In those days it was not the practice to embalm dead bodies in balsam. Much of the knowledge acquired by the Roman Catholic Church about the way in which Egyptian Pharaohs preserved corpses had been lost by that time. The Roman tradition was to place them in a sarcophagus above ground. (The word ‘sarcophagus’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘flesh-eater’.) The sarcophagus was made of limestone, which was thought to accelerate the dead body’s transformation into a skeleton scraped clean by worms.
Normally a body would have rotted away completely after nine months, but in its carefully sealed sarcophagus, despite the assumed effect of the limestone, this body would probably have been more or less intact. The dry climate of Rome would have meant that the body would have dried out quickly and the skin become hard, almost like leather, forming a sort of black shell. But the rotting interior organs must have produced an unbearable stench, even for people used to bad smells.
The poor priest must have been suffering the torments of hell as he stood beside the throne, trying to reject the accusations levelled at the stinking body.
Sitting in the background were the bishops and priests making up the jury in this macabre court of justice.
What was it all about? How could the leader of millions of Roman Catholic believers set up a court that was sheer lunacy?
History is full of examples of what one might call ‘stories about incomprehensible human beings’. It would be easy to replace the dead body in Rome with something else equally stupid. Despite their claims to be creatures of reason and common sense, people have repeatedly behaved as if there were no rational motives for actions or emotions.
In the case of the dead Pope Formosus and his successor Stephen VI, it is difficult to understand why the living pope dug up his dead and half-rotten predecessor. Dressing up the corpse in full regalia, putting a mitre on his skull and placing him on the papal throne doesn’t make it any more comprehensible.
Stephen VI was mentally unstable, we do know that – but not enough to prevent him from being elected pope. Obviously insane candidates were not usually chosen. Corruption and ruthless tactics could result in being elected pope, but people were afraid of insanity, which could lead a pope into paths of action that couldn’t be controlled.
Stephen VI was a member of the then Roman aristocracy, and was extremely ambitious and ruthless. Taking his predecessor to court was prompted by a bizarre bureaucratic detail. Stephen VI accused the corpse of having broken an ancient Church law which forbade a bishop to move from one district to another. The early Church considered the bishop of a diocese to be ‘married’ to its members and that he should stay put. However, if a bishop was elected pope, that was not a move between bishoprics but something different from anything else within the Roman Catholic Church, a detail ignored by Stephen.
Formosus had been a bishop outside Rome. The law suit was set in motion because Stephen VI wanted to defend himself; he had done exactly the same as his predecessor and moved to Rome from an outlying bishopric. He didn’t want to risk being dug up after his death, and taken to court, and so endeavoured to have his predecessor’s appointment declared illegal so that everything he had done as pope was revoked. That would give Stephen VI a clean sheet, enabling him to place his friends and trusted advisers in positions that would secure his power over the Church and, not least, its financial affairs.
What happened that day in 897 in Rome must have seemed horrific and absurd. It seems the stench was detectable inside the church for a long time afterwards.
It is not clear whether the outcome of the trial was due to the smell or because everything had been decided in advance, but it took only a few days for the jury to find Formosus guilty of all charges. His papacy was declared invalid.
An even more macabre punishment was that the stinking body had its clothes removed. All that remained on the corpse was the hair shirt, which couldn’t be removed because it had become fused with the rotting flesh. In addition the three fingers of his right hand used in blessing congregations were taken away. The corpse was later buried in a graveyard where pilgrims were generally interred.
What happened next is a mystery. There are documents suggesting that after a while Stephen VI had his predecessor’s body dug up yet again and thrown into the River Tiber. He soon made himself impossible to tolerate and was imprisoned and later strangled in his cell in July or August 897. He had spent less than a year as leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
These macabre goings-on seem totally incomprehensible: Stephen VI shouting and threatening with his finger raised in the basilica, bishops and priests sitting in the jury, the ridiculous charges and the judgment passed – how could people representing the religious conscience of millions of believers, ambassadors of a God who was both believed in and feared, behave in such a manner? We know that vanity, hatred and other destructive forces can drive people to do incredible things – but we tend to believe that there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
What were the thoughts of that unnamed priest standing there surrounded by the stench of death? What happened to him later in life? Indeed, how could he carry on living after having been forced by his religious superiors to take part in this macabre farce?
There are people in history I would have liked to meet. He is one of them.
When he was eventually allowed out of the basilica, his priority must have been to free his clothes and body of the stench of death. I think of him as a man who had spent a long time in a fermenting swamp and had finally managed to scramble up onto dry land. I can see him shaving off his beard and the hair on his head in order to be free of the stink.
The image of human beings is and will always be strange. The incomprehensible seems to be an ever-present shadow.
64
A violent north-westerly storm
At the northern tip of Jutland, where sandbanks reach out a long way into the sea, is an old church buried underneath shifting sands. Only the tower sticks out from among the sand dunes, as if it were the church’s gravestone.
