With Matilda’s return to political power, she supported the cause of a new pope who was committed to Gregory’s memory and their shared determination to separate the papacy from the influence of secular power. He was a fierce defender of Rome’s independence and a staunch opponent of royal interference in spiritual matters. Matilda maintained a close relationship with this new pope, Paschal II, for the remainder of her life.
Paschal. The similarity between this pope’s name and her own were most certainly not lost on Maureen. The connections within this story were never-ending.
Maureen approached the marble tomb with a new awareness. The magnificent woman depicted here held the papal tiara and the keys to the Church because she had lived here and ruled here with her own beloved. Together they were the manifestation of Solomon and Sheba in their time, and perhaps even a reflection of Jesus and Magdalene, El and Asherah. They were the embodiment of their own holy concept: the time returns.
And Bernini, the great Baroque master who inherited the designs for Saint Peter’s from Matilda’s descendant, Michelangelo, knew it. He created a powerful and elegant design that would preserve the truth in marble, for those with eyes to see.
Art will save the world.
Running her hand along the cold marble, designed by an artist who knew more than he was telling, Maureen examined the depiction of a scene from Matilda’s life that graced the facing of the tomb. It would not have meant anything to her before. Here was the event in Canossa, with Henry on his knees, begging forgiveness. Pope Gregory VII held central focus on his throne. Matilda, of course, stood beside him as she had literally and figuratively throughout their eventful years together.
Matilda’s story inspired Maureen more than any other she had ever investigated, with the possible exception of that of their shared ancestress, Mary Magdalene. Matilda, with her unprecedented commitment to equality for all men and women under God, her passion for charity and for improving the lot of the poor, had contributed to the demise of the Dark Ages by allowing in a new era of light. She was, in many respects, the first modern woman.
Most of all, Matilda kept her promises. She never stopped fighting for the reforms Gregory had attempted to implement. A thousand years later, reforms put into place by Gregory VII, with Matilda by his side, were considered critical to the foundations of the established Church.
Matilda dedicated her life to the people of Tuscany and their prosperity, and she built and restored centers of spiritual learning all over Italy, while managing to get her sweet bishop Anselmo canonized and remembered by posterity as a saint. She designed bridges and buildings and beautified existing structures with artworks: paintings, mosaics, and sculptures, thus becoming the first official patron of the arts in Tuscany. She would be the forerunner of the great artistic patrons of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance who nurtured and supported artists. Matilda insisted that her artists and sculptors sign their works when such a thing was unheard of, because she believed that posterity should remember the names of those who created such beauty.
As a gift to her beloved Lucca, she designed and financed a magnificent bridge across the Serchio that would facilitate both trade and travel for the people. She called the bridge Ponte della Magdalena, Magdalene’s Bridge, and it was a feat of art and engineering worthy of the great Lady’s name and legacy. The bridge was constructed of semicircles that seemed to rise out of the river. When viewed from a distance, the shapes reflected in the water create geometrically perfect circles. In their reflection, the circles were whole.
And Matilda of Canossa remained committed to the teaching of the Way of Love throughout her extraordinary reign. She implemented equality and tolerance among her own people at a time in history when there were no words for such concepts. She was a most unique woman with an epic life and legacy.
She was, quite simply, Matilda. By the Grace of God Who Is.
When Adam, the first man, lay dying, he begged for the archangel Michael to visit him upon his deathbed. Micha-el, the angel whose name means One Who Is Like God, came to Adam and offered to grant him his last request. Adam asked that a seed be given to him from the Tree of Life, the symbol of Holy Mother Asherah, that he might possess all her wisdom and know the answers to life’s mysteries on earth before he left this place, and that perhaps—just perhaps—the life-giving properties of her great divinity might save him.
Michael granted this wish and placed the requested seed directly into Adam’s mouth. But upon ingesting it, the first man drew his last breath. Rather than saving him, the Tree of Life brought about his demise. There was too much knowledge to be contained within one man. Adam was buried, and the following spring a sapling burst forth from the seed in his mouth, splitting the earth and growing into a new and mighty tree. It flourished for many centuries, before it was cut down with an axe by ignorant men who did not believe in its powers or its sanctity. The wood from the sacred tree was used to build a bridge that would cross the waters and lead to Jerusalem.
When Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, first came to Solomon on her long trek from Sabea, she crossed this bridge on the final day of her journey. It is said that in her grace she recognized immediately that this bridge was built of a special wood. The wood cried out to her and told her it had once flourished as the Tree of Life, before men without wisdom destroyed it. The beauty of Asherah, once a living and vital element on earth, had been hacked to pieces by the ignorant.
The Queen of Sheba fell to the ground in awe and worshipped the wood, realizing as she did so that she had been given a divine gift. But her sadness at this great loss tore at her heart, and she wept. As her tears struck the wood, the wisdom which had been trampled upon for so long was released to her and she was further bestowed with a vision from God. Makeda was shown that a new order, a new covenant, and a new messiah would come forth from the line of David and Solomon to change the world. Sadly, she also saw tragedy in the vision. This messiah of light would be killed for his beautiful beliefs, killed by the very same wood upon which she now knelt.
