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INS PIR ATION A ND AUTH ORITY
I N THE MID D LE AG E S
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2017, SPi

OXFORD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS

The Oxford Historical Monographs series publishes some of the best
Oxford University doctoral theses on historical topics, especially
those likely to engage the interest of a broad academic readership.

Editors
P. CLAVIN J. INNES
J . M CD O U G AL L D . P A R R O T T J . SMITH
S. A. SMITH J. L. WATTS W. WHYTE
Inspiration and
Authority in the
Middle Ages
Prophets and their Critics from
Scholasticism to Humanism

B R I A N FI T Z G E R A L D

1
 3
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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Brian FitzGerald 2017
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2017
Impression: 1
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 Acknowledgements

I have relied on the help of many people to write this book. It began as a
doctoral thesis, and I am deeply grateful to Matthew Kempshall, my
doctoral supervisor, whose generosity, insight, and enthusiasm have
been a constant support. During crucial phases of my initial work, I also
relied heavily on the excellent guidance of Vincent Gillespie. I benefited
tremendously at Oxford from a community of scholars and friends, whose
advice and assistance with my project I wish to acknowledge with great
thanks, particularly Lesley Smith, Martin McLaughlin, Patrick Lantschner,
Shami Ghosh, Jonathan Morton, and the members of the Medieval Church
and Culture Seminar.
For help with my more recent revisions, I owe much to the recom-
mendations of my doctoral examiners, David d’Avray and Mishtooni
Bose, to Sibjrn Snnesyn’s consideration of my draft, and especially to
the anonymous reader for OUP, who considered my work so carefully.
I greatly appreciate the steady encouragement of John Watts, who helped
guide my manuscript through the final stages of publication. Throughout
this process, my colleagues at Northeast Catholic College, especially
George Harne, were extremely supportive of my efforts.
I am pleased to recognise the financial assistance of the Clarendon
Fund, without which I could not have remained at Oxford. Funding for
research and other expenses also came from Oxford’s Isaiah Berlin Fund,
Colin Matthew Fund, and the Erasmus Exchange. Throughout my days
as a doctoral student, I also depended on the constant support of the
fellows and staff of Lincoln College, Oxford.
My research could not have been completed without assistance from
librarians at Oxford in All Souls College, the Bodleian, Exeter College,
Lincoln College, and New College; as well as at the British Library in
London; Worcester Cathedral; the Chester Beatty Library and Trinity
College in Dublin; and Padua’s Biblioteche Antoniana, Dottorale, and
Universitaria. I am also indebted to Alastair Minnis and Andrew Kraebel
for helping me examine a copy of Nicholas Trevet’s Boethius commentary
before it became available online.
Finally, I am profoundly grateful to my family for all their support, and
to my wife Leah, who has been with me each step of the way.
vi Acknowledgements
An earlier version of Chapter One appeared in ‘Time, History, and
Mutability in Hugh of St. Victor’s Homilies on Ecclesiastes and De vanitate
mundi’, Viator, 43 (2012), pp. 215–40. It appears with permission from
Brepols Publishers. An earlier version of Chapter Four, section III
appeared in ‘Prophecy and the Contemplation of History: Peter John
Olivi and Hugh of St. Victor’, in L. Nelstrop and S. Podmore (eds),
Exploring Lost Dimensions in Christian Mysticism: Opening to the
Mystical, (Ashgate, 2013), pp. 173–96. It appears with permission from
Taylor & Francis.
 Contents

Abbreviations ix
Notes on Sources xi
Introduction 1
1. Hugh of St Victor and the Prophetic Contemplation
of History 18
2. The Scholastic Exegesis of Prophecy 50
3. Polemic, Preaching, and Early Dominican Assessments
of Prophetic Authority 88
4. The Mendicant Conflict over Prophecy: Thomas Aquinas
and Peter John Olivi 109
5. Nicholas Trevet and the Consolation of Prophecy 152
6. Albertino Mussato and Humanist Prophecy 193
Conclusion 230

Appendix: Categories of Vision and Prophecy 235

Bibliography 237
Index 269
 Abbreviations
ACW Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in
Translation, ed. J. Quasten and J. C. Plumpe (1946–)
AFH Archivum franciscanum historicum
AHDLMA Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age
BML Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana
BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France
Borgnet Albert the Great, Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet, 38 vols (Paris
1890–9)
CCCM Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis (Turnhout,
1967–)
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (Turnhout, 1954–)
CHLC The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 2: The Middle
Ages, ed. A. J. Minnis and I. R. Johnson (Cambridge, 2005)
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna, 1866–)
De civ. Augustine, De civitate dei
De doct. Augustine, De doctrina christiana
De Gen. litt. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram
Geyer Albert the Great, Opera omnia, ed. B. Geyer et al., 37 vols
(Münster 1951–)
HR Historiarum Rolandini, [etc.], Albertini Mussati, de gestis Henrici
VII. Caes. & alia eiusdem opera (Venice, 1635)
IMU Italia medioevale e umanistica
In Hiez. Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem prophetam
Leonine Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII edita, 26 vols
(Rome, 1882–)
MEFRMA Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Age—temps modernes
MLTC Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c.1100–c.1375: The
Commentary Tradition, ed. A. J. Minnis and A. B. Scott (Oxford,
1991)
MOPH Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum historica, ed.
Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 26 vols
(Louvain/Rome/Paris, 1896–)
OOB S. Bonaventurae opera omnia, ed. P. Bernardini, 10 vols
(Quaracchi, 1882–1902)
Opusc. theo. Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula theologica, ed. R. Verardo and
R. Spiazzi, 2 vols (Turin, 1954)
Parma Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia, 25 vols (Parma, 1852–73)
PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64)
RRTC Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R. L. Benson,
G. Constable, and C. Lanham (Oxford, 1982)
x Abbreviations
SBO Sancti Bernardi opera, ed. J. Leclercq et al., 9 vols (Rome,
1957–74)
SC Sources chrétiennes (Paris, 1941–)
SCG Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles
SEP Thomas Aquinas, Super Epistolas S. Pauli lectura, ed. R. Cai,
2 vols, 8th edn (Turin, 1953)
SRG Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum
ST Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae
Super Sent. Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum magistri Petri
Lombardi episcopi Parisiensis
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
 Notes on Sources

I have followed the orthography of my sources, with two exceptions: in

Latin words, I have generally used ‘i’ instead of ‘j’, and I have used ‘v’ for
consonantal ‘u’. I have also inserted modern punctuation and expanded
manuscript abbreviations.
When I provide Latin words and phrases within the body of the text,
I normally use italics when I am not reproducing the original exactly (for
instance when the original word is in the accusative case and I provide the
nominative) or to highlight central words or concepts. I use quotation
marks for longer extracts or less common phrases, particularly when I am
reproducing the original exactly.
When citing from a large series such as the Patrologia Latina, I have
listed volumes in Arabic numerals. When citing from a single work
divided into a few volumes, I use lower-case Roman numerals.
I refer to the titles of biblical books by the Vulgate name, for instance
1 Kings rather than 1 Samuel. All Vulgate references rely on R. Weber (ed.),
Biblia sacra iuxta vulgata versionem, 4th edn (Stuttgart, 1994).
 Introduction

I.

Prophecy’s place as a defining feature of the religious culture of the Latin

Middle Ages has been clear for some time. The mid-twentieth-century
historian Marjorie Reeves wrote that ‘only when intelligent and educated
men ceased to take prophecy seriously’ did the Middle Ages truly end.1
During the medieval period a belief flourished that important events, even
those unfolding in the present moment, had been and could be foretold,
whether by the Bible or by special visionaries. Reeves had in mind
particularly the legacy of the twelfth-century abbot Joachim of Fiore,
whose predictions of an impending new and final age of the Holy Spirit
gave distinct historical shape to the future.
Important as Joachim’s legacy was, however, when we look closely at
what medieval people took seriously as prophecy and at those whom they
accorded special authority as prophets, another story begins to emerge in
which prophecy takes on new significance in surprising ways. To compre-
hend this story, we must expand our understanding of prophecy beyond
the notion of predictions or gnomic utterances, which the word often
evokes today. When we do so, we see that ‘prophecy’ in the Middle Ages
actually had a multitude of meanings and that this very multiplicity played
a crucial role in some of the most important religious and cultural deve-
lopments of the time.
We can get a sense of the wide range of meanings prophecy had by
considering the popular mid-thirteenth-century dictionary written by
William Brito, an English Franciscan living in Paris. Drawing from
scriptural examples, Brito gives the following meanings for prophetare,
‘to prophesy’: prediction, historiography, reporting what is happening
somewhere else, reciting other prophecies, singing praise to God, teaching,

