The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (11 page)

Many apocryphal texts have somehow gained circulation and credence here, and we have found copies of the Gospel According to St Thomas, the ‘Interrogatio Johannis’, the Vision of Isaiah, as well as an extraordinary plethora of modern ‘gospels’ written down by people who claim to have received them by revelation. Thus there is a Gospel of Isabel the Whore, who enjoins people not to eat beans because flatulence is deleterious to spiritual health. The Gospel of Ricardo of Rinconondo claims that Mohammed was a reincarnation of Christ, who had returned in order to lose his virginity, and the Gospel of Maria of Malaga claims that Christ was really a woman who formed the third part of a ‘Holy Trinity’, of whom the other two were Mary Magdalen and Mary, Mother of Jesus. Not only do such ‘gospels’ exist in written forms, there are also many evangels which have remained oral thus far, but which nonetheless have gained great currency. For example, there is a city called Cochadebajo de los Gatos, which does not even appear upon the maps. In this place the population practises santeria, but there is also an Indian named Aurelio in whom the people place great faith for his medical advice; much of his advice and philosophy is gained from Aymara Indian and
Navante Indian mythology, and has syncretised with the beliefs even of ‘good Catholics’. In the same place there is a notable heresiarch, an unfrocked priest named Garcia, who leads a dissipated life and consorts with a false priest whose command of Latin extends no further than the lewder passages of Catullus and Ovid. This Garcia preaches a dualistic faith, and advocates self-indulgence and concupiscence as the means to salvation. He has gained literally thousands of followers all over that part of the sierra. In this he is not at all unique, for there are many others like him. Your Excellency will no doubt be aware of the phenomenon of Canudos in Brazil, where Antonio the Counsellor once gathered thousands of faithful who fought to the last drop of blood for their whimsical beliefs. We have the impression that there are many Antonio the Counsellors at work unnoticed in this country.

We have heard that the Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ were both angels, who merely appeared to be fleshly (the theory of the ‘
corpus phantasticum
’); that she became pregnant through her ear; that she was a sinful woman of the flesh, or even a prostitute; that she was really a male named ‘Marinus’.

Of Christ we have heard that he was merely a man, of sinful flesh, because only the fleshly may come to earth; that there were two Christs, one fleshly with Mary Magdalene as his concubine, who was crucified and suffered on earth, and that the other one was without sin, neither ate nor drank, was unfleshly, and was crucified in the invisible world; that Christ’s death was a scandalous defeat at the hands of Satan, who still therefore reigns here; that he reopened the path to heaven for his fellow fallen angels; that his miracles were black magic, and he a sorcerer; that he died upon the cross in each of the seven heavens; that he could not suffer or die, and therefore it was a demon that died in his place.

We have heard that earth is a penitence for fallen angels, and that when we die we are tormented by demons into transmigrating into another body, the new host depending upon one’s degree of merit. They prove reincarnation on account of numerous stories such as that of someone remembering where they lost a shoe in their past life as a horse, and the shoe turning up in that spot, as predicted. We have also heard that there is no resurrection at all in the flesh.

We have heard that there is no purgatory, or that purgatory is nine
times brighter than fire, that eighteen angels transport the good through it, spending one day in each of the seven heavens. In heaven there are pastures, savannahs, jungles, and birdsong. There is no hunger nor leprosy, and people don a ‘robe of light’ and reclaim the crowns that they wore before their fall as Satan’s angels.

We have heard that there is no free will; one is an angel or devil by predestination, and therefore repentance and attempts to behave well are pointless. This doctrine is justified by divine foreknowledge, and is used to license absolute libertinism, even including incest.

We have heard that all sacraments practised by a sinful priest are null and void, and that this is backdated to all sacraments made previously. Thus people will flock to be rebaptised when they perceive that their priest has sinned.

Of carnal matters it is said that marriage is ‘demoniac’ and that married congress is ‘legalised fornication’; this means that it is equally sinful to be married or to indulge in premarital intercourse, which justifies the latter, as one is condemned to sinfulness in either case.

