The Book of Love (45 page)

One of Conn’s men came to advise Matilda that his captain was last seen heading for the chapel. She noticed that Conn was spending a lot of time in there since the massacres in Mantua. As Matilda reached the chapel, the door was ajar and she was able to see that Conn was on his
knees in prayer, before the Libro Rosso and beside the Master. She watched quietly, waiting until both men appeared to be stirring to rise before entering the room.

The Master had to be ancient at this time in his long life, and yet he did not look so very much different than he did when Matilda first met him as a child. He appeared tired and perhaps a bit worn, but he was in remarkably good physical form for a man of his advanced age. And nothing of the years impacted his spirit, or his mind.

“Come in, my dearest child, come in.”

Matilda entered her chapel, bending her knee to the beautiful life-sized statues of Jesus and his most beloved, Maria Magdalena, before reaching up to kiss the Master on his scarred cheek. She glanced up at Conn, who was looking sheepish, as if he had been caught doing something that was somehow inappropriate and definitely embarrassing.

“My two favorite men in the world.” Matilda smiled, adding with a note beyond curiosity in her voice, “But what on earth could they possibly be doing together?” She knew there was some planning unfolding here—she just wasn’t sure what it was.

The Master looked at Conn, who turned a shade of red that matched Matilda’s hair. “Before I tell you the decision that the Master has come to, and I with him, I need to tell you a story, little sister.”

It was just like Conn to have a story when times were toughest, so Matilda wasn’t surprised at this answer, but she had an inkling that this would be a tale unlike any other he had ever told. The Master excused himself and left the pair of them to the chapel and the stories that it contained.

After nearly twenty years of secrecy, the man named after the ancient Celtic warrior, Conn of the Hundred Battles, told Matilda the story of his long journey to a new life in Tuscany.

Conn, who was born and christened Conchobar Padraic McMahon in the province of Connacht, left the west of Ireland as a boy of fifteen summers after an invasion by the Northmen had brutalized his village.
He had willingly entered a monastery three years prior and was committed to the study of language and religion. He loved it, lived for it, and as he was one of seven sons, Conn’s vocation as a monk had been accepted readily by his father, who now had one less child to worry about. As it happened, when the Northmen invaded, Conn was on a supply mission to a monastery further north up the river in Galway to gather more ink and parchment for the manuscripts that the novices were learning to illuminate. He was out of harm’s way when the vicious storm blew in from Scandinavia.

While the majority of Vikings had been driven from Ireland by the great king Brian Boru in 1014, there were still scattered regions where the violent warriors of the north would come to raid. They most often struck the richer communities along the rivers, as they not only possessed the greatest spoils but also provided the easiest escape routes for the narrow and swift Viking ships. It was one of these raids along the River Shannon that had razed Conn’s hometown and led to the brutal deaths of most of the villagers, including his parents, sisters, and brothers.

The monastery where Conn lived was looted and burned to the ground; the gentle and learned brothers who had become his second family were hacked to pieces. Conn was now truly an orphan. Worse, he could not bear the sight of his desecrated village and violated monastery. He buried his family and his brother monks with his own hands over the next days, then set out with a determination to leave Ireland. He could no longer remain in a place where such violence was a daily possibility, when all he craved was solitude and learning.

Remembering happier days with the brothers, Conn’s thoughts turned to a visiting monk who had come from Gaul. The monk was the most learned man Conn had ever met. He was fascinating and full of wisdom. He was also very gentle and loving, unusual qualities in a scholar. Conn loved all the brothers at the monastery, even the stringent abbot who beat him periodically when he was caught delving into the Celtic pagan mythologies that were preserved in the library. But this French monk was the first truly holy man Conn believed he had
ever met. The monk, who told Conn that he had no name, talked of his education in a place called Chartres, where there was a school of the spirit unlike any other on earth. When the elder monks were long in their beds, Conn would stay up and listen to the Frenchman speak in terms that were clearly heretical. And yet he wasn’t shocked by the stranger’s point of view. He was fascinated, recognizing a strange truth in the startling perspective, and each revelation left him hungering for more information.

The visitor told Conn of the man called Fulbert, who was the bishop of Chartres as well as the force behind the great school associated with the cathedral. When a tragic and possibly intentional fire burned part of the cathedral to the ground in 1020, it was Fulbert who rebuilt it in a solid, traditional Romanesque style. He took great care to hire the finest craftsmen, focusing on the sacred crypt under the cathedral. The crypt covered a primeval well—said to be the holiest on the planet—and the sanctified pear-wood carving of Notre Dame, called Our Lady Under the Earth. Fulbert protected and preserved all these items with utmost care.

The French monk spoke of the teachings of the great Greeks, specifically of Plato and Socrates, and of a teaching method called
dialectic
, which was one of the acknowledged liberal arts. Dialectic was the method of civilized argument, and it was through this teaching that men were made to think and thoroughly analyze a proposition and a counterproposition. It was through this dialectic teaching that Fulbert’s greatest student emerged, the man who would be known to history as Berengar of Tours. While Berengar would eventually inherit the leadership of the Chartres school at the passing of his mentor, Fulbert, it was his vitriolic battle with the Church that made him infamous. Berengar proposed an opposition to the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Church’s belief that the sacramental bread and wine of the Eucharist physically becomes the body and blood of Christ once it is consecrated. He put forth that this was meant to be a spiritual concept rather than a physical one, citing earliest Church fathers and a “mysterious ancient text” to lend credence to his argument.

