The Sanguinaria
The Sanguinaria is a complicated and awkwardly written book, and many Sanctified theologians speculate that it was originally intended to be two separate books and then somewhat artlessly combined into a single text. Much of the book addresses the fates of some of the first Dark Apostles, who, after their training by Longinus and the Monachus, were sent out into the world as missionaries to preach the philosophy of The Lancea Sanctum to the rest of the Damned. The Dark Apostles rarely found willing listeners, and five of the Dark Apostles identified in the text were martyred and posthumously became known as the Black Saints. One of these martyrs was the Ventrue Icarius, whose childer went on to become the leaders of the Icarian Heresy, though that schism came much later and is not addressed within the text. Interspersed between the accounts of the various Dark Apostles and their ultimate fates are completely unrelated sections which appear to be philosophical treatises on the nature of vampirism and damnation, as well as proverbs and sayings attributed to Longinus and the Monachus.
The Sanguinaria
The First Book
of Sanguinaria
1. The triumphs and martyrdoms of the Dark Apostles, whom we call the Black Saints, are widely known among the Sanctified faithful, for their stories are passed among us as an inspiration. 2But it can only be a help to us to see their tales in writing, and although I cannot imagine that a time will come when the tales of the Black Saints and their miracles and their Final Deaths are not told to the enthralled assemblies of the Sanctified, it is up to mea to write down the miracles of these first followers of Longinus.of Sanguinaria
3When Longinus left behind the Spear with the Monachus and walked into the world, he said: 4“The Blood of Christ gave sight to my blind eyes.
5“Octavian left my tongue and pulled my teeth, but I still commanded him to abandon his idols.
6“I have been buried and I have returned. I have been stricken down, and yet I have returned to my feet.
7“If these are not miracles, what are they?
8“And yet, if they are miracles, why has God granted them to me, a vessel of sin?”
9And then he said to the Monachus: “Teach your offspring to listen to my word, and tell them to teach their own offspring the same.
10“When my line can no long contain the blood it has spilt, the night the offspring of your offspring can no longer hear the blood of their brothers and sisters cry to them from out of the earth, that is the night when all hope is lost.”b
11And then, Longinus left.
2. The Monachus decided that the time had come to take disciples. 2And so, over time, he found five who were devoted to the word of Longinus. 3They were Adira and Gilad, who were crucified to face the dawn; Daniel, who avenged the Theban Legion; Pazit, who gave herself to the flames to save the Spear; and Maron of Icaria, who brought the word to Alexandria and fell to the wolves in Italy.
a No indication exists within the text of who the writer might be. Various legendary figures have been named, but the fact remains that the author of the Sanguinaria remains frustratingly anonymous, but for one reference (see 10:6 and note v below). CP
b This, unlike the other sermons in the book (see note j below) shows no signs of being by another author than the primary author of the text. CP
4On the night they met in the cave near Jerusalem that had been the home of the sect of the Essenes, the Five made a covenant with the Monachus. 5They swore on the Spear that they would protect it, and they swore to spread the teachings of Longinus to all who were numbered among the ranks of the Damnedc and who would gladly accept the truth, and repent.
6We consider their tales to be the foundation of our own covenant.d
3. This is how Adira and Gilad came to hear the word of Longinus and accept it gladly. 2Longinus had left the Monachus, and the Monachus chose to hunt the cattle alone, because Longinus had said to him, “It is good for you to hunt the cattle.”
3By chance, he walked through a street and heard the sounds of life in a garden. He leaped over the wall, 4and he stumbled across a youth and a young woman beneath an apple tree. They were naked, and they were having sexual intercourse.e 5When they saw the Monachus, they cried out. 6They each tried to hide their nakedness, and mistaking the Monachus for a holy man, begged him to have mercy upon them, and they asked him to tell them what penance they should perform. 7Moreover, each blamed the other for leading them into sin.
