The Fifth Gospel: A Novel

by Ian Caldwell

  Many priests, canonists, and professors made crucial contributions. Surely no institution on earth has better reason to doubt the motives of novelists than the Catholic Church, but to my surprise I received generous help at every turn: seminary instructors, Church lawyers, and prominent Catholic scholars not only answered my questions in detail but sometimes spoke openly about their experiences at the Vatican. Special thanks go to Father John Custer for many hours of generous assistance helping me understand Eastern Catholicism and the life of an Eastern Catholic priest in Rome; to Margaret Chalmers and Father Jon Chalmers for their guidance on penal cases under canon law, a subject that has not received full justice in these pages but that would have been utterly bungled without their unstinting help; and to John Byron Kuhner, who had already studied with the papal Latinist by the time we were reading Augustine and Ignatius as undergraduates together, and who made short work of correcting my Greek and Latin.

  Many newfangled technologies prevented a years-long research process from becoming a decades-long one. Google in particular deserves recognition for the wealth of tools it has placed at the hands of researchers. With a working knowledge of only English and French, I resorted to scanning my own books in other languages and reading them via Google Translate. I made almost daily use of Google Books, mining its stockpiles of scholarship on ancient Christianity, its old Baedeker guides of Italy and the Papal States, and its hard-to-find texts on clerical clothing. Google Maps helped me diagram the layout of the Vatican village in more detail than any of the various books I own on the subject, while letting me keep tabs on the progress of the city-state’s endless construction projects. More recently, Google Street View has made it possible to take high-resolution tours around the perimeters of both the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo. Also deserving of great thanks are the many newspapers—above all The New York Times—that during the past ten years bravely digitized their archives. I discovered wonderful and sometimes astonishing things about the Vatican in those old pages.

  Jonathan Tze, who seventeen years ago helped hatch the idea behind The Rule of Four, became one of the first victims of this novel’s endless birth pangs. After long months of helping to research a different storyline, he watched the material lead me in another direction. Years later, though, he generously reprised his inspirational role by helping me imagine The Fifth Gospel’s final scenes. There are few better things to a writer than creative companionship, but one of them is constant friendship.

  Dusty Thomason is this book’s godfather. Even before the publication of The Rule of Four, he and I spent a week together in Greece researching a follow-up novel we intended to write together, which neither of us envisioned being set at the Vatican. Then life intervened, and we found ourselves working on different projects on different coasts. Still, Dusty helped shepherd me through endless drafts of this manuscript—and through the selva oscura they led to. Most importantly, in the eighth year of this process, when the book seemed on the brink of failure and my family was on the verge of a darkness I still cannot contemplate, Dusty refused to let us suffer. He rescued the people I love, simply out of love for me. Not even a thirty-year friendship brimming with acts of inexplicable kindness prepared me to receive a gift like that. No thanks will ever suffice. Just writing these words brings me almost to tears.

  The last of these acknowledgments is the hardest. The world is full of writers who believe they are making important sacrifices for their art. But a husband and father who volunteers his family to share in those sacrifices is either heartless or a fool. Beginning in 2006, and continuing in an almost yearly cycle, I believed I was close to finishing this book. Whatever the problem was—the bottomless research, the interweaving of the threads of the plot, the work of getting Alex’s voice just right—the solution was always just around the corner. For nine years this is what I put my family through. My wife wouldn’t steal from me the optimism I was surviving on, but she knew the truth. And when the worst finally came, and it knocked me on my back, she was the one who lifted me up and carried me to the finish line. Never have I met anyone who cares less about material things or the prospect of losing them. Never have I met anyone who shows by daily proofs that love, truly, is all. I gave this novel everything I had. But she gave it even more. This book begins and ends with Meredith.

