Priscilla of Alexandria

by Maurice Magre

  Had he not always been too humble? Would it not have been possible for him to conquer one of the foremost places in the world, if he had put himself forward?

  And it was a few days later that he had his second stroke of luck.

  On the fourteenth day of the month of Nizam, according to the Jewish calendar, the celebration of the festival of Pesach, in memory of the emergence of Israel from Egypt, commenced in the Jewish quarter.

  According to the Torah, on that day God ordered the Jews united in the city of Ramses on the edge of the Red Sea to eat lamb standing up, girded by their belts containing all their riches, staff in hand, like travelers.

  It was a Friday and, in the evening, all the Jews not ready to take their meal, with their money clasped against them and their traveling staff in their left hand. But beforehand, many believers went to the synagogue.

  When the synagogue was full, the ethnarch walked through the assembly and said: “Who wants to open the commandments?” And the man who had paid the most for that honor was designated to open the Book, to recite the eighteen prayers and to sound the shofar, a kind of ram’s horn, in memory of the horn the angels sounded when God descended over Sinai.

  In spite of the sums received at the synagogue, however, the ethnarch Eleazer, who was a just man, strove only to designate every time a Jew whom he knew to have carried out a good deed.

  That evening, he perceived in the front row, among the most honorable—moneychangers, merchants and commentators on the Law—the ragged Amoraim, standing there with his body slightly inclined to the left.

  The ethnarch’s first thought was astonishment that an individual as humble and timid as the candle-merchant occupied the first row. In truth, he might have dressed with more decency and have contented himself with a more modest place!

  But the ethnarch considered the simplicity that was reflected on Amoraim’s face. He remembered a tenebrous shop glimpsed in passing, a long life of poverty, labor and rectitude, the solid qualities of the race of Abraham.

  Let the poor fellow be honored once in his life, he thought.

  And it was Amoraim that he designated.

  There were a few whispers, and then a great stupefied silence.

  Amoraim advanced, limping, into the free space in front of the Book. Everything was spinning around him; he could hear his heart hammering in his breast. But he was sustained by a firm thought.

  All the important men whose power and intelligence he venerated were there around him. They were showing him a signal confidence, via the ethnarch’s choice. He had to show himself to be worthy of it. It was the recompense of his humble life.

  He made a great effort and said, in a voice that was quavering slightly: “God has opened the doors of the heavens to us today, and will judge us.”

  Then his overexcited senses perceived beyond the closed doors of the synagogue a vast, unaccustomed rumor coming from all directions at once, as if God were coming with all his angels for the announced judgment.

  That was also perceived by the audience, and they interrogated one another with apprehensive gazes.

  “Play your role honorably, Amoraim,” Amoraim murmured to himself. “Luck has come this evening; welcome it!”

  And in a firm, even sonorous voice, he recited the eighteen prayers.

  What was happening outside? Clamors resounds at the four cardinal points, mingled with cries of fear and cries of death, and only the majesty of the prayer prevented the Jews from running to the door.

  Having concluded, Amoraim, who sensed calm descending within himself as the agitation of the assembly became greater, seized the ram’s horn with a noble slowness, raised it to his lips and blew the three blasts that ought to be repeated symbolically seventy-two times, which corresponded to as many maledictions upon the seventy-two false beliefs.

  From outside, as if the resonance of that horn had unleashed the enemies of Israel, a mighty shove opened the two battens of the door to the synagogue. Monks waving torches, who were carrying pikes and staffs, appeared on the threshold. The brown robes, the resolution and fanaticism of the faces and the voices that emerged from the increasing obscurity, had something terrifying about them. The first monks to appear began seizing the Jews and projecting them brutally into the street. Some tried to flee. Others prepared to defend themselves.

  Then a voice rang out: an immeasurable, immense, thunderous voice, the like of which one would never have thought a human voice capable of producing. That quasi-divine voice drowned out the cries of terror, the savage shouts of the monks and the rumor of the revolutionized Jewish quarter.

  It pronounced the last formula of the prayer: “Listen, Israel! The Eternal, our God, the Eternal is one!”

  It reminded the Jewish people of their traditional virtues, prudence in danger, the religiosity that saves.

  It was the voice of Amoraim.

  He had just realized, suddenly, the role that God had fixed for him, and how he had been mysteriously prepared to play it. For the humblest man can have forces hidden within him that are precious, and can serve for the salvation of his race.

  The redoubted hour, which had been announced as imminent for some time, had arrived for the Jews of Alexandria. The rumors that had run around were true. They were being expelled by force. But the God of Israel had selected the humble Amoraim to guide his people at that critical moment. He had forged his soul by means of years of silence. He had made the ethnarch choose him to recite the prayers, to the scorn of immemorial custom that put the rich ahead of the poor.

  Amoraim contemplated momentarily the divine light that descended over his forehead, more radiant than the morning star.

  He had taken the open Book in his hands. Clad in an incredible majesty, which immobilized the audience with stupor, he advanced, serene and tranquil, with a grave tread, toward the monks, who opened up before him.

