The Wanderer and the Way 4
The Vision
This is Chapter 4 of The Wanderer and the Way
Bishop Quendulf did not express himself any more delighted with Theodemir’s return than Witteric had done. It did not help Theodemir’s cause that he arrived at the bishop’s door on a fine horse and wearing the garb of a Visigothic captain, complete with sword and dagger by his side. He had considered that since news of his pilgrim trek from Rome had reached Witteric’s ears long before he had arrived himself, it had probably reached the bishop’s ears also, and that Quendulf had therefore been expecting a dusty mendicant to arrive on foot rather than an armed soldier arriving on horseback. He had considered this before he left his uncle’s villa and had thought for a moment of dressing himself in his pilgrim tunic and sandals. But when he had gone in search of them, his tunic was no longer where he had dropped it on the bank nor the broken sandals where Agnes had cast them into the garden. They had, he guessed, been cast into the cleansing fire of the gardener’s brazier.
His next thought had been new sandals and a new pilgrim tunic, but while his uncle’s villa contained much suitable for lords, it contained nothing suitable for pilgrims. And while he had been pondering the question, his uncle had found him, presented him with a sword and dagger, and walked off without speaking. Taking this gesture to mean that if he wished to be welcomed back to the villa, he had better leave it in possession of these tools, he had then dressed himself accordingly, found a suitable horse and saddle, and set out for the bishop’s house.
Nearing the gate of the villa, he had heard Agnes’s voice singing a psalm. She was kneeling in a shaded spot beside the gate as if even the freshness of the morning was oppressive to her northern-bred constitution. She did not immediately rise to open the gate when he approached, as if the singing of her psalm was a duty that she ranked before the duty of keeping the gate. Far from vexing him, he was glad of the delay, for Witteric’s admiration for Agnes’s voice, sincere though it had been, had fallen far short of doing her justice, and he would happily have sat and listened to her till sundown. She was, he recognized, singing the office of Terce, and at the end he joined her, his baritone to her soprano in the final Amen. She looked up at him then, and he wondered if she had been so engrossed in her prayer that she had not been aware of his presence despite the uneasy shuffling and blowing of his horse. Her loveliness in the morning seemed even to outshine her loveliness of the previous afternoon.
He swung down from the saddle and bowed before her. “I must beg your pardon, lady, for my conduct yesterday. I thought you were making game of me. I know now that you were not. May I have your forgiveness?”
“I suffered no hurt,” she replied. “But if my forgiveness will ease your heart, you have it.” She did not raise her eyes to meet his but went at once to open the gate so that he might pass through. Nothing in her demeanor had invited further discourse, so Theodemir had mounted again and had ridden out, feeling a sharp pang of desolation as she closed and barred the gate behind him.
“I was told you had forsworn the world to devote your life to God,” Quendulf said, inspecting his soldierly raiment with a jaundiced eye. The bishop himself was richly dressed after the Roman fashion and was seated on a well-cushioned throne of gilded rosewood.
“I foreswore the pursuit of impious pleasures, Father,” Theodemir replied. “But I still await some sign to show me the vocation of my life.” As he said the words “impious pleasures,” the thought came into his head of Sakina, her trembling hands poised to undo the pins that held her dress. An impious pleasure, surely. But then, he had not pursued it, and having it within the grasp of his hand, he had not taken it. To look upon Agnes, to pause to hear her sing in the cool freshness of the morning, was that an impious pleasure? He remembered the monk she had spoken of who had refused to look at her. Was that the duty to which he was called?
“‘Generatio mala et adultera signum quaerit,’” the bishop said. A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.
“I have been a fornicator, Father,” Theodemir admitted, “but not, to my knowledge, an adulterer. But how am I to know what path I am to take if I am not to be given a sign?”
“I was given to understand,” the bishop said, “that God sent a monk to preach his word to you in Rome and that you had heeded his word and given all your worldly possessions to the poor and resolved to live the life of a mendicant. A sign, surely, you have had.”