1
The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1969), p. 508.
2 Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages
being a spokesperson, and prefiguring events by one’s actions.2 Those who
theorized about prophecy were well aware of the difficulties this wide
semantic field produced: ‘under the name of “prophetic light” lie equivo-
cations’, wrote the thirteenth-century theologian Peter John Olivi.3
This book chronicles the attempts of medieval thinkers from the
twelfth to the fourteenth centuries to wrestle with the ambiguities of
prophecy. During this period, the nature and implications of prophetic
inspiration became a major area of contention, especially when scholastic
theologians, with their particular techniques and standards of rationality,
sought to make systematic sense of inspired speech and knowledge.4 Why
do such attempts matter? They matter in large part because prophecy was
a crucial—if not the crucial—locus of debates over sacred authority in the
medieval Church. ‘Authority’ or auctoritas means here both legitimate
justification for one’s social role and, in a larger sense, the claim for one’s
words to be trusted.5 The exemplary Old Testament prophets were
authoritative insofar as their words came from God. What, then, of the
other types of prophecy Brito listed? Did they likewise derive from God a
sacred authority?6
To answer these questions required significant epistemological consid-
erations. If prophecy did not only mean prediction, one had to explain the
‘equivocations’ of prophecy, and to unravel the different types of words
and acts given the same name. Many of the descriptions used in the
Middle Ages for prophecy would fall today under the heading of ‘inspir-
ation’, a word with its own array of definitions, describing influences both
divine and natural. Medieval writers, too, used inspiratio in a range of

2
Summa Britonis, ed. L. W. Daly and B. A. Daly, ii (Padua, 1975), p. 604: ‘futura
predicere’, ‘preterita narrare’, ‘facta absens nuntiare’, ‘prophetias recitare’, ‘laudes deo
canere’, ‘docere’, ‘prolocutoris officium exercere’, ‘prefigurare’.
3
Quodlibeta (Venice, 1509) I.13, fol. 5v: ‘sub nomine luminis prophetici latent
equivocationes’.
4
I use the term ‘scholastic’ as a synonym for ‘academic’, and also to describe thinkers of
this era who sought a ‘scientific and rational penetration of the faith’ according to their
conception of scientific rigour. See U. G. Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology, trans.
M. Miller (Washington, DC, 2010), pp. 2, 10–11.
5
See E. Marmursztejn, L’Autorité des maîtres (Paris, 2007), pp. 10–27; and
M.-D. Chenu, Towards Understanding St Thomas, trans. A. M. Landry and D. Hughes
(Chicago, 1964), pp. 129ff. Thus, auctoritas is not identical with the wielding of power
(potestas), though there was certainly overlap. I am not examining the strict sense of
theological auctoritas, i.e. the criteria for determining which texts became formally part of
scholastic commentary tradition: see A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 2nd edn
(Philadelphia, PA, 2010), pp. 10–15.
6
By ‘sacred’, I intend a general definition such as Glenn Olsen’s: the sacred professes
‘God-connectedness’, while the ‘secular’ is ‘an area of life capable of being understood in its
own right’. See ‘Cultural Dynamics: Secularization and Sacralization’, in Wethersfield
Institute (ed.), Christianity and Western Civilization (San Francisco, 1995), pp. 100–1.
 Introduction 3
contexts, though generally the word meant the inner manner by which
God made something known.7 Yet ‘prophecy’ remained the model for
understanding such revelations and asserting their importance. Did all
these varieties of prophecy deserve equal credence? Were they all forms
of the same inspiration, or was ‘prophecy’ in fact a misleading label?
Medieval academic rationality faced serious difficulties in confronting a
phenomenon of religious experience exceedingly hard to categorize.8
Discussions of prophecy were also deeply bound up with medieval
conceptions of texts, of genres of writing and the structures of knowledge
that underlie them. Medieval readers accepted the authority of a text
differently according to its genre. But medieval literary genres were
imbued with a fluidity akin to that of prophecy itself. The shifting
relationship, therefore, of rhetoric, history, and poetry throughout the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries affected greatly the sorts of truth claims
medieval writers could make.9 This in turn influenced the types of texts
people were willing to recognize as inspired.
Medieval answers to questions about prophecy required, furthermore,
serious reflection on the Church’s place in history. What relationship did
the inspiration seen in the scriptural past have to the Church of the
present, a Church which claimed to be guided by the Holy Spirit in its
teaching capacity?10 A standard medieval method of comparing past and
present was typology, seeing similar figures or institutions recapitulated
over time.11 According to Christian thinkers, the primary role of prophets
in the Bible was the prediction of Christ’s coming. With the Incarnation,
however, there had been a distinct historical shift. Did past models of
prophecy, then, have any present relevance? What would revelation or

7
Y. Congar, Tradition and Traditions, trans. M. Naseby and T. Rainborough (London,
1966), pp. 128–9.
8
Rather than imposing my own distinctions on the fluid terms of the medieval debate,
I use ‘prophecy’ and ‘inspiration’ without strict differentiation, except when highlighting
significant distinctions found in the sources, or contexts in which ‘inspiration’ was not
described as ‘prophetic’. Some modern theologians have attempted to separate inspiration
and prophecy by emphasizing, e.g., a prophet’s awareness of the divine impulse, but this is a
distinction not made by medieval theologians. See L. Alonso-Schökel, ‘Inspiration’, in
K. Rahner et al. (eds), Sacramentum Mundi, iii (New York, 1968), p. 147. For a recent
reminder of the importance of the relationship between rationality and religion, see
D. d’Avray, Medieval Religious Rationalities (Cambridge, 2010).
9
M. S. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011),
ch. 4.
10
For the medieval understanding of the Spirit’s role in the life of the Church, see
Congar, Tradition, pp. 130–7.
11
H.-W. Goetz, ‘The Concept of Time in the Historiography of the Eleventh and
Twelfth Centuries’, in G. Althoff et al. (eds), Medieval Concepts of the Past (Washington,
DC, 2002), p. 164.
4 Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages
inspiration in the current age look like? How would one determine that
inspiration’s authenticity or authority?12
The stakes for these questions were high. If ‘prophecy’ was everything
William Brito said it was, then it could be claimed—and indeed at various
points was claimed—by preachers, teachers, mystics, and even writers of
apparently secular works of history or poetry. Theologians had to respond
to powerful assertions of divine inspiration and prophetic authority. Some
of these assertions were external to Christendom, embodied particularly in
the growing confrontations with Islam and its own prophet. More imme-
diately of concern, however, for most Catholic theologians of this period
were claims which they viewed as internal challenges to the unity of the
Church and its institutional structures.
But when scholastic thinkers sought to understand prophecy and to
determine the boundaries of sacred texts and sacred authority, they were
reflecting at the same time on their own growing role as the intellectual
power of Christian society—a power referred to as studium. The role of
studium, of those who have been called ‘medieval intellectuals’,13 was
distinct from—though often intertwined with—the authority of a second
social and ecclesiastical element: the sacramental priesthood and the hier-
archy of bishops, known as sacerdotium.14 Theoretical discussions of
prophecy therefore help reveal the self-conception of medieval theologians.
Significantly, many defenders of institutional unity also claimed the
mantle of the prophet. While keeping other challenges at bay, theologians
began legitimating a moderate form of inspiration that justified their
own studium through ordinary activities such as teaching and preaching,
activities which were often grouped under the name of ‘prophecy’. These
non-predictive prophetic practices fostered new understandings of the
relationship between inspiration and authority. My argument is that, as
theologians attempted to determine the limits of prophetic privilege, and
to shape prophecy for their own purposes, they actually opened space for
claims of divine insight to proliferate in those ordinary functions, and in a
way that went beyond their control. This proliferation, as part of a broad
stream of inspiration, is the central thread of this book.

12
These questions still occupy contemporary theologians. Consider the Second Vatican
Council’s debate over whether revelation had closed with the apostles, discussed in
N. C. Hvidt, Christian Prophecy (Oxford, 2007), pp. 3–6, 17–18, 204–5.
13
See J. Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, trans. T. Fagan (Cambridge, MA, 1993);
and A. Boureau, ‘Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, 1957–95’, in M. Rubin (ed.), The Work
of Jacques Le Goff and the Challenges of Medieval History (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 145–55.
14
Studium and sacerdotium were part of what by the thirteenth century was a standard
division of powers, the third of which was political—regnum: H. Grundmann, ‘Sacerdo-
tium – Regnum – Studium: Zur Wertung der Wissenschaft im 13. Jahrhundert’, in Archiv
für Kulturgeschichte, 34 (1951–52), pp. 5–21.
 Introduction 5

II.

