TRIP AMONG TWO WORLDS

Octave departs

58

Cristoforo told the Calabrian monk: "During the trip for Chio, in 1474, I made visit in big secret to the Sanctuary of Paola. Officially, this was not anticipated, but it was an initiative wanted by the Pope, which gave me a letter from the hidden content, to deliver to the monk. I expressly asked to the men of the crew, not to quote that standstill, which I didn't make to go down to earth, since the visit didn't last for a long time, few more than a few times and to avoid." The monk was deeply stricken in front of those words: "Monk Carlo, wants to narrate you the secret meeting that I had with the monk, and to quote you some of the things that that day told me, those more "important" for you, which you/they made me understand how much great it is Francis of Paola, that spreads wisdom and charity among the men with love." Cristoforo, after brief silence it said: "I have desired for a long time a meeting with the man of God, that you/he/she has been an unique occasion. I met him/it among those sacred boundaries of the convent of Paola." The monk was anxious to listen. "I saw the man that crossed the narrow one of Messina with his/her mantle, he who the people of sea, considered to big voice their protector and for me you/he/she was the illumination" "He brings Light among the men" it Said monk Carlo. Then the navigator took back: "When I arrived to the Convent it received me a monk that conducted me in front of him. This way I had the opportunity of able see with my eyes the work that the monk wanted to build with his/her hands and with the help of men and women illuminated by his/her charity. When I was ahead me the damp cell of monk Francesco, a humble man it felt me, only a simple creature that appeared with respect and devotion to the man of God, then the monk knocked to the cell and entering simply told the Saint: has arrived he who was waiting! Leaving us alone. Shortly after turning to me, it said: you have come from very distant, your trip is still long, but the Lord will protect you. I remained without proferir word in front of him, after having felt that sentence, but with great effort I found the voice to tell him: my name is Cristoforo Colombo, I am a sailor and secretly I have stayed for delivering you a document… this for me is the only occasion to be able to speak to you, I desired for a long time it… and only a Saint man can know my trip. Monk Francesco told me: I know who are… and I also know that you have something for me. Then it added: have had the news from the Sky, I am humble and devoted I Use God, for Him, there are no limits, since he loves us and follows us! And me again turning to him I said: the Pope has written a letter for you from the content to me hidden… I have the order to deliver you her. And he responded: when it will be the moment he will have responded to his/her questions. Then the Calabrian monk continued telling me: your road must be crossed with courage and faith in the Lord, to give to the world "new discoveries" and "truth". Then been stricken by those words, I asked to the Saint to tell me qualcos'altro, but the monk said: will discover him/it in the years to happen, God is nearby you, great will be your work! Then it still added: don't have doubts, a lot of answers will be given to the men. After having listened in silence and with great devotion, I threw me to his/her feet, and I asked his/her benediction, saying not to hesitate only never a moment in the faith and verse he who is Illuminated of it. The Saint man, made then me as gift some candles saying to turn on her to me in the moments in which I would have held him/it necessary for protection and comfort, so he would have been nearby me. The man of God, turned then him the last time toward me telling me: this meeting of ours will be remembered! " To the Calabrian monk surprised by the history, the prophecy came to mind that the Saint did and as it foretold in fact, now it was found involved in a discovery unprecedented with the man that had of forehead… Monk Carlo pronounced: "I am honorable of knowledge venir of such visit in my earth, and I will maintain the silence in the years that he/she anchors they stay me to live, on this meeting wanted by the Pope, in how much he/she wanted the maximum secretiveness, and I will respect his/her will." Cristoforo finally added: "And I am honorable to have you known, and to be able to tell you after many years of silence, to have been a fortunate man for the meeting had with monk Francesco, and now I have the privilege to be able to submit to you this history of mine, I have looked for for many years her "truth", and as it foretold the Saint, you/he/she has happened. I don't find other words to be able to praise him/it, since these would not be enough." While monk Carlo listened, Cristoforo an instant detained him, looking at him/it with eyes estasiati thanked him/it bringing himself/herself/itself toward the caravel.

