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The Archive of Stanley MessengerThe Cathar Connectiona novel by Stanley Messenger8. REQUIESCANT |
No sudden impact of such a group of people, reeling and ecstatic as these four at once were with the sudden release of energies long held in tension, can last long without those energies needing an outlet extending beyond simple personal involvement. For Raymond it was quickly apparent that Helene would engage most of his time and thoughts. It was partly to assuage Esther’s inevitable pain that Clothilde engaged her quickly upon a course of studies and tasks which occupied her fully until she had to return to her next probation placement in England. Among the tasks was that of visiting, (and incidentally practising her French on), a number of enquirers who had shown an interest in Clothilde’s historical study group, but whom she was too busy with her practice to spend much time with. Part of the object was to find out if any of these enquirers showed a potential interest in the more esoteric aspects of the work. Clothilde felt that the meeting of the five of them, including Helène, raised the question whether it was not intended by beings beyond the threshold that a considerable expansion of teaching was now demanded by the times, for which the events culminating in their own discovery of each other were intended as an unmistakable signal.
Esther made no startling discoveries straight away, but her reports back to Clothilde in the evenings took them both deep into the realm of Cathar beliefs, and the problems they raised. Stimulated by Clothilde’s far memories, Esther’s keenly analytic mind, ably backed by Alan’s insights, provoked Clothilde into many revelations she herself had forgotten. Some of the most interesting of these related to information, much of it second hand, which she had picked up during her Templar work, about some of the personalities of later Cathar times, who necessarily kept themselves deeply hidden, but who had become legends in their time along the equally secret trails and haunts of missioning Templars. It was during one of these exciting speculative evenings that Esther suddenly came out with the idea that they should try to bring some of these legendary personalities to life in the form of drama.
"After all", she said, "the real way to bring the Cathars alive for people today, to show the vital part they played in sowing the seeds of our own romanticism, and at the same time how their beliefs and philosophy have to be transformed in our time into further capacities for understanding and growth, is not so much to lecture about them as to embody them in living form." "Don’t we do that already in our own persons by slowly penetrating into those times in far memory?" asked Alan. "Yes, but I think we need to do more. Mere memory is still to some extent a retrograde step. We are the fulfilment of the prophecy which their problems embodied. Can we not give that fact far greater force for other people by expressing dramatically the full prophetic challenge the Cathars felt then? Would not this be one way to help others recall their own involvement, to bring their own forgotten intentions into consciousness?" "It would be extraordinary to perform the part of one’s own previous incarnation on the stage", said Clothilde. "Probably more therapeutic to play each other’s!" said Alan. "We’re none of us playwrights", said Esther. "How do you know?" asked Alan, "Some of the stuff you wrote in the diary was highly dramatic. Why don’t you have a go?" "I think Clothilde and I might do it together", said Esther. "I could record your reminiscences, Clothilde, and build on some of those."
Several scenes for plays arose in this way, and could well form the basis for a future archive. One especially, however, seems to belong to the present account. It later played a special part in their teaching work, but it is placed here for the role it plays in closing that particular chapter in their lives, laying finally to rest also their regret and longing to relive and resolve old tragedies. After that they became much more fully engaged in the present life, and far memory, while not fading, was increasingly embodied in a transformed way in their involvement with other people and new tasks.
* * *
This scene was originally conceived as part of a radio play. They made a tape of it, and used it in audio-visual scenes, using photographs and paintings of Montségur and the caves, and of other mountain and lakeland scenery in the area, some of it high up in the Pyrenées. The sound effect of echoes and dripping water was essential to the atmosphere, and they were able through the kindness of the owners to record it in Lombrives itself.
The young Dominican brother, Philippe, and his Cathar friend Bernard are seated on a rock in the middle of the vast cathedral cave of the Grotte de Lombrives. The scene opens with the ringing echoes of their loud laughter, reverberating in the huge space of the cavern, and the microphone slowly homes in on them as Philippe starts to speak.
PHILIPPE My dear Bernard, you’re incorrigible. (Laughter again. Then, in the silence which follows, Bernard speaks quietly.)
BERNARD And so we come again, now as so often before, to the same point in the same discussion, the same interminable discussion...threading our way with what seems endless patience and care past pitfall after pitfall in the vast edifice of doctrine which men have built up, for our protection and our training, and reaching, as always so it seems to me, a point at which the intelligence confesses itself utterly at a loss, and hands over the task of final judgement to the weary untutored heart. And upon that heart’s judgement rests the dreadful burden of our deeds.