8The Monachus told them to stand, and spoke firmly to them, saying, 9“You are sinners, and if I were to expose you to your families, you would die.” 10They begged him all the more to keep their secret, and cursed each other, 11and the Monachus saw that they were not ashamed of their sin, only that they were afraid of being found out. 12He said to them, “Your parents shall not know, but you shall follow me and understand the depths of your sin.” 13And then he said, “The desires that lead you into sin shall leave you, and you may choose to die and place yourselves on the mercy of God, 14or you can follow and be slaves forever to a greater desire. 15You may know greater pleasures than your bodies can supply.” 16Then, he made each of them kneel, and gave each the Dark Gift, Adira first and then Gilad. They rejoiced, and followed him.
4. This is how Maron of Icariaf came to follow the word of Longinus. 2Maron was a soldier of Rome. 3He was a thief; 4one night the Monachus saw
c Lit. counted Damned. VB
d The usual Latin term in the Testament for “covenant,” by which is meant the historical organization founded by Longinus, is foedus, foederis. Here, however, the text uses conventio, conventionis, a term found largely in the Codex Theodosianus that usually refers to a legal agreement or an organized meeting (hence also the English derivation “convention,” which is either a physical meeting or a metaphorical meeting of minds). However, although the term is different, the meaning is clear to us: the author refers to the covenant the Five founded, Lancea et Sanctum, Spear and Chapel. CP
e My colleague translates virgo, virginis as “young woman,” potentially obscuring an important point of doctrine: Adira had not succumbed to the sins of the flesh before joining the Monachus, and remained a virgin. Fornicatio (as it looks, “fornication”) refers to more than just the sinful act. VB
f Here, some later texts have, instead of “of Icaria,” the epithet “called Icarius,” but this is clearly a later corruption of the text (not found in the Nag Hammadi document). There is no reason to make the connection that the proponents of the so-called “Icarian movement” would later infer from the person of Maron. Certainly, the Longinian canon contains so little of the words of Maron, it is difficult to ascribe to him the origins of an heretical sect. The likelihood is that Maron is being conflated with another figure called Icarius. VB
him kill a man and take his purse. 5The Monachus called out to him, and Maron decided to run, 6but the Monachus said “Stop,” and Maron could only stop and be amazed. 7Maron shook with fear, for he thought that the Monachus would kill him.
8The Monachus said to him, “Indeed, you can die now, or you can come, and follow, 9and be a thief of blood, and be Damned.” 10He told Maron of Longinus, and gave Daniel the Dark Gift, and Maron followed him.
5. This is how Pazit came to hear the word of Longinus. 2The Monachus walked through the gardens of the Mount of Olives, 3and saw a woman digging in the earth with a spade, and on the ground by her a dead child. 4The Monachus said to her, “Woman, why are you digging, and why is this child dead?” 5The woman replied, “Father,g I have no money to eat, and my husband has abandoned me for a whore. 6And so I put my hands around the throat of my daughter and strangled her.” 7And the Monachus said, “Are you not repentant now that you have killed your daughter?” 8The woman said, “I am not. 9For she is the child of the villain, and she eats the food that I need to live, and she has been a burden on me. 10I shall tell my husband of what I have done, and I shall kill myself.”