The relationship of sacred to secular, the nature of religious inspiration,

and of the claims to authority that flow from it—all these are still relevant
issues, but modern scholars have only lately come to recognize the
importance of medieval prophecy for understanding them more deeply.
Marjorie Reeves’s and Robert Lerner’s studies of predictive or apocalyptic
prophecy helped to reveal its considerable role in the Middle Ages,15 but
despite (or perhaps because of) prophecy’s centrality, scholars of medieval
intellectual and cultural history have yet to document comprehensively
its complexities, or medieval thinkers’ attempts to confront those com-
plexities.16 The significance of Joachim of Fiore’s eschatological prophecy
has been well established, yet the crowning of Joachim as a paradigmatic
prophetic figure has also thrown into shadow a great deal of what was
considered prophecy in the Middle Ages. Indifference to the future
mattered as much as fascination with it.
Historians of medieval sanctity have been among the most attentive to
the implications of prophecy’s variety.17 Claudio Leonardi in particular
has emphasized that the fluidity of prophetic categories could serve
to break down traditional polarizations such as ‘popular’ and ‘official’
sanctity.18 Nonetheless, Leonardi sees prophecy as ‘critical of power’, a
definition rooted in Max Weber’s model of the prophet as an extraordin-
ary individual whose charismatic leadership is ultimately turned by priests
into institutional routine, a model which usually places the ‘prophetic’ on
the side of the reformer in opposition to established ways.19 Yet, prophecy

15
Reeves, Influence of Prophecy; Lerner, The Powers of Prophecy (Berkeley, CA, 1983).
16
Thus, Bertrand Taithe and Tim Thornton acknowledge medieval prophecy’s ‘multi-
farious’ meanings but focus on political prediction: ‘The Language of History: Past and
Future in Prophecy’, in B. Taithe and T. Thornton (eds), Prophecy: The Power of Inspired
Language in History, 1300–2000 (Stroud, 1997), pp. 1–2. Political prophecy is also
the subject of L. Coote (ed.), Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England
(York, 2000).
17
e.g., in André Vauchez’s Saints, prophètes et visionnaires (Paris, 1999).
18
C. Leonardi, ‘Committenze agiografiche nel Trecento’, in V. Moleta (ed.), Patronage
and Public in the Trecento (Florence, 1986), p. 38. Leonardi considers this binary to be a
weakness in Vauchez’s account. Some literary scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries have also explored discourse where the prophet does not predict but rather speaks
on God’s behalf: D. Watt, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early
Modern England (Woodbridge, 1997); and M. Bose, ‘Complaint, Prophecy, and Pastoral
Care in the Fifteenth Century: Thomas Gascoigne’s Liber Veritatum’, in C. Gunn and
C. Innes-Parker (eds), Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care (Woodbridge, 2009),
pp. 149–62.
19
‘Committenze agiografiche’, p. 38. Leonardi’s focus is on ‘political’ prophecy, by
which he means inspired saints such as Catherine of Siena seeking to effect practical action.
6 Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages
became the common currency for all sorts of theoretically opposed
categories: not only ‘official’ and ‘popular’, or ‘intellectual’ and ‘mystic’, but
also ‘institutional’ and ‘reformist’. Not all medieval prophets were critical
of power.
Prophecy was indeed a common currency, but this also led to argu-
ments which could pit competing groups against each other, often in
unequal ways. Controversies, for instance, over women as preachers,
prophets, and priests emerged during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
precisely because the parameters of sacramental, revelatory, and intellec-
tual power were up for debate.20 Although the focus of my study is not
specifically on debates about gender, I draw on them where they inform
more general discussions of inspiration and authority. There are also ways
in which the wider transformations described in this book can provide
context for those controversies. Wendy Anderson has already pointed
towards at least one area where this may be useful: the ‘discernment of
spirits’, part of a process used by theologians to assess the sanctity of
allegedly inspired women.21 As Anderson has recently insisted, the central
issue in debates about discernment of spirits is not gender per se but
authority.22 Understanding how the parameters of sacred authority devel-
oped thus becomes crucial.

III.

This book begins with the early twelfth century and ends with the early
fourteenth. This diachronic approach is necessary to understand crucial

For Weber’s account, see The Sociology of Religion, trans. E. Fischoff (Boston, 1963),
chs. 4–5. The Weberian usage of ‘prophetic’ can also be seen in, e.g., John O’Malley’s
archetypal ‘prophetic culture’, ‘the culture of alienation, of protest’: Four Cultures of the
West (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 6–7.
20
See J. Coakley, ‘Women’s Textual Authority and the Collaboration of Clerics’,
in A. J. Minnis and R. Voaden (eds), Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition,
c.1100–c.1500 (Turnhout, 2010), p. 83; and A. J. Minnis, ‘De impedimento sexus: Women’s
Bodies and Medieval Impediments to Female Ordination’, in P. Biller and A. J. Minnis
(eds), Medieval Theology and the Natural Body (Rochester, NY, 1997), pp. 109–39.
21
Important works on the topic include D. Elliott, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality
and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 2004), and N. Caciola,
Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2003).
22
The Discernment of Spirits: Assessing Visions and Visionaries in the Late Middle Ages
(Tübingen, 2011), pp. 5–7. Anderson is critical, for instance, of Caciola’s approach in
Discerning Spirits, with its focus on a ‘practice of institutional mistrust’ (p. 1), and of both
Elliott and Caciola for assuming that any discussion of ‘discernment’ relates to the
repression of women, when in fact ‘discernment’ was used with regard to men as well.
 Introduction 7
aspects of change (and stasis) within notions of prophetic inspiration,
particularly because so much reflection on prophecy occurs in works of
exegesis or scholastic treatises, where subtle variations may reveal their
full implications only gradually. At the same time, I integrate close readings
of influential texts with attention to wider contemporaneous social and
cultural developments.23 My argument, furthermore, depends on the diffu-
sion of ideas beyond a small spectrum of learned thinkers, and so I also
highlight less academic sources that helped this transmission. I am not setting
out, however, to document all serious reflections on prophecy at the time;
their number is vast. But I will draw out particular threads which reveal
some of the most important effects of this period’s debates over inspiration.
There are several reasons for beginning with the twelfth century. First of
all, the late fourteenth century has become a focal point for scholarly
examinations of prophecy,24 but this has also obscured the complexity of
medieval inspiration. The fourteenth century is when debates about divine
revelation became more explicitly gendered and more closely bound up
with concerns about demonic influence.25 By looking first to the twelfth
century, a more varied story of prophecy and inspiration can be con-
sidered: which paths were taken, and, just as significantly, which were not,
which elements were combined, and which were not. The twelfth century
was the beginning of real theological interest in and reflection on proph-
ecy, for reasons discussed later in this Introduction. Accompanying this
interest was a growth in historical consciousness and an expanding interest
in discerning the lineaments of sacred (and secular) history.26 At the same
time, the discipline of academic theology was emerging, as was greater

23
In particular, I am guided by Caroline Walker Bynum’s insight that scholastic
discussions, rather than debates in the abstract, are often attempts to find pragmatic
solutions to pressing issues: The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity,
200–1336 (New York, 1995), p. 137.
24
e.g. for Elliott (Proving Woman), Caciola (Discerning Spirits), Leonardi (‘Commit-
tenze agiografiche’), and Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. J. Birrell
(New York, 1997).
25
Anderson argues that scholarly discussions of discernment of spirits proceed from
flawed assumptions that the concept is the same from the patristic period onward; to begin
with the fourteenth century, she says, conceals ‘multiplicity’: Discernment, pp. 5–11.
On prophecy and the demonic, see A. Boureau, Satan the Heretic, trans. T. Fagan
(Chicago, 2006).
26
On twelfth-century historical awareness, see P. Classen, ‘Res Gestae, Universal
History, Apocalypse’, in RRTC, pp. 387–417.
27
On theology in the twelfth century, see G. R. Evans, Old Arts and New Theology
(Oxford, 1980); on proofs of sanctity, see A. Kleinberg, ‘Proving Saints: Selection and
Authentication of Saints in the Later Middle Ages’, Viator, 20 (1989), pp. 188–9; on
miracles, see B. Ward, ‘Miracles in the Middle Ages’, in G. Twelftree (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Miracles (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 155–6.
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firmly set jaw and the tightly closed lips that seemed sealed with bitterness
and were always ready to jeer, though they could never smile.

"He that increases knowledge increases sorrow," Dio recalled

Tammuzadad's words as she looked at that face. "To know all is to despise
all," it seemed to say, "not to curse, but merely to despise in secret, to spew
out of one's mouth." If a very courageous man firmly determined on suicide
had drunk poison and then calmly awaited death, his face would wear the
same expression.

Merira came of a very old family of the Heliopolis priests of the Sun.
He had once been the favourite pupil of Ptamose and an ardent devotee of
Amon; but he gave up the old faith and worshipped Aton. The king was
very fond of him. "You alone have followed my teaching, no one else has,"
he said, when he conferred on Merira the rank of high priest.

