Alphabet pour une gabonite (French Edition)

Presently the hand on the rein steadied her, pressed her gently back into a walk, then patted her neck and she shook in answer the silver ornaments of her harness. They strolled together, hand-in-hand, as it were, like a courting couple along the water-side, until a slight shift of weight, a pressure from the leg, a gathering up of attention in the thrilling touch on the lip, set her once more stepping briskly out in the glades of her keen, young mind.

The dirge ended and the singers' throats now gurgled with mead; the piper shook out the spittle and the fiddlers tinkered with their strings. The King's applause momentarily awoke the company from their several reveries. Momentarily only; there was an interval of pledging and quaffing; then the music began again. Trotting through the limpid upper-air of her thoughts, stepping high and delicately, nibbling the bit, tossing the buckles and sparkling bosses of her bridle, making the reins ring like a harp-string with the note of assent and exultation, tenderly, sweetly displaying before the world the chivalry of her rider; thus went Helena.

And Constantius also rode; rode in triumph; not in his chariot amid the sweat and garlic-reek of the City, not behind yoked sovereigns and exotic animals, the almoners and augurs and tumblers and ceremonial troops, not in the pantomine of official triumph; but at the head of battle-worn, victorious legions, at the heart of power, at the entry into possession; he rode between crowds who were part sullen, part timorous, part flushed with gratitude for their immediate salvation, all scanning him as he passed for a sign of what was coming to them.

That was Constantius's triumph as he jogged along in his service uniform into a conquered and anxious world. And, as he lay, he looked across the hall to the row of women; scarcely observing them, his eyes passed from one rapt face to another, until, in the lowest place but highest by a handsbreadth, Helena raised hers to meet them. They gazed at one another, unknowing, separate, then running together like drops of condensed steam on the ewer, pausing, bulging one against the other, until, suddenly, they were one and ran down in a single minute cascade.

Helena trotted on and Constantius bestrode her in triumph. Constantius had done something unprecedented and unpremeditated, something for which his talents were ill suited; he had fallen in love. For weeks now he had left early stables to his corporal-major; grey, queasy mornings such as this were ordained for discipline. As he expected, everything was behind-hand; he saw it in the corporal-major's eye as he saluted; he saw it in the men as they stood to attention; he saw it in the half-groomed horses and the disordered straw. What was more, there was a girl in the stables. He could see her back through the door of the harness-room, a red-headed girl wearing, surprisingly, a bridle.

She turned towards him and removing the bit from her mouth, smiled. He doesn't know the first thing about horses, you know. He thinks these are Gallic. I'd know them anywhere. They come from Allectus's stud in the South. He sent me one once; they're quite special, you know. What are you doing here? I say, you do look ill. I'm the King's daughter you know and we Britons think a lot of education.

Constantius had allowed no time for courtship in his itinerary. The whole British visit was supererogatory, something subsidiary to his main mission; something which, if it ever came out, would want explaining. It had seemed easy, with his other business speedily concluded and a month in hand, to slip across the Channel, to see for himself this little frequented dependency, to form his own opinions, to add to the knowledge he was patiently building up of the vast structure of imperial government, to add one or two more names to the men of consequence with whom he was on personal terms.

But he had not reckoned on falling in love. However the thing had happened and must be settled expeditiously. He presented his suit to Coel. He was not at all Coel's idea of a gentleman, and the District Commander whom he had consulted as soon as this question of Helena's marriage arose, had said exactly what Coel was saying now. At length he said: He had meant to keep his secret until he was clear of Britain, until he was across the Rhine, but the King was plainly not to be put off; according to Coel's simple tradition if a man had a genealogy to be proud of, he hired an orchestra and set the thing to music.

At last Constantius spoke. When I tell you, you will understand my hesitation. I would have preferred you to accept my word, but since you insist' - he paused to give full weight to his declaration - 'I am of the Imperial Family. Also,' he added, 'of the Divine Quintilius, whose reign though brief was entirely constitutional. Some of the emperors we've had lately, you know, have been' - very literally - 'nothing to make a song about.

It's one thing burning incense to them and quite another having them in the family. You must see that. I myself have no property to speak of. I live where I am sent. We don't arrange marriages over here quite as you do, I daresay, on the Danube. No not you' - as all the bards came bundling in - 'only the three strings and the pipe. I have to think. I had just gone to the stables to look at Pylades's over-reach. He'll be all right for Tuesday. He wants to marry you.

Says he comes from the Balkans somewhere. You don't really want to marry him, do you? Go away,' said Coel suddenly to his band. The music died among the rafters; slippers shuffled among the rushes and the room was silent. The hook's got bent. Not there' - as Helena tucked it down the front of her tunic.

I have never regarded you as a girl. I get offers for them every week. But you, Helena; well I never expected this. You look like a boy, you ride like a boy. Your tutor tells me you have a masculine mind, whatever he means by that. I did think you at least might stay at home with your old father. And if you must marry, why choose a foreigner? Oh yes, I know we're all Roman citizens and all that; so are a lot of Jews and Egyptians and disgusting Germans.

They're just foreigners to me. You won't like living abroad, you know. Besides, he's promised to take me to The City. Ask the District Commander. He met a fellow who'd been there. Told him all about it. No one goes there nowadays who can possibly help it - even the Divine Emperors. You'll be stuck all your life in some Balkan barracks, you see. After all, papa, we Trojans are always in exile, aren't we - poor banished children of Teucer? Constantius was eager to be off, overseas, to his work; there was no time for the sewing-maids to prepare the robes of a King's daughter, no time for the heralds to assemble the kin; time only for the augurs to fix a lucky day, a day of high salt wind and momentary sunshine.

The ox was duly felled and the Spring-flowers of his garland lay with him on the temple court-yard, crushed and bloody on the sanded floor; in the porch bride and groom broke the wheaten cake and, as they entered the sanctuary to burn incense to the Gods and the Divine Aurelian, the royal bards sang the epithalamium which had been taught and learned, father to son, before the Gods of Rome were known in the island. In the hall bride and bridegroom sat enthroned until sunset while the court and the garrison feasted round them. In twilight they were led to Constantius's lodging; he took her in his arms and carried her across the threshold of the home that was neither his nor hers; a soldier's camping-place.

His baggage was already in order for the journey and stood stacked by the bed. The music and voices of the banquet came clearly to them through the midst. They've some hard travelling ahead. Helena picked her way to the window, barefoot through the baggage. Standing there, she could see only the golden globes of flame moving below in the mist 'The minstrels, Chlorus. The song came to its end; Helena watched the torches dwindle in the darkness, glimmer and expire, heard the voices die to a murmur and fall at last quite silent.

The marriage-house seemed to stand solitary in the night and fog. I don't think I know the place. Is it one of the islands of Britain? Next day, while Constantius despatched the advanced-party and distributed the pack-loads, Helena went hunting once more for the last time over the familiar country. The timber round Colchester had been cut, first for reasons of defence, later for fuel; coverts of scrub and second-growth extended from below the walls, growing sparse and bare in successive belts as they approached the forests; the roads too had been cleared against ambush; there were large estates of tilled land and stretches of marsh towards the sea which gave free passage to the nimble game but engulfed horse and rider; there the hounds had to be whipped off the scent.

