Q, Luther Blissett [children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

new liturgy that has now been inaugurated thanks to you and your most learned writings is the start of the reawakening. The word of God can finally reach its chosen ones, and regain its splendour. What better sign could there be that you are the interpreter of His will? What more conclusive than the spontaneous following that you are winning? Of humble folk, lifting up their heads and pursuing the redemption promised by the Lord?

So, where you are concerned, I tell you to stay staunch and never give up; as to myself, from this outpost, in times to come it will be my task to communicate to you any information that be employed for the greater glory of God.

Certain that the protection of the Lord will always be with you,

Qo�let

5_th__ November of the year 1523_

I fold the page and blow out the candle. Lying in the darkness with my eyes open, I relight the fire in the chapel at Mallerbach.

When we’d been in Allstedt for a year, Magister Thomas had been called there by the town council. Each Sunday his sermons lifted everyone’s hearts, and during those days we could have done anything we wanted to: above all make the Franciscans of Neudorf pay, those filthy usurers suffocating the peasantry. We could have avenged all their years of feasting alongside the poor.

First we sack the building, then two faggots, a bit of pitch and up their little church goes in flames. While we stand there watching it going up, two hangers-on of Zeiss, the tax collector, show up, alerted by the friars. They immediately run to the well, with two buckets each: the boss had clicked his fingers, and they’d hide in the flames of hell for him. Before a drop is spilled we come out of the shadow, black with soot, iron bars in our hands: ‘If I were you I’d make sure the forest doesn’t catch… There’s nothing to be done here now.’

Ten against two. They look at us. They look at each other. They drop their buckets and off they go.

The flames subside, turn over in bed. Zeiss’ piggy face emerges from the darkness. The Elector’s census-taker. Those flames had scorched his arse so badly that he called \\\\in people from outside to flush out the arsonists. Good for Zeiss! The town’s been invaded by armed strangers? Nothing better to turn the people against you. All you have to do is utter the name of M�ntzer once and his guardian angels come running: a hundred miners with shovels and picks emerging from the bowels of the earth to drag you under. The women of the town wanting to castrate you. Things are slipping out of your hands: like a frightened child, you clung to your mother’s skirts and went crying to the Elector. I can imagine the scene: you creeping and trying to explain how you lost control of the town, and Frederick the Wise looking at you.

ZEISS: Your Grace, with your well-known foresight, will already have guessed the reason for your servant’s visit…

FREDERICK: I have guessed it, Zeiss, I have guessed it. But my foresight was not required in this instance. For some time all Count Mansfeld has brought me is complaints about your little village of Allstedt. It seems that the new preacher is giving you serious problems. In any case, you were the one who failed to tell me about the fact that he had settled in your parish, and I hope the problems that this has caused will make you think more quickly in future.

ZEISS: Your Grace knows that the responsibility was not mine: it was the town council that decided not to tell you of the appointment of Thomas M�ntzer. You know very well that as far as I’m concerned…

FREDERICK: No excuses, Zeiss! You know that before this throne you cannot pass the blame on to anyone else. Fundamentally, this man M�ntzer has caused me no problems. The fact is that too many people in Thuringia think too highly of themselves. First Luther unleashes his fury at Spalatin, so that he brings that preacher into line for not giving him enough respect, then Count Mansfeld writes to tell me that your council is defending a rabble-rouser who has openly insulted him. So, what else?

ZEISS: Well, there’s what I’ve come to talk to you about. But I expect you know something about that already, although I am sure that events in our town are not of the greatest concern to you.�

FREDERICK: Really? They tell me a little country chapel burned down.

ZEISS: To be precise, it was the chapel of the Holy Virgin in Mallerbach, on the road between Allstedt and Querfurt, owned by the Franciscans of the monastery in Neudorf. The bell was stolen during Sunday service, and they set fire to the church the next day. I sent two trusted men to put out the fire, but the men were there watching, and so they explained that they’d gone some way away to shield the forest from the flames, since the chapel was lost by now.

FREDERICK: Nothing new so far. The Neudorf friars were unusually pedantic in their description of the situation when they asked me to intervene. If I remember correctly, I wrote telling you not to let the situation get worse and worse, to find some kind of culprit and keep him in jail for a day,� and then for you to pay a symbolic sum in compensation.

ZEISS: But everyone in the town knew that the arsonists were the preacher’s acolytes. Just think, Your Grace, they’ve founded a league, the League of the Elect, they call it, and they’ve got weapons. It would be hard to avoid direct conflict without losing face…

FREDERICK: So blame for all this should be laid at the door of this man M�ntzer?

ZEISS: Certainly… and his wife, Ottilie von Gersen. When I was in search of a culprit, that witch did more than anyone else to turn the whole population against me.

FREDERICK: They’re even setting their womenfolk on us now…

ZEISS: From what I’ve seen, she’s a raving madwoman, a crazy woman, worthy of her husband. And both other women and men fervently admire her.

FREDERICK: Get on with it, Zeiss. How did things turn out in the end?

ZEISS: I had to call in outside reinforcements, and the preacher’s wife started screeching that foreigners were trying to invade Allstedt, that I’d sold my self… They wanted to lynch me!

FREDERICK: And quite right too: you’ve fucked up mightily.

ZEISS: But what was I to do? The Franciscans wouldn’t leave me in peace. In the end a troop of miners from the county of Mansfeld turned up on my door, about fifty of them, asking me if Magister Thomas was all right, if everything was peaceful or if I needed their help, saying that if anyone touched a hair on his head they would have them to answer to… After that visit I gave up the use of any kind of force. I have no wish to be responsible for sparking a revolt in Your Grace’s possessions.

FREDERICK: Fine, Zeiss. And now I’ll tell you what I think about all this. You wanted a fiery and innovative preacher to give a sheen to your country town. But this guy has turned out to be hard to manipulate, he’s won over the town council, he’s put a few stones and pitchforks in the hands of the common people, and you and Count von Mansfeld have been shitting yourselves. And now you’re coming to ask for help.

ZEISS: But Your Grace…

FREDERICK: Silence! I think all this fits you like a glove. Still, for some time things of this nature have been happening more or less everywhere. It begins with the sacking of churches, and ends with a request for a municipal order for any tiny village. The peasants are in turmoil throughout Germany, and it would be unwise not to throw the hotheads in jail. In a few weeks you’ll get a visit from my brother Duke John and my nephew John Frederick. Have a suitable welcome ready for them; inform them that the Elector will not tolerate this level of agitation, and that if the people have any grievance against the Franciscans of Neudorf, they will have to turn directly to your envoys, via the burgomaster or their preacher. In any case organise a meeting with this Thomas M�ntzer. Just tell him that we’ve expressly requested it, and tell him to prepare a sermon in which he sets out his ideas. Basically he’s still in his trial period, he will have to have our approval if he’s going to a pastor in your church.

ZEISS: Your grace always has the best solution for everything.

FREDERICK: Fine, but too often the subalterns who are supposed to put it into effect turn out to be absolute dickheads.’

I laugh to myself, the darkness engulfs their silhouettes, bringing back to me the figure of Magister Thomas in the bright dawn of that great summer day.