by Mark Coakley
SISTER LEOBA: Thank you, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Now, we understand that you are now being kept under a severe excommunication. You have been, for defiance and unauthorized attempts to leave, kept alone in a dark miserium for the past three months and one day? Is that right?
SISTER LEOBA: Three months? It was just after New Year when I was put there.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: It is April 17 today. Is something wrong?
SISTER LEOBA: My eyes, Your Reverence. The light hurts them.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: I see. Brother Ecgfrith, close that curtain. Is that better?
SISTER LEOBA: Yes, Your Reverence. Thank you.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: You should dip that cloth into the water-jug and wipe your eyes. Wipe away that crusty mess.
SISTER LEOBA: Yes, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: We understand that before you were put in isolation, you spent a few months under a less severe form of excommunication. You must be tired of punishment by now.
SISTER LEOBA: Yes, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Well, Sister Leoba, co-operate with us in this interview, and we will see what we can do about easing the terms of your excommunication. We can tell Abbess Tetta how to treat you. Let us help each other. Are you familiar with these kinds of interviews? Do you know what kind of information we are looking for?
SISTER LEOBA: When I was at Iona, Bishop Aethred would visit us every year like this, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: And when you answered Bishop Aethred's questions in Iona, did you ever mention that your Monk's robe concealed the body of a daughter of Eve?
SISTER LEOBA: No.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: We expect much more honesty in your answers to us today. It is our duty to determine the spiritual health of the convent, and you will help us. Now, do you have any complaints about your treatment here?
SISTER LEOBA: No, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: We wish to hear about Abbess Tetta. Is she ruling the convent properly?
SISTER LEOBA: Yes, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Has she been too harsh on you?
SISTER LEOBA: No. She has to follow the Rules, and the orders of her superiors. Abbess Tetta is pious and tries to be fair, and I have grown to admire her. My sufferings come from God, not that good Christian.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Nobody is without any weaknesses or sins. There must be something about her that is not as it appears?
SISTER LEOBA: [Unintelligible.]
BISHOP HIGBOLD: What?
SISTER LEOBA: I do not wish to inform against Abbess Tetta.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: But you wish to provoke us? Remember that every word you speak is recorded by my scribe and will be sent to the appropriate eyes in Rome. Tell us the sins and faults of Abbess Tetta, so that we may help her spiritual improvement.
SISTER LEOBA: No, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: So you remain defiant! You wish to go back to your dark and silent miserium?
SISTER LEOBA: No, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: You do not have to go back there. You can help us.
SISTER LEOBA: I will not give you evidence against Abbess Tetta.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Why do you not trust us, your Bishop?
SISTER LEOBA: For one thing, because you stole Lindisfarne's olive oil.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: What?
SISTER LEOBA: I heard that you took the last of our olive oil for your own use. How can the Sisters do proper services without olive oil? Is that how to treat the keepers of the tomb of Saint Cuthbert? And what kind of Bishop, pray, wears a silk shirt with dragons stitched to it? Or does that to his fingernails? I can see enough to tell what kind of Priest you are. One serving this world more than the next.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: The Devil has possessed you.
SISTER LEOBA: [Laughs.] The Virgin freed me. There is nothing that anybody can offer to me or threaten me with anymore. I must walk in the Holy Land, or die, and someday I will do one thing or the other, no matter what happens here, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: You could serve the Virgin Mary in the scriptorium, making beautiful books to bring her fame to distant pagans, or to adorn the best Northumbrian churches. You could design and make a work to rival even the Gospels of Saint Cuthbert. We say that is God's task for you, the reason He implanted such talent in you. Your article "On Virginity" was persuasively written, in Latin that would make Cicero jealous. I can tell you that it was perused with approval in Rome, at the very highest level. We are sure that you wish to go back to using your God-granted gifts for His eternal glorification, through scholarship and art. Tell us what we need to hear, for the good of the Church, and we will take you out of that pit and back among the other Nuns. All excommunication will be lifted. Lindisfarne might soon get a new Abbess, one more understanding.