It was a difficult country requiring cleverness and long experience in huntsmen and hounds; sometimes the game fell to the spears at the covertside; sometimes the hounds got away and pulled him down in the forest; the huntsman's skill lay in driving him up the lanes into the open inland. It was a day of promise, the mist rose early leaving a wet and windless country and a strong scent. Helena rode Pylades; she sat astride and the saddle-tree solaced her man-made hurt; whip in hand, rein in hand, the ah- of her home sweet in her nostrils. The smell of the hunt, compact of horse-sweat and warm harness, new leaf and old leaf trodden together; the call of the horn; the horselife under her, between her thighs, at her fingers' ends; everything of that tangy, British morning contended with the memories of the night and seemed in those last few free hours to heal her maidenhead.

It was a mixed bag - two grey old boars that bolted, wheeled, charged and fell to the javelin throwers, a fallow hind whom the hounds followed slowly, with many checks, who at last led them a clear run to her death in the bare cornlands and, after noon, a red deer, rare in those parts, a beast in his splendid prime, four-atop and all his rights, who ran to the sea in a great half-circle and fell to the hounds on the shingle at the water's edge.

Only Helena was with the huntsmen at the kill. The Roman followers were lost and forgotten. The little cavalcade turned towards home into the setting sun; two of the hounds were lame but Pylades trotted bravely towards his stable; as she jogged back through the dear, darkling country the exhilaration of the morning was all spent. It was night when they leached the town. That evening Helena said to her father: I've always been very fond of Marcias.

Wasted as a girl's tutor. Did I say that? I don't think I ever said anything quite as definite as that. Besides, how was I to know your education would be over so soon?

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There's plenty of good work in Marcias yet. And think how bad it would be for him. I've heard all about Alexandria - beastly place; nothing but sophists and aesthetes. We have obligations towards him. I'd keep him myself but he's not exactly in my line. He'll fetch a good price in Gaul; you see if he doesn't. Constantius Chlorus came on deck and looked knowingly at the sun. We've made a good passage. Those must be part of Carausius's fleet; the fastest ships in the channel. Not a pirate can touch them. I must look Carausius up this evening if he's in the town.

He says whoever rules the Channel, rules Britain. He's got three sons, all at sea. I've been meaning to tell you. As soon as we cross the Rhine into Swabia, there must be no talk of Gaul or Britain. No one must know about this journey of mine. A time will come. You shall go to Rome, but not yet.

Are you not coming? I have business first elsewhere. You'll be better at Nish. The couriers used to do it in a fortnight. That was in the old days when the post-stages were properly organized with the best horses in the Empire waiting fresh every twenty miles and the roads- safe to ride at night.

Things aren't so good now; we'll get all that tidied up soon. But you'll do it in a month. Or you might wait at Ratisbon and come on with me later. I shall know better in a day or two. One does not travel direct to Rome. They travelled fast, saddling before dawn, bivouacking for their midday meal at the roadside, sleeping where darkness found them at the nearest stage-post.

Constantius eschewed the towns. At the border-castle of Strasbourg Constantius had friends with the VIII Legion; they stayed in the commander's quarters but Helena was sent early to bed and Constantius sat up all night talking soberly; next morning his face was paler than ever and grim with fatigue; he scarcely spoke until they were across the Rhine; then, suddenly, his hard mood relaxed.

The change touched the men and through them the horses and they jogged along in the sunshine at ease, almost merrily. The troopers sang snatches of bawdy ditties; they halted early, unsaddled, turned the horses to grass at hobble, and lay full length while the smoke of their fire rose straight into the windless sky. I have business there. The plans have all been made. They keep putting it off, first for one thing, then another, a raid here, a mutiny there, a corrupt slave-contractor, a commanding-officer too old for his job, always something more urgent to be done, never the time or the men or the money for anything except the immediate task.

Sometimes I feel as though the Empire were like an unseaworthy boat; she springs a leak in one place, you caulk it up, bale out and then before you can settle down to navigation, water comes spurting in somewhere else. Think of it, mile upon mile, from snow to desert, a single great girdle round the civilized world; inside, peace, decency, the law, the altars of the Gods, industry, the arts, order; outside, wild beasts and savages, forest and swamp, bloody mumbo-jumbo, men like wolf-packs; and along the wall the armed might of the Empire, sleepless, holding the line.

Doesn't it make you see what The City means? Beyond the Germans, beyond the Ethiopians, beyond the Picts, perhaps beyond the ocean there may be more people and still more, until, perhaps, you might travel through them all and find yourself back in The City again. Instead of the barbarian breaking-in, might The City one day break out? That's what people thought in the days of the Divine Augustus. But it came to nothing; from time to time in the past we've pushed a bit further East, taken in another province or two.

But it doesn't work.

In fact we've lately had to clear out of the whole left bank of the Danube. The Goths are delighted and it saves us a lot of trouble. There seems to be a natural division in the human race just where the present wall runs; beyond it they're incurable barbarians. It takes all our time to hold the present line. I meant couldn't the wall be at the limits of the world and all men, civilized and barbarian, have a share in The City? Am I talking great nonsense? She greeted her kindly. You must get some clothes,' she said.

I can see Constantius has no idea of how to look after a bride. They sat in Helena's room while the barber did his work, commenting on the rare splendour of her hair as it mounted and rippled and took an alien shape under his hands. Where do you think Constantius found her? Young men get stranded in the service for years at a time in most out-of-the-way places - without the chance of meeting girls of their own kind. One does not blame them if they sometimes marry rather oddly; one makes allowances and one tries to help.

That is all they need to know. What have you done to your hair? It was the Greek barber. The Governor's wife made me have him. Don't you like it? Helena left them for bed but could hear them talking long into the night in the adjoining study, now in Latin, now in their own tongue, gossip, reminiscence.

She dozed and woke to hear them still talking, in Latin now. I've just collected her. She's a good girl. It was near cock-crow when Constantius bade them good-bye and came to bed. Then he departed on his high and secret errand and Helena remained at Ratisbon. Summer broke deliriously along the banks of the Danube; Helena languished in halls too lofty for her and a company too numerous. None of the ladies of Ratisbon seemed ever to go out of doors except in curtained litters to pay calls from street to street or, rarely, to drive in dosed carriages to one or other of the riverside villas.

They talked endlessly in rapid, allusive Latin that seemed always to mean more to them than to Helena; they laughed endlessly at jokes she missed. There were two sets among the ladies of Ratisbon over whom the Governor's wife serenely and indifferently held sway - those concerned with love affairs, and the religious. Helena was no stranger to the laws of man's desire; at home she had watched her father's errant and exuberant fancies ring change after change in the precedence of his little household; in her reading she had followed all the crazy transmogrifications of desire, the incest, the cloud-kisses, the courting showers of coin, the swans and bulls, of ancient poetry; but here in the whispered confidences under the portico she found no part of her own steadfast and bruised passion.