11The Monachus said, “You shall tell him, but you shall not kill yourself. 12You can choose to die now, and place yourself at the mercy of God, or you shall show others their guilt, and punish them. 13Follow me and be Damned, and leave the child to the crows.” 14She accepted, and the Monachus gave Pazit the Dark Gift, and she put down the spade and followed him. 15She did not look back.h
This is how Daniel came to hear the word of Longinus. 2The Monachus and the Four came to the city of Masada.i 3Now the hill of Masada had been a fortress owned by the Romans. 4Men belonging to the sect of the Sicarii,
g Emphatically not “Rabbi,” as the Authorized version has it. The use of “Father” (Pater) to refer to a Christian or at any rate a quasi-Christian divine is anachronistic, but it does no favors to the text to hide those anachronisms in the act of translation. Besides, this is only one of many anachronisms and historical errors in the Sang. CP
h Debate continues as to whether Pazit’s Medea-like killing of her nameless daughter and the abandonment of the corpse constitutes a Kindred woman’s act of liberation from the chains of familial oppression or an act of violence against our gender. For the former interpretation, see S. Birch, “The shackles of the female disciple: Pazit freed” in Longinian Studies 5 (1994 for the latter interpretation see my own “The paradox of confirmed roles: Adira, Pazit and oppression in the Sanguinaria,” in Perspectives on the Monachal Acts, SPLD London 2004. CP
i The siege of Masada, presented here, agrees more or less exactly as in the much earlier Josephus (VII. 9), the most likely source for the author of Sang. This incident causes serious problems with the Longinian chronology, since we have a pinpoint date for the end of the siege (16th April 72CE). It is a problem of arithmetic. The crucifixion is reckoned by those scholars who consider Christ to have existed at all to have occurred at Passover, sometime between 22 and 27 CE. Longinus is supposed to have waited 33 years (which is by modern reckoning, 32 — the ancients counted inclusively) before his vision of Vahishtael and the beginning of his mission (Mal. 14:6-13). Having engaged the Monachus as his disciple, he taught the Monachus for 20 years (a matter of Sanctified tradition, but an unchallenged one). Assuming no gap at all between the vision of Vahishtael, the recruitment of the Monachus, the teaching, Longinus’ leavetaking and the recruitment of the Five, gives the meeting with Daniel an absolute earliest terminus post quem of sometime in 73CE. It is, I suppose, just about conceivable that Longinus’ teaching of the Monachus and his travails were not those exact spaces of years. But since even the accepted Longinian chronology is an article of faith, questioning these durations is a dangerous business. CP
along with their women and children, had killed the Romans and had made the place their home, and a base for their raids on the Romans. 5But the Romans returned, and laid siege to the town. 6The Monachus came to Masada by night, with the Four. The Monachus cast a shroud of shadow over himself and the four, and the Romans did not see them.
7And so the Monachus and the Four strode through the siege works and the doors of the city swung open before them; this is how they gained entry to Masada. 8The Monachus and the Four walked through an assembly of the men of Masada. The men of Masada spoke together and decided that they did not want to fall to the Romans. 9They decided to die. 10But they were afraid that they would be damned, because they had committed suicide. 11And this is why they decided that each man would kill his family, and the man beside him, and only the last man would have to kill himself, and face damnation. 12The Monachus and the Four rejoiced that God had shown them this place, 13and as the men of Masada killed each other that they might not be damned, the Damned aided them in their task, and killed and feasted.
7. When all the men of Masada were dead, and their women and children, and the blood ran freely and filled the streets, 2so that the Four fell to their knees and praised God, and lapped it up from the stones of the street, one man remained. 3He had killed his wife and his children, and many of his friends, but could not kill himself, because he was a coward, and feared damnation.4 The Monachus came to him, and removed the shroud so that he could be seen, and said, 5“Do you not see that your cowardice has damned you already?” 6Daniel knew that it was true, and fell to his knees in the river of blood that ran through the street. He wept, and said, “What must I do?” 7The Monachus said, “You must accept that you are already one of the Damned, and you must fulfill God’s purpose in your damnation.” 8Daniel raised his hands to Heaven, and accepted the Dark Gift from the Monachus, 9and now his Dark Apostles were the Five: 10Adira and Gilad, caught in fornication; Maron of Icaria, the murderer and thief; Pazit, who slew her own daughter; and Daniel, the coward, who was the most favored of all of the Monachus’ disciples.
