by God
19 Though it may have just been “that time of the century.”
20 I also played an active role in the Christianization of Ireland, guiding St. Patrick on his journeys through the Emerald Isle.
21 Yea; how I loved watching St. Patrick parading gaily along his route, marching and prancing in his gaudy finery, inviting the many like-minded men he encountered to join his festive procession; which they did, often fueled by mead; in this way converting the entire nation of Ireland to Christ, and/or sodomy.
22 And I personally guided Marco Polo on his epic journey to China.
23 For he had prayed most devoutly to me to satisfy his wanderlust by guiding him to the Orient; so I agreed to help him, but only if he promised to show perfect faith in my navigation.
24 Thus, throughout his entire journey he kept his eyes closed; ascertaining the direction of travel by repeatedly shouting out his first name, then listening for the sound of my voice ahead shouting back his last name.
25 In this slow yet oddly amusing way did he travel from Venice to Cathay, whereupon he celebrated with a dip in the pool.
CHAPTER 4
1And then there was Joan of Arc; that sweet, innocent young farmer’s daughter who flat out gave it up for me.
2 No, I mirth; truly, Joan of Arc was beloved of me; for she was none other than the earthly incarnation of my daughter Kathy, sent down to earth like her brother, to be born, inspire, and die young.
3 Jesus and H. G. had long since become active partners in all aspects of my business; but Kathy had spent the previous 14 centuries assisting Ruth in her duties as a heavenwife.
4 (Note that I did not say “just a heavenwife”; for I know how difficult it is to maintain a proper heaven.
5 Yea: in some ways heavenwifery is the toughest job of all!)
6 Kathy had been in awe of Jesus ever since his triumphant return, yet also a little jealous; for though never one to gripe, every century or so I would overhear her in the throes of an all-out martyrdom complex, complaining, “It’s not fair! Why won’t Daddy let me die for him!? Is it ‘cause I’m a girl?”
7 For over 1,000 years I ignored her pleas, because I harbored concerns about her pursuit of a career whose inevitable end was excruciating death at an early age.
8 As I have said, I can be overprotective.
9 But she was the apple of my eye; so when in 1412 I overheard her grumbling yet again, I lovingly set out to get her killed.
10 She did not require a mission as global as Jesus’s, only one that would make a difference in some epic earthly enterprise; and the obvious choice at the time was the Hundred Years’ War;
11 Which was already so-called even though it had only been waged for 75 years; for those were the days when men dreamed big.
12 Until that point the war had been a purely secular conflict between England and France, and I had no stake in the outcome; but it was suitably vast for Kathy’s modest messianic purposes, so I decided to plunk her down smack dab in the middle of it.
13 I flipped a coin; it was tails; she was French.
14 I will spare thee the tedious details of our planning, along with those of Kathy/Joan’s short life, which thou mayest read elsewhere; though I will point out that unlike Joseph and Jesus, the definitive musical version of her story hath yet to be written.
15 (I am looking at thee, Jeanine Tesori; for I admired thy score to Caroline, or Change, and I hear Joan’s story told with the same kind of stylistically eclectic musical vocabulary.)
16 Yet also unlike Jesus, “Joan” never learned the true nature of her identity; so up until the moment of her death, she considered herself no more than a French peasant woman;
17 Or, as that was known at the time, a “triple non-threat.”
18 But her brothers and I keenly monitored her progress; indeed, the saints who visited her and commanded her to fight for France were not in fact Michael, Catherine, and Margaret, but the three of us in disguise.
19 I was Michael. Just so thou knowest.
20 And lo, Kathy rose to the occasion; she was fearless and incorruptible; she forever proved the point that a woman could achieve success in a man’s world, so long as she was tough, and hid her femininity, and cut her hair like a lesbian, and was personally protected by the king and God, and there was only one of her.
21 She was clever, too; for when I visited her in prison after her trial to tell her the English meant to chop off her head, she said, “Pardon me, LORD; but if the goal is to inspire others through suffering, might it not be more efficacious for me to endure an agonizing public immolation o’er a slow-kindled pyre?”
22 She was right. I was wrong. Period.
23 But even as her flesh still smoldered Kathy’s spirit rose skyward; whereupon her whole family and the entire heavenly contingent greeted her with a joyful “Surprise!”; the surprise, of course, being that she was the only-begotten daughter of God.
24 And she was surprised; genuinely surprised; so I was glad we managed to keep that a secret.
25 Kathy remains very proud of all she achieved as Joan; and though she has since gone back to helping her mother with her heavenwork, she still speaks affectionately of the time she spent as a national heroine.
26 And thou hast recognized her achievements, too; for in 1920 the Roman Catholic Church officially canonized her as a saint.
27 It is not the same as being one-third of the Trinity, but still: that’s my girl!
CHAPTER 5
1Alas, all good things must come to an end.