Merira came in while the king was sitting on the floor and the poodle,
Dang, with its paws on his shoulders, was licking his face and the
princesses were laughing and shouting.

"Abby has kissed Dang! Doggie has made friends with the king."

Merira probably failed to notice the queen and stopped in the doorway
looking intently at the king. The queen, bending slightly forward and
craning her neck, looked at Merira as intently as he did at the king.

"Merira, Merira!" she cried suddenly and there was fear in her eyes.
"Why do you look at the king like that, do you want to cast a spell over
him?" she laughed, but there was fear in her laughter.

He slowly turned to her and made the low ceremonial bow, bending
down from his waist and stretching out his hands, palms upwards.

"Rejoice, queen Nefertiti, the delight of the Sun's delights! I have come
to call the king to the Council. It seems I have come at the wrong moment."

"Why wrong? Go and tell the king."

 Merira went up to the players. Laughter died down. The king jumped up
and looked at him with a guilty smile.

"What is it, Merira?"

"Nothing, sire. You were pleased to call the Council for to-day."

"Oh yes, the Council! I had forgotten..... Well, let us go, let us go!" he
hurried.

The bandage he had round his eyes during the game was dangling on his
neck; he tried to pull it off, but could not—it got tied into a knot. Ankhi
went up to him, undid the knot and took off the bandage, while Rita—
Meritatona—put on his head the royal tiara he had taken off for the game.

The girls' faces fell. The poodle slightly growled at Merira and the
dwarf made funny and frightful faces at him behind the king's back. It was
as though a shadow had come upon everything and the sun had grown dim
and looked like a 'fish's eye.'

As the king walked past the queen and Dio he looked at them dejectedly
and resignedly like a schoolboy going to a dull lesson.

Dio glanced at the queen.

"Yes, follow him," she said, and Dio followed the king.

He looked round at her with a grateful smile and Merira looked at them
both with his usual mute derision.

VII
 he three walked into the Council Chamber. The dignitaries
had long been gathered there waiting for the king. When
he passed by them they prostrated themselves, sniffed the
ground under his feet and, raising their shaven, egg-shaped
heads stretched out their hands palms upwards, saying:

"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"

Tuta, as usual, surpassed them all.

"My king, my god, who hast made me, grant me to enjoy the sight of
thy face forever!" he exclaimed, rolling his eyes so ecstatically that
everyone envied him.

The king sat down in his chair on a low alabaster platform between four
pillars. Dio stood behind him with the fan.

All looked at her curiously. She felt she was already regarded as the
king's mistress; she flushed and looked down.

A bodyguard of Hittite amazons stood in the depths of the many pillared

room. The dignitaries sat on their heels in a semicircle on mats on the floor;
only three sat on folding chairs: Tuta, Merira, and the commander-in-chief
and king's vizier, Ramose, a heavy fat old man of seventy, with a red puffy
face, like an old woman's, a courtly smile on his lips and small eyes lost in
fat, very kind and intelligent.

Grandson of General Amenemheb, fellow-soldier of the great Tutmose

the Third, the Conqueror, he had covered himself with glory in the different
campaigns he led against the wild tribes of Kush and the Sinai nomads. He
had been promoted to the rank of Vizier under King Amenhotep the Third,
Akhnaton's father, and the people were fond of him and called him 'a just
man.' He would have given his life for the king, but he regarded the new
faith in Aton and the betrayal of the old gods as madness and disaster. "The
best and most unfortunate of kings," he used to say about Akhnaton, "he is
ruining himself and his kingdom for nothing."
 The sitting of the Council began. The king listened to the officials'
reports about the failure of crops, famine, rebellions, brigandage, robberies,
bribe-taking, secessions of provincial governors and feuds between them.

Standing slightly on one side Dio could see his face. He listened with
his head bent and his face seemed expressionless.

The chief of the guards, Mahu, reported on the last rising—the one in
Thebes.

"Very likely nothing would have happened had not the Lybian
mercenaries joined the rebels," he said in conclusion.

"And why did they join them?" the king asked.

"Because their salary was not paid in time."

"And why was it not paid?"

"At the prince Viceroy's orders."

The king looked at Tuta.

"Why did you do it?"

"I have laid the king's yoke upon my neck and here I bear it," Tuta
began, wondering what kind of answer he had better give: he understood
that someone had informed against him. "If I go up to heaven or come
down to earth my life is always in thy right hand, O King! I look here and I
look there and I see no light; I look upon thee, my king, my sun, and
behold, here is light! A brick may move from under other bricks in a wall
but I shall not move from under the feet of my king, my god...."

"Make haste and tell me why you did it," the king interrupted him
impatiently.

"There was no money to buy bread for the starving and so I borrowed it
from the Lybians' salary."
 The king said nothing, but gave him such a look that Tuta lowered his
eyes.

"How many killed?" asked the king, turning to Mahu again.

"Less than a hundred," he answered.

He knew that more than two thousand had been killed, but, exchanging
glances with Ramose, understood that the truth should not be told: the king
would be unhappy and perhaps fall ill and nothing would be gained by it—
everything would remain as before.

"A hundred people!" the king whispered, bending his head still lower.
"Well, you won't have long now....."

"Not long to do what, sire?" Ramose asked.

"To kill people in my name!" the king answered and then asked, after a
pause: "Is there a letter from Ribaddi?"

"Yes, there is."

"Show it me."

"I cannot, sire, it is an unseemly letter."

"Never mind, show it."

Ramose gave him the letter. The king read it first to himself and then
aloud so calmly that it might have been written about someone else:

"Ribaddi, Viceroy of the King of Egypt in Canaan, thus speaks to the

King: for ten years I have been sending to thee for help but thou hast not
helped me. Now Azini, an Amorite, a traitor, has risen against thee and
gone over to the king of the Hittites. And they have gathered together
chariots and men to conquer Canaan. The enemy is at my gates, to-
morrow they will enter and kill me and throw my body to the dogs. Well
does the King of Egypt reward his faithful servants! May the gods do the
 same unto thee as thou hast done unto me. My blood is on thy head,
traitor!"

"How dares this dead dog insult our god-king!" Tuta said, with
indignation.

The king looked at him again, and he subsided.

"Has Ribaddi perished?" the king asked.

"He has," Ramose answered. "He threw himself on his sword so as not
to fall into the enemies' hands alive."

"What will happen now, Ramose?"

"Why, this, sire: the king of the Hittites will have Canaan; the thieves
will undermine the wall and enter the house. We were for four hundred
years under the yoke of the nomads, and we may be for another four
hundred under the yoke of the Hittites. Your great-grandfather, Tutmose the
Great, made Egypt the head of all nations and we were the light of the
world and now this light is no more...."

"What are we to do then, Ramose?"

"You know yourself, king."

"Begin war?" the king asked.

Ramose made no answer; he knew that the king would perish and ruin
his kingdom rather than begin war.

The king was silent, too; he seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he raised
his head and said:

"I cannot!"

He paused again, thinking, and repeated:

 "I cannot; no, I cannot! 'Peace, peace to the far and the near,' says my
heavenly father, Aton. 'Peace is better than war; let there be no war, let there
be peace!' This is all I know, all I have, Ramose. If you take this from me,
there will be nothing left: I shall be destitute, naked, dead. Better kill me
outright!"

He spoke simply and quietly; but Dio's heart throbbed again as on the
day before in the joy of the heavenly dream. She suddenly recalled the huge
pale phantom of Cheop's pyramid shimmering in the rosy sunlight mist over
the yellow sands of the desert: the perfect triangles—"I began to be as one
god, but three gods were in Me," in the words of the ancient wisdom—
divine triangles getting narrower and narrower, more and more pointed as
they rose to heaven and in the very last point the same frenzied ecstacy as in
Akhnaton's quiet word 'Peace'!

"O, how sweet is thy teaching, Uaenra," Tuta thrust himself forward
again—like the poodle Dang licking the king in the face. "You are the
second Osiris, conquering the world by peace and not by sword. If you say
to the water 'let there be peace'—there shall be peace."

"Listen, Ramose," the king began, "I am not such a scoundrel as

Ribaddi thought, and I am not such a fool as Tuta takes me to be...."

The poodle Dang got a flip on the nose: he was alarmed and upset. But
he was soon comforted by Ay—an old dignitary with intelligent, cold and
cynical eyes, who sat next to him.

"Don't bother, it isn't worth it," he whispered in Tuta's ear. "You see he
is playing the fool again, the crazy saint!"

"I am not such a fool as Tuta thinks," the king went on. "I know there
will be no peace on earth for a long time to come. There will be endless
war, and the longer it goes on the fiercer it will be: 'all will be killing each
other' as the ancient prophecy says. There has been a flood of water—there
is going to be one of blood. But even so, even so, let men know that there
has been in the world a man who said 'peace'!"

