before priests, elders, scribes, in a marble-floored
room, Roman insignia on the wall, the room icy, airless,
officers and soldiers at one end, one of them in battle
gear—to impress me, I thought. But I was scarcely able to
stand, scarcely able to think. My hands on the back of a
chair, I put my mind to work: I singled out my home, its
doors, its windows, the grass growing in the street. I
forced myself to visualize my mother and father. Though I
was in pain I remembered my little friend, Amos: we were
kneeling in the dust before my house, playing marbles:
dust flipped as we shot.
I was asked if I was the son of God.
The trial was not a trial. There were no witnesses.
Temple officials conferred.
Roman authority was not involved.
A judge or priest condemned me to death.
Such authority had been denied forty years ago by the
Romans. Being aware of this added to my resentment; I
tried to speak out but was silenced. From the courtyard I
was marched to the paved square called Babbatha; troops
lined the square, spectators gathered. The sun’s warmth
lessened my pain. One of the guards, secretly, gave me
bread. I saw Judas with Pontius Pilate; Pilate was ac-
companied by councilors, guards. I felt I had been hurled
into a wholly alien world—enemy world.
Pilate, stepping forward in his robe, asked Caiaphas
the nature of my crime. I will remember that scarlet
robe.
Caiaphas, annoyed, said:
“If he were not a malefactor we would not bring him
before you.” Pilate understood the evasion. He responded:
“Take him, judge him according to your law.”
A priest declared:
“We found this man saying he was Christ the King.”
Perhaps Pilate was remembering his troubled past, the
servitude of his ancestors, some problem, for he
hesitated, suspecting a ruse, that the priests were
deceiving him. He must have known that I had not preached
revolt.
“Are you king of the Jews?” he asked, motioning me to
come closer. “Your people have brought you here. What
have you done?”
“My kingdom is not of this world.”
“Are you a king?”
“I was born to bear witness to the truth.”
Pilate shrugged.
“What is truth?” He resumed his seat.
I did not respond.
“What is truth?” he repeated. He waited a little while
and then said, looking at me closely: “I find no fault in
this man.”
Spectators and priests protested. Someone shouted:
“He stirs up the people from here to Galilee. He’s a
troublemaker. He drove us out of our temple market.”
At that moment Pilate may have become aware of my
accent or remembered I was born in Nazareth for he
ordered me brought to trial before Herod, the local
governor. Herod, I thought, the name stunning me as I
recalled his crime.
We crossed a bridge, a hostile crowd following; young
Herod welcomed me because he had heard of my miracles and
wanted me to perform for his benefit. Was I wizard,
necromancer, fakir?
I could not speak to this murderer: I envisioned John
in prison, waiting, waiting for the liberty that never
came. I saw his decapitated head on a tray, displayed for
a dancing girl.
Because I could not speak Herod had his men throw a
purple robe over my shoulders and place me on a chair.
They mocked me, spat on me, and demanded I save myself.
Herod refused to try me and ordered guards to return me
to Pontius Pilate. It was then, as we recrossed the
bridge where the populace jeered, it was then I attempted
to think of home. Something like an actual wall blocked
me. All the emptiness of life, the savageness of the
wilderness, the enmity of mankind, came into being. I
prayed but prayer was useless. A man held my arm or I
would have fallen: his sword hit my side.
ÿ
Peter’s
Iyyar 25
Pilate resented a jeering mob and tried to establish
order.
He commanded men to assume positions in the Babbatha
yard. Calling several priests, he said, shouting at them:
“You have brought this man before me. You say he
perverts the people. I find no fault in him. I will
punish him and release him.”
He sat on his tribunal chair, his wife beside him.
Raising his hand he resumed:
“I will free a man. Who will it be? Barabbas? Do you
want Barabbas free or Christ? Choose your man.”
“Barabbas...Barabbas,” the priests shouted, and the
crowd repeated his name, a man known for his crimes.