People have invented strange prohibitions of their own, having found a heterogeneous collection of things to be satanic. Thus there are persons who will not eat flesh because the Devil created it, nor cheese, nor eggs, nor milk, but they will eat fish, because it is ‘the spontaneous product of water’. Many will swear no oaths, citing Matthew 5: 33–37, which means that they will not get married because they will not make the vows. For the same reason they refuse to become godparents. For others, insects, fish and lice are diabolical, as are serpents, frogs, toads, lizards and mice. There are cohorts of mendicants who refuse to work on the grounds that it prospers a world made by the Devil. They become formidably parasitic upon the ignorant poor, who nonetheless support them gladly. Some of these consider eating to be work, and they starve themselves to death in order to reprove the flesh.

Amongst the more curious beliefs that we have found to be current are these: that Pontius Pilate paid interest upon Judas’ forty pieces of silver; that it is very good luck to wear the Gospel of St John upon the top of the head; that only those who are perfect may say the Pater (thus most people never say it at all, and block their ears at the points in the service where it occurs); that God created evil in order to have something against which He might comprehend Himself; that one
has to plunge oneself into evil in order to understand and overcome it; that Heaven will only come when the last soul is saved, including that of Satan himself.

We could exhaust Your Eminence with the continuance of this section of our report, but to put it in short, we find that there is a plenitude of heretical belief in our country. We discovered Arianism, Waldensianism, Mazdaism, Zervaism, Albigensianism, Manicheanism, Bogomilism, theosophism, Paulicianism, Nestorianism, monophysitism, and Hussism. We found numerous gnostic groups, including one that actually preached salvation through oral intercourse, and yet was composed of those who earnestly declared themselves to be Catholic. We found a nun who wandered in dishevelled condition about the countryside proclaiming that the Roman Church was ‘the whore of the apocalypse, the synagogue of Satan, a monument of dead stones’; yet around her neck she wore a locket containing a picture of His Holiness which she kissed very frequently with more than religious passion. Above all we find that the prevailing practice is that of kathenotheism, by which we mean the custom of treating as the Supreme Being whichever deity one happens to be addressing at any given moment.

To conclude, we agree between ourselves that what we have discovered reveals two things. The first is that the religious imagination of the people is far from dead. We have found an extraordinary vivacity of belief amongst them; they expend great intellectual energy in constructing theologies, arguing about them, and observing the precepts that they develop. This reveals a profound spirituality amongst them which overflows into their artistic endeavours and permeates every aspect of their lives. We believe that this must be a cause for great rejoicing, because it uncovers to what extent we find ourselves upon already fertile soil.

The second thing that is revealed is that this soil is untilled, these sheep unshepherded. We point out once again that many of these beliefs are shared by clergy, which points to an appalling lack of training and pastoral support. We cannot be surprised by bizarre and heterodox beliefs amongst the laity once this is taken into account. Secondly, we state that it was a severely retrograde step to close down so many church-supported schools on the grounds that only politically radical priests and nuns were prepared to work in them.
This has resulted in widespread ignorance amongst youngsters, not only of the faith, but of everything else as well.

We firmly recommend that very large sums of money be released in order (
a
) to properly staff, maintain, and equip our seminaries and missions, (
b
) to reopen all closed missions and schools, and (
c
) to expand such school and missionary services all over the country, until every citizen has the opportunity to resolve issues of religion according to a conscience which is fully informed of the relevant facts and arguments. We further strongly recommend that the Church be prepared to shift its attentions somewhat away from those who at present receive our greatest attention and consolation (the pious middle classes), and go forth once more amongst the needy and the sinners, as Our Lord directed us to do. We are of one mind in believing that such money would more profit the world in this way than by remaining in fixed-interest Swiss bank accounts, or by being invested in the Ecclesiastical Mining Corporation.