He suddenly turned to Merira.

 "What do you think, Merira? Why do you smile?"

"I think, sire, that what you say is good, but it is not all. God is not only
peace...."

He spoke slowly, with an effort, as though thinking of something else.—

"But also what?" the king said to help him.

"Also war."

"What are you saying, my friend? War is not of God, but of the devil."

"Yes, of God, too. Two sides of the triangle meet at one point: day and
night, mercy and wrath, peace and war, Son and Father—all the opposites
are in God...."

"Is the Son against the Father?" the king asked and his hand that was
holding the arm of the chair trembled slightly.

Merira raised his eyes to him and smiled so strangely that Dio thought
'madman!' But he looked down again at once and his face turned to stone,
grew heavy with a stony heaviness.

"Why do you ask me?" he answered calmly. "You know it all better than
I, Uaenra: does not the Son know the Father? God is the measure of all
things. I say it not to you but to others: seek for measure in everything—in
peace as in the sword."

"Quite so! Quite so!" Ramose cried. "I am no friend of yours, Merira,
but for this saying I am ready to bow down at your feet—it couldn't be said
better!"

"Why are you so pleased with it?" the king asked, looking at Ramose in
surprise. "What he says is very dreadful."

"Yes, dreadful, but necessary," Ramose answered. "Ankh-em-Maat,

You-Who-live-in-Truth, you want to lift truth up to heaven and spread it
throughout the earth; but men are weak, stupid and wicked. Be merciful to
them, O King, don't ask too much of them. If you fix a ladder for them they
will climb up, but if you say 'fly,' they will fly headlong into the pit. There
is no getting on with mercy only: our mercy merely smooths the way for
evildoers. We talk much and we do little, but believe an old man like me:
nothing in the world is more wicked than empty good words, nothing more
vile than empty noble words."

"Are you speaking of me, Ramose?" the king asked, with a kind smile.

"No, not of you, Uaenra, but of those who demand a miracle of you and
do not stir a finger themselves. For twenty years I have served faithfully the
king, your father, and you; I have never told lies and I am not going to now.
Things are going ill in your whole kingdom, they are going very ill, O
King! We say 'peace,' but there is war, we say 'love,' but there is hatred, we
say 'light,' but there is darkness instead."

He got up heavily, fell at the king's feet and wept: "Have pity, sire; have
mercy! Save yourself, save Egypt, take up the sword for right and justice.
And if you do not want to do it, I don't want to see you ruin yourself and
your kingdom any more. Let me retire, I am old and want a rest!"

The king bent down to him and lifting him up embraced and kissed him
on the lips.

"No my friend, I will not let you go, and you would not go yourself—
you are fond of me... Bear up a little longer, the time is getting short—I
shall soon go myself," he whispered in his ear.

"Go where? Where?" Ramose asked with prophetic terror.

"Don't speak, don't ask, you will soon know everything!" the king
answered and got up, showing that the Council was over.

VIII
 eaving the Council Chamber, they went to the Beggars'
Court. Telling the courtiers to go on, the king lagged
behind so as to remain alone with Dio. Passing through a
number of rooms they came into a small hothouse garden
where incense trees brought from the far-away Punt, the
land of the gods, grew in pots of earthenware, like huge
heather plants fine as cobweb, dropping amber rosin tears in the warm
sunshine.

The king sank down on a bench and sat for some minutes in silence
without moving. He seemed to have forgotten Dio's presence, but suddenly
he looked at her and said:

"Shame! Shame! Shame! You have looked enough at my shame, go

away!"

Dio knelt down before him.

"No, sire, I will not go away from you. As the Lord lives and as my soul
lives, whither my king goes, to shame or to honour, there will his servant go
also."

"You have seen me put to shame once, now you will see it again. Let us
go," the king said, getting up.

They entered the Beggars Court.

Three times in the year—when the Nile overflowed, at seed time, and at
harvest—the palace gates were opened to all; every beggar could go in
freely, merely giving his name to Mahu, the chief of the guards. Tables with
bread, meat and beer were placed in the courtyard: everyone could eat and
drink his fill. It was there that the king received petitions and heard
complaints.

During the first years of Akhnaton's reign these feasts were more
frequent. "Let every ninth day of the month be a day for beggars," it said in
the king's decree. Governors of provinces were on that day to distribute to
the hungry corn from the king's granaries "for the cry of the needy has come
up unto heaven and our heart is sore." "Amon is the god of the rich and
Aton the god of the poor," the king preached. "Woe unto you, you sleek and
rich who acquire house after house and field after field, so that there is no
room on the earth left for others! Your hands are full of blood. Wash,
cleanse yourselves, learn to do good. Save the oppressed, defend the
orphan, protect the widow. Provide bread for the hungry, water for the
thirsty, clothes for the naked, shelter for the homeless, smiles for the
weeping. Undo the bondsmen's yoke and set the slaves free: then shall your
light shine in darkness and your night shall be as midday!"

"Ankh-em-maat, You-Who-live-in-Truth," the king's disciples said to

him, "you will make the poor equal with the rich, will efface the boundaries
between fields as the river flood effaces them. You are a multitude of Niles,
flooding the earth with the waters of inexhaustible love!"

The king had invented a dangerous game of throwing gold to the

beggars like fire into straw. For many years Mahu, the chief of the guards,
had saved the situation: collecting trustworthy people from among the
palace servants he dressed them up as beggars and promised the well-
behaved a fair share of the spoils and the unruly—the lash; and all had gone
well. The king was short-sighted; from the High Place where he sat while
throwing the gold money rings into the crowd, he could not recognize the
faces below.

But someone informed against Mahu. The king was very angry and
nearly dismissed him from his post; and next time Mahu had to admit real,
not dressed up beggars. Then there was trouble: no sooner did the rain of
gold begin to fall than people grew savage, a free fight began and a whole
detachment of armed soldiers had difficulty in quieting the crowd. There
were three killed and many wounded. The king fell ill with grief, gold
rained no more, but food was still given away and petitions received.

The Beggars Court was a large quadrangle paved with slabs of alabaster
and surrounded by two storeys of pillared arcades. At one end of it was the
High Place—the king's tabernacle. A wide, gradually ascending staircase of
alabaster led to it. The goddess, Nekhbet, the Falcon Sun-mother, with a
white head and a red, scaly body, was soaring above the tabernacle holding
a golden ring—the royal globe, in its claws. "As the mother comforts her
children so will I comfort you," the king, son of the Sun, said to the
sorrowful children of the earth.

"Down! down! down! the king comes! The god comes!" the runners
cried and the whole crowd in the court prostrated themselves, crying out:

"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"

Besides beggars and petitioners there were, in the crowd, many sick,
blind, halt and lame, because people believed that everyone who touched
the king's clothes or upon whom his shadow fell was healed.

"Defend us, save us, have mercy, O Lord!" they called to him, like the
souls in hell to the god who came down to them.

The king ascended the steps to the tabernacle and sat on his throne. Dio
stood behind him with the fan.

The guards admitted the petitioners through a narrow passage between

two low walls of stone along the foot of the stairs. Two Nubian soldiers
with naked swords guarded the door in the middle of the wall adjoining the
staircase. Approaching this door every petitioner prostrated himself, sniffed
the ground, placed a wooden or a clay tablet with his petition on the bottom
step of the stairs, where there was a heap of them already, and passed on.

Everyone was admitted into the Court, but a special permit was required
for entering the passage leading to the king's tabernacle. Mahu, the chief of
the guards, watched over everything.

Suddenly there was a disturbance. A petitioner tried to get through the

little door. The soldiers crossed their swords in front of him but he went
straight ahead, stretching his arm towards the king and screaming as though
he were being cut to pieces:

"Defend, save, have mercy, Joy of the Sun!"

Not daring to kill a man before the king, the soldiers lifted their swords
and the man, flattening himself on the ground and wriggling like an eel,
crept between them and began crawling up the stairs. Mahu rushed at him
and seized him by the collar, but the man wriggled out and went on
screaming and crawling towards the king.

Mahu made a sign to the lancers of the bodyguard who stood two in a
row, along the stairs. They closed their ranks and lowered their spears. But
the man crawled on.

At the same moment a frenzied scream was heard:

"Let him through! Let him through!"

The squealing, breathless scream like that of a woman in hysterics or of

a child in a fit was so strange that Dio did not recognize the king's voice.
With a distorted face he jumped up and stamped with both feet, as the little
girls had done when they played blind man's buff to the sound of the
threshing song. And the ringing cry went on:

"Let him through! Let him through!"