8. And the Monachus said:j 2“We are dead, and we do not feel the same sensations that the living feel. 3When the living desire food, their desires are in the heart, but our hearts are still. They do not beat. 4The living, who still exist in the light of God, know the experience of love, and hate, and sadness, and joy. But we can only remember such things, for we do not exist in the light of God. 5We can only know reflections of the movements that once governed our hearts, as if in a clouded mirror. 6We know fear,
j This is the first of the so-called “Monachal sermons” in 1 and 2 Sang. (see also 2 Sang. 2 and 4). Controversy has raged concerning the make-up of Sang. ever since the birth of modern textual criticism. It seems clear to even the most obtuse critic that these passages, placed in with no real context and introduced only with the phrase “And the Monachus said:” are interpolations, sections of another text that have much in common, linguistically and doctrinally, with each other, but very little to do with the rest of the narrative, being written in a later expression of the Latin and using a number of linguistic quirks that differentiate the text from the rest of Sang. Some more thoughts on the composite nature of Sang. can be found in Appendix I. CP
anger and hunger; but even these sensations are not our own, but are the emotions of the demon that lives within each of us, even though we are all dead. 7But when we become Sanctified, we may find a purity and joy in our purpose. 8We above all were chosen for the great mission because we did not know true happiness, or love, or charity, or faith in our living days, while we yet had hope of salvation. 9And because we did not know these things already when we came to be Damned, and then, when each of us came to receive the Dark Gift, how much more is our joy to know our purpose and our mission! 10For we are given this great commission, to go out and make disciples out of all the Damned, in all nations, so that all may know that our curse is the rightful judgment of God, and being under God’s judgment, we must be the vehicles of God’s judgment. 11We who only knew suffering in our lives must bring suffering to the mortals, and we should rejoice as we feed and kill, knowing that because we are Sanctified, the believing may find their way to Heaven, and the unbelieving may find damnation. 12It is up to us to make those who sicken and survive know that God has ordained suffering on this world, and that His wrath is upon it, just as His mercy is also upon it. 13We are the mirrors of Christ. We are the agents of humanity’s damnation, just as the Christians are the agents of God’s salvation. We bring disease, and death, and despair, just as the Spirit brings healing, and life, and hope. 14We are the vehicles of despair. We are the tools of wrath. 15Although we are ourselves Damned and deprived of a living heart’s feeling, we find our joy in knowing our role, and in feeding and bringing suffering, and killing when it is ordained necessary.”
9. The Monachus and the Five preached in Jerusalem. 2They saw the destruction of the Temple, as the living Christ had prophesied, 2and rejoiced in the ruin of the land and the captivity of the people, 3because they saw despair in the world, and saw that it was good. 4Each worked the dark miracles that was his lot, 5and preached to the Damned, 6and although a few came to follow the way of the Sanctified — 7they were Veronica and Burrus the brother and sister, Gaius Victor the tax-collector, Chrysophile the whore, and Lamasusk — 8most of the Damned would not listen to them, and mocked them as fools, and sometimes tried to fight them.
9The Sanctified were strong, and were united, while the rest of the Damned fought among themselves and had no common cause. 10A night came when the Damned of Jerusalem said to one another, “Come, let us be rid of these Sanctified, as they call themselves. 11Let’s gather with arms and sharpened stakes of wood and flaming torches. 12Let us find the place they make their rest and go there with our minions and thralls, 13and let us destroy them, and spit on their ashes.” 14In those nights, the Monachus and the Five hid in storage jars in a house that had once been the home of a priest, whom they had killed. 15One of the living who drank
k Nothing more is known about any of these five. They do not appear anywhere else in the Testament, nor does any apocryphal source exist. Presumably, they left Jerusalem or met their ends before the crucifixion of Adira and Gilad, which would explain the subsequent rapid growth of the covenant, but anything we say about the next five disciples of the Monachus is conjecture. VB
the blood of the dead and was slave to them in mind and body found the place where the Monachus and the Five slumbered and returned to his masters, and told them.
