Azazeel (32 page)

I knew this view of his by heart, but I let Nestorius elaborate, out of politeness and out of respect for his righteous anger. When he had finished and was quite calm again, I asked him
politely, ‘Why don’t you leave ordinary Christians and the ignorant to their own beliefs, mixed with delusions which they find comforting and which are appropriate to their
understanding, while we explain the facts to theologians, the clergy and the priests of the churches, because they are capable of understanding these subtle theological matters? Then we could leave
the laity to learn from them, generation after generation, without confronting them.’

‘Why should we resort to this trick?’ said Nestorius.

‘Out of necessity, your Grace, out of necessity, to escape the fangs and claws of the lion of St Mark!’

Nestorius smiled at my pun, because with his sharp mind he realized I was referring to the belief, common in Alexandria, that St Mark the Apostle of Alexandria adopted the lion as a mascot, or
rather the Alexandrians gave him, and gave themselves, the symbol of the lion, in that they depicted St Mark the Apostle in their books and on the walls of their houses writing his gospel with a
lion crouched next to him, looking at what he was writing. The brief smile had restored to Nestorius’s face some of the serenity which I had known in earlier times and which I had missed
since the start of this unexpected meeting of ours in Antioch.

I wanted to ask him if there was any truth in the reports we had been receiving for the past year, the reports that he had oppressed his opponents, demolished churches run by the Arians and
expelled them from Constantinople and so on. But I felt that the moment for this had not yet come, so I bided my time.

After several minutes of calm, Nestorius sat up straight, adjusted his cap and turned towards me. He looked anxious and his smile could not disguise what he was going through. Visibly disturbed,
he told me he had sent a forceful response to Cyril’s first letter and was now planning to respond to this latest letter, and was also thinking of sending me to Alexandria to debate with him
on the subject.

‘I beg your pardon, reverend father, but do you think that Bishop Cyril will listen to me, or even respect my visit in the first place?’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You have been a monk since your early youth. You are a scholar of dogma, you speak eloquent Greek, and you studied in Alexandria.’

‘And I fled the city on a memorable day.’

‘Do you think he was aware of that at the time? His elation at the killing of Hypatia must have distracted him from the fact that you were gone. By the way, Hypa, did you ever meet him at
a private gathering while you were in Alexandria, the great city?’

Nestorius uttered the famous sobriquet with a sarcasm that did not conceal his distaste at describing the city as great, and at the city’s enthusiasm for promoting itself at the expense of
the papal see in Rome and of the imperial capital Constantinople. Because he expected me to answer his question, and because I loved Nestorius like a father and did not want him to meet the same
wretched fate, I told him something I had always tried to keep secret. It was for his sake that I told my story.

‘I met Bishop Cyril on a single occasion. At the time I had been in Alexandria for two tedious years during which I submitted to the will of the Lord and set aside my dream of excelling in
medicine. I spent my time there either praying with the monks, attending mass on most days, dozing off in most of the masses, and taking regular classes at the theological school, to learn again
what children learn in primary schools in Upper Egypt. At the time I was studying the kind of medicine practised by people who sell perfumes and medicinal herbs and by farmers in my home country. I
persevered in this course, passively and without enthusiasm, and I realized that since I had come to Alexandria the dreams which had tied me to the city had turned into nightmares which weighed
upon me and from which there was no escape. Then the day came when the senior priest at the church of St Mark told me I would have an audience with Bishop Cyril the next morning after mass. At the
time I was about twenty-five years old and naturally I spent the night lost in labyrinths of anxiety and insomnia. The next day I went in to see Bishop Cyril after waiting two hours at his door. As
soon as he saw me he asked me how old I was. I told him, and then I said that I originally came to Alexandria to immerse myself in studying medicine, and he responded with a question the meaning of
which at first I did not grasp.

‘Who is the greatest of those who have immersed themselves in medicine?’ he asked.

‘Your Holiness, it is said to be an ancient Egyptian by the name of Imhotep or the famous Greek, Hippocrates. Or perhaps, father, you mean the Alexandrian doctors who came after them, such
as Herophilos, or those who studied in Alexandria, such as Galen.’

‘Wrong, all your answers are wrong. All those you mentioned are pagans and not a single one of them could cure a leper, or with a touch of his hand bring the dead back to life,’ he
said.

‘I’m sorry, your Grace, but I did not understand what you meant.’

‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, monk, is the polymath of medicine, so learn from him, and from the lives of the saints and the martyrs. Tap into their spiritual power through your piety and
faith.’

Cyril spoke severely to me and what he said did not reveal what he really and surely thought. At the time I preferred to stay silent, while he said something to the effect that I was about to
end my period of training in the city and he intended to send me, starting the next summer, to one of the monasteries in arid Wadi Natroun in the heart of the desert, south of Alexandria, where, as
he put it, there would descend upon me the blessings of the pure earth, which is rich with the remains of the saints who gave their souls for Jesus and for His sake abandoned the world. Cyril sat
up straight and, without looking in my direction, continued. ‘And I might send you to one of our monasteries in Upper Egypt or in Abyssinia. The children of the Lord there need our
support.’

Cyril stopped a while as though in deep thought, then he looked towards one of his priests and said, ‘Perhaps it would be appropriate for us to send him to Akhmim, because the people there
face tests of faith. In recent years many people from here have fled there and many people there are studying sciences which are of no benefit.’

I was at a loss to answer him. Then, in a moment of courage or stupidity, lowering my voice, I asked him in all politeness, ‘And what, your Holiness, are the sciences which are of no
benefit, that I might know them and make sure I avoid them?’

