I blurted, “You found a manuscript of the Diatessaron? In what language?”
“It’s a diglot. Syriac on one side, ancient Greek on the other.”
I was agog. “That would be the original text.”
The Diatessaron had been written in one of these two languages and then translated into the other so quickly that no one today knew which came first.
“Unfortunately,” Ugo continued, “I don’t read either tongue well. Father Simon tells me, however, that you read one of them fluently. So I wondered if you might be willing to help me—”
“Absolutely. Do you have pictures?”
“Alas, the book is . . . not easily photographed. I discovered it in a place where I wasn’t supposed to be looking, so I can’t bring the book to you, Father. What I need to do is bring you to the book.”
“I don’t understand.”
He squirmed. “The only other person I’ve told about this is Father Simon. If word got out, I would lose my job. Your brother assures me you can keep a secret?”
For just a glance at that book, I would have promised Ugo almost anything. I had spent my life since seminary as a gospel teacher, and the first principle of my profession was that a small handful of ancient manuscripts had given the world its entire text of the gospels. The life of Jesus Christ as most modern Christians know it is a fusion of several texts, all slightly different, all breathtakingly old, stitched into a single version by modern scholars who even now continue to make changes based on new discoveries. The Diatessaron, because it was constructed by that same process of fusing older texts, could reveal the gospels as they existed in the 100s AD, long before the earliest complete manuscripts that had come down to us. It could add new facts to what we knew of Jesus’ life and make us question the facts as we thought we knew them.
“I can fly to Turkey as soon as next week,” I said. “Sooner if you need me to.”
The pulse was becoming thready in my chest. It was June; I didn’t have to teach class again until the fall. There was enough money in my savings account for two airplane tickets. Peter and I could stay with Simon.
But Ugo frowned. “I’m afraid you misunderstand,” he said. “I’m not asking you to come back to Turkey with me. The book is here, Father.”
CHAPTER 6
AS I FOLLOW Simon out of the canteen and up toward Leo’s apartment, my mind contains a single thought: the Shroud is here. The burial cloth of Christ is within these city walls. I wonder if it’s already locked in one of the piers of Saint Peter’s. Maybe the news will be public soon.
The Shroud’s arrival lends Ugo’s exhibit new significance. The truck’s papers were signed by Archbishop Nowak, which means it was John Paul who ordered the Shroud moved. For sixteen years, since the radiocarbon tests, the Church has made no official pronouncements about the Shroud. Suddenly that seems about to change. My thoughts about Ugo’s death, and the intruder at my apartment, begin to tip in new directions. I wonder if this is what Ugo was trying to tell me in his e-mail. That he had succeeded in bringing the Shroud here, only to encounter some kind of problem.
Something has come up. Urgent.
Christian relics can unearth the most subterranean feelings. Last year at Christmas, Peter and I watched TV footage of a huge brawl among priests and monks in Bethlehem over nothing more than which side of the Church of the Nativity they were allowed to sweep. Earlier this year, an armed guard had to be posted inside an international Shroud conference, and the Shroud’s priest-caretaker had to flee the conference hall because of violent reaction to a decision to have the surface of the cloth gently cleaned. If word of the Shroud’s transfer got out, no doubt most people in Turin would be thrilled to learn of Ugo’s plans to authenticate and honor it, but a small fringe might react differently. The only other violent attack I remember at Castel Gandolfo was inspired by strange religious delusions: when I was ten years old, a disturbed man tried to attack John Paul in the gardens, before leading Italian police on a highway chase back to Rome and charging them with an ax. In his pockets were found notes filled with ravings about emulating the gods. I wonder if it’s possible the moving of the Shroud triggered something similar. If so, then I thank God Peter and Helena weren’t hurt.