“What shall I do with Jesus?”
“Crucify him...crucify him.”
“What has he done?”
The crowd answered: “Crucify him.”
Shall I continue this journal? Will others accept my
account? Shall I simply destroy these words? As days pass
I am able to re-live the sadness. There is a chance to
diminish man’s cruelty. I take that chance. We are here
in this world to make life worthy. We are here to teach
others. Teaching is no easier than learning. No one has
ever had my vantage point: this permits me to continue.
I searched for a friendly face among the
mob...Peter...Mother...Matthew... Clibus...
Barabbas was brought before the judges and liberated
with jeers and laughter. He passed by me, a great, tall
man. As he walked away I was led to a whipping post,
bound, and lashed with thongs; I was lashed until
unconscious. Courage, where was my courage to bear the
crucifixion.
I tried to think...
In a barren hall soldiers stripped me and put a filthy
robe around me and forced a crown of thorns on my head.
Six or eight men confronted me. They mocked me.
“Hail, king of the Jews,” they hollered.
Priests appeared and cried: “Crucify him...he calls
himself the Son of God. Kill him.” Pilate appeared and
asked: “Who are you?” I could not speak because of pain.
“Speak to me...don’t you realize I have the power to
set you free.”
I was thinking of Judas.
A Roman officer spoke out: “He’s an enemy of Rome...he
defies Caesar.” “Our emperor is Caesar,” a priest
shouted.
“Take him away,” Pilate said. “He is yours.” He took
water and washed his hands before the crowd. “I am
innocent of the blood of this man,” he said.
Again I looked for my disciples but now a centurion in
cuirass and armed soldiers, carrying shields, grabbed me
and forced me outside. “To the cross,” someone said. “To
the cross,” another repeated.
I was amazed to find myself walking. It isn’t far, it
isn’t far, I told myself.
We descended a stepped path. The bridge lay ahead.
People jammed the bridge. We climbed a steep bank, passed
houses, trees, rocks. The centurion ordered me to carry
the crossbeam. As he compelled me to take the beam he
gave me water.
It was nearly noon.
I shouldered the beam, fell, tried again. The officer
ordered an onlooker to carry the beam. I heard a priest
shout: “If any man wishes to prove the innocence of
Jesus, let him speak.” His voice, his robe, the beam, the
crowd... I can’t remember. Yet I remember men selling
dates, hawking fruit. I wanted the food of earth, life
itself.
My mother broke through the crowd and embraced me. A
little farther on I heard Lazarus call. I saw Martha. She
was kneeling, reaching toward me. Peter, Luke, Clibus,
Mark. I saw. I loved them, their faces like old graven
coins.
I saw them all the way to the spot where they laid the
cross on the ground. I prayed for courage, strength to
endure, as they stripped off my clothes.
Then men pounded a nail through my hand and I was
blinded, torn with pain. Then I felt greater pain as they
pounded a nail through my legs and then I felt no more
pain until I hung on the cross.
I looked and looked but could make out nothing; then I
saw two men hanging on crosses beside me. I looked at
them and they looked at me. I saw people below me; I
heard women and children crying. I tried to speak to
them. But as I hung there everything began to move away
from me: a great distance swam around me. I thought of a
mirage. Someone put a sponge to my mouth. Then I saw my
mother, I saw Martha, Lazarus, people I had cured. A
soldier shoved his spear into me. I tried to say
something... That is all that I remember.
ÿ
Joseph of Arimathea obtained permission to remove my
body from the cross. He and my disciples placed it in his
family crypt. He provided a robe and cloth to cover my
face. I lay in his tomb, myrrh and aloe about me; there I
lay for three days.
ÿ
Peter’s Home
Sivan 2
P
eter is a descendant of a nomadic tribe. Euodia, his
mother, is a gnarled woman, dark, serious. She and Peter
built this house after her husband died. She had had
enough of desert privation. Last night she spread a
special table for my homecoming: pomegranate juice,
melon, cheese, bread, nuts, chromis and another fish,
clarias, my favorite. Euodia is an expert with olive oil—
perhaps some are nomad recipes. At supper time she
accepted me easily; Matthew and Peter were wary, afraid,
shy.
