John the Pupil

by David Flusfeder

  His father gave orders that the stranger be welcomed, and designated a cell for him in the house. Alexis persevered in prayer and disciplined his body with fasting and vigils. The house servants made fun of him and spilled dirty water on his head, but he bore all their insults with unshaken patience. For seventeen years Alexis lived unrecognised in his father’s house. Then, knowing by the spirit that the end of his days was near, he wrote out a full account of his life.

  On a Sunday, after mass, a voice rang out in the church, saying, Come to me all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. All those present had great fear and fell to their knees while the voice sounded again, saying, Seek out the man of God, that he may pray for Rome! They looked around but found no one, and a third time the voice sounded, saying, Look in the house of Euphemianus.

  The emperors Arcadius and Honorius, in company with Pope Innocent, came to the house. They found Alexis dead, his face shining like the face of an angel. His father tried to take the writing out of the dead man’s hand but could not. The Pope then went up and took the script, which was readily relinquished, and read it before a great throng of people. Euphemianus tore at his garments and pulled at his grey hair and beard, lamenting, Woe is me, my son! Alas, what consolation will I ever find?

  And his weeping mother, Aglaë, threw herself upon the body of her only son, and said, My soul’s consolation, the one who suckled at my breast, why have you served us so cruelly? Now my mirror is broken and my hope gone. Now begins the grieving that has no end.

  And the people standing around heard all this and wept loud and long. For Alexis had been pure in heart and holy in spirit, and his mother and father felt themselves unworthy of him, and yet they reproached their saintly son, because they loved him, and longed for him.

  Now the Pope and the emperors placed the body on a princely litter and went before it into the heart of the city. The people all ran to be near the man of God. Any among them who were sick and touched the holy body were cured instantly, the blind received their sight, the possessed were delivered of their demons.

  •

  We have a new enemy. They are called Ghibellines and they are enemies of the Pope and wish harm to all his friends. Their soldiers roam the countryside in murderous companies, their cities are perilous for any true believers. If they carry banners these show a red cross on a white background. The battlements of their cities are carved like swallows’ tails.

  Saint Margaret the Virgin’s Day

  This virgin Margaret had two names, she was called Margaret and Pelagien. Inasmuch as she was named Margaret, she is likened to a flower, for the flower of virginity blossomed from within her. And in that she was called Pelagien, she might be said of pena, which means pain, and lego or legis, to gather. For she gathered pain in a great and cruel manner.

  We hear of a holy virgin in an adjacent province, of whom great wonders are told. We would like her blessing. But our way is treacherous, Ghibelline soldiers, Ghibelline towns, that mock the piety of the Pope and all who swear allegiance to him. These are the last times, war within and without. The Tartars drive west, through the gate that Alexander built to shut in the twenty-two kingdoms of Gog and Magog, who Ezekiel prophesied are destined to come forth in the days of the Antichrist. In the Holy Land the Saracens battle against the Lord. The Germans have control of the Pope’s kingdom in Italy and seek out his followers to punish.

  We remember a time when we had to fight the attentions of robbers who would steal our treasures for brute reward. That seems a more innocent time now. It is a marvel, worthy of my Master’s investigation, how lies and rumour and gossip can travel faster than any man. Along with the tales we hear of the holy virgin, in hospices, taverns, monasteries, on hillsides, as we feign to be other than what we are, we hear tales of the magicians of the Pope, clad as friars, who carry a Book that contains the source of all power. The stories differ. Sometime they are a whole army, sometime there are three of them, sometime just one, who looks like a man, who has the devilish power to split himself into multitudes.

  Were it not for this uncertainty of the tally, we would be even more in peril than we are. Nonetheless, in the interests of our mission, with the hidden potency of sincerity, we have to be hypocrites and blasphemers. We grant indulgences to men who would murder us if they knew who we are. We pray for their souls and for ours.

  And then we find a Guelph town, where we may become ourselves again. There seems no order to this, no boundaries that we may recognise. Some towns are Guelph, most are Ghibelline, and until we see the shape of their battlements and the colour of their flags we do not know if we are entering into the territory of God or His Adversary.

  I am diligent. I collect treasures along the way. And sometime, I pick flowers, because I hope to believe that their colours, like emeralds and rubies and amethysts, may have equivalent power to the herbs.

  • • •

  Saint Victor’s Day

  It is a hillside village like any other, a few small houses cluster around a church. In front of the church is a plot of grass where the villagers used to graze their pigs. Around the village are vineyards and olive groves. The vines have died and the olive trees grown swollen. The church is empty, and there are fewer villagers than pilgrims, who are thronging to visit the living shrine at the edge of the village.

  Outside is a congregation, and an altar. Inside the house is a girl who is saintly. The Devil torments her, Christ consoles her with his stigmata. For a year she has eaten nothing but ginger. The Devil in Advent had hung her naked from a tree.

  There are people from the plains here, and the mountains, fine ladies, low serfs, Guelphs and Ghibellines, enmity forgotten in proximity to the holiness of the living saint.

