Concerning the life and martyrdom of Saint Dodekanus, patron of
Nepenthe, we possess hardly any information of a trustworthy nature. It
is with his career as with that of other saints: they become
overlaid--encrusted, as it were--with extraneous legendary material in
the course of ages, even as a downward-rolling avalanche gathers snow.
The nucleus is hard to find. What is incontestably true may be summed
up almost in one paragraph.
He was born in A.D. 450, or thereabouts, in the city of Kallisto, in
Crete. He was an only child, a beautiful but unruly boy, the despair of
his widowed mother. At the age of thirteen he encountered, one evening,
an elderly man of thoughtful mien, who addressed him in familiar
language. On several later occasions he discoursed with the same
personage, in a grove of laurels and pines known as Alephane; but what
passed between them, and whether it was some divine apparition, or
merely a man of flesh and blood, was never discovered, for he seems to
have kept his mother in ignorance of the whole affair. From that time
onward his conduct changed. He grew pensive, mild, and charitable. He
entered, as youthful acolyte, a neighbouring Convent of Salacian monks,
and quickly distinguished himself for piety and the gift of miracles.
In the short space of three years, or thereabouts, he had healed eight
lepers, caused the clouds to rain, walked dryshod over several rivers,
and raised twenty-three persons from the dead.
At the age of eighteen he had a second vision. This time it was a young
woman, of pleasing exterior. He discoursed with her, on several
occasions, in the grove of laurels and pines known as Alephane; but
what passed between them, and whether it was a woman of flesh and
blood, or merely an angel, was never discovered, for he seems to have
kept his brother monks in ignorance of the whole affair. From that time
onward his conduct changed. He grew restless and desirous of converting
the heathen. He set sail for Lybia, suffered shipwreck in the Greater
Syrtis, and narrowly escaped with his life. Thence he passed onward,
preaching to black nations as he moved along, and converting tribes
innumerable. For three-and-thirty years he wandered till, one evening,
he saw the moon rise on the right side of his face.
He had entered the land of the Crotalophoboi, cannibals and
necromancers who dwelt in a region so hot, and with light so dazzling,
that their eyes grew on the soles of their feet. Here he laboured for
eighty years, redeeming them to Christianity from their magical and
bloodthirsty practices. In recompense whereof they captured him at the
patriarchal age of 132, or thereabouts, and bound him with ropes
between two flat boards of palmwood. Thus they kept the prisoner,
feeding him abundantly, until that old equinoctial feast drew near. On
the evening of that day they sawed the whole, superstitiously, into
twelve separate pieces, one for each month of the year; and devoured of
the saint what was to their liking.
During this horrid banquet a femur or thigh-bone was accidentally cast
upon a millstone which lay by the shore, having been borrowed by the
Crotalophoboi from the neighbouring tribe of Garimanes a good many
years previously and never returned to them by reason, they declared,
of its excessive weight. There it remained till, one day, during a
potent sirocco tempest, the stone was uplifted by the force of the
waters, and miraculously wafted over the sea to Nepenthe. Forthwith a
chapel was built on the spot, to commemorate the event and preserve the
sacred relic which soon began working wonders for the good of the
island, such as warding off Saracenic invasions, procuring plentiful
vintages, and causing sterile cattle to produce offspring.
In later years the main church was dedicated to Saint Dodekanus and the
relic moved thither and enclosed within that silver statue of the saint
which is carried abroad in procession at his annual festival, or on any
particular occasion when his help is to be invoked. And all through
succeeding ages the cult of the saint waxed in pomp and splendour.
Nobody, probably, has done more to foster pious feelings towards their
island-patron than the Good Duke Alfred who, among other things, caused
a stately frieze to be placed in the church, picturing in twelve marble
tablets the twelve chief episodes in the life of the Saint--one for each
month of the year. This frieze indeed was admired so unreservedly, so
recklessly, that the Good Duke felt it his duty to remove the
sculptor's eyes and (on second thoughts) his hands as well, in order
that no other sovereign should possess works by so consummate a master
of stonecraft. There the disciplinary measures ended. He did his best
to console the gifted artist who was fed, henceforward, on lobsters,
decorated with the order of the Golden Vine, and would doubtless have
been ennobled after death, had the Prince not predeceased the sculptor.
