Hattie was fascinated by the early years of the church; heresies sprang up almost as soon as Jesus was crucified. Week after week, the pale Jesuit took them over the great heresies: Gnostic, Arian, Nestorian, Pelagian, Waldensian, Albigensian, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican. The girls made up a singsong chant of the names to memorize them for the quiz. The history of church heresy was far more interesting than the lives of the saints, though the stories of martyrdom by fire and steel were comparable. The other young women in the religion class talked about nothing but young men and marriage; though Hattie was interested, still she preferred books.
At home, Hattie read all the books of mythology she could find. When she finished with Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, she began to read about the Egyptians. Her interest in archaeology came from her passion for hidden tombs and mummies. She loved to read Shakespeare’s plays—weepy Richard II and malevolent Richard III were favorites; suave, brilliant Lucifer of Milton’s Paradise Lost captivated her.
Her mother insisted she take riding lessons for the benefits of fresh air and sunshine; she wanted Hattie to develop normal interests and hobbies to take her away from her books long enough to find a suitable husband.
She galloped her pony in the dunes above the bay; she loved the rush of the wind in her face and the sensation of flying above the powerful muscles of the horse. Her father sent along a groom at a discreet distance in case of a fall; otherwise Hattie rode alone. A ride along the beach cleared the mind and allowed completely new ideas to spring up. She loved to imagine she was Joan of Arc riding to battle or a knight of the Crusades.
By the time she completed her studies under her father’s direction and departed for college, Hattie had exhausted their own library of books about early Christianity. They saw two white swans and a black swan from the train window on their way to Poughkeepsie to settle Hattie at Vassar.
Hattie completed her course work with honors in three years; Mr. Abbott spoke with pride about Hattie’s interest in the early church and her desire to continue with graduate studies. A Harvard graduate himself, Mr. Abbott arranged with the Divinity School to allow Hattie to attend lectures as a nondegree student until she proved she was capable of distinguished graduate work.
Mrs. Abbott did not share her husband’s enthusiasm for Hattie’s continued education; she feared Hattie’s reputation might be compromised. How many respectable gentlemen wanted scholars of heresy for wives? Why must she go to Harvard when Columbia was so much closer? But Mrs. Abbott knew when she was outnumbered and graciously accompanied Hattie to the comfortable town house rented near Harvard Square. Mr. Abbott intended to stay home in Oyster Bay with his wind power experiments, but loneliness quickly sent him to them, accompanied by the cook and coachman.
Hattie’s father contacted his old friend Dr. Rhinehart in Cambridge and arranged for Hattie to use his private library from time to time. A scholar of ancient Coptic manuscripts, Dr. Rhinehart’s library of texts and treatises of early church history was remarkable, an equal of Harvard’s collection; Hattie was delighted.
Months later the doctor blamed the overstimulation of the lectures in the presence of young gentlemen for Hattie’s illness. The doctor confided to Mrs. Abbott that he treated many more nervous disorders in young women since the advent of Margaret Fuller, Mrs. Eddy, and the like. But Hattie thought her illness seemed quite natural in view of the incidents that preceded it.
Dr. Rhinehart’s library surpassed Hattie’s expectations. The sight of so many ancient scrolls in glass cases, and folios of early church history shelved from the ceiling to the floor, took away Hattie’s breath. She was silent as she moved around the shelves to savor the scent of leather bindings and glue. The beauty of the bindings caught her attention; the arrangement of the books on the shelves was precise but not by author or title or time period. Here and there volumes bound in red leather and saffron vellum were clustered together amid volumes of fawn, chocolate, and hunter green leather; bindings of black leather formed borders, so the effect was of a lovely strange garden.
From his study, Dr. Rhinehart brought out an armload of leather-bound manuscripts and stacked them on the library table near Hattie. He invited her to read at her leisure his translations of the old Coptic scrolls that were his life’s work. She thanked the kind doctor and promised to return as soon as she settled into her classes. The graduate lectures included long reading lists, so the first semester she limited herself to a lecture course on the Crusades and a seminar on heresy. Both classes demanded a great deal of reading and preparation; weeks passed and Hattie was still too busy to return to Dr. Rhinehart’s library.