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  The Fifth Gospel

  Ian Caldwell

  In 2004, as Pope John Paul II’s reign enters its twilight, a mysterious exhibit is under construction at the Vatican Museums. A week before it is scheduled to open, its curator is murdered at a clandestine meeting on the outskirts of Rome. The same night, a violent break-in rocks the home of the curator’s research partner, Father Alex Andreou, a Greek Catholic priest who lives inside the Vatican with his five-year-old son. When the papal police fail to identify a suspect in either crime, Father Alex, desperate to keep his family safe, undertakes his own investigation. To find the killer he must reconstruct the dead curator’s secret: what the four Christian gospels—and a little-known, true-to-life fifth gospel known as the Diatessaron—reveal about the Church’s most controversial holy relic. But just as he begins to understand the truth about his friend’s death and its consequences for the future of the world’s two largest Christian Churches, Father Alex finds himself hunted down by someone with vested stakes in the exhibit—someone he must outwit to survive.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. “He was my friend. His name was Ugolino Nogara.” What does Father Simon Andreou’s behavior at Castel Gandolfo suggest about his true feelings for Ugo Nogara? How does Simon’s younger brother, Father Alex Andreou, interpret the scene he encounters in the garden? Why does Simon’s behavior seem suspicious to Alex?

  2. When he returns to Vatican City from Castel Gandolfo, Father Alex discovers that in his absence a man searching for him and Simon broke into his apartment. Why does Alex suspect that Ugo’s murder and the break-in are connected in some way to Ugo’s forthcoming exhibit? What do both of these disturbing incidents reveal about the dynamics of the sibling relationship between Simon and Alex?

  3. “The image created a strange tension inside me. . . . [T]he Holy Shroud is king, the image at the heart of our faith.” Why is the carbon-dating of the Shroud to the Middle Ages significant to Alex and Simon? What role does their family history play in both brothers’ decision to help Ugo validate the Shroud’s authenticity?

  4. What is important about Ugo’s discovery of the Diatessaron in the Vatican Library? Why do Ugo and Father Alex clash over what should be done with “probably the oldest complete gospel manuscript in the world?” How does their disagreement highlight the rifts in historical and religious scholarship concerning the figure of Jesus Christ?

  5. When Alex confronts Simon with physical evidence that Ugo was targeted like Michael Black, Simon explains that he cannot reveal more to his brother because he has taken an oath. Discuss the role of oaths in the novel. Does religious secrecy imposed by the papal state take precedence over legal and moral imperatives? How does Simon’s oath affect the information he can give to the papal police in the case of Ugo’s death?

  6. “. . . Michael howls, ‘Helping Nogara? That’s what Simon told you he was doing?’ He gives a scornful laugh. . . . ‘Alex, your brother’s been lying to you. Lying to everyone.’ ” To what extent is Michael Black telling the truth when he calls Simon’s honesty into question? How would you characterize Michael’s relationship with the Andreou family? Given that Alex and Simon are ardent believers in uniting the Christian denominations of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, why do they trust Michael Black, who devotes himself to fomenting division between these separate communities?

  7. How does Alex’s unanticipated role as a single parent to Peter reframe his understanding of his life’s obligations? How does he make sense of his wife’s unexplained disappearance? Compare Alex’s and Peter’s experiences of Mona’s absence. How does her surprising return to their l
ives impact them individually? How would you describe her role in the novel?

  8. How does Ugo Nogara’s pursuit of the truth about the Holy Shroud set the plot of The Fifth Gospel into motion? Ugo’s character is revealed posthumously—through flashbacks, voicemails, and notes. What do these pieces of evidence establish about his personality? Given all that we as readers learn about him, does his death seem consistent with the way he lived his life?

  9. “Simon stands. ‘I’ve decided that I won’t defend myself against the murder charge.’ ” What does Simon’s decision to opt for silence rather than confess to murder or defend himself reveal about his character? How would you describe Simon’s faith? How does his elite position in the Secretariat add to the cloak of secrecy that surrounds him? How much does Alex truly understand his older brother and his motives?