I BELIEVE I
mentioned before that during the reconstruction of my house I had the use of Antoine’s ancient three-wheeled tractor, a machine ideal for negotiating the precipitous tracks of the mountainsides, and I like to believe that I had more than a little to do with its arrival here, as the blisters upon my hands at the time amply testified.

In fact we have the use of two tractors in this place, which is indeed a miracle because the city is completely inaccessible to wheeled vehicles, however rugged. The other tractor belongs to Don Emmanuel, and it was his that we fetched first all that time ago, just after I had arrived to take up residence and just before I was seduced into my delightful captivity by Ena and Lena, who have now both given birth to daughters. I am so busy with them these days that it is yet another miracle that I am finding time to write all this down.

I could observe in passing that miracles are not a great rarity around here; I would be prepared to wager my own life that this is the only place on earth where a man may meet his own ancestor in the flesh, which is what, if I may be permitted to digress, happened to Dionisio Vivo.

It appears that during the original migration to this town there was an avalanche that uncovered the frozen corpses of an entire military expedition from 1533, at whose head was the Conde Pompeyo Xavier de Estremadura, a Spanish aristocrat who had served the monarchies of both Spain and Portugal. Aurelio the brujo somehow contrived to bring these characters, including the Conde, back to life. I understand that they caused mayhem in the town with their arrogant behaviour, until Hectoro found a way to bring them down to size. This is ironic, because Hectoro looks and behaves much like a conquistador himself, and his face is very like that of the Conde.

The Conde was, and still is, remarkably disorientated by his resurrection; he refuses to learn to read on the grounds that only monks should have the need of it, he threatens people who displease him with the vengeance of the King of Spain, and he talks about the
events of the sixteenth century as though they were only yesterday. He reports that in heaven one hunts and ‘goes a-whoring’, a strange thing to hear from a literal-minded Catholic of that era. He is cared for by Remedios, the leader, or ex-leader, of the People’s Vanguard, and I daresay that she is the only woman here with a sufficient degree of fortitude to put up with him. I have no doubt that she loves him dearly, but I remember that once when he was in an aristocratic rage about a dent in his cuirass which he alleged that she had put there by dropping it, and he was waving his rapier in her face and threatening to slit her nose ‘as I did with the moor in Cordoba’, she walked past him without flinching and picked up the armour. She took it out into the plaza, put it at the bottom of the jaguar obelisk, and shot four holes through it with her Kalashnikov. With her eyes blazing magnificently, and tossing back her black ponytail, she marched regally back into the house, leaving the Conde with his mouth agape, and all his rage evaporating into astonishment.

The Conde was always prone to astonishment, such as when he saw the helicopter that came to fetch the tractors, and when he first came face to face with Dionisio Vivo. The fact is that they both have the same unnervingly blue eyes, probably for the reason that I gave above, which is that the Conde is Dionisio’s progenitor.

Dionisio was merely strolling down the street accompanied by his two jaguars, which are even larger than mine, when suddenly the Conde burst out of his doorway and waved his rapier in the former’s face, once again threatening to split his nose ‘as I did with the moor in Cordoba’. Dionisio said something to the two animals, and they leapt on the Conde, pinning him to the ground with their prodigious weight. I might add in parenthesis that this is yet another miracle, since no one else’s cats pay any attention to what they are told. Dionisio waited patiently until the Conde had finished his fearsome string of archaic oaths and maledictions, and then demanded to know why he had been accosted so rudely. ‘You have stolen my ring that was given to me by the King of Portugal,’ announced the Conde, ‘and I will have it returned or I will have you beheaded and the hands that stole it thrown to the ravens.’

Dionisio wore two rings, both on his left hand. One of them was a woman’s ring that he wore upon his little finger, and the other he
took off and held before the Conde’s eyes. ‘This ring?’ he enquired, and the Conde explained, ‘That ring, by God.’

‘This was given to an ancestor of mine, the Conde Pompeyo Xavier de Estremadura. It was presented to him by the King of Portugal in gratitude for some disgraceful mercenary episode, and has been passed down my family ever since. It is not yours.’