The Hand of Christ

by Joseph Nagle

  Paul’s seal was next to Peter’s; the two seals were side by side and in the top drawer. The remaining seals lined the multiple drawers of the box in the order of each Pope’s reign. Most believed that St. Peter was the first Pope, but this was a mistake of the vernacular difficult to remedy. The leader – any leader – of the Roman Church was not referred to as Pope until Marcellinus took the title early in the 4th century. Peter had been the first Bishop, and Church leaders thereafter used the title “Vicar of Peter” instead of “Pope,” until Marcellinus.

  The two saints had simultaneously been leaders of their respective Christian followers, groups that had grown into what is now the Holy Roman Church. Paul and Peter began the tradition upon which that Leo stared. Each had a stamp of their respective holy seals.

  Tradition places Peter first, with less emphasis on Paul. True religious historians, however, argue the validity of such a statement and point to the third chapter of the third book Against Heresies written by St. Irenaeus of Lyons in AD 180: the Church was “…founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul…”

  Both men, by the actions of their lives and the consequences of their deaths, had created the necessary foundations that forged the Roman Catholic Church. Neither had been Pope, but both were the first leaders of the Church.

  Leo carefully removed Paul’s seal from where it sat next to Peter’s in the case. He took a moment to hold it in his hands. It had been heavier than he thought it would be. Closing his eyes, Leo certainly enjoyed the moment. In has hands, caressed by his fingers, he held the stamp of the holy seal of St. Paul; the very same worn by the saint himself. Never had Leo felt so small and so humbled. This ring, he had been shocked to learn, had been worn on a hand that had touched the body of Christ.

  After his slight moment of indescribable profundity, Leo opened his eyes and dipped the stamp carefully into a nearby small container of ink. When he pressed the stamp firmly onto a piece of paper, he compared it to the one on the parchment.

  Leo held his breath whilst gazing at the sight before him. Studying it closer he could clearly see it; both were a perfect match! There was even a slight, barely detectable, imperfection on the seal that could clearly be seen in the stamp made by Paul on his Apocryphal; an imperfection that matched the stamp that Leo had just made.

  A small tear lined the lower lid of his right eye. Leo removed the holy seal of Pius and repeated the process. He had hoped that this time neither would match; he hoped that he would find that one bit of evidence that had evaded him over the last three months, the evidence that would prove him wrong. Leo lost track of how many times that he had repeated this process, one that always ended with the same result. Over and over again, he had hoped that the seals wouldn’t match. Unfortunately, they matched – again.

  After months of conducting his own private research, Leo was finally beginning to understand, finally beginning to believe.

  Leo returned the two seals to their resting place and then carefully opened the weathered and time-browned piece of paper. The letter written by Pius was in a black ink that was still surprisingly stark and began with the words: “August 18, 1914. To my Papal Brother, I am still not worthy as your Pope. I am near my death and write this letter from where I lay. My heart no longer wills to live. My actions, taken by writing this letter, offer a final confirmation with respects to the veracity of the solemn burden I carry.”

  Leo raised the letter and squinted heavily; he was looking for something more, something that he may have missed. By now, he knew that it would not be found. Leo continued reading: “In my possession is the most troubling Apocryphal of our history. A parchment found innocently. Words, at first, I could not believe, but those I now know within my heart are true. I have always believed in the holy trinity, and the affirmation of Jesus’ divinity by the Filoque inserted in the Nicene Creed, and never to be questioned. I have always believed in the Eucharist; in the Host. In an instant, these beliefs were changed.”

  “Changed,” Leo whispered out loud, now fully understanding.

  “The Papacy has been witness to numerous and permanent separations between the Eastern and Western halves of our Church and that of the Church and States: the Crusades, the Schism, the Church of England, the Protestant Reformation, and the Monroe Doctrine. These travesties amongst other movements have weakened us. To these ends I have been most distressed; the Church would appear powerless in the reversal of this cause.

