The Fifth Gospel (27 page)

No wonder Tatian, the author of the Diatessaron, wanted to combine the gospels into a single text. In many passages the gospels already
share
a single text. But why? Forty percent of Mark's gospel appears wholesale in Matthew—the same words in the same order—which suggests that an eyewitness like Matthew copied a large part of his testimony from another source. Why?

Biblical science provides a surprising answer: he
didn't
, because the gospel attributed to Matthew was not really written by him. In fact, not one of our four gospels was written by an eyewitness.

Scholars have gathered together our oldest surviving gospel manuscripts and found that, in the most ancient texts, the four gospels are
not
attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They're anonymous. Only in later copies do the names of their would-be authors appear, as if tradition or guesswork has added them. A close comparison of the texts shows how they were really written. One of them—the one we call Mark's—is raw and unrefined, presenting a Jesus who sometimes becomes angry, sometimes performs magical incantations, and is considered by his own family to be out of his mind. Two of the other gospels—the ones we call Matthew's and Luke's—make these embarrassing details disappear. They also correct Mark's small lapses of grammar and vocabulary. Matthew and Luke borrow whole passages from Mark, word for word, yet they systematically fix his weaknesses. This leads strongly to the conclusion that Matthew and Luke aren't independent accounts. They are
edited versions of Mark
.

The gospel of Mark, in turn, is a patchwork of individual stories that seem to come from older, fragmentary sources. This is why most scholars believe—and most Catholic priests are taught in seminary—that our four gospels are not memoirs of the men whose names they now carry. They were assembled, decades after Jesus' ministry, from older documents that recorded an oral tradition of stories about Jesus. Only at that earliest, deepest level of testimony would it be possible to find the actual memories of the disciples.

This means the gospels
do
stretch back to Jesus' life—but not directly, and not without additions and subtractions. Understanding this editing process is crucial to anyone searching for the pure historical facts about Jesus' life. This is because the changes were often theological or spiritual: they reflected what Christians
believed
about the Messiah, rather
than what they actually knew about Jesus the man. For instance, the gospels of Luke and Matthew disagree about the details of Jesus' birth, and there's reason to believe neither account reflects the facts. But the authors of both gospels—whoever those authors really were—believed Jesus was the Savior, so He
must've
been
born in Bethlehem, as the Old Testament predicts.

This ability to separate theology from fact is crucial, especially in the last and strangest of the gospels—the one that would become the focus of Ugo's Diatessaron work: John.

“So the Alogi took issue with the gospel of John,” Ugo said, pulling at his thinning hair.

“Yes. And
only
the gospel of John.”

“They tried to snuff John out of the Diatessaron.”

“Right.”

“Why?”

I explained to him that John was the last of the gospels to be ­written—sixty years after the crucifixion, twice as long as Mark had been. It set out to answer new questions about the fledgling religion of Christianity, and in the process it revolutionized Jesus. Gone is the humble carpenter's son who heals the sick and exorcises the possessed, who speaks simple parables with a common touch but never says much about his own identity. In his place, John offers a new Jesus: a high-minded philosopher who never performs exorcisms, never speaks parables, and talks constantly about himself and his mission. Scholars today agree that the other three gospels trace their roots to an original layer of factual memories—historical events that were recorded at an early stage and edited over time. But the fourth gospel is different.

John paints a portrait of God rather than man, removing facts and replacing them with symbols. The gospel even leaves guideposts to teach its readers what it's doing: John says the bread we eat isn't true bread; Jesus is the true bread. The light we see isn't true light; Jesus is the true light. John's word
true
almost always means the invisible realm of the eternal. In other words, the fourth gospel is theological rather than historical. And for many readers, that theology comes as a shock. After reading three gospels rooted more strongly in history, it's perilously easy to read the fourth and fail to see how these facts have been transformed into symbols.

For that reason, John has always been the black sheep of the gospels. Only one Christian scholar before Tatian tried to write a gospel harmony like the Diatessaron, and he didn't use John at all. No group, however, made its opposition to John clearer than the Alogi.

“And you're telling me,” Ugo said, “that for our purposes the Alogi were right. If all I care about is history—facts—then I should toss John out.”

“It depends. There are rules.”

“Father Alex, I'm a good Catholic. I'm not trying to take a pair of scissors to the Bible. But the other three gospels say Jesus was buried in a cloth. John says cloths. They can't both be right. So John is out?”

It was as if he didn't even want to see the words that his team of conservationists was uncovering from beneath the smudges of the Diatessaron. I should've sensed the pressure on him, the urgency he felt.

“Or,” he said, “to take another example, John says Jesus was buried in a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes. The other gospels say the burial spices weren't used because Jesus was buried in such a hurry.”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because the chemical tests that disprove the radiocarbon dating also found no myrrh or aloe present on the Shroud. Which is exactly what we have if we remove John's testimony.”

