The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

When the procession, at the passage of which the crowd prostrated itself religiously, completed the circuit of the church, the papal footmen who bore the banners grouped them as trophies upon the main altar, before which the stretcher, covered with gold cloth, the bull, and the big coffer were processionally borne. The Apostolic Commissioner with the cross of red wood in his hand placed himself near the coffer; the penitentiaries ranked themselves in front of several confessionals that were set up for the occasion near the choir, and all of which bore the pontifical arms.

The excitement and curiosity awakened by the procession together with the peals of the organ and the chant of the priests excited a considerable agitation in the church. By degrees quiet was restored, the kneeling faithful rose again to their feet, and all eyes turned impatiently towards the choir. Hervé, who had been one of the first to prostrate himself, was among the last to rise; the lad was a prey to profound agony; perspiration bathed his now livid face; he was hardly able to breathe. Turning his wandering eyes towards Fra Girard, he said to the monk in broken accents:

"Oh, if I only can rely upon your promises! The moment has arrived when I must believe. I tremble!"

"Oh, man of little faith!" answered the Franciscan with severity and pointing to the papal commissioner, who was preparing to speak; "listen – and repent that you doubted. Ask God to pardon you."

The silence became profound; the dealer in indulgences deftly rolled up the sleeves of his robe, just as a juggler in the market would have done in order not to be hindered in the tumultuous motions of his performance, and pointing to the red cross which he placed beside him, he cried in a stentorian voice fit to make the glass windows of the building rattle:

"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen!5 You see this cross, my beloved brothers? Well, this cross is as efficacious as the cross of Jesus Christ! You will ask me, How so? My answer is that this is, so to speak, the symbol of the indulgences that our Holy Father has commissioned me to dispense. But what are these indulgences? you will then ask? What they are, my brothers? They are the most precious gift, the most miraculous, the most wonderful that the Lord has ever bestowed upon His faithful! Therefore, I say unto you – Come, come to me; I shall give you letters furnished with the seal of our Holy Father, and thanks to these letters, my brothers – would you believe it? – not only will the sins that you have committed be pardoned, but they will give you absolution for the sins that you desire to commit!"

"Did you hear that?" Fra Girard whispered to Hervé. "One can obtain absolution both for the sins that he has committed, and for the sins that he intends to commit!"

"But – there – are – things – crimes and outrages," stammered Hervé with secret horror, "that, may be, one can not obtain absolution for! Oh, woe is me! I feel myself sliding down a fatal slope!

"Listen," replied the Franciscan, "listen to the end; you will then understand."

The mass of people that were crowded in the church received with indescribable signs of satisfaction the words uttered by the Dominican seller of indulgences; especially did those whose purses were well lined hail with delight the prospect of their salvation if they but took the precaution of equipping themselves in advance with an absolution that embraced the past, the present and the future. The Apostolic Commissioner observed the magic effect that his words produced; in a jovial and familiar tone he proceeded to harangue the audience amidst violent contortions of both face and limbs:

"Now, let us have a heart-to-heart talk, my brothers; let us reason together. Let us suppose that you wish to undertake a voyage into some strange country that is infested with thieves; fearing that you will be rifled of all that you carry about you before you attain the end of your journey, you do not wish to take your money with you. What do you do? You take your money to a banker, do you not? You allow him a slight profit, and he furnishes you with a draft, by means of which the money that you deposited with him is paid over to you in the strange country, upon your arrival there. Do you understand me well, my beloved brothers?"

"Yes," answered several of the faithful; "we understand – proceed with your discourse."