PHILIPPE And there it is, at that very point, my dear tortured friend, that Holy Mother Church holds out her two hands and offers...
BERNARD Stop, Philippe.
PHILIPPE ...and offers...
BERNARD Stop, I say. I beg you to be silent.
PHILIPPE Upon this rock will I build my....
BERNARD (cries out) SILENCE! (Tremendous echoes resound). Forgive me! My rude bellowing shatters the very silence I would defend. Hear the echoes lose themselves among the endless pillars and curtains of stone which surround us on every side, mile after mile. There! Now the silence I invoke rules again, and the rock may speak. Forgive me my friend. There are things hidden from us here, things that I am compelled to defend. Heaven knows they need no defence from me. But I cannot help myself. Tell me, how far did you walk to reach me here?
PHILIPPE Three leagues in the saddle, and a mile on foot to the cave mouth.
BERNARD And how far within the mountain?
PHILIPPE I don’t know. Why do you ask? A long way.
BERNARD Over half a mile. Over half a mile of solid limestone between us and the sun, Philippe, and another half mile of it over our heads. To that depth has your Holy Mother Church driven us. "Upon this rock!" Has the rock of Peter entered into your souls then? Are we to be crushed finally like toads between rock and rock, ground like flour between the Pope and the Pyrenées?
PHILIPPE It is too late to speak like this, Bernard. You are not usually so bitter. What is to become of our friendship? The crusade is over a century old. Do I have to remind you that we are living in the land of tolerance, the only land in Europe where men of the most widely divergent opinions can live side by side within the Church in mutual regard, the civilisation of the Langue d’Oc....?
BERNARD The civilisation of the Langue d’ Oc? We are the civilisation of the Langue d’Oc, we five hundred pale prisoners, invalids, hermits, children, herded in this sunless tomb! The civilisation of the Langue d’Oc is as dead as mutton, and you know it. Our very language, the language of the Troubadours, is as dead as Ancient Greek. Our Courts of Love, the flower of European culture, they are museum pieces, the gossip of tourists and archaeologists. Our whole culture, Troubadours and Cathars, croyants and parfaits, relegated to the history book, the story book almost. You have utterly destroyed them.
PHILIPPE The Inquisition has utterly destroyed them. They act with the utmost wickedness in the name of the Church, and the Church acts with what wisdom she may through them. She is hardly in a position to do otherwise. Like any artist she uses the material she has. There is no room for a whole world of vermin in a building as large and as old as the Catholic Church, Bernard. But no amount of cockroaches can pull down a mansion, and they keep the cellars clear of rubbish. Yes, rubbish! In the broad view one has to admit that the Church’s scavengers detract very little from the value of the Church as a whole. It is certainly so that most of her time is spent advancing the purposes of Christ by balancing out the crimes of Christians. If you insist on living in the cellars of course, the very dungeons of Christendom, you naturally come up against them. But if I may say so, that’s your own look out. There’s plenty of room upstairs.
BERNARD No. There’s no room for us ‘upstairs’ as you call it. Oh I know what you want. You think all we have to do is to walk out into the sunshine and give ourselves up. We allow a few dozen more souls to be sacrificed in the fire; what would they amount to among the hundreds of martyrs already burned? And then, how would you put it?.. March forward in line with a truly progressive Christianity into the modern fourteenth-century world., is that it? We are an anachronism, aren’t we, a bunch of outmoded radicals chanting slogans that the world is thankful to have forgotten. What is more pathetic that the revolutionary of yesterday whose reforms are either established commonplaces, or else have been relegated to the back shelf?
No, your kindness is worse than your cruelty. The Catholic juggernaut has grown so big it no longer knows what it is crushing. You, invoking the tolerance of Langue d’Oc! You don’t know what the Langue d’Oc was. You haven’t the faintest idea, you don’t know what there still is, living in these caves. You’ve come here since you were a boy and you still don’t know. There are five hundred of us, Philippe. The sole coherent remnant of a whole civilisation, and we hold here in the palm of our hand the secret and the guiding force that built that whole world. A world that would have conquered Europe with the Love of Christ, a world that would have wooed and melted the whole stony heart of the Rome-ridden, Norman-ridden, yes and Pope-ridden western world with the sweet lover’s kiss of Christ the Troubadour, the little story-teller from the sun, who whispers in the ears of drunken warriors and priests the sweet romantic tale of catharsis, of a new earth and a burning fire which lifts the very rocks of these crushing Pyrenées right into the floor of the heavenly kingdom.