Such, briefly, is the history of Saint Dodekanus, and the origin of his
cult on Nepenthe.
Legends galore, often contradictory to this account and to one another,
have clustered round his name, as was inevitable. He is supposed to
have preached in Asia Minor; to have died as a young man, in his
convent; to have become a hermit, a cobbler, a bishop (of Nicomedia), a
eunuch, a politician. Two volumes of mediocre sermons in the Byzantine
tongue have been ascribed to him. These and other crudities may be
dismissed as apocryphal. Even his name has given rise to controversy,
although its origin from the Greek word DODEKA, signifying twelve and
alluding to the twelve morsels into which his body was superstitiously
divided, is as self-evident as well can be. Thus a worthy young canon
of the church of Nepenthe, Giacinto Mellino, who has lately written a
life of Saint Eulalia, the local patroness of sailors--her festival
occurs twelve days after that of Saint Dodekanus--takes occasion, in
this otherwise commendable pamphlet, to scoff at the old-established
derivation of the name and to propose an alternative etymology. He lays
it down that then pagan inhabitants of the island, desirous of sharing
in the benefits of Christianity which had already reached the mainland
but left untouched their lonely rock, sent a missive to the bishop
containing the two words DO DEKANUS: give us a deacon! The grammar is
at fault, he explains, because of their rudimentary knowledge of the
Latin tongue; they had only learnt, hitherto, the first person singular
and the nominative case--so he says; and then proceeds to demonstrate,
with unanswerable arguments, that Greek was the spoken language of
Nepenthe at this period. Several scholars have been swayed by his
specious logic to abandon the older and sounder interpretation. There
are yet other conjectures about the word Dodekanus, all more or less
fanciful....
If the Crotalophoboi had not devoured the missionary Dodekanus, we
should assuredly never have heard of Monsignor Perrelli, the learned
and genial historian of Nepenthe. It was that story, he expressly tells
us, which inflamed him, a mere visitor to the place, with a desire to
know more about the island. A people like the Nepentheans, who could
cherish in their hearts a tale of such beauty, must be worthy, he
concluded, "of the closest and most sympathetic scrutiny." Thus, one
thing leading to another, as always happens where local researches are
concerned, he soon found himself collecting other legends, traditions,
historical data, statistics of agriculture and natural productions, and
so forth. The result of these labours was embodied in the renowned
ANTIQUITIES OF NEPENTHE.
This book, a model of its kind, is written in Latin. It seems to have
been the author's only work, and has gone through several editions; the
last one--by no means the best as regards typography--being that of 1709.
The Crotalophoboi therefore, who procured the sanctification of
Dodekanus by methods hardly commendable to decent folks, can be said to
have done some good in the world, if the creation of a literary
masterpiece like these ANTIQUITIES, for which they are indirectly
responsible, may be classed under that head.
It is a pity we know so little of the life of this Monsignor Perrelli.
He is disappointingly reticent about himself. We learn that he was a
native of the mainland; that he came here, as a youth, afflicted with
rheumatic troubles; that these troubles were relived by an application
of those health-giving waters which he lived to describe in one of the
happiest sections of his work, and which were to become famous to the
world at large through certain classical experiments carried out under
his contemporary, the Good Duke Alfred--a potentate who, by the way,
does not seem to have behaved very prettily to our scholar. And that is
absolutely all we know about him. The most painstaking enquiries on the
part of Mr. Eames have failed to add a single item of positive
information to our knowledge of the historian of Nepenthe. We cannot
tell when, or where, he died. He seems to have ended in regarding
himself as a native of the place. The wealth of material incorporated
in the book leads to the supposition that he must have spent long years
on the island. We may further presume, from his title, that he belonged
to the church; it was the surest path of advancement for a young man of
quality in those days.