The religious, too, confounded her. In her own country the Gods had been honoured in their seasons; Helena had prayed, year by year, devoutly and at ease at the altars of her household and her people, had greeted the returning Spring with sacrifices, had sought to placate the powers of death, had honoured the sun and the earth and the fertile seed. But the religious ladies of Ratisbon spoke of secret meetings, passwords, initiations, trances, and extraordinary sensations, of Asiatics who floated about the room in half-darkness, of enigmatic voices, of standing stark naked in a pit while a bull bled to death on the lattice above them.

Esteem, almost affection, had grown in Helena's lonely heart for this great lady. To her, tremulously, she had confided the secret of her royal parentage, her Trojan descent. As Constantius had foretold, the Governor's wife was not impressed. You'll find that a whole-time job, you know. He's a very important young man. I sometimes wonder if you quite realize it. The Divine Aurelian thinks the world of him. What did you do all day in Britain? No lady is supposed to hunt, though I did sometimes when we were quartered in Spain, I'm ashamed to say, and enjoyed myself enormously.

You'll never bear children if you hunt. I hope it's a son. He may turn out to be someone of the Greatest Importance. The Governor's wife was not the only one who frightened her in this way. A wealthy woman, whom blank plainness of mind and face excluded from both the religious and the smart sets of Ratisbon, was more explicit. From the moment they met she showed Helena marked attention; one day when Helena had refused to accompany her to a party she said: But you do keep people at a distance, don't you? And you're quite right. It's a great mistake in early life to tie yourself up with friends you may have to drop later.

If you only knew how I long for a friend. I admire so much the way that you are carrying off the situation. Don't pretend you don't know you've made the most brilliant match. Don't tell me you didn't know. Everyone in Ratisbon is talking of it. It was as though she had fallen asleep in the secure, child's bedroom at Colchester - the low-raftered room that had been hers since first she slept alone, where sitting on the press she could toss her shirt to its peg on the opposite wall; where, dressing, she had countless times paced its length and breadth, two steps from press to looking-glass, four paces from glass to door - and had lived since in a nightmare where walls and ceiling constantly receded and everything but herself swelled to monstrous size and in all the remote corners dark shadows lurked.

Days and nights grew heavy with the heat; the ladies of Ratisbon plied ivory and feather fans, whispered and peeped, while Helena looked only for the return of Constantius. He came at length early in August with the dust and stiffness of the road on him, and the lean look of the camp. He came in discreet triumph, full of the praises of Aurelian's generalship, silent on his own part in the business. Helena, for whom the summer in vain had grown to fullness, welcomed him as the spring. The slaves pulled slow on their oars. Constantius was in no hurry now.

He and Helena lay like princes of India under an awning of yellow silk; idly, daylong, they watched the rushy banks sweep by, threw sweetmeats to the naked urchins who swam to salute them, to the birds who followed their passage and perched sometimes on the gilded prow; at night they eschewed the towns and tied up on the banks at the leafy islets, lit a fire on shore and feasted the villagers who often gathered to dance and sing in its light. The guards and the boatmen slept ashore, leaving the whole splendid ship to be a marriage-bed for Helena and Constantius.

Often in the morning, when they cast off, their guests of the night before came with garlands of flowers which died at midday and then were thrown overboard to drift more slowly behind them towards Nish. Helena's love, sprung of the mists and rain, grew tender and summer-sweet while the new life ripened imperceptibly within her; in those soft days of Constantius's holiday, her honeymoon deferred, Helena rejoiced to feel that she was loved. They came to the whirlpool at Grein where, to humour Helena, Constantius ordered the helmsman to steer straight for the vortex of swirling, encumbered water; the leisurely slaves were caught unawares and the boat swung broadside across the stream; for a minute there was confusion on board, helmsman, master and pilot shouted to one another, the oarsmen awoke from their dreams of freedom and pulled furiously, and Helena laughed loud and clear as she used to laugh at Colchester.

For a minute it seemed they were out of control and must spin helpless as the eddying driftwood about them; then order was restored, the boat was righted, drew clear, and resumed her course. Presently they came to the sunless gorge of Semlin and there, awed by the vast precipices and momentarily recalled by them to the mood of Ratisbon, Helena said: Aurelian and I have spoken of it before.

After the battle he spoke of it again. He has to go to Syria now, to tidy up the trouble there. After that he will return to Rome for his triumph. Then we shall see. It's nothing to be shy of, just another, larger command - Gaul, the Rhine, Britain, possibly Spain. The Empire's too big for one man; that's been proved. And we need a secure succession, a second-in-command who's been trained to the job, knows the ropes, can step in straight away when the command falls vacant; not leave each army to declare for its own general and fight it out as they've done lately.

Aurelian is going to talk to the senators about it when we go to Rome. I haven't really thought, my dear. Most women would give their eyes to be Empress. Her hair was still tiered in the height of fashion - a slave from Smyrna was attached to their party for this purpose alone; all that the dressmakers and kindred tradesmen could do, had been done to transform her; new beauties had been discovered, old beauties hidden, by their crafts; but as Constantius gazed he felt bonds of the British spell still strong about him, he felt himself seduced from his cold intentions and transfixed anew as he had been that uncanny night in Coel's banqueting-hall.

Were you in great danger? I never felt anxious about you while you were away. Should I have done? It was all arranged beforehand,' 'Tell me. Tetricus rode over with his staff and gave himself up. He had put his army just where we wanted them. All we had to do was wade in and cut them to pieces in our own time. There was nothing much else they could do. We had them surrounded. We shall keep our bargain. It was enough, in the sunshine, that Constantius was with her and complacent; but that night, when the golden canopy was black against the stars and the water lapped placidly on the sides of the boat; as the sentry ashore paced to and fro in the firelight and Constantius lay asleep, sated, as he had turned from her, as he always did, curtly without tenderness or gratitude, chilling her crescent ardour and leaving her lonely at his side as in the empty bedroom at Ratisbon; and often later at Nish when the leaves had fallen and the guards under the window stamped and chafed their hands in the first cold winds of winter, - then the grim story haunted her.

Something had died in her heart that had lived there from her earliest memories. Her nurse's father, that redoubtable sergeant, was dead, had died in vain, and his grave had been dishonoured. This was Chlorus's victory, this his mystery; for this his journey, his furtive interviews, his fox-like doubling on his tracks, his lies and silences; this butchery of a betrayed army, this traffic with the betrayer; this and herself were his joint prizes.

At length they reached the confluent Morava and, turning south, rowed upstream towards the mountains. As he approached his homeland Constantius grew impatient once more, forced the pace, stood for hours at the prow searching for familiar landmarks. The men strained and sweated, the non-commissioned officers grew peremptory and Helena felt the chill of loneliness return to her heart. They turned again from the main stream up another tributary; the hills closed in until one day at evening they reached the town that was to be Helena's new home.

Officers, officials, and a shabby crowd assembled to greet them. Since they left Strasburg, Constantius had discarded the insignia of his assumed, modest rank; now before landing he donned the full finery of his command. All was not ready for their reception. Functionaries came on board and talked obsequiously while a carpet was spread on the rough wharf; the guard-of-honour marched up, resplendent but late; one sedan-chair and, after delay, a second, were set down between the rigid ranks. Only then, to a salute of trumpets, did Constantius lead Helena ashore.