I rested my head in my hands. It wasn't that he was wrong. It was that he was moving too quickly. The creed of any Bible student is humility. Caution. Patience. Sixty years ago, the pope let a small team of men dig beneath Saint Peter's to look for Peter's bones. Today, gospel teachers are those men, entrusted with digging under the foundation of the Church, allowed to search where searching is most dangerous. Anything less than immense care is reckless.

“Ugo,” I said, “if I gave you the impression we use these tools lightly, then I made a mistake.”

He put a hand on my shoulder, as if to comfort me. “Father, don't you see? This is
good
. It's very good. Everyone who has ever studied the Shroud assumed the four gospels were all factual. The world has been making the same mistake as the Diatessaron without even realizing it: we weave together the four gospels even though John isn't historical. There must be a dozen aberrations in his version of the burial story alone: Jesus is buried by a different man, on a different day, in a different
way. You've changed the future of the Shroud, Father Alex. You've found the skeleton key.”

But instinct told me otherwise. It told me the tool I had placed in his hands wasn't a skeleton key but a battering ram. Having taught the gospels to hundreds of students of all ages, I had never come across a man so fearless about the truth. He felt a heroic, almost militant, compulsion to side with it. To explode the most cherished beliefs if they were mistaken. No doubt, this was what so attracted him to the defense of the Shroud in the first place, this rage against the injustice of error.

It worried me, though, for his sake. Sometimes I wondered if he would sooner make an enemy than assuage a friend so long as the smallest crumb of factual truth hung in the balance. He was relentless, ruthless, even with himself. He admitted to me once that it saddened him to relinquish the gospel stories he'd grown up believing to be historical; some childish part of his heart sank to know that the manger and wise men existed more in a little nativity scene than they ever had on that magical night two thousand years ago. But he smiled with pride and said, “If the pope's behind it, then so am I.” And he insisted on beginning all our lessons by saying, “Time to put away childish things.” He was eager to give up his manger and wise men if it meant winning back the Shroud for the world.

Deep in the marrow of our religion is the conviction that loss and sacrifice are noble. To surrender something beloved is the highest proof of Christian duty. I always admired this quality in Ugo. Yet I couldn't help feeling that his bravery contained an undercurrent of self-­flagellation—and that this was an important insight into how he'd become such fast friends with my brother.

C
HAPTER
13

P
ETER SLEEPS IN.
He's usually up first, marching into the bedroom and rowing my limp arm like the oar of a Greek trireme. I'm out of practice sneaking out of bed, but I manage not to wake him. While ironing my cassock, I can't help cracking the front door just to be sure.

Fontana is still on duty.

An hour later, Peter and I have breakfast in the dining hall. As he enters the room, old bishops and cardinals look up from their plates and smile. There are more men here over the age of eighty than under the age of thirty. And all of them are Roman Catholics. Peter and I sit at a conspicuous table where any Eastern Catholics passing by might notice us and decide not to flee. But in vain.

Midway through the meal, my mobile phone starts beeping. Simon has left a message.

Alli,
something's come up. Meet me at the exhibit hall as soon as you get this.

I set my napkin beside my plate and tell Peter to grab a last bite for the road.

IN PREPARATION FOR UGO'S
exhibit, a whole wing of the museums has been closed. Work trucks idle outside the galleries like war elephants, making the air shimmer with their exhaust. Inside, a highway of carts and dollies carries paintings and display cases and raw lumber, all
moving at the same speed like cars in a funeral caravan. Wooden frames are being raised, hiding ancient frescoes behind makeshift walls, turning gold corridors into empty white pipes. Art that hasn't been moved since Italy became a country is suddenly gone.

A service elevator opens. Two art restorers appear from downstairs. In the distance, workmen tape drywall seams. Electricians check lights. This many people, from this many departments, working together at short notice, gives the vague feeling of a state of emergency. This must be why Simon called. Ugo seems to have left a lot unfinished.

The deeper we get into the galleries, the more curious I become. On the wall is a billboard-size photo of the scientists who announced the radiocarbon results in 1988. Behind them in the photograph, written on a blackboard, is the official date range established by the carbon tests, punctuated by a snide exclamation mark:
1260–1390!
I don't understand why Ugo would've mounted this here, until I see a glass cabinet resembling a jeweler's case, padded with black satin. Hovering on gold armatures inside it is a row of ancient books, one of them sitting higher than the rest. A Hungarian Mass book, a placard says. It's opened to a black-ink illustration showing Jesus' dead body being prepared on its burial sheet.