“It is true that I took the monk’s teaching for a sign, Father,” Theodemir said. “And yet, the monk promised other signs, which did not come. For I found neither peace nor insight, nor kindness, nor bread on that long, hard road. ‘Intuemini et cavete a fermento Pharisaeorum et Sadducaeorum’” Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
“Or perhaps you have deceived yourself,” the bishop said. “‘Quare non intellegitis quia non de pane dixi vobis cavete a fermento Pharisaeorum et Sadducaeorum.’” Why do you not understand that it was not concerning bread I said to you: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees?
“‘Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie,’ Father.” Give us this day our daily bread. “But I was fortunate if it was given bread once a week.”
“I imagine there is bread and to spare at your uncle’s table,” the bishop replied sourly. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
The bishop led Theodemir out of his house and across the square to the church. Theodemir shivered as he entered into the dark interior which still held the coolness of the night. Agnes would be more comfortable here, he thought, though he shivered to think of the constant cold and damp and wind that he had heard tell of from men who had visited Britannia. And she had been born in the northern part of that cold, damp island. No wonder the heat of Hispania enervated her.
The church itself was of the Roman pattern, tall and rectangular with side aisles separated by a row of sturdy round columns with capitals of crudely carved leaves supporting round arches. A few narrow windows above brought in enough light to see by once his eyes had adjusted from the brightness without. Having seen the great churches of Rome, the Church of Santa Maria of Iria Flavia seemed a poor thing to him, small and rough-hewn by Visigothic masons with neither the knowledge nor the art nor the time nor the capital of the Roman craftsmen whose examples they so roughly copied. And yet the church in Iria Flavia was in many ways more pleasant than the great churches of Rome, for here the flagstones were not covered with sleeping drunkards. Nor was its silence disturbed by the cries of beggars and the weeping of mothers holding still and silent children to their empty breasts. Nor yet did it reek of urine and feces, nor were there rats scurrying along the walls or dogs rutting and fighting in the sanctuary. No, this church was still and silent, except for a group of old women gathered before the altar, mumbling prayers under their breaths. These got to their feet when the bishop and the heir to the lord of Iria Flavia entered, bowed to them, and shuffled out in silence.
If there was some new possession of the church that the bishop was anxious to show off, Theodemir could see no sign of it. It seemed exactly as it was in his memory. The bishop made his obeisances to the altar after a quite elaborate formula, and Theodemir, embarrassed to stand idly while he did so, made the sign of the cross upon his person. The piety he had so suddenly discovered in Rome had been entirely of the itinerant kind. He was not habituated to the manner of clerics. He was about the bend his knee to the altar, also, when the bishop rose.
“Do you know on what spot you stand?” the bishop asked.
“This is the Church of Santa Maria of Iria Flavia, Father,” he replied, wondering if the bishop believed that his years in Rome had made him forget even this elementary knowledge of his place of birth.
“This is the spot on which the word of God was first preached in the whole region of Hispania,” the bishop said. “It was preached here by St. James the Great, an apostle in the flesh, a man who had known Christ himself, had walked with him and eaten with him and heard his words, the very words of God, from his own mouth.”
“So it is said, Father,” Theodemir said. It was the fashion of the scholars of Rome to be suspicious of such claims, and the more remote the lands of which such legends were spoken, the more suspicious they became. But was it impious to doubt such stories?
“He landed by the river,” the bishop continued, “at the place where your uncle’s villa now lies, which should be a shrine to the apostle and not the house of debauchery that he has made of it. With his companions, the apostle walked up to the village and in the square began to preach, winning all the souls of the village for Christ. And so they built this church on the very spot where he stood to give his sermons.”
Theodemir looked around the church, which was so obviously the work of Visigothic masons, and thought that if what the bishop said were true, the work had waited many centuries after the time of St. James to begin. More likely there had been a church built here before, which had crumbled as the empire had crumbled and fallen long before the Visigoths had come to rule Hispania. But it was not to his purpose to argue this matter with the bishop. Could I invite Agnes to come here with me to enjoy the coolness of this place, he wondered to himself, some part of the bishop’s oration being lost to him while the thought of Agnes inhabited the place. What delight she would take in it, he thought. How her eyes would light as she looked up to him in gratitude. How sweet would her voice sound as it echoed through these stone arches!
