Priscilla of Alexandria

by Maurice Magre

  Cyril lowered his head.

  “It was you who thus aggravated their misery, who provoked famine among them, who rendered them too debilitated to struggle against the epidemic. It’s your hatred that is the cause of everything.”

  His voice had become grim.

  Cyril looked at him fearfully.

  “And besides,” Adamantius went on, “have you heard that there were plagues in Egypt before this one? How was the scourge born? This year, the Nile flood has been higher than usual; it reached many cemeteries in the region of Heliopolis and has disturbed them. From the putrescence of cadavers exposed to the light, the germs of the plague were born. That is happening for the first time, because once, the wise priests who directed this land had the dead embalmed in order to protect the living from the dangers of their decomposition. How long have people been punished for obeying the salutary law of embalming? Who is the fanatical Patriarch who has obliged the living to be poisoned by the putrescence of the dead? It’s you. It’s your religion that is the cause of everything.”

  As he spoke, Adamantius measured the terror that he was creating and the faculty of reaction that Cyril might still have. He must have judged it negligible, for he took him by the collar of his robe, shook him, and said to him in a pitiless tone full of delight:

  “There is no remedy: none. You are destined to die in frightful torments. You ought to wish with all your might that there is nothing beyond life, for if there is a Hell, you will suffer there eternally.”

  Cyril fell back into his armchair, and Adamantius hastened to disappear.

  On the morning of that same day, Cyril had listened with satisfaction to the story of the frightful death of Nestorius, transmitted by desert nomads and brought by a monk.43

  In Syria, to which he had fled, Nestorius had been sent to the great oasis that was the most rigorous place of exile. The extreme solitude had caused him to fall into a state of melancholy dejection. One evening he had marched straight ahead and had gone to sit down beside a marsh where savage beasts drank. On the first two nights, the lions had roared close by and had come to sniff him without attacking him, but on the third evening, pastors had seen one of them seize the motionless head of the enemy Patriarch between its teeth and lacerate him with its claws.

  Cyril saw his enemy Nestorius distinctly, sitting beside his table, making the gesture of stirring sand with his hand and looking at him with is bright eyes. He had a triumphant expression and he said: “There are two persons in Jesus Christ.”

  Another voice immediately resonated.

  “It’s Apollinaris who is right. The body of Jesus Christ is not consubstantial with ours.”

  Cyril saw the Archimandrite Eutyches,44 who had been condemned by a synod in Constantinople. He was tranquil, full of faith, sure of his verity.

  Immediately, other voices resonated, and Cyril perceived that he was surrounded by the heretics against whom he had fought throughout his life.

  They were all there, some in monastic robes, others in the white mantles of philosophers, raising pastoral crosiers or theurgical staffs, all affirming their religious idea, obstinate illuminates ready to die for the point of dogma that had been the passion of their existence.

  Cyril recognized the false prophet Elci who had lived under Trajan.45 He was brandishing the book that an angel had put into his own hands, and he said: “Jesus Christ has come to earth many times before. I knew him personally in four former lives.”

  He recognized the monk Eustathius, condemned in Paphlagonia, whose sanctity was so great that no pleasure and no sensual excess could tarnish it, with the consequence that he devoted himself to all of them with impunity.

  He recognized Pelasgius by the fur that he had over his shoulders, because he was always cold. Shivering, he said:

  “There was no original sin. It was Augustine, the imbecile bishop of Hippo, who invented it.”

  By her shaven head and her long teeth he recognized Quintilla, the prophetess of the Pepusians to whom Jesus had appeared in Phrygia. She repeated:

  “Eve is superior to Adam because it was her who ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge first.”

  Sabbathius displayed his atrophied left hand with pride. He claimed that men ought to be horrified by it and let it dangle at the end of his arm like a dead branch.

  “Only one hand is good,” said the Sabbathians behind him.