The burial sheet is strikingly consistent with the Turin Shroud: it has the right dimensions, the right method of wrapping the corpse, the right posture of Jesus' body with his hands modestly crossed over his genitals. It even gets right a rare detail that Ugo once explained to me: no thumbs are visible. Modern medical examiners have found that a nail piercing a particular nerve near the hand causes the thumbs to retract involuntarily. Almost no painting in Western art gets this correct—but the Shroud and this little drawing both do. Most amazing of all, the cloth in the illustration has four dots in the shape of an L. These are the unexplained “poker holes” in the Holy Shroud, just below Jesus' elbow. The artist of this book must have studied the Turin Shroud up close. Yet the placard beside the illustrated Mass book says, in modest type:

MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN 1192 AD
.

1192 AD. Sixty-eight years before the earliest possible radiocarbon date.

Scanning all the placards in the case, I suddenly understand. Ugo is making a point. The giant photo on one side of the gallery is facing off against the manuscripts on the other. We will pit our library against your lab. Your science is young and has no memory, but our Church is ancient and forgets nothing. These books virtually prove that the radiocarbon tests are wrong: every book in this case mentions a relic seemingly identical to the Shroud, and
all
of these books were written before the earliest possible radiocarbon date.

I stare at the strange, fanciful names of their authors. Ordericus Vitalis. Gervase of Tilbury. These manuscripts are starlight from an extinct universe. Original copies of Latin authors writing in the age of the Crusades. The schism between Catholics and Orthodox is usually dated to 1054, when an angry papal messenger in the Orthodox capital of Constantinople took it upon himself to excommunicate the patriarch. But it would never have happened if Westerners hadn't already become disconnected from the East and its Christian traditions. The Crusades, decades later, were what reopened the West's eyes—and the manuscripts I see here, written in the 1100s, capture that exact moment. My rusty Latin is just enough to make out the news trickling in from the Holy Land, the news that again and again seems to have captured the Catholic imagination: there is a city called Edessa, in which is kept an ancient cloth imprinted with a mystical image of Jesus.

I didn't realize the extent of the evidence Ugo had found. And the Diatessaron is yet to come, probably in the final gallery that lies ahead.

Suddenly Peter's hand breaks out of my grip. “Simon!” he cries.

I look up to find my brother moving toward us quickly, descending like a bird of prey—blade-thin, with his cassock feathered out behind him.

“What's wrong?” I say.

His blue eyes swirl with emotion. He sweeps up Peter in one arm and slips the other behind my back, ushering us back outside to the rear entrance to the museums. Then, in a low voice, he says, “Last night Lucio had a visitor at his apartment. A messenger from the Rota who had news about Ugo.”

I hang on his next words. The Rota is the second-highest court of Catholicism.

“They're empaneling a tribunal,” he says. Then he continues in Greek, to prevent Peter from understanding. “
To try Ugo's killer.
”

“Who did they arrest?”

Simon looks at me impatiently. “No one. They're making it a canonical trial.”

Canon law. The code of the Church. But the Rota spends most of its time ruling on requests for marriage annulments. It never handles murders.

“That's impossible,” I say. “Who decided that?”

The Vatican has a separate civil law. We can convict criminals and send them to Italian prisons. That's how Ugo's murder should be prosecuted. Not under Church law.

“I don't know,” Simon whispers. “But Lucio has a friend coming over with more news tonight. I think you should be there.”

I tug at my beard. Our criminal court is run by a layman, but our canonical courts are run by priests. Somewhere in this I hear an echo of Michael Black's warning. Someone in a collar has a hand in this and won't give up until he has what he wants.

“Okay,” I tell Simon. “I'll be there.”

But my brother's focus has been distracted by something else. The rear door to the museum is open. Standing at the threshold are Don Diego and Agent Martelli.

I raise a hand in the air and call out, “We're okay. I just need a minute with my brother.”

But Diego says, “Father Simon, the curators need you.”

So my brother puts Peter down and kneels to hug him. To me he murmurs, “Stay safe. I'll see you both in a few hours.”

THE CASA HAS A
small library for guests. When Peter and I arrive back at the hotel, I borrow the law book that applies to all Roman Catholics—Codex Iuris Canonici, the Code of Canon Law—and we go straight to our room.

The code and its built-in legal commentary are immense. They make the Bible look like beach reading. Here in my hands is the combined wisdom of two thousand years of solving the Church's day-to-day problems. How much can a priest be paid for performing a funeral? Is it okay to marry a Protestant? Can the pope retire? Canon law dictates who can teach at a Catholic school, or sell Church property, or lift an excommunication. But Ugo's case will revolve around canon 1397:
A person
who commits a homicide or who kidnaps, detains, mutilates, or gravely wounds a person by force or fraud is to be punished
. Nowhere in the list of punishments, though, is there any mention of prison. This is the most obvious problem with trying Ugo's murder under Church law: the killer won't spend a day behind bars, because prison isn't a punishment under canon law. If the killer is a priest, though, a more harrowing punishment looms—dismissal from the clerical state.

