This week's edition to our Olympia Extracts is a historical mystery called, The Mystery of the Veronese Code By Teresa Ceccacci.
Prologue
The secret harmony “I tell you, if these keep silent, the stones will cry out”
(Luke, from his Gospel)
“I am fave, Martyr, precibus clientum; Instrue et civem; populum tuere; Et sacerdotum pia corda mulce pacis amore. Crimine dempto, animus virescat: Pane coelesti satiemur omnes: Carnis elapsae vitiata membra Spiritus ornet. Non ruinoso perimamur actu, non cibis corpus, vitiisque pressum Non in occultis animus crematura igne malorum. Ut pia tecum, Cucufas beate, Regna coelorum meritis tenentes, Det Deo nostra resonans placentem lingua canorem, Gloriam Patri celebrant honore: Gloriam Nato recinent perenni, Cum quibus sanctus sociatus extat Spiritus unus. Amen.”
Hymns (Patrologia Latina, Vol. 86)
Twelfth century, Spain, The Cloister of Sant Cugat.
The scene was fixed on the chanting of the monks who had their ecstatic gaze turned upward, singing choruses of heavenly melodies to the Lord.
Father Ramon cautiously approached on tiptoe so as not to disturb the brothers who were so intent in their activities so they would not notice his awkward presence. He sat down on the middle of the bench, whose rims were close to the cloister walls almost as if it was encircling and marking the border. He closed his eyes and breathed. He took a deep breath and began to enjoy all the benefits, which the soft chanting infused in him; he took another breath and he seemed to feel a quiver, almost a flickering run down his back. He felt happy but above all, he felt like a winner. He had waited with great patience as one who looks towards a life free from pain and suffering hiding his truths with fear from those who do not know. Therefore, he could finally amuse himself, thoroughly enjoying his efforts with that mocking smile he wore on his face for some time now, as if it was his shadow.
Thoughts swarmed around his temples like flies, taking him back in time to when he came across that dark figure who had appeared out of nowhere, who introduced himself as a simple and pure ‘master-architect of sacred works’. He could hardly believe his eyes, remembering those almost glassy eyes on an angular face with a thick dark beard, which were fixed upon him and which he could almost feel beside him.
The chanting carried him away so that it swept the earth under his feet. For a moment, he staggered, holding himself with his strong arm gripping to the bench, as if he was drunk, pervaded by his purely acoustic and enlightened world.
He was sure to have made the right decision by consigning the cloister renovations to the, as ambiguous as unusual, man in exchange for hospitality and frugal meals. He could never have imagined that behind similar garments was hidden the keenest of beings; “You have been chosen to receive a message.” These were the words of their first encounter and he could not refuse, especially after knowing the truth about everything. He had actively participated in all the reconstruction phases in every stone posing, and he learned of unknown hidden secrets which were untouched and engraved on stone notes which would be forever trapped under the false appearance of those animals and those mythological beings that were now staring at him from above, scrupulously illustrated in the bestiaries; he had wanted them all for himself, to express that heavenly design. They looked so real that fear was instilled.
He had provided the cloister with seventy-two columns arranged in two rows, which surrounded a garden full of all kinds of plants, and along the colonnade, there were centaurs, mermaids, roosters and peacocks chasing an improbable and symbolic tetragram, in which the columns represented the sounds interposed to the pauses dictated by the distances. Nothing was done by chance; every space occupied by every capital in succession of the columns corresponded to a perfect design; those heads or those fantastic elements were the actual results of a precise executed will. By this means, he had purified his spirit, putting it in the Lord’s service, in deep communion with the divine.
That magic would eventually dominate everything. Now he was a part of the universe and, only thanks to his help, everyone could admire and enjoy the result.
The sound produced by the columns represented an inseparable bond between the living and their gods. Sound is the primordial principle of all cosmic phenomena. Those columns constantly sang a hymn, Quad Chorus; he had passionately dedicated to Saint Cacufane who now returned to live again among the faithful after having suffered a cruel fate.
For a moment it seemed that the lion on the capital in front of him, was looking at him proudly and triumphantly, like the sun and its note, FA, the light that shines and marks the beginning of a new day; at his side was the bull, MI, puffing, as to remind him with his combative temper the alternating of the night and somehow of a continuous circle made of conflicts and tensions. Pure matter with all its richness and vital nourishment preserves the spring key. At the coming of the evening, the sun and the lion, won by the night and the victorious bull arrives. To break this crucial moment is the peacock, the bearer of RE, symbol of peaceful balance between the forces.
Father Ramon laughed for the well-done job and meticulously remembered the words of the young man that ensnared him by capturing his attention: “There is a multitude of ways to communicate with those who know just as you know without being considered delirious heretics. Let me explain the flow of time and let it be the works built by you to shout; they must be under the sight of everyone and at the same time conceal their innermost meaning; they represent the tool which calculates every single moment of your life, the lives of all of us with the same precision with which a drop of water falls from the inexorable sky. I will give you proof that these works may indicate the primal forces from which all began, the seasons and equinoxes. Everything has its likeness; in a short time you will be able to master it so well as to become the absolute master; you will be the new guardian.”
He spoke relentlessly while spinning vigorously his rather long arms for his height and shocked him with his design. He did not know where he came from nor why he had been chosen; he was not allowed to ask questions. He could only savour his presence without asking for explanations.
In his capacity as a humble monk he would have wanted to dedicate the church to the saint who died on the 25th of the month when the sun enters the constellation of Leo, offer him a hymn and represent him devotedly in lion form in every corner and stone, in a continuous rising and setting that represented the hour mark and the magical sound. Nothing to object; they had done a commendable job, and now he was fully enjoying it, both in the view and especially in the sound. That figure which at times had seemed essential had come to teach him properly and had appeared out of nowhere and then in nowhere he had vanished without a trace on one warm spring morning.
He recovered from his dark thoughts as if awakened from a long sleep. He walked into the cell with extreme calmness, eager to admire once again the supreme bearer of his sacrifices. He opened a chest at the foot of his bed with a harmonious-shaped key. He kept it well hidden inside a crack in the wall of his cell, appropriately covered with a small votive tapestry once given to him by a brother. The lock clicked and he began to rummage through his personal belongings, fingering to find the bottom. It was covered with a piece of cloth; he took out the precious content, caressing it with the back of his hand and with a mocking smile he remembered the moment everything had begun.
“It is precisely the nature of the sacred that can be heard. However, I want to be seen veiled or I do not want it at all… The inscrutable is not perceptible to those who are insensitive. It does not hit him with deafness nor does it take away his sight, but it passes by him Silent and dull”
(Hildegard Von Bingen).