During her time of communion with King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba told him of this experience. Solomon was alarmed by the vision and believed that it had been given to her so that they could take precautions to save this descendant of prophecy. He ordered the bridge destroyed, and the wood buried outside Jerusalem. In his faith and wisdom, Solomon hoped that by his returning the wood to the earth, the Tree of Life might flourish once again. If this could not happen, then perhaps he would eliminate the possibility of its use in the destruction of this forthcoming holy man. This was done, and the wood remained underground for fourteen generations.
During the reign of Pontius Pilate, the wood was discovered by chance when a battalion of Roman soldiers were digging mass graves for Jewish insurgents. They brought the wood to Jerusalem, where it was used to create the beams of the cross upon which our Lord met his divine fate atop the hill of Golgotha.
A man’s destiny cannot be denied when it is written in the stars.
It is further said that the place where Solomon and Sheba had their first fated meeting would become the exact location of the Holy Sepulcher. It would seem that there are areas of the earth that have their own destiny, chosen by God as places of power.
For those with ears to hear, let them hear it.
THE LEGEND OF THE TRUE CROSS, PART ONE
AS PRESERVED IN THE LIBRO ROSSO
Rome
present day
BÉRENGER AND MAUREEN strolled toward the Piazza della Rotonda, hand in hand, on their way back to the hotel. The Pantheon gleamed under the spotlights, and the fountain gurgled, all in harmony with the bustle that occurred every evening in this ancient plaza. Vendors sold flying toys and cheap souvenirs to tourists who weren’t already jaded from paying too much for mediocre pasta at the cafés perched on prime real estate. Maureen had learned quickly that to walk a few paces away from the grand spaces in Rome was to find far more appealing cuisine at prices that didn’t include rent for suc
h a historic view. Tonight they had dined in the quiet nearby piazza dedicated to Mary Magdalene, where a beautiful portrait of their Lady was preserved in a large, cameo-shaped frame at one corner of the square.
Maureen and Bérenger skirted the bustling piazza, as alive on a late spring night as the Trocadero in Paris or Times Square in New York City. As they entered the sanctuary of the hotel lobby, the night porter recognized Maureen and signaled to her.
“There was a package left here for you. One moment.”
He scurried to a back room and emerged with a container the size of a shoe box, wrapped in brown paper. The plain package made Bérenger immediately suspicious.
“Did you see who left this package?”
“A courier. From a local service. I had to sign for it.”
Maureen thanked him and took the package. She briefly hoped that the package might at least contain her missing notebooks; it was too small to hold her computer. As they waited for the elevator, the pair of them inspected it. In the upper left corner, handwritten in a scrawl on the brown paper, was a single word: DESTINO.
“Bloody hell, who is this guy?” Bérenger growled his irritation. The mystery was getting to him, although he wasn’t inclined to let Maureen know just how disturbed he was. He was a man used to being in charge at all times, and he was beginning to chafe at a game where he was not in control of the players, or the rules.
“He knows too much about our comings and goings; he knows your history. He knows something about me, clearly. And…”
“And he knows what I dream about. How is that possible?”
They placed the box on the bed and sat on either side of it, opening it together. As she removed the brown paper on her side of the box, Maureen cried out.
“Ouch!”
It was simply a paper cut, albeit a particularly vicious one that ran across the inside of her middle finger and began to bleed. And it hurt disproportionately, as paper cuts are wont to do. She got up to wash her hands and held a towel around the offended finger for a moment until the bleeding stopped. Then she returned to Bérenger to finish unwrapping the parcel. He first kissed her wounded finger gently and inspected it to be sure it wasn’t too deep.
While the exterior of the package was addressed very simply to Maureen, the interior was filled with two smaller boxes, each individually addressed. One was to Maureen, one was to Bérenger.
“You first,” Maureen said, handing Bérenger the small box with his name on it. It was the same size as a gift box for a small jewelry item, and when he opened it, he saw that it was very definitely something rare and valuable, like a jewel. The box contained a small silver reliquary, oval in shape and made like a locket, but with a cover that slipped over the top, like the lid on a tiny box. The lid covered the red wax seal that is used to both protect and authenticate religious artifacts. In this case, the seal was so ancient and deteriorated that it was impossible to determine what the original image looked like in its entirety, but there were tiny stars visible in what appeared to be a circular pattern, embedded in the wax.
While smaller than Maureen’s thumbnail, the casing was, conversely, highly detailed and well preserved. Embossed into the silvered cover was a miniature crucifixion sequence. At the foot of the cross, a long-haired and kneeling Mary Magdalene clung to the feet of her dying beloved. Strangely, the only other element—carefully crafted—was a columned temple perched on a hill behind them. The temple looked distinctly Greek, resembling the Acropolis in Athens, the shrine built to honor feminine wisdom and strength.