It's hard for a layman to understand the gravity of being laicized. Saying that a priest is no longer a priest is paradoxical, like saying a mother is childless or a person is inhuman. What God gives a man at his ordination, no human power can remove. So while a laicized priest can still validly celebrate the sacraments, he's forbidden to. Any Mass he celebrates must be shunned by the Catholic laity. He may not give a homily or hear a confession except on a deathbed. He may not even work at a seminary or teach theology at any school, Catholic or not. This is what gives the sentence such power: it turns us into ghosts. It obligates the world to deny our existence. No secular court has this power over laymen. It's a verdict that pushes many priests to suicide. As I think about it now, this may be a clue to what's happening in Ugo's trial. Trying the case in a canonical court isn't just a way to let priests control the outcome. It's a peculiarly awful way to threaten a priest as well.

“Peter,” I say, “can you get my pack of index cards from the suitcase?”

“Why?”

“There's something I need to figure out.”

He groans. Though he's too young to know the meaning of these legal terms, he knows what it means when Babbo needs to figure something out. Bookwork.

At first, it's painstaking. The gaps in my education seem chasmic. Every priest takes a basic class on canon law in seminary, but nothing serious until fourth year, when men choose between theology and canon law for their graduate work. My choice of theology has never seemed so inconvenient.

“Write down this number,” I tell Peter. “One-four-two-zero.”

Canon 1420:
Each diocesan bishop is bound to appoint a judicial vicar . . . distinct from the vicar general
.

I know how a canonical trial starts. In theory, a bishop investigates an accusation. If it has merit, he summons a tribunal. But the reality
is different. A bishop is a busy man, so his work is done by assistants. This is especially true of John Paul, who oversees not only the diocese of Rome but the universal Church. So which of John Paul's underlings is making this decision? The answer is in this canon: the special assistant in charge of legal matters, a priest known as the judicial vicar. Now that I know his title, I can use the Vatican yearbook to hunt down his name.

“Next,” I say, “write one-four-two-five. And then a little squiggle with the number three.”

Peter frowns. “Which way does three go again?”

I tousle his hair. “Like B, without the line.”

Canon 1425
§
3 says the judicial vicar also assigns the judges. The whole trial now seems to lie in the hands of this one man, whoever he is. It leaves me curious about who these judges will be. But I came here looking for something more: a back-door way to find out who stands accused of Ugo's murder.

Church trials are secretive. A parish may never find out that a crime was committed in its backyard, let alone that a Church court has rendered a verdict. Knowing the name of the judicial vicar will be helpful, but it isn't as if I can call his office and ask about his investigation. Fortunately, in our Church there is always—
always
—a paper trail. And canon law tells me what to look for.

“One-seven-two-one,” I tell Peter. “Then add a star. And below it, one-five-zero-seven.”

I repeat each number to him, digit by digit. The code, like the Bible, jumps forward and backward, each line referencing others hundreds of pages away. Canon 1721 says that when the bishop decides there's enough evidence for a trial, he asks a Church prosecutor to write a formal accusation, called the libellus, which includes the name and address of the accused. This invokes 1507, which says the libellus must be sent to all parties of the trial. In other words, the libellus is how word of the trial seeps beyond the bishop and his immediate contacts. If Lucio is receiving a visit from a friend with information about the trial, then I infer the libellus is in circulation. And if that's true, then I know where one copy of it must've been sent. The Holy Father's safety requires that the Swiss Guard be notified about any dangerous persons on Vatican soil.

“Peter,” I say, “put a rubber band around those cards. I think we're done.”

I'm already dialing the phone number.

“Alex?” Leo answers. “Is everything okay?”

I explain the situation. “Have you seen anything about a name?”

“No. Nothing.”

“But did they tell you to keep an eye out for anyone?”

“No.”

I'm taken aback. If the libellus is out, then whoever killed Ugo knows he's being prosecuted. Yet no one is even looking for him.

“I'll make some calls,” Leo says to reassure me. “I'll double-check with the guards on palace duty. Maybe their orders were different.”

But Leo is senior enough that I doubt orders go over his head. I'm about to dig back into the code when a sound in the hallway distracts me. The swish of something sliding under the door.

“Hold on, Leo,” I say.

It's an envelope. My name is written on the front of it. The handwriting is somehow familiar.

When I open it, I find a single photograph. It shows the exterior of the Casa with an Eastern priest leaving the front doors.

My breath slips out.

“What's wrong?” Leo asks.

The Eastern priest is me.

This picture was taken yesterday. Whoever took it was standing just across the courtyard.