59

Many of the men of the crew were companions of the first consignment and the others, for the most greater part, they were voluntary enthusiastic and thirsty of wealths. There were then some Hidalgoses, that is, children cadets of the noblest families, rich of names and titles but poor of substances, pushed by the dream to add to his/her own surname the ownership of some new earth and many cleric. Among these last ones, there was father Linares, which was introduced Armand to father, and it was him that more it opposed Christopher Columbus before 1492. Its penetrating and severe look, was not suitable at all him to a man that had the role to convert the Indian people to the faith of Christ. Monk Carlo, with great surprise, it came to knowledge that on one of the numerous caravels, there was a young monk coming from Calabria, and learned by a sailor, that he was a follower of the Saint Calabrian Hermit shortly after. Charles thanked the sailor for the information and after a search you/he/she found him/it introducing himself/herself/itself him. The young monk called Joseph de Ritacco. The man turned him to monk Carlo with a lot of humility, and you/he/she mentioned him to know him/it, since in the convent of Paola, he always spoke of the first followers of the beloved Saint. Charles, that left back Patycos years, saw in that young the possibility to have news on the country, on the Sanctuary, and on the followers of the Saint and he wanted to know her. "Among Charles, the followers increase of year in year and the number of his/her/their brothers you entertain of the convent of Paola you/he/she has been climbed to 25 men, but many are those presents in the other convents founded by S. Francesco in these years in the whole Calabria, but also in Sicily, and in the rest of the kingdom in Naples they count many and so many you/they have left their beloved earth to spread elsewhere the order with the spiritual help of St. Francis that is found in France to the court of the king, together to other Calabrian monks. My dear brother, the Sanctuary in these years is grown a lot and something has remained to do but there is the time, and there are and they will be the men to do him/it… and the church to the inside that shine! In his/her mystical austerity of the game times, the nobility of the aisles, the ampleness of the proportions and the beauty of the execution they make some construction an original work and of elevated harmony, that creates greater proximity to the Divine one, a Gothic construction, mysterious, that fascinates, awake admiration, a work more divine than human! And if the habit during the years has changed the sudden disturbance of the first meeting, have never been able to free me d to a kind of enchantment in front of that wonder! The graven bas-reliefs transmit thoughts, they speak to whom observes her with pure spirit, and they transmit an absolute message, of simple expression, a sense purified by the fineness, from the allusions, from the literary misunderstandings! This is the language of stone, clear and sublime. Talk to the soul of the humblest as to that of the most cultured! And as the human soul it has his/her secret recesses, so the work of the Saint has its passages hidden in the subsoil, low place, dampness and cold, and a sincere feeling tries him that imposes the silence: that of the in partnership power to the darkness. A dismal and heavy silence riempie the spaces of the times. The thousand noises of the outside, these vain echis of the world, don't arrive anymore, everything is mystery, anguish and fear in this dark cavern… where thick pillars and rough and worn-out forms there are, where elegance and superfluous wealth surrender the footstep to the solidity, material strength that the Builder has known how to order and to leave again. He/she forces Royal but hidden, that practices secretly him, it develops him in the shade and it acts without truce in the depths of the intimate structure of the work! " Monk Giuseppe lived with transport those words that you/he/she pronounced and monk Carlo remained estasiato of it. Then the elderly monk asked to shortly tell him his/her history and as you/he/she was found there: "I was me in the city of Genoa few months before coming here, coming from the city of Naples, where I stayed for a few years, guest of a convent, tiing friendships on the place, above all people of sea that allowed me to reach other countries and villages lived by families for him humblest origins, even if they didn't miss men of a certain social intelligence where I have tried to spread the thought of among Francis to all with a lot of humility" "You have done what correct and good" The monk smiled and nodded. Then resumptions: "During that years I could also reach Rome, and in this stately city I saw and I had useless and personal confirmation that the name of the Saint was known, admired and respected since the taller ecclesiastical positions, and you praises didn't save him on its figure, the Pope it is its first supporter, and it was born for wanting of many religious a church in his/her honor, as to Naples, to want some king, where they built a church to him entitled before plaza of the Plebiscite. By now his/her fame you/he/she was consolidated... One day then, talking to some sailors, I came to knowledge of the admiral Colombo, that looked for consents to effect a daring consignment over the Columns of Ercole, and they reported me, that when it had the possibility to depart, as trionfatore returned, in how much it discovered a new earth to the horizon." Monk Giuseppe was spellbound, as all the men from that discovery, and as researcher knew of some texts that quoted a possible arcadia after the Columns, and he saw the possibility to be able to present himself/herself/themselves among the crew as religious, and definite to depart for Genoa, but once arrived in the city of sea, had to embark himself/herself/themselves to come in the I bring from which would have departed for the second consignment, and with the consent gotten by the superior of the convent in Naples and a letter of introduction, you/he/she was approved on board of a caravel. Monk Carlo felt him fierce to have been the first one to undertake the choice to spread the order, and now I crosses the words of Joseph you/he/she could gather the results of it. The satisfaction and the enthusiasm were tangible. Monk Giuseppe told him: "Thank you for having given the example and the will power, to the monks arrived in the following years." But that religious was not alone anxious to spread the word of the Saint Hermit, as it will discover monk Carlo.

