The Black Madonna

by Peter Millar

  ‘Are you a member of this sect … the Giuliani … is that what you call yourselves?’

  ‘We don’t call ourselves, such as we are, anything, except perhaps students, philosophers. But it is a name that has been used.’

  ‘But nothing to do with Sister Galina, the Gallae?’

  ‘Nothing at all. We were aware of their existence, of course. That is why I was in contact with Sister Galina, but we have always favoured less extreme behaviour. We were not aware that the sisterhood had paid to have the statue stolen.’

  ‘Why? Where does it come from?’

  ‘What do you know of the Emperor Julian?’

  ‘Julius Caesar? As much as the next man. More than most.’

  ‘Not Julius. I said Julian.’

  ‘Julian? I don’t think …’ then not for the last time, Marcus’s mental squirrel retrieved a piece of information he had thought discarded for ever, something from his first-year university history course’s compulsory reading of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. ‘A late emperor,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Fourth century or thereabouts. The one they called Julian the Apostate?’

  The old abbot smiled, more appreciatively this time. ‘The very same,’ he said. ‘Except that they did not call him that at the time. They would not have dared. Nor indeed for many years later. The name is an invention of those who worked scrupulously to darken the name of a man who was a friend of learning and an opponent of dogma.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘It’s not surprising: history lost him. Julian was the nephew of the Emperor Constantius, great-nephew of Constantine, last of the imperial line. He only ever wanted to be a philosopher. But fate ruled otherwise. He turned out to be a brilliant general and on the death of his uncle was acclaimed emperor by his troops.

  ‘Julian was an initiate into the mysteries of Mithras. He saw his elevation to the purple as an opportunity to abolish the faddish new religion he believed was strangling the minds of his contemporaries. He abolished all of Christianity’s privileges. The Catholic Church today insists he tried to ban it, but in reality he simply stopped the Christians banning all others. It was they who were intolerant. And they got their revenge.’

  ‘What do you mean, got their revenge?’

  ‘Had Julian lived, the world might have been a different place. Christianity would never have become dominant. Islam might never have got off the ground. The whole dominance of the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic religious edifice would never have taken off, crushing the more tolerant pluralist beliefs of the old Hellenic world.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Julian died young. He died in battle, a futile war against the Persians. The manner of his death remains suspicious. A wound from the rear. Julian was not a man to run.’

  ‘Friendly fire?’

  ‘Or deliberate assassination. After his death the empire was run by a serious of weak dolts, the Christians gained the upper hand again, suppressed all the other cults and gradually took over the power structures from within. The rest is history. Literally.’

  ‘And this is why people like you have lived like a secret society within the Catholic Church, trying to take it over from within?’

  ‘Good God, no, if you will excuse the expression. We are not, as you might think, trying to take over anything from within. On the contrary, as I said, we like to think of ourselves as Julian did, as philosophers. No religion is wrong until it attempts to proscribe all others and claim for itself the sole right to truth, yet sadly that is what so many try to do.’

  Nazreem nodded, as if suddenly she was indeed convinced that handing over her trophy to this man was the right thing to do.

  ‘And this,’ she said, handing him the rucksack, ‘my “black Madonna” is really the Magna Mater, Kybele?’

  ‘Almost certainly. The church where you found it was, I believe, supposedly dedicated to …’

  ‘Saint Julian.’

  ‘Indeed. Not a saint at all, you see, but a covenant, a clue to future generations, a way to save the legacy of an emperor who believed in an alternative to autocracy – in heaven and on earth. I believe it must have been some of his Greek philosopher friends who brought it there from Rome, after his death. It’s the sort of intellectual joke that would have appealed to them: sweet and sour all at once.’

  ‘And yet in Rome they believed this lump of stone had magic powers, believed it saved the city.’

  ‘In Rome,’ the old priest smiled, ‘there were people who would believe anything. There always have been, and still are. Yet maybe it did. Because they believed it. Maybe those who believe in miracles experience them. Maybe. The important thing is to have an open mind.’

