Durazzo lies upon a promontory stretching out into the Adriatic. The
walls which surrounded it at the time of our story, told, by the
weather-wear of their stones, the different ages during which they had
guarded the little bay that lies at the promontory's base. A young
monk,[63] Barletius, to whom Colonel Kabilovitsch introduced the
voyagers, as a travelling companion for a part of their journey,
pointed out the great and rudely squared boulders in the lower course
of masonry, as the work of the ancient Corcyreans, centuries before
the coming of Christ. The upper courses, he said, were stained with
the blood of the Greek soldiers of Alexius, when the Norman Robert
Guiscard assaulted the place, hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
Indeed, to the monk's historic imagination, the world seemed still
wrapped in the mists of the older ages; and, just as the low lying
haze, with its mirage effect, contorted the rocks along the shore into
domes and pinnacles, so did his fancy invest every object with the
greatness of the history with which the old manuscripts had made him
familiar.
While Morsinia listened with a strange entertainment to his rhapsodic
narrations, Constantine was busy studying the graceful lines of the
Venetian half-galley that lay at the base of the cliff, and upon which
they were to embark; her low deck, cut down in the centre nearly to
the water's edge; her sharp, swan-necked prow raised high in air, and
balanced by the broad elevation at the stern; the lateen sail that,
furled on its boom, hung diagonally against the slender mast; the rows
of holes at the side, through which in calm weather the oars were
worked; the gay pennant from the mast-head, and the broad banner at
the stern, which spread to the light breeze the Lion of St. Mark.
They were soon gliding out of the harbor of Durazzo, at first under
the regularly timed stroke of a score of oarsmen. Rounding the
promontory, the west wind filled the sail; and, careening to the
leeward, the galley danced toward the south through the light spray of
the billows which sung beneath the prow like the strings of a zither.
Perhaps it was this music of the waves--or it may have been that the
wind was blowing straight across from Italy; or, possibly, it was the
beauty of the maiden reclining upon the cushioned dais of the stern
deck--that led the weather-beaten sailing master to take the zither,
and sing one after another of Petrarch's love songs to Laura. Though
his voice was as hoarse as the wind that crooned through the cordage,
and his language scarcely intelligible, the flow of the melody told
the sentiment. Constantine's eyes sought the face of his companion, as
if for the first time he had detected that she was beautiful. And
perhaps for the first time in her life Morsinia felt conscious that
Constantine was looking at her;--for she generally withstood his gaze
with as little thought of it as she did that of the sky, or of
Kabilovitsch. Even the monk turned his eyes from the magnificent
shores of Albania, with their beetling headlands and receding bays, to
cast furtive glances upon the maiden.
The monk's face was a striking one. He was pale, if not from holy
vigil, from pouring over musty secular tomes. He had caught the spirit
of the revival of learning which, notwithstanding all the superstition
of ecclesiastics, was first felt in the cloisters of the church. His
forehead was high, but narrow; his eyes mild, yet lustrous; his lower
features almost feminine. One familiar with men would have said, "Here
is a man of patient enthusiasm for things intellectual, a devotee to
the ideal. He may be a philosopher, a poet, an artist; but he could
never make a soldier, a diplomat, or even a lover, except of the most
Platonic sort. Just the man for a monk. If all monks were like him,
the church would be enriched indeed; but, if all like him were monks,
the world would be the poorer."
Among other passengers was a Greek monk, Gennadius. This man's full
beard and long curly forelocks hanging in front of his ears, were in
odd contrast with the smooth face and shaven head of the Latin monk.
Though strangers, they courteously saluted each other. However sharp
might be the differences in their religious notions, they soon felt
the fraternity such as cultured minds and great souls realize in the
presence of the sublimities of nature. They studied each other's faces
with agreeable surprise as the glories about them drew from their lips
vivid outbursts of descriptive eloquence, in which, speaking the Latin
or Greek with almost equal facility, they quoted from the classic
poets with which they were equally familiar.
As the galley turned eastward into the Corinthian gulf there burst
upon them a panorama of natural splendor combined with classic
enchantment, such as no other spot on the earth presents. The
mountainous shores lay about the long and narrow sea, like sleeping
giants guarding the outflow of some sacred fountain. Back of the
northern coast rose, like waking sentinels, the Helicon and Parnassus,
towering thousands of feet into the air; their tops helmeted in ice
and plumed with fleecy clouds. The western sun poured upon the track
of the voyagers floods of golden lustre which lingered on the still
waters, flashed in rainbows from the splashing oars, gilded with glory
the hither slope of every projection on either shore, and filled the
great gorges beyond with dark purple shadows.