Bérenger recognized it immediately. “It’s a temple that symbolizes the Sophia element in spirituality,” he said. “Divine feminine knowledge. Artists affiliated with the bloodline used it when painting Magdalene to indicate that she was the keeper of the knowledge, as have the secret societies affiliated with bloodline traditions for centuries. You can identify the Sophia temples specifically, as they have rounded rooftops representing female curvature.”
Maureen looked at the image and nodded. In her research into Magdalene art, she had seen a number of Italian depictions of the crucifixion with similar configurations: her Mary at the foot of the cross, usually clutching it. In several cases, there was a structure that resembled a classical Greek temple in the background. Some artists depicted the temple in ruins, symbolic of the loss of the divine feminine wisdom in their contemporary spirituality.
Bérenger turned the case over to see the relic itself. It was minuscule, so tiny as to be nearly invisible, but it was there. A speck of wood was held in place by some type of resin, glued into the center of a golden flower. Beneath the relic was a sliver of paper, handwritten in painstaking script: V. Croise.
It was an abbreviation that both understood, even in the antiquated French, Vraie Croise. They looked at each other and said in tandem, “The True Cross.”
There was a time, even in the last week, when Bérenger Sinclair would have scoffed at any relic that claimed to be a portion of the True Cross, particularly if the provenance of the item could not be established. But given recent events, and Maureen’s presence in Rome, he knew there was no room for skepticism. The minuscule splinter’s tiny size gave credibility to the authenticity. If a villain were going to create a forgery for the sake of a black-market relic sale, wouldn’t he at least create a splinter that was wholly visible to the naked eye?
Maureen jumped suddenly and let out a little squeal.
“What is it?”
She had been holding the reliquary in her open palm. When she jumped, it fell on the bed. Bérenger leaned over to pick it up.
“Feel it,” Maureen said.
Bérenger’s eyes grew wide as he picked it up. “It’s hot.”
Maureen nodded. As she had held the relic in her hand, the metal had begun to grow warm, finally heating up to such a degree that she dropped it.
It was cooling now, so Bérenger returned it to its resting place in the box.
“Bérenger, look. My paper cut. It’s…gone.”
She held out her hand to show him. She had held the reliquary in the same hand that was injured. The cut, an inch in length, that she and Bérenger had both witnessed just minutes before, was gone.
He nodded silently, then reached for the accompanying card on the now familiar stationery with the strange monogram, the A tied to the reversed E, and read it aloud to Maureen.
This once belonged to another Poet Prince, the greatest who ever lived. You are charged to wear his mantle. Do so with grace and God will reward you just as the prophecy promises.
Amor vincit omnia,
Destino
For the first time in their relationship, Maureen saw Bérenger Sinclair at a loss. The blood had drained from his face and he looked stricken. Haunted.
She reached out and took his hand, gently. “What’s wrong? What does it mean?”
He reached up and kissed her hand to soften the blow of his evasiveness. “It means…that there is something I need to tell you. But not quite yet. Let’s look at the other items in this mysterious Pandora’s box first.”
Maureen didn’t want to let it go, but she would respect his wishes for the moment as she was equally curious about what was left within the treasure box. Reaching in for her own package, Maureen extracted another container designed for jewelry, larger than the one addressed to Bérenger. Hers was lined with an exquisite indigo-colored satin, a rich fabric and hue falling somewhere between deepest blue and violet. Sitting atop the satin was an ancient-looking medallion of hammered copper. Bérenger recognized it instantly.
“The labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral.”
Inscribed on the reverse, in what appeared to be a more modern engraving in French, were the words:
Marie a choisi la meilleure part, et personne ne la lui enlèvera.
Bérenger, who was fluent, translated it aloud quicker than Maureen could have, although both recognized the passage immediately. “Mary hath chosen the better part, which no one will take from her.”
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br /> “Luke ten forty-two,” Maureen replied simply. All devoted students of the Magdalene knew this passage by heart. It comes after Martha complains that she is doing all the housework while Mary sits at the feet of Jesus and listens to him. Jesus replies in support of Mary with this enigmatic phrase.
“What do you think it means?” Maureen spoke first. “Because we both know it’s not going to be an obvious, scriptural interpretation.”
“Of course not. It’s on the reverse of the Chartres labyrinth image, and it’s in French, so those elements are obviously connected. Read the card.”
Maureen extracted the card, not bothering to disguise her shock as she read.
The Book of Love is in Chartres Cathedral. This is your destiny and destination on June 21. Window 10.
While the first line had significant impact—could it really be possible that the Book of Love was in Chartres Cathedral?—the lines that followed left her speechless.
Behold, the Book of Love. Follow the path that has been laid out for you, and you will find what you seek. Once you have found it, you must share it with the world and fulfill the promise that you made. Our truth has been in darkness for too long.
Amor vincit omnia,
Destino
The words were verbatim to those spoken by Jesus in her dreams about the Book of Love. Was the author of this card, this Destino, a messenger of divine providence? Or was he the thief who had stolen her laptop and notebook, taunting Maureen with her own notes?