SISTER LEOBA: No, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: If you told me something very interesting, I could arrange a special dispensation from Rome, letting you go on Pilgrimage. How does that sound, Sister Leoba?
SISTER LEOBA: No, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Sister Leoba, your position is most confusing to us. What was this vision of the Virgin you spoke of?
SISTER LEOBA: I have had many visions of Her. Since I first changed from girl to woman. Mary comes to me when I am in trouble, singing wisdom to me. She knows everything I feel and think. Sometimes I seem to be alone, but Her voice sings in my ears and I know She is nearby.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: What does She sing to you about?
SISTER LEOBA: Suffering. How it leads to Redemption. When Mary sings, I know that my pains are echoes of Her own, and that always comforts me.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: What does She look like?
SISTER LEOBA: She is gowned in sky-blue. Her face is under a long black veil, but it glows with a golden light like a full moon. And tears of blood fall down from under Her veil to splash on her bare pale feet as she steps towards me. She was with me in the miserium last night. Comforting me.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: And does the Virgin Mary sing to you about Pilgrimage?
SISTER LEOBA: She wants me to go to the Holy Land, so that I can walk in the same places that She did. See the same ground and mountains, feel the same biblical sun on my face. Jerusalem. That experience will transform me.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Speaking of transformations, we have been told that you are still a virgin. You might lose that precious treasure on such a long and dangerous journey. Before the decision at Whitby, there were towns in France and Lombardy where, we are told, almost every common whore was an Englishwoman who left home on Pilgrimage, before falling into traps of the Devil.
SISTER LEOBA: I hope to avoid such a fate, Your Reverence.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: What about robbers and pirates? Unfriendly states? And you know that the Holy Land is infested by the descendants of Christ's condemners, the wily Jew, and fanatical Muslims. Men of these dark races will swarm around you, with evil intent and the filthy lusts of damned souls. Think about rape, slavery, murder.
SISTER LEOBA: Such suffering would bring me additional Blessings later, when I reach Heaven.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: What does the Virgin want you to do in Jerusalem?
SISTER LEOBA: Walk in Her footsteps.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: How will you know exactly where the Virgin walked, 800 years ago? The Emperor Vespasian knocked down the entire city, if I remember my readings of Tacitus correctly, and Jerusalem had to be completely rebuilt. It has been rebuilt many times since then. All the old roads in Jerusalem are surely buried by now, covered up by new roads going in different directions, and you will never be able to find the exact places that the Virgin walked. But I do not wish to argue. I am here only to help you, and to help Abbess Tetta. You mentioned, with some bitterness, the controversy over the olive oil. You have only heard part of the story. Did the gossip mention that the reason I took it was because I was given a direct order from King Aethelred? It is important for him to properly celebrate Mass at Bambury with the royal
family and his knights and his Bishop, and so he ordered me to take Lindisfarne's oil if there was a chance of the Bambury supply running out. That was what happened. I had no choice in the matter. I left a sufficient amount of olive oil with your Abbess, and then, a few weeks later, when the supply ship came into port at last, I returned all of the oil I had borrowed.
SISTER LEOBA: You did? There is enough olive oil here again?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: [Laughs.] My dear Leoba, of course. It was just a temporary measure. I explained all that to Abbess Tetta at the time, but perhaps failed to make myself sufficiently clear. And gossips always exaggerate. However, the blame for any confusion or miscommunication is mine, and I apologize to all the Sisters here.