  They talk of her, her miracles, her ordeal and her agony and her passion, the news she has brought them from family members that live in distant places, even from across the mountains, although she never leaves her seclusion, and few outside her family are permitted an audience with her. One man tries to sell us cloth that he says has been dipped in the saint’s blood, another offers bread that she has chewed and spat out and blessed. A guide in a blue tunic says he can take me to the tree the Devil hung her from. He shakes the leather pouch he wears at his throat.

  I have heard these kinds of stories before, the more remote is the district, the greater the claims made for the holiness and sanctity of its saints. Rumours walk faster than men, and grow in remote places. We have been frightened by the legend of the Blind Monk of the Ghibellines, when we should have known better, because we are the subject of another.

  Villagers tug at our arms to show the fragments and relics that they are offering to sell. There is one I recognise. Our mountain guide, Aude’s brother, in his blue tunic, is taking pennies from pilgrims in exchange for soiled fragments of the saint’s clothes. He shows me no recognition, but others in blue tunics block our way so that we are further from the saint’s door.

  We are not permitted entry into the house. Everything has a price in this village, food and lodging as well as relics of the living saint or the granting of an audience at her shrine. There is no hospice, they have no love for mendicant friars here. When I try to preach to them, of Saint Peter in Chains, and the angel who freed him, they hardly attend my words.

  Night grows cold here. I tell my companions that there is nothing for us, that we should drive on with our journey, navigate by the stars, but my companions, Brother Andrew especially, wish to stay here longer, to meet the saint. We need, he says, her blessing on our journey. We pray for guidance on an empty still street, with just a dog for company who waits for scraps at the tavern door.

  Perhaps, Brother Bernard says, we should go in there.

  Or we should proceed to pray, Brother Andrew says.

  As if in answer, someone came out of the saint’s house, we heard the footsteps, I felt a touch on my sleeve, pulling me along.

  Just you, a voice said.

  Together we walked up the hill
side through the dead vineyard, towards a moonless sky, and in the darkness I recognised my silent shadow companion as Aude, my mountain girl.

  Have you been true to me? she said.

  In the starlight she could not have seen me blush.

  I said that the town she had described to me in the mountains was not the one I had arrived at. She had told me about a languishing place.

  The villagers grow rich on my sister, she said. They grow fat and she dwindles away.

  And you?

  I do what I can in the service of my sister. My sister says we do what we have to do. We have no choice in the face of God’s will.

  She sermoned me. She said that if we have no choice then there can be no sin, because there is no sin without freedom. And she told me that being without sin is like being without death.

  These are some of the things she said; and she complained about the cupidity of the villagers and the sacrifice they were making of her sister, and the night was cold, and we walked beside each other, shoulders touching, and sometime she shivered, or maybe it was me.

  And then she had to go. She took me to a stone lodge on the edge of the vineyard and told me that I and my companions could sleep there without disturbance.

  I thanked her. I asked if I could see her the following day and she said that she only could see me at night, because she was too busy in service to her sister.

  I asked if I might meet her sister but Aude laughed at me and said that she did not think I could afford the price.

  I found Brother Andrew outside and Brother Bernard inside the house that serves as a tavern and I took them to the stone lodge in the vineyard. And in this way did our first night pass in the village of the living saint.

  Saint Mary Magdalene’s Day

  Mary is called Magdalene, which is understood to mean, remaining guilty, or it means, armed, or, unconquered, or, magnificent. Before her conversion she remained in guilt, burdened with the debt of eternal punishment. In her conversion she was armed and rendered unconquerable by the armour of penance. After her conversion she was magnificent in the superabundance of grace, because where trespass had abounded, grace was superabundant.

  There are some who say that Mary Magdalene was espoused to John the Evangelist, who was about to take her as his wife when Christ called him away from his nuptials, whereupon she, indignant at having been deprived of her spouse, gave herself up to every sort of voluptuousness. And there are those who allege that Christ honoured John with special evidences of his affection because he had taken him away from delight. These tales are to be considered false and frivolous.

  She was well-born, out of noble stock, and very rich; and sensuous voluptuousness keeps company with riches. Renowned as she was for her beauty and her riches, she was no less known for the way she gave her body to lust – so much so that her proper name was forgotten and she was commonly called The Sinner. When Christ was preaching at the home of Simon the leper, the divine will directed her there. Being a sinner she did not dare mingle with the righteous, but stayed back and washed the Lord’s feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and anointed them with precious ointment.

  This is the Magdalene upon whom Jesus conferred such great graces and to whom he showed so many marks of love. He cast seven devils out of her, set her totally afire with love of him, counted her among his closest familiars, was her guest, had her do the housekeeping on his travels, and kindly took her side at all times. He defended her when the Pharisee said she was unclean, when her sister implied that she was lazy, when Judas called her wasteful. Seeing her weep he could not contain his tears. For love of her he raised her brother Lazarus, four days dead, to life; for love of her he freed her sister Martha from the issue of blood she had suffered for seven years.

