Authors: Heather Terrell
“Why don’t you just sit by the window and finish your coffee then? I’ll tell you when it’s all over.” He sounded like a doctor reassuring a mother about her young child’s impending surgery. And that was precisely how she felt.
“Okay.”
Peeling off her gloves, she retrieved her coffee from the foyer and walked to the window. There was no way she’d be able to sit while he hovered over her manuscript with a blade. She stopped herself: “her” manuscript indeed.
Alex tried to keep her eyes fixed on the pedestrians strolling through Saint Stephen’s Green, but her vision settled on a large clock tower looming over the park instead of on the people walking on its paths. She ticked off several minutes that seemed like hours. Impatient, she was about to turn around and find out what was happening when Declan called to her.
She ran to the worktable. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, the piece came off easily.”
“So now what?”
“I’ll take it to a good friend—a discreet friend—who works at Trinity’s labs. Then we wait.”
“For how long?”
“Maybe a week. Maybe a bit more.”
“A week? Dec, I don’t have a week before I have to return this to Sister Mary.”
“I don’t know that we have any other alternative.”
Alex knew they did. For her own reasons, she’d held off giving him the two books she’d found in the convent archives. But the time had come. She reached into her bag and handed them to Declan.
“Oh my God,” Declan whispered after he’d paged through the first of the two books.
“What is it?” Alex was almost afraid to ask.
“It’s an ancient life of Saint Brigid.”
“A saint’s hagiography?”
“Yes.”
As he turned his attention to the second book she had found in the convent archives, Alex began to believe that every rush of terror and dread she’d experienced since her decision was worthwhile. Before Declan even spoke, the reaction on his face told her that, whatever the risk, disclosing the two books might make the manuscript the stuff of dreams. He looked up at her and asked, “Alex, you found these books in Kildare as well?”
“Yes, in the convent archives. From the age of the vellum and the script, they seemed related to the manuscript.” She couldn’t wait any longer. “What’s the second book?”
He smiled. “It’s a bound packet of letters written in the same hand as the manuscript—and as the life of Saint Brigid, except for the final few pages of the life. It’s early days yet, but I believe they might be letters written by the scribe.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’m hoping these books might contain the evidence we need to prove the early date of the manuscript and the image of the Virgin Mary—proof that’ll change everything.”
After much deliberation, Alex and Declan decided to study the life first and the letters second. This time, however, Alex didn’t sit in the upholstered chair reading research material while Declan translated. This time, she sat in the work chair next to Declan, literally looking over his shoulder. Alex didn’t care if she distracted him. They had agreed that he would undertake a cursory translation first, to get a sense of the documents and see if any critical evidence jumped out. And she had no intention of missing a single word.
Declan began to skim the life, reading aloud key passages to Alex and entrancing her with the Brigid found there. He described a bold Celtic girl, a well-educated warrior of the fifth century. He told of an evolving young woman who defied her noble parents’ wishes to follow Jesus Christ. And he revealed a woman brought to Christ through the love of His Mother, Mary, as Brigid read what she called “the Gospel of Mary the Mother.”
For all her familiarity with gnostic and apocryphal Gospels alike, Alex had never heard of the Gospel of Mary the Mother. But as Declan began reading the lines from the Gospel excerpted in the life, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit together.
Alex asked, “You don’t happen to have a copy of the gnostic or the apocryphal Gospels in your library, do you?”
“What self-respecting Irishman doesn’t have the banned Gospels handy?” He smiled at her. Blushing, Alex was glad when he swiveled over to his bookshelves and plucked out three textbooks for her.
She stuck her nose deep into the textbooks while Declan continued with his translation of Brigid’s mission to convert the Irish. Scanning the tables of contents, she found what she was looking for: the Protoevangelium of James and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. The Protoevangelium was written around
A.D
. 150, and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew was a later version of it. Together, they described Mary’s unique birth and childhood, including her training in the Temple
of Jerusalem, her young adulthood and chaste relationship with Joseph, and her close relationship with her son Jesus. It was a very different picture of Mary than that presented in the handful of mentions of her in the accepted four Gospels of the Bible. It showed a well-educated, bold woman who was the only human being her divine Son would listen to.
