by W. E. Gutman
“The ensuing uprising was less an act of insubordination against dictatorship than an insurrection against a grotesque class disparity between the haves and the have not. It was a social, not a political movement that purged France of hereditary kings and parasitical clergy. Given sufficient impetus, social movements eventually prevail.
“The economic crisis sweeping France accentuated the inequality between the classes. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Thousands died of hunger. It was obvious to most that France could not escape revolution. Would it be short or protracted, violent or peaceful? Would much needed reforms forestall the inevitable? Only the king, his queen, the blue-bloods, the knights and the princes of the Church could answer that, but they were all opposed to change.
“Louis hid behind his neurotic piety (and a bad case of phimosis). He neglected his wife in favor of hunting and tinkering with locks and clocks. He was drawn neither by royal duty, love, sex, politics, nor war, which he entrusted to pompous and ham-fisted generals. Inattentive to fact, deaf to reason, unwilling to heed advice, incapable of making decisions on his own, he took solace in his wife’s opinion of him:
‘Pauvre homme, il est bon -- poor man, he is kind.’
“Goodness in 1789 was apparently not enough. Marie-Antoinette, a spendthrift with a colossal disregard for the well being of her people, her reputation further sullied by the famous Necklace Affair and allegations of infidelity, became not only unpopular but loathed. The affair of the diamond necklace, you all have learned in school, was a mysterious and sordid incident involving Marie Antoinette, a cardinal, a con artist -- the famous charlatan Cagliostro, better known as Joseph Balsamo -- and a prostitute. The queen, whose reputation was already tarnished by gossip and scandal, was implicated in a crime that further increased the French people’s disillusionment with the monarchy.
“A propos of the famous brioche quote, it's a myth. Marie-Antoinette was so out of touch with the lives of her subjects that she had no way of knowing whether they dined on moldy bread, escargots or filet mignon. Revisionists of all stripes have attempted to rehabilitate the queen -- or at least lend her a human visage. She was in fact a pretentious scatterbrain and a squanderer who, with her cuckold husband Louis' approval, ruined France. Some have argued that she was tried on trumped up charges. Indeed, Marie-Antoinette's trial had nothing to do with the legal definition of treason but everything to do with treachery, meaning deceitfulness, disloyalty and duplicity. Her accusers fittingly charged her (and Louis) with unscrupulousness; corruption; embezzlement; cruelty; a perverse disregard for the well being of the people; profligacy; avarice; squandering the national treasury; and when all was lost, flight to avoid prosecution.
“Modern France can well understand the hatred, the rage Louis and Marie-Antoinette’s bankrupt, abject, merciless and dehumanizing reign provoked among the people. Some, among them the fellow citizen I keep mentioning but will not name, are still fixated on the royal heads that rolled into the wicker basket but they have no memory of the despair of the wretched masses or of the thousands of Lettres de Cachet, signed by the King and countersigned by princes of the Church, which sent innocent people, among them Huguenots, Jews, nonconformists and dissenters into exile or to the gallows.
“Much of the world has come to regard royalty as an anachronism, if not an obscenity. Perhaps evolution will endow the human brain with the capacity to regard organized religion as yet another form of entrapment by an elite engaged in its own preservation, as were the dynasties of thugs who called themselves kings. I know that the fellow citizen to whom I’ve been referring all along will recoil at the thought, but tradition is a poor excuse for the perpetuation of costly eccentricities. Time has come to recognize that what gives dignity to one individual ensures the dignity of all.
“In parting, Hieronymus Bosch, the artist behind the recent spasm of priestly rancor, said it all in his paintings five centuries ago. I urge my Fellow Freemasons and the public at large to discover what a mind free of absurd beliefs, an unerring eye, an attentive ear and a heart dedicated to knowledge and justice can do to make the world look at itself. Vive la France. Vive la République. Vive la Laïcité.”
Grand Master Lelouch’s nationally televised speech triggers instant and feverish interest in Hieronymus Bosch. People flock to museums around Europe to gawk at his fantastical creations. Reproductions of his work sell in record numbers. The Louvre contacts the El Prado in Madrid, asking it to grant the temporary loan of several of his masterpieces. Books about the Flemish master fly off the shelves.
