The Modest Inquisitor

[Gunnland]

Eastern Olmolungring. July 28, 1981.​

The new ways hadn't yet come to Mimir Abbey. Perhaps they haven't yet. So Coemgein would have to defend his dissertation to the public, line by line, day after day. Our new archbishop, Zebulon of Karlljon, came from Yungdrunggutsak to preside. Many more men, priests and professors from the Capitollium - our major university, in the capital, is named for its Tiburian founders - came to watch, ask, and critique. I was an acolyte among the Swordbrothers at that time (who were then and are now uninterested in theological disputes) so I was left to usher around the guests of the Abbey. If you have never been to Mimir, and presumably you haven't, it is a massive Gothic place of stone spires and arches and stained-glass windows that look down the mountain upon the glittering lake frozen ten months out of the year. Coemgein had to defend in late July.

Nobody in Olmolungring would agree to be the advocatus diaboli. Coemgein was the most acute theological mind our country had produced, some were saying, since S. A. Gravplass. He had studied with the Dominici in the 1970s, the great humanist scholars of the Université Catholique Pontificale Dominiquaine; even in 1981 not a soul could imagine the Dominci would soon be eclipsed by a growing movement of conservative malcontents. To this day I am not sure Coemgein was prepared for the man they sent up from the Archdiocese of Schwabach, whose cape made him look even taller and thinner, whose cold greyblue eyes looked like they had been carved from the walls of the Abbey.

"Thank you for shewing me in, brother Matteus."

Middelhuis von Haaksbergen laid a black leather briefcase with a subtle Faber-Castell Gruppe imprint on the long table in front of him and snapped it open without looking at Coemgein Beornsson Hart.

 

[Gunnland]

Eastern Olmolungring. August 19, 1981.​

"Is a law mortal? If so, then what is the life of a law? There is no doubt that the House of Knýtling-Babenberg invested the Great Council with suzerainty over its own ancestral homeland in 1945. But that releases neither Abbot Mimir nor the Bishop of Yungdrung Gutsak from obedience to the Tiburian pontiff in matters ecclesiastic and civil. There is also the matter of whether the cuius regio principle of the 1568 treaty ought to have divested authority in this realm not to the Knýtlings but to the Great Council, who would then have retained loyalty to the Catholic House of Thießen and the Imperium. A number of Oelarian legal scholars during the Kingdom period have made this claim, looking to Pratia for aid, and not without due cause, I think."

Imperious and gaunt, Monsignor Von Haaksbergen did not dally with Hart's phenomenological critique of metaphysics, his phenomenological redefinition of orthodoxy, or his historical narrative of the sensus fidelium and the conciliar tradition. The crucial question, at days end, was to what extent the pope was the rightful temporal ruler of the realm of Olmolungring.

It was the last day of Hart's month-long public defense. Imposing in a different way than Von Haaksbergen, the nameless Abbot Mimir, broad and baldheaded with a closely-cropped beard, jabbed his finger to put a question to Hart.

"As a religious, I am not interested in the temporal ramifications of this question, Coemgein Beornsson. But your arguments elevate our bishop to the status of patriarch, our national church to the status of a rite. Tibur alone has this authority, no?"

I watched Archbishop Zebulon fidget anxiously in his seat looking at Coemgein Beornsson. I have always had the impression that Coemgein, stooped and bespectacled, was a remarkably gentle man. The two challenges were serious. Everyone knew that Zebulon planned to defend the old frontier tradition of a married clergy within an autocephalous church and nonetheless remain in communion with Tibur. (However strenuously the Abbot disagreed!) Everyone knew that Olmolungring aspired to an independent future free of foreign rule, Tiburian or Franconian. Coemgein simply had to say exactly why.

 

[Gunnland]

Yungdrung Gutsak. July 28, 2011.​

"Matteus Eir here."

"Matteus Einarsson, or should I say Deputy Minister Eir of Finance, Trade, and Industry? It's Coemgein Beornsson. Does the constant ring of the telephone make you wish for your gorgeous old monastery?"​

Coemgein! That would explain the unfamiliarity with the new forms of address. I have heard that Coemgein left the new modern Olmolungring behind to become a journalist in Tibur.

"Coemgein, to what do I owe this pleasure?"

"It's no pleasure, young Matt. [pause] I am not sure whether you keep up with the Holy See, but my old friend Von Haaksbergen pulls the strings here now."​

"Are you in trouble?"

"Often enough..."​

Coemgein sounds bemused. I imagine Coemgein's eyes sparkling behind his lopsided glasses as he exaggerates the occasional word like a storyteller before a group of children.

