Fifth Gospel Read Free Page A

called Consolamentum .
    T he Romans believe this ritual to be evil because alongside the arguments of similar and same, came the arguments of through and from – which began in the 3 rd century, and concerned the origins of the Holy Spirit, whom we call the Consoler . I will not dwell on these arguments for they were many and varied, but I will tell only as much as can help you to understand how they have led to our present troubles.
    S ome time ago the Roman Church decreed that a man could not have a spirit at all – despite the assertion that the man Jesus had become one with the spirit of Christ! Since then, any man who dares speak of a human spirit is threatened with excommunication and is pronounced to be ‘anathema’ which means, cursed by God. Our faith, on the other hand, argued that the spirit can be conferred on any man by way of the laying on of hands – this, despite our assertion that Christ’s spirit could not have entered into a man’s corruptible body!
    Do you see how subtly, imperceptibly, each side has fallen into error? Each forming from out of the small and intricate contradictions of the past an erroneous foundation for new and more confusing contradictions in the present, until no man in the future will know if the ground he stands upon will collapse into an abyss!
    Oh my! The foolishness of knowledgeable men! And I should know, for the Lord God has given us each a weakness and the foremost of my many weaknesses is that I have always considered myself a man of learning! Yes…I may have sacrificed the love of a woman, marriage and children, meat and eggs and milk, and a wondrous life singing songs like my friend Matteu, but until recently I had not, God forgive me, sacrificed my thirst for knowledge. In truth, night after night I had dreamt of a great library that expanded to infinity and in which there were not a thousand manuscripts but one great book; a book that held the answers to all questions of religion – a book that could prove to the world the veracity of the one true faith: ours of course!
    What a pleasant dream! But I was speaking of the debates and how the years passed. Yes, each side could not convince the other and this eternal round of argument continued until one fateful night, near forty years ago, when a papal legate was murdered. That is how ill begets ill, for such a crime gave Pope Innocent, a cannon lawyer before he took up the keys of Peter, the pretext he needed to convince the French King of the lawfulness of a Crusade against us.
    Fight the heretics and rob them of their lands and their goods! Those who take up arms against these plague-ridden un -believers will be granted heaven by God!
    Ah b ut the men of the south are proud! They would not be cowered and took our part and have defended us ever since; paying for their loyalty with the slaughter of their citizens, the sieges of their castles and the burning of their friends and relatives – God bless them. That is why a small part of me cannot blame the vassals of Pierre Roger for killing those inquisitors at Avignonet, even though it has set me upon this path, which you shall soon know, for you see, now that I have an understanding of everything, I realise that it could have been no different, and to illustrate this, I will sing of the night I met Lea.
    It was midnight and all was quiet after a day where nothing was heard save the pounding of shots from below and the shouts of the soldiers from the parapets. Seeking solace, I came again to the meeting room situated at the top of a long set of circular stairs in the keep. It was my custom to come here on sleepless nights so as to read from the contents of our sizeable library. Here, I could read not only the precious writings of the fathers of our church, but also a number of ancient texts brought over from Syria and other far off places. This night, mindful of Guilhabert’s request, I was engaged in copying the Apocalypse (that part which speaks of the woman