  ‘Open enough to believe this is also a chunk of the Hajr-e-Aswad, stolen from the Ka’aba itself.’

  Marcus could hear the cynicism in her voice, but there was none in the Spaniard’s reply.

  ‘Many Muslims believe that the Black Stone fell from heaven in the time of Adam, who they too believe to have been the first man. Some scientists believe life on earth may have been brought here by chance, on a meteorite from another world.’

  ‘You’re not saying there’s a connection?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything except that in the end everything is connected. Myths, legends – religions if you like – intermingle, and anything is of importance if it reminds us of our real significance in the universe.’

  ‘Infinitesimally small. Meaningless.’

  ‘No, not at all. In size we may be infinitesimal but we are also infinite: each one of us as a manifestation of “the One” that is the Universe itself – which is what Plato suggested and Julian believed – we are all, after all, each of us our own universe, but only make sense of any sort in communion with others. It is not dissimilar, I think, to what quantum physics and string theory suggest. Science and belief are not necessarily so estranged as many people would believe. But what do I know? It is time for me to go.’

  He took up his burden and hoisted it onto his back, not a cross but a small statue, little more than a lump of rock in a backpack, but a symbol nonetheless, and with a small bow towards Nazreem, turned and walked slowly away from them.

  Marcus watched him, a small, slight figure, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, watched him walk away until he was lost in the crowd. Then he put his arm around Nazreem, and hugged her tight. As if the universe itself depended on it.

  As maybe it did.

  The End

  Author’s Note

  The worship of Kybele goes back to the oldest days of human civilisation and is historically documented at great length. The goddess’s name has taken many forms including Cybele, Kubhih and Kubaba.

  She was linked to the Egyptian goddess Isis, the Greek Rhea and the earth goddess Gaia, and an idol in her shape made from a sacred black stone was indeed brought into Rome in 204 BC and credited with saving the city from invasion.

  There has always been a transgender aspect to her worship, and her Roman followers did indeed practise voluntary self-castration.

  There are many academic tomes about the study of Mithras, notably German scholar Manfred Clauss’s The Roman Cult of Mithras, translated into English by Richard Gordon. The similarities between the story of the deity’s life and that of Jesus Christ, including the date of birth, resurrection and virgin mother are remarkable to say the least. The nineteenth-century French philosopher, Ernest Renan, wrote: ‘If the growth of Christianity had been arrested by some mortal malady, the world would have been Mithraic.’

  The temple of Mithras in the City of London is real, though it has been relocated several times due to building work. At the time of writing it is still to be found in Queen Victoria Street and it really is a bus stop (see website below).

  The Roman Emperor Julian (‘the Apostate’) is one of history’s most intriguing figures. Quixotic and controversial, there is no doubt the world would have been a different place had he lived longer. There is an arresting and hi
ghly readable novelesque biography by Gore Vidal, entitled simply Julian.

  The Black Stone set into the wall of the Ka’aba in Mecca dates back, according to Islamic tradition, to the time of Adam and Eve, when it was sent to earth by God to show Adam where to build a temple.

  Most deities considered ‘pagan’ by mainstream religions have worshippers today. A Kybele-worshipping group in the US town of Catskill is fighting for religious recognition. I stress that my ‘Gallae’ belong firmly in the realm of fiction and have no reference to any modern adherents, other than drawing on the same historical religious background.

  I apologise to anyone whose religious sensibilities might be in any way offended by the fictional content of this book. It is a piece of imaginative fun with no intended message, other than perhaps a plea for mutual toleration of our fellow humans. As for the views expressed by some of my fundamentalist characters, I stress they are theirs alone, not mine and I have no wish to promote them: believe me, there are enough nutters out there already.

  There are myriad links on the internet to all the topics in this book. I offer only a couple of links to anyone interested in seeing some of the items mentioned in real life:

  Useful information on the sites of the black Madonnas in Altötting and Guadalupe may be found at:

  http://www.altoetting.de/cms/welcome_tour.phtml

  http://www.paradores-spain.com/spain/pguadalupe.html

  http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/extremadura/guadalupe.htm

  The Temple of Mithras and its bus stop can be found at:

  http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/central_bus_map.pdf

  ALL GONE TO LOOK FOR AMERICA

  Riding the Iron Horse Across a Continent (and Back)

  PETER MILLAR

  ‘Witty yet observant’ Time Out

  As the Bush era comes to a close there is unprecedented interest in an America on the cusp of change.

