Collected Wisdom of the Saints, The

And so, let Elias' tenacity, unmatched by us ordinary souls, be a shining example for us during trying times. For in the midst of hardship, the temptation of desire—even that humblest desire to sate our hunger and quench our thirst—can tempt us to stray from our higher callings.

- Excerpted from a sermon given by His Holiness Teuantius at a Vanguard camp in the vicinity of Wessan Heights. c. 3480 HE.

Central to the moral teachings of the Reborn Theocracy was The Collected Wisdom of the Saints, a series of sermons drawing lessons about personal virtues and admonitions for righteous behavior derived from the Parables of the Saints as recounted in The Grimoire of the Saints and Their Trials. As the Theocracy annexed new lands, assimilated local populations, and led both "rightful natives" and "the new flock" through military conflicts and other hardships, the priesthood found the Parables to be a valuable vehicle for the socialization of subjects loyal to the Theocracy. And for this purpose, tales personifying their religion's moral values served far better than rote, dry commandments ever could.
Or so it was said. What is curious about The Collected Wisdom, at least those portions which historians have documented, is that the Grimoire from which it is supposedly derived did not explicitly lay out any religious morals or values whatsoever.

The Origin of The Collected Wisdom

The Grimoire of the Saints and Their Trials, in reality, was little more than a series of pseudo-biographic stories about major figures from the mythic history of the Theocracy's religion. Available evidence does not indicate that these tales explicitly spelled out any moral lessons. Although only fragments of second-hand copies of the Grimoire have survived the Crusade and the Reconquest,¹ disparate tellings of saints' stories across the Theocracy's once-vast territory and eight-odd decades of rule demonstrate that priests of the One Light took considerable liberties with how they recounted its tales for their congregations, and the lessons that congregants were supposedly expected to glean from the Parables—according to their priests—varied considerably from one telling to the next.
A straightforward explanation of these contradictions starts with the fact that most of the Theocracy's subjects were illiterate. That these congregants respected the authority of their priests and never read the Grimoire at all helps explain why numerous folk accounts of the Theocracy's religious history erroneously claim that the Grimoire, the Collected Wisdom, and sometimes the Parables (derived from the Grimoire) were all separate, written religious texts.
While the Collected Wisdom was revered as much as any official text would be, it is properly understood as a tradition of oral storytelling through which the priests of the One Light gave congregants a clear sense of meaning and purpose in their lives—and inculcated in them loyalty to the Theocracy under which they lived. Although the tellings of the Parables were far from uniform, they nonetheless functioned as a social glue in the contexts in which they were told, as ordinary subjects of the Theocracy found in these tales role models, stories they enjoyed memorizing and retelling, and ultimately a foundation for a shared cultural identity transcending the borders of the tribal lands and petty states that the Theocracy overtook. The tales of the Collected Wisdom are unofficially divided into "The Admonitions" and "The Virtues," depending on the contents of their moral lessons.
Many of these lessons further served to advance the Theocracy's goals of statecraft, which varied considerably over its history of rapid territorial expansion and then retraction. Those tellings of the Parables which date back closest to the Theocracy's founding, for example, sometimes concentrate on themes of "bearing the One Light to breach the darkness" (exploring unknown lands and subjugating foreign cultures), whereas those versions dating from the Theocracy's end days often borrow characters and plot points from older tales to instead implore listeners to be vigilant "keepers of the One Light" (protect the Cradles of the One Light and the settlements in which they stood). Other tales concern more mundane matters such as frugality and family values, though often also with the Theocracy's initially expansionistic aims and later struggles for survival in mind.
^{1 Indeed, the paucity of written religious texts from the Theocracy that have survived to the present—even in Geiljana/Kailrana, a city that surrendered to the Rebel Coalition peacefully at the end of the Reconquest—has led critical scholars to question whether the Priesthood of the One Light kept any religious texts aside from the Grimoire itself. Why a fairly advanced society with literate elites would neglect to record most of their religious texts, however, remains an unanswered question.}

The Admonitions

Despite the fact that the Parables are stories of the Theocracy's most revered saints, they impart plenty of lessons on the pitfalls and consequences of unvirtuous behaviors. Many of the Saints, far from being perfect, are described as having given in to temptation—for a time—and leading wayward lives before growing into exceptional bearers of the One Light.² Meanwhile, some of the more simplistic Parables include obviously villainous and wretched characters, clear foils to the Saints who highlight the fruits of righteous versus unrighteous living clear as day.
^{2 In this respect, too, the original contents of the Grimoire are the subject of much scholarly debate. Historians who regard the Parables first and foremost as theological teachings generally accept that these themes of moral failings and growth are central to the original texts. Those historians with a more critical perspective, such as Burahan in-Nabatir, allege that the Saints were originally depicted as morally flawless individuals, the stories of their failings having been added later so as to better arouse the sympathy of listeners.}

Popular Admonitions:

The parable of Sieghelde is best known as a cautionary tale against overlong grieving and preoccupation with one's past. Characterized as a good wife to a good husband, Siegehelde's fortunes take a turn for the worse when her husband is slain while heroically defending their settlement against raiders. Siegehelde, perhaps loathe to see her husband's soul off without ceremony, buries his body with his broadsword and helmet. Months later, Siegehelde and her new husband—her late husband's brother—pay dearly for her seemingly innocuous choice, when an Order contingent arrives at the settlement to recruit conscripts, only reject Siegehelde's new husband because his only weapons are humble spears with flint spearheads. A few dozen men aside from Siegehelde's new husband are conscripted, and not long after, the depopulated settlement is overrun by a truce-breaking Haifah tribe. Although Sieghelde is unmistakably a Northerner name, the contents of the parable seem to be intended for a Haifah audience, as their traditions of treasure burials plainly contradicted the Theocracy's norm of the cremation of the dead.
The parable of Ingwern does not seem to belong among the Admonitions until its very end. (Historians often characterize Ingwern's tale as one of the few Parables of significant literary value.) After Ingwern and his wife (unnamed) produce three children, all sons, the third through difficult and dangerous labor, Ingwern takes up a vow of chastity and spends much of his free time in service of his town's head priest. His chastity is the subject of admiration and some bemusement throughout his story until twenty years later, when he receives news that the galley bearing all three of his sons for a coastal expedition capsized, leaving him suddenly bereaved and without heirs. Ingwern and his wife fail to produce any more offspring (the exact reasons vary from one telling to the next), leaving the Theocracy's next generation in want of men as seemingly virtuous as Ingwern. This tale is somewhat unrelatable to students of history in the overcrowded city of Andaen, site of the Haifatneh Sea's premier historical institutes, but makes more sense when one considers the settler-expansionist aims of the early Theocracy.
Perhaps the most tragic tale among the Admonitions is that of the siblings of Elias, He Who Knew Not Desire. Raised by a poor family of eight children (in most tellings) and growing up during a severe famine, the siblings each meet untimely deaths or even more harrowing fates as they resort to petty crime and even prostitution for want of sustenance—except for Elias who, alone among his siblings, lives without food for an improbable forty days rather than choosing to acquire it through unrighteous means.^{3
3 The origin of this tale is the subject of much scholarly debate, not the least because Elias sounds quite unlike most names in Krausprauch and is potentially of pre-Haifatnehti or Takheti origin. Renowned scholar and archaeologist Saffiya an-Winari is among those who have speculated that Elias' tale was originally appropriated from Takheti folklore. If this is indeed the case, then Elias' tale is surely a recent addition to the Collected Wisdom.}

The Virtues

The majority of the Parables are largely tales of virtue, presenting (often male, and almost always Northerner) role models for the Theocracy's subjects. In the retellings of these tales that have been passed down into the historical record, priests often spent at least as much time lecturing their congregants on the virtue at the center of a given Parable as they did on retelling the Parable itself. The surviving written texts of the Grimoire, however, tend to do without such lecturing, and more confusingly, many of these Parables' characters suffer and die for upholding their virtues, all of this without obvious awards or accolades.

Popular Tales of Virtue:

Eudiulf the Last Warrior is a popular tale of a warrior's defiance, though a close reading suggests that Eudiulf's ways were, in fact, rather underhanded. After an assault upon his unit's frontier fort, Eudiulf awakes in a cot and learns from the Haifah woman tending his wounds that the battle was lost. Eudiulf sulks for quite a while—weeks, in some tellings—as he is unwilling to surrender and his Haifah captors, at least in more nuanced versions of the story, are equally unwilling to dispatch a helpless prisoner. When Eudiulf finally does speak with his attendants, he requests an audience with the fort's new captain and, upon meeting him, lethally stabs the captain with a medical instrument as his final act of defiance. The values meant to be imparted from this story are rather straightforward, coinciding with Theocracy soldiers' social mores against surrendering to their "heathen" enemies.
A classic tale of noble sacrifice is that of Ansal the Ever-Selfless. One of the multiple heroes of the Parables who seems to have successfully forsaken desire itself, Ansal gives generously, and to his own misfortune, to those in need and even those who are better off than him in long-winded recountings of his good deeds. He persists with his generosity even into a siege upon the Citadel of Authenwerge, where he resides as a refugee. When Ansal's wound from an enemy's arrow becomes badly infected, the Citadel's defenders, who already regard Ansal as something of a folk hero, ask whether he has any special requests for his last rites. Ignoring their query, Ansal instead instructs them that when they cremate his body, they should extract his char-hardened bones for use in arrows and spearheads.
^{4 Most curiously, Ansal's tale is among the oldest of the Parables, yet scholars of ancient Agratekti civilization find undeniable parallels between Ansal's self-sacrifice and that of Nuhashu the Earth Mother in a popular Agratekti and pre-Haifah creation myth.}
Whereas a number of the Parables extoll virtues of bravery and valor, the tale of Aulfwad Most-Humble⁵ was often told in the same sitting at these, sometimes in greatly abbreviated form, half-Admonition and half-Virtue. Aulfwad is mainly known as a skillful warrior who nonetheless discouraged those around him from discussing his feats at all. Upon the cremation of his remains, it is said, Aulfvad rose from his own funeral pyre, shambled to a friend's (or lover's) abode, located a personal item with his name engraved in it (which item exactly varies from one telling to the next), and then threw this item into the flames before lying upon the pyre again.
^{5 Notably, Aulfwad (later Aulfvad) was a stereotypically common male name among the Frulthudii and other subjects of the Theocracy. Historians even question whether this name was popularized by Aulfwad's tale or, instead, this name was assigned to the subject of this tale well after his death. (This assumes Aulfwad Most-Humble was a real person at all, though it is generally accepted that the subjects of the Parables are at least based on historical individuals).}

Authorship
Unknown

Type

Decree, Religious

Medium

Oral Tradition / Word of Mouth

Authoring Date

Unknown

Location

Andaen, The Crusader Citadel of