  10. What role does His Eminence Lucio Cardinal Ciferri play in the lives of Alex and Simon? How does his character evolve over the course of the novel? How does Uncle Lucio use his authority to help his family, and what does this suggest about the nature of Vatican politics?

  11. Describe the scene at the opening night of Ugo’s exhibit. How do the gestures of religious reconciliation made by Pope John Paul II in the Sistine Chapel at the end of the exhibit alter the course of religious history for Catholic and Orthodox Christians? How is the reunion of these long-divided denominations made possible by a cover-up?

  12. “So this is why my friend died. Because I taught him how to read the gospels. And because he had the bravery to speak out about what they revealed.” How does Alex’s hermeneutical expertise enable him to connect Ugo’s death at Castel Gandolfo to the truth about the Shroud’s authenticity? Why does Ugo use a code involving the gospels to reveal the truth about the Shroud to Simon?

  13. “Simon peers down at me. And there is such heart-splitting love in that look.” Why does Alex falsely confess to Ugo’s murder? To what extent is Alex’s deception guided by his faith? What does Alex’s calculated lie signify to Simon? How do both brothers, through their actions in this book, embody the passage from John 15:13—“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”?

  14. How does the author characterize the community of Vatican City? What does its nearest neighbor, the city of Rome, represent to many Vatican City dwellers? How do some of the minor characters in this novel—figures like Guido Canali, Sister Helena, Gianni Nardi, Leo and Sofia Keller—enhance your appreciation of secular and religious life in this altogether unique city-state?

  15. Alex identifies himself early in the book as an Eastern Catholic. How might his minority status within his own Church give Alex a heightened appreciation of the religious hierarchies in Vatican City? How would this novel differ had Simon Andreou been its narrator?

  ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

  1. In The Fifth Gospel, brothers Alex and Simon share the belief that they are to submit themselves and their lives to God. Their faithfulness to God’s will leads them down very different paths. Have members of your group discuss the significance of faith in their own lives. How, if at all, have religious traditions shaped who they are as people? How have they shaped other members of their family? Members of your group may want to consider the moral or religious underpinnings of their childhood, and examine how they have followed or departed from them in their adult lives.

  2. In The Fifth Gospel, Ian Caldwell examines the profound emotional impact of losing a parent. In the case of Alex and Simon, the early deaths of their father and mother force them to rely more closely on each other; in the case of Alex’s son, Peter, the sudden disappearance of his mother in his infancy colors his young world incalculably. Some members of your group may have experienced the early loss of a parent firsthand. How does Caldwell’s theme resonate with them? What qualities do children who grow up without parents seem to exhibit? Have members of your group consider the characters of Peter, Alex, and Simon in their discussion.

  3. The Shroud of Turin functions almost as a character unto itself in The Fifth Gospel. Rumors of its holy presence haunt the tight-knit Vatican City community in Caldwell’s novel, and its appearance in the Sistine Chapel at the exhibit organized by Ugo Nogara seems partly responsible for enabling the reconciliation between Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Ask members of your group to discuss their feelings about the Shroud. Do they believe it to be a holy relic? How does the carbon dating of the Shroud to the Middle Ages affect their thinking about it? Members of your book group may choose to discuss the significance of the Shroud to them, and what the mystery surrounding the Shroud’s origins represents to a wider world audience, both religious and secular.

  A CONVERSATION WITH IAN CALDWELL

  Ten years have passed since the publication of your first novel, The Rule of Four, and the release of The Fifth Gospel. How many of those years did you devote to writing The Fifth Gospel?