Light was failing; the crowd pressed close, peering between the guards; Helena saw little of Nish on her way from the water-front. They went under an arch; through the windows of her chair and over the porters' shoulders Helena caught glimpses of an arcaded street, of the bases of many fluted columns, of a thronged square, and a line of over-sized, official statues; the scent of garlic and hot olive-oil, pierced with a sweeter breeze from the mountains; then she was set down and stepped from her close cabin into the vast, paved square of the barracks, bemusedly climbed the steps between ranks of guardsmen and entered her house where the lamps were already alight 'I'm afraid you won't have thought much of the turn-out,' said Constantius.

Aurelian's been bleeding us white, the last six months, for the army that's forming for the Syrian campaign - draft after draft of our best men, over ten thousand of them. He's promised them back but you can never tell. We should look pretty silly if the Goths started anything. They've had something to remember too lately.

If I have time tomorrow I'll show you Uncle Claudius's battle-field. The salvage had been patiently collected and between the unconsidered bones, the trampled vines, replanted, were even now being picked. He showed her, also, the principal beauties of the town, the statue of Uncle Claudius, seven and a half tons of Pentelic marble with bronze enrichments; it stood at the hub where all the roads of the province converged and met the great highway that led from the Rhine to the Euxine Sea; the more modest monument to Uncle Quintilius, a bust in the cooling-room of the public baths; the massive shrine and domestic altar of the Flavian family; the half-finished meat-market Constantius himself had planned - work had lagged there during his absence and was now furiously resumed; the court-house where he gave judgement; the very chair he sat in on such occasions; his box at the theatre.

Constantius was at home in Nish; here in his own command, among his own people, his precise speech betrayed the local burr, his manners at table became rougher, he laughed, mirthlessly hut from a kind of contentment at the jokes his subordinates made when they came to dine. Various kin came to call from the surrounding hills; Helena often failed to follow their broken Latin. They commented coarsely on her now-evident pregnancy and, when these compliments were at an end, lapsed, with an air of physical ease, like a man unbuckling too tight a belt, into their mother tongue.

Helena found none to love among them; they were a prosaic race; some farmed their ancestral holdings; some had profited by their high connexions to the extent of small trade monopolies and sinecures; many of them had not yet troubled to adopt the fanciful new patronymic of 'Flavius'. The grapes were pressed, the leaf paled and fell, the first, premature snow melted as it touched ground; then after a few brumous weeks winter set in, hard and white, with cruel winds from the mountains. Helena patiently bore her growing burden, lay much indoors, borrowed the few rolls of poetry in the bank-manager's library, dreamed of Britain and the call of the hunting-horn in bare woods.

Our boys did most of the fighting as usual. She's something very special I can tell you. Aurelian's going to treat her soft, they say. He left Palmyra practically untouched. It didn't go down any too well with the troops. He chopped the block off an old boy called Longinus. According to Zenobia he was behind the whole trouble. Do you know anything about him? We shall have to watch our steps.

Nothing at all really. He had joined the sapper-sergeant in the lost country of her British youth and it seemed that now, tragically, her education had come to its end.

That's all set as soon as the troops can be moved. It's a matter of transport. I wonder you aren't going. All the big shots will be there. I wish he wouldn't. The boys'll never be the same again. Besides, you weren't actually in the campaign, were you? No, I suppose not. All the same, I thought Aurelian would want me there. Then the imperial courier arrived and his mood lightened; he was going to Rome. It was his first visit 'Chlorus, I do wish I could go too. I know it's out of the question, but I've always so wanted to see a triumph. She cried again bitterly when Constantius and his small escort rode away through the snow; then she composed herself and bided her time.

Her child was born in the new year. Constantius had left orders that it was to be called Constantia if it were a girl, Constantine if a boy. It was a boy; a robust baby acclaimed by all its father's kinswomen as notably handsome. British mothers of the upper class followed the Gallic and Italian fashion and put their babies out to nurse; not so the Illyrians, as Constantius's relations unanimously sought to inform Helena.

She complied joyfully with this primitive usage; suckled her boy, crooned to him and deeply loved him. She lived in the promise of Constantius's return. So also did the cantonment and the neighbouring countryside. Almost every family had a man in the army; many of them veterans of the Gothic wars, whose term of service was up, who had been looking forward to discharge and a bonus of land, when they were drafted East; some were young soldiers, newly-married; the infant Constantine was one of a thousand babies in and about Nish whom their fathers had never seen.

Constantius returned with the Spring when the plain was white with plum blossom. A courier came first with orders for his reception and inquiries about his son. Crowds pressed round the man in the courtyard asking news of friends and kinsmen, but he rode back into the hills leaving them unanswered. A scare started in the garrison that something was amiss, that the army was being drafted East again, that there was plague in the column.

No word of these rumours reached Helena. She nursed her baby, repeating over the cradle the message that in two days he would see his father. When the day came she rode out to greet Constantius through the flowering orchards and vineyards, met him five miles up the road, turned and trotted home beside him. They spoke of Constantine and then he fell silent. Behind them, also silent, followed the vanguard of the Danubian army.

One of the things a soldier must expect' Tell me. The news, and more than the news in a hundred fantastic distortions, spread through the town. To correct the rumours Constantine issued a proclamation. The truth was grave enough. Part sullenly, part in Balkan gusts of grief, the townspeople pulled down the flowery arches with which they had decked the street, and gave themselves up to mourning.

That evening alone with Helena, Constantius at last gave way to his grief. Some local grievance at the Mint, a townsman's brawl It wasn't a mere riot. They were armed and trained for the job, backed with money. What are they after? There's something we don't understand, working underground, planning Some say it's the Jews. There are secret societies everywhere in Rome. You never know who you're talking to; the man next to you at dinner may be a member. Every class is mixed up in it. Slaves and eunuchs and senators.

They're out to destroy the Empire; God knows why. Aurelian says ifs the Christians It none of it makes any sense. He was not the man who had hopefully ridden out from Nish. In the days that followed, when the fatigue of the journey was forgotten and the first smart of loss dulled, and he was once more soberly and confidently calculating his chances of preferment, he was still a stranger to Helena. When he stood beside her as she nursed her baby, when he came to her bed, he was still a stranger.

Rome, where all the treasure of the world flowed and was squandered, has despoiled Constantius. What he had ever had of youth was dried up now; whatever of love was all grown cold; that large shadow of him which Helena had glimpsed, pursued, briefly enjoyed, was lost forever. He was a man unschooled in courtesy; no inherited veil of kindliness hid his small, cold soul. Helena saw all this in the first days of his return and accepted it like the Spartan boy so often - so crassly it had seemed then - extolled to her in her childhood, she pressed the gnawing fox to her vitals and held him hid.

But because they were alone together evening after evening and his mind was shaken and clotted with the events at Rome, he talked long about them. Aurelian's chariot had a four-in-hand of stags; there were ostriches and giraffes and animals there isn't a name for, who've never been seen before.

Zenobia came down on hands and knees once from the sheer weight of jewellery Tetricus looking as pleased as though it was his triumph in mustard-coloured breeches You never saw anything like it' 'No,' said Helena, 'never. All the biggest senators opened their palaces to us. They're a queer lot.