While we were eating, Peter said:
“Master, how can it be you were crucified eight days
ago... Can you say that you are well?” He brushed his
hand over his yellow beard. “I couldn’t forget the
terror...will you help us understand? When all of us meet
will you explain? Is it faith?...”
We were eating at a makeshift table under Peter’s
olives; it was well after sunset and we felt the quiet of
the extensive fields that make Peter’s home a retreat.
Matthew, picking at his supper, nervous, kept watching
my hands—I knew he was studying the scars.
“I hope you never return to Jerusalem,” he exclaimed.
I agreed: I agreed for several reasons: one reason was
my desire to send my disciples to remote places,
villages, towns.
“Our work is to be carried out among our countrymen
while governments interfere.”
“We love you...we had nothing to do with the
crucifixion,” Euodia blurted out.
Love, love after crucifixion is a brilliant but black
enigma: it proffers and denies. We know that love helps
us forget pain; however I ask myself whether it is evil
to forget evil. But I can think of resurrection as a form
of love, a love beyond supplication. I take that step and
realize that immortality is another form of love.
Desert air pushed in as we finished our meal and we
soon felt chilled. I wanted to shed my fatigue by reading
but we discussed visiting the spring at Neby. I suggested
we leave early if it did not rain during the night and
bog the paths. At Neby I wanted to work out a plan for
James, Peter and Matthew, if James joined us. When
government cruelty diminishes I want Peter to preach in
Rome.
In my bedroom I read Ecclesiastes—drowsing at times,
aware of my familiar pallet, the good pillow, the
candles. I was able to dismiss the imminence of de-
parture. I put it away like a shell under sea grass.
Ecclesiastes meant more to me than weeks ago as I read
and re-read passages.
Rain woke me during the night—a pleasant shower
smelling like spring. So, we would walk to Neby another
day. Here I would be able to go on reading Ecclesiastes
and Peter’s copy of the Psalms. When I told Peter that
Clibus had found the Ecclesiastes scroll on a trip to the
upper Nile they were astonished. They had never seen so
ancient a scroll.
ÿ
Peter’s
Sivan 5
Judas is dead. He took his own life. His body was found
by the daughter of Pontius Pilate. Since he was one of us
we have buried him; at his grave a downpour struck us and
drove us to a shelter. In a few moments the earth was
flooded. I can’t recall such rain and thunder.
Judas, born in Gamala, vineyard proprietor, dead at
twenty-eight years. As Ecclesiastes says: “Woe unto him
who is alone when he falls.”
ÿ
Startling, on a hillside, on a hilltop, a contingent of
Roman soldiers, a new encampment, white tents in rows,
banners, standards, smoke. Shields flash as men drill.
Camels are hobbled behind the tent town. We can make out
men in half armor, men wearing helmets, men at work
shoveling, men erecting a large striped tent.
Is this always glory, power and death?
ÿ
Peter’s—early morning
Sivan 8
Shall we be like trees planted by rivers of water?
Shall we mature slowly like the olive? Shall we endure
two hundred years? Shall these men replant? They are
humble men. Are humble men more or less successful with
their lives? These men know ambition and is ambition the
safe route? Verily, verily “all is vanity and vexation of
spirit,” if we listen to Ecclesiastes. What will evolve
when the silver chord is broken? I have answered these
questions in the past but I wish to answer them once
more.
ÿ
Peter’s
Sivan 10
Sivan is a beautiful month, a month of subtle changes.
I lay in deep grass yesterday. While I lay in the grass
I remembered the fields around Nazareth and I remembered
climbing olive trees at harvest time—how we sang and
shook down the ripe fruit onto nets.