Mahu made another sign to the lancers and they lifted their spears,
making way. The man crawled between them and advanced almost as far as
the top landing where the king's tabernacle stood. He raised his head and
Dio recognised the long red curls, the red goat's beard, the prominent ears,
hooked nose, thick lips and burning eyes of Issachar, son of Hamuel.

The king was quiet now and, bending forward, looked straight into
Issachar's eyes intently and, as it were, greedily, just as Issachar looked at
him.

"Your servant has a secret message for you, sire!" Issachar whispered.

"Speak, I listen."

"No, for you, for you alone."

"Leave us alone," the king said to the dignitaries who stood on the
landing.
 All withdrew except Dio who hid behind the corner of the tabernacle.

Some three or four steps separated Issachar from the king. "I know who
you are! I know!" he said, crawling up and looking straight into the king's
eyes, with the same intent, eager look. "Sun's joy, Sun's Only Son,
Akhnaton Uaenra, Son of the living God!"

Suddenly he jumped up and drew a knife from his belt. But before he
had time to raise it Dio darted forward and seized him by the hand. He
pushed her so that she fell on her knees but jumped up again, not letting go
of his hand, and screening the king with her body. An unendurably burning
chill pierced her shoulder. She heard shouts, saw people running and fell on
the ground with the last thought: 'he will kill him!'

IX

aradise gardens of Maru-Aton—the Precincts of the Sun

—were situated south of the city, where the rocks of the
hilly desert were close to the river.

The sweet breath of the north wind could be felt even

on the hottest days under the shade of the evergreen
palms and cedars laden with the fragrance of incense. Each tree was planted
in a hole dug in the sand, filled with the Nile black earth and surrounded by
a ridge of bricks to prevent water running away.

Everywhere there were flower-beds, ponds, islands, bridges, arbours,

chapels, summer houses of light transparent lattice-work magnificently
painted and gilded like jewel boxes.

The king often came here to rest from the noise of the city in the
stillness of paradise.
 Dio spent three months here recovering from her wound. Issachar hit
her with the knife just above her left breast. It was a dangerous wound: had
the knife gone in deeper it would have touched the heart. During the first
few days she suffered from fever and delirium.

She fancied she was lying on the funeral pyre as then, in the island of
Crete after killing the god Bull; the sacrificial knife pierced her heart; the
flames burnt her but through their heat she felt a heavenly freshness: Merira
was the flame and Tammuzadad—the freshness.

Or she saw a fiery red goat grazing on the green meadows of paradise;
the grass turned coal-black at his touch and red sparks flitted about it; and
again—Tamu was the green grass and Merira—the sparks.

Or it was a rich old Sidonian merchant unfolding before her among the
booths of the Knossos harbour magnificent stuff, red shot with green;
winking slyly he praised his goods: "a true robe of Baal! A mine of silver
per cubit is my last price." And, once more, the red shade was Merira, the
green—Tammuzadad.

Or, the real Merira was taking her into the holy of holies of Aton's
temple, as he really had done, three days before Issachar's attack on the
king; she did not want to go in, knowing that no one but the king and the
high priest were supposed to do so, but Merira reassured her, saying, "Yes,
with me you may!" And, taking her by the hand, he led her in. In the dim
light of sanctuary lamps the bas-relief of the Sphinx seemed a pale
phantom: a lion's body and legs, human arms and head and an inexpressibly
strange, fine, birdlike face—old, ancient, eternal. "If a man had suffered for
a thousand years in hell and then came to earth again, he would have a face
like that," Merira whispered in her ear. "Who is he?" she tried to recognize
him and could not; and then, suddenly, she knew him and woke up with a
cry of unearthly horror: 'Akhnaton'!

The king's physician, Pentu, treated her so cleverly that she was soon
better. But the unwearying care of the queen did her more good perhaps
than any medicine. The queen nursed Dio as though she had been her own
daughter; she never left her, spent sleepless nights beside her though she
herself was far from well: she had a cough and every evening there was an
ominous red flush in her cheeks.

Each time that Dio saw the wan, beautiful face bending over her, the
face of one who had also received a mortal wound, she felt like bursting
into tears.

She learned from the queen what happened in the Beggars Court after
Issachar had struck her and she fell down senseless.

"God has saved the king by a miracle!" everyone said. The assassin had
raised his knife to strike him when some dreadful vision appeared before
him; the knife dropped out of his hand and he fell at the king's feet. The
king, thinking that Dio was killed, bent over her and embraced her with a
cry so terrible that only then they understood how much he loved her. He
would not leave her, but at last Pentu, the physician, assured him that Dio
was alive and he got up, covered with her blood.

"You are now related by blood both to him and to me," the queen said,
smiling through tears.

Some of the bodyguards rushed at Issachar, intending to kill him on the

spot, but the others saved him at the orders of Mahu and Ramose; only
these two had kept their presence of mind amidst the general confusion and
remembered that, before putting the criminal to death, they ought to find
out from him whether he had any accomplices. Issachar was taken to the
prison and cross-examined, but he said very little; he did not give anyone
away and only confessed that when he raised the knife to strike the king he
had a vision. He would not say what the vision was and only muttered to
himself something in the Jewish language about their King-Messiah and
repeated senseless words "they shall look on Him whom they pierced." But
he would not explain who was pierced and then grew silent altogether.

Torture was forbidden by royal decree in the holy province of Aton, yet
considering the importance of the occasion they had recourse to it all the
same. But neither antelope lashes nor hippopotamus scourges could untie
Issachar's tongue. Mahu and Ramose had to give him up at last.
 On that same night he was taken ill with something like brain fever—or
pretended to be. Fearing that the criminal might die before the execution
Ramose hastened to ask the king for a death penalty had been abolished in
Aton's province. And when Ramose suggested that the criminal should be
moved to some other province and executed there, the king smiled and said,
shrugging his shoulders: "there is no deceiving God, my friend! This man
wanted to kill me here—and here he must be judged."—"Not judged, but
pardoned," Ramose understood and was indignant; he decided to put
Issachar to death secretly by the hands of the gaolers. But he did not
succeed in this either: the old gaolers were replaced by the new who had
received strict orders to preserve the prisoner's life.

Issachar soon recovered from his real, or pretended, illness. The king
who had had an epileptic fit after Issachar's attack on him and was still far
from well, visited the prisoner and had a long peaceful talk almost alone
with him: the guards stood at a distance; and a few days later it appeared
that the prisoner had escaped.

The three elder princesses, Maki, Rita and Ankhi, helped the queen to
nurse Dio; it was from them she heard of the city rumour about the king
having himself helped Issachar to escape; it was said that the man had not
gone far but was hiding somewhere in the town waiting, perhaps, for a new
opportunity to take the king's life.

"The king has now shamed the faces of all his faithful servants because
he loves those who hate him and hates those who love him!" Ramose cried
when he heard of Issachar's escape, and he recalled the words of old
Amenhotep the Wise, the tutor and namesake of the king's father: "if you
want to please the gods, sire, and to cleanse Egypt from corruption, drive
away all the Jews!"

"The darling Hippopotamus is right," Ankhi concluded—she called

Ramose 'hippopotamus' because of his being so stout—and suddenly she
clenched her fists and stamped almost crying with anger. "Shame, shame
upon all of us that the vile Jew has been spared!"

Dio made no answer, but the thought flashed through her mind "we are
related by blood now, but blood, both his own and other people's is like
water to him!" And though she immediately felt ashamed of this thought a
trace of it remained in her mind.

The king often came to Maru-Aton, but the queen seldom allowed him
to see Dio, especially during the first, difficult days: she knew he was not
clever with the sick. His conversations with Dio were strangely trivial.

"Why is it I keep talking of trifles?" he wondered one day, left alone

with her. "Is it that I am growing stupid? You know, Dio, sometimes I am
awfully stupid, ridiculously so. It must be because of my illness...."

He paused and then added, with the childishly timid, apologetic smile
that always wrung her heart: "The worst of it is that I sometimes make the
most sacred things foolish and ridiculous: like a thief stealing and
desecrating that which is holy...."

"Why do you talk like this?" Dio cried, indignantly.

"There, forgive me, I won't.... What is it I was going to say? Oh, yes,
about Issachar. It wasn't out of foolishness I pardoned him. He is a very
good man...."

The queen came in and the conversation dropped. Dio was glad: her
heart was throbbing as though Issachar's knife had once more been thrust
into the wound.

By the month of Paonzu, March-April, she was almost well though still
weak.

The first time she went into the garden she was surprised to see that the
hot summer came straight after the winter: there was no trace of spring.

Strange longing came upon her during those hot days of delusive
southern spring. "He who drinks water out of the Nile forgets his native
land," the Egyptians said. She fancied she, too, had forgotten it. What was
this longing then? "It's nothing," she tried to comfort herself, "it's simply
foolishness, the result of illness, as with the king. It will pass off." But it did
not.