Lelouch’s speech also stirs France’s republican soul, eliciting editorials, essays and political cartoons eulogizing the innovative and civilizing changes brought on by the Revolution. Several newspapers, among them Le Monde, Libération and L’Humanité, publish retrospectives extolling secularism and urging untiring vigilance against the intrusion of the Church into affairs of state.
Archbishop Trente-Trois is apoplectic. He orders Le Calvaire “not to engage the enemy.” He instructs priests throughout France to steer clear of the controversy and directs them to keep their sermons pastoral. He then convenes an emergency consistory. Father Hubert François de Ravaillac, Opus Dei’s and the Knights of Malta’s most promising star, will be all ears.
Hiram Falls
On Sunday, August 9, 2009, prior to leading the recitation of the Angels with the faithful gathered in the courtyard of his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, Pope Benedict XVI “meditates” on several saints who are commemorated during this period. One of them is Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, better known as Edith Stein, who, “consumed with love and won over by Christ,” converted from Judaism, became a Carmelite nun and later perished at Auschwitz. From her, the Holy Father asserts,
“We can learn the evangelical heroism that impels us to give our life fearlessly for the salvation of the soul. Love triumphs over death. All saints, but especially martyrs, are witnesses of God, who is Love: Deus caritas est.”
Glorifying conversion as a path to salvation, the pope’s “meditation” does not allow for the possibility that Edith Stein died in a Nazi concentration camp because she was Jewish, not because she sacrificed herself, that her “martyrdom,” like that of millions of her coreligionists, was that of a hated Jew, not because St. Teresa of Avila’s story inspired her to take the veil. The most powerful man in the Church, the man who lives in Babylonian splendor, the commander-in-chief of an army of Swiss Guards, the holy mortal worshipped by more than one billion Catholics, then asks his audience to reflect on the “profound divergences … that have transformed human beings into gods.” He does not elaborate. Instead, he invites the faithful to come forward, kneel before him and kiss his blessed ring.
On that same day in August, Michel Montvert reflects in silence as he marks the death, four hundred and ninety-three years ago, of Hieronymus Bosch, one of his heroes, the artist who inventively and at the peril of his own life, exposed the “profound divergences’ that continue to turn out false prophets and allow ambitious egomaniacs to exploit human stupidity.
Montvert raises his hands high above his head, lowers them in three distinct rhythmic motions and whispers, “Is there no mercy for the Widow’s Son?” He remembers the distant expression, a mixture of sarcasm and controlled exasperation, in Bosch’s surreptitious self-portraits.
A fortnight later, still on vacation at his summer palace, the pope asks the faithful to reflect on the Bread of Life Discourse in the Gospel of St. John, in which Jesus presents himself as
“the bread of life … which came down from heaven … if anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever: and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
It is not without a hint of bitterness that Benedict XVI accuses “the Jews,” who find the concept repulsive, of misinterpreting the message and distancing themselves from the messenger. Shifting from metaphor to vampirism, the pope then scolds “the world” for debating -- rather than swal
lowing whole -- Jesus’ demented warning, “…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” He argues that Jesus, not given to compromise, has no cause to make himself understood, and he urges mankind to trust in the “power of the Holy Spirit.” Rapt, seduced by this preposterous injunction, the faithful cross themselves at the very thought of feasting, even symbolically on the Son of Man.
Homo hominis lupus. Man is a wolf to man. He feeds on sheep.
On September 19, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Jacques Lelouch, the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France is pushed under the wheels of an oncoming train at the Saint-Paul Metro Station. His assailant melts into the crowd of rush-hour commuters and vanishes.