The lectures on the Crusades were exciting, but disturbing as well because of the bloodshed. The seminar on heresy was as fascinating as Hattie hoped it would be. Christ was scarcely in his grave before the first heresies sprang up. As the semester progressed, she found the Gnostic heretics the most interesting and thought she might find a worthy subject for her thesis. Whether she was granted graduate student status depended in large part on the thesis topic she chose; of course, her father thought she should write her book and not bother about a graduate degree.
The Gnostic heretic Basilides was really quite wonderful. He preached Jesus was not crucified, that Simon of Cyrene took on Jesus’ appearance and carried the cross and died instead. Basilides believed Jesus came to redeem mankind with the light of divine goodness, but since the material world is full of suffering and evil, Jesus assumed a phantom body that appeared normal but was of heavenly, immaterial origin.
Lecture after lecture Hattie discovered heresies and heretics never mentioned in catechism class, such as Simon Magus, the Samaritan Messiah, who claimed to be the chief emanation of the Deity and was reputed to be the author of a lost gospel, the Great Revelations.
The Gnostic Cerinthus taught the world was not made by God but by a power remotely distant from him. He looked forward to a millennium when a Messiah would rule for a thousand years of peace. Carpocrates, a follower of Cerinthus, taught the world was made by six angels, and all believers are equal with Christ; man could be free of vice and sin only after enslavement to vice and sin.
What would the pale Jesuit say if he could see Hattie now? She knew Sister Conrad would have declared her immortal soul in jeopardy! For her first paper, Hattie wrote about the origins of Illuminism, preached by Valentinus, who said he received secret instruction about the secret doctrine of God. “May you be illumined by the Light” was the greeting of his followers to one another. The Illuminists appeared first in Spain with Priscillianus, who preached special enlightenment directly from God, which naturally caused a furor. The Spanish bishops persuaded the emperor Maximus to condemn Pricillianus to death, but Martin, bishop of Tours, who was present at Trier, protested the heretic’s punishment by state authorities and insisted excommunication was enough. Martin refused to leave the city until the emperor promised to spare Priscillianus, but as soon as Martin left, the bishops persuaded the emperor to behead Priscillianus and one of his followers. In her concluding remarks, Hattie asserted that A.D. 385 marked the first time the church invited the state to meddle in church business, but not the last.
When the paper was returned to her she found extensive notes from the professor in a tiny cramped script in the margins. Her paper was well written, he said, but her conclusions were impetuous and unsound, and might even be mistaken for an indictment of the Spanish bishops for Priscillianus’s execution. Moreover, her paper allowed the possibility that God did give secret knowledge denied to the church hierarchy; that was heresy, pure and simple.
While Hattie was looking over the comments on her paper, she was aware that Mr. Hyslop in the next chair seemed quite interested. Mr. Hyslop was the first of her classmates to introduce himself, polite and even hospitable while the other students continued to ignore her. She glanced up and smiled, but gave him no further notice while she considered the B her paper received.
After class, Mr. Hyslop waited outside on
the steps for her and reminded her they had two classes together—heresy and the Crusades, he said with a chuckle. Hattie liked his bright blue eyes but felt her face flush, so she looked down at the steps. The others might feign indifference to her, he said, but they all knew her name because she was the only woman to audit classes that semester. A Presbyterian himself, Mr. Hyslop thought it quite amazing that a Roman Catholic, never mind a woman, was attending Divinity School lectures.
But Hattie didn’t even flinch the morning the lecturer asserted that the Crusades were a disaster for Christianity. Afterward, she told Mr. Hyslop she agreed: the Crusades accustomed Christians to killing for the sake of religion. She relaxed as they moved down the sidewalk under the trees away from the lecture hall.
