Temple of the Grail(48)

‘And yet I remember a Scythian prince having said that ‘Written laws are like spider’s webs; they will catch the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.’’

‘Very good, Christian. Religious fervour requires a fine balance. This is true of both heretics and the most devoutly orthodox men who call what they approve, good, but what they do not approve, evil.’

‘What then, master? Will we see justice done?’

‘I don’t honestly know. As men of science, however, we must not look at what is good or bad, wrong or right, we must rather search for the facts, find the cause, and treat the disease. And so too if we are to take the right path to solving our mystery.’

‘Like you knew the right path the day of our arrival?’ I offered.

‘Yes!’ he cried jubilantly, ‘which only goes to show that I am usually right.’

‘But not always,’ I dared to say.

‘Well, my impertinent boy,’ he fired at me so suddenly that I nearly reeled, ‘perhaps I should leave it all to your illiterate and clumsy faculties . . . Where would we be then?’

I looked down, knowing I had indeed been impertinent.

‘Come on then, boy,’ he said, seeing my distress, ‘it may be that I prove not so worthy of praise. This, too, remains to be seen.’

I stood, chastised, shuddering as something cold fell on my face. I looked up and the sun had disappeared and a grey pall had overtaken us. It was now snowing lightly and I followed my master to the church, feeling tormented by doubt, watching as more and more snowflakes floated gently onto the ground before me.





8


Capitulum

Mass

A young man is ruled by antipodes. He either loves in abundance or he hates vehemently, his spirit glides confidently on a joyous breeze of hope one moment, or is plunged into the gulfs of despair and doubt the next. He is guided, we are told, by exalted notions because life’s artistry has not yet humbled him or shown him his limitations. Now as an old man living by memory rather than by hope (could the little life left to me ever compare with the long past now gone and yet lovingly remembered?) I tend to smile, feeling a little pity for that poor young man, for I was in morbid contemplation of discrepancies and inconsistencies which threatened to overwhelm me.

The more my youthful-self reasoned, the greater my doubts became, like an object that casts a darker shadow the more one sheds light upon it. My master, because he was a man in his prime and, as Aristotle tells us, not guided so much by what is solely noble, but also what is useful, had during our discourse challenged many things that I had previously accepted unquestioningly – things that formed (albeit unknowingly) the cohesion of my existence – and I believed at that moment that I understood the origins of dissent and the metaphor of the seed. A little knowledge, I now surmised, was food for this odious germ, which then only requires a suitable medium in which to thrive and to grow until it becomes a tree of suspicion and mistrust. I felt that perhaps the inquisitor was right. What good is learning if it drives one away from the grace of God’s love?

And so, it was in this mood that every word of the Sunday mass, every ritual, every formula posed a question: is this the work of God, or only the desire of man, in his vanity, to mimic him? As the abbot ascended the altar and we sang ‘Judica me Deus’ from Psalm 42, kissing it as the sacred repository of saintly relics, I wondered from what inexhaustible source were so many relics recovered? Indeed how many fragments of one holy cross could there be? Andre once said – I believe to shock me – that five churches in France pledged they held the one genuine relic of Christ’s circumcision, and that the churches of Constantinople purported to have some hairs of the Lord’s beard. When I asked him about the heart and body of the martyr St Euphemia, kept at ‘Atlit by our order, he told me that it was said to have miraculous properties, and that it drew in many pilgrims. Raising one brow he then added that it was exceedingly good business too. How could one keep one’s faith from crumbling like so much dust?

Before too long I found myself joining the others in reciting the credo in unum Deum and I wondered how I could sing it? ‘Credo in unum Deum, that is, I believe in one God.’ But did I truly believe?

At some point the abbot consecrated the wafers of bread and the chalice of wine into the body and blood of Christ, and was bidding us to lift up our hearts to God; ‘sursum corda’, I heard myself answer ‘abeamus ad Dominum’, followed by the triple Sanctus, the Agnus Dei and the Pater noster, with a special emphasis on ‘deliver us from evil’, and I thought that these words must have been meant for me alone, for I was once again faced with further cause for distress. What if my master was right? What if there was no magic that allowed a man to turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ? Moreover, what if the one whose duty it was to perform this monumental and awe-inspiring task, was tainted with sin, corruption and irreverence? Did this result in the failure of the ritual, or did the blood and the body become tainted with the stain of his sin, so that all those who partook of it became stained also? Perhaps the Waldensians were right when they refused to take communion   from those whom they saw as impure? Oh, what anguish! It was only by the barest margin that I managed to keep from shouting out ‘no!’ Then, almost overcome with guilt, I prayed for the Lord to pacify the ravenous, unrelenting beast that consumed my faith, with a sign of his universal omnipresence, his eternal and infinite goodness. God, I was convinced, was aware of my pain, and in his benevolence could restore my faith by rallying the elements to do his bidding. Soon, I was certain, a bolt of lightning would shatter the abbey, cataclysmically tearing asunder the church in an arc of blinding light that, landing squarely on the altar, would irradiate with its illuminance the void that was now my faithless heart. I would then know that God dwelt in heaven and on earth and in every place, and that he heard the feeble cry of a young, confused novice.