Some say that Mary was impregnated by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
But they do not know what they say.
How can the feminine impregnate the feminine?
Maureen and Peter looked at each other for a moment, allowing the passage to speak for itself in its simple, pure power. Maureen ultimately broke the silence. “Is this really all about something completely different than we ever suspected, Pete?”
“Meaning?”
“Well, I used to think that this was entirely about vindicating Mary Magdalene, making people realize and understand who she was and why she mattered. She was the wife of Jesus and she was his best friend and his partner and his chosen successor. She brought Christianity to Europe and she and her children risked everything to see that it flourished and endured. That in itself is a fairly tall order.”
“But…”
“But…what if that isn’t the point at all? Oh, I mean it matters, of course it does, it is a point, and a significant one. But maybe it’s not the ultimate point.”
“Go on.”
“Maybe Magdalene is emblematic of a larger issue. Maybe what she represents, even more than the wife of Jesus in his human aspect, is the wife of Jesus in his divine aspect. He is God and she is the beloved of God. His other half. On earth as it is in heaven.”
“The feminine aspect of the divine?”
“Yes. But not in the traditionally considered pagan form of a goddess or some minor deity. But as an aspect of God. The equal, female face of God, if you will. The feminine half that completes the male half of God. In this case, seen in the guise of the Holy Spirit.”
Peter was considering this as he looked through the notes he had made earlier that morning. “Let me read you something I found very interesting. ‘It has even been speculated that the name of God, Yahweh, may have evolved from Ya-hu, which means “Exalted Dove” and was the name of an ancient creation goddess who was the wife of God, who was called El. The two, El and Ya-hu, blend into one and are ultimately called by the singular Yahweh, which later becomes known to be simply male.’ Now to be fair, there are many other theories about the origins of Yahweh, and this is just one of them, and certainly not the accepted one by many scholars.”
Maureen laughed at this a little. “Lately, I find that I often prefer theories that are not accepted by scholars. You know, the French esoteric writer Louis Charpentier once said that when history and tradition disagree, you can be sure that history is wrong. I’m with him on this. I’ll take the living traditions that have endured in France and Italy for thousands of years over a set of academic principles which were designed to support power structures over the truth.”
She walked to the window, threw it open to let in the late spring air, and gazed out at the Isis obelisk. To her right, by a few hundred yards, was a piazza and church dedicated to Mary Magdalene. To her left the same distance was a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and built over a temple to the goddess of wisdom, in the case of the Romans, Minerva—but also known as Sophia, the Lady of Divine Wisdom. Ahead of her was an obelisk in honor of Isis.
“Notre Dame,” she said suddenly.
“What about it?” Peter’s mind went immediately to the Gothic monument in Paris.
“Not it. Her,” Maureen corrected. “Notre Dame. Our Lady. For two years I’ve been building a case that all the churches in France that are dedicated to Notre Dame were dedicated to Mary Magdalene, right?”
Peter nodded. He had helped her with that very convincing research. It was clear to both of them that the Notre Dame churches, and churches that contained statues of “black madonnas” all had associations with the Magdalene heresy.
“Well, they are, I’m certain of it, and so are you. But what if that’s not the end? What if all of ‘Our Ladies’—whether they be Magdalene, or the Virgin, or Isis or Minerva or Sophia—what if they’re all the same? And what if they are just telling us that God has a female aspect? Or that God has a wife and a beloved? Could all these shrines have been built to restore that balance? We know all the Gothic cathedrals—all of which are called Notre Dame—were temples to the glory of God. But were they temples to the glory of the female aspect of God? She is Notre Dame. She is Our Lady. In all her guises. Because they all matter, regardless of which personification she takes on earth.”
Peter was struck by an idea. “The time returns?”
He didn’t have time to complete his thought, as they were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Lara from the front desk. An envelope had been delivered to Maureen by a courier, which Lara had brought up thinking that it might have been something about Maureen’s missing bag and computer.
Maureen thanked Lara and returned to the room. She immediately recognized the card stock and the strange monogram. The “Hail Ichthys” clues had been on identical stationery. This note was very simple:
Genesis 1:26
Genesis 3:22
Amor vincit omnia,
Destino
Maureen spoke first. “Look at the second verse number. Three twenty-two.”
Peter was way ahead of her. It was the first thing he had noticed. Since Maureen had relayed her dream to him that morning, he had been fixated on the “coincidence” of Lucia Santos’s date of birth, which was the same. “Your birth date.”
She nodded. “Do you know the verse?”
“Well, I can’t quote Genesis verbatim, but chapter one is creation and chapter three is the expulsion from the garden. I do carry my small Bible with me for reference. It will only give me the English, but we can look up earlier versions and ancient phrasing later.”
“Start with the first verse on the list. Genesis one twenty-six.”
Peter found it quickly. “Creation. ‘Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”’”
He flipped ahead quickly to the third chapter, locating verse twenty-two. “This verse follows the place where Adam and Eve partake of the fruit in the garden. ‘And the Lord God said, “Behold, man has become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”’”
Maureen was laughing. “Well, I don’t know who Destino is, but I want to thank him for doing my work for me.”