As Morsinia reclined with her head resting on Constantine's shoulder,
and drank in the gorgeous, yet quieting, scene, the two monks stood
with uncovered heads and, half embracing, chanted together in Greek
one of the oldest known evening hymns of the Christian church. In free
translation, it ran thus:--
"O Jesu, the Christ! glad light of the holy!
The brightness of God, the Father in heaven!
At setting of sun, with hearts that are lowly,
We praise Thee for life this day Thou hast given."
"I love that hymn," said Gennadius, "because it was written long
before the schism which rent the Holy Church into Latin and Greek."
"We will rejoice, then, that by the inspiration of the Holy Father,
Eugenius, and the assent of your patriarch, the wound in the body of
Christ has, after six centuries, at last been healed," replied
Barletius.
"I fear that the healing is but seeming," said the Greek. "I was a
member of the council of Florence, and know the motives of the men who
composed it, and the exact meaning of the agreement--which means
nothing. Your Pope cares not a scrap of tinsel from his back for the
true Christian dogma; and while his ambition led him to desire to
become the uniter of Christendom, his own bishops, who know him well,
were gathered in synod at Basil, and pronounced him heretic, perjurer
and debauchee."
"But you Greeks were doubtless more honest," said Barletius, with a
tone and look of sarcasm.
"Humph!" grunted Gennadius, walking away; but turning about quickly he
added,
"How could we be honest when, for the sake of the union, we assented
to a denial of our most sacred dogmas by allowing the _Filioque_?[64]
It is not in the power of men living to change the truth as expressed
through all past ages in the creed of the true church. Our emperor
yielded the points to the Latins; but holy Mark of Ephesus and Prince
Demetrius, our emperor's brother, did not. They retired in disgust
from Italy. Why, the very dog of the emperor, that lay on his
foot-cloth, scented the heresy to which his master was about to
subscribe, and protested against the sacrilege by baying throughout
the reading of the act of union. And I learn that the clergy and
populace at Byzantium are foaming with rage at this impiety of our
Latinizing emperor. I am hasting thither that I may utter my voice,
too, in my cell in prayer, and from the pulpit of St. Sophia, against
the unholy alliance."
"Yet," said Barletius, with scorn, "your emperor and church
authorities subscribed. What sort of a divine spirit do you Greeks
possess, that prompts you to confess what you do not believe?"
"I feel your taunt," replied Gennadius. "It is both just and unjust.
Have not some of your own prelates lately taught that the end
justifies the means? The union, though wrong in itself, was
justified--according to Latin ethics--by the result to be secured, the
safety of both Greek and Latin churches from being conquered by the
Turks. Our Eastern empire, the glory of the later Cæsars, has already
become reduced to the suburbs of Byzantium. The empire of Justinian
and Theodosius has not to-day ten thousand soldiers to withstand the
myriads of the Sultan. There must be union. We must have soldiers,
even if we buy them with the price of an article of the creed--nay the
loan of the article--for the union will not stand when danger has
passed. Conscience alone is one thing: conscience under necessity--I
speak the ethics of you Latins--is another thing. But I abhor the
deceit. Your bishop, whom you call Pope, has no reverence from our
hearts, though we were to kiss his toe. You are idolaters with your
images of Mary and the saints. _Filioque_ is a lie!" cried the Greek,
giving vent to his prejudice and spite.
Barletius in the meantime had felt other emotions than the holiest
being kindled within him by these hot words of his companion; and when
the Greek had flashed his unseemly denunciation at _Filioque_, the
Latin's soul burst in responsive rage. But he was not accustomed to
harsh debate. Words were consumed upon his hot lips, or choked in his
fury-dried throat. His frame trembled with the pent wrath. His hands
clenched until the nails cut into the flesh. But alas for the best
saintship, if temptation comes before canonization! The thin hand was
raised, and it fell upon the holy brother's face. The blow was
returned. But neither of them had been trained to carnal strife, nor
had they the skill and strength to do justice to their noble rage.
Constantine, who leaped forward to act as peace-maker, stopped to
laugh at the strange pose of the antagonists; for the Greek had
valiantly seized the cowl of the Latin, and drawn it down over his
face; while Barletius' thin fingers were wriggling through Gennadius'
beard, and both were prancing as awkwardly as one-day-old calves about
the narrow deck, with the imminent prospect of cooling their spirits
by immersion in the water.