Mama made the finest olive oil in Papa’s oil press, the
finest in Nazareth some Nazarenes said. I hurried to fill
our baskets... I wanted to gather more than anyone. I
never did.
Tomorrow I go to villages and will heal the sick...it
is a joy, a joy rather kindred to lying in deep grass in
the warm sun.
I have read my journal. I will return it to Matthew’s
care. Among our disciples he is the most reliable.
ÿ
Sivan 12
So, as I write with my bronze stylus, I listen to the
evening, familiar sounds; through my window I see the
Milky Way and the great constellations and I am aware God
is affirming his handiwork.
I write very slowly, lingering over each letter, the
square letters superior to the old script. I go on
listening. The lamp burns steadily. There is no wind.
There is gratitude.
ÿ
Nazareth
Sivan 17
Father has suffered from his imprisonment. His hands
tremble. After seeing me on the cross he is unable to
believe that I am alive.
I held out my arms to him as we stood in front of our
home. He backed away.
“...Father, remember how we visited together at Qumran?
Remember that old long-bladed saw, how I repaired its
handle three times?
“Mama gave you that shirt at the Feast of Lights...”
He turned and walked away, trembling.
ÿ
When I was staying at the home of Gehazi, after
preaching in the synagogue, after healing, Barabbas
appeared. Jamnia is his village and he entered the house
of Gehazi without knocking. A great tall hulk, he loomed
over me; then he knelt and begged me to accept him.
Dressed in goat’s skin, his face and beard wild, he
seemed ill, perhaps deranged. I tried to calm him, to
reason with him.
“I should have been crucified,” he repeated in a hoarse
voice.
For a long while we remained together, talking,
praying, hoping.
ÿ
Peter’s
Sivan 24
Patience—we need patience.
Going from village to village, town to town, means
walking five days, four days, two. It is a five day walk
to Nazareth. It is a two day walk to the village of
Gehazi. Most walks are pleasant. It can be cold, windy,
hot; and when it rains there is seldom any shelter.
Sometimes we travel together; sometimes we walk alone;
these days I prefer my solitary walks. I am aware of
close communion when alone. Patience, patience...but the
calendar moves on: Shevat, Adar, Nisan, Iyyar, Sivan...
ÿ
Peter’s
Tammuz 3
I
will miss Peter’s little house, its rough walls, its
crooked windows, its clumsy thatched roof. The floors
have interested me. He found pieces in some Babylonian
structure; he hauled them here in an ox cart. I have come
to love this isolation, its olive trees.
Today is a summer’s day.
Great clouds, great sky.
Peter sought me out as I sat in the bedroom reading.
Again he asked for forgiveness. Kneeling by me he
promised he would carry the word... “to Rome, if you
wish. Teach me courage, teach me strength, teach me to be
wise...”
He and I have worked at the carpenter’s bench lately,
in Lazarus’ shed. It took the three of us to line up a
door. Of course it was very old. Laughing, we had to
admit our clumsy workmanship.
We are proud that there are more than seventy of us
now. I send them out in pairs.
ÿ
The home of Lazarus
Tammuz 8
It seems to me I view mankind with a sense of
compassion—a constant perception. Mine is a brief, swift
looking back: I heal the sick, I renew lives... I re-
member the hart and the brook...man’s insatiable thirst.
Children come and animals come...the ox and the donkey
have been friends. A shepherd, I still follow hills,
hills of resurrection they may be. Perhaps history may
call me a man of righteousness. Perhaps history may not
stop. I speak to history. I say, once again:
“Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost...”
Teach as I have taught...remind them of grace.
ÿ
Tammuz 11
I leave no tomb, no crypt, no marker.
Finality may not be a friend...
When I leave shall I carry a handful of earth with me?
James, Peter, Matthew, Mark...Mother and
Father...Lazarus...Miriam... each one is mine but for how
long?
Peter will pick up my sandals and say:
“These were his.”
Father will say:
“He helped me make this box.”