Two women audited classes the year before, he said, and both were quite good students. Hattie replied she certainly hoped the women were good students—why else should they bother to audit classes? Mr. Hyslop’s face became bright red. Just then they reached the end of the walk, where the Abbotts’ carriage waited each afternoon. The young man stood awkwardly with his hat in his hand as the driver opened the door for her. Hattie called out, “Good afternoon,” to him as she stepped into the carriage, and he blushed and waved as they drove away.
For her second paper in the heresy seminar, Hattie wrote about the followers of Valentinus, who prayed to the Mother as the mythic eternal Silence and Grace, who is before all things and is incorruptible Wisdom, Sophia. Valentinus said those who listened to their guardian angels would have knowledge revealed to them because their angels could not enjoy eternal bliss without them. He taught the material world and the physical body are only temporary; thus, there are no sins of the flesh, and no sacrament of marriage is necessary either, since the spirit was everything.
Hattie’s attention focused on the equal status accorded the feminine principle in Gnostic Christian tradition. She researched other instances of the equality of the feminine element and discovered the Ophites, who believed the light, or glory, of God is without equal and Christ will reign for 365,000 years. The thrones of the twelve disciples will be near his throne, but the thrones of Mary Magdalene and John the Virgin will be higher than the thrones of the disciples. Amazing! Hattie thought. Fantastic, remarkable. The heresy was plain to see, and yet she was spellbound.
Marcion became another of Hattie’s favorites. After he and his followers were expelled from the church, Marcion established his own church, thus adding the sin of schism to heresy. He claimed to preach a purer Christianity than the orthodox Christians, and he and his followers were called the Dissenters. They believed in a supreme God of pure benevolence, not found in the Old Testament; the Just God of the Old Testament was a creating power with anger, jealousy, and the urge to punish, while the God of the New Testament was a Kind God, who sent his Son to rescue mankind. Those loyal to the Just God were inspired by him to crucify Jesus, but this act brought the defeat of their God, who acknowledged his sin in killing Jesus out of ignorance. The Just God was punished by losing all the souls of his followers, who embraced the Kind God. Thus mankind was saved by Jesus’ crucifixion, and all that was required for salvation was a belief in God’s love. Aha! Hattie thought, and composed her conclusions: Marcion’s teachings rendered the orthodox church useless; no need for punishment if there are no laws, only God’s love. No need for church hierarchs, or tithes either.
Hattie was curious to read more, but from the pens of the Gnostics themselves; she sent a note around to Dr. Rhinehart, who was about to leave town but was delighted to instruct his household staff to let Hattie into the library and to see to her every need. She opened the first volume of the translations to this passage:
Abandon the search for God and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who is within you who makes everything his own and says: My God, my mind, my thoughts, my soul, my body. Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate. If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself.
Hattie experienced a wonderful sense of pleasure and excitement to find such bold words in the old doctor’s translation. As she continued to leaf through the manuscripts, Hattie was astonished to read:
After a day of rest, Wisdom, Sophia, sent Zoe, Life, her daughter who is called Eve, as an instructor to raise up Adam. . . . When Eve saw Adam cast down and she pitied him and said, “Adam, live! Rise up upon the Earth!” immediately her word became deed. For when Adam rose up, immediately he opened his eyes. When he saw her he said, “You will be called the mother of the living because you are the one who gave me life. . . .” It is she who is the Physician, and the Woman and She who has given birth. . . . the Female Spiritual Principle came in the Snake, the Instructor, and it taught them, saying, “You shall not die; for it was out of jealousy He said that to you. Rather your eyes shall open and you shall become like gods, recognizing evil and good. . . .” And the arrogant Ruler cursed the Woman and the Snake. . . .
At that moment Hattie knew her master’s thesis must explore further this female spiritual principle in the early church.
Hattie had difficulty falling asleep because her mind was abuzz with ideas for her thesis. She slept fitfully, and the following morning she woke and realized something felt very different about the world, though both she and the world appeared the same as they had been the previous morning. The names Sophia, Zoe, and Eve came to her again and again like a nursery rhyme, and when she glanced at the small marble Pietà on the foyer table, the words “Adam, live! Rise up upon the Earth!” came to mind. On her way to class, as it did every day, the carriage passed the church with the life-size bronze of Christ on the cross; but this morning Hattie found herself scrutinizing the figure. This bronze Jesus was well fed and his posture more relaxed than tortured; the expression on the face was one of peace, even satisfaction. Was this actually Simon of Cyrene, at peace, relieved that he managed to spare Jesus the crucifixion?