16So, the Damned men of the city gathered there, with murder in their hearts and flames in their hands. 17But the angel of God whispered to the Monachus: “Do not go to your haven, for you will be attacked by your enemies.” 18So the Monachus and the Five slept in a cave. 19When they awakened the next night, the Sanctified looked out of the cave, and they saw that the sun had burned up their enemies. 20The Monachus laughed: “They are slothful, and continue their Sabbath past sunset.” 21And so those who gather in numbers but do not accept God are called sabbat.l
l The original used of the term in Sanctified parlance. The practice of using the term for those who deal with demons only dates back to the 16th century. VB
The Second Book
of Sanguinaria
1. When the night came for the Monachus to send the Dark Apostles out into the world, they met together in that same cave that the Monachus had found, that had belonged to the sect of the Essenesa, 2whom Maron had made to suffer and sicken, and whom he made to understand the misery and pain of the world, and God’s judgment upon it. 3And when the Essenes were dead, the Monachus sought to appoint the cave as a chapel in which he could keep the Spear that Longinus had entrusted to him.of Sanguinaria
4He began to paint the story of Longinus on the walls of the cave, and the tales of each of the Dark Apostles. 5He kept a reliquary filled with the finger bones and skulls of the most sinful of the victims that the Sanctified had seen fit to kill, and wrote upon each skull the sin that each man or woman had committed, so that one read “thief” and another read “fornicator” and yet another read “blasphemer” and another still read “murderer.” 6He kept an altar there, too, and above the altar he hung the Spear, on two hooks made from nails that Longinus had taken from the cross of Christ and had given to the Monachus.b
7On each side of the altar, the Monachus placed lamps which always burned, and which he charged Pazit with replenishing each night with the fat of living sinners whom the Dark Apostles had purified.
8The night came the Monachus decided to send the Dark Apostles into the world, and he called the Five to him and they made their covenant, to preserve the Spear and offer the knowledge of God’s purpose for the Damned to all who would take it.c
2.And the Monachus said:d “Do not despair when the Damned do not hear you and prove stiff-necked, because it is the way of the Damned to fear change. 2The living change and age; a mortale enters into the world as an infant,
a The same sect reputed to have been the keepers of the Dead Sea Scrolls; however, no other evidence exists that Essenes kept a cave near Jerusalem. CP
b At no point before or after are the nails of the cross said to have ever been in Longinus’ possession. CP
c Traditionally, this happened in 232CE. HM
d The second of the interpolated passages begins here. CP
e Normally, our convention in the Revised Version is to use inclusive language (so when “man” or “mankind” is used in a general sense, we translate it as “mortal,” “human” or “humanity”). For reasons that should be obvious, using inclusive language in this passage would damage the sense. CP
and he can only wail and feed and produce effluvium; then he grows into a child, who learns of good and evil, and ignores the words of his parents and his schoolteachers, thus choosing sin. 3He becomes a tall and graceless youth and dark fantasies enter his heart and he takes up the sin of Onan; 4and as an adult he learns hypocrisy and has the strength to do violence and take a woman by force, place his seed within her and father a child. 5And so he perpetuates his condition, just as we perpetuate ours. 6Then he grows old, and watches his own children fall into the sins he fell into, and despairs, not understanding that he has done the same. 7The day comes when he dies. But as for the Damned, when we are Embraced by that Damnation, we cease to change; we remain as we were when we died to the light of day, and we always remain so, locked in the chains of sin and hunger forever. 7So do not be surprised when the Damned do not recognize you; rather rejoice when God works the Dark Miracle in a dead heart, and a soul that cannot change itself is changed by God.”
3.Now the Rulerf of the Damned of Jerusalem was Nephele, and she did many evil things, but did not see the true way.
2Nephele hated the Sanctified, just as she had hated the Christians before she was Damned, and did much to thwart the word of Longinus. 3She had long forbidden Monachus or the Five to speak in the courts of the Damned, and had denied them the privileges that the unbelievers held. 4And although the persecution was not open, she contrived it so that the Sanctified could not find their sustenance in the places where the other Damned could feed, but instead forced the Monachus and the Five out of the city of Jerusalem.
5But one night, the Monachus had brought another sinner into the number of the Damned, a man who had jumped from a high tower and had thought to end his life. His name was Boethius. 6The Monachus had seen Boethius fall and had heard his bones break and his body rupture. He had found the broken body of Boethius and had restored him, and had brought him among the Damned, and had given him the word of Longinus. 7Nephele had heard of this, and had brought the Monachus to account, and had called the Monachus and Boethius before her. 8She said to the Monachus: “Have I not declared that I might be the arbiter of who comes among the Damned and who does not? When I say, Embrace that person, doesn’t one of my vassals Embrace him? And when I say, do not Embrace, don’t I expect the Embrace not to be given?”