  At the age of 52, with a shoestring budget, a backpack and an open mind, Peter Millar set about rediscovering the US, by following the last traces of the technological wonder that created the country in the first place: the railroad. On a rail network ravaged and reduced he managed to cross the continent two and a half times, talking to people, taking in their stories and their concerns, shaking stereotypes and challenging preconceptions, while watching the vast American landscape that most visitors fly over unfold in slow motion. In the tradition of Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux, wry, witty, intelligent and always observant, this ‘inland empire’ should appeal to modern Britons keen to get beneath the skin of the country that more than any other influence their lives, and to intelligent Americans open to an oblique look at their own country. And, of course, railway lovers everywhere.

  ‘Witty yet observant … this book smells of train travel and will appeal to wanderlusts as well as armchair train buffs’ Time Out

  ‘Succeeds in capturing the wonder of America that the iron horse made accessible to the world’ The Times

  ‘Fills a hole for those who love trains, microbrewery beer and the promise of big skies and wide open spaces’ Daily Telegraph

  Paperback

  £8.99

  9781906413637

  1989 THE BERLIN WALL

  My Part in Its Downfall

  PETER MILLAR

  ‘Irreverent and engaging’ Economist

  It was an event that changed history, bringing the Cold War to a sudden, unexpected end and seeing the collapse not just of Communism but of the Soviet Union itself. Stereotypes disappeared overnight, and the maps of a continent had to be redrawn. Peter Millar was in the middle of it, literally: caught in Checkpoint Charlie between bemused East German border guards and drunk western revellers prematurely celebrating the end of an era.

  For over a decade Millar had been living not just in East Berlin but also Warsaw and Moscow. In this engaging, garrulous, bibulous memoir we follow him on a journey into the heart of Cold War Europe. From the hitchhiking trip that helped him discover a secret path into a career in journalism, through the carousing bars of Fleet Street in the seventies, to the East Berlin corner pub with its eclectic cast of customers who taught him the truth about living on the wrong side of the Wall. We relive the night it all disintegrated, gain insight into the domino effect that swept through Eastern Europe in its aftermath and find out how the author felt as he opened his Stasi files and discovered which of his friends had – or hadn’t – been spying on him.

  ‘The most entertaining read is The Berlin Wall: My Part in Its Downfall, a witty, wry, elegiac account of Millar’s time as a Reuters and Sunday Times correspondent in Berlin throughout most of the 1980s’ Spectator

  ‘The best is [this] irreverent and engaging account. Fastidious readers who expect reporters to be a mere lens on events will be shocked at the amount of personal detail, including sexual antics and drinking habits of his colleagues in what now seems a Juvenalian age of dissolute British journalism. The author has a knack for befriending interesting people and tracking down important ones. He weaves their words with his clear-eyed reporting of events into a compelling narrative about the end of the cruel but bungling East German regime’ Economist

  ‘Part autobiography, part history primer and part Fleet Street gossip column, Millar cast aside the old chestnuts and set about reporting on the reality of life under communism … Energetic and passionate’ Sunday Times

  Paperback

  £11.99

  9781906413477

  About the Author

  PETER MILLAR is a British journalist, critic and author, named Foreign Correspondent of the Year 1989 for his reporting of the later days of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall for The Sunday Times. He is the author of All Gone to Look for America, 1989 The Berlin Wall: My Part in Its Downfall, and the translator of several German-language books into English including the best-selling White Masai by Corinne Hofmann, and Deal With the Devil by Martin Suter.

  Copyright

  First published in 2010

  by Arcadia Books Books, 15–16 Nassau Street, London, W1W 7AB

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  All rights reserved

  © Peter Millar, 2010

  The right of Peter Millar to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–1–908129–29–1