"Upon this rock will I build my Church!" Let these timeless caverns ring with this redeeming word! Let the indwelling spirit of every crystal pillar answer you back word for word the message you try to bring them from the stony earthbound hearts of Peter’s churchmen. Here, here in the earth herself, in these very stones, is the TRUE church of Christ, strut as you may in your crimson vestments, dispense as you may your man-contrived absolutions, wrangle and scribble as you may towards that highly distilled theology, that Summa Theologica you all hope to write.
Listen, Philippe, here, in this very cave.. (As Bernard draws near to Philippe and prepares to whisper more secretly in his ear, a faint sound caused him to turn. The ‘grand initié’ himself, Father Amiel, son of the original Amiel Aicard, and himself now of a great age, has silently drawn near, and now quietly speaks.)
FATHER AMIEL Bernard!
BERNARD Father! I didn’t know you were here. I thought........
FATHER AMIEL Yes, my son?
BERNARD I thought this was your day in the lower cave. The others all went down early. The children have no studies. This was to have been the preparation day for the Autumn festival.
FATHER AMIEL All is as it should be. The fires are lit; everyone is carrying out their tasks as usual.
BERNARD Why should they not, Father? Is something wrong?
(The question hangs in the air.)
FATHER AMIEL Philippe, you are loyal to your childhood friend, and welcome as always. But this is the first time you have honoured us at a festival time. Your own rites surely have first claim to you. Have you a particular reason for coming today?
PHILIPPE Father Amiel, I am deeply disturbed. I came to speak to Bernard about it, but as usual we have spent the time trying to resolve our differences in discussion.
FATHER AMIEL It seems to me more and more that the clarity we seek lies not in discussion but in another region altogether.
BERNARD Yet something impels us to search for answers at that level also.
FATHER AMIEL A level which can only have been designed by God for sharpening our questioning faculty and making it more painful. Answers are given through events, but only if questions are painful enough. I heard part of your conversation. Not intentionally of course. You seem to have roused our dear Bernard more then usual, Philippe. Something is making you more than usually anxious for our welfare here.
PHILIPPE Oh Father Amiel! Father Amiel!
FATHER AMIEL They have found us at last.
PHILIPPE I don’t know, Father. I simply don’t know. I am told nothing, of course, although as far as I know my visits here are not suspected. But somebody must know something. The first thing that aroused my fears was the appointment of a new Grand Inquisitor at Toulouse. Antoine de Lafitte was old and due in any case for retirement, but the man they appointed was none other than the notorious Lecocq, who served as a young man under Amaury de Citeaux himself.
BERNARD But this is old news...a general tightening up of the Inquisition everywhere. We know all this. But what now, Philippe, for Heaven’s sake, why didn’t you tell us at once?
PHILIPPE But it is no more than a rumour...
BERNARD But, Philippe....
PHILIPPE They are transferring the tribunal from Foix to Tarascon.
(Horrified pause)
BERNARD At our very gates! They must know we are here! Oh Father Amiel, the children, the whole community, we can’t......
FATHER AMIEL They probably don’t know where we are.
BERNARD But Tarascon, Father, it’s barely three miles away.
FATHER AMIEL They probably don’t know where we are.
BERNARD Then why...?
FATHER AMIEL They have known we were here in a general way for a very long time. Oh, the Inquisition probably, no, but the Church itself, more specifically the authority in Rome, most certainly, yes. For a very long time indeed. In fact it is not an exaggeration to say that they have always known we were here.
BERNARD You mean ever since... Montségur? That must be over eighty years, Father. Is this true? I can’t believe it! The Inquisition would have scoured every valley in the Pyrenées for us by now, a hundred times over.
FATHER AMIEL When I say ‘we’, Bernard, I don’t simply mean we, the Albigeois. We have only been here eighty years. But there have been worshippers in these caves since long before the Catholic Church invented the word ‘heretic’; since long before there was a Catholic Church. This has always been a gateway to the world of the spirit. His Holiness the Pope knows that as well as we do, and the popes before him knew it. We are no more than the last inheritors of an ancient key, a key to the spiritual world, which someone on earth must always have. That key the Church needs, and is always in danger of losing. That key we hold for them, but only so long as we remain free to use it.
BERNARD Father, I’m sorry, but this is nonsense. The whole aim of the Inquisition is to destroy our kind of knowledge. They claim it is all untrue and devilish, and that only through the sacraments of their Bishops can the people reach Christ in safety. How can the Church covet that which it destroys with the utmost savagery?
FATHER AMIEL The Inquisition is not the Church, Bernard.