It was the secret and mysterious text, which the monk referred to as the Book of Love, that obsessed the young Conn as he listened to the Frenchman’s stories. The brother whispered for Conn’s ears alone that this great book had been written in the hand of the Lord himself and brought to France by Maria Magdalena following the crucifixion. It was her descendants who had protected the teachings that came from it through the millennium. But the religious climate in France was changing, becoming less tolerant and more dogmatic, and these secret truth teachings were suddenly dangerous. Followers of the Book of Love, the pure Christians who would become known as the Cathars, were forced underground and found secret ways to carry on their teachings. It was through Neoplatonism and the revival of Greek philosophy and dialogues that the heretical teachings continued in the region of La Beauce. Many of the more controversial principles from early Christianity were re-dressed in Greek thought so that they could be argued as scholarship rather than heresy.

It was in one of these dialogues that Berengar of Tours first raised the challenge to transubstantiation. Explaining this to Conn, the monk quietly imparted a teaching from the Book of Love, reciting from this heretical document:

Conn was transfixed. While the verses were undoubtedly heretical, they were also beautiful. And most of all, it simply made sense to him that Jesus was possibly using the flesh and blood, the bread and wine, as metaphors.

The Church, however, did not find this perspective beautiful in the least. The outcry from within France and subsequently Rome very nearly destroyed Berengar, who was imprisoned by the French king for his heresy and spent the remainder of his life in a constant struggle with Church authority.

Conn dreamed of the day that he could meet more men like this French monk and his extraordinary teachers, who challenged everything in the name of truth and wisdom. He vowed that one day he would see this school for himself, and it was this that he was determined to accomplish following the Viking massacre. Perhaps he would find the peace that he sought in the school at Chartres.

The young Conn traveled south and sold the costly ink and paper to a monastery outside Tralee. With the money he bought his way aboard a ship sailing to the place of the Normans in Gaul. From there he would make his way to Chartres, either by horse or by foot. He prayed for God to forgive him for using the monastery’s supplies to support himself, but he had no other means at the moment and he pledged to do good works as his penance. Thus he arrived at his destination, on the doorstep of Fulbert’s cathedral, recently reconstructed over the damaged ninth-century edifice—itself constructed over a site considered to be holy ground for thousands of years.

Conn studied at Chartres for nearly ten years, applying his naturally swift intellect to becoming expert in Neoplatonism, Greek language and thought, all aspects of religious theory and doctrine, and European history. But it was the heresy that reached into his spirit and took root. It was the teachings from the Book of Love that became Conn’s raison d’être. These teachings were not offered to everyone. They were part of the mystery school that was attached to the formal cathedral school. One had to earn admission into the mystery school through good works and strong intentions toward wisdom. Conn, an astonishing pupil, became a master of the material in record time.

The associated teachings of the labyrinth were critical to the mystery school of Chartres, and Conn walked the eleven circuits each day before beginning his studies. There was not, at this time, a labyrinth in the cathedral. There was a garden labyrinth built of stones, which was
nonetheless effective. This labyrinth was based on the Solomon design with a rounded center for the initiate to pray in upon arriving in the heart of the circle. It was in the center of this garden labyrinth, in the shadow of Fulbert’s rebuilt structure, that Conn received the vision that would change the course of his life.

It began as a vision of the archangel Michael, the messenger of light who defeats the darkness. Michael carried his flaming sword of truth and righteousness with him as he hovered over the labyrinth and over Conn. The angel reminded him that his name, Micha-El, meant “he who is like God.” Then Conn saw a little girl, perhaps nine or ten years old, with coppery red hair and an extraordinary energy. She was under attack by unseen forces, and Michael swung his sword over the girl’s head to dispel the darkness that threatened to encroach upon the child. He then turned and spoke to Conn.

“Behold, your promise. It was to protect this girl, this daughter of God, above all else and for as long as necessary. You will become her brother and her knight protector, you will be as I am to you, an angel of light that defeats the darkness. But make no mistake, this is a battle of good versus evil, and you will be called upon to fight the evil.

“This child awaits you in Tuscany. Go to where the duke of Lorraine lives in Florence, and there you will find your calling to protect her.”

Conn was dumbfounded. Here was without a doubt a vision of such clarity, such pure message, that he could do nothing but obey it. He had devoted a decade of his life to intensive spiritual training in order to receive just such messages clearly. But the warrior’s life was not for him, surely. While he was strong and athletic, and had already grown into his enormous frame at this stage, he did not desire to be a soldier. Why did God not give him the chance to stay at Chartres and ultimately become a teacher there? Why did he have such desires if it was not his destiny? This was a spiritual crisis for Conn, because the Book of Love teaches that our dreams as humans are not accidental, they are not random. They are our soul’s means of reminding us what we are here to do to fulfill our promise to God. Then why did he crave the solitude and peace of the school when he was told that his calling
was war? Why did he love Chartres beyond all reason and want nothing more than to live and die in the shadow of the blessed cathedral and its wisdom school?

It would take Conn many years to understand the answer completely, and this in itself was a critical piece of the teaching. For it is true that we often discover meanings and reasons for things many years after they mattered quite so much to us.

Conn had made a promise to his Lord, and he intended to keep it. But before he could be worthy of defending this petite princess, he would need to hone his warrior skills. Thus it was that Conn became a mercenary, hiring himself out across Europe to gain skill and experience from the greatest captains on the continent. It was after he had earned the nickname “of the Hundred Battles” that he determined he was ready to find Matilda in Florence. Taking a commission with Duke Godfrey, Conn bided his time, watching the petite countess surreptitiously until the day that Godfrey sought him out and requested that he become her weapons master.

Tears streamed down Conn’s face as he told Matilda how much he loved her, how she was truly his sister of the heart and spirit and that defending her was the most sacred and honorable duty he could have asked for. And then he told her the rest, and she realized the reason for his tears.