In the gardens of Maru-Aton by the big pond opposite the women's

quarters where Dio lived, a rare tree, hardly ever seen in Egypt, was planted
—a silver birch, graceful and slender, like a girl of thirteen. It had been
brought as a present to Princess Makitatona from Thracia, the land of
Midnight. The princess was very fond of it; she looked after it herself,
watered it and kept the ground around it well dug, covering it with fresh
Nile black earth.

Dio, too, grew fond of the birch tree. Every day she watched its buds
swell and sticky, greenish yellow leaves, crumpled like the face of a new-
born baby, open out; she kissed them and, sniffing them with her eyes
closed, fancied that every moment she would hear the call of the cuckoo
and smell the melting snow and lilies of the valley as in her native woods at
home on Mount Ida—smell the real spring of her own native land.

When flocks of cranes flew northwards, with their melancholy call, she
stretched out her arms to them: would that she, too, were flying with them!
Looking at the ever blue, lifeless sky she longed for the living clouds she
knew so well. Putting her ear to a shell, she eagerly listened to its roar, that
was like the roar of sea waves; she dreamt of the sea in her sleep and wept.
One day she sniffed a new sponge Zenra had just bought and almost cried in
reality.

She had a Cretan amethyst, a present from her mother, with a fine
design upon it: bare willows in a flooded meadow all bent to one side by the
wind, a tumble-down old fence with poles sticking out, the ripple of autumn
rain on the water: everything dull and wretched and yet she would have
given her very soul to see it all again. But she knew she would never see it,
she would never go home—she would not want to herself. Was this,
perhaps, why she longed for it so? Thus the radiant shades in paradise may
be longing for this gloomy earth.
 One early morning she sat by Maki's birch tree, listening to the wailing
of the shepherd's pipe in the hills above Maru-Aton. She knew both the
song and the singer: the song was about the dead god Tammuz and the
singer was Engur, son of Nurdahan, a Babylonian shepherd, an old servant
of Tammuzadad, brought by her to Egypt from the island of Crete.

The sounds of the pipe fell sadly and monotonously, sound after sound
like tear after tear.
"The wail is raised for Tammuz far away,
The mother-goat and the kid are slain,
The mother-sheep and the lamb are slain,
The wail is raised for the beloved Son."

Dio listened and it seemed to her that in this song the whole creation
was weeping for the Son who is to come, but still tarries "how long, how
long, O Lord?"

Nothing stirred and complete stillness reigned everywhere; only the air,
in spite of the early hour, was simmering with heat over the sandy paths of
the garden and flowing in streams like molten glass.

Suddenly a fan-like leaf at the top of a palm moved as though coming to

life, then another and a third. There was a gust of wind, hot as from an
oven; the sand on the paths rose up like smoke; the light grew dim; the sky
turned dark and yellowish in an extraordinary, incredible way: it might be
the end of the world; the whole garden rustled and groaned in the sudden
whirlwind. It was dark as night.

Dio ran home. The wind almost knocked her off her feet, burned her
face, blinded her with sand. Her breath failed her, her temples throbbed, her
legs gave way under her. It was not twenty paces to the house but she felt
she would fall exhausted before she got there.

"Make haste, make haste, dear!" Zenra shouted to her from the steps;
seizing Dio by the hand she dragged her into the entry, and with difficulty
shutting the door in the tearing wind, bolted it fast.
 "What is it, nurse?" Dio asked.

"Sheheb, a plague of Set," the old woman answered in a whisper,

putting the palms of both hands to her forehead as in prayer.

Sheheb, the south-east wind, blows from the Arabian desert. Fiery
clouds of sand, thrown up by the whirlwind, fall slanting upon the ground
with the noise of hail. The sun turns crimson, then dark like an ember. At
midday lamps have to be lit. Neither men nor animals can breathe in the
black stuffy darkness; plants perish. The whirlwind never lasts more than an
hour; if it lasted longer everything would be burned up as with fire.

In the fiery darkness of the Sheheb Dio lay on her couch like one dead.
The wind howled outside and the whole house shook as though it would
fall. Someone seemed to be knocking and throwing handfuls of sand at the
closed shutters, the flame of the lamp flickered in the wind that penetrated
through the walls.

The door opened suddenly and someone came in.

"Zenra, is it you?" Dio called.

There was no answer. Somebody approached the couch. Dio recognized

Tammuzadad and was not frightened or surprised, she seemed to have
expected him. He bent over her and smiled; no, it was not Tamu, but
Merira. She looked closely and % again it was Tamu and then Merira again;
first it was one then another; they interchanged and merged into one another
like the two colours of a shot material. He bent down still lower, looked into
her eyes as though asking a question. She knew that if she answered 'no'
with her eyes only he would go away; but she closed her eyes without
speaking. He lay down beside her and embraced her. She lay like one dead.

When he had gone away she thought "I will go and hang myself." But
she went on lying quite still. She may have dropped asleep and by the time
she woke up the Sheheb was over, the sky was clear and the flame of the
lamp looked pale. Zenra came in and Dio understood that it had been
delirium.
 After the Sheheb the weather freshened. The sweet breath of the north
wind could be felt in the shade of the evergreen palms and cedars fragrant
like a censer of incense. Only at times a smell of carrion came from the
direction of Sheol and then Dio thought of her Sheheb nightmare. It was the
last attack of her illness. The wound healed so completely that the only
trace left of it was a pale pink scar on the dark skin, and Dio was quite well.

The king had once given her a beautiful scroll of papyrus, yellowish like
old ivory, smoothed to perfection with wild boar's tooth, fine, strong,
imperishable.

Papyrus was expensive and only used for the most important records;
everything else was written on clay or wooden tablets, flat white stones or
fragments of broken earthenware.

Dio had been wondering for some time what would be good enough to
write on this scroll; at last she thought of something.

All the king's teaching was given by word of mouth; he never wrote
down anything himself and did not allow others to do so. "To write," he
used to say, "is to kill the word."

"It will all be lost, it will vanish like a footprint on the sand," Dio often
thought sorrowfully, and at last she decided: "I will write down on the
papyrus the king's teaching; I will not disobey him: no one living now shall
see the scroll; but when I have finished writing I will bury it in the ground;
perhaps in ages to come men will discover it and read it."

She carried out her plan.

In secret from all she worked night after night, sitting on the floor in
front of a low desk with a sloping board for the papyrus, tracing upon it,
with the sharpened end of a reed, close columns of hieroglyphics,
abbreviated into shorthand, and covering each column with cedar varnish
which made the writing indelible.
 Words of wisdom of King Akhnaton Uaenra Neferheperura—Sun's
joy, Sun's beautiful essence, Sun's only Son—heard and written down by
Dio, daughter of Aridoel, a Cretan, priestess of the Great Mother.

The King says:

"Aton, the face of god, the disc of the sun, is the visible image of the
invisible God. To reveal to men the hidden one is everything.

"My grandfather, Prince Tutmose, was hunting once in the desert of

the Pyramids; he was tired, lay down and dropped asleep at the foot of
the great Sphinx which, in those days, was buried in the sands. The
Sphinx appeared to him in a dream and said "I am your father, Aton; I
will make you king if you dig me out of the sands." The prince did so,
and I am doing so, too: I dig the living God out of the dead sands—dead
hearts."

The King says:

"There are three substances in God: Zatut—Rays, Neferu—Beauty,

—Merita—Love; the Disc of the Sun, Light and Warmth; Father, Son,
Mother."

"The symbol of Aton, the disc of the sun with three rays like hands,
stretched downwards is clear to all men—to the wise and to the
children."

"The remedy from death is not ointments for the dead, balsam, salt,
resin or saltpetre, but mercy and love. Have mercy upon one another, O
people, have mercy upon one another and you shall never see death!"

The King said to the malefactor who attempted his life, Issachar the
Israelite: "your God sacrifices all to Himself and mine sacrifices Himself
for all."

The King says:

"The way they break granite in the quarries of Egypt is this: they
make a hole in the stone, drive a wooden wedge into it, moisten it with
water and the wood, as it swells out, breaks the stone. I, too, am such a
wedge."

"The Egyptians have an image of Osiris-Set, god-devil, with two

heads on one body, as it were, twins grown together. I want to cut them
in two."
 "The deadness of Egypt is the perfect equilibrium of the scales. I
want to disturb it."

"How little I have done! I have lifted the coffin-lid over Egypt and I
know, when I am gone, the lid will be shut down again. But the signal
has been given to future ages!"

"When I was about eight I saw one day the soldiers piling up before
the King, my father, the cut-off hands of enemies killed in battle, and I
fainted with the smell of corruption. When I think of war I always recall
this smell."