"Miserable sinners!" replied the Dominican suddenly changing his jovial tone into a thundering voice. "Miserable sinners! You understand me, say you? and yet you hesitate to buy from me for the small price of a few crowns a draft of salvation! What! Despite all the sins that you may render yourselves guilty of during the voyage of life, infested as that road is with diabolical temptations that are infinitely more dangerous than thieves, this draft will be paid to you in paradise in the divine money of eternal salvation by the Almighty, upon whom we, the bankers of souls, have drawn in your name – and yet you hesitate to insure to yourselves at so small a cost your share of the celestial enjoyments reserved for the blissful! No! No! You will not hesitate, my brothers! You will buy my indulgences!" the Dominican now proceeded to say with a resumption of familiar and even paternal solicitude. "Nor is this all, my brothers; my indulgences do not save the living only, they redeem the dead! Aye, the dead, be they even as hardened as Lucifer himself! But, you may ask, how can your indulgences deliver the dead?" cried the merchant of salvation again shouting at the top of his voice, "How will my indulgences save the dead? Can it be that you do not hear the voices of your parents, your friends, even of strangers to you – but what does that matter, seeing that you are Christians? – can it be that you do not hear their frightful concert of maledictions, of groans, of gnashing of teeth which rises from the bottom of the abyss of fire, where those poor souls are writhing in the furnace of purgatory – where they writhe, waiting for the mercy of God or the pious works of man to deliver them from their dreadful tortures? Can it be that you do not hear those miserable sinners, the piteous meanings of those unhappy people, who from the bottom of the yawning gulf where the flames are devouring them cry out to you: 'Oh, ye stony hearts! we are enduring frightful torture! An alms would deliver us! You can give it! Will you refuse to give it?' Will you refuse, my brothers? No! I know you will give the alms. I know you will give it when you consider that the very instant your gold crowns drop into this trunk," (pointing to it) "crack – psitt – the soul pops out of purgatory and flies into heaven like a dove liberated from its cage! Amen! Empty your purses, empty your purses, my friends!"

The majority of the audience before the Dominican seemed little concerned about the deliverance of souls in pain. However blind their superstitious belief, it had a certain charitable side, but that side had no attraction whatever for the faithful ones who were attracted only by the expectation of being able, by means of indulgences, to give a loose, in perfect security of conscience, to whatever excesses or crimes they had in mind.

A man with a gallows-bird face named Pichrocholle, one of the Mauvais-Garçons who hired out their homicidal daggers to the highest bidder, said in a low voice to a Tire-Laine, another bandit, and one of the worst of his kind:

"As truly as the Franc-Taupin whom I was speaking about to you a short time ago saved my life at the battle of Marignan, I would not give six silver sous for the redemption of the souls in purgatory! Oh, if I only were rich enough to purchase a good letter of absolution – 'sdeath! – I would pay for it gladly and spot-cash, too! Once the papal absolution is in your pocket, your hand is firmer at its work; it does not tremble when dispatching your man! With an absolution duly executed, you can defy the fork of Satan on the Judgment Day. But by St. Cadouin, what do I care for the souls in purgatory! I laugh at their deliverance! And you, Grippe-Minaud?"

"I confess," answered the Tire-Laine, "I bother as little about the souls in purgatory as about an empty purse. But tell me, Pichrocholle," added Grippe-Minaud with a pensive air, "letters of absolution are too dear for poor devils like ourselves – suppose we stole one of those blessed letters from the commissioner, would the theft be a sin?"

"'Sdeath! How could it be? Does it not give absolution in advance? But those jewels are kept too safely to be pilfered."

While the Mauvais-Garçon and the Tire-Laine were exchanging these observations, the Apostolic Commissioner rolled his sleeves still higher, and continued his sermon, interspersing his words with smiles or violent gestures according as the occasion demanded:

"But, my brothers, you will say to me: You puff your indulgences a good deal; nevertheless there are such frightful crimes, crimes that are so abominable, so monstrous that your indulgences could never reach them! You are mistaken, my brothers. No! A thousand times no! My indulgences are so good, they are so sure, they are so efficacious, so powerful that they absolve everything – yes, everything! Do you want an example? Let us suppose an impossible thing – let us suppose that someone were to rape the holy Mother of God – an abominable act of sacrilege!"6

A long murmur expressive of dreadful suspense and hope received these last words of the trafficker in indulgences; a boundless horizon was opened for all manner of the blackest and most unheard-of felonies. Among others in the crowd, Hervé remained hanging upon the lips of the Dominican; the lad was seized with dizziness; he imagined himself oppressed by a nightmare. The hollow-sounding voice of Fra Girard awoke him to reality. With a triumphant accent the Franciscan whispered to his disciple:

"An insult to the Mother of God herself would be pardoned! Even such a crime would be reached by an indulgence! Did you hear him? Did you? An indulgence would cover even that!"