  “Tatian was indignant against the mass because wine was served there that came from the devil, and Seleucus was indignant against baptism because use was made therein of water, which is an impure element.

  And Cyril saw the disciples of Simon Magus appear, whose perverse smile betrayed the abominations they were preparing to commit; the Tocodrugites who, by virtue of an affectation of meditation, inserted their second finger into one of their nostrils; the Abelians who, as a symbol of their continence, wore an iron grille over the loins; the Adamites who lived naked in order to recall the original innocence and only had intercourse with women in public; the Antidicomarianites who claimed that he Holy Virgin was not a virgin and had several children by Saint Joseph, the names of whom they knew; the Artotyrites, who made use of cheese for the eucharist; the Barborians, who claimed that Christ had be created from the joyous humor of a female spirit named Barbeliote; the Cainites, who venerated Cain and Judas; the Passolorhynchites, who became mute by dint of maintaining silence; the Hesyrastes, who considered their navel; the Musorites, who rendered worship to mice because they spread through houses like the Holy Spirit through souls; and also the Paulianists, the Celicoles, the Origenians, the Noetians, the Cerdonians, the Cataphrygians and a thousand others, equally possessed by their errors and inflamed by their follies.

  All of them showed him the finger. They were united by one common thought, which was the scorn they had for him. Those irreconcilable sectarians no longer hated one another, and had even been brought together by a sort of fraternity. All those fanatics were poor. Consumed by theological arguments and the search for religious truth, they had disdained material wealth and had voluntarily stripped themselves of it.

  When Nestorius, raising his ravaged face, turned his insensate eyes toward Cyril and proclaimed: “Behold the man who bought the Council of Ephesus with gold! Behind the man who paid the Emperor’s entourage in order that I might be condemned!” an immense cry of reprobation rose up from all sides.

  The saints, the prophets, the doctors, the commentators on the laws, the extravagant anchorites, and the mad ascetics moved away in horror. They opened a great circle around Cyril and drew away, as if he had just been afflicted by the plague of Heliopolis; they recoiled into the shadows or plunged into the walls, and there was no longer anything but a few eyes that continued to shine with a expression of disgust.

  And Nestorius started to snigger, crying: “I prefer the lions! Let them come and eat my face! The so-called Patriarch of Alexandria is nothing but an incarnation of Mammon!”

  Cyril closed his eyes. He had often exorcized the possessed. Demonic possession, the strange mystery of evil taking over a soul, had always troubled him. He knew that the demon could slip into you easily, during sleep, at certain times of the year, in places where the pagans had long celebrated their religion. He had often said that Theophilus had committed a great imprudence in constructing the Episcopal palace on the site where the temple of Serapis had stood, and employing the same materials with which it had been built. Had the age-old gods of Egypt not ended up bewitching him?

  Mammon, Nestorius had said: the demon of wealth! As far as he could go back in the remembrance of his life, he saw that the desire for wealth had always held the foremost place there. He had loved gold, he had acquired it, and he had made use of it in order to obtain more of it. If he had had the statues of temples melted down, it was to have the ingots transported to his coffers. If he had closed the churches of the Donatists it was because they were full of ornaments and he had pillaged them. If he had expelled the Jews from Alexandria it was to steal the tre
asure hidden in the house of the Hillels. Yes, he had bought the Council of Ephesus, and he had bought the advisors of Theodosius. He had always bargained and trafficked in order to acquire more.

  But why? He scarcely had any needs. The books in his library were sufficient for him. His only love was refuting, by means of his pen, the heresies of false doctrines.

  So, he had persecuted, tormented and had people killed in order to have wealth that did not serve any purpose for him. That was because he was possessed by Mammon. Nestorius was right. He had identified himself without being aware of it with the demon. He was the demon personified.

