SHORTLY after this, King Berlu defeated the Mambournians in a great
battle. He was, at first, unaware of the fact, for armed conflicts
always present a great confusion, and during the last two hundred years
the Vervignolians had lost the habit of victory. But the precipitate
and disordered flight of the Mambournians informed him of his advantage.
Instead of fighting a rear-guard action he pursued the enemy, and
regained half his kingdom. The victorious army entered the city of
Trinqueballe, all beflagged and beflowered in its honour, and in that
illustrious capital of Vervignole it committed a great number of rapes,
thefts, murders, and other cruelties, burnt several houses, sacked the
churches, and took from the cathedral all that the Jews had left there,
which, truth to tell, was not much.
Maxime, who having become a knight and commander of eighty lances, had
largely contributed to the victory, was one of the first to enter the
city, and repaired straightway to the House of the Musicians, where
dwelt the beautiful Mirande, whom he had not seen since his departure
for the war. He found her in her bower, plying her distaff, and fell
upon her with such impetuosity that the young lady lost her innocence
without, so to speak, realizing that she had done so. And when, having
recovered from her surprise, she exclaimed: “Is it you, Seigneur Maxime?
What are you doing here?” and was preparing as in duty bound to resist
her aggressor, he was quietly walking down the street, readjusting his
armour and ogling the girls.
Possibly she would have entirely overlooked this offence, had it not
been that some time later she found that she was about to become a
mother. Captain Maxime was then fighting in Mambournia. All the town
knew her shame: she confided it to the great St. Nicolas, who, on
learning this astonishing news, lifted his eyes to heaven, and said:
“Lord, did you rescue this man from the salting-tub only as a ravening
wolf to devour my sheep? Your wisdom is adorable; but your ways are
dark, and your designs mysterious.”
And in that same year, on the Sunday of Mid-Lent, Sulpice threw himself
at the feet of the holy Bishop, saying:
“From my earliest youth, my keenest wish has been to consecrate myself
to the Lord. Allow me, father, to embrace the monastic state, and
to make my profession in the monastery of the mendicant friars of
Trinqueballe.”
“My son,” answered the good St. Nikolas, “there is no worthier condition
than that of the monk. Happy is he who in the shade of the cloister
takes shelter from the tempests of the age. But of what avail to flee
the storm if the storm is within oneself? Of what avail to affect an
outward show of humility, if one’s bosom contains a heart full of pride?
What shall you profit by donning the livery of obedience if your soul
be in revolt? I have seen you, my son, fall into more errors than
Sabellius, Alius, Nestorius, Eutyches, Manes, Pelagius, and Pachosius
combined, and revive, before your twentieth year, twelve centuries of
peculiar opinions. It is true that you have not been very obstinate
in any of them, but your successive recantations appear to betray less
submission to our Holy Mother the Church than eagerness to rush from one
error to another, to leap from Manicheeism to Sabellianism, and from
the crime of the Albigenses to the ignominies of the Vaudois.”
Sulpice listened to this discourse with a contrite heart, a simplicity
of mind and submissiveness, that drew tears from the great St. Nicolas.
“I deplore, repudiate, condemn, reprove, detest, execrate, and abominate
my errors, past, present, and future,” he said. “I submit myself to the
Church fully and entirely, totally and generally, purely and simply; and
I have no belief but her belief, no faith but her faith, no knowledge
but her knowledge: I neither see, hear, nor feel, save only through her.
She might tell me that the fly which has but now settled on the nose
of the Deacon Modernus was a camel, and I should incontinently, without
dispute, contest, murmur, resistance, hesitation or doubt, believe,
declare, proclaim, and confess, under torture and unto death, that it
was a camel that settled on the nose of the Deacon Modernus. For the
Church is the Fountain of Truth, and I am nought by myself but a vile
receptacle of Error.”
“Take care, my father,” said Modernus. “Sulpice is capable of overdoing
submission to the Church even to the point of Heresy. Do you not see
that he submits with frenzy, in transports and swooning? Is wallowing in
submission a good way of submitting? He is annihilating himself; he is
committing suicide.”
But the Bishop reprimanded his deacon for holding such ideas, which
were contrary to charity, and sent the postulant to the noviciate of the
mendicant friars of Trinqueballe.
Alas, at the end of a year those priests, till then so quiet and humble,
were torn by frightful schisms, plunged into a thousand errors against
the Catholic truth, their days filled with disorder, and their souls
with sedition! Sulpice inspired the brothers with this poison. He
sustained against his superiors that there was no longer any true Pope,
since miracles no longer accompanied the elections of the Sovereign
Pontiffs; nor, rightly speaking, any Church, since Christians had ceased
to live the life of the apostles and the first of the faithful; that
there was no purgatory; that it was not necessary to confess to a priest
if one confessed to God; that men do wrong in making use of moneys
of gold and silver, for they should share in common the fruits of
the earth. These abominable maxims, which he forcibly sustained, were
combated by some, and adopted by others, causing horrible scandals.
A little later Sulpice taught the doctrine of perfect purity, which
nothing can soil, and the good brothers’ monastery became like a cage of
monkeys. This pestilence did not remain confined within the walls of a
monastery. Sulpice went preaching through the city; his eloquence, the
internal fire by which he was consumed, the simplicity of his life, and
his unshakable courage touched all hearts.