9The Monachus replied, “I do not bow to the rules of any earthly ruler, but to the rules of God. But I have not broken your rule, for you have denied me the right to Embrace the living, and I have given the Embrace to one who was dead.”g
10Nephele was infuriated by this, and did not believe that the Monachus had Embraced a dead man, and so called back to her the witness who had seen
f Gender-neutral term, and hence preferable to the usual translation, “Prince.” CP
g A point of contention: is this miraculous or simply uncommon? Opinions differ, even today. The danger, of course, lies in attaching the empirical to the irrational. CP
the Monachus restore the man. 11The witness, whose name was Simon, said “I saw this man throw himself from the tower. And I heard his body break and rupture on the ground. And I saw this Kindred take the body in his arms and give him the Blood, and restore him.” 12And Nephele also questioned Boethius, who said, “I don’t know what happened. I threw myself from the tower, and now I am whole, and standing here before you. And I am very hungry.” 13Nephele flew into a terrible fury and leaped from her chair. She reached her hand into Boethius’ mouth and crushed his brains, and Boethius was no more.
14And she turned to the Monachus, and grasped him by the throat with her terrible claws, which were still red and gory. 15The Monachus said, “Unhand me,” and Nephele let go of him, and said: “You must leave. If you or your disciples are in my domain come the next sunset, you shall meet your fate like Boethius.” 16The Monachus left that place. He returned to the shrine and told the Five that it was God’s will that they should prepare themselves for travel. But Nephele lied: she planned to send minions to assault the Monachus and the Five, and destroy them before they could leave.
17Adira and Gilad thought that they could turn the mind of Nephele, and appeared her court before her order could be carried out. 18Gilad said, “Is it against the laws of this place to raise a dead man to Damnation?” 19And Adira said, “Have we done you any harm? Have we done anything other than to obey your laws?” And they asked for clemency, and asked that they should not be made to leave Jerusalem. 20Nephele, in a rage, said to them, “You shall not leave Jerusalem. You shall be crucified, like the Saviour whose blood you value so much, and made to face the dawn.” 21Nephele had Adira and Gilad seized then, and told the soldiers to nail them by the hands and feet to crosses, and to hang them high. 21She had them placed on the eastern side of the city, and facing the dawn. 22As the sun rose, Adira and Gilad sang hymns of praise to God, for He had allowed them to be martyred, and their song of praise continued, even though their bodies burned in the light of the sun, and they were ash.
23But the Monachus and the Three escaped, and went their separate ways because of the martyrdom of Adira and Gilad. And so they became the first of the Five Martyrs.
4. And the Monachus said:h “We are forever denied the light of the Sun, and hence the light of God. 2But although we do not see the light, we may experience the darkness of God and His blessed night, which guards all terrors and protects the monstrous. 3The night is blessed by God as the means by which He refines the faithful. 4And so, God has Sanctified us, for he has given us a place in His Creation: we rob sleep and we bring sickness. We cause unholy dreams and we make people fear the dark. 5It is God’s will that we should test the faithful and bring wrath to the sinful. It is also the intention of God that we bring suffering to all, because this world is Fallen, and there should be no comfort for humanity in a world where sin exists. 6By doing God’s will we are Damned and Sanctified. We are monsters, but we serve Heaven,
h The third interpolated passage, this one more brief than the others, begins here. CP
not Hell. 7We should therefore put aside our memories of the things we loved when we lived and were not Damned, because it is not our place to bear the concerns of mortals. 8We have become only a little lower than the angels, glorifying God as we bring fear and suffering to the living. 9Though our work is sinful, our mission is divine.i
5. The Monachus and the Three traveled west to Egypt, and to Thebes, where they stayed for many years. 2Now Daniel mourned the loss of Adira and Gilad and began to doubt the will of God, but the angel Amoniel appeared to him in a dream, and said to him, “Join the Theban Legion, and you shall see the truth. And you shall see a miracle.”