  Something supernatural escaped from his person. He emerged from the synagogue and started marching through the streets, followed by the ethnarch and the Jews.

  He repeated, at intervals: “Listen, Israel! The Eternal, our God, the Eternal is one!”

  And the cortege that followed him repeated it in their turn, and those who emerged from the crossroads, fleeing, and those who appeared at windows, also repeated it with a single voice, so that in the end, it was like an immense hymn that rose up from forty thousand mouths toward star-strewn night, affirming in the catastrophe the unity of God.

  A few houses were began to burn, a few Jews who had tried to defend themselves were blocking their thresholds with their corpses. All the exits from the Delta quarter were guarded by armed groups save for the street that connected the quarter, via the city wall, with the region of sepulchers. By that route, all the Jews, robbed of their houses and their property, were to leave Alexandria by the end of the night.

  And Amoraim advanced, with the principals of the synagogues now grouped behind him. He marched alone, because the law says that the prophet must lead and the people must follow and obey.

  “Remember Hieros!” cried the monks and the crowd of Christians as he passed by.

  Remember him! He could still feel the warmth of his blood running over his shoulder when he had transported him in order to aid him. This was the payment for his good deed! But he did not hate that Hieros, the cause of persecution. By the connection of events, that dead Christian had made him the reciter of the prayers, the sounder of the horn, the bearer of the Book, the conductor of the people, the equal of the prophets. At that moment he was Moses himself and he heard an interior voice soaking to him.

  “Far from the city of the infidels you will lead into the desert the ever-wandering and persecuted race. You will make sure that the spikes of the tents are deeply embedded in the sand, and that the prayers are said, that the Ark is saved. And by invoking my name, you will also cause the manna of perseverance to rain from the sky and the pure water of the spirit that vivifies spring forth from the rock.”

  Amoraim, like all the Jew
s spread over the vast earth, knew that there existed in Alexandria sacred wealth more precious than human life He remembered that in the intoxication of his illumination and, still repeating with his formidable impressive voice: “Listen, Israel! The Eternal, our God, the Eternal is one!” he thought by virtue of a doubling of his mind of the admirable word of the Torah: “Be cunning in the dread of the Lord!”

  And he went at a more rapid pace up the street where the house of the Hillels was, raising the Book above his head. From the other direction, under the guidance of Peter, groups of Parabalani were arriving, on whom it was incumbent to pillage that house, carefully designated by Cyril.

  But in a second, all the Jews, those who preceded Amoraim, those who ware behind him, and those who were outside the doors, had understood.

  Some lay down on the ground, others let themselves fall from windows. Around Amoraim, a compact mass, voluntarily inert, rolled and unfurled, which extinguished the torches and obstructed the door.

  The Parabalani, rushing forward, striking with their pikes and swords amid plaints and howls, ended up fraying a passage, but it was too late. The torches were lit again, the door of the Hillel house was wide open. The crowd, like a mass, flowed further on, carrying its wounded and its dead, and also a few heavy coffers, wrapped in canvas sacks: the treasure of the Temple of Solomon, saved.

  Guided by the prophet Amoraim, the Jews of Alexandria left the city and went toward another destiny.

  The Christians were never able to explain how every inhabitant of the Delta, in spite of the suddenness of the attack, had been able to carry all his wealth with him. No gold or silver coins were found in the houses. That was because, on the fourteenth day of the month of Nizan, in accordance with the Torah, God ordered the Jews to eat lamb standing up girded by their belts containing all their riches, staff in hand, like travelers.

  The Christians had found them ready to depart.

  The greater number headed for Heliopolis, where Onias35 had built a castle and a temple and founded a Jewish center. But the descendants of the Hillels and a few hundred of their friends and servants followed the inspired Amoraim and plunged into the desert.

  Somewhere, under a mountain of gem salt, under an accumulation of stones battered by the simoom they hid the great candelabrum with seven branches, the miraculous almond-wood wand, the tablet in which the revelation made by Jehovah to Moses is engraved, and the talisman Thunim, formed by as many stones as there are tribes in Israel, and which provokes in its bearer a state of apocalyptic vision and communication with God.

  There, the treasures of the Ark were to remain hidden until the prophecy is realized: “I shall bring from the Orient a bird, and from a distant land a man, who will execute my will.”

  XII. The Death of Hypatia

  That morning, when the immutable dawn began to appear over Alexandria, many people woke up prey to desire, to torment, to hope and to fury. But souls are closed to one another, and evil is born of their incomprehension

  In the cloister where he was lying in the midst of his companions, the monk Simon sat up. He was not numbed by the nocturnal chill, as on previous nights. He was light. A force lifted him up.

  He looked at the other monks slumbering heavily on the flagstones. He had accompanied them to the Jewish quarter the previous evening. He no longer liked them. He was all alone now.

  Oh, he understood that it was necessary to fight for the Church, that evil was triumphant everywhere, and that if one did not strike one was struck. The Jews had killed Hieros, they lived in the hatred of Jesus, it was perhaps a good thing that they had been expelled—but what had been prescribed for him to do this morning he refused to do.