"...but this time, actually, I am calling because I think you are in trouble. You see, the Holy See wishes to take control of Solaren when this dreadful Federation invasion is over. Some ancient law or another provides the justification. But they need a test case, a precedent, or perhaps you might say a show of strength."​

"And you think Von Haaksbergen will try to muscle his way into Oelar. That sounds familiar, no?"

"I am afraid I have had the distinct displeasure of hearing exactly so, yes."​

 

[Gunnland]

Yungdrung Gutsak. August 6, 2011.​

Coemgein was right. It was Hippolyte Frison, undisguised, stepping off the train at Issverth Station. Dark-haired and thin - as thin as Cardinal Camerlengo Von Haaksbergen - with round spectacles. The feeling of shock has not subsided - it lingers in my stomach and the cavities around my heart - to hear that this man, Frison, poisoned Marcus Clemens II. Coemgein does not spread vicious rumors.

But this past week, I have wondered if Coemgein is right about our country. My country, I should say. He's left. Coemgein doesn't have to work for Fil Gutkind (much less have his cousins arrested!) or hear post-delegationist cants from Alasdair Symeon. He doesn't have to hear the intersectionalist screeds of Stephan Hvit or the anarcho-socialist pablum from Svava Gunn's mouth.

We have factories and roads to build in Knytlingsfort. Call me a Swordbrother still, but Tiburian morals are good to discipline our people. Tibur's gold is better yet. As I walked out of my apartment to discuss the matter with the Viereskogs, something extraordinary happened.

"Matteus Einarsson, turn around."

I wheel around. Monsignor Frison, bespectacled, and Atreifur Tomasson Aethur are waiting on the wall, now half-obscured by the opened door. Frison speaks quickly in a low voice. The cardinals' man sure moves quickly.

"Please call your cousin Havi Beornsson and have him arrest Sigbjorn the Pretender. The Abbot Mimir has notified the Skycommander, a plane will take him to Tibur this afternoon for trial. The inquisition will be Abbot Mimir, Cardinal Puopolo, and of course, Cardinal Camerlengo Von Haaksbergen. I am told that in the meanwhile I will find Minister Halvbefaren more than amenable to the idea of eliminating our left-wing rivals. Take me to him now."

His one mistake, I know now, was not realizing that my wife Ella, in the room behind me, heard everything. Which meant Valerian Poller heard everything. Frison's plan was analyzed and dissected in Nürnberg not thirty minutes later.

Coemgein's voice is in my head - "Don't do it" - even now. "You don't know who these people are, Matt. Don't do it." But Coemgein does not know who the people who run our country are. Politics is too messy a sport for philosophers. It has been the tragedy of our country.

 

[Gunnland]

Tibur. August 12, 2011.​

Ella is amused at how quickly one could topple an Oelarian government. The camerlengo says the Franconians - he has this in confidence from Beaumont himself - are too busy to stop us from seizing control. I haven't spoke to Coemgein. I suspect he is hiding somewhere in the vennels and warrens of this ancient and overbuilt port.

The Syracanthian Guard is supervising a few "guests" in the Palazzo del Capitolino. The alleged conspirators, as surprised as Ella, include all of President Symeon's party and Minister Roerich. Roerich, I expect at least, will be found innocent. Back home, all the television stations carry the shocking news that the beloved old rigpa is long dead and the left-wing government has put an impostor in his place. The military, it's sad to say, is the only respected public institution in Oelar. Skycommander Viereskog has been making one public appearance after another denouncing ISRA for betraying the trust of the Oelarian people. The Church, Skycmdr. Viereskog says, is the "court of last resort..."

"...which basically means we provide the semblance of legalism to avoid making this look like a military counter-coup, hm?" The Cardinal Camerlengo smiled, but his eyes as grey and cold as I remember them from thirty years ago. "It is perfectly appropriate, since Rigpa Thorlakur was protosyncellus - that is, auxiliary bishop - of Yungdrung Gutsak. But that nameless archimandrite Mimir will put pressure upon us to bring the diocese into order, you realize..."

A warm westerly wind blows Von Haaksbergen's cape, and I imagine a half-dozen red tongues of some ancient reptilian monster licking about his gray head. An ominous man. And I only hear heard viler rumors about the other cardinals, bishops, and prelates who presently strut about the Holy See like so many colorful peacocks. I have not met, for instance, Gaspar Cardinal Puopolo, although I hear he is going to assist the new bishop of Yungdrung Gutsak. Haven't you heard? The camerlengo has asked Bishop Zebulon to retire, and his replacement is none other than Monsignor Frison. Von Haaksbergen told me with a wide smile, cryptically, "Hippo Frison doesn't know who to trust, now."