The legend of “Hiram, the Widow’s Son,” is the keystone of Freemasonry’s ritualistic drama of the Third, or Master’s Degree. When Solomon, King of Israel, undertook the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, he asked King Hiram of Tyre for materials and architectural expertise. King Hiram, in exchange for corn, oil and wine, sent Solomon cedar trees from the forests of Lebanon and appointed a skilled worker, or artificer, to oversee the project. This story appears in the Old Testament (Kings, 1-7) and (Chronicles, 11-2). An artisan, also named Hiram, is referred to as “the son of a widow of the tribe of Naftali” whose husband hailed from Tyre. This feature of the Masonic legend comes from Scriptures. But the story staged by Freemasons has a tragically different twist and is inspired to impart symbolic and life-altering lessons. Hiram Abiff (Hebrew for “father”) worked for Solomon in Jerusalem as the Master of the Works, or chief architect and builder. More than 85,000 people were employed in the erection of the Temple, which took seven years to complete.
Workmen who labored faithfully were promised to be elevated to the status of Master Mason. Some time before the Temple’s completion, several workmen became impatient and demanded the promotion they had been promised. They also sought to obtain the higher wages and fringe benefits accorded to Master Masons and conspired to extort them from Hiram Abiff. Resisting their threats, Hiram rejected their demands. Reminding them of their obligations to King Solomon, he insisted that they honor the contracts by which he and they were bound. Three of them, more cunning and brutal than the others plotted to attack Master Hiram and force the concessions he denied them. Hiram stood firm and the three murdered him in the unfinished Temple.
The legend of Hiram is one of the most impressive ritualistic dramas of all time. Tenuous evidence, some deduced from ancient art, some found in arcane medieval texts, suggests that the story of Hiram may have been known to operative Masons as early as the Middle Ages. Perhaps the legend is a reworking of some medieval mystery play whose original may have been secreted in some private library or forgotten amid the debris of an ancient building.
Regardless of its origins, the drama of Hiram is a representation of the eternal conflict between men, of individuals pitted against the evil forces embodied in other men. The enemies Hiram faces are symbols of the lusts and passions and failures of the human spirit. Seen in that light, Hiram’s violent death is also his triumph -- the resurrection of truth over ignorance. The enriching significance of the legend of Hiram is that it continues to stir men to serve the Truth by steadfastly keeping its flame burning bright and in full view of those who would shield their eyes from it.
Seen in the light of contemporary history, the assassination of Manuel Albeniz and Jacques Lelouch, as was that of Hiram Abiff, can also be construed as a grotesque act of censorship. The assassins were less interested in obtaining the “secrets” of a Master Mason as they were in preventing the dissemination and popularization of the freethinking ideals they impart.
Epilogue
A lone letter to the editor in Le Monde sums up Lelouch’s murder with the pithiest of epitaphs: “Humans are just not nice.” Montvert, who has lost two friends and Brother Freemasons, first Albeniz, then Lelouch, agrees. But what does this self-evident truth say about the crime, about the criminal, about his motives, about the sadism of man? What does it express other than some letter writer’s fondness for clichés?
The writer is right, of course, but his summation is as shallow as it is fragmentary. Yes, we are not “nice” but we are unique. We possess seeds of genius and inspiration. Hidden deep in our subconscious teem the viruses of jealousy, greed, spite and aggression. Astonishing acts of creativity are accompanied by surges of unspeakable evil.
We pulverized Nagasaki and Hiroshima and have since left our footsteps on the Moon. We used napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, experimented with LSD and syphilis on unwary citizens and landed robotic explorers on Mars. We fought to “liberate” some nations from the yoke of oppression while ignoring slavery in other parts of the world. We fed the hungry in areas of strategic importance and let others starve to death. We carried the Cross in one hand and brandished the sword in the other. We sired Euripides and Shakespeare, Bach and Beethoven, Michelangelo and Van Gogh, Galileo and Einstein … and spawned Attila and Hitler, Stalin and Mao, Pol Pot and Saddam, Torquemada and Hubert de Ravaillaic.
Montvert finds no contradiction in these incongruities, however jarring the contrast between them. He accepts with equal dispassion both the wretchedness and the sublime transcendence of the human spirit. Leaning against the forged iron railing of his balcony, surrounded by window-boxes brimming with geraniums, he gazes at his beloved Paris. Then scenes from his childhood blur the heavenly landscape.
June 14, 1940. The Germans had crossed the ancient city gates. Huge flags -- a black swastika on a field of crimson and white -- were hoisted over palaces and public buildings, replacing the French tricolor. German soldiers were seen buffing their boots with it, arousing laughter among the troops.