On hearing the voice of the reformer, the ancient city, evangelized by
St. Cromadaire, and enlightened by St. Gibbosine, fell into disorder and
dissolution; every sort of extravagance and impiety was committed there,
by day and by night. In vain did the great St. Nicolas warn his flock by
exhortations, threats, and fulminations. The evil increased unchecked,
and it was sad to see the contagion spreading itself among the
well-to-do townsfolk, the lords, and the clergy, as much as and more
than among the poor artisans and the small tradesfolk.
One day when the man of God was lamenting the deplorable state of the
church of Vervignole in the cloister of the cathedral, his meditations
were disturbed by strange shrieks, and he saw a woman, stark naked,
walking on all fours, with a peacock’s feather for a tail. As she came
nearer, she barked, sniffed, and licked the ground. Her fair head
was covered with mud, and her whole body was a mass of filth. In this
unhappy creature the holy Bishop Nicolas recognized his niece Mirande.
“What do you there, my daughter?” he cried. “Why are you naked, and
wherefore do you walk on your hands and knees? Have you no shame?”
“No, uncle, I am not ashamed,” sweetly replied Mirande. “I should, on
the contrary, be ashamed of any other gesture, or method of progression.
If one wishes to please God, it is thus that one should behave. The holy
Brother Sulpice taught me to conduct myself thus, in order to resemble
the beasts, who are nearer to God than is Man, in that they have not
sinned. So long as I am in the state in which you see me, there will be
no danger of my sinning. I have come, uncle, to beg you in all love and
charity to do likewise; for unless you do you cannot be saved. Remove,
I beg, your clothes, and adopt the posture of the animals, in whom God
joyfully sees His image which has not been distorted by sin. I give you
this advice by order of the holy brother Sulpice, and consequently by
order of God Himself, for the holy brother is in the Lord’s secrets.
Strip yourself naked, uncle, and come with me, so that we may show
ourselves to the people for their edification.”
“Can I believe my eyes and ears?” gasped the holy Bishop, whose voice
was stifled by sobs. “I had a niece blooming in beauty, virtue, and
piety; the three children whom I rescued from the salting-tub have
reduced her to the miserable condition in which I now see her. The first
has despoiled her of all her property, an abundant source of alms, and
the patrimony of the poor; the second has robbed her of her honour, and
the third has turned her into a heretic.”
He threw himself on the flagstones, embracing his niece, begging her to
renounce so evil a way of life, and adjuring her to reclothe herself,
and walk on her feet like a human being, ransomed by the blood of Jesus
Christ.
But she replied only by sharp yelps and lamentable shrieks.
Before long the town of Trinqueballe was filled with naked men and
women, walking on all fours and barking; they called themselves the
Edenites, and their ambition was to lead back the world to the times of
perfect innocence, before the unfortunate creation of Adam and Eve.
The Reverend Father Gilles Caquerole, a Dominican, inquisitor of
the faith in the city, university, and ecclesiastical province of
Trinqueballe, became uneasy concerning this novelty, and proceeded to
look into it minutely. In the most urgent fashion, by letters under his
seal, he invited the Bishop Nicolas, in co-operation with himself, to
arrest, imprison, interrogate, and sentence these enemies of God, and
especially their principal leaders, the Franciscan monk, Sulpice, and
a dissolute woman named Mirande. The great St. Nicolas burned with an
ardent zeal for the unity of the Church and the destruction of heresy,
but he dearly loved his niece. He hid her in the episcopal palace, and
refused to hand her over to the inquisitor Caquerole, who denounced him
to the Pope as an abettor of disorder and the propagator of a new and
very detestable heresy. The Pope enjoined Nicolas to no longer
withhold the guilty one from her legitimate judges. Nicolas eluded
the injunction, protested his obedience, and did not obey. The Pope
fulminated against him in the Bull _Maleficus pastor_, in which the
venerable pontiff was accused of being a disobedient member of the
Church, a heretic, or one smelling of heresy, a keeper of concubines,
a committer of incest, a corrupter of the people, an old woman and a
meddling old fool, and was passionately admonished.
In this way the Bishop did himself a great deal of harm without any
benefit to his beloved niece. King Berlu, having been threatened with
excommunication if he did not lend his secular arm to the Church in
pursuit of the Edenites, sent some men-at-arms to the episcopal palace
of Trinqueballe.
They tore Mirande from her asylum: she was brought before the inquisitor
Caquerole, thrown into a deep dungeon, and fed upon bread which the
jailers’ dogs had refused; but what afflicted her most was that she was
forcibly compelled to don an old frock and a hood, and that she could no
longer be certain of not sinning.
The monk Sulpice escaped the investigations of the Holy Office and
succeeded in reaching Mambournia, and found an asylum in a monastery of
that kingdom, where he established new sects even more pernicious than
the previous one.
Nevertheless, heresy, fortified by persecution, and exulting in danger,
now spread its ravages over the whole of Vervignole. All over the
kingdom there were seen in the fields thousands of naked men and women,
nibbling the grass, bleating, lowing, roaring, neighing, and contending
at night with sheep, cattle, and horses for the use of stable and
manger. The inquisitor informed the Holy Father of these horrible
scandals, and warned him that so long as the Protector of the Edenites,
the odious Nicolas, remained seated on the throne of St. Cromadaire, the
evil could only continue to increase. Conformably with this advice the
Pope hurled against the Bishop, like a thunderbolt, the Bull _Deterrima
quondam_, by which he deprived him of all his ecclesiastical functions,
and cut him off from the communion of the faithful.