60

Monk Carlo involved in the search of the Spanish father during a discussion, asked once him some explanations. It exposed so different questions, one behind the other: "Thing was happening AD around the Church around 1100? Because the papacy decided to keep silent on the letter received by father Johannes of the open earth over the Columns? Who were the albigesis? Because the Church raged him toward that men? " Father Armand, surprised together by such set questions all, he/she justly wanted to satisfy in the best some ways the curiosities of Charles and he/she answered this way: "In the XII century, an alternative religion was apparently materialized by the "nothing", in Provenza and in Linguadoca, and you/he/she had immediately made breach in the heart and in the mind of vast sectors of the population. You also recorded one thick presence of his in the near regions of oriental Spain and northern Italy, in Liguria and Piedmont, among the communities Valdesi, while it was making some sporadic apparition inside smaller and distant community in Belgium, in the North of France and in Germany. The name of this religion, that spiazzò quickly and with success the Roman Catholic Church in so near regions to the center of its power was: "Christianity" " The Valdesis! The men come in Calabria! He/she thought among itself Charles, that hearing such words remained notably surprised and it didn't make time to pronunciar word because father took back Armand, realizing his/her perplexities. "His/her followers were defined "good Christians", but there the Church stamped as heretics since the first moment in which it acknowledged their existence. In the XII, in the XIII and in the XIV century their contemporaries had the tendency to call them "manichei", from the ancient dualistic heresy of the manicheismo, presumably eliminated from Europe hundreds of years first" "To thing it refers the dualistic heresy of the manicheismo? " He/she asked Charles. "Now I explain you: the manicheis were also known with an ample variety of other epithets, among which the more communes were "albigesi" that it derived from Bulletin-boards, important city of the Linguadoca, and "catari" from the Greek katharos, or rather "pure". Charles, the albigesis, or cataris revered just Jesus Cristo as the Catholics, for this motive they were defined "good Christians", but the place that Jesus occupied in their religion was radically different. According to the conception Catholic Christ was "the Verb done meat" that "he/she lives among us", but cataris firmly opposed him to this belief and they revered him/it as a being of pure spirit, an emanation of the "good God", a projection or an apparition. they categorically Denied his/her material incarnation as "child" of God, been born in a human body for "to live in the middle of us", accordingly they also denied the Catholic teaching of the Christ crucifix to redeem our sins. As you/he/she would have been able to be crucifix, did they beat, if, had not you/he/she ever existed first of all physically? Afar to conform himself/herself/themselves to the central spiritual symbol of the Christianity, the albigesis therefore they denied the meaning of the cross. For them it was an obscene tool of torture that the Church in Rome, in misleading way, you/he/she had induced million of believers to revere as idol. To twist the symbols, the doctrines and the most meaningful dogmas of the Christianity was a tendency that more times it provoked and it made to rage the Catholic Church. However the source of the problem was that, instead of having only an almighty God and highestly good as the Christians, the cataris were "dualists", or rather they believed in the parallel existence of two divinities: a God of the Good and a God of the Evil. Every of them was powerful only in his/her own dominion and almost impotent in the kingdom of the other. The dominion of the God of the Good was completely spiritual, intangible, immaterial and full of Light. From here they had origin the human souls, that were created therefore by the good God. The dominion of the wicked God was the same Earth, the material world and the physical life inside this world, an infernal place of suffering and punishment, full of obscurity and inequity. In the vision catara was the wicked God, he who forged and it governed the material world, to give form to the bodies, but not to the souls of the human beings modeling "mud and water", and really to this wicked God, they sustained the preaching cataris, the cult of the Roman Catholic Church was turned" "But then they believed that the pope was a negative position" "Exact, theirs believed that the pope was not servant of the good God, on the contrary the representative of the devil on the Earth. The purpose of the Catholic Church was not to transmit our souls to the spiritual dominion and full of light of the Sky after the death, but to induce us to continually return, in a human incarnation after the other, to the material world of the hell. a life of culminating abnegation in special way in the gnosis or inspired knowledge, achieved Only reaching the initiation to the tallest degree of the faith catara, you/he/she would have been able to save the men. It was a revolutionary teaching and, in the XII century, in Europe it was extremely dangerous. All this with the diffusion of the news of an earth over the columns, denied with strength from the Church, and of the men coming from that distant place. What would you/he/she have provoked to the power of the Church? The doctrines from it you impart you/they could have put seriously in discussion, in an unstable period, where many men began to I handed questions, to produce doubts to which to give answer, founding himself/herself/itself on studies of texts of the past, on the origin of the same Earth, considered older than that that the Sacred Writings affirmed. This and other anchor you/he/she would have produced greater confusion in the men, or no? Perhaps in good part you/they would have begun to believe in something that went beyond the knowledges until then "approved", you/they would have begun to refuse in good part the Church as only and alone religious institution and medium to reach God, the tallest degree of spirituality for the men." These revelations left amazed monk Carlo. He didn't succeed in believing in those words, to the convictions of that men, present also in Calabria.