In Christianity’s early days, all sorts of Gospels floated around, and the church had to sanction a few or risk splintering. To that end, in the late second century, Bishop Irenaeus recognized four Gospels as the pillars of the church, banning all others. Still, other Gospels continued to circulate, versions of the Protoevangelium of James among them. The church condemned the text multiple times: in 382, Pope Damasus I did so; in 405, Pope Innocent I; and in 496, Pope Gelasius I. And, in fact, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew was prefaced by an introductory letter—of dubious origin—that claimed to explain the church’s view on the Gospel’s rejected status: “The birth of the Virgin Mary, and the nativity and infancy of our Lord Jesus Christ, we find in apocryphal books. But considering that in them many things contrary to our faith are written, we have believed that they ought all to be rejected, lest perchance we should transfer the joy of Christ to Antichrist…. You ask me to let you know what I think of a book held by some to be about the nativity of Saint Mary. And so I wish you to know that there is much in the book that is false.”
Regardless of the repeated denunciation, parts of the stories found within the Protoevangelium—and its later version, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew—were seamlessly woven into the fabric of Catholic practice by medieval times. Bits of the apocryphal Gospel’s tales formed the basis of the legends around the Virgin Mary and Christ child birth and helped promote the worship of Mary within the church through the Feast of the Nativity, the Conception, and the Presentation. Nowhere would ardent readers of the Bible find mention of these events celebrated by the church; those accounts were described only in the Protoevangelium and its related progeny. Having decided to ban the Gospel as apocryphal, or legendary, the church—or its constituents—later determined that it had some need of the Mary found within its pages after all. As Alex had suspected.
But she didn’t need to tell Declan any of this. A scholar of early biblical manuscripts, among other things, he could tell her a thing or two about the rejected Gospels.
Alex interrupted Declan and asked him to reread the quotes from Brigid’s Gospel of Mary the Mother. “She’s referring to some version of the Protoevangelium of James,” Alex said.
“Are you sure?”
“Listen to this,” she told him, then read aloud the relevant sections from the Protoevangelium and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. The text was almost identical.
Declan pushed his chair back from the table and let out a low whistle. “Brigid must have had access to the prototype for the Protoevangelium in her mother’s library. Some scholars think that the Protoevangelium is a faulty copy of an earlier Gospel that has been lost—maybe this Gospel of Mary the Mother. This reference to the Protoevangelium in the life might have the additional effect of bolstering the credibility of that Gospel.”
Alex asked, “There isn’t a copy of the Gospel of Mary the Mother in the life or the letters, is there?”
Declan flipped through both quickly, then shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it. Still lost, I guess. You’re getting too big for your britches, Alex,” he laughed. “Anyway, I’m happy to see the Protoevangelium surface. I love its mischievous picture of the young Jesus.” He was referring to the descriptions of the youthful Christ child lashing out at other children with his powers when they acted against his childish will.
Alex smiled; of course the Protoevangelium was one of Declan’s favorites. “Maybe that’s why no fewer than three popes banned it?”
“Nah. I always thought the church was more put off by the world seeing his strong-willed mother.”
They were interrupted by the rare ringing of Alex’s cellphone. Hardly anyone ever called her on it unless it was an emergency. She reached for it, checking the number. It was the exchange code for Kildare. Her stomach lurched as she picked up.
“Alexandra Patterson, please.”
“This is she.”
“Alex, it’s Sister Mary. I have some bad news.”
Her heart beating even harder, she said, “What’s happened?”
“The previous keeper, Sister Augustine, just passed away.”
“I’m so sorry, Sister Mary,” Alex said, although all she could feel was relief.
“We’d like to use the communion vessels and the reliquary one last time for her funeral Mass, and I’d like you to be here for that. To make sure that our usage doesn’t interfere with your appraisal process—or the sale, of course. Can you make it down to Kildare for first thing Thursday morning?”