"On the wall of the Charuk palace, near Thebes, where I spent my
childhood, there was a mural painting of a naval battle between the
Cretans and the Egyptians; the enemies' ships were going down, the men
drowning and the Egyptians were stretching out to them poles, sticks,
oars, saving their enemies. I remember someone laughed looking at the
painting: 'One wouldn't find such fools anywhere except in Egypt!' I did
not know what to answer and perhaps I do not know now, but I am glad
to be living in the land of such fools!"

"The greatest of the kings of Egypt, Amenemhet, had it written on

his tomb:

In my reign men lived in peace and mercy

Arrows and swords lay idle in my reign."

"The god rejoices when he goes into battle and sees blood" is said in
the inscription of King Tutmose the Third, the Conqueror, to the god
Amon. Amon is the god of war, Aton the god of peace. One must choose
between them. I have chosen."

"There will be war so long as there are many peoples and many gods;
but when there is one God and one mankind, there will be peace."

"We Egyptians despise the Jews, but maybe they know more about
the Son than we do: we say about Him 'He was' and they say He is to
come.'"

The king said to me alone and told me not to repeat it to anyone:

 "I am the joy of the Sun, Akhnaton? No, not joy as yet, but sorrow;
not the light, but the shadow of the sun that is to rise—the Son!"

Dio wrote down many other words of the king in her scroll and she
finished with the hymn to Aton:

The Song of King Akhnaton Uaenra Neferheperura to Aton, the

living and only God.

If my scroll is ever found by you, men of the ages to come, pray for
me in gratitude for having preserved this song for you, the sweetest of all
the songs of the Lord, that at the everlasting supper I may eat bread with
my beloved King Akhnaton, the messenger of the rising sun—the Son.

Glorious is thy rising in the east

Lord and giver of life, Aton!
When thou risest in the sky
Thou fillest the earth with thy beauty.
Thy rays embrace all created things,
Thou hast carried them all away captive.
Thou bindest them by thy love.
Thou art far but thy rays are on earth,
Thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.
When thou settest in the west
Men lie in the darkness like the dead.
Their heads are wrapped up, their nostrils stopped
Stolen are all their things that are under their heads
While they know it not.
Lions come forth from their dens,
Serpents creep from out their holes:
The Creator has gone to rest and the world is dumb.

Thou risest and bright is the earth

Thou sendest forth thy rays and the darkness flees.
Men rise, bathe their limbs, take their clothing,
Their arms are uplifted in prayer.

And in all the world they do their work.

All cattle graze in pastures green,
All plants are growing in the fields,
The birds are flying over their nests,
And lift their wings like hands in prayer.
Lambs leap and dance upon their feet,
All winged things fly gaily round.
They all live in thy life, O Lord!

The boats sail up and down the river,

Every highway is open because thou hast dawned.
The fish in the river leap up before thee
And thy rays are in the midst of the great sea.

Thou createst the man-child in woman,

And makest the seed in man,
Givest life to the child in its mother's womb,
Soothing it that it may not weep
Ere its own mother can soothe it.

When the chicken cries in the egg-shell,

Thou givest it breath to preserve it alive
And the strength to break the shell.
It comes forth from the egg and staggers,
But with its voice it calls to thee.
How manifold are thy works, O Lord!
They are hidden from us, Thou only God whose power no
other possesses!
Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire,
While thou wast alone in eternity,
Thou didst create man and the beasts of the field,
All the creatures that are upon the earth,
And fly with their wings on high.
 Thou didst create Syria, Nubia and Egypt,
Setting every man in his place.
Giving him all that he needs,
His measure of food and his measure of days.
Their tongues are diverse in speech,
Their forms are diverse and their skins,
For Thou, divider, hast divided the peoples.

Thou makest the Nile in the nether world

To fill with goods thy people here;
Thou hast set a Nile up in the sky,
That its waters may fall down in floods,
Giving drink to wild beasts on the hills,
And refreshing the fields and the meadows.
How excellent are thy works, O Lord!
The Nile in heaven is for the strangers,
And the Nile from the nether world is for Egypt.

Thou feedest each plant as thine own child,

Thou makest the seasons for all thy creatures:
The winter to bring them coolness
And the summer to bring them heat.

Thou didst create the distant heavens

In order to behold all that Thou didst make.
Thou comest, thou goest, thou comest back
And Greatest out of thyself, the Only One,
Thousands upon thousands of forms:
Cities, towns and villages
On highways and on rivers.
All eyes see thy eternal sun.
When thou hast risen they live, when thou settest they die,
When thou didst establish the earth
Thou didst reveal thy will to me,
Thy Son, Akhnaton, who lives for ever and proceeds from thee,
And to thy beloved daughter,
 Nefertiti, the delight of the Sun's delights.
Who flourishes for ever and ever.
Thou, Father, art in my heart
And there's no other that knows thee,
Only I know thee, thy son,
Akhnaton Uaenra,
Joy of the Sun, Sun's only son!"

When she had finished writing, Dio put the scroll inside an earthenware
vessel, sealed it with a leaden seal with the sun disc of Aton and, as soon as
it was dark, took a spade and went to Maki's birch tree by the big pond in
the garden.

The fiery whirlwind of Sheheb had withered the tree, the blackened
leaves were rolled up into little tubes, but the roots were alive. Maki dug it
out to move it to a new hole with fresh earth in it, but she probably had not
had time to finish her work before night: the tree lay near the hole.

Dio dug the hole deeper, put the earthenware pot into it, covered it with
earth and levelled it.

A white rose was blooming close by in a flowerbed by the pond. In the

stillness of the April night glowworms flitted about like sparks. One of them
burrowed its way into the rose, and the flower seemed to have a heart of
fire.

Dio went up to it, kissed it and thought:

"If some day men read my writing, they will connect Akhnaton with
Dio. I shall be in him as this flame is in the flower."

X
 he whip cracked, the horses dashed forward, the feathers
on their manes swayed, snowflakes of foam dropped off
their bridles, and the chariot flew like a whirlwind. The air
whistled in the ears; the lion's tail fixed to the king's belt at
the back and the crimson ribbons of his robe fluttered in
the wind. The king was driving; Dio stood behind him.

They passed the palm groves and the fields of ripe, yellow corn, taller
than the height of man; the Nile glittered for the last time in the distance
and the menacing silence of the endless desert, now dark brown, now
sparkling like glass, enveloped them.

As she looked through her lashes at the shining snake-like sandy roads,
flattened by heavy traffic, Dio recalled the thin layer of ice over the thawing
snow sparkling in the sun on Mount Dicte. The dazzling air was
shimmering with the heat. A vulture hung motionless in the dark blue sky.
At times the shadow of a passing cloud ran over the ground and, still
quicker, an antelope galloped past; suddenly it would stop and, stretching
out its neck, sniff the air and then run on, light as the wind.

The sun was setting when the wayfarers saw on a high rock of the
Arabian hills a boundary-stone of the province of Aton.

The images of King Akhnaton and Queen Nefertiti, cut out in the rock
at a height where only the wind, the sun and the eagles could reach them,
were half-covered, as though buried alive, by the waves of drifting sands.
The only way to reach the bas-reliefs was to descend by a rope down a
perpendicular rock; and evidently this was what some enemy of Aton's faith
had done, for the images were broken and defiled.

The king stepped out of the chariot. The long black shadow cast by his
figure upon the white sand seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth.

There was a clatter of hoofs. The high-priest, Merira, and the chief of
the guards, Mahu, drove up.

"If I could only find the scoundrels, I would kill them on the spot!"
Mahu cried indignantly, when he saw the desecrated images.
 "Come, come, my friend," said the king, with a smile. "The sands will
bury them anyway—there will be nothing left."

Mahu went to make arrangements for the night: the king wished to sleep
in the desert.

Close by there was a mountain gorge, dark and narrow like a coffin,
where tombs had been cut in the rock for the princesses. Hard by an old fig-
tree made an unfading patch of green against the dead sand, and a
sweetbrier flowered, fragrant with the scent of honey and roses: the secret
water of an underground spring kept them fresh.

The king, accompanied by Dio and Merira, went down into the gorge to
see the tombs.

When they had finished they walked up the slope of the hill by a narrow
jackals' path, talking.

"Is the decree concerning the gods ready, Merira?" the king asked.

Dio understood that he meant the decree prohibiting the worship of all
the old gods.

"It is ready," Merira answered, "but do think before you proclaim it,
sire."

"Think of what?"

"Of not losing your kingdom."

The king looked at him intently, without speaking, and then asked
again:

"And what ought I to do, my friend, not to lose my kingdom?"

"I have told you many times, Uaenra: be merciful to yourself and
others."

"To myself and others? Can one do both?"