3Now it had happened that all of the soldiers in the legion of Thebes had only recently converted to the Christian faith.j 4So Daniel stayed with the Theban Legion, and preyed upon them at night, and brought them bad dreams. 5And he found that the Damned of Thebes knew certain rituals, and could wreak certain dark miracles, and he allied himself with the Damned of Thebes, who gladly accepted the teachings of Longinus. 6And thanks to Daniel’s preaching, many of the Damned were Sanctified in Thebes, foremost among them Penelope and Valentinus, Michael and Hostilinus the Numidian. But Daniel could not perform the miracles of Thebes, although he prayed that he might be able to.
7One day, the Augustus of the west, Maximian, came to Thebes, and commanded that the Theban Legion join him in a war in the North, and the Legion followed. 8Daniel came with them, hidden by day in a chest, among the possessions of Mauritius, the commander of the Copts, whom Daniel had made his slave by forcing the man to drink his Damned blood three times.
9When the Theban Legion went to battle, God was with them. 10This is how Daniel caused the Theban Legion to become the wrath of God: the battle was turning against the Romans, until the men of Burgundy came and sacked Mauritius’ tent. 11The angel Amoniel appeared to Daniel, and said, “Get up in fear and trembling, Daniel, and fight.” 12Daniel awoke, and the sunlight did not harm him.13He drove back twenty men of Burgundy with tooth and fist, and raised his arms, and blackened the sky, because he found that he could now perform the dark miracles of the Damned of Thebes. 14He called Mauritius to his side, and blessed the man’s spear, making it cursed like the Spear of Longinus, and all the men who saw it took heart. 15Behind the Spear of Mauritius, the men of the Theban Legion won the battle, and the few men of Burgundy who escaped alive ran in terror. When the battle was done, Daniel left the field and returned to his place of sleep.
i Often misquoted as “Though my work is sinful, my mission is divine.” Theologically speaking, it is important to remember that we are a covenant and have a corporate, not individual, expression of faith. VB
j The tale of the Theban Legion, although often repeated in Medieval Christian romance, is wholly a fiction, not mentioned in living texts before the fifth century. If not for the fact that no records of any such legion existed, the verisimilitude of the story would be in doubt for the simple reason that Christianity was a wholly pacifist faith until the reforms brought in by Constantine some thirty years after this event is supposed to have happened (traditionally September 22nd, 286CE). CP
16After the battle, the Emperor told their commanders to tell the men to sacrifice to the gods of Rome, as was common practice among the Romans at that time. 17But the men of the Theban Legion would not sacrifice to the gods of Rome, because they believed that an angel sent from God had fought beside them, and had blackened the sky, and shown them a Spear around which they could rally. 18The Emperor commanded a second time, and still the men would not sacrifice. 19The Emperor commanded a third time, this time angry and adding terrible threats to the command. The men still would not perform the rite, and so the Emperor commanded that one man in ten be executed. 20He commanded a fourth time, and when the men still would not sacrifice, he killed another one-tenth of the legion. 21Again and again the Emperor commanded that the men make the sacrifices to the gods of Rome, and each time the men refused, and each time another portion of them died, until the Emperor had commanded the last of them to be executed.
22When the sun set, Daniel awoke, and he found the camp of the Theban Legion empty. He walked to the camp of one of the other legions in the Emperor’s army, and sat by a campfire, and asked a soldier what had happened to the Theban Legion. 23“The Emperor has killed them all, for they would not sacrifice to the gods of Rome,” said the man.
24A terrible fury possessed Daniel then, and he rose and spoke a word of power, and the man became a pillar of salt. He strode through the camp, and the men found they could only speak in tongues. 25He fashioned his blood into a whip, and scourged the pagan soldiers, and men tried to scream, only to find beetles and locusts swarming from their mouths. 26Other men found that they bore the wounds of Christ in their hands, feet and sides. 27Brave men tried to assault Daniel with spears and swords, but their blades turned away. 28The Emperor awoke, and tried to command the men to rally, but none of them could look at him; God forced them to turn their faces from him.
29Others among the Damned were hiding among the soldiers of Maximian’s army, and they looked on in wonder at the dark miracles that Daniel was working in the camp of the pagans.