SISTER LEOBA: I see.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Sister Leoba, I know that for the sort of woman who is strong-willed enough to leave her family for the monastic life, it is difficult to now strive for meekness and obedience. The reason why you must listen carefully to me, must obey me, is not because I am superior and you inferior. In the eyes of our Father, we are both lowly sinners. The reason why you must obey Abbess Tetta, and why she is supposed to obey me, and why I obey His Supreme and Apostolic Holiness, is linked to the doctrine of original sin. The need for a —
SISTER LEOBA: The need for a hierarchy of authority is a consequence of man's corrupted nature, and is both punishment and remedy for our sinful nature. I have read that its other justification is the doctrine of apostolic succession: Christ gave divine authority to his Disciples, who passed it to the Apostles, who gave it to the first Priests, who passed it on to Bishops; and you happen to be a Bishop.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: You are learned, yet lacking in sense. Predicting my arguments and spitting them back at me is clever, but how does it help you or anybody? To achieve good works that will shine forever in tribute to Christ, God, and the Virgin, we are told not to speak useless words, and to confess our sins to God every day with sighs and tears, and to hate our own will. Good works in this world and the next come from obeying our superiors and humbling ourselves and raising our eyes only to Heaven. Does that describe you, Leoba? You seem to love your own will. You speak more often from pride than piety. You often disobey your superiors. That is the heart of this problem: will, pride and disobedience. The ecclesiastical council of Whitby prescribed, over two decades ago, that every Nun shall remain where she has been placed. Where she has taken on the duties of God, there shall she fulfill them before God. But that means nothing to you.
SISTER LEOBA: I am sorry about my actions. I want to be a good, obedient Nun.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: You do?
SISTER LEOBA: When I return to England from Pilgrimage.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: [Laughs.] Leoba, you are outrageous.
SISTER LEOBA: May I ask a question, Your Reverence?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Yes.
SISTER LEOBA: You mentioned that King Aethelred still rules. What happened to the pretender, Osred?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: You have missed a lot of news in your excommunication. Osred's men abandoned him. King Aethelred found Osred the Magnificent hiding in a hole in the ground at a pig-farm.
SISTER LEOBA: He is dead now?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Of course. Why such interest in him? There has been no shortage of pretenders to the throne in the past few troubled years, and most come to the same end.
SISTER LEOBA: There was a rumour that Osred, as king, might have revoked the law against female Pilgrimage.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Ah. That was a false rumour, spread by his desperate supporters. I know that if Osred had somehow managed to take the throne, his first concern would have been replenishing the treasury and stopping the Mercians and South-Picts and Scots from nibbling away at our borders. No, opening up a long-resolved controversy, against the opposition of the Bishops and most of the Abbotts and Abbesses, was not likely.
SISTER LEOBA: It doesn't matter now. The law will not change, at least not in my lifetime.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: True. But there are ways around the law. There are ways for us to arrange a special dispensation for you to go to Jerusalem.
SISTER LEOBA: If I betray Abbess Tetta.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Sister Leoba, you misjudge me. I am not Abbess Tetta's enemy, nor yours. My taste in clothes may differ from yours, but remember the Proverb about a book and its cover. Sister Leoba, I believe in your visions, your beautiful visions of the Virgin; I know in my heart that they are real and meaningful.
SISTER LEOBA: You believe?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: If I had never heard of similar cases, in France and Sicily, perhaps I would be more sceptical. But there is no doubt that the Virgin has appeared to women in other lands. Why is it so strange that She should now make an appearance to you in Northumbria?
SISTER LEOBA: Thank you, Your Reverence. [Sobbing.] Oh, thank you for believing. [Unintelligible.] To finally have someone in authority believe me, Your Reverence, after all this time, means so much. Even Abbess Tetta doubted me.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Thank you, Sister Leoba, for sharing your beautiful visions with us. We want you to understand that we sincerely want to help you reach the Holy Land. By helping you such, we will be surely helping the Virgin, in her mysterious ways.
SISTER LEOBA: Oh, yes.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: But for us to help you, Leoba, it is necessary for you to submit to our authority as Bishop. We cannot help a Nun who spits defiance in our face.
SISTER LEOBA: I am so sorry, Your Reverence. I wished no disrespect.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Of course not. We see that now. All we ask is that you now speak, openly and honestly, without fear or hope of favour, the truth, the complete truth, and nothing else. For the good of the Church. I am sure that you have read Saint Benedict: "An Abbess should show her flock of Nuns what is holy by her deeds more than by her words; she should explain the commandments of God to intelligent Nuns by words, but to simple Nuns by actions." That is why we have been commanded by His Holiness to learn about the actions of Abbess Tetta.