The Godhead is before me and I struggle with delight
and with astonishment.
ÿ
Tammuz 12
I am entrusting my journal to Matthew. Since we have
friends at the synagogue in Capernaum he will leave my
journal there.
Verily, verily I say: Fear God and keep His
commandments. This is the duty of man.
ÿ
FAREWELL THOUGHTS
I
hope these thoughts may be helpful. It is very late and
lamplight flickers...
Inside a man of light there is light and with
this light he lights the world.
The angels and the prophets will come to you
and give you strength.
Blessed are the ones who have heard the
Father’s word and kept it in truth.
Have you then discovered the beginning so that
you ask the end? Where the beginning is, there the
end will be.
The kingdom is inside you. When you really
understand you will know that you are the son of
the living Father. If you do not understand
yourself you will be in poverty.
Split wood and I am there. Pick up a stone;
there you will find me.
Come to me because my yoke is easy, my lordship
gentle. You will find rest.
The kingdom of the Father is spread over the
earth and men do not see it.
Blessed are the solitary and the elect; you
shall find the kingdom because you have come from
it and you shall go there again.
I say, whenever one is one he will be filled with
light, but whenever he is divided he will be filled with
darkness.
Love your brother as your own soul. Guard him as the
apple of your eye.
There will be days when you seek and you will not find
me.
ÿ
NOTE:
These logia appear for the first time in a journal.
They are from the 4th century Coptic book,
The Gospel According to Thomas,
discovered in Hammadi, Egypt,
quoted through the courtesy
of the translator, Dr. Ray Rummers,
Chairman, Department of English, Baylor University.
LEONARDO DA VINCI’S JOURNAL
“Both those who recently attempted to fly came to
grief.
Leonardo da Vinci also tried to fly,
but, he, too, failed.”
– Girolamo Cardano, 1555
For Elizabeth
Leonardo da Vinci
APRIL 15, 1452 – MAY 2, 1519
ILLUSTRATIONS
The illustrations are originals by the author—
interpretations of work by da Vinci.
Leonardo’s self-portrait 225
Rendering of Leonardo’s signature
in his “mirror handwriting” 225
Silhouette of head 227
Head of horse 233
Madonna’s hand 243
Prisoner 248
Sforza horse 251
Birds in flight 261
Plants and designs 264
Mona Lisa 278
Christ’s hand 283
Bicycle 296
Head of man 308
Glider 317
This journal was kept by Leonardo da Vinci during the
years 1516 to 1519 while he lived in France as the guest
of King Francis I; there, he lived in the small residence
of Cloux, near the King’s summer palace at Amboise on the
Loire River. Leonardo writes of his boyhood, his mother,
his friends, his easel and mural paintings, his
dissections, his colossal bronze horse.
He tells of his attempts at flying, his inventions...
This is a codex of his mind as he divulges his art and
the scope of his interests.
To the end of his life he was painting, map-making,
carrying out architectural commissions, arranging his
treatises on perspective, anatomy, horses, flight, and
the arts. His patron, King Francis, called him “Mon
Père.” Da Vinci’s last years, at Cloux, near Paris, were
friendly years.
1516
Cloux
December 10, 1516
MEMORY . . .
MEMORY. . .
I
remember that hot, dusty afternoon in Florence. I
ordered everybody out of my studio. I got up from my
workbench and demanded that they leave: the tattlers, the
oafs, the bores, the faithful. I packed them off. Yelled
at them. Stormed. I had work to do, work that would keep
me until dawn. I had to have serenity, no ribaldry, no
disgruntled silence, no questions, no interruptions of
any sort.
I slammed the doors, bolted them.
A mouse scuttled across the room.
Until I resolved the perfect angles, sheet after sheet
went into the making of that pelvic drawing.
