The Invisible Assassin(17)

‘In the seventh and eighth centuries, the monastery at Lindisfarne on Holy Island, off the east coast of Britain, was the centre for all learning. Scholars from across the whole of the known world, from Europe, Asia and north Africa, came to Lindisfarne to exchange researches on a huge range of topics, especially the sciences. They brought their notebooks, and the monks at the monastery made copies for the monastery library. By AD 780, the library at Lindisfarne held most scientific knowledge available at that time. An order dedicated to the development of science sprang up within the larger order at Lindisfarne. This was the Order of Malichea.

‘In 793, the monks at Lindisfarne heard a rumour that the Vikings were preparing to invade Britain. The monks were afraid that the Vikings would come to Holy Island, and if they did they’d destroy the library with all these precious scientific texts. It’s believed that some members of the Order of Malichea decided to take all the scientific texts away to a sympathetic abbey at Caen in Normandy, in northern France, where the library found safe haven. In 793, the Vikings did invade Holy Island, as had been predicted, and they destroyed the priory at Lindisfarne before they went on to attack the rest of Britain. But the science books were now safe in France.

‘From 793, the library of scientific texts, now held by the Order of Malichea at the abbey at Caen, were added to, with scientists from all faiths, all nations.

‘In 1130, the Norman Roger became Roger II, King of Sicily, succeeding his father and brother. Roger unified three separate faiths under his rule: Christian, Byzantine and Islam; and encouraged scholars from all three cultures to contribute their scholarship and knowledge to his kingdom. As a result, as had happened at Lindisfarne hundreds of years earlier, the library of the court of Roger II included works of scholarship – particularly scientific – from all cultures, particularly Islamic. The library expanded under Roger’s successors: William I, II and III, and Tancred. However, the Pope considered the kingdom of Sicily, where Islam was on equal terms to Christianity, to be a “heathen” kingdom and ordered crusades to destroy it.

‘Although many of the texts of the library of Roger II survived, including works by Ptolomy and Islamic scholars, those that were considered particularly heretical had already been smuggled out of Sicily and taken to the abbey at Caen, where they were added to the scientific library of the Order of Malichea.

‘By the middle of the fifteenth century, the library of the Order of Malichea in the abbey at Caen was the hub of all knowledge of the global scientific community. However, the abbot of the Order was acutely aware that to the Establishment of the time, both Church and State, these works could be considered dangerous.

‘In 1483, the Inquisition was set up in Spain under Tomás de Torquemada, to seek out and destroy heresy. That included all heretical writing and thought. The Inquisition spread beyond Spain to Italy, and there were fears that it would spread through the rest of Continental Europe.

‘The monks of the Order of Malichea at the abbey in Caen were very worried: many of the scientific works in their library were by Arabic or Islamic scholars, and many dated from pre-Christian Roman or Greek times. For that reason alone, most of them would be considered heretical, and would be destroyed, as would any texts that went against the orthodox Church view of the world. In order to save the texts from destruction, they moved the library again. A large party of monks was sent to Britain, under the guise of making a pilgrimage to Glastonbury, because the abbot at Glastonbury was sympathetic to the Order of Malichea. Each monk took with him a number of books. And at Glastonbury Abbey they hid the library in secret rooms behind the official library.

‘Unfortunately, even at Glastonbury the books weren’t safe, because over the years the threat of the Inquisition spread, and the Church in Britain also began to seek out and destroy heretical thinking in its ranks. So, in 1497 the leader of the Order of Malichea took drastic action to save the texts. The monks of the Order were told to take these so-called “heretical” science books and hide them, secreting each in a separate place. To ensure the books would not be discovered, each one was to be hidden in a place that was unlikely to be disturbed because it was either sacred, or said to be cursed, or claimed to be haunted. A coded list of the different books and their hiding places was kept, known as The Index.

‘The abbot’s intention was for the books to stay hidden until the threat of the Inquisition had passed, and then the books could be recovered and returned to the abbey library in safety. However, the Inquisition didn’t pass. As far as the authorities were concerned, anything considered heretical had to be destroyed. So the books stayed hidden.