  He had fallen on to his hands. He found himself on all fours, and he stopped moaning in order to think that he was like an animal. He had gone backwards. The demon had brought him back to the condition of a beast. The disorder of his soul was so great that he was tempted to roar in order to frighten Nestorius, to croak like the crows that devour the dead, or to writhe while hissing like the tempter Serpent. A great bloodstain bathed the floor tiles in front of him. He advanced his head in order to lap that refreshing liquid with his tongue.

  He perceived that it was the first ray of the rising sun.

  A face of supernatural beauty was very close to his. A blue jewel cast a light in her hair, parted in the Greek style. Cyril saw the birth of a woman’s shoulders and he would have distinguished the grace of her body if he had dared to look.

  He had just recognized the features of Hypatia. They were imprinted with a marvelous comprehension. She gazed at him, she understood him. She measured his savage fanaticism, his hatred of free discussion and everything that contradicted the limited dogma of his religion, his blind conviction and his incommensurable love of virtue,46 which had been mysteriously expressed in him by avarice, persecution and crime.

  “Love of virtue all the same,” she said. “I forgive you because I have arrived at a degree of intelligence that permits sight and penetration of the mind, and the sincerity of your faith shines like a lamp tarnished by ordure, but which nevertheless projects a tiny eternal glow.”

  Cyril got up painfully, sat down, and wept.

  It was at that moment that, between the four ivory columns of her bed, Priscilla had just woken up.

  Sitting upright, her dark hair flowing in two sheaves over her breasts, she gazed avidly at her bedroom, blanched by the morning, and was astonished to be alone.

  She had, therefore, only had a dream. Men whose faces expressed wisdom and purity had previously grouped around her bed and had spoken to her. She could not remember their words. They were tender, confused and admirable.

  On reflection, she told herself that it had been more than a dream. She wondered who those men could have been, and how they had come and gone after having indicated to her what she ought to do. But she was never to know that.

  She leapt out of bed, ran to the wooden figurine that Khepra had given her and gently, carefully, detached the little sachet that was nailed to it.

  Then she threw a cloak over her shoulders, went out of her bedroom, went down the marble stairs and ran to the portal that gave access to the street.

  XXV. There is a Way for Everyone

  Beneath his hut of reeds in the marshes of Shedia, Olympios had arrived at detachment from all things.

  The men who drained the salt and those who cut the wild plants in order that they did not encumber the salt-pans gave him the bananas and rice necessary to his life in exchange for a few words that they did not understand but to which they attributed a meaning of benediction.

  He only walked slowly, in order not to crush insects under his footsteps, because his wisdom informed him that it is necessary not to destroy life even in the humblest forms; and he only picked up dead and desiccated branches for his fire, in order not to attack vegetable life.

  One day, a young monk named Simon had come to build a hut of reeds like his, not far from the place where he lived, and had installed himself therein.

  At first, Olympios had been fearful of that proximity, for he knew the intolerance of Christians wearing dark robes. At first he had expected furious anathemas or subtle attempts at conversion. There had been nothing of the sort. The monk Simon was gentle and sad, and gazed suavely into his soul.

  First, they had exchanged a few words on the subject of the Nile flood, which, when it was high, made itself felt as far as the salt-pans, with the consequence that the water could invade their huts. Then a narrower relationship had been formed because of a fire that one of them had been unable to light and for which the other had lent his briquette, in exchange for barley cakes, which they shared. They had acquired the habit of coming to visit one another every day, and they talked about divine things.

  Although they departed from the most opposed points of faith, there was no contradiction between them. Olympios translated the terms employed by Simon internally. When the latter talked about his guardian angel and looked to his right, Olympios knew that it was a matter of the entity that he had labored to create within himself, and which Socrates called his familiar daemon.

  Their goal was common, and they educated one another reciprocally on means to achieve it. They both sought perfection by ecstasy, and the monk’s ecstasy and the philosopher’s ecstasy were similar; they each permitted the human spirit to be confounded by love with the divine unity.

  Sometimes, there were loud vocal outbursts on the threshold of Olympios’ hut. That was Socles, who had not forgotten his friend, and came to visit him. Slaves unloaded a basket of provisions, and Simon was always invited to the meal they took together in the shade of a sycamore.