Peter wasn’t there yet. “Meaning?”
“Both of those passages refer to God in the plural form. Let us make man in our image, in our likeness. Behold, man has become as one of us. I had every intention of looking into all the places in scripture where we could argue God refers to himself in the plural, and now I don’t have to go searching for that information.”
Peter found the synchronicity more unsettling than comforting, and he still wasn’t convinced that the mastermind behind the clues wasn’t also the criminal with the gun. “Let me see that card again.”
Maureen read the Latin motto first. “And it also says Amor Vincit Omnia. Even I know that one. Love conquers all. And it shows up on most of the Book of Love material that Matilda quotes in her memoirs. But isn’t that from Virgil? Are we to believe that Jesus was quoting ancient Roman poetry? Because that’s a stretch even I can’t make.”
“I’m not so sure it’s that much of a stretch,” Peter countered, surprising Maureen. “Look, I know I’m supposed to be the voice of reason here, but it is fascinating. If Jesus had a classically influenced education, he could have known about Virgil, who was only a generation ahead of him. Further, Virgil is often credited with predicting the coming of Jesus in the same work, the Eclogues, that uses the phrase Love conquers all. Eclogue Four is sometimes said to be about the nativity. So there is a strong connection, and perhaps even a deliberate effort to attach yet another messianic prophecy to his legacy. Or it could just be that this concept of Love conquers all is completely universal and archetypal and continues to return and recycle with diff
erent generations across the globe.”
Maureen caught it immediately. “Making yet another aspect of what the time returns could mean.” She nodded her understanding as she glanced down to catch the signature at the bottom of the card.
Destino.
Maureen paused before asking a question she already knew the answer to. “Pete, what does destino mean in Italian and Spanish?”
“Destino? It can mean either destiny or destination, or both.”
Before Maureen had time to consider the correlation between Peter’s revelation and her dream of Easa, the phone rang.
Father Girolamo di Pazzi needed to see Maureen on urgent business.
Vatican City
present day
“DO YOU KNOW what this is?”
Maureen looked at the yellowed manuscript pages on Father Girolamo’s desk and shook her head in reply to the old priest’s question. She did not, legitimately, know exactly what it was, so she wasn’t lying.
“Look closely,” he rasped. “In fact, here.” He handed one of the pages to her, and she took it gently. “Hold this and see what you think.”
Maureen jumped a little when the paper made contact with her hands. There was power in these pages. Real power. She looked down at the verses, more curious now than wary. “They’re in French. I’m sorry, but I’m not fluent.”
“It doesn’t matter. These verses are not to be translated verbatim with your mind. They’re to be translated with your heart. Try.”
Maureen read the first line in French. Le temps revient.
“The time returns,” she said softly.
Father Girolamo nodded. “You do know what it is.”
Maureen was quite sure that she was holding a piece of the Libro Rosso, or at least an aged translation of it, in her hands. But she couldn’t admit that. To do so would be to give away that they had Matilda’s manuscript, and she wasn’t going to do that for anyone at this stage. There were too many questions. While Peter was certain that Father Girolamo was trustworthy, Maureen trusted no one within the walls of Vatican City. And Peter hadn’t been allowed to accompany her, which was suspect. Girolamo insisted that the meeting was limited to the two of them.
“It’s…poetry?” Maureen replied lamely.
The old man tried not to let his growing irritation show and spoke to her gently. “It’s prophecy. Written in quatrains. Can you read more?”
Maureen looked at the verses, her hands shaking now. Yes! She wanted to scream at him. She could read them, and she knew exactly what they said, what they meant, and who wrote them. The page she held in her hands reverberated through her body.
“Choisi…” Maureen muddled through the literal French, which appeared to be medieval, or early Renaissance. “Something about being chosen. There are a lot of words here about love…that’s really all I can translate. I’m sorry.”
Father Girolamo patted her hand softly. “Do not rush, my child. Take your time, and just relax. I did not mean to put such pressure on you.” He pulled out another page; this one appeared to be the very first in the manuscript. “See what you think of this.”
It was a dedication page, and she could decipher that it was made out to Pope Urban VIII. But she stopped short as she saw the next line.
Les Prophéties de Nostradamus.
“Nostradamus?” Maureen asked, confused now.
“Yes, yes. These have all been attributed to the famous Frenchman.”
Maureen could not shake her head or protest, did not indicate that she knew these were not the work of a French doctor from Provence in the sixteenth century. But she didn’t have to.
“But as you already know”—Father Girolamo winked at her conspiratorially—“these prophecies are not the work of the famous Frenchman. Tell me, what else do you think Les Prophéties de Nostra Damus could mean?” He separated the syllables in the name deliberately, causing Maureen to gasp in spite of herself.
Hiding in plain sight. The Prophecies of Nostra Damus.
“The Prophecies of…of Our Lady.”
Maureen called Tammy on her cell as she walked across Saint Peter’s Square in search of her own Peter.
“We owe Nostradamus an apology,” she quipped as her friend answered from the château in Arques.
