‘In time man shall forget that there was ever a Christ and shall remember only Jesus.’
‘I cannot believe that, master.’
‘Now, now, there is hope, Christian. As men become clearer of mind they begin to question everything. They seek to know the reasons for things, the fundamental principles. Perhaps their questions are not always the right ones, but the important thing is that they question! The church struggles because it has no answers. It has forgotten the old wisdom and interprets everything wrongly. Then it gets into further trouble by expounding lies in order to cover up preposterous things. You see, that is why in the end it comes to despise men who strive after truth, it seeks to destroy them.’
‘But God is the embodiment of truth. Is that not what you have always told me?’
‘Yes, but the church believes that only it may say what is true and what is not. It wants to rule men’s minds. It has forgotten about God altogether! You heard our conversation at the table last evening? It does not limit itself to the heretical orders, it also persecutes the educated men in the universities because the church believes, as we have heard, that knowledge breeds discord and doubt. The church condemns the search for knowledge because to see the truth leads one to discern it from what is untrue, and that is why lay people are prohibited from owning copies of the Bible.’
‘But master, where do lay people find copies of the Bible when most can hardly read?’
‘Those who can read have been known to make and disseminate their own translations. The council of Narbonne had to pass a law forbidding this practice by the Waldensians. You see, the church seeks to prevent men from questioning.’
‘I think it is wise, for how can the ignorant man know anything of doctrine? If what you say is true and the old wisdom is lost, then only error can result.’
‘Man must regain wisdom, perhaps in a different way than before.’
‘But if you educate the ignorant man he will be like those learned men who are also condemned of heresy!’
‘That is so, but I believe it is far better to suffer in knowledge than to suffer in ignorance . . . or perhaps it is worse? I don’t know.’
‘But I am a little wiser now, and yet I find myself knowing very little.’
Andre smiled with affection. ‘Wisdom is gained in a lifetime, Christian. Even the greatest fathers of our faith have been known to have felt this way because they knew that man himself is imperfect! They understood that man carries within himself the polarity of good and evil, and so is bound to all that is divine and noble, and yet bound to dogmatism and opinions that may be erroneous. Remember our discussion that first day I warned you that in the coming days you would hear many opinions. Only trust what you know truly in your heart. Augustine himself has said that he would not have believed the gospels were he not constrained to do so by the authority of the church.’
‘But master!’
‘Do not look so surprised! Only four hundred years ago the pope himself allowed a form of heresy to enter into the matters of doctrine.’
‘How?’
‘He denied the spirit, and so he allowed a form of Arabic thinking to enter into the body of belief.’
‘But man has a soul, is that not spirit?’
‘No, Christian. The spirit is something higher. In this revelation, the pope decided that he should deny the spirit in man. He did not think clearly, however, because if you deny the spirit in man then you also deny the possibility of revelation through man, for it is the inner spirit that can, in turn, recognise the outer spirit, et par conséquent, what is revealed through it. Do you see how ridiculous it is?’
‘I am once again confounded, master. Why should he deny it?’
‘It is merely that he had lost the ability to see it, Christian.’
‘Then who is right and who is wrong?’
‘Right and wrong, like good and evil, are rarely what they seem.’
‘I see . . . So it is the Devil’s deception that makes good men seem bad and bad men appear good, so that even pious men are fooled?’
‘Yes. Believe only what is in your heart, and yet it must come from a deliberation without emotion, for more often mistakes are made when men are driven by a feverish zeal . . . on both sides.’
‘As in the case of Eisik?’
‘Unfortunately, yes, for as Alcuin tells us, the righteousness of a crowd is always very close to madness. That is, often times there is a kind of frenzy enjoyed by men in the anonymity of a crowd. That is why the inquisition was formed in the first instance, to introduce a logical and practical way of dealing with such things! Without laws we lose the ability to hold together savage men in a society of civilised human beings. However, even as I say this, there are also those whose zeal is ignited by singular power. Inquisitors are not immune to such things.’