  All of them! I started writing The Fifth Gospel even before The Rule of Four was published, so it’s been almost a dozen years of work. But the first incarnation of this story was completely different: a team of archaeologists goes searching for a lost wonder of the world that, as the characters discover in the end, changed the way Jesus came to be depicted in Christian art. When I finished writing that manuscript in 2006, I realized I’d told the wrong story. The adventure novel didn’t engage deeply enough with the question I cared about most: how Jesus became a subject of Christian art, since the gospels never describe his appearance and early Christians were opposed to making images. Where did the tradition of a long-haired, bearded man come from? Eventually I decided to rewrite the book and set it at the crossroads of faith and art: the Vatican. I had a feeling the switch was going to involve some research, but the Vatican is the world’s smallest country, so how much research could it really take? Famous last words . . .

  You cowrote your first novel with a childhood friend. How would you compare the experience of writing fiction with a partner to writing a novel on your own?

  The monastic part of writing—the solitude and self-imposed discipline—agrees with me. Since I have three sons under the age of ten, those hours of deep silence and inner grappling feel almost medicinal! I do make a lot more blockheaded storytelling decisions than I did back when I had a friend looking over my shoulder, but fortunately my old coauthor is just a phone call away, and we still eyeball each other’s drafts. Dusty [Thomason, cowriter of The Rule of Four] now works in Hollywood and writes mainly for TV. He’s more at home in the West Coast creative world, and I’m more at home in this East Coast one, but we’re on the phone all the time, trading stories and comparing notes.

  What drew you to setting your novel in the notoriously insular Vatican city-state, and how challenging was it for you as a fiction writer to re-create its environment in your narrative?

  I was attracted to the challenge of writing about a secretive place . . . only to find out that this particular place wasn’t as secretive as I’d thought. In fact, there’s probably no better-documented place on earth than the Vatican, once you know how to find what you need. Two-thirds of the city-state can be visited most days of the year by almost anyone. The pope is one of the most photographed people on earth, and considering that his golf course–size country has its own daily newspaper, publishing house, radio station, and TV operation, in any other context the Vatican would be accused of media oversaturation. On top of that, books have been written on every subject from the pope’s finances to the pope’s clothes to the pope’s cars, and on the seedier side of things there are paparazzi who will sell you aerial drone photos of the inner Vatican and recount, step by step, how they broke into the pope’s summer residence to take compromising photos of the Holy Father in his private swimming pool. (You also wouldn’t believe some of the things that turn up on eBay.) What surprised me most, though, and what made a great impact on The Fifth Gospel, was the willingness of Catholic priests with Vatican experience to talk openly abo
ut their lives. We novelists haven’t given them much incentive to do that, but they did it, anyway. So one of the biggest challenges of creating the Vatican of The Fifth Gospel was how to do justice to the huge volume of factual information at hand.

  Eastern Catholicism is not well known. How did you come to learn about it, and what led you to make Alex Andreou, the protagonist of your novel, an Eastern Catholic?

  At an early stage of researching The Fifth Gospel, I was reading books on different subjects when everything suddenly converged. While learning about the internal legal code of the Catholic Church (canon law), I’d found out there are separate codes for Latin Rite (“Roman”) Catholics and for Eastern Catholics. I’d also been reading a biography of Pope John Paul II, who in his final years tried to reunite the Catholic and Orthodox Churches but couldn’t quite fix the problem that many Orthodox view Eastern Catholics as obstacles rather than as middlemen. And of course I’d been scanning hundreds of pictures of Vatican life, and whenever there was a big enough gathering of cardinals, I noticed that a few of them were dressed in unusual robes and headpieces and jewelry. Since Catholic clerical dress is as rule-bound and complicated as the American tax code, I knew there must be a reason for that. What I didn’t expect to find was that the pope oversees almost two dozen Catholic rites I’d never known existed, and that their Christian traditions offered a new perspective on what I’d thought of as Catholicism. The writing of The Fifth Gospel coincided in my own life with a decade in which I got married and had three children, so one of the ancient Eastern traditions that resonated with me was the practice of allowing married men to become priests. I’d known from the beginning that I wanted to write not just about a Vatican priest but about a Vatican family. Now I had a way to do it.