The Hand of Christ (7 page)

While studying the parchment in his archives, Leo read everything that he could that was related to the heresiarch: Valentinus.

Most of what he read was biographical depictions of the Valentinus. But Leo looked for more. Searching for weeks, Leo had finally stumbled across a well-hidden text authored by Valentinus. The book had been placed – no doubt by Pius – behind a row of much larger scrolls.

He had searched under different methods of categorization: the name Valentinus, under the word heresiarch, and for anything related to the 1
^st
and 2
^nd
Century.

Nothing, nothing, and nothing.

Then it dawned on him, the parchment was a lost Apocryphal of Paul. The shelves in the room contained all of the known scrolls of the Apocryphals. One by one, he went through them. It took some time, and Leo had nearly quit searching. As he neared one of the few remaining scrolls, Leo saw that one of them covered a small, thin book.

Its author was Valentinus.

The book was handwritten.

The book and the parchment were now side-by-side. The names were identical in their penmanship. Valentinus had written both.

In the text, Valentinus wrote that he had lived in Rome during what would be the late 1
^st
and early 2
^nd
centuries; he claimed to have unpublished teachings of Jesus from AD 46 – 51, a full ten years after Jesus had been presumed to have been crucified.

The text referred often to Valentinus’s great teacher Theudas. Leo drew the connection immediately. Theudas was a follower of St. Paul, the venerated man that wrote the first half of the parchment that was now laid out before him. Some have even whispered that St. Paul was the first of the heresiarchs.

Paul’s Christian teachings throughout Rome’s empire were not of large concern, but when accused of the capital crime of bringing a Gentile into a temple, Paul was faced with arrest. As a Roman citizen, he demanded his trial to be held in Rome; his demand had been granted. It would prove an unfortunate fate for Paul as during this time, Nero, Rome’s Emperor, falsely persecuted the Christians for setting Rome ablaze. Paul knew he was to be Nero’s scapegoat, and correctly feared that he was to be executed at the emperor’s command.

Paul was ensuring the life of his Apocryphal by passing it secretly to his followers in Rome! The words echoed through Leo’s mind and twisted him with uncertainty and emotion. He further read in Valentinus’s text that the unpublished teachings of Jesus were written in Egypt, where, according to the ancient text, Jesus had fled
after
his crucifixion.

As many times as Leo had read the letter from Pius X, he had studied the ancient parchment and text twice as much. Pius’s letter was fragmented in its prose, and did not bear the hallmarks of the deceased Pope’s literary elegance; much of it didn’t make sense. That is, until Leo had found and read the ancient text.

Leo now understood why Pius feared the parchment, why he couldn’t force himself to do anything with it, why he thought himself a coward. It contradicts the very foundations of Catholic doctrine and the Nicene Creed, it calls the Church what they are: liars.

If Jesus had lived, then he couldn’t have been divine. His divinity was argued at many Ecumenical Councils, many times violently, over the centuries.

The question of the divinity of Jesus was one of the main arguments that led to the Great Schism and final separation of the Roman Church of the West from its counterpart in the East. The Schism had so violently fractured the Roman Church that the power once wielded from Rome’s pulpit had dramatically spilled away.

Leo traced his fingers over the lost Apocryphal of Paul until his finger met a familiar piece of scripture. Looking at the words that Paul wrote, Leo said them out loud:
If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless...

These words were in the bible: 1 Corinthians 15:14

Was this a veiled attempt by Paul to pass on to the world the Crucifixion didn’t happen?

The parchment contradicted what each priest preached every Sunday to all of the faithful; it contradicted Easter and Good Friday, holidays that celebrated and reminded us of Jesus’ resurrection.

Just as troublesome to Leo were the names of the twelve different Popes that were written on the inside cover of Valentinus’s text. There, all twelve names lined the inside cover of the text much like the old method used by libraries when one checked out a book. By the name of each Pope that adorned the inside cover was a date, and silently conveyed a message to the next Pope to do nothing. The first name written was Pope Gelasius I with a date of March, 496.

A dozen popes – now thirteen with Leo’s name added – had been aware of the parchment; they knew about the lost Apocryphal of Paul and of the text of Valentinus as early as the 5
^th
century, and each had conspired to do nothing!

The year – 496 – stood out in Leo’s mind. Something about that year seemed a bit familiar. It didn’t take long to make the connection, the resources in the archives held an immense amount of history and data of each Popes’ private dealings. Leo’s endeavors to draw a connection to his memory of that date and its importance had been a fairly simple task.

Leo had searched for the private diaries of Gelasius and soon found them. Scanning through the entries made by the Pope in March of 496, Leo soon found what he sought.

Leo had been astonished when he read Gelasius’s entry for March, 496. During lengthy and heated negotiations, Gelasius had been presented with a document from Clovis the Merovingian King; the document attested to Clovis’s right to be Holy Roman Emperor. Gelasius had forced Clovis to relinquish the document and promised in return for it that the Merovingian bloodline, starting with Clovis, would forever be the holy rulers of Rome. It was a secret deal that had come at a high cost to the Church.

But why the Merovingians, how could this lineage be more important than any other royal family? Why should they be the “holy rulers” and not the Church? Why would the Church have had no choice but to accept the validity of the document and abruptly concede power? What did Clovis have? These questions taunted Leo nearly to the point of breaking. For five frustrating weeks he had searched for something, for anything that would reveal the answers.

Gelasius wrote nothing of this connection between the Merovingians and the Roman Church.

The only clue that Gelasius left was an innocuous statement written by Gelasius in his diary: “Clovis circumtenui Unus” – Clovis possesses the One. What did that mean? What is the one? What document could Clovis have possessed that forced the Pope, the Holy leader of the once powerful Roman Church, to his knees before him and declare Clovis and all of his bloodline as the Holy Roman Emperor?