I remember the first time I visited the place. As I drove along the tower suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I stopped and discovered that the sand surrounding the tower had buried the church itself.
I instinctively realised what the concept of transitoriness means. Before, it had seemed to me closely associated with religion and something unclear – a way of avoiding calling death by its real name.
But now I saw this solitary tower. Shifting sand everywhere, a few bushes, and beyond them the sea whose presence was always felt thanks to its distant sighing sound. Then all of a sudden this tower, which was fighting stubbornly against the sand and the dunes as they kept on rising.
There had been a time when the church was full every Sunday with congregations of poverty-stricken families who lived in the fishing villages of Skagen. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the shifting sand dunes became more and more threatening, like an enemy infantry gathering around the church and preparing for the final assault.
As a result of a violent north-westerly storm in 1775 the shifting sands reached the church wall for the first time, and then entered the church itself. After only another twenty years it had been defeated. In 1795 the Danish king decided that the church would have to be abandoned. Everything movable would be taken in horse-drawn wagons to Österby Kapell and kept there until a new church was built. The church was deconsecrated and the doors locked for the final time.
The church, which had been standing there since the 1300s, was finally surrendered to the encroaching sand. Today only the tower is visible: the church itself, including the font, which was never taken away as it was carved out of natural stone and too heavy to shift, is buried.
Now the only sound down there in the darkness is the shifting sand, which moves when pockets of air form beneath the dunes. This shifting sand is constantly drifting, conquering fresh tracts of land.
My main reason for going to Skagen was not to see the buried church, but because
I intended to send one of my literary characters there – Kurt Wallander, who was in mourning and needed to get away from his normal environment.
I wandered along the endless beaches and imagined how my character would react. It was late autumn: cold, windy, with occasional snowflakes drifting through the air, signalling the imminent approach of winter.
I had rented a room in a guest house with no other customers. Skagen was deserted in the autumn; it was a time of great weariness for me, bordering on an unusual feeling of unhappiness. In the evenings I sometimes wondered if I was the one who should be spending time on those endless shores, rather than Kurt Wallander.
On the wall next to my bed were some bookshelves containing a few well-thumbed old volumes. One evening I took one of them down at random. It was printed by the Skagen Boktrykkeri, and was about Skagen – its history, the sea, the fate of people who lived there, and the church buried in the sand. Strangely enough, it had never been opened, and I had to fetch a knife in order to cut open the pages. I lay awake for the whole night and read it from cover to cover.
Shortly before dawn there was a power failure; as this was a frequent occurrence in windy Skagen I had come prepared and lit my emergency paraffin lamp.
What I remember most vividly from the book is how a ship called Daphne ran aground on one of the treacherous sandbanks. If it hadn’t been for the death-defying heroic actions of a number of Skagen fishermen, the ship would have gone down with all hands on board; instead it was the voluntary rescuers who suffered most.
On 27 December 1862, at about half past six in the morning, the gales that had been blowing all night slowly began to die down. Ragged clouds were racing across the sky. One of the watchmen in the fishing fleet moored in an inlet went ashore as soon as it started to grow light in order to see if the hurricane had caused any damage. Somebody had claimed to see lights on the sea during the night, and it was impossible to know what might have happened in the darkness when the storm was at its height.
The watchman discovered that a large ship had run aground on one of the sandbanks. As the winds had eased, he thought it might be possible to take the crew off the stricken ship. It took just over an hour to launch the rescue boat, and the volunteer fishermen from Skagen started rowing towards the scene – but the currents were so strong that they had to turn back twice. They then tried to send a rope out to the ship, using a primitive rocket launcher – and eventually succeeded. But by then darkness had fallen again, and the would-be rescuers were so exhausted they were unable to do any more.
The following day the wind had eased further, even if the waves were still high and the currents strong. The rescue boat managed to reach the ship, but a sudden gust of wind overturned it. Now it was no longer a case of rescuing the crew on board the ship; it was even more urgent to save all those who had been on the capsized boat.
Another rescue boat crewed by volunteers was launched, and they succeeded in saving two of that crew – Niels Andersen and Jens Jensen Nork – who had managed to stay afloat and not yet frozen to death; but most of their comrades were dead. Their names are listed on a memorial stone raised some years later in Skagen:
Jens Christian Jensen
Niels Christian Simonsen
Iver Andreasen
Anders Christensen Bruun
Christen Thomsen Knep
Jakob Tønnesen
Jens Pedersen Kjelder
Thomas Pedersen
They were all hard-up fishermen, most of them young, and all of them married with children. Some of them can be seen on blurred black-and-white photographs, standing beside their boats. It is difficult to make out their faces without the aid of a magnifying glass.
They were all shy, modest, religious and hard-working human beings.
The crew of the Daphne were eventually rescued, but the price had been high. On 31 December, the eight volunteer rescuers were buried; eight women became widows and twenty-five young children became fatherless.
The eight graves were in a row. On top of the coffins lay flowers and in some cases medals awarded to the dead men in recognition of their courage in earlier rescue operations.