A tremor ran through Hervé from head to foot; he made no answer, hid his face in his hands, and feeling himself reel like an intoxicated man and even his knees to yield under him, the lad found himself obliged to lean upon the arms of the Franciscan, who contemplated him with an expression of infernal joy.

The merchant of indulgences had paused for a moment upon uttering his abominable supposition in order the better to assure himself of its effect; he then proceeded in a stentorian voice:

"You tremble, my brothers! So much the better! That proves that you appreciate in the fulness of its horror the sacrilege which I cited as an example! Now, then, the more horrible the sacrilege, all the more sovereign is the virtue of my indulgences, seeing that they give absolution therefor! Yes, my brothers, whatever the sacrilege that you may commit, you will be pardoned – provided you pay for it – provided you pay bountifully for it! That is clearer than day! Our Lord God will have no power over you, he ceases to be God, having assigned His pardoning power to the Pope. But, you may still ask, why does our Holy Father so bountifully distribute the boon of his indulgences? Why?" repeated the Dominican in a voice of deep lament; "why? Alas! alas! alas! my brothers, it is in order to be enabled, thanks to the returns from the sales of these indulgences, to rebuild the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome with such splendor that there is none to match it in the world. Indeed, none other must be like that basilica, which contains the sacred bodies of the two apostles! And this notwithstanding – would you believe it, my brothers? – the Cathedral of Rome is in such a state of dilapidation that the holy bones, the sacrosanct bones of St. Peter and St. Paul are so constantly exposed to the peltings of rain and hail, they are so soiled and dishonored by dust and vermin that they are falling to pieces!"

A shudder of painful indignation ran over the faithful crowd assembled before the Dominican when thus informed that the relics of the apostles were exposed to the inclemencies of the weather and the soilure of vermin as a result of the dilapidated state of the Basilica of Rome, while, since then, the most marvelous monument of architecture that immortalizes the genius of Michael Angelo, was reared to the admiration of the world. Perceiving the effect made by his peroration, the Dominican proceeded in a thundering voice:

"No, my brothers! No! The sacred ashes of the apostles shall no longer remain in dirt and disgrace! No! Indulgence has set up its throne in the Church of St. Dominic!" and pointing to the large coffer and beating with his fists a tattoo upon the lid, the Apostolic Commissioner added with the roar of a bull: "Now, bring your money! Bring it, good people! Bring plenty! I shall put you the example of charity. I consecrate this gold piece to the redemption of souls in purgatory!"

And pulling out of his pocket a half ducat which he held up glistening to the eyes of the crowd, he dropped it into the coffer through the slit in the lid, upon which he continued to strike with his fists, keeping time to his words as he cried:

"Fetch your money! Fetch it, good people! Fetch your ducats!"

The front ranks of the crowd broke in response to the summons of the trafficker in indulgences and hastened to empty their purses. But the Dominican held back the surging crowd with a gesture of his hand and said:

"One more word, my dear brothers! Do you see these confessionals decorated with the armorial bearings of the Holy Father? The priests who will take your confessions represent the apostolic penitentiaries of Rome on the occasions of grand jubilees. All those who wish to participate in the three principal indulgences will proceed to these confessionals and will conscientiously notify the confessor of the amount of money that they are disposed to deprive themselves of in order to obtain the following favors:

"The first is the absolute remission of all sins – past, present and future.

"The second is freedom from participation in the works of the Holy Church, such as fasts, prayers, pilgrimages and macerations of all nature.

"The third – listen carefully, my brothers, pay particular attention to the last words, as the saying is – this indulgence exceeds all that the most faithful believers can wish for!"

"Listen," whispered Fra Girard to Hervé; "listen, and repent your having doubted the resources of the faith."

"Oh, I doubt no longer, and yet I hardly dare to hope," murmured the son of Christian with bated breath, while the Dominican proceeded to announce aloud:

"The third favor, my brothers, gives you the right to choose a confessor, who, every time that you fear you are about to die, will be bound – by virtue of the letter of absolution that you will have purchased and which you will display before him – to give you absolution not only for your ordinary sins, but also for those greater crimes the remission of which is reserved to the apostolic See, to wit, bestiality, the crime against nature, parricide and incest."