Paris had been overpowered. A ghastly silence hovered over the once bustling narrow cobbled streets of the old part of town. It was as if the city had lost its soul. Elsewhere, on Place Pigalle, on the Champs Elysées, in the open vastness of the Place de la Concorde, small groups of Parisians, including priests, greeted and feted the invaders. Many volunteered their services. Others offered their bodies for bread or wine or money to expiate France’s fervid capitulation in a symbolic act of self-immolation.
He remembered seeing vast numbers of Parisians standing motionless, weeping openly, a quiet rage burning in their eyes as German soldiers -- the reincarnated Sons of Darkness -- strutted freely in the magnificent but now dimmed City of Light. He would never forget their tears. And he remembered taking his father’s hand and huddling next to him for warmth and reassurance. Sensing disquiet, his father had picked him up and held him in his arms. He had smiled and pressed him closer to his heart, and Montvert saw sadness in his father’s face, sadness and fear.
Montvert was three.
He was now an old man. Time had done little to quiet the inner echoes of primal cynicism that had escorted him since childhood. He had sailed the seven seas, flown on the Concorde, scaled Mayan tabernacles, probed the Kabbalah’s dizzying and mazelike realm, marveled at the erotic carvings of the Khajuraho temples in India, dived in the amethyst waters of the gulf of Aqaba, combed the ruins of the ancient community in Qumran, studied the ancient scrolls.
As Montvert stood on the ruins of the millennia-old monastery, shimmering in the afterglow of dawn, suspended between the amethyst sky and the brackish waters of the Dead Sea, the furrowed mountains of Moab and Gilead had loomed in the distance, bleak, barren. Rolling in from the Mediterranean, passing over Bethlehem and Hebron, a rare cluster of rain-swollen clouds had surrendered its precious life-bearing gift. It was only a sprinkle but together with the morning dew the welcome shower, Montvert knew, would energize the date palms and the neatly tended patches of barley and wheat. Here in the Great Rift, 390 meters below sea level -- the lowest point on Earth -- grainfield was not the golden ocean of swaying corn that dwarfed the harvester in the Valley of Jezreel or the coastal plains of Sharon. Here the men had to stoop and pluck the plant by its roots. The sheaves were squat, sho
rt-stalked and sparsely leafed but the ears were full. There would be bread for all.
Amplified by the great stillness hovering over mangled bluffs and escarpments, riding on the wings of an occasional rush of hot, dry wind, the surefooted hoof beat of a clan of ibexes resonated in the distance. Wary, their scimitar-shaped horns poised like antennae, their quivering nostrils probing the scorching updrafts, Montvert had seen them come to drink from weather-worn shallow limestone basins. Catching a whiff of danger in the air, they had vaulted from boulder to boulder, leaving a pungent trail of musk behind them.
Down below, dressed in white linen robes, lost in their apocalyptic incantations, men had descended single-file into a pool fed by runoff rainwater. A narrow, ankle-high berm in the center of a steep stairwell had separated the cleansed from those still awaiting purification. Such ritual ablutions, it was written, were repeated when the Sun reached its meridian height, and just before it sank behind the craggy ramparts and cast long cooling shadows upon the old settlement.
A simple meal had been shared, freshly laundered communal vestments distributed. Standing on the top landing of the two-story watchtower commanding the Dead Sea's darkening, glassy surface, a lonely figure bent by age had peered at the horizon through slits worked into meter-thick cut stone. Like the ibexes now resting in their lairs, the old man had grown uneasy. The world is evil, the old rabbi had whispered to himself. Greed and lust mock the God of all creation. That such a world should be sundered is obvious. That the end was near seemed nowhere more manifest than in this dreadful chasm, halfway between the Bitter Lake and the wretched cliffs disfigured by the sun's scorching breath. Was it not in this accursed region, patriarchal texts recount -- in Sodom and in Gomorra -- that man laid the scene of God's fury? What will it be this time? Lightning? Torrential rain? Floods? Another deadly tremor? Earthquakes had badly damaged the life-bearing aqueducts, their course forever diverted.