“After he died in Jerusalem,” the bishop said, his voice once again penetrating Theodemir’s thoughts as the ghost of Agnes faded into the shadows between the columns. “The saint’s companions, Theodore and Athanasius, brought his body and head here from Jerusalem in a stone boat, which they tied up to a stone by the shore. That stone now lies beneath the altar of this church. But, I am certain you must be asking yourself, as I have long asked myself, where were the head and the body laid to rest?”
“I confess the question had not occurred to me,” Theodemir said distractedly. A stone boat? A pious tale. But then, should not such tales be believed by pious men?
“Think upon it,” the bishop said. “I confess that you do not seem to me a man suited to a monastic life. You are too unsettled in your habits and in your mind. But there is still a service that you can do for the church. You can find the tomb of St. James, the patron of all Hispania.”
To his surprise, Theodemir found some part of this proposition appealing. A wandering and probably fruitless quest, certainly. But he saw no reason why it had to be pursued on foot or without a purse. And if his uncle would not provide the purse, surely the bishop could not refuse to do so. Still, it would mean banishment from his uncle’s villa. And banishment from his uncle’s villa would mean exile from Agnes.
“My uncle would say that a more pressing need is for soldiers to fight the incursion of the Moors,” he said. “Once we Visigoths ruled all of Hispania for Christ. Now most of it is in Moorish hands. The Moors have despoiled Oviedo, my uncle tells me. Perhaps my talents are better suited to serve the church and the kingdom in this manner.”
“But do you not see, my boy,” the bishop said, a note of passion creeping into his voice, “that it is since the bones of the apostle have been lost to us that the Moors have conquered and despoiled Hispania, leaving only the place of his burying and first preaching to hold out against their invasion? Do you not see that if the tomb of the apostle could be discovered and restored to his people, that the victory over the Moors would be assured?”
“Do you believe, then, Father, that my impulse to give all I had to the poor and become a mendicant was a foolish one, as it came to seem to me as I walked the road alone without the spiritual compensations promised to me by the monk?”
“It was that impulse that brought you home at this hour, was it not,” the bishop answered. “Without this impulse, you would still be in Rome, pursuing your studies.”
“I suppose that is true, Father.”
“Then do you not see that God sent this monk to start you back towards your home where your true service lies?”
“Then I could wish that God had sent me a letter, Father, and perhaps funds to pay for passage on a ship. In that case, I should have arrived much sooner, and my feet would not be so wounded and sore.”
“No, no,” the bishop replied, waving away this suggestion with great decision. “Do you not see that this journey was to prepare you for the work that is to come? Why did God deprive you of spiritual rewards on your pilgrimage? Why, to teach you to endure through disappointments, of course. Why did God withdraw his charity so that you found so little kindness and so little bread on your journey? Why, to toughen you up for the quest that it is his will that you should undertake. The tomb of St. James has been lost to us for hundreds of years. Finding it will be a hard quest, with many pains and disappointments to endure. God has been preparing you to endure them.”
“And does God require me to endure them on foot without a horse or a purse to my name?” Theodemir asked, unsure in his own mind in what tone he should express this inquiry.
“The first prerequisite of such a quest is holiness,” the bishop said. “The bones of the apostle will surely yearn to reveal themselves to a man of sanctity and recoil from one of luxury and perfidy.”
“Must one be poor to be holy, Father?” Theodemir asked. “It seems that I have known many men reputed holy who nonetheless lived in comfort.”