A perfunctory glance into his pages will suffice to prove that he
lacked what is called the ecclesiastical bent of mind. Reading between
the lines, one soon discovers that his is not so much a priest as a
statesman and philosopher, a student curious in the lore of mankind and
of nature--alert, sagacious, discriminating. He tells us, for example,
that this legend of the visions and martyrdom of Saint Dodekanus, which
he was the first to disentangle from its heterogeneous accretions, was
vastly to his liking. Why? Because of its churchly flavour? Not so; but
because he detected therein "truth and symbol. It is a tale of
universal applicability; the type, as it were, of every great man's
life, endeavour, and reward." The introduction to these ANTIQUITIES,
setting forth his maxims for the writing of history, might have been
composed not three centuries ago, but yesterday--or even to-morrow; so
modern is its note.
Hearken to these weighty words:
"Portraiture of characters and events should take the form of one
gentleman conversing with another, in the easy tone of good society.
The author who sets out to address a crowd defeats his own object; he
eliminates the essence of good writing--frankness. You cannot be frank
with men of low condition. You must presuppose a refined and congenial
listener, a man or woman whom you would not hesitate to take by the
hand and lead into the circle of your own personal friends. If this
applies to literature of every kind, it applies to history in a
peculiar degree.
"History deals with situations and figures not imaginary but real. It
demands therefore a combination of qualities unnecessary to the poet or
writer of romance--glacial judgment coupled with fervent sympathy. The
poet may be an inspired illiterate, the romance-writer an uninspired
hack. Under no circumstances can either of them be accused of wronging
or deceiving the public, however incongruous their efforts. They write
well or badly, and there the matter ends. The historian, who fails in
his duty, deceives the reader and wrongs the dead. A man weighted with
such responsibilities is deserving of an audience more than usually
select--an audience of his equals, men of the world. No vulgarian can be
admitted to share those confidences....
"The Greeks figured forth a Muse of History; they dared express their
opinions. Genesis, that ancient barrier, did not exist for them. It
stands in the way of the modern historian; it involves him in a
ceaseless conflict with his own honesty. If he values his skin, he must
accommodate himself to current dogmas and refrain from truthful
comments and conclusions. He has the choice of being a chronologer or a
ballad-monger-obsolete and unimportant occupations. Unenviable fate of
those who aspire to be teachers of mankind, that they themselves should
be studied with a kind of antiquarian interest, stimulating thought not
otherwise than as warning examples! Clio has fallen from her pedestal.
That radiant creature, in identifying her interests with those of
theocracy, has become the hand-maiden of a withered and petulant
mistress, a mercenary slut. So things will remain, till mankind has
acquired a fresh body of ethics, corresponding to modern needs. It is
useless, it is dangerous, to pour new wine into old bottles...."
He carries out his theory. The work of Monsignor Perrelli is, above all
things, a human document--the revelation of a personality cultured and
free from prejudice. Indeed, when one considers the religious situation
of those days, he seems to be sailing perilously near the wind in some
of his theological reflections; so much so, that Mr. Eames often
wondered whether this might not account for our ignorance of his later
life and the manner of his death. He held it possible that the scholar
may have fallen into the clutches of the Inquisition, never again to
return to the surface of society. It would explain why the first
edition of the ANTIQUITIES is so extremely rare, and why the two
subsequent ones were issued, respectively, at Amsterdam and Bale.
Incidentally, the book contains in its nine hundred pages all that
could possibly interest a contemporary student about the history and
natural products of Nepenthe. It is still a mine of antiquarian
information, though large sections of the work have inevitably become
obsolete. To bring the ANTIQUITIES up to date by means of a revised and
enlarged version enriched with footnotes, appendixes and copious
illustrations, was the ambition, the sole ambition, of Mr. Ernest
Eames, R.A....
It was not true to say of this gentleman that he fled from England to
Nepenthe because he forged his mother's will, because he was arrested
while picking the pockets of a lady at Tottenham Court Road Station,
because he refused to pay for the upkeep of his seven illegitimate
children, because he was involved in a flamboyant scandal of
unmentionable nature and unprecedented dimensions, because he was
detected while trying to poison the rhinoceros at the Zoo with an
arsenical bun, because he strangled his mistress, because he addressed
an almost disrespectful letter to the Primate of England beginning "My
good Owl"--or for any suchlike reason; and that he now remained on the
island only because nobody was fool enough to lend him the ten pounds
requisite for a ticket back again.