PHILIPPE Father, much as I love and respect you, I cannot stand here and let you say these things. It has always been understood between us that I came here pledged to respect your sincerity, and to discuss my beliefs unrestrainedly with you in expectation of a similar tolerance. I am a Languedocien as well as a Catholic, and I grieve equally with you for our lost liberties and our dying culture. But I cannot allow you to say that the Church is divided, the Pope one thing and the Inquisition another. Whatever the Inquisition does, however terrible it seems, and however wicked the men themselves, what they do they do with the Pope behind them. However bitter the necessities they are carried out with this assurance. If this were not so, how could Christian men dare to shoulder the burden of such terrible destruction as is necessary for the purification of Christ’s Church?
FATHER AMIEL Yet I repeat, the Inquisition is not the Church, Philippe. The Inquisition does not know we are here, and the Church does. If the Inquisition knew we were here, it would have destroyed us, and that the Pope has striven till now with the utmost fidelity to avoid, loving us and needing us as he does. For that reason his predecessor gave into the hands of Dominic, his faithful and saintly servant, the task of leading us poor straying sheep into the fold, before ever the terrible crusade was thought of. Dominic failed in his mission, and we failed him.
PHILIPPE How can you stand there and say so? Father, I am torn by all this. At least I have believed till now that the very intensity of your deep wisdom and knowledge of the secrets of nature and of the Earth had somehow blinded you to the love the Church has for all who profess as you do the love of Christ. And I felt that the hardships and agonies of soul and body you have all suffered through the Inquisition had still further closed you to all we wish to bring you, above all to the tremendous promise for the future which the Church holds. All this I have felt deeply bound to forgive, believing in and feeling the need as I do for mutual tolerance, and remembering my happy childhood among you all. How then can I now bear to stand and hear you confess that you have known these things all along and care nothing for them? That you have felt the great love of Christ’s Church calling and protecting you, and have rejected it? You have called down upon yourself the chastisement of Christ’s inevitable laws. How can I protect you from them?
FATHER AMIEL You cannot, my son. I do not tell you these things now for the first time as if by chance. We have come to a division of the ways. You have brought us news. This bears its bitter fruit for you, sooner than you could have expected. You are called upon to make a decision, which till now has been left in a happy suspense all your life. The whole growth of your understanding has taken place as if between two warring armies pledged to mutual destruction, but in a part of the field where they were as yet unready for the fray. Not many have so long a reprieve from fatal decision and action, or so good a chance to prepare for it. I am sorry to see you go, but I do not think we will often meet again. The Lord be with you my son.
PHILIPPE Heaven forgive me, Father, have you too developed in spite of yourself that self-destroying madness I have seen and pitied in so many of your peasant converts, who throw themselves into the flames in an ecstasy of thoughtless desire for martyrdom at all costs? How many more disillusionments am I to suffer today? I thought you, Father, at least were free from the taint of the minority mind. Yet here you are apparently determined that your defeat is already at hand. I can think of no other possible explanation for your heartless dismissal. If the Holy Church is my mother, I may say in truth that this place has fathered me, and speak no disloyalty. Well, Father, is the lad to be sent out to fend for himself.
FATHER AMIEL You are free, Philippe, my dear son.
PHILIPPE Free, yes. Father Amiel, I am afraid for you. They will not spare you, Father, you are too responsible. But, Bernard, persuade him. Father, I beg you to come with us. I would use every argument I possess to convince him. I am convinced, Father much as I love you. The Church is for the future. The Church will lead every man to freedom, to the free choice of Christ. With all your wisdom, your teaching only blinds men back to inevitable actions and inevitable laws. You see so much of the spiritual world that its vastness chains you. We choose blindness for the sake of freedom, and for the development of the priceless gifts of faith and grace. See how obsessed you are now with a sense of inevitable doom. You have infected me with it. That is why I ran here today. Oh, Father!
(Philippe runs into Father Amiel’s arms)
FATHER AMIEL How blessed we are, dear Philippe, to have your selfless love. And how blessed you are, with all your youthful insight, and its promise of future wisdom. Go now. Return tomorrow, if you can. Perhaps you will be able to bring us more news. You will have to be very careful who sees you come and go. Bernard and I will talk. Bernard too is faced with a decision. Go now.
(Father Amiel gives a blessing. Philippe goes)
FATHER AMIEL This is the end, Bernard.
BERNARD Father, what can I say? Is there nothing we can do?
FATHER AMIEL There is a great deal we can do for each other, very little we can do now for the world. But what of yourself, Bernard?
BERNARD What do you mean, Father?