SISTER LEOBA: So you can help her?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: So we can help her, Leoba. Would you like a cup of water? I'll pour myself one too. Here you go, Sister.
SISTER LEOBA: Thank you.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: What should we know about Abbess Tetta?
SISTER LEOBA: You will ask Rome for a special dispensation for my Pilgrimage?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: If you tell us what we want to hear. We promise! Leoba, just think of visiting the Holy Land, as the Virgin wishes!
SISTER LEOBA: Well, I already told you that Abbess Tetta is kind, and pious, and runs the convent well. It takes a lot of energy and dedication, to guide us as she has.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Yes. Her many strengths will all be described when we write to Rome. But we need more than strengths to make a complete picture.
SISTER LEOBA: She has only one weakness or sin that I have seen. Excessive pride.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Ah. How does Tetta's sinful pride manifest itself?
SISTER LEOBA: In her scholarship. She gives the impression that it is not enough for her to serve the Lord as an Abbess. She has pretentions to being a great scholar as well. Which she is not. Her writings are often full of errors of doctrine, and sometimes there are even grammar mistakes too.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: It is no sin to lack genius.
SISTER LEOBA: But if, lacking genius, one attempts to deceive others into thinking otherwise?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: How does she try to deceive?
SISTER LEOBA: One example is this. Every day, Abbess Tetta rests in her office between afternoon Mass and dinner. She likes to have a younger Nun read a classic book to her while she stretches out on a little couch. Sometimes it seems that she has fallen asleep while her companion is reading. But if a mistake is made in the reading, Abbess Tetta's eyes will open and she will correct the Nun. This has happened so many times, that she has developed a reputation among the Nuns for knowing classic texts so well that she can hear a mistake even while asleep.
BISHOP HIGBOLD:
I too have heard about Abbess Tetta's gift.
SISTER LEOBA: It is not a gift. It is a trick. She pretends to sleep, and pretends to wake when she hears a mistake. To impress others. A deception, inspired by her pride.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: How do you know that she pretends to sleep?
SISTER LEOBA: Because I have been the Nun reading to her, and I watched her. When she decided to pretend to fall asleep, she changed the pattern of her breathing. It became slow and deep, like a person who is really sleeping. But she missed something that sleeping people do. Their eyes move under their eyelids. The bump of the eye's retina moves around under the skin of the eyelid when somebody is really asleep. Abbess Tetta just closed her eyes and stared straight ahead.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Did she pretend to wake up when you made a reading mistake?
SISTER LEOBA: I didn't make any reading mistakes. If I had, I'm sure that she would have pretended to wake up, just to impress me, and that would have been a sin of pride and deception.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: A very minor one, if it had actually happened. Tell us something more.
SISTER LEOBA: When she was lecturing the Nuns about the Millennium, she told us that the first Year of Our Lord began with the day of the birth of Jesus Christ. I pointed out her error, in that the first Year of Our Lord began not with His birth, but His immaculate and sinless Conception. The authorities are consistent that the nine months that He spent inside Mary's womb are part of the Christian Age — how could they not be? — but Abbess Tetta refused to admit any error. From pride.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Anything else?
SISTER LEOBA: I can give you many other examples of her excessive pride.
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Like the examples you just gave? That is not what we want!
SISTER LEOBA: What do you want, Your Reverence?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Do you understand nothing? I want evidence that Tetta is stealing from the Church! Or sneaking in lovers! Or reading forbidden books! Dumb peasant, tell me Tetta is a heretic, who thinks the Father is a different substance than the Son! We want to hear of Tetta and pagan sacrifices! Something illicit, something His Holiness would be shocked to read about. And you reveal how she supposedly takes fake naps and is, in your opinion, confused about the calendar.