Queer how memory is: I can see that messy workshop,
easels, clay figures on stands, rags, canvases, frames,
chisels, pigments, brushes... I can see the mouse
watching me from beneath a basket. Again I sense that
long afternoon, that long night... I had dried bread,
cheese, and port. I remember the church bells. At dawn I
slid my work into a special portfolio, then concealed it.
I was often hiding things in those days, hiding sketches,
hiding determination, hiding frustrations, goals.
Memory...it gives you what you want and supplies
absurdities as well, like the dream that I had in
Florence, recurrent: I was lying on my cot... I was
dead... I was carried to a morgue and dumped there, among
cadavers...blood and mould saturated my drawings and my
writings...my canvases were being eaten by termites...
how well I remember that dream.
I remember a fat Milanese who used to haunt me while I
was decorating the walls and ceiling of the Sala delle
Asse: he was a pompous member of the Sforza household, a
great nose-picker, who had done nothing at all through
his long life. While I worked, he sat, hunched in a
princely brocade chair, in elegant clothes, sometimes
asleep in spite of my assistants, ladders, and
scaffolding.
That Sala delle Asse work was boring. Like many a
commission it was compulsory. To arrange masses of
foliage on walls and ceiling seemed absurd. Designs were
refused, at the outset. The employment of immense tree
trunks satisfied. As I painted, I mingled knotted cords
with the foliage, intermingled branches, established a
rhythm. I kept my greens from becoming monotonous. I
achieved a kind of helmeted bark on the tree trunks.
Before I finished, the Sala’s canopy, the forest
umbrella, became more meaningful.
My fat friend slept on and on.
How much did I earn? I have forgotten. Was I ever paid?
I would like to return to the castle and walk through
that Sala; I would like to be alone; I would like to try
to think as I thought in those days; I would like to
sense my aspirations; I would sit on a bench under that
deluge of foliage: I would list geology, hydraulics,
painting, sculpture, geometry, anatomy, medicine...
Cloux
When Michelangelo showed me his cartoon for his mural
in the Consejo, I complained that a scene of idling nude
bathers was not the best way to depict war. He was
critical of my cartoon, saying “you are more concerned
with horses than men.”
My objective was to show war’s anguish: pain was to be
sixty feet long by twenty feet wide. Twelve hundred
square feet of pain. All of my draughtsmanship went into
this Anghiari conflict: I painted rage, rage against war,
the rage of dying men, the rage of the wounded, my hate,
my affirmation.
All of 1503 and 1504 went into my preliminary sketches.
I often rode about the countryside to sketch horses,
sketch riders; I sketched in the Sforza stables; the
stablemen posed for me; my apprentices posed. Friends had
their chance to exhibit their horses in action. Gamin
posed. The militia.
So, I did not paint a wall: I painted the smash of
steel against steel, the plunge of steel into flesh, the
grunting of frightened horse against frightened horse,
men stumbling, men falling, dying, their helmets of fear,
helmets of pain...yellows, blues, greys, reds.
On Friday, June 6, 1505, I began to paint the Anghiari
battle. It was my greatest challenge. Here I could render
something more meaningful than the madonnas. Not Christ
on the cross, but man on the cross. Pigment and light
were to come together in harmony. The day that I began to
paint was beautiful but the weather changed quickly for
the worst. Some of my assistants were called away—they
were ordered to attend a trial.
The wind caught me unprepared and ripped the cartoon.
In a few minutes the storm took over in earnest. I laid
aside my brushes and pigments and dismissed the remaining
apprentices. Half of Florence was inundated that night.
PAZZIA BESTIALISSIMA!
That is man’s disease: he can not refrain from
political madness. Again and again he is willing to be
duped.
The central group in my Anghiari mural is the struggle
for a military flag: I painted life-size horses, life-
size men, life-size hatred: the central struggle fans out
across the mural, expressing this futility.
I seldom eat at the King’s table although I am always
welcome. Sometimes it seems like a long walk to the
château, sometimes it is raining. In the evening fifteen
courses are certainly gourmet adventures, but a little
late at night.