The bishop certainly did not fail to notice the rebuke in this remark, but rather than enraging or humbling him, it caused him a burst of pursed-lipped chest-quaking laughter. Rather than replying, he turned and approached the altar. Getting down on his knees, he bowed his head as if in prayer, leaving Theodemir standing in the middle of the nave. An old woman came into the church, saw the bishop kneeling before the altar and the armed warrior standing in the nave, crossed herself and hurried away. It suddenly occurred to Theodemir to wonder if the old woman thought some form of murder was afoot and that perhaps the warrior had given the bishop a few last moments to reconcile himself to God before dispatching him to the next life. He cursed himself for having come into the church with his weapons, for such had never been his custom. But when the bishop had led him out of the bishop’s house, he had not said where they were going and he had not scolded him to disarm when they entered the church. He glanced at the bishop, who was still hunched in prayer. He turned and walked to the door of the church, took off the belt that held his sword and dagger, and laid them against a half-column inside the door. Feeling the pain in his feet with an acuteness that had not been there when his mind had been on other things, he walked back towards the alter. About halfway up the nave, however, it seemed to him that he should go no closer, so he knelt there on the flagstones and tried to form himself for prayer.
“Pater noster, qui es in caelis,” he began. But at once his mind went elsewhere and he took up the psalm.
O God, take pity on us and bless us,
and let your face shine upon us,
And he realized that it was the verse of the psalm that he had stopped to hear Agnes sing that morning and that it was not his own voice that was singing, but hers, and her voice seemed to ring through the echoing arches of the church, so that he opened his eyes with a start and looked about to be sure that she was not actually there. The bishop was still knelt in prayer. He clearly did not hear the voice, which he could not but have mistaken for that of an angel. Generatio mala et adultera signum quaerit. Yet if this were a sign, it was not one he had asked for. And surely the words of Christ did not forbid that he should receive a sign, only that he should ask for one. Could it be, then, that God had called him out of Rome and set him upon his cruel and stony path, not for the bones of St. James, but for the living flesh of Agnes?
The sword he had leant against the half-pillar scraped and rattled its way across the stone and clattered onto the flagstones. The voice of Agnes vanished.
He closed his eyes to summon the vision again.
Pater noster qui es in cælis
sanctificetur nomen tuum
adveniat regnum tuum
But now, thought he ached for it, the voice of Agnes did not come to him. He rose, thinking that this was a sign that he should go to her. But as he turned toward the door, the bishop called to him from the altar, “Do you know the story of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne?”
“No, Father,” he replied.
“It was told to me not so long ago by a charming young woman on your father’s estate,” the bishop said, rising and coming to join him. “He was a man of great holiness, a hermit who spent most of his years on a barren island in a cold sea, with only the birds for company. His reputation was such that the king of that country called a synod of all the bishops of the land where it was decided that they would call Cuthbert from his island and make him a bishop of a place called Lindisfarne. Cuthbert agreed, reluctantly, but all his life, he longed to return to his island, and eventually, nearing his death, he returned there, and there he died. He may have been a good bishop. I do not know. But I think he was probably a better hermit.”
“And what am I to learn from this, Father?” Theoderic asked, for the bishop clearly expected him to take a lesson from the story.
“That some men are called to be bishops and be in the world for the sake of the church, and some men are called to be hermits and withdraw from the world to work for the sanctification of all.”
“As some are called to be soldiers, Father. And some are called to be husbands and love their wives and children.”
“Surely so,” the bishop replied. “Surely so. It is better to marry than to burn.”
“There was news come to Rome of this place you speak of,” Theodomir said. “I remember that name now that you tell me the tale. Two or three years gone, I think, a great raid by the Northmen that destroyed Lindisfarne, stole its treasures, and desecrated its holy books. And the people there were in full possession of the bones of Cuthbert, who they venerate there. And yet, this did not turn the Northmen away.”
But the bishop waved this objection aside. “Cuthbert was but a monk,” he said. “St. James was an apostle. And what is it to the world if a place in far Brittania is despoiled? Of what consequence is Brittania to the civilized world compared to Hispania? I tell you, lad, as it was told to me by St. James himself in a dream. It is God’s task for you to restore the bones of St. James to the people of Hispania for the salvation of their souls and the deliverance of their country.”
Theodemir wondered why, if the bishop had indeed had a dream of St. James, he had not thought to mention it at the beginning of the conversation. But the bishop's project, whether or not it had been transmitted to him in a dream, was of no interest to him. His own vocation had been communicated to him not in a dream but in a waking vision.
A vision of Agnes.Comments welcome. If you spot a mistake, please let me know by replying to this email or by sending an email to author@gmbaker.net. Thanks!