Armed in Her Fashion

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In those days there was some disagreement about when a soul knows the perfect happiness of knowing God, as it is written in Corinthians: Videmus nunc per speculum in ænigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem.

The true pope in Avignon, who took the name John XXII, expressed the private opinion that a soul cannot know this beatific vision until the Judgement Day, when Christ comes in His Glory and the world will be made new. The Holy Father later came to see that this was an error. But in those days there were many men of the church who whispered against John and some were secretly saddened that the Imperial Antipope in Rome failed in his attempt to take the papacy.

It was in that same year, the year of the Antipope Nicholas, that King Philippe and the Chatelaine put down the Flemish insurrection.

And, as is the way of things, the words of the wise came to the ears of the common people like whispers in a cathedral, and the unwise worried that Pope John was uncertain about the life that follows death. What did truly happen, then, to those who died in faith? What would they see in Heaven?

And on Judgement Day, when all souls and bodies were reunited, what would happen to the chimeras?

These were the questions that occupied the pope in those days, as he and his counsellors sought to understand the nature of the Hellbeast, which seemed to be neither the Gehenna of punishment nor any Purgatory of infants or holy fathers. Was this then Sheol, home of the shades, and did Samuel wait in such a place before he was summoned by the Witch of Endor? Was this the infernus where Christ descended after his Crucifixion, for the Harrowing of Hell and the release of just captives? Some hoped that were true, for it might mean that those whom they had loved, who had been swallowed by the Beast, would one day be freed, even before the Last Judgement.

It was clear that many, many of the dead were not in the Beast. There was some other Hell somewhere. For where was Judas?

It was a time of great confusion and the pope was beset on all sides. For while he had the support of King Philippe, the Emperor Louis was lying in wait for a chance to supplant the pope with a new usurper, someone who would support the Franciscans’ contention that Christ and the Apostles had no possessions, someone who would not assert papal authority over the Empire. The pope and all the bishops loyal to him, therefore, were very grateful for the support of King Philippe in those warlike times.