In Michelangelo’s room, Leo studied the history of the Merovingians and found that they had ruled over much of what is now France and Germany. The documents that he read told him that the Merovingians quickly and forcibly expanded their kingdom; the expansion of their power occurred right after, and certainly coincided with, Clovis’s secret deal with the Church.

Leo thought about how conspiracies were always irresponsibly put forth relative to the Church; they are an inevitable consequence to religion. One conspiracy, that until now seemed ridiculous, was about a holy bloodline. Often popularized in fantastic best selling novels, theatre and movies, the legend of Jesus’ bloodline gave credence to the belief that the rightful heir and king of Israel was still alive and living among us. Some believed that the Merovingians were that bloodline, and that a descendent of Jesus had married into their ruling family.

There were those who believed Jesus was not a poor carpenter but born into an aristocratic and wealthy family, a fact they say is hidden by the Roman Church. They believed that in accordance with mandated tradition for the Jewish ruling class, Jesus had married Mary Magdalene, another member of an aristocratic family and together they had produced a child.

The persistent ramblings of the unfaithful argued that marriage was more than just typical for the time it was required. Jewish men that lived during the first century had to marry and had to have children (another absolute requisite for married Jewish men). If true, Jesus’ surviving bloodline would most certainly be the true heir to the throne of Israel and of the Church.

Until now, Leo had passed these ludicrous slices of manipulated history as heresy. It was the product of the unfaithful and of lost souls, of those with overactive imaginations.

He could hardly believe, that as Pope and leader of one billion Christians worldwide, the thoughts he now had.

This knowledge would have been disastrous, and the end of the Roman Church’s hold on its flock of faithful followers in the early centuries, and, more importantly, it would have been disastrous to its hold on power. The Church would itself have been reduced as conveyers of heresy; labeled as charlatans and liars. He could see why Gelasius had struck a bargain in return for whatever it was that Clovis had.

Leo thought of one conspiracy theory in particular.

A small group of theorists believe that Jesus’ bloodline still existed, and that the descendents had formed an esoteric society, but have long vacated the attempt to rule from the throne. Instead, they sought to rule from the shadows, and it is believed that this secret society had carefully orchestrated the rise of their chosen pawns into powerful positions of political power and control in Western societies – to quietly rule. The group had been called by many names: the Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion, the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons and – the more popular and topical – New World Order.

Preposterous!
Leo thought.

Leo had always written off such conjecture as ridiculous, the rants of conspiracists or anti-religion zealots. What he had uncovered contradicted popular thought, Christian thought.

Leo had tried exasperatingly hard to find something, anything that would show this parchment to be obviously false. But the further he dug and the more he researched, it became clear that what he now possessed was indeed real.

There was a Holy Bloodline consummated with the marriage of Jesus and Magdalene, descendents of the Davidic line of rulers, of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Jesus had lived!

Jesus lived.

Leaning over the brown document with his elbows firmly rested on the table, and not for the first time, Leo began to cry. A drop of tear fell to the parchment and caused the ink of one letter to smear. Leo thought of every Church, of every Basilica, and of every Christian home in the world that hung a cross with the crucified body of Jesus Christ. A lie, it had been a lie.

Slamming both fists onto the table, Leo instantly righted himself in the chair and looked to the heavens with his still clenched hands extended high into the air, extended to god himself, and screamed, “Why? Why have you bestowed this knowledge upon me? What do I to do with it, am I to be so presumptuous that it should be me who rights history; what of the faithful, what do I tell them? That they have been wronged for centuries! That the Church has lied to them! That Jesus is not the son of god!”

Once these words left his lips, his sobs came more uncontrollably; each brought a stinging tightness in his chest as his ailing heart beat harder. Leo shrank, as if being pressed by the weight of Heaven, into a diminutive and hunched position in his chair.

“
How can it be?” Leo said meekly as his body convulsed slightly with each new tear. “How is it that he did not perish on the cross? Why is it not taught that he fled with his family to Egypt, and they, farther on to France?”

The marks from Leo’s tears ran down both sides of his flushed face. Some were wet and rolled down his cheeks, and some had dried creating white salted lines. Leo looked skyward once more and screamed, “He had a family!”

His body shook harder, as if he had caught a chill. He wrapped himself tightly in an effort to ward off the small convulsions that plagued him. Ineffective, he instead buried his face into his hands – hands that were still wet from his crying. For many hours and on many occasions over the past three months he had found himself this way; his faith was truly being tested. Leo would weep until the tears no longer were able to form: tonight he would end that pattern.

Leo raised his eyes no longer wanting to shed painful tears and muttered, this time to no one in particular, “I know what I must do; I have the obligation to the Church, to the world, to him, to share this knowledge.”

The revelation came to him in the blinding flash of a splitting nucleus. Leo felt amazing warmth envelop him as if god himself had wrapped his divine arms around his frail and aged body. A smile, a true smile, pierced the corner of his mouth for the first time in months. Looking skyward once more, and with a calm and newly resolute voice, Leo spoke, “The agony I have carried for the last three months is nothing when compared to yours. The world is made up of your creations and without predetermination. We are to our own devices and choices, we are conscious beings, but have failed you; these things I truly believe.”

Leo felt fresh and encased by a new found will, and continued with his words to god: “Many times throughout history, from your creation of man to present day, have devastating mistakes purposely been contrived by man. It started with the apple, with the first sin of temptation. Men have connived, distorted, and manipulated all for the sake of power, for glory, for wealth solely to control our destinies. Even the Church is fallible, for the Church is simply governed by man.