I regret most missing the beautiful women of Cardinal Puopolo's retinue, particularly his cousin Lucrezia, whom Von Haaksbergen warns is "the most unscrupulous woman in Europe". The camerlengo seems delighted that the three of them - Cardinal Puopolo, Lucrezia, and Frison - will reside in Oelar for the winter. "Let them take all of their schemes with them, Matteus. You must be on your guard," he tells me.

I know that the upcoming proceedings of the holy office will reprise the main themes of Coemgein's 1981 defense, except instead of old Zebulon presiding, it would be the Inquisitor. The Church in Oelar will be brought back under Tibur's control after many centuries of de facto independence. Which means to some degree so will the Great Council of State.

 

[Gunnland]

Over Franken. September 19, 1981.​

It was my first time on an airplane. I was terrified. Of course, I was fourteen. When Coemgein Beornsson - or Doctor Hart, for he passed his oral defense, did I mention? - asked me what was wrong, I lied. I told him I didn't want to meet Monsignor Von Haaksbergen again at the court of Pope Clemens. If he knew I was lying, he said nothing. He just peered over his glasses, which sat permanently askew on his face - or perhaps it was his twinkling green (blue?) eyes that were not level - and began to tell a story in that gentle voice of his.

"Middelhuis van Haaksbergen - that later changed to the German 'von' -" (Coemgein peered above his glasses to see if I understood.) "and I were good friends once, Matteus. His old man was a Vistrasian jeweler in Augsburg who fell upon hard times and moved his family to Sebastiansburg, on the border between Franken and Oelar, to work for his suppliers."

"Sebastiansburg?" Uncle Sigvarthur had a country estate there, on the Oelarian side of the border. My crazy cousins lived there. (I did not know then that Ella lived there too. Of course then I never suspected I would have a wife. And truth be told, I have never met another soul from Sebastiansburg.)

"Yes, that's where I met him. My father, an engineer from the north country of Arendaal, fell in love with a girl from just over the Warreic border in Lumina. Her father was not keen on their marriage, and they eloped to Dulwich. When that wasn't far enough, or perhaps for lack of a good job, they sailed off to Cantigny." His eyes sparkled as he told the meandering love story. "But my father..." (He said this with exaggerated mock disapproval.) "...did not like to see me going to church with the Oceanic Saints. Now this was the late 1950s and there was great worry that Franconian nuclear weapons would fall into 'barbarous' hands in Oelar..." (He peered above his glasses, smiling, to make sure I was following.) "One of Dad's Aren friends told him, 'Don't complain, oilman, you could be mining diamonds in the Dovre Mountains.' In a way I suppose we moved to Sebastiansburg to prove a point." Coemgein sighed.

"In some ways Middelhuis and I were birds of a feather, the children of itinerant parents with funny names and accents who ended up on the unmarked borderlands of Olmolungring - there are no immigrants in our country! - without ever knowing who we are. Our only home was the Church. When they finally drew the border right through Sebastiansburg in 1962-1963, I was on the Oelarian side, and he was on the Franconian side. We went to different seminaries. That was that."

We had been in the air for almost an hour, and my sweaty grip on the armrest had relaxed considerably. Now I got the sense, young as I was, that there was a lot of story I hadn't been told.

 

[Großlausitz]

August 13

While they were having their Sunday’s dinner on their beautiful estate’s vast balcony, Ella’s private cell phone was ringing. Ella didn’t actually call it like that; it was Matteus’ joke name for her gadget. In fact it was a highly sophisticated phone, which allowed for an encrypted satellite link connection. This way, Ella used to say, she could keep in touch with good old friends. Of course Ella knew that Matteus knew it was her connection to her old employer. Mumbling an excuse Ella waddled into the house with all the elegance a woman in mid-pregnancy could muster. Sporting a very un-gentlemanlike smirk Matteus continued to enjoy their light pasta dish accompanied by a fine salad.

About ten minutes later she returned with a slightly worried look in her face. “What is it, dear?” Matteus asked, “Have they finally decided to outlaw actually funny jokes?” Her husband alluded to the Central European cliché of Franconians taking life way too seriously. “If it only were so, if it only were so, my dear. Nürnberg told me I should convince you to convey the carmalengo that they are prepared to take off the kid glove if Haaksbergen becomes too greedy. They told me to have you remind the carmalengo there are both special commandos and a regular Royal Army base not too far away from the border. They should be aware that the raised alarm level is in effect for all of Franken’s military. I guess they will focus on Knýtlingsfort. Therefore, any of Haaksbergen’s puppets will be deprived of access to industrial goods. Last but not least: They will increase the bodyguard of Prince Sebastian who has begun studying at the Capitollium and he will stand in for his father at the election of the next Rigpa. And don’t you dare to conveniently forget this message, Matteus. Valerian Poller is informed as well.”