The Dominican had hardly pronounced these words when Hervé's features became frightful to behold. The lad's eyes shot fire, and a smile of the damned curled his lips as Fra Girard stooped down to him and whispered in his ear:

"Did I deceive you? The indulgence is absolute, even for incest."

"Finally, my brothers," the Apostolic Commissioner proceeded to say, "the fourth favor consists in redeeming souls from purgatory. For this favor, my brothers, it is not necessary, as for the three first ones, to be contrite of heart and to confess. No, no! It is enough if you drop your offerings in this coffer. You will thereby snatch the souls of the dead from the tortures that they are undergoing; and you will be moreover contributing towards the holy work of restoring the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome. Now, then, my brothers," he added, thumping anew upon the coffer, "come forward with your money! Come forward with your ducats! Come!"

Upon this last exhortation the railing of the choir was thrown open. The small number of the charitably disposed who wished to deliver the souls in pain began filing before the coffer into which they dropped their offerings after making the sign of the cross; the confessionals, however, in which the pontifical penitentiaries took their seats, ready to issue letters of absolution, were immediately besieged by a mob of men and women, anxious to obtain impunity in the eyes of heaven and of their own conscience for sins ranging from the most venial up to monstrous deeds that cause nature to shudder. It was a frightful sight, the spectacle presented by the mob around these confessionals crowding to the quarry of impunity for crime.

Good God! Your vicars order and exploit the traffic! Behold human conscience upturned, shaken at its very foundation, losing even the sense of discrimination between vice and virtue! The moral sense is perverted, it is smothered by sacrilegious superstition! Mankind is lashed to a vertigo of folly and evil by the assurance of impunity, feeling certain, Oh, God of justice! of having You for an accomplice! Souls, until then innocent, no longer recoil before any passion however execrable, the bare thought of which is a crime! Does not the Pope of Rome absolve for all eternity, in exchange for a few gold crowns, even parricide and incest? If only its faith is strong enough the incestuous or parricidal heart knows, feels itself absolved! Oh, in honor at least to the religious sentiment – the divine gift implanted in man's heart, whatever the dogma may be in which it is wrapped – there are Catholic priests of austere morals who, despite their intolerance, have, in these accursed times, indignantly repudiated the monstrous idolatries and savage fetichism that even ancient paganism knew nothing of! No! No! Christ, your celestial gospel is and will remain the most scathing condemnation of the horrors that are committed in your venerated name. Those papal penitentiaries in the confessionals emblazoned with the pontifical arms, those new dealers in merchandise in the Temple dare to sell for cash patents of salvation! Alas! After a few hurried words exchanged with Fra Girard, Hervé was one of the first to hurry to the confessionals and kneel down; he did not long remain there; those near him heard the papal penitentiary first utter a cry of surprise; silence ensued, broken by the intermittent sobs of the lad; the chinking of the money that was being counted out to the priest in the confessional announced the close of the absolutional conversation. Hervé issued out of the tribunal of penitence holding a parchment with a convulsive clutch, closely followed by Fra Girard; he cleaved the compact mass of people, and withdrew to one of the lateral chapels; there he knelt down before a sanctuary of the Virgin that a lamp illumined, and by its light read the letter of absolution that he had just bought with his father's money. The pontifical letter was couched in the following terms:

May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon you [here followed a blank space into which the name of the owner of the letter was to be inserted]; may He absolve you by the virtue of the Holy Passion. And I, in virtue of the apostolical power in me vested, do hereby absolve you from all ecclesiastical censures, judgments and punishments that you may have deserved; furthermore of all excesses, sins and crimes that you may have committed, however grave and enormous these may be, and whatever the cause thereof, even if such sins and crimes be those reserved to our Holy Father the Pope and to the apostolic See —such as bestiality, the sin against nature, parricide and incest. I hereby efface from you all traces of inability, all the marks of infamy that you may have drawn upon yourself on such occasions; I induct you anew as a participant of the sacraments of the Church; I re-incorporate you in the community of saints; I restore you to the innocence and purity that you were in at the hour of your baptism, so that, at the hour of your death, the door through which one passes to the place of torments and pain shall be closed to you, while on the contrary, the gate that leads to the Paradise of joy shall be wide open to you, and should you not die speedily, Oh, my son! this token of mercy shall remain unalterable until your ultimate end.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen!