30And they believed and were Sanctified, and when the armies traveled home, they told the story of Daniel to the other Damned, no matter where they found them. As for Daniel, the sunrise came, and the soldiers of Maximian’s legions banded together and drove Daniel to the edge of their camp. 31They marveled as they saw the flames engulf Daniel; he praised God that he had worked His perfect will, and before he met his end, he said: “Caesar has his due, yet even Caesar is but king among men.”k 6. And the Monachus heard this tale, and he and Pazit, and Maron of Icaria mourned Daniel and took comfort in his martyrdom. 2They hid for a time among the Damned of Thebes and they too learned the miracles of Thebes. 3But the Damned of Thebes who were not Sanctified grew jealous, and one among them, who worshiped a god called Seth, saw the Spear that the Monachus carried and coveted it, for she could see that it had power.
k Often used proverbially, of course, although rarely in its proper context. VB
4The worshipper of Seth had many among the living and the Damned under her control. She found where the Monachus, and Pazit and Maron of Icaria had made their sanctuary and arranged for her followers to surround their home and attack them, and to try to steal the Spear. 5The first to awaken was Pazit, and she gave the Spear to the Monachus and said,
6“Christ had His Golgotha, and now I shall have mine, too.
7“Night, and hunger, and Satan have tempted me to greater evils.
8“But the walls of this house in which I sleep are the mount on which I dwell.
9“Go now, for it is time for me to be purified in the flames.”
10Having said this, Pazit went out and faced the worshipper of Seth and her followers, and called out for the murderers, thieves and fornicators among them, and they burned with a terrible white fire. 11The screams filled the whole city; everyone in Thebes who slept that night had terrible dreams.
12But when Pazit had done her miracle, she could only stand and be over-run by the minions of the worshipper of Seth, who howled for revenge. 13They impaled Pazit on a spear shaft, and left her out in the sunrise. 14Meanwhile, the Monachus and Maron escaped, and traveled to Alexandria.
7. In Alexandria, Maron and the Monachus preached the word of Longinus to the Damned, and brought a few more to Damnation, 2but the Ruler of that place, whose name was Timaeus the Cappadocian, commanded that they cease their preaching. 3The Monachus made no sign that he had heard the edict, and Maron followed suit. 4Timaeus sent his minions to destroy them with fire, but the Monachus escaped, and Maron would have been destroyed had he not worked a miracle, and made himself take on the aspect of a demon that was so horrible, the servants of Timaeus could only cower.
5The Monachus and Maron gathered up their followers and took with them those who were not afraid to come with them. 6From Alexandria, we sailed to Italy, hidden in clay storage jars.l
8. When we landed, we stayed away from Rome, because the Monachus said that it was not the will of God for us to go there. Instead we traveled north, into Cisalpine Gaul. We gathered up a group of men, to whom we gave our blood. We made them our followers, and they drove the wagons that hid us up through the high places in the hours of sunlight.
2One night, we stopped in the mountains, and arose, as was our wont. We found our camp surrounded by wolves, which we fought off. 3But on the second night, the wolves came back. Each night for three nights, the wolves drew nearer and grew larger. 4We feared witchcraft, and on the fourth night, a woman appeared among the wolves and spoke in the language of the Alpine people, which we did not know. 5We realized that the wolves were sent by Satan, and began to pray. The wolves attacked us, and
l The change from third person to first person plural is the only clue of the authorship of Sang. CP
we fought. 6Maron saw that the woman directed them with the magic of our Adversary; and he leaped from our circle and drew his sword. The woman became a beast like all the others, 7but Maron drove her off her feet and the two of them fell from the side of the mountain, and when the beast was dead and Maron was gone, with no final words, the wolves left us, and we could travel north.
8And so the Monachus’s Five Black Apostles were gone, and new Apostles had to be found. He traveled north and founded a Black Abbey, and there new blasphemies came into being, and the Monachus did the will of God in this, for the innocent we shall always have with us, and innocence must know pain and terror to be truly refined.
Type
Text, Religious
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