out the window and saw you. Do you have any idea what this is about?"
She handed him a piece of paper.
"I have received a similar letter from the Erfurt city council. Just this morning, protesting that Ezechiel Meth is active again. Being harbored again by the dowager countess of Gleichen-Tonna within the jurisdiction of West Virginia County. I have no doubt that Pastor Griep has also received one, and Count Ludwig Guenther as well."
Pastor Kastenmayer paused, which was just as well, since Liz barreled right along.
"Who is Ezechiel Meth and why do we care?"
Kastenmayer raised his eyebrows while his mind groped for a tactful reply. That was certainly a question that opened up possibilities in regard to the issue of cults and sects—cultists and sectarians. Of which the
lady mayor was one. Not just in his personal opinion. Certainly in the opinion of every down-timer who had received a copy of the Erfurt protest. In the opinion, for that matter, of all the up-time Lutherans who had been transferred by the Ring of Fire.
Henry Dreeson had been a Presbyterian. A Calvinist. Comprehensible to the mind or ordinary men. Liz Thornton verh. Carstairs was what other people called a Mormon. They called themselves by a much longer name. He would have to look it up. Shortened to LDS. She might not even care that the followers of the late Esaias Stiefel showed signs of becoming active again. This would require careful handling. Delicate phrasing. Coffee.
He looked around. They were almost directly in front of Cora's.
"Shall we go in?" he asked politely. "I'm buying."
He hadn't explained anything at all yet, but Liz knew that whatever it was, she wasn't going to like it.
Cora thumped the cups down.
"Have you ever heard of Schwärmer?"
She shook her head.
He searched his English vocabulary and found it wanting. "We need Jonas. Whatever am I going to do without Jonas once he leaves to become director of the normal school in Amberg? Not that it isn't a splendid promotion for him and that we aren't all proud and happy." He stood up. "Gracious and most kind Cora, may I use your telephone, with most hearty thanks?" He moved behind the counter.
Anne Penzey, waiting tables on another Saturday morning, leaned over and whispered into Liz's ear. "Isn't he cute? I bet his eyes were blue when he was young, even though they've faded to a kind of greenish-hazel. It's amazing that he doesn't have to wear glasses at his age."
Liz took a look. The pastor wore his wavy hair long, at shoulder length. It was mostly gray, with some lingering brown strands. No receding hairline, but it had gone thin on top. The goatee that covered his chin was even grayer. "Cute" was not precisely the adjective she would have chosen. "Amazing," she agreed. That seemed neutral enough.
They were well through their second cups of coffee by the time Jonas arrived via trolley.
"Enthusiasts. Spiritualists. Perfectionists. Sectarians. Chiliasts. Cultists. Heretics. 'Enthusiasts' is probably the most direct translation into English, but it does not encompass all the connotations." Jonas paused to think. "People with really, really strange religious ideas. Not all the same strange ideas, of course, which is why most of the groups are small.
Liz nodded. "Yeah. Those 'rapture' people and all that. Or Jim Jones."
"Esaias Stiefel thought that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and a lot of people agreed. You would think that they would have changed their minds when he died. That was, um, about eight years ago. But some of them didn't. Meth did reconcile with the Lutheran church, but Countess Erdmuthe Juliana, the dowager countess, never gave up her strange faith. If Meth is with her again . . ." He looked at Kastenmayer, a little uncomfortably. "We probably ought to call Pastor Griep, too."
"Ah, how did he die?" Liz asked.
"Peacefully in his bed. In the municipal hospital in Erfurt. Gispersleben, where the cult was centered, belongs under that jurisdiction. That's why the Erfurt council is involved, I guess, if it seems to be reviving."
* * *
Waiting for Griep to get downtown from Saint Thomas' on the trolley had the rest of them into third cups.
It didn't help that he walked into Cora's and said, "Too late." Before he even sat down.
"What's too late?" Liz asked.
"It was Tilesius in Langensalza who alerted Erfurt. So he's bound to have notified Pankratz Holz, too. It's going to be a big mess. Tilesius and the Stiefelite controversy go back . . . at least thirty years. Not quite before my time, but almost. I was in my first year at the university when they held the set of hearings that led to Stiefel's first recantation."
"First?"
"Yes, ma'am. There have been several."
Liz had an impulse to say, "But I thought they just burned heretics in this day and age. This sounds as long-drawn-out as up-time legal proceedings." She managed to stifle it. Instead, she said, "All right."
Griep was frowning. "I don't want to cause you stress," he said carefully. "But perhaps we should also ask your chief of police to join our discussion."
* * *
Preston Richards listened carefully. "Look," he finally said, addressing both of the pastors and Jonas, "It sounds like you think we didn't have that sort of folk up-time. We did. Just let me tell you about the Hare Krishna people who were right up Route 250. The Ring of Fire didn't miss their conference center by much. Then you'll have something to thank God for. Namely, that they aren't here with us today."