BROTHER JOHN TEZEL,Apostolic Commissioner, signed by his own hand.7

Without rising from his knees Hervé frequently interrupted the reading of the document with suppressed signs of pleased and blissful astonishment. The absolution that he was now the owner of extended to the past, it covered the present, it reached the future. As Fra Girard called the purchaser's attention to the fact, the document bore no date and thereby extended the apostolic efficacy over all the sins, all the crimes that the holder of the indulgence might commit to the end of his days. Hervé folded the parchment and inserted it into the scapulary that hung from his neck under his shirt, bowed down till his forehead touched the slab of the floor at the foot of the sanctuary and kissed it devoutly. Alas! The unfortunate lad was sincere in his frightful thankfulness towards the divine power that granted him the remission. His mind being led astray by a detestable influence, he felt himself, he believed himself, absolved of all the wrongs that his delirious imagination raved over. Fra Girard contemplated the prostrate lad with an expression of sinister triumph. The latter suddenly rose and, as if seized with a vertigo, staggered towards the railing of the chapel. The Franciscan held him back by the arm, and pointing at the image of the Virgin, arrayed in a flowing robe of silver cloth studded with pearls, and her head crowned with a golden crown that glistened in the semi-darkness of the dimly-lighted sanctuary, said in a solemn voice:

"Behold the image of the mother of our Savior, and remember the words of the Apostolic Commissioner. Even if the horrible sacrilege that he mentioned were a feasible thing, it could be absolved by the letter that you now own. If that is so, and it may not be doubted, what then becomes of the remorse and the terrors that have assailed you during the last three months? Since the day when, distracted with despair by the discovery of the frightful secret that had lain concealed in the bottom of your heart, you came to me, and yielding, despite yourself, to the irresistible instinct that whispered to you: 'Only in faith will you be healed,' you confessed your trials to me – since that day you have hourly realized that your instinct guided you rightly and that my words were true. To-day you are assured of a place in paradise. Hervé – do you hear me?"

"I hear," and after a moment of pensiveness: "Oh, celestial miracle for which, with my forehead in the dust, I rendered thanks to the mother of our Savior. Yes, since a minute ago, from the moment that I became the owner of this sacred schedule, my conscience has regained its former serenity, my mind is in peace, my heart is full of hope. I now only need to will and to dare – I shall will, I shall dare! Mine is the bliss of paradise!"

Hervé uttered these words with calm conviction. He did not lie. No, his conscience was serene, his mind at peace, his heart full of hope, even the lines on his face seemed suddenly transfigured; their savage and tormented expression made room for a sort of blissful ecstasy, a slight flush again enlivened the cheeks that frequent fasts, macerations and mental conflicts had paled. The monk smiled silently at the metamorphosis; he took Hervé by the arm, walked with him out of the church, and as the two stepped out upon the street said to him:

"You have now entered upon the path of salvation; your faith has been tried – will you still hesitate to join the ranks of the militants, who openly preach and cause this faith to triumph, the miraculous efficacy of which you have yourself experienced this day? Think of the glory of our holy mother the Church."

"Speak not now to me of such things. My thoughts are elsewhere – they are near my sister Hena."

"Very well; but, Hervé, never forget what I have often told you, and that your modesty makes you disregard. Your intelligence is exceptional; your erudition extensive; heaven has endowed you with the precious gift of a persuasive eloquence; the monastic Orders, especially the one to which I belong, I say so in all humility, recruit themselves carefully with young men whose gifts give promise of a brilliant future; this is enough to tell you of what priceless value you would be to our Order; you could make with us a rapid and brilliant career; you might even become the prior of our monastery. But I shall not pursue this subject; you are not listening to me; we shall take up the matter later. Where are you going so fast?"