Thursday would give her only two more days with the manuscript, two more days to ascertain the date of the Book of Kildare. But what choice did she have? “Of course, Sister Mary. I’ll be there first thing Thursday.”
“Excellent. I hope you’ll be bringing me good news, Miss Patterson?”
“God willing, Sister Mary.”
Brother
,
The history begins. I have never heard anyone speak the way Brigid speaks, with such frankness and intimacy. She bares her thoughts and feelings as she unfolds the details without a shred of self-consciousness. Brother, Brigid speaks only as I have read in Augustine’s
Confessions
and only as I write to you.
The experience of capturing Brigid’s words with my own is like painting a moving likeness with letters. I sit in a rigid wooden chair, with the scribe’s table before me, and force my quill to race to catch her words. I disregard the splinters that lodge in my palm as my fingers fly across the rough table surface in search of ink. I steal glimpses of her face during her rare moments of pause. At day’s end, if I have been quick and open, I find her vivacity, her soul, in my pages. In my darker moments, I wonder what will become of this history, as I do not have the same intentions for it as does she.
Each day, we start before the sun rises and the abbey along with it. Her duties, of course, demand that we break for meals and meetings and ministry and Mass, yet we use every spare moment between—as the noon sun brightens even a gray Gael, as the afternoon shadows
takes hold, even as dusk settles like silt. I scribe furiously as she talks about the misty world from which she emerged.
While she performs her abbey responsibilities, I carry out my other charge: to create a wondrous Gospel book. Brother, I need not tell you how I delight in this task. I build on my early effort at illumination—my personal Gospel book—and meld its design with the uniquely Gaelic artistry. I hope you will not find me prideful if I share that even the recalcitrant Aidan finds time to watch as I paint and illuminate, that even he finds reason to praise me.
Yet the scriptorium and the hut do not confine us. Brigid desires the history to memorialize her current ministry; thus we tramp across the lush countryside as she tends her people with the dedication of a servant. No task, no person is below her care. No situation poses too great a danger for her, and dangers abound in this still-Druidic warrior world. She dismisses my cautions with a laugh and a wave, saying, “You know that I am the daughter of two warriors.”
In my days with Aidan, I often heard the other monks tell tales of her wondrous selflessness, but I thought the vignettes tall. I was wrong. If you ever perchance read the history, brother, you will see an account of her good deeds, and I endeavor to animate them well. I must admit, however, to witnessing her works firsthand moves in a manner words cannot share. In fact, she is so kindly and maternal in her ministrations, I once asked her whether she did not regret forgoing motherhood.
Her answer to my somewhat impertinent inquiry vastly informed my understanding of her. She said, “How can I be mother to all, if I am mother to one?”
Her statement casts an interesting shadow over all our dealings, for she is indeed mother to her people. I recall one afternoon when Brigid dragged us on horseback through near-blinding rain over hills that slid like ice. She seemed to have a particular destination in mind that day, though she did not always, and we arrived at a small cluster of structures in a knoll.
The inhabitants, rough Christian men and women indistinguishable in their dun-colored cloaks, emerged at the rare sighting of their abbess. They threw themselves prostrate at her feet, and Brigid knelt
down in the puddles to draw them up to her level. She spoke to each person in a low voice, such that I could not overhear, and their faces softened at the conversation.
When the group rose, Brigid addressed the whole: “I understand that one of your daughters wishes to enter the abbey life as a nun. May I meet this young woman?”
A man scrambled into one of the structures and came forth dragging a writhing girl under his arm. “Here she is, Abbess.” The local community insists on calling Brigid by her title, regardless of her efforts to the contrary. “My daughter Maeb wants to take the veil,” he said, shoving the reluctant girl forward.
The unkempt, towheaded girl, who could not have been more than twelve, stumbled at the force of her father’s push. Brigid bent down to help her up and took her hand in hers. She looked into the girl’s face and asked, “Is it your intention to enter the Abbey of Cill Dara as a religious?”