2 (I love this saying, because its implicit corollary is equally true: all bad things must go on forever.)
3 Sturdy winter gives way to tempestuous spring; the gorgeous caterpillar transforms into the unsightly butterfly; and in time, the fragrant blossom of the Middle Ages wilted into the Renaissance.
4 At least medievalism did not go down without a fight; for it offered up one last spectacle of sacred fury in the form of the Spanish Inquisition.
5 But sadly, I can no longer recollect that event without my memories being retroactively contaminated by either the famous Monty Python sketch, or the musical number from Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part I.
6 For no sooner will I call to mind a chained Muslim convert writhing in thumbscrews, than I see looming above him the image of Michael Palin in a ridiculous mustache shouting “Fetch . . . the comfy chair!”
7 Or no sooner will I recollect the six Marrano Jews burned alive at the 1481 auto-da-fé in Seville, than I hear their Grand Inquisitor Torquemada break into song: “We’ve flattened their fingers! We’ve branded their buns! Nothing is working! Send in the nuns!”
8 Yea; upon reflection it seemeth a shame the same persecution should be associated with two such all-time comedy classics, when other historical mass tortures have none.
9 Whither your spoofs, gulags?
10 Whither thy song parody, Killing Fields?
11 I knew the end of the Middle Ages was inevitable; long had I been anticipating a return of one of thy intermittent spasms of humanism, and in truth I was pleasantly surprised at how long thou hadst managed to keep thy status so quo.
12 And at least the Renaissance gave me a chance to do something I had been putting off for over 5,000 years: pose for my official portrait.
13 For even a notoriously harsh art critic like myself had to acknowledge the great work being done in Europe at the time; better still, the majority portrayed Christian scenes, which was gratifying.
14 (Though I will note in passing they never came close to capturing Mary’s actual appearance after the Nativity; for they show her as angelic, dreamy, and loving, rather than exhausted, bloated, and drenched in amniotic fluid.)
15 The angels put out the commission, and we received over 2,000 entries from all over Europe; entries of every description from the traditional (cave paintings) to the avant-garde (watercolors—canst thou imagine?).
16 In the end we settled on two finalists: a couple of young, hotshot Itali
ans, Lenny and Mike.
17 Both came highly recommended: Jesus and the apostles spoke highly of Lenny’s way with a brushstroke, and King David raved how heroically Mike had portrayed every part of him other than his penis.
18 Both were qualified; we could not decide; we wound up going with Mike, mostly for reasons of scheduling.
19 For he was the only one available on November 1, 1511—which I knew even then would be 500 years to the day before the publication date of this book;
20 Thus providing an invaluable promotional tie-in.
CHAPTER 6
1It was a once-in-an-all-time event.
2 I was very nervous; it took me hours to choose which mortal guise would best represent the limitlessness of my effulgence; but I finally settled on the one that most flattered my hips.
3 I like the white cloak, for it suggests purity; and there is something about a flowing white mane and bushy beard that evokes in one a sense of infinite force and perfect judgment; so I minded not sitting in the chair for half an hour while the stylist moussed me.
4 Thus primped, I walked into the Sistine Chapel and met Mike: verily a great genius; endlessly creative, protean, temperamental, and egomaniacal; he saw the world as nothing but fodder for his own vision of what things should be; I knew the type.
5 We chatted not, for I am a busy God, so quickly I assumed the position that our representatives had prenegotiated.
6 The moment to be immortalized was the Creation of Adam; the angels huddling around me were my actual angels: Gabriel, Uriel, Michael, Raphael, and eight others I had chosen for compositional reasons, or because they were the children of friends.
7 As for Adam, he was some Tuscan beefcake named Umberto.
8 Mike told me Umberto was the apprentice in charge of “cleaning his tools.”
9 I let it go; too easy.
10 Mike lay on his back on scaffolding high above the Chapel; Umberto, the angels, and I posed on scaffolding next to him; Mike would turn to the side, squint at us, look back up to paint, then turn again.
11 He did this for eight straight hours, and in all that time he only talked once: to ask me to point my finger at Adam.
12 I said, “How’s that?”
13 He said, “Closer.”
14 I said, “How’s that?”
15 He said, “Closer.”
16 I said, “How’s that?”
17 He said, “Closer.”
18 I said, “How’s that?”
19 He said, “Bingo.”
CHAPTER 7
1When a religion uses crass marketing techniques to proselytize, support, or sustain itself, it runs the grave risk of cheapening—yea, even permanently corrupting—those techniques.
2 I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe; and I have too much respect for the art of getting other people to say or do or buy things that are not worthy of them, to enjoy seeing it prostituted in the name of things that are.
3 So when my sons informed me the pope was selling “indulgences” as a means of raising revenue, I grew sorer than an altar boy at a College of Cardinals afterparty.