"But what are you going to do?" Griep asked.
"Unless they start making trouble? Nothing."
"Well," Liz said. "I'll send a polite letter back to Erfurt, I guess. Thanking them for their concern. After that—like Press says, unless they actually make trouble, there's nothing we can do. It's not against the law to have what Jonas calls 'really, really weird religious ideas.'"
She smiled at him. "So go finish getting ready for your wedding. And Dina and Phillip's. At this stage, you probably have a list of two dozen things to do that Carol and Salome think are more important than . . . what did you call them?"
"Stiefelites. Or did you mean 'enthusiasts' in general?"
May 1635
"I met Superintendent Tilesius," Dina said at the rehearsal dinner. "The year before the Ring of Fire, he put on a really big celebration for the centennial of the Augsburg Confession in Langensalza. Three days long. Papa took us all. I had a wonderful time."
Ronella swallowed. She was Lutheran, but . . . "You had a wonderful time celebrating the centennial of when a great big thick theological book was published?"
"It was great," Jonas said. "I was there, too. We took the whole Quittelsdorf village school on a field trip."
"It does sound like it would have been fun," Gary Lambert said. "If the Ring of Fire had only happened a year earlier, we could all have gone. We're both too young to remember the bicentennial celebration for the American Revolution, but my parents used to talk about it. Just about every town in the United States put on a bash."
"You wouldn't have needed to go that far—as far as Langensalza," Friedrich Hortleder said. "We had a big celebration in Weimar, too. Just as good as the one Tilesius put on, if you ask me. In spite of the marauding armies. Sometimes people need to focus on what's really important in the long run, no matter what's happening all around them."
"I agree," Salome said. "By the way, Carol, have you noticed that lately we've only been getting Pankratz Holz's pamphlets. They're basically topical attacks. The personal attacks on Ludwig and Gary aren't coming any more." Nor were the personal attacks on her, but she was too modest to mention those.
"We always sort of thought that the worst ones—like the Christmas Eve set—were coming out of Saxony. Maybe the distribution network has collapsed because of all the military activity. If so, it's the only actual blessing of war I've ever heard of," Ron Koch commented.
* * *
"Two weddings down," Carol said. "A week apart. Oh, my aching feet."
"Have another cup of cider," Salome suggested.
Carol grinned. "At least they got Ron to church two weeks in a row. That hasn't happened very often in our lives. He was born a Lutheran, of course—well, baptized as one, when he was just a baby—so that's what he is, but he doesn't actually work at it very hard. A lot of the up-time Germans I met were like that. Most of his friends thought I was a little odd because I actually went to church."
Rudolstadt
"Well, of course. If they won't do anything about Ezechiel Meth, they won't do anything about Pankratz Holz, either. This 'storefront church' of his is usurping a great deal of what should be Saint Thomas' parish. The Philippists have kept going to Saint Martin's. Of course, Kastenmayer has known that Saint Thomas' would be opening since the beginning, so their budget has allowed for this. He's shrewd enough to have determined the
leanings of most of those who were attending there because they didn't have an option, yet.
"For Saint Thomas, though, Holz is splitting the Flacians. Which means that we have obligations, bills to pay, but can't count on the number of members I expected."
"I will take up the question of a transitional subsidy with the consistory. However . . . You wanted this appointment, Pastor Griep. You went to a great deal of effort to secure it. All I can really recommend now is that you use persuasion to bring your flock into the fold. I certainly can't herd them there."
"But can't you do something?"
Count Ludwig Guenther, once more, pointed out that he and his consistory really did not have any jurisdiction over the ecclesiastical situation in West Virginia County. No more in regard to Holz than in regard to Meth. "Which," he finished, "only confirms my prudence in having erected both Saint Martin's and Saint Thomas' outside the boundaries of the Ring of Fire, within my own lands."
* * *
"It will all be to do over again, dearest. You do realize that?" Count Ludwig Guenther beamed down at his young wife. In accordance with the best medical opinion, both up-time and down-time, she was breast-feeding little Albrecht herself.
"All what?"
"The theological colloquy. The one we held in Magdeburg last year, at the emperor's insistence. I told him, at the time, that there was very little point in trying to achieve some lasting settlement without the participation of Brandenburg and Saxony. Especially Saxony. But he just wasn't to be deterred by the power of reason. When he makes up his mind that he wants something, he wants it right now."
"So, when?"
"Not this fall, I think. That will be too soon. But, after things have rested a while during the winter. I predict that we will be going back to Magdeburg early in the spring of 1636."
Emelie giggled. "More days on a hard bench? So the delegates can't fight about who has a right to bring in what size or shape of cushion? You have mentioned the hardships of presiding over colloquies several times."
Grantville Gazette Volume 27 Page 6