  Socles laughed noisily and mocked his guests because of their sobriety. He drank the wine that he had brought alone and proudly showed off his muscular arms and laborer’s calluses. He had just constructed a house himself in one of his fields, and he was going to build another. He was happy. Physical labor had given him mental serenity.

  “There is a way for everyone,” said Olympios, softly.

  And when Socles asked him, ironically, if he still rose up into the air, he shook his head negatively, for since he had sensed that power of levitation within him, he no longer took pride in having it, and no longer exercised it.

  One evening, all three of them were sitting under their familiar sycamore and Socles was recounting the news of Alexandria to the two anchorites.

  Bishop Cyril had declared to his entourage that he was renouncing the patriarchate of Alexandria and was going to go on foot, clad in the robe of a mendicant monk, as far as the great oasis, where he would end his days in solitude. People had tried in vain to deflect him from that project. It was doubtless when he began to realize it that he had been struck by death. He had been found lying on the steps of the Serapeum with a beggar’s wallet and a pilgrim’s staff.

  An event had turned the house of Diodorus upside-down. One morning, on opening the door to the street, the porter had found a man in wretched clothing who had just died. At the same moment, the beautiful Priscilla came running. She had the body of the unknown man washed and perfumed and had him carried to a villa she possessed outside Alexandria. Public rumor said that she had had a sandalwood and lemonwood pyre built and, scorning imperial edicts, she had had him solemnly burned. Then she had collected the ashes in a solid gold urn.

  Socles remembered ancient confidences that had once escaped Aurelius. He had often thought about his friend, departed for the abode of the wise and had been afflicted by his absence. He wondered whether it might be him who had come to die on the threshold of Priscilla’s house. He had made enquiries, interrogated the servants. He had intended to go see Priscilla herself. But he had learned that she was completely ignorant of the identity of the traveler. He could not explain the funeral honors that she had rendered him.

  “Perhaps it was Aurelius,” said Olympios, pensively. “Certain beings communicate by means of a wordless language during sleep and don’t remember it when they wake up.”

  And as they were conversing about
their friend’s destiny, a man who was passing along the road perceived their little group, and climbed the path that led to the place where they were seated.

  He was limping, and he was very weary, although of joyful humor.

  He did not hide the fact that he was hungry. He was immediately invited to sit down and Socles served him copiously, insisting that he drink some wine in order to make him feel better. He drank some.

  His name was Amoraim and he mingled the greatest pride with the greatest simplicity. He explained that his life had been divided into two parts, the first tormented by bad luck, the other illuminated by an unparalleled good fortune. The essential thing was to see the world and educate oneself. Sometimes he mentioned a little shop where he had sold candles, sometimes he confided that he was Moses and that he was charged by God with teaching the law. In both cases, however, he had spread light. He could not imagine that any human life might be more beautiful than his. He was in a hurry because he had learned that his coreligionists were in misfortune in Heliopolis, and he was going to that city in haste in order to save them. No, it was necessary not to insist. He could not stay longer. Moses does not stop when his people call him.

  He thanked his hosts very humbly for the meal hey had offered him. He almost prostrated himself. But he adjusted his petty stature immediately, uncertain as to whether his quality as a prophet permitted him to bless men who appeared to be full of sanctity themselves.

  “The eternal, our God, is one!” he said, by way of adieu, and he drew away repeating in the darkness in an increasingly loud voice the formula that had saved the Jews of Alexandria from the massacre.

  A little later, when Socles left, Amoraim’s voice was still audible in the distance among the arborescent tamarinds and the violet pistachio trees of the marsh.

  “The Eternal, our God, is one!” murmured Olympios, turning to Simon, who was also about to leave. He showed him with a gesture the opposite directions in which the two men, so different from one another, were heading, and he added: “There is a way for everyone—but only one truth, however.”