Temple of The Grail (16 page)

‘So you are saying that it makes no
difference what heresy it is because they eventually intertwine, and so all
must be equally punished?’

‘No, that is not it.’

‘But ...’

‘No, because what a man confesses
when persuaded with a hot iron, my boy, may far exceed the extent of his sin.
One can never be certain that one hears the truth under torture.’

‘But why lie? How could one confess
to terrible crimes if they are not true?’ I asked because I did not know, at
that tender age, that the flesh is weaker than the spirit.

My master shook his head in dismay,
and at that moment he looked more like a Saracen than a Christian. ‘Firstly, we
are not all born to endure a martyred end, my boy, otherwise we would all be
saints! When one is tortured – and we must remember with what zeal an
inquisitor pursues his victim – one will often confess to anything in
order to die and in order to escape pain and humiliation. A person will often
confess to the most remarkable things. Theres is also a strange phenomenon,
something not explained by medicine or science that occurs between an
inquisitor and his captive. An unnatural, unholy bond that sees the accused confessing
to greater and greater sins in order to please the inquisitor. After a time
even the accused believes his lies. It is a terrible thing.’

‘And yet,’ I retorted, ‘if a person
confesses to having committed a sin that he did not in truth commit he is then
compounding that sin with an even greater one!’

‘You say these things, Christian,
because when one is young, one believes very simply, as you have said before,
in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, but just as nature adorns
herself in manifold colours, so, too, are there various shades of virtue, as
there are various shades of depravity.’

‘How must I differentiate to what
extent one evil is greater than another, and one good is less good than another
good, master?’

‘One must look into the heart of it
to see what is heresy. In its most extreme case it is a noxious weed which
seeks to strangle the good plant, but we must eradicate this weed wisely, for
as we know, some poisons are not only harmful to the weed, but also to humans
and horses and others only to cattle or dogs.’

Seeing my blank look, Andre considered
another explanation.

‘In my opinion the only true heresy
seeks to take Christianity as a living spiritual reality, and transform it into
a dead animal, one that only seems to live, but is decayed and lifeless . . .
theoretical.’

‘Do you mean, like the theologians
do?’

‘Yes, but they have the help of the
Arabic philosophers who interpret Aristotle in such a way that man begins to
lose sight of the spirit.’

‘Master,’ I interrupted, seeing my
chance, ‘I had a very strange dream last evening, in which I –’

‘Did you? Well, you must tell it to
me sometime . . .’

‘But it concerned this very subject.
A monk called Thomas and his companion were living in the shelter outside the
abbey.

This Thomas spoke about a task that
he had to perform, he said something about Christianising Aristotle.’

‘Indeed, your mind works wonders in
your sleep!’ he exclaimed and I knew there was no point in pursuing it further.
‘We were speaking of the heresies.’ He scratched his greying head and pulled at
his beard. ‘Come outside.’

We turned away from Gilgamesh,
leaving the comforting smells of the stables and walked to the garden, now
blanketed in snow. Andre glimpsed a bush, now covered in the smallest leaves,
and picked one or two. Rubbing them between the palms of his hand, he sniffed
the scent lightly. A moment later, he remembered me and continued as before.

‘To begin with, we must consider
Christianity. Since the holy death in Palestine things have changed, Christian.
In the first centuries men still had a knowledge of Christ, but this knowledge
became corrupted. Some began to doubt that a God could have died on the cross,
that is to say, Christ could not be born nor could He die since He could not
have lived in a mortal body whose very essence is, to their way of thinking,
sinful. You and I know, however, that Christ did indeed die on the cross, but
his cross signifies life, not death, as the church would have us believe. As
time passed, Christian, men have become dull of spirit and clearer of mind, and
this means they need to make everything comprehensible, in a tangible way. So
the church comes up with all manner of dogma and stupidity to explain things
that cannot be explained. It tells us that Jesus was born to a virgin, when it
is well known that Mary was inspired by the heavenly Sophia who comes from the
region of the Virgin in the starry heavens! The church no longer knows the
meaning behind the sacraments, or the reason behind the partaking of the wafer
and the wine. It has lost the knowledge of why the monstrance is decorated with
the sun and a sickle moon. The Cathars have a sentiment for this, you see? They
have come into contact with an old Gnostic wisdom that understands what the
church has forgotten. They know that Christ has come to us from the sun and
that we partake of wafer and wine to remind us of that, because the wafer and
the wine are products of sun forces. The monstrance depicts the forces of the
sun, or
Son,
Christian, as they gain victory over the old forces of the
Father, or the moon wisdom of the Jews.’

‘But master –’

‘Listen, they have become empty
rituals now, and the church seeks to protect itself from what scraps of wisdom
still exist in the world.’

‘In the name of power?’

‘Yes, Christian. There is a vast
empire to protect and the pope has become its new caesar. He is the new
pontificus
maximus
, you see he even retains the name! It should not surprise me if in
the future he makes himself a god, infallible. Is he not almost a god? When the
pope tells us that a black cross is the symbol for Christ, then we must accept
it, is that not so? Or else prepare our carcasses for the pyre.’

‘So we do not believe in the black
cross, master?’

‘Our cross, as I have just told you,
is a red cross, it is a living cross, Christian! It tells us that Christ
lives
in our blood.’

‘And so you are telling me that the
heretics know more about Christ than the church and this makes the church
despise them?’

‘Cathars know many things even if
their wisdom has become distorted as we have said, and it is worth keeping that
in mind. There is distortion everywhere, it is inevitable.’

‘Then everyone is wrong and the world
shall fall into ruin.’ I was crestfallen, my heart weighed down and my mind
filled with thoughts like an anthill is filled with ants.

‘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.’

‘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.