He came there originally to save money; and he stayed there originally
because, if he had happened to die on his homeward journey, there would
not have been enough coppers in his pocket to pay for the funeral
expenses. Nowadays, having solved the problem of how to live on 85
pounds a year, he stayed for another reason as well: to annotate
Perrelli's ANTIQUITIES. It sweetened his self-imposed exile.
He was a dry creature, almost wizened, with bright eyes and a short
moustache; unostentatiously dressed; fastidious, reserved, genteel,
precise in manner, and living a retired life in a two-roomed cottage
somewhere among the vineyards.
He had taken a high degree in classics, though Greek was never much to
his taste. It was "runaway stuff"; nervous and sensuous; it opened up
too many vistas, philological and social, for his positive mind to
assimilate with comfort. Those particles alone--there was something
ambiguous, something almost disreputable, in their jocund pliability,
their readiness to lend themselves to improper uses. But Latin--ah,
Latin was different! Even at his preparatory school, where he was known
as a swot of the first water, he had displayed an unhealthy infatuation
for that tongue; he loved its cold, lapidary construction; and while
other boys played football or cricket, this withered little fellow used
to lark about with a note-book, all by himself, torturing sensible
English into its refractory and colourless periods and elaborating,
without the help of a Gradus, those inept word-mosaics which are called
Latin verses. "Good fun," he used to say, "and every bit as exciting as
algebra," as though that constituted a recommendation. Often the good
form master shook his head, and enquired anxiously whether he was
feeling unwell, or had secret troubles of any kind.
"Oh, no, sir," he would then reply, with a funny little laugh. "Thank
you, sir. But please, sir! Would you mind telling me whether PECUNIA
really comes from PECUS? Because Adams minor (another swot) says it
doesn't."
Later on, at the University, he used the English language for the sake
of convenience--in order to make himself understood by Dons and Heads of
Colleges. His thoughts, his dreams, were in Latin.
Such a man, arriving almost penniless on Nepenthe, might have passed a
torpid month or two, then drifted into the Club-set and gone to the
dogs altogether. Latin saved him. He took to studying those earlier
local writers who often composed in that tongue. The Jesuitical
smoothness, the saccharine felicity of authors like Giannettasio had
just begun to pall on his fancy, when the ANTIQUITIES fell into his
hands. It was like a draught of some generous southern wine, after a
course of barley-water. Here was Latin worth reading; rich, sinewy,
idiomatic, full of flavour, masculine. Flexible, yet terse. Latin after
his own heart; a cry across the centuries!
So bewitched was Mr. Eames with the grammar and syntax of the
ANTIQUITIES that he had already gone through the book three times ere
realizing that this man, who could construct such flowing, glowing
sentences, was actually writing about something. Yes, he had something
of uncommon interest to impart. And a gentleman, by Jove! So different
from what one runs up against nowadays. He had an original way of
looking at things--a human way. Very human. Those quaint streaks of
credulity, those whimsical blasphemies, those spicy Court anecdotes
dropped, as it were, in the smoking room of a patrician club--a rare old
fellow! He would have given anything to have made his acquaintance.
Forthwith a change came over Mr. Ernest Eames. His frozen classical
mind blossomed under the sunny stimulus of the Renaissance scholar. He
entered upon a second boyhood--a real boyhood, this time, full of
enthusiasms and adventures into flowery by-paths of learning. Monsignor
Perrelli absorbed him. He absorbed Monsignor Perrelli. Marginal
observation led to footnotes; footnotes to appendixes. He had found an
interest in life. He would annotate the ANTIQUITIES.
In the section which deals with the life of Saint Dodekanus the Italian
had displayed more than his usual erudition and acumen. He had sifted
the records with such incredible diligence that little was left for the
pen of an annotator, save words of praise. In two small matters,
however, the Englishman, considerably to his regret, was enabled or
rather obliged to add a postscript.
Many a time he cursed the day when his researches among the archives of
the mainland brought him into contact with the unpublished chronicle of
Father Capocchio, a Dominican friar of licorous and even licentious
disposition, a hater of Nepenthe and a personal enemy, it seemed, of
his idol Perrelli. His manuscript--the greater part of it, at all
events--was not fit to be printed; not fit to be touched by respectable
people. Mr. Eames felt it his duty to waive considerations of delicacy.