FATHER AMIEL Do you not know why I interrupted your conversation with Philippe?
BERNARD I had forgotten in the stress of this terrible news. Why are you here Father? Why not down in the lower cave? Can it be you knew already what he had to tell?
FATHER AMIEL It has always been inevitable, my dear son. We older ones are always and continually on the look out for it. The seeds of the inevitable extinction of our movement were nurtured in the finest flowering of Langue d’Oc. The very success of our teaching, the very hunger of the people for it, the very richness of the life in Langue d’Oc which sprang into riotous being on the heels of our mission, these things have always spelt no less than our final doom.
(BERNARD (puts in) But why, Father?)
FATHER AMIEL Because the world is not ready for the sheer wealth of spiritual life. The world is not ready for romance. The world swoons at the lover’s kiss, it gets drunk, it goes mad. Man is a baby, he hasn’t the stomach yet for freedom and responsibility and ecstasy all in one. He has to lose ecstasy for the sake of the other two. Christianity must become prosaic, so that man may become responsible and free. Then the secrets may be told again. Then some future Catharism will arise to serve wine instead of milk.
You see my dear Bernard, one of the vows that is put upon the highest Initiates of our order is that they must never betray the nature of their faith. Yet leakage is constantly occurring. How can I express this without hurting you? You love the high and courtly culture of the Troubadours with all the passion which is its supreme achievement and crown. Yet I have to say to you that this lost glory was our supreme failure and our tragedy; That I, and with me the great Initiates and leaders of our movement, now and in the past, suffer and bleed with His Holiness the Pope and with all the wise men of the Church, for this very tragedy. I desire the unity of Christendom, O Lord Christ, how I desire and long for it. And I believe, Heaven protect my words, that if the leakage of what is secret can only be ended by the utter destruction of all our forms and movements and teachings, and even our very hold on the earth, then it is right that the Pope should countenance this utter destruction. Oh Bernard, you know these things. The Silence you invoked a little while ago, and laid upon Philippe, that is the realm in which our Truth must now perforce have its life. In the silence of these impenetrable rocks we have by God’s grace imprinted the forms of ecstasy. Here let our passion be enshrined, suspended, frozen, till man is strong enough to handle the key. If the Church knows that we have so transformed the impenetrable rock by our secret and Christ-filled powers, that our very bones will speak as loudly to posterity as if we addressed them in words; IF THE CHURCH KNOWS THAT, Bernard, she can release her Inquisitorial hounds from their leash with a quiet mind. And we can welcome them.
BERNARD The key, Father, the key of which I spoke to Philippe.
FATHER AMIEL Yes, the key, whose nature Philippe is not ready to hear of, and which you so nearly betrayed to him.
BERNARD That is why you interrupted us.
FATHER AMIEL No, for you would not have given him a true picture of it. I interrupted you because the false picture you would have given him would have reached the Inquisitors, and so the Pope; and if the Pope has a false picture of what is here he will never forgive himself for destroying us. Only if he is sure we have kept our greatest secrets from the Inquisition can he release them upon us with a good conscience.
BERNARD But you are implying that Philippe will betray us to the Inquisitors?
FATHER AMIEL Never intentionally. And now not at all. It is not his task.
BERNARD How can it be anybody’s task?
(Another question hangs in the air)
FATHER AMIEL Bernard, I must speak to the people.
BERNARD They are all below, Father. They will wonder what has kept you here so long.
(Father Amiel walks towards the lower entrance. We hear his steps receding. Then the steps come to a halt. We hear him speak further away)
FATHER AMIEL Bernard, my son, you asked me if I knew before Philippe came if anything was about to happen, which led me to wonder whether the end might not be near. It has to do with that key of which we have spoken. Think about it. I told you that a decision faced you. Think about the key.
(His footsteps recede into the silence)
BERNARD (whispers) I shall never see the sunshine again. I shall never see you again, darling girl. I don’t want to die in this dark cold place.
(Silence)
BERNARD (clearly in his full voice) Lord Christ, I was going to tell them. Father Amiel knew. I am ready now. I am ready to see the key.
(Silence)
BERNARD (whispers again) The key is a Vessel. I can see the Light. The rocks are all made of Light. I’m allowed to hold the Vessel. I’m allowed to carry it right through the mountain.
(The whisper now comes from further away)
I’m allowed to carry it right through the mountain.
(Scene ends)
---oOo---
Have confidence.
You will know the place.
From ‘Recipe for a Threefold Conjunction’
Note: Esther completed the poem while she was working with Clothilde during the first year at Ussat. It is reprinted in full at the end.
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