  I fear that the suppression of our venerated St. Paul’s Apocryphal has laid a permanently divided path between the histories of the Church of Rome and that of Constantinople, and now between that of the Church and State. We have created our own demise through this lie: this is our shame to carry. This parchment would seem to prove this so. It has weakened us and the world along with it. I have struggled with its disposition. Do I destroy it? Or, do I share it with the world? What should I do?

  I have become immensely consumed by these questions, but as I lie hear near death, I have concluded that the power to decide either choice shall not rest with me.

  Instead, in my cowardice, I choose to do nothing. I hope that I may be forgiven. What sort of Pope sits powerless, unable to act?

  Perhaps you will know what to do. Or, perhaps this parchment will last another two-thousand years; by then it may have faded beyond recognition ridding any of us the burden it brings. I certainly have not the fortitude to rid the world of it, or to take any action. I am a coward.”

  “Two-thousand years,” Leo whispered. Every time he read that sentence he could hardly believe it to be true. So difficult it had been to believe, Leo had cut a small piece from the corner of the parchment for carbon dating testing.

  Leo had always marveled at how progressive the Vatican is; unbeknownst to most. To the rest of the world, the Roman Church appears affixed in doctrine and tradition of a time long forgotten. A number of Popes, including John Paul II, had opened up to the pragmatic use of technology, believing that if it had come from man that it must have been from God and should be embraced, albeit carefully and not without purposeful caution.

  The test results had been handled quietly by Geoffrey, and initially the priest had been without question or suspicion. Such a good man, thought Leo. Within a few short weeks, however, Geoffrey had returned the results with a furrowed brow and been full of brewing interrogatives.

  “Your Holiness, the results of the test show that the item dates approximately to the time of Christ. Where did this piece of parchment come from? How did his holiness find this in his possession? Is there more?” So many questions he had.

  Leo had always been a careful man and quick when cornered; he had easily replied to the barrage of questions, “Geoffrey, I found it stuck in between some pages of the Papal Bible in the Apostolic Apartment, I was simply curious.” Leo had lied again. At the time he had felt it was for good reason.

  Reading through the parchment, Leo had been astonished to learn, but could clearly see that it had been written by two men. The second half was written with a markedly different penmanship than the first half and was a slightly darker black ink.

  Regardless of these differences, what made it more obvious that there were two authors was that the document clearly stated so. In the lower right corner of the second half of the document was the signature of Valentinus, next to a faded, red hand print.

  Slowly, Leo caressed the red handprint with his index finger and then placed his own over it. With his hand resting atop the handprint, he closed his eyes and felt its warmth. Could it really be? Leo thought.

  Removing his hand, he looked at the name written underneath the faded print: Yeshua – the Hebrew name for Jesus.

  Letting out a long, uneven breath, Leo moved his eyes to the name of the second author scribed onto the vellum and further proof of its age. The man whose name was written on the parchment was a seldom mentioned heresiarch and one time potential leader of the Church at the turn of the first century. Many heres
iarchs did not believe in the validity of Jesus’ divinity; that being born of a man and woman, He had a beginning whereas God does not. To them, Jesus and God were not consubstantial - “not of one being.”

  While studying the parchment in his Archives, Leo was sure that he would find something related to the heresiarch Valentinus, a category of people that even included the name of the great mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy.

  Searching for weeks, Leo had finally stumbled across a well hidden text authored by Valentinus. The book had been placed – no doubt by Pius – behind a row of much larger scrolls.

  He had searched under different methods of categorization: the name Valentinus, under the word heresiarch, and for anything related to the 1st and 2nd Century.

  Nothing, nothing, and nothing.

  Then it dawned on him, the parchment was a lost Apocryphal of Paul. The shelves in the room contained all of the known scrolls of the Apocryphals. He had pulled them all out one by one; Leo soon saw the lost text behind them.