In his capacity of annotator he would have plunged headlong into the
Augean stables, had there been any likelihood of extracting therefrom
the germs of a luminous footnote. He perused the manuscript, making
notes as he went along. This wretched monk, he concluded, must have
possessed a damnably intimate knowledge of Nepenthean conditions, and a
cantankerous and crapulous turn of mind, into the bargain. He never
lost an opportunity of denigrating the island; he was determined,
absolutely determined, to see only the bad side of things, so far as
that place was concerned.
Regarding the pious relic, for instance,--the thigh-bone of the saint,
preserved in the principal church--he wrote:
"A certain Perrelli who calls himself historian, which is as though one
should call a mule a horse, or an ass a mule, brays loudly and
disconnectedly about the femur of the local god. We have personally
examined this priceless femur. It is not a femur, but a tibia. And it
is the tibia not of a saint, but of a young cow or calf. We may
mention, in passing, that we hold a diploma in anatomy from the
Palermitan Faculty of Medicine."
That was Father Capocchio's way: bald to coarseness, whenever he lacked
occasion to be obscene.
To Mr. Eames it would have mattered little, A PRIORI, whether the relic
was a femur or a tibia, a cow or man. In this case, he liked to think
it was the thigh-bone of a saint. He possessed an unusually strong dose
of that Latin PIETAS, that reverence which consists in leaving things
as they are, particularly when they have been described for the benefit
of posterity, with the most engaging candour, by a man of Perrelli's
calibre. Now an insinuation like this could not be slurred over. It was
a downright challenge! The matter must be thrashed out. For four months
he poured over books on surgery and anatomy. Then, having acquired a
knowledge of the subject--adequate, though necessarily superficial--he
applied to the ecclesiastical authorities for permission to view the
relic. It was politely refused. The saintly object, they declared,
could only be exhibited to persons professing the Roman Catholic Faith,
and armed with a special recommendation from the bishop.
"These," he used to say, "are the troubles which lie in wait for a
conscientious annotator."
On another point, that of a derivation of the saint's name, he was
pained to discover in the pages of Father Capocchio an alternative
suggestion, of which more anon. It caused him many sleepless nights.
But on matters pertaining to the climate of Nepenthe, its inhabitants,
products, minerals, water-supply, fisheries, trade, folk-lore,
ethnology,--on questions such as these he had gathered much fresh
information. Sheaves of stimulating footnotes had accumulated on his
desk.
When would all this material be published?
Mr. Eames had not the faintest idea. Meanwhile he calmly went on
collecting and collecting, and collecting. Something might turn up, one
of these days. Everybody with the slightest pretensions to scholarship
was interested in his work; many friends had made him offers of
pecuniary assistance towards the printing of a book which could not be
expected to be a source of profit to its publisher; the wealthy and
good-natured Mr. Keith, in particular, used to complain savagely and
very sincerely at not being allowed to assist to the extent of a
hundred or two. There were days on which he seemed to yield to these
arguments; days when he expanded and gave rein to his fancy, smiling in
anticipation of that noble volume--the golden Latinity of Monsignor
Perrelli enriched with twenty-five years' patient labour on the part of
himself; days when he would go so far as to discuss prospective
contracts, and bindings and photogravures, and margins, and paper.
Everything, of course, was to be of appropriate quality--not
pretentious, but distinguished. Oh, yes! A book of that kind--it must
have a cachet of its own....
Then, suddenly, he would observe that he was joking; only joking.
The true Mr. Eames revealed and reasserted himself. He shrank from the
idea. He closed up like a flower in the chill of night-fall. He was not
going to put himself under obligations to anybody. He would keep his
sense of personal independence, even if it entailed the sacrifice of a
life's ambition. Owe no man anything! The words rang in his ears. They
were his father's words. Owe no man anything! They were that
gentleman's definition of a gentleman--a definition which was cordially
approved by every other gentleman who, like Mr. Eames junior, happened
to hold analogous views.
Gentlemen being rather scarce nowadays, we cannot but feel grateful to
the Crotalophoboi for devouring Saint Dodekanus and paving the way, VIA
the ANTIQUITIES of Monsignor Perrelli, for the refined personality of
Mr. Eames--even if such was not their original intention.