‘Good monk, they are the absurdities of the heretics and the delusions of those who devote themselves to astronomy, mathematics and magic. Understand that and stay away from such things,
that you may follow in the ways of the Lord and the paths of salvation. If you seek history, then you have the Pentateuch and the Book of Kings. If you seek rhetoric, you have the books of the
prophets. If you seek poetry, then you have the psalms. If you seek astronomy, law and ethics, you have the glorious law of the Lord. Arise now, monk, and join the prayers, and perhaps our Lord the
living Christ will grace you with a kindly glance.’

Nestorius listened with such interest and concern that I felt he could discern behind what I said the hidden meaning which lies deeper than the superficial sense of the words.
After a moment of portentous silence, he turned towards me with the old paternal sympathy which I had always found in him. ‘I’ll excuse you, Hypa, from the mission of going to see this
man. I’ll answer his stupidities myself and meet his anathemas with counter-anathemas that I shall enshrine in a letter like his own. But let’s leave that aside for now. Tell me how you
are coming on in the monastery.’

I remembered the letter from the abbot and I quickly took it out from inside the folds of my cassock and passed it to him. He opened it carefully, looked at it, then said with an interested
smile, ‘Samuel the monk wants to enlarge the church and build a wall for the monastery. Assure him, Hypa, that I’ll talk to Bishop John on the subject today, and with the help of God
the bishop will fulfil his request.’

Nestorius called for an inkwell and pen and took from his pocket a small piece of parchment on which he wrote a letter to the abbot, then sealed it with his seal and gave it to me. I asked him
if I could go back to the monastery the next morning and he told me he would sail at dawn for Constantinople. Then he stood up, embraced me goodbye and sat down again, alone. At the door I
remembered a question I had been repressing, so I went back and asked him. ‘Father, if the dispute between you and Bishop Cyril grows worse than this, will the other bishops support
you?’

‘Hypa, there are many bishops in the world, east and west, and their inclinations vary. You go in the protection of the Lord and do not worry, for God is our helper and our aid.’

I wanted him to be clearer, so I said, ‘Father, I mean Bishops John and Rabbula.’

‘John of Antioch is a righteous man and we have been friends for many years. As for Rabbula, I do not know what he intends to do. Don’t worry, Hypa. Don’t worry, my child,
because this world, with everything and everyone in it, is not worth believers worrying about.’

SCROLL EIGHTEEN

O
n my way back from Antioch I had planned to drop in at the Eupropius monastery to visit Dignified Laugher the monk, because I missed him. But for
some mysterious reason the idea escaped me and I decided to go straight back to the monastery. As I left the eastern gate I noticed something strange: the donkey, which I had always considered a
stupid animal, began to hurry along the way as though it knew the way back. It walked along without the least guidance from me. The tapping of its hoofs showed its elation and delight at heading
back to its home and its tether in the pen at the monastery. Donkeys long for their roots and take pleasure in returning home, while I am terrified of the idea of going back to my country, even on
a short mission.

But in fact I was terrified specifically of going back to Alexandria, because for someone like me it would be fraught with dangers. Anyone who leaves Alexandria, either in anger or as the target
of someone else’s anger, should not go back. The test of time has proven that. Origen went back to the city after leaving in anger and the bishop at the time, Demetrius known as the
vine-tender, made him suffer grievously. That was two hundred years ago and the bishop of the city at the time was not as powerful as the bishop today, and Alexandria at the time was not known as
the Great City. The façades of the houses and walls of the churches were not yet full of images of Mark the Apostle, with the lion crouched beside him, and Origen was not a wretch like me!
None the less at their hands he tasted bitterness and woe. Eighty years later the Alexandrians lured Arius the monk to Constantinople from his exile in the land of the Goths, also known as Spain,
where he had settled quietly and comfortably at the end of the earth, after excommunicating him, deposing him and blackening his reputation. They were not content to let him die in peace, and when
he was tricked into going and meeting Bishop Alexander in the court of Emperor Constantine, in the hope of a reconciliation and an end to the theological dispute which had angered Alexandria, Arius
met his horrible fate and died of poisoning. The bishop of Alexandria at the time was not as powerful as the bishop today, and Arius was not a poor man like me.

As the donkey clip-clopped steadily along the gravel road, these thoughts made my head spin. Neither the verdure of the gardens around Antioch nor their beauty could help me escape the eddies
and currents of Alexandria. Much violence surrounded the history of the city, which for years I had dreamed of visiting and which, once I arrived, I longed to escape – the city where I was
trapped until that calamitous day. I would have liked to fulfil Nestorius’s request and help him in what he was about to do, but how could I return to Alexandria? And would Cyril expect a
monk like me to argue with him and explain to him Nestorius’s theological concepts? He would not meet me in the first place, but would annihilate me. If I escaped him, would I escape the
public and the Lovers of the Passion if they knew I had come as a representative of Bishop Nestorius, whom they see as a heretic? The people of Alexandria have no mercy and do not fear punishment
for their deeds. They killed Hypatia in front of all the inhabitants and they were not punished. Before that they killed the bishop of their own city, George of Cappadocia, and pulled his body
apart on the main street. Emperor Julian, who renounced Christianity, was too cowardly to punish them and confined himself to saying, in an outrageous imperial decree, that he would pardon them in
honour of Serapis, the god of Alexandria.

How could I return to Alexandria after what I saw there and found out about the city? Who knows what they said about me when they found out that I had run away on that fateful day. Perhaps one
of the pilgrims returning from Jerusalem had spoken to them about me. Would the fact that I adopted the ecclesiastical name Hypa conceal me from the gaze of the church of St Mark and the claws of
the lion? Did I let down the reverend Nestorius by declining to carry out his request? Or did the Lord reveal something to him, something to make him abandon the idea of throwing me into the
furnace that is Alexandria? Or did he notice my fear when I told him the story of my meeting with Bishop Cyril and then he relieved me of this frightful mission, which would have been pointless
anyway?