The wreck of the Daphne was just one in a series of similar incidents. The waters around Skagen are justifiably regarded as a ships’ cemetery. Since time immemorial ships have run aground on submerged reefs or been blown too close to land by north-westerly storms.
The fishermen who volunteered to man the rescue boats regarded doing so as a matter of course. Nobody has ever heard of any individual who declined to risk his life in order to save unknown sailors struggling among the breakers. It was routine for fishermen to risk their own lives every day, and when the storms came to risk their lives for others.
One of the most basic features of our civilisation is the readiness to volunteer. Even if rescue operations are nowadays rarely so dramatic and devastating as the one on 27 December 1862, it is still the norm for volunteers to risk their lives to save others in a variety of circumstances.
I often wonder how I would react if a small child suddenly ran out onto a busy road in front of where I was standing, closer to it than anybody else. A child I had never seen before and had absolutely no relationship with.
I don’t know the answer because it has never happened. I can only hope that I wouldn’t hesitate to run out into the road in a totally unselfish attempt to rescue the child from the speeding traffic.
It should be something one can take for granted, but unfortunately it isn’t. People fall down in the street, suddenly overcome by illness. Eventually somebody stops and tries to help, but most people hurry past and pretend they haven’t seen the man or woman who fell.
It is a question that has haunted me ever since that night in the guest house in Skagen. Were the rescuers driven by courage? Did any of them even consider it an act of courage? Or was it the realisation that they were entering into the strongest of all relationships? The relationship that is formed when people know they are in mortal danger?
Today that trip to Skagen all those years ago seems almost like a dream. I duly wrote my book, and Kurt Wallander spent a long time wandering around the beaches, feeling mournful, until he met somebody out there in the desolation, the mist and the booming foghorns who drew him back in to his normal life.
I dream about the boat that set out one night in December 1862 to try to rescue the crew of the shipwrecked Daphne. In the dream I try to see myself among the oarsmen rowing desperately in their knee-boots and sou’westers.
But I’m not sure if I’m on board or not.
I can’t be sure. I’ll never be sure.
65
A fictitious meeting in a park in Vienna, 1913
One of the most remarkable artists of our age was born in 1940.
Pina Bausch was a choreographer who created some of the most notable examples of artistic dancing that I know.
Her black hair was swept back; she was thin and could be fragile. But she concealed an immense primordial power. She was beautiful in a vague sort of way. She was also very stern – but towards herself, never with anybody else.
The most remarkable thing about her was her eyes, her expression. She had a way of looking at you that nobody forgot. When she died in 2009 a lot of people talked about Pina Bausch’s eyes.
She looked at people with unwavering concentration, and she was as honest with her fellow human beings as she was with those who chose to dance on her stage in Wuppertal.
I sometimes think I have lived in ‘the age of The Rite of Spring’.
Last year, 2013, it was exactly one hundred years since Stravinsky, the dancer Nijinsky and the leader of the Ballets Russes Diaghilev mounted the first performance of the ballet The Rite of Spring in Paris.
The performance was a scandal. There was such uproar in the audience that Nijinsky, who was standing in the wings waiting to enter the stage, couldn’t hear the music. He had to observe the other dancers’ movements and count the bars in his head so as not to be completely
out of time when he danced onto the stage.
Stravinsky was furious and left the performance before the end, protesting that the audience had made so much noise they had ruined his music.
The Rite of Spring signalled a fundamental change in modern art, showing how it would reflect the twentieth century with its explosive industrialism, technical progress, expanding cities and the vulnerability of individuals in a brutal financial world set to exploit them as never before.
All these new developments are incorporated into Stravinsky’s passionate music, with frequent paradoxical changes from something akin to tonal madness to serene calm and even silence. Nijinsky’s dancing and the choreography were also something new – the fact that the dancers sometimes turned their backs on the audience aroused people’s disgust and anger. It was as if the artists were insulting the audience by abandoning all established conventions.
Sixty-two years later Pina Bausch and her ensemble performed their version of The Rite of Spring at the Tanztheater in Wuppertal. I saw it many years after its premiere in 1975. It only needed a few bars of music, a few movements, to make me aware that I was about to see something remarkable.
It certainly was. It was as if Pina Bausch’s production was a totally convincing reflection of my own contemporary life and the world I now live in. Loneliness, exploitation, frantic hustle and bustle – it was all there, but with a constant counterbalance in the form of human beings’ ability to resist and endure.
Her choreography was a duel. The performance made me feel as if I were part of a resistance movement that refused to be forced to live in a world where people were sacrificed every day at the altar of pointlessness. You are sacrificed because you are too old or too young, too slow or too fat, too black or too ugly. Even if The Rite of Spring is a heathen saga, the picture it presents of our time and our society is vividly clear.
Pina Bausch always felt uncomfortable in her relationship with the spoken word, perhaps also the written word. But in dancing and the movements of the body she was able to express herself as she wished.
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