  Fourteen years after the passion and accession of Our Lord, the Magdalene travelled to Marseille, where she converted many idolaters with her preaching, because all who heard her were in admiration of her beauty, her eloquence, and the sweetness of her message: the mouth which had pressed such pious and beautiful kisses on the Saviour’s feet breathed forth the sweetness of the word of God so profusely.

  Later, the blessed Mary Magdalene, wishing to devote herself to heavenly contemplation, retired to an empty wilderness, and lived unknown for thirty years in a place made ready by the hands of angels. There were no streams of water there, nor nourishment, nor the comfort of grass or trees. Every day at the seven canonical hours she was carried aloft by angels and with her bodily ears heard the glorious chants of celestial hosts.

  After her own accession, many miracles attended: the dead were brought back to life; the blind made to see; prisoners were freed from their chains. One penitent, visiting her tomb, had the Magdalene appear to him as a lovely, sad-eyed woman supported by two angels, one on either side. The penitent soon felt so great an outpouring of grace in himself that he renounced the world, entered the religious life, and lived a very holy life thereafter. At his death, Mary Magdalene was seen standing with angels beside the bier, and she carried his soul, like a pure white dove, with songs of praise into heaven.

  •

  When we wake there is a pot of fresh water and a loaf of bread outside the doorway to our lodge. But today is a Friday, so we fast and spend the day in contemplation and prayer. Aude and I make a tryst on the hillside at night.

  Her family’s prosperity is restored. The villagers grow rich on her sister. They lost their relic, their church and land lie neglected, their income is far greater now than before.

  The second time I see my Aude she talks far less of her sister, whose saintliness seems to be oppressive to her, and she talks less too of sin and will. Instead, she speaks, softly, as if to herself, as if it is accidental that I happen to be overhearing her thoughts, of exile and escape.

  The village holds its strange work at too bright a pitch, as if the high point of ecstasy that some music builds to, to celebrate the Almighty One in a hot deliverance, is being sung, and lived, perpetually.

  My companions are impatient to leave this place. They find its ways irksome upon them. The saint is not permitted to us, we should proceed with our journey, they say. We still have far to go.

  I make excuses, I reiterate our desire to receive a blessing from the saint. They accuse me of playing the part of a lover. They threaten to go on without me. You have been subject to another enchantment, they say.

  And so I tell my Aude that we will have to go.

  I am not stopping you from doing anything, she says.

  She asks me, as she has before, What is your great sin? Why do you need absolution?

  And I tell her that only a visit to her sister can restrain my companions from continuing on.

  She was angry with me. She reminded me of something that she had said in the mountains, that I would prefer her sister to her, but I do not remember her having said that.

  • • •

  My Master teaches us to be careful with talk of miracles. In his Great Work, he writes,

  If the experiment of the magnet in relation to iron were not known to the world, it would seem a great miracle.

  Aude’s brother led me into the house. The people outside were angry at my undeserved privilege of being taken directly into the house and into a small corner room, which was dimly lit by candles like an altar.

  The saint was lying on a bed. Her body was narrow, her clothes dirty and torn. Her mother was combing her short hair.

  The saint sent her mother away. The others who were in the room made as if they were conceding me an audience but they were listening most intently. Sometime one of them would be so brave as to touch me or even her while we were talking. One even dared to touch the wounds on her feet.

  Have you been true to me? she said.

  I might have blushed. I did not know her.

  But she knew me. She asked me about my journey. She named my companions. She mentioned a donkey that I took as a judgement on our companion Bernard.

  Our listeners, h
er devotees, praised her, her knowledge that God had given to her of life everywhere, even the lives of strangers.

  She sent all the others away so I was alone with the saintly girl.

  She asked me to sit a little away from her, because, in this very dim room, the light was too bright for her eyes. And then she asked me questions.

  She asked me where I had come from, and why I was travelling and whether a great sin was the reason for my journey. I told her no, I had committed sins, but not great ones; that I was on a mission.

  She asked me to tell her the nature of my mission, and the room seemed to expand and contract again, and I heard a great rushing in my ears, as if a sea were all around us.

  I do not know if I can tell you, I said.

  She asked if I had a lover, if my heart was promised to anyone, and I did not answer. She asked me what my opinion was of her sister, and which of them I did prefer; and again, I found reason not to answer.

  The dimness of the room, the harshness of her voice as she led us in prayer.

  When we had prayed, I asked for her blessing on our journey but she said that she could not give it because it would be ungodly for her to bless a journey whose purpose was being denied her; and she knew my name and those of my companions, and the names of some of the places we had come from; and she told me to visit her again the following day, and she said that she might be able to bless me then.

  My companions are grieved that we did not receive a blessing from the saint. I tell them that I can hope for it to be delivered on the following day, and in this way, despite their impatience, I persuade them to stay here longer. They have given up hope of meeting the saint themselves, nor does this greatly worry them. They have no doubt of her sanctity but they are restless to move on.

  When I meet Aude that evening she asks me my opinion of her sister, and I tell her that she has made a great impression upon me. Aude finds reasons to chide me, she calls me a great hypocrite. We dispute and she is gone.