The thesis committee declined Hattie’s proposed thesis topic, “The Female Principle in the Early Church,” and the dean of graduate programs concurred with their decision. Hattie’s proposed research materials and corroborating texts were deemed inadequate. Dr. Rhinehart’s translations from the Coptic were impeccable, but there was as yet no reliable documentation to authenticate the papyrus scrolls. Little or nothing had been written about the feminine principle, wrote one committee member, “because it was a peripheral detail, too minor to merit much scholarly attention.” Still, the committee might have entertained her proposed thesis topic had Miss Abbott not rejected all reliable authorities and texts in favor of odd forgeries of old heresies.
Both Dr. Rhinehart and her father warned her from the start it was unlikely the committee could be persuaded of the scrolls’ authenticity. Her father cautioned that the scholars of early church history were quite conservative, and she was bound to be disappointed. But the worst of it was the casual suggestion by the Divinity School dean that Miss Abbott should attend the Metaphysical College operated by Mary Baker Eddy in Boston. Hattie was furious to be linked with Mrs. Eddy or her “healer,” Phineas P. Quimby. Hattie felt she had been dismissed as a suffragist, but her mother feared far worse—that Hattie was bound to be linked to Margaret Fuller, notorious advocate of free love. More than once, acquaintances of Mrs. Abbott compared Hattie’s precocity and ambition to Mrs. Eddy or Miss Fuller, which caused Mrs. Abbott to exclaim she was sure a compliment was intended, however she really must point out Mrs. Eddy was not Catholic and Miss Fuller was not even a Christian and was quite dead.
Though she had been aloof from most of the other Vassar women, still she felt cozy in the classrooms with other women. But at Harvard the atmosphere was far different. The decisions of the thesis committee were to remain confidential, yet news of Hattie’s rejected thesis topic leaked out at once to humiliate her. The eyes of the other students no longer were averted from her; there were whispers and smiles because the worst of her proposed thesis had been
its conclusion, that Jesus himself made Mary Magdalene and other women apostles in the early church!
As for the behavior of Mr. Hyslop after the committee’s decision, Hattie greatly misjudged his character; he was not the gentleman or Christian he appeared to be. From the start, all had proceeded properly enough, and Hattie welcomed his companionship in class and their discussions after class. But Hattie should have been alerted to Mr. Hyslop’s intentions when he compared Hattie’s ambitious thesis topic to the “lofty and spiritual ambitions” of Margaret Fuller. At the time, Hattie politely assumed Mr. Hyslop’s comparison of her to Miss Fuller was strictly limited to intellect and ambition; after all, the Fuller woman shocked polite society with her endorsement of free love and her premarital pregnancy.
Later Hattie realized there was a great deal about Mr. Hyslop that she misunderstood or, worse, that she had imagined for her own comfort. She assumed he was trustworthy because they shared class notes and compared grades and had exhilarating discussions after class. Although he did not seriously challenge the church canons (his thesis topic concerned Irenaeus and the Coptic Christian Church), on numerous occasions he expressed his respect and admiration for her scholarship. But Mr. Hyslop was not honest with her or himself.
In the days that followed the committee’s decision, Hyslop began in good form with a gentleman’s solicitude after the seminar, consoling her for the rebuff. The glorious spring morning looked so inviting Hattie arranged to walk the short distance home after class. As she and Mr. Hyslop chatted under the big oak tree along the Commons walk, a breeze came off the river and sent yellow blossoms fluttering across the lawn as rain showers drifted in front of the sun. Mr. Hyslop saw she carried no umbrella and kindly offered her a ride home in his coach, which seemed harmless enough, since Mr. Hyslop intended to enter the ministry upon graduation.