4 (That was Raphael’s.)
5 The church was telling sinners, i.e. all of ye, that their monetary gifts could purchase divine forgiveness for past and future indiscretions.
6 Naturally, the money-to-sin exchange rate fluctuated, depending on the state of the economy and public morality; but as a baseline, routine acts of masturbation were being forgiven for around five gold coins.
7 Drunkenness would set thee back ten; so would stealing, quarreling, and bearing false witness.
8 Fornication was 20; adulterous fornication was 30; homosexual adulterous fornication was 40; and charging money for homosexual adulterous fornication was 50; unless thou hadst thyself charged more than 50, in which case it was 60.
9 These were usurious rates; and bear in mind that tipping was customary.
10 It was an outrageous practice, especially if thou hast ever seen the Vatican; in which case thou knowest the place is not exactly struggling to make rent.
11 But it was in keeping with a church that over the last few centuries had grown more bloated than Henry VIII after a Whitsuntide boar roast.
12 (That was Uriel’s.)
13 The papacy in particular was not what it used to be; for in their arrogance, the cardinals had grown ever more careless in their selection process; for every Gregory the Great that brought a smile to my face, along came a Sixtus the Pederast to throw a wrench in the works.
14 The nadir came in 1492 with the ascension of Alexander VI, a man who had ten children by three mistresses—several while serving as pope—and literally turned St. Peter’s into a bordello.
15 Alexander VI was such a horrible person, and such a catastrophe for the church, that once when I mentioned his name in a meeting, out of nowhere Jesus shouted, “Fuck that guy!”
16 He rarely speaketh like that.
17 So shortly after my Sistine sitting, he and H. G. told me they wanted to take some radical steps to reform Christianity.
18 “Boys,” I said, “I have some concerns about so drastically altering the faith; but as you know I have the highest respect for the sanctity of the Trinity; among whom, it seems, I am outvoted.
19 I would only ask that thou dost not end the Catholic Church entirely, for I retain some affection for the old girl; besides, think how much we have already invested in costumes.
20 But if you would like to create another branch of Christianity to compete with it, be my guest.
21 Or should I say in H. G.’s case, ‘Be my ghost!’”
22 (That was mine!)
CHAPTER 8
1On the morning of October 31, 1517, the citizens of Wittenberg, Germany, awoke after a particularly festive Mischief Night.
2 Toilet paper littered the trees; eggs dripped from City Hall; and the town elders rose exhausted, teenage pranksters having spent all night ringing church bells, then running away.
3 Anticipating the mess, the sexton of All Saints’ Church had set his rooster for 5:30 AM, to leave himself enough time to straighten the tombstones in the graveyard, and wipe the remnants of the extinguished flaming dung-bags from the narthex.
4 But as he approached the cathedral he noticed something odd: a thick sheaf of parchment nailed to the front door.
5 The sexton’s first feeling was annoyance: everyone knew the proper place for public postings was the kiosk in the village square, where young students gathered to collect information concerning rooms to let and the location of the upcoming rally to legalize wormwood.
6 But his second feeling was shock; for as he neared the parchment he saw its boldly-written title: Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.
7 Luther was a young, ambitious professor at the University of Wittenberg; an institution itself ambitious to shed its reputation as the University of Greifswald’s safety school.
8 He had spent several years as a monk, devoting himself to abstinence, fasting, and long hours of prayer, but ultimately rejected the lifestyle as too frivolous.
9 In his subsequent lectures and writings, Luther came across as liberal; anti-authoritarian; a foe of the wealthy; a hater of corruption; a passionate reformer working for the common man.
10 But personally he was dour, short-tempered, mean-spirited, tolerated no disobedience in regard to himself, and showed contempt for almost every actual “common man” he encountered.
11 Lo, he was Michael Moore in a jerkin.
12 It was H. G. who had first spotted this extremely unpleasant person, and saw in his unique combination of cunning, self-righteousness, and deep-seated need to be hated the perfect vehicle to launch a revolt against the church.
13 And it was the spirit of H. G. that filled Luther as he spent October of 1517 creating the document that would forever change the way white people silently judged each other.
14 All of Luther’s work before and after is written in the most Teutonic
ky German imaginable; to read but a single page of it is to feel one’s spirit grow heavy with beer, sauerbraten, and umlauts.
15 But H. G. was the presiding spirit behind the work that would go down in history as The 95 Theses, and thus it is divinely inspired in its logic, prose, poise, and above all, salesmanship.
16 In it lay the seeds from which would sprout not only the entire Protestant movement, but much of the history of the next 500 years.
17 Yet today it is seldom discussed, and resides in the same murky region of the collective unconscious wherein also float the Magna Carta, the Stamp Act, and the presidency of Jimmy Carter.