One of them collected mechanical toys they make for the harems in Persia. You couldn't understand half they said. I felt sometimes they treated us as if we were part of the wild animals from the procession, but they gave us some staggering dinners. Everything was got up to look like something else, partridges made of sugar, peaches of mincemeat; you couldn't tell what you were eating You can stand on any of the hills and look round and as far as you can see there's nothing but roofs. Great blocks of flats six and seven storeys high; and hardly a genuine Italian in the place, every race and colour under the sun.

It shook the men, I can tell you. He was with Probus all the time; a new man who's been lucky in the East. I began to think he was avoiding me. Then after the Triumph was all over he called me in and we had a long talk. Everything's going to be all right. He's a great man, a second Trajan. He began by putting all the objections - the Senate were getting restive and thought we Illyrians were taking too much into our own hands; the army in the East didn't know me, and so on. I thought he was working up to say he'd changed his mind. He had the proclamation made out for my appointment and another one outlawing the Christians.

Then, if you please, a thunderbolt had to fall in his garden. He's a queer, superstitious fellow. He began consulting a lot of fortune-tellers and put off signing anything. Then came that frightful rising in the city. After that he suddenly decided to go off to Persia. He says it's to get back the body of Valerian, but if you ask me he's afraid of the army.

He's got to keep them on the move and in action for fear of mutiny. I hoped he'd take me with him. I tried to see him again and again. Then just when he was starting he sent me a message. I was to come back to Nish. I wasn't to worry. He had not forgotten me.

So it's just a matter of waiting again. It won't be long this time. He had barely started when he was murdered by his staff on the shores of the Bosphorus. News of the event came swiftly to Nish and was received with lamentation as general and bitter as for their own kin. Constantius was dumbfounded and made no move. The whole army seemed momentarily shaken in its self-confidence. No general put himself forward. Month succeeded month and the Empire lay inert, without an emperor. Then the Senate appointed one of themselves, a blameless elderly nobleman. There were no objections except from himself; he knew very well what it meant.

A few months passed and an Illyrian was again on the throne. Constantius patiently served, and advancing one lowly step in his ascent, went after a time as Governor to Dalmatia, while his rivals, Carus, Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, clustered enviously round the seat of supreme power. Constantine was just three years old when they moved to Dalmatia; sometimes for an hour or so he sat Helena's saddle astride before her: He slept long and seldom complained, watching the passing scene with silent interest.

Because of the snow they followed the circuitous route up the Danube and Sava and across the mountains by the gender, northern pass. On the edge of the high, blind plain of the Lika they re-ordered the caravan, transferring then- baggage from the ponderous military wagons to the light, big-wheeled carts of the country, engaging new guides and outriders and a local pioneer unit to go before them and clear the road. Helena had left Nish without regret and she travelled forward without hope.

They brought a sledge for her but she preferred to ride. Day by day they followed the brown ruts in the bland white surface. At the foot of the pass sledges were assembled from all the surrounding farms. The carts were driven up empty, left at the summit and the horses led back to drag the luggage, eight to a sledge with a dozen men about it, at the sides, at the back, at the horses' heads, pushing and pulling and shouting, till all the baggage was up. Then Constantius broke camp, breakfasted and saddled by torchlight, was off at the grey of dawn and rode through in the day to the first frontier town of his new dominion.

The joy of that day's ride took Helena unawares, so long had she ceased to look for it. All the morning they climbed; the baggage trains had worn the road bare and the horses stepped out firmly and bravely. The way ran zigzag through a forest of pine which the bitter wind, still that morning, had turned to ice; every bough was adorned with lines of stalactite which shivered and glittered in the morning sun; every needle had a brilliant, vitreous case and when she flicked her whip at a wayside shrub she brought down a tinkling shower of ice-leaves, each the veined impression of its crisp, green counterpart.

The sun mounted with them and when, soon after noon, they reached the top of the pass and Constantius drew rein to inspect the loaded carts, Helena rode forward round a bare pinnacle of limestone, and came alone to an immense and splendid prospect. The ice ended abruptly; six paces had borne her out of that soundless and scentless, lunar winter. Birds were in song all round her; the wooded hillside fell away, cleared and terraced on its lower slopes with vineyards and olive groves and orchards, while at its foot, far below, a river wandered through a rich landscape of villas and temples and little walled towns.

Straight before her lay a primrose gleam of sunlit water, a line of purple and grey islands and beyond, above their crown, the single blue arch of the sea; and through the balmy smell of the woods her nostrils caught the distant, salt tang of the seaside, of her first home. She had her child with her. That evening they stopped at the fort which held the foot of the pass and the people flocked round to greet them with jars of sweet wine and baskets of figs, sugared and packed layer by layer with bayleaves.

Next day they reached the sea. Government House stood on a little creek, sheltered from the open sea by a wooded islet dedicated to Poseidon. Here Constantius justly and moderately governed his province. Uprooted from his homeland and estranged from his kin he assumed a manner that passed for dignity among his genial subjects. On all its frontiers the Empire was fiercely at war; Probus floundered round the periphery through sand and marsh slaughtering Sarmatians and Isaurians, Egyptians and Franks, Burgundians and Batavians; his grim Illyrian chiefs-of-staff, Cams, Diocletian, Maximian, and Galerius followed his eagles, watched him and counted their chances.

Once or twice Constantius himself took the field in brief successful actions on the frontier. News of these victories came promptly to Dalmatia and was greeted with suitable official rejoicing. But there in that fertile and populous plain between the mountains and the sea, peace smiled; law was obeyed, the old gods were honoured, exquisite carpets were woven, private houses were fondly adorned, sweet must fermented, the oil ran in the limestone vats; there Constantine learned his letters, rode his first pony, practised the bow and sword; there Constantius took a mistress, a vicious woman from Drepanum ten years his senior, and seemed content.

And there, shy and impulsive, in sudden starts and pauses, as if playing with her affections the nursery game of 'grandmother's steps', Helena made a friend, a widow who had retired there from the disorders of Rome, the benevolent mistress of a household as large as Helena's, a patron of local arts. To her, in time, Helena came to speak almost without reserve. She doesn't look a bit kind. So much happens one never expected. I always knew that when I was old, he would want someone younger. I never expected him to give me up so soon, for someone nearly twice my age.

I suppose that's what he wanted all the time really, never me. If only people knew what they wanted I expect in Rome they all think of me as dead. Yet here I am well and cheerful, busy all day long, doing no one any harm and some people a little good, with the finest garden on the coast and a collection of bronzes.

Don't you call that a full life? Then for the first time in anyone's memory the Empire was at peace. Through the full length of its frontier the barbarians were stopped and shaken. Now for the first time there was the chance of restoration. Probus was the saviour of the civilized world. He turned his energies to the tasks of peace.

A great undertaking was begun in the marshes of Sirmium. They were to be drained and planted and settled by his victorious and devoted veterans. Probus directed the work in person. One warm day the men got bored, chased the emperor up a tower and murdered him on the summit When news of this incident reached Salona, Helena said: The new emperor was Carus. He derided to attack the Persians, but before sailing he crossed the Adriatic and visited Constantius and talked to him at length, speaking the precise Latin of the Universities; a bald, leathery old soldier, but a gentleman.