The presence of this danger led Constantine to separate the scufflers;
although his laughter at the contestants had made his limbs almost as
limp as theirs. The ecclesiastical champions stood glaring their
celestial resentment, the one white, the other red, like two statues
of burlesque gladiators carved respectively in marble and porphyry.
The conflict might have been renewed had not Morsinia risen from her
cushion, and approached them. But no sooner did Gennadius realize the
danger of having so much as his gown touched by a woman, than he
bolted to the other end of the galley, and sat down, with fright and
shame, upon a coil of ropes. The Greek had been trained at the
monastery on Mount Athos. From that masculine paradise the fair
daughters of Eve were as carefully excluded as if they were still the
agents of Satan, and sent by the devil to work the ruin of those who,
by lofty meditation and unnatural asceticism, would return to the
pre-marital Adamic state of innocence. During the long twilight, and
when the night left only the outlines of the mountains sharply defined
high up against the star-lit sky, Gennadius still sat motionless; his
legs crossed beneath him; his head dropped upon his bosom. He gave no
response to the salutation of the attendant who brought him the
evening meal: nor would he touch it. When the sailors sung the songs
whose melody floated over the sea, keeping time to the cadences of the
light waves which bent but did not break the surface, the monk put his
fingers into his ears. He tried to drive out worldly thoughts by
recalling those precepts of an ancient saint which, for four hundred
years, had been prescribed at Mount Athos for those who would quiet
their perturbed souls and rise into the upper light of God. They were
such as these. "Seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above all
things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin upon thy
breast; turn thy eyes and thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, the
region of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat of
the soul, which when discovered will be involved in a mystic and
ethereal light."
Barletius, equally chagrined by his display of temper before the
laity, sought relief by inflicting upon himself a task of Pater
Nosters, which he tallied off on his beads, made of olive-wood and
sent him by a learned monk at Bethlehem.
When his punishment seemed accomplished, Morsinia asked him,
"Good father, why did you quarrel with the stranger?"
Barletius entered into a long explanation of the faith of the Roman
Church at the point challenged by the Greek.
"I understand your words," said Morsinia, "but I do not understand
their meaning."
"It is not necessary that you should, my child. If Holy Church
understands, it is enough. A child may not understand all that the
mother knows; yet believes the mother's word. So should you believe
what Mother Church says."
"I would believe every word that Mother Church speaks, even though I
do not understand why she speaks it," said Morsinia reverently. "But
how can one believe another's words when one does not know what they
mean; when they give no thought? Now what you say about the
'procession of the spirit,' and the 'begetting of the Son,' I do not
get any clear thought about; and how then can I believe it in my
heart."
The monk cast a troubled look upon the fair inquirer, and replied--
"Then you must simply believe in Holy Church which believes the
truth."
"And say I believe the creed, when I only believe that the Church
believes the creed?" queried the girl.
"It is enough. Happy are you if you seek to know no more. Beware of an
inquisitive mind. It leads one astray from truth, as a wayward
disposition soon departs from virtue. Credo! Credo! Credo! Help thou
mine unbelief! should be your prayer. Restrain your thoughts as the
helmsman yonder keeps our prow on the narrow way we are going. How
soon you would perish if you should attempt to find your way alone out
there on the deep! Woe to those who, like these wretched Greeks,
depart from truth, and teach men so. Anathema, Maranatha!"
"But, tell me, good father, can that be necessary to be believed,
about which whole nations, like the Greeks, differ from other nations,
like the Latins? I have seen Greeks at their worship, and bowed with
them, and felt that God was near and blessing us all. And I have heard
them say, when they were dying, that they saw heaven open; and they
reached out their arms to be taken by the angels. Does not Jesu save
them, though they may err about that which we trust to be the truth?"
"My child, you must not think of these things," said Barletius kindly.
"It is better that you sleep now. The air is growing chill. Wrap your
cloak closely even beneath the deck."
He walked away, repeating a line from Virgil as he scanned the
star-gemmed heavens.
"Suadentque cadentia sidera somnos."
Wrapping his hood close over his face, he lay down upon the deck.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] Marinus Barletius, a Latin monk of the time, has given us in his
chronicles, the most extended account of Scanderbeg.
[64] Filioque; "and the Son." The Latin Church holds that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father _and the Son_. The Greeks deny the
latter part of the proposition.