Can the courageous be manipulated?
Can the courageous be manipulated?
The origins and journeys of warnings.
The Fulcrum of Courage, Part 12
When a beaver notices a predator, it slaps its tail on water making a loud clap.
The sound immediately alerts the predator to the beaver’s location.
The rest of the colony learns instantly that a predator is nearby, and gets a clue as to where it is going. This enables them to take safer routes to their dens.
The predator might catch the beaver who spotted it, and it might not.
The rest of the beavers live another day.
For a beaver, a tale-slap is an existential warning that benefits the whole colony.
According to 10th century folklore, God created demons from a shadow.
They envied humans for receiving love and forgiveness, but doubted those emotions were real. Demons regarded humans as foolish for believing in them.
Most people have a complete range of emotions, but a 10th century demon was an emotional skeptic. It was drawn to mercy and reverence out of a dark craving, not because it could feel such things for others.
Demons craved the taste of souls, and reveled in devouring every morsel. To them, warm feelings were merely forms of camouflage. They were distractions used for deception in zero-sum games.
If a demon wasn’t playing a cynical game - if it wasn’t feeding - it was bored.
Demons were rarely bored for long.
The 10th century church taught that everything was created in exactly 6 days, and God rested on the 7th. There were 7 periods of equal length in creation.
Many clerics believed each day corresponded to a historical millennium. God planned the entire course of history in 7 periods of equal length.
Although the heads of the church generally disagreed with Millennialism, these clerics were convinced the events described in Revelation 20:1-7 laid out precisely what would happen on the threshold of the final period.
They calculated the Apocalypse would begin 1000 years after the birth of Christ. It would be ushered in on New Year’s Eve by a heretic in league with the Devil.
A massive battle between good and evil was going to take place.
Satan would appear in the form of a dragon with 7 heads and 10 horns. An angel would descend from heaven to fight him. Those who followed the Lord of Demons or bore his mark would die horrible deaths, and so would many others.
The angel would triumph by imprisoning Satan in an abyss until the end of time. Then the worthy would reign with Christ for the final millennium, and God would resurrect the pure and righteous.
The provost’s daughter had mastered using meaningful-sounding reasons to control and direct people long before she ever met Gerbert. She also observed that believers in love and forgiveness find purpose together.
The daily penance was spreading rapidly. It proved to her that most people could be convinced of a coming apocalypse.
As pope, Gerbert was a powerful man. Yet, it was already a common belief that he owned a book of spells. Perhaps she could use terror to crush him. If she retold his life story to affirm such beliefs, she might even instigate a riot on New Year’s Eve.
She began by approaching clerics with large congregations to ask about the seven millennia and the Book of Revelation.
She became an outspoken critic of non-believers and publicly glorified millennialist beliefs. Any denial or disagreement, she said, was foolish and immoral.
For evidence, she started with the Norman Conquest of Sicily. The archers on horseback frequently resembled the first horseman of the Apocalypse.
Nobody could disagree. The Normans were capturing lands that belonged to the Kingdom of Italy and Germany, and their armies were already in southern Italy.
When the provost’s daughter was welcomed into congregations, she secretly confided that the new pope was once in love with her.
She would lower her voice and explain that in Reims, the Count of Roucy maintained a haven for demons. She described horrible, unspeakable, things done to women.
In the 10th century, theft bore the same consequences as murder.
Her story went that Meridiana, the pope’s succubus lover, once resided with the Count and only pretended to be his second child to avoid suspicion. The provost’s daughter was Gerbert’s first and only earthly love, and Meridiana stole him.
She recalled a drunken night in which Gerbert used his book of spells to summon a demon just to feel powerful. Meridiana appeared and seduced him.
Gerbert willingly provided Meridiana with his seed for cambions, and she promised to make him pope if he vowed to be hers alone.
The provost’s daughter swore she walked in to find them in bed together, just as he promised, and it broke her heart forever. Her sincerity seemed undeniable.
Those who believed in love and forgiveness agreed she surely deserved compassion. After all, she clearly loved Gerbert and her dearest wish was to save his mangled soul by liberating him from Meridiana’s control.
Sadly, she feared it was too late.
She said she overheard Gerbert and Meridiana making a mockery of Pope Charles V. She described them laughing about fooling him into rejecting the existence of the Devil and joking about how Meridiana killed Gerbert’s former protégé in his sleep.
She carefully emphasized that morally, Gerbert should be exposed.
She claimed he didn’t make the horologium himself. He bought it from an Arab merchant so Meridiana could use it to trick Abbots and Archbishops into doubting the Apocalypse.
Gerbert’s debate with Otric proved he was not intelligent enough to make such a sophisticated time piece, let alone become pope, on his own.
She insisted his meteoric rise to power, from lowly teacher in Reims to Count and Abbot of Bobbio, was only possible because he had a book of powerful spells and Meridiana’s sinister help.
The provost’s daughter made a point of mentioning the mythical predators biting the necks of prey in the blood-red circles on the Marriage Charter of Theophanu. She lamented them as a curse that killed Otto the Great.
The Empress, she claimed, once tried to seduce Antipope John XVI and failed. According to her, Otto III’s soldiers brutally humiliated him for not succumbing to Empress Theophanu’s seductive behavior.
The provost’s daughter led clerics to believe Otto III was surrounded by demons.
She said Meridiana could not have elevated Gerbert if Otto II was married to the daughter of a Saxon instead. Otto the Great betrayed the Saxon nobles and Western Bishops because Gerbert cast a spell on him!
The clerics who listened concluded the Devil could eventually acquire whole armies by shortening the lifespans of kings and emperors over successive generations.
They determined that Otto III was a cambion, and Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes was an incubus. Clearly, Meridiana was conspiring with a Turkish demon.
It explained why Otto the Great married his son to a Byzantine princess.
It also proved the Devil was deceiving nations, exactly as foretold.
The prophesy was unfolding before their very eyes.
These clerics told their congregations, and their congregations told the masses. People from Spain to Germany to Jerusalem heard the stories.
Millions made pilgrimages, and millions more redoubled their penance.
In early November of 999, riots broke out in the Holy Land.
Next: When is courage real? Schemas versus evidence.