  Clever. Pius had placed the text on the shelf in a manner to ensure it was lost.

  Leo was astonished to find the handwritten name that now stares at him from the parchment; he had set the parchment side by side to the text, it was clear that the names were identical in their penmanship. Valentinus had written the text!

  In the text, Valentinus wrote that he had lived in Rome during what would be the late 1st and early 2nd centuries; he claimed to have unpublished teachings of Jesus from AD 46 – 51, a full ten years after Jesus had been presumed to have been crucified.

  The text referred often to Valentinus’s great teacher Theudas. Leo drew the connection immediately; Theudas was a follower of St. Paul, the venerated man that wrote the first half of the parchment that was now laid out before him. Some have even whispered that St. Paul was the first of the heresiarchs.

  Paul’s Christian teachings throughout Rome’s empire were not of large concern, but when accused of the capital crime of bringing a Gentile into a temple, Paul was faced with arrest. As a Roman citizen, he demanded his trial to be held in Rome; his demand had been granted. It would prove an unfortunate fate for Paul as during this time, Nero, Rome’s Emperor, falsely persecuted the Christians for setting Rome ablaze. Paul knew he was to be Nero’s scapegoat, and correctly feared that he was to be executed at the emperor’s command.

  Paul was ensuring the life of his Apocryphal by passing it secretly to his followers in Rome! The words echoed through Leo’s mind and twisted him with uncertainty and emotion. He further read in Valentinus’s text that the unpublished teachings of Jesus were written in Egypt, where, according to the ancient text, Jesus had fled after His crucifixion.

  As many times as Leo had read the letter from Pius X, he had studied the ancient parchment and text twice as much. He had become visibly and physically disturbed by their contents, if not outright shaken. Pius’s letter was fragmented in its prose, and did not bear the hallmarks of the deceased Pope’s literary elegance; much of it didn’t make sense. That is, until Leo had found and read the ancient text.

  Leo now understood why Pius feared the parchment, why he couldn’t force himself to do anything with it, why he thought himself a coward. It contradicts the very foundations of Catholic doctrine and the Nicene Creed, it calls the Church what they are: liars!

  The question of the divinity of Jesus was one of the main arguments that led to the Great Schism and final separation of the Roman Church of the West from its counterpart in the East. The Schism had so violently fractured the Roman Church that the power once wielded from Rome’s pulpit had dramatically spilled away. Today, Rome is nothing more than an enclave of tradition having lost any remnant of political power.

  Leo traced his fingers over the lost Apocryphal of Paul until his finger met a familiar piece of scripture. Looking at the words that Paul wrote, Leo said them out loud: “If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless.”

  These words were in the bible: 1 Corinthians 15:14

  Was this a veiled attempt by Paul to pass on to the world the Crucifixion didn’t happen?

  If Jesus had lived and had not been crucified it would mean that He had not been resurrected; the very occurrence that made Him divine; the very matter that is most centric to Christian theology. What Leo now stared at completely contradicted what each priest preached every Sunday to all of the faithful; it contradicted Easter and Good Friday, holidays that celebrated and reminded us of His resurrection.

  Just as troublesome to Leo were the names of the twelve different Popes that were written on the inside cover of Valentinus’s text. There, all twelve names lined the inside cover of the text much like the old method used by libraries when one checked out a book. By the name of each Pope that adorned the inside cover was a date, and silently conveyed a message to the next Pope to do nothing. The first name written was Pope Gelasius I with a date of March, 496.

  A dozen popes – now thirteen with Leo’s name added – had been aware of the parchment; they knew about the lost Apocryphal of Paul and of the text of Valentinus as early as the 5th century, and each had conspired to do nothing!

  The year, 496, stood out in Leo’s mind; something about that year seemed a bit familiar. It didn’t take long to make the connection, the resources in the archives, and at his fingertips, held an immense amount of history and data of each Popes’ private dealings. Leo’s endeavors to draw a connection to his memory of that date and its importance had been a fairly simple task.