Maureen went on to explain the events in Father Girolamo’s office. “Nostradamus wasn’t a plagiarist. He was preserving the prophecies. Protecting them and providing a way for his generation to begin to understand them. And he couldn’t exactly come out and say, ‘These are the prophecies of the daughter of Jesus,’ when the Inquisition was lurking just across the border from him. So he hid them in plain sight, within his name—the name his family adopted intentionally when they converted to a particular Order of Christianity. And that’s Order with a capital O.”
She signed off as she saw Peter approaching her, promising Tammy to call her later and fill her in on all the details as they were rapidly unfolding in Rome.
Father Girolamo was very pleased with the interview. While he knew that Maureen was holding back, he had also seen her genuine reaction to the manuscript pages. He would be patient and gentle with her, and wait. He was quite certain that her sheer curiosity would eventually bring her back for more.
Salerno
1085
GREGORY VII WAS DYING.
The last years of his life had tested the limits of his faith. Had he been given the chance to be near Matilda during these trials, he could have endured anything that God put in his path, but they had been apart for eight years since that last night in Rome. How strange that, somehow, they both had known it was their last night together. When Matilda sent the portrait upon her return to Tuscany, it was her way of acknowledging that they were not destined to meet again in the flesh, at least not in this place and time. For all her warrior queen nature, Matilda was a deeply gifted mystic. She knew that their parting would be permanent.
She also knew, as did he, that their parting was only physical. Their spirits were united, their hearts and dreams were one and the same. Matilda had proven herself time and again to be the most loyal and devoted of souls. When Henry IV marched on Rome, Matilda sent every man she could muster from Tuscany to defend Gregory. When there were not enough men left in Tuscany, she sold everything she owned and purchased mercenaries from all over Europe. She even melted down her personal jewelry, everything except the ring she had been given on her sixteenth birthday. She raided her own monasteries and churches, liquidating anything that could be used to buy support for the papal cause. Over the last two years, Matilda of Tuscany had completely devastated her personal wealth and position in defense of the man she loved and in support of their mutual cause. That it wasn’t enough, that she was unable to save him, was her ultimate heartbreak.
After a lengthy and bloody struggle, Henry IV had succeeded in deposing Gregory VII and installing a puppet pope on the throne of Saint Peter. Rome was in Chaos. Gregory was forced into exile in the coastal town of Salerno, where his family owned a sizable estate. He tried to rally support from Norman allies, but Henry’s stronghold was now too great in Italy. Gregory’s papacy was over, and with it, his life. In his exile, Gregory was unable to write to his beloved, and he was unable to save Rome and his church from the tyrant who would call himself king. He had lost the will to carry on, and a wasting sickness was overtaking him.
He called in one of the few men he trusted and asked him to write a final letter, one that he prayed would find its destination across the war-torn plains of Italy. He gave the man one of the few treasures he had left, a ring in gold with a carnelian intaglio of Saint Peter, and asked that he take a vow to see that this package reached its destination. That the messenger was an honest man, and intrepid, was God’s final gift to Gregory VII before he left this earth for heaven on May 25, 1085.
In his final words, taken by a scribe, Gregory VII whispered, “I have loved justice and hated iniquity. Therefore I die in exile.”
Canossa
June 10
85
THE NEWS of Gregory’s death was carried to Matilda by Conn, although it did not come as a surprise. She knew when it happened, down to the very minute on the very day.
“You do not lose the other half of your soul without feeling it in every piece of your being,” she said quietly. “I have been mourning him for weeks. Long before the news arrived in Canossa.”
Conn nodded. He had been away on one military crisis after another and had not been here to stay with her and comfort her as he would have liked. She was regal in her grief, like a queen who had lost her king but knew she had an obligation to carry on for the sake of her people.
“Tilda, a messenger brought a package today. It is from Salerno.”
She swallowed hard; she had not expected this. To get any messenger from Salerno, past Rome, and into Tuscany in the current climate of all-out war was nearly impossible. That it had arrived safely was surely an act of divine protection. She took the package from Conn and opened it carefully, saying a prayer of thanks for the arrival of anything that would perhaps give her one last moment with her beloved.
The package contained the portrait of her and Guidone, the image in blue painted as a madonna and child that she had sent to Gregory four years before. She read the letter that accompanied it:
My beloved, my perfected one, my sweet dove—
How I miss you, how I have ached for you in these trying times. While God has chosen to give us terrible trials, none is harder for me than knowing that I cannot tell you how much I appreciate all that you have done, given, and sacrificed for our vision of love and equality. I know the toll that it has taken on you, and on your people. I pray many times a day that God will care for you and that your faith will bring you peace.
As my days left on earth grow short—indeed I shall likely be with our father and mother in heaven by the time you receive this—I wanted to return this portrait to you. For it is the single item that has kept me alive over the terrible period of exile. It was this image of your strength, and of Guidone’s promise, that gave me hope when I had none. It was this reminder of your beauty, and of the sacred nature of our love, that gave me strength. This portrait is the single most valuable possession of my life, and as I die I do not want to see it lost. And so I return it to you, that you may know what it has meant to my heart and spirit for these years that it has been in my possession.