  His face suddenly lit up. Alone! He had been able to think that he was alone! Oh, no! He sensed an invisible presence to his right. The guide, the guardian angel, had returned, and was telling him to get up and act.

  Silently, he stepped over the bodies of his companions, traversed the courtyard, penetrated into a kitchen garden and found himself at the foot of a wall, over which he climbed without difficulty. He was behind the Church of Caesarea. He could see the blue sea between the colonnades. He did not try to get his bearings. He launched himself through the streets, lightly, all the way to the Prefect’s house.

  Anxiety had kept the Prefect Orestes awake all night. Irresolution was devouring his soul. A month ago, foreseeing events, he had sent urgent letters to the Emperor in Constantinople asking to be given formal orders. None had come. He was not sure of troops almost entirely composed of Christians. He had sent the sole cohort on which he could count to the Delta quarter the previous evening. The commander Marcellus had sent word that to restore order it would be necessary to engage in a veritable battle with the Parabalani and the monks. He had hesitated; he had waited. Cyril had sent a messenger to him affirming that there would be no bloodshed. Finally, he had sacrificed the Jews.

  He regretted it. He suffered from that injustice. He was a tolerant man, an inheritor of the old Roman tradition, respectful of all beliefs.

  So, that morning, unable to sleep, faithful to his habits, he was trying not to think any longer out what was tormenting his conscience by burying himself in pleasure.

  For him, pleasure was occupying himself with a marvelous collection of insects that he possessed, and which occupied the largest room in his house, classifying them according to their species and forms.

  He had a specimen of every kind of butterfly and scarab known in the world, from the Acteon scarab, entirely covered in a fine down like the fur of cats, to the Jupiter scarab that bears on its back the image of a bearded man, from the Podalyre butterfly that has four wings the color of flame to the Alexander butterfly that has in the blue lunulae of its wings the design of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. And the best part of his time and his life was spent considering the variety of colors, weights, and the thickness of carapaces, and measuring elytrae and antennae.

  He was about to put a drop of palm oil on a curious chrysalis when the porter came to tell him that a young monk was asking to see him in order to make him important revelations.

  The porter was still half asleep and forgot to add that those revelations concerned Hypatia.

  The Prefect Orestes was an admirer of the celebrated philosopher. He sometimes consulted her. It had even been claimed that he was secretly in love with her. If the name of Hypatia had been pronounced, he would have had Simon come in and added credence to his words. But events were of little account; the Prefect, with a burette in his hand, had a drop of palm oil to apply.

  “Tell the monk to come back this evening,” he said.

  And the drop fell on the curious chrysalis, for his greater satisfaction.

  Simon knew that the rich Palladius was the head of an organization of pagans that feared Cyril’s partisans. He had been shown the house from which, at a given moment, groups hostile to the monks might emerge. It was at the other end of the city. He ran there. He went astray on the way and lost a good deal of time.

  Long negotiations were necessary before he was admitted to see Palladius. The latter was in his bath. He finally appeared, draped in a green tunic, accompanied by two armed servants, who were ready to throw themselves on Simon, for Palladius believed himself to be surrounded by assassins, like a king, because of his importance. He went red at the name of Hypatia and began to tremble.

  “Telamon will take charge of her defense,” he replied.

  And he made a sign for the monk to be dismissed.

  The sun was already high in the sky. Anguished, Simon wondered what he ought to do.

  “My God! How difficult it is to reach the hearts of men!”

  And he started running in the direction of Hypatia’s house.

  In the courtyard of his house, Diodorus, bent double, was speaking in a hoarse voice to his children.

  “The Patriarch wants the noblest families in Alexandra to be represented. The Parabalani have rendered themselves odious by their violence, so he wants a
peaceful manifestation that will be the expression of the entire city. The grandchildren of the great Diodorus must be in the first rank. I’m too old and my legs are too weak for me to accompany you, but the wise Majorin won’t quit you.”

  Marcus started to laugh stupidly, but Priscilla experienced a certain pride in having a small role to play in the battle between the Christians and the heretics. She drew herself up to her full height, touching the metal cross that she had around her neck, which Bishop Cyril had given her. On the very place where she was standing, her grandfather had once fallen, a victim of pagan fury.

  Oh, yes, she was ready!

  And at the same moment, Diodorus, who was looking at her, could not retain a movement of surprise. From that beautiful young woman, that creature of flesh, emerged a breath of life, an exhalation of pleasure that disturbed his old soul. The thick hair sprang in tresses from the head, her skin was an animated velvet, the strength of the young breasts elevated the tunic, and the entire young body was a hymn of sensuality.

  Is that really my family? thought Diodorus, as the children draw away. As long as God does not abandon it!

  The rendezvous was at the gate of the Sun. The city terminated there amid leprous houses and mariners’ dives.

  Peter had arrived first. He headed toward a wretched hovel, the door of which he opened. It was inhabited by a goitrous and idiotic beggar nicknamed Dionysus, well known in the two ports of Alexandria, where he served as a clown for the mariners.

  He lived with his daughter Nausithoe, who was fifteen and had prostituted herself since childhood on the neories and around the barracks neighboring the Macedonia fortress.