  Leo had searched for the private diaries of Gelasius and soon found them. Scanning through the entries made by the Pope in March of 496, the date listed in the text, Leo soon found what he sought.

  Leo had been astonished when he read Gelasius’s entry for March, 496. During lengthy and heated negotiations, Gelasius had been presented with a document from Clovis the Merovingian King; the document attested to Clovis’s right to be Holy Roman Emperor. Gelasius had forced Clovis to relinquish the document and promised in return for it that the Merovingian bloodline, starting with Clovis, would forever be the holy rulers of Rome. It was a secret deal that had come at a high cost to the Church.

  But why the Merovingians, how could this lineage be more important than any other royal family? Why should they be the “holy rulers” and not the Church? Why would the Church have had no choice but to accept the validity of the document and abruptly concede power? What did Clovis have? These questions taunted Leo nearly to the point of breaking. For five frustrating weeks he had searched for something, for anything that would reveal the answers.

  Gelasius wrote nothing of this connection between the Merovingians and the Roman Church.

  The only clue that Gelasius left was an innocuous statement written by Gelasius in his diary: “Clovis circumtenui Unus” – Clovis possesses the One. What did that mean? What is the one? What document could Clovis have possessed that forced the Pope, the Holy leader of the once inordinately powerful Roman Church, to his knees before him and declare Clovis and all of his bloodline as the Holy Roman Emperor?

  In Michelangelo’s room, Leo studied the history of the Merovingians and found that they had ruled over much of what is now France and Germany. The documents that he read told him that the Merovingians quickly and forcibly expanded their kingdom; the expansion of their power occurred right after, and certainly coincided with, Clovis’s secret deal with the Church.

  Leo thought about how conspiracies were always irresponsibly put forth relative to the Church; they are an inevitable consequence to religion. One conspiracy, that until now seemed ridiculous, was about a holy bloodline. Often popularized in fantastic best selling novels, theatre and movies, the legend of Jesus’ bloodline gave credence to the belief that the rightful heir and king of Israel was still alive and living among us. Some believed that the Merovingians were that bloodline, and that a descendent of Jesus had married into their ruling family.

  There were those who believed Jesus was not a poo
r carpenter but born into an aristocratic and wealthy family, a fact they say is hidden by the Roman Church. They believed that in accordance with mandated tradition for the Jewish ruling class, Jesus had married Mary Magdalene, another member of an aristocratic family and together they had produced a child.

  The persistent ramblings of the unfaithful argued that a marriage would have been more than just typical for the time, it would have been required. Jewish men that lived during the first century had to marry and had to have children (another absolute requisite for married Jewish men). If true, Jesus’ surviving bloodline would most certainly be the true heir to the throne of Israel and of the Church.

  Until now, Leo had passed these ludicrous slices of manipulated history as heresy. It was the product of the unfaithful and of lost souls, of those with overactive imaginations.

  He could hardly believe, that as Pope and leader of one billion Christians worldwide, the thoughts he now had.

  This knowledge would have been disastrous, and the end of the Roman Church’s hold on its flock of faithful followers in the early centuries, and, more importantly, it would have been disastrous to its hold on power. The Church would itself have been reduced as conveyers of heresy; labeled as charlatans and liars. He could see why Gelasius had struck a bargain in return for whatever it was that Clovis had. But what was it, what was “the One”?

  Leo’s mind no longer raced, he was thinking of one conspiracy theory in particular. A small group of theorists believe that Jesus’ bloodline still existed, but that the descendents had formed an esoteric society and have long vacated the attempt at ruling from the throne. Instead, they sought to rule from the shadows, and it is believed that this secret society had carefully orchestrated the rise of their chosen pawns into powerful positions of massive political power and control in Western societies – to quietly rule. The group had been called by many names: the Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion, the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons and – the more popular and topical – New World Order.