And I knew Aurelian well. He had great faith in you. They were great men, Claudius and Aurelian. We don't seem to get that type in the army any more. Somehow or other the mould got broken sixty years back. The young men - Galerius, Diocletian, Numerian - well, you know what they are like as well as I do. I can't abide the fellows. Do you know my boy, Carinus? I sometimes think he's wrong in the head. And do you know what I've had to do? Put Carinus in charge in Rome, simply because I can't find anyone better.

That's a pretty state of affairs. He's doing no good there. I expect you've heard. He's made a pimp Consul and his hall-porter Governor of the City. He even employs a professional forger to sign his letters. Not that the Romans mind. They find it all very amusing. But it can't go on. As soon as I get back from Persia I shall put things straight. That's why I've come to you now. I'm giving you the West. You've done well here. You've done well wherever you've been. You're the man for the job.

If things go too far in Rome or if anything happens to me, you're to step in at once and act. I know I can trust you. He heard it now with less exultation. But he was content. His time, long deferred, had come at last. He told Helena about it and she heard it with less than her usual despondency. It seemed not to matter, now, and, anyway, might not be true. Next day Carus went back to his army. News came from East and West, of the steady advance and repeated victories of Carus, of the appalling profligacy of Carinus.

Seleucia and Ctesiphon fell; the eagles were on the Tigris, were across and marching straight for Persia. Carinus had staged a battle between ostriches and alligators. Then the familiar, paralysing message. The Emperor was dead, burned in his tent, by an assassin, by a thunderbolt none knew how. Carinus and Numerian were being proclaimed everywhere. And Constantius did nothing.

At this, his star-given opportunity, lethargy mysteriously fell on him. He went down the coast alone to a little villa he had there, and week after week received no messengers. Neither his wife nor his mistress had any word from him or any clue to what was going on in his mind. When he came out of hiding it was all over. Numerian was dead; Apar, the Praetorian Prefect was dead, murdered in open court by Diocletian, and the army was on the march home with Diocletian commanding it.

Soon Carinus too was dead, stabbed by a cuckold Tribune, and slave-born Diocletian ruled the world. For seven more years Constantius remained Governor of Dalmatia. Constantine had a tutor and a fencing-master and the games of childhood became the stern exercises of boyhood; he was quick to learn, handsome and affectionate.

He wept to read of the death of Hector. I hate all the Greeks. I do so wish the Trojans would win. He got what he wanted, anyway. There was little of his father in the boy, save for occasional sullen moods when his small plans went awry; he yielded swiftly to Helena's teasing. I'm to be Emperor some day. I won't say anything to father. Father says it's in my stars. In that solitude, broken only by tidings of death, he had passed a climacteric; something had happened, an interior jolt and rearrangement, a twist of the kaleidoscope - such as he had experienced in Rome at Aurelian's triumph.

They were liable to sudden change, these 'Flavians'. Thus Constantine came to glory. Constantius lived alone now, save when he was with his troops. Helena passed days without hearing his voice. Quite alone; the Bithynian woman's palanquin was never again seen in the courtyard. One day Constantine came in from fishing, agog. It was a woman. She'd been in the water weeks, Mark said; her face was quite black and she was all blown-out like a wine-skin.

And, mummy, she hadn't been drowned; there was a cord, tight round her throat, sunk right in. I shouldn't have noticed it only Mark showed me. You must try and forget it' 'Oh, I couldn't ever forget it. Mark could hardly see that either, the wrist was so swollen. He rode often, some times twice a week, to his villa on the coast. But his work did not suffer. Whatever hours he kept, he was punctual in court, just and moderate; he never signed a paper unread; he amended the training reports of the army, he studied the accounts. It is a book that can be taken up at different stages and devoured from one end to the other.

It is both dynamic story-telling and a gripping tale. It binds the reader so closely to the characters that he cannot put it down. It is easily made into a film. Many writers seem to agree on this. As they write their novels they visualise them, cutting them up into sequences and varied plans. The historical novel should be gripping, breathtaking. Its interest should also come from its faithful reproduction of historical ways and customs.

Above all, he should re-instil life into the characters and their times. He should bring History to life and literally resurrect the past. The interest of an excellent historical novel lies in its accuracy, its faithful reproduction of the way of life and customs of the historical period Unlike the History book, the historical novel shows what people really were, as History is made explicit through the individual destinies of the characters.

This is why Alessandro Manzoni wrote: Maria Valtorta s readers will think that all these definitions perfectly describe her work, insofar as it can be considered a simple novel! Which of course, only a superficial reading could lead one to imagine. But even were it so, the depth and coherence of the characters, the places and events, the quality of the style and the wealth and diversity of the vocabulary cannot fail to awaken the reader s admiration. Whether the appreciation of this work is positive or negative, it is of paramount importance to justify it.

In order to try to objectively determine the quality of this work, we will put The Gospel as revealed to me through an evaluation grid, adapted to the analysis of a historical novel We will successively examine the relevance of the subject chosen, how it is treated, the rendering of the times and places, the authenticity of the characters and the quality of the text. Nathan, , p These evaluation grids are sometimes used by reading groups, or by teachers to help their pupils to form judgements. The historicity of Jesus Christ is accepted today. For us all, believers or unbelievers, He is one of those illustrious figures who have changed the course of our life and times.

He is even the most frequently filmed historical figure in the history of the cinema. The subject should interest a maximum of readers. There is no doubt that the subject the life of Jesus always has, and always will arouse passionate interest in untold numbers of people of all races and nations. The interest that the subject arouses is such that many readers testify that after reading it, they proceeded to re-read it The novel relates the history of a country, a figure or a period.

In Maria Valtorta s work, the country is Palestine, under Roman domination. The plot remains plausible within its time; it might contain fictitious adventures. As this is the life of Jesus, we can simply take note of the fact that the story told by Maria Valtorta is perfectly coherent, not only with the four Gospels, but also with many episodes transmitted by Tradition.

The chronology is so precise that it has been scientifically possible to reconstruct a day by day dating of all the events of the three years of the public life of Jesus. Jean Aulagnier 38, by a meticulous study of 4, indications noted here and there over the 6, pages of the work, was the first to reconstruct a perfectly coherent chronology of the life of Jesus in minute detail.

As I was unable to find the sources of this study, I took it up in detail with modern computer tools. The research and scientific analysis of thousands of clues climate, astronomy, chronology, calendar, the duration of journeys, etc found all over the work, and covering the three years of the public life of Jesus, confirm their coherence. As for the lunar descriptions, their perfect chronological concordance requires a level of competence that few amateur astronomers possess This chronology, which sometimes differs from those that we see today, perfectly takes into account: The integral content of the evangelical writings, as well as numerous Old and New Testament passages.

Historical, archaeological, climactic and geographical data. A wealth of first century information transmitted via Christian, Jewish and Roman writings. The most recent exegetical discoveries. The subject is sufficiently developed. This is a monumental, 6, page work. This is even the principal criticism levelled at it by some of its detractors. As Gabriel Allegra remarked, in The Gospel as Revealed to Me, the inter-connection of facts is spontaneous, natural, flowing logically from the circumstances.

This is particularly true of the conversation with Nicodemus, the speech about the Bread of Life, or the polemical theological speeches given in Jerusalem, on which subject the well-known efforts of the greatest exegetes to situate and explain them in context remain fruitless But it is also the case for apparently unimportant facts, briefly mentioned in the Gospels, as for example, the evangelization of Judea at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus John 3, 22 , the invectives against the lakeside towns Matthew 11, 20 , or the secret meeting at Chouza s house to proclaim Jesus king John 6, Minor facts that exegetes, novelists or apocryphal writers have never thought of analyzing or of replacing in their context.

Gabriel Allegra further stated: The author holds the reader s interest. On this point, we need only mention some of the innumerable testimonies of readers that demonstrate their interest in the work. Whether it be Wayne Weible, an. Haffert, an editor and author 41, or the missionary A. Rosso, OFM, a professor and editor who said in I always find something new in it, even after my eighth reading. The anonymous author of the article in L Osservatore Romano criticizing the work took the liberty of writing: He would no doubt have been well advised to start by re-reading the old adage Sutor, ne supra crepidam 42, given the numerous attestations by specialists categorically contesting his affirmations.

Not only is the work full of precise information, be it historical, topographical, architectural, geographical, cultural, etc. I will give several examples later 39 I must say that I consider these to be the most beautiful books that I have ever read, excepting the Holy Scriptures I shall be eternally grateful to Maria Valtorta for this monumental work. I recommend it wherever I speak. I couldn t put it down. As soon as I had finished my first reading, I started reading it all over again 41 John Mathias Haffert was the co-founder of The Blue Army of Fatima movement and the author of many books.

It is the most beautiful work that I have ever read and I consider it a benediction from God. I m odd and of all the books that I have ever read in my whole life, The Gospel as Revealed to Me is among those that have been of the most precious aid to my spiritual life. The Greek painter Apelles of Kos had listened to the advice of a shoemaker about a shoe that he had just painted.

When the shoemaker advised him to correct the leg too, Apelles gently reminded him that he was judging beyond his expertise. I was very impressed when I found in Maria Valtorta s work the names of at least six or seven towns that are not mentioned in the Old or New Testaments. These names are known only to a few rare specialists, and are unknown to nonbiblical sources How, then, could she have known these names if not by the revelations that she claims to have received? Letter to the CVE, The author succeeds in transporting us to the precise time and place of the novel.

Here is some more from the biblical scholar Gabriel Allegra If Mary of Magdala or Joanna of Chouza had been able during their life to see what Maria Valtorta sees, and had written it down, I believe that their testimony would not differ much from that of the Poem. Valtorta observed with such intensity the place and personages of her visions that anyone who has been in the Holy Land for studies and has repeatedly read the Gospels, need make no excessive effort to reconstruct the scene One might say that in this Work the Palestinian world of the time of Jesus comes back to life before our eyes; and the best and worst elements of the characters of the chosen People--a people of extremes and enslaved by every mediocrity- -leaps alive before us.

The author credibly describes the place where the story unfolds. Plausibility is one of the essential characteristics of a good historical novel. And Maria Valtorta describes towns, monuments, reliefs, the type of soil, forks in the roads, milestones, varieties of crops, corresponding to the type of 43 Excerpt from his message given in Macao in.

In several cases, recent archaeological digs have shown the accuracy of the places that were as yet undiscovered in Maria Valtorta s lifetime The Sardinian geologist and mineralogist Vittorio Tredici wrote in I would like to stress the author s precise and inexplicable knowledge of panoramic, topographic, geological and mineralogical aspects of Palestine. Hopfen, an agronomic engineer at the FAO, published a detailed map of first century Palestine in which he included the greater part of the hundreds of geographical data contained in the work The topography of Palestine conforms to its reality to the point that even those who have lived there for many years would probably not be able to describe it with such precision and in such minute detail.

As for anachronism, that other trap that unfailingly lies in wait for the historical novelist in his quest for credibility, it is extremely rare in Maria Valtorta s work The author renders local colour and traditions faithfully. By local colour or historical colour we mean the description of clothes, gestures, stylistic formulas, habits, everyday objects, architecture and furniture, in short, everything that gives the story the appearance of authenticity.

Maria Valtorta excels in the detailed description of daily tasks, such as 44 See several examples in particular in the chapter The equal of the greatest geographers? CEV On this subject, see the paragraph Errare humanum est. She infuses life into the long lines of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, the insecurity in the mountain regions, the colourful, noisy crowds on market days, fishing techniques, or the manoeuvres of the Roman galleys coming alongside the military ports of Caesarea, Ptolemais and Alexandroscene.

Her descriptions of the high priest s vestments, the Pharisees and the women are perfect. She even notes the differences in pronunciation between the inhabitants of the different regions of Palestine! The depiction of customs is more concerned with characters in depth, their behaviour, their prejudices, their different ways of expressing themselves, of admitting or hiding their eternal passions, from themselves or from others. Customs are shown in this work principally through the characters subjects of conversation.

In fact, these conversations reveal the peoples and the mentalities of the times. So in Caesarea, the epicurean Romans are concerned with the quality of the wines and the organizations of their orgies to come. The soldiers swear by Minerva or by Jupiter. They often talk about dreams or presages. The Pharisees never miss an opportunity to remind all and sundry of the observance of the precepts of law, whereas for the humblest, food and health occupy, as might be expected, a prominent place in their daily lives.

Maria Valtorta describes the disgust of the Jews for certain impure animals pigs, dogs , and she also mentions the animal sacrifices from which our civilization recoils, but which was a part of the daily life of the times. Many are the figures who made up the circle of those close to Jesus, of whom the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, History or Tradition tell. Maria Valtorta omits none of them, from the most famous to the least familiar.

She even mentions certain people known only through the epistles of St. But it is no easy task to find the members of the Sanhedrin at the time of Jesus in the writings of Flavius Josephus, the Talmud and other documents. Yet, Maria Valtorta mentions them all in addition to others as yet unidentified by historians 49, sometimes, truth to tell, with purely phonetic spelling! Equally surprising is her inclusion in the work of characters known principally to Byzantine tradition, such as Phostine the Samaritan, or Eucheria, the mother of Lazarus, Martha and Mary or their father, Theophilus the Syrian, as well as Timon of Aera, one of the first 7 deacons, or even Porphyria, Peter s wife, mentioned only by the Byzantine hagiographer St.

Here is what Bishop Roman Danylak said about it in Her characters are not 47 Close to people, named or anonymous, have been counted. Or again, women like Albula Domitilla, the confident of Claudia Procula in the work, historically known through a single, 3-word mention by Suetonius and who turns out to be the mother of Flavia Domitilla, future wife of Vespasien and great grandmother of Saint Domitille!

Even more surprising is the case of Caecilius Maximus 50, an officer in the Roman army, simply mentioned by Maria Valtorta in a brief dialogue between two Roman soldiers. He has no role in the work. And yet, his historical reality can today be considered as proven, thanks to the fortuitous discovery of clay slabs during works on the motorway near Pompei in ! The author s depiction of his characters is realistic. I feel compelled to confess frankly that the Mariology that emerges from Maria Valtorta s writings No other text on the subject, not even the sum of all that I have read and studied, has ever given me such a clear, vivid, complete, luminous, fascinating idea, at the same time simple and sublime, of Mary, that Masterpiece of God s.

Gabriel Allegra was also surprised, as were most of the readers of the work, by the exceptional coherence of all the 50 These cases and others are mentioned in detail in the chapter The eye witnesses 51 OSM He was also a professor at the Pontifical University of Latran Faculty of Theology , a philosopher, a theologian, a hagiographist, advisor to the Sacred Congregation for the doctrine of faith, and advisor to The Sacred Congregation for the causes of Saints. He is the author of books and a great number of articles. He wrote this about it: That a novelist or a playwright of genius may create unforgettable characters is a known fact; but of the numerous novelists or playwrights who have approached the Gospel in order to use it in their creations, I do not know of one who has drawn from it such richness and sketched with such force and so pleasingly the figures of Peter, of John, Mary Magdalene, Lazarus, Judas -especially of Judas and his tragic and pitiful mother, Mary of Simon- and of so many, many others and I omit for now Jesus and Mary , as does Valtorta so very naturally and without the least effort.

The characters come to life before the reader In order for life to be infused into characters, they should be made both credible and coherent. And it is true that one of the most remarkable qualities of this work is the coherence of the individual personalities of each and every character, how they evolve and how they react in the most unforeseen situations, Gabriel Roschini added this remark about Mary: From this Mariology there emerges the living and active Virgin Mary who thinks, meditates, speaks and acts in the most diverse situations Everything is true-to-life and bears the mark of authenticity, the inexorable worsening of Lazarus s health, Mary Magdalene s slow conversion, Judas s fatal decline, or the unease of the Pharisees, developing into their growing hatred of Jesus Every single detail rings true in the work: It is as if Maria Valtorta herself is there, present in the midst of each scene.

She smells the smells, feels the heat or the cold, hears the background noise and turns round to see others arriving. Re-creating what historians call the mental tools of the era is probably the most difficult concept, as much for the author as for the reader. In the work, the psychology of the characters is extremely rich, so that we can see and observe the diversity of the apostles. Peter appears exactly as Benedict XVI 53 described him: How different he is from his brother, the shy, but effective Andrew, the totally pure, shy John, the jovial, meticulous Thomas, the wise and conciliating Simon the Zealot, or the down-to-earth Matthew.

Each one thinks and acts in accordance with his temperament. The personal character of each apostle imprints itself indelibly on the heart of the attentive reader. Throughout the work we follow the efforts that Jesus makes for Judas and meditate on Mary s role. The attitudes of diverse Jewish groups Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenians or those of the pagans, is in perfect conformity with what we know of them from the few contemporary testimonies, especially those of Flavius Josephus, the historian. Maria Valtorta excels in her descriptions of ambition, anguish, fear, shame, love, hatred and all the other emotions inherent to human nature.

Featuring the characters, she seems to touch what is authentic to this era more accurately than any historian before her. The present title, The Gospel as revealed to me, perfectly reflects the content of the work. The quality of the language used in the dialogues and descriptions is adapted to the historical context. The author of a historical novel faces many difficulties, the worst of which are not, as one might think, those of historical truth, but rather of the writing of it.

How to transpose original dialogues in Aramaic, Latin or Greek into modern language while remaining true to the spirit? Today s sentences are short, clear and to the point, whereas the Ancients were given to long, explanatory phraseology. The Hebrew art of speaking had nothing in common with the Greek and Roman ideas of eloquence The Israelite art of speaking was not so much to convince by reason, as to establish contact with the sensitivity of the audience. This was not the eminent linguist Gabriel Allegra s least surprise when he noted that In the Dialogues and Discourses which form the structure of the Work there is, in addition to an inimitable spontaneity the Dialogues , something of the ancient and at times the hieratic the Discourses.

In sum, one hears a very good translation of an Aramaic or Hebraic manner of speaking, in a vigorous, multiform, robust Italian. It is again to be noted that in the structure of these Discourses, Jesus either moves in the wake of the great Prophets, or adapts Himself to the method of the great rabbis who explain the Old Testament by applying it to contemporary circumstances.

We may also compare other explanations which the Lord gave for other passages of the Old Testament and for which we possess, in whole or in part, the commentaries of the rabbis of the 3rd or 4th Century B. Besides an external similarity of form, we will perceive such superiority of depth, of substance, that we will finally understand fully why the crowd said: No one has spoken like this Man. But he also refutes any objections from those who might consider the teachings of Jesus to be too modern: There is in the Poem, therefore, a transposition, a translation of the Good News announced by Jesus into the tongue of His Church of today, a transposition willed by Him, since the Visionary was deprived of any technical theological formation.

And this is, I think, in order to make us understand that the Gospel message announced today by His Church of today, and with today's language, is substantially identical with His Own preaching of twenty centuries ago. The use of appropriate words reproduces the atmosphere of the time and the place.

Although the work contains an exceptional wealth of erudition, the management of this erudition goes almost totally unnoticed because it is so naturally integrated into the story. Here are some examples, among thousands. Only the informed readers of the Talmud of Babylon will notice the use of the nickname Faba bean given in the work to Nathanael ben Phiabi: Who can describe the role of the paranymph today, as Maria Valtorta does? Who still remembers that fouace was a very popular dish in Antiquity and that muslum, sicera or Falerne were drinks that the Romans loved? Who can unerringly name the animals that were immolated during the Ludi Ceriales That is, a pig, a ewe and a bull.

How many present-day readers fully appreciate the meaning of Latin expressions like to wear the virile toga or Libitina s embrace? How many know that the fable of the stones changed into men is an allusion to Pyrrha and Deucalion who, in Greek mythology, roamed the world after the Deluge, throwing stones over their shoulders. These stones were changed into men and women and repopulated the earth in this way.

How credible it seems to hear someone walking along a Roman Via talking about six stadiums to designate the sabbatical distance, which is rigorously precise What is more natural than that a reveller should say of his expenses: It s twenty thousand sesterces, or if you prefer, two hundred gold pieces, which is correct, as one hundred sesterces made up an aureus. And what is more natural than to hear in mid- August: The sun is still in Leo, for a little while at a time when the observation of the sky was the best way to determine the them. Instead of calling them ben Phiabi, they were given the derisive nickname ben Faba or ben ha Afun, a pun on the Latin word faba meaning bean 56 This is confirmed by Saint Jerome in the Epistle to Fabiola.

These are, clearly, only a few examples 58 taken at random among the thousands that figure in the work. And this erudition, always extremely discreet and integrated naturally into the dialogues, goes unnoticed at first sight. When all is said and done, isn t the essential quality of a good historical novel to bring to life, to literally resuscitate the characters, their thoughts and emotions, their joys, their fears, their worries, their troubles, so that everything rings true and the reader can literally see them living in front of him, without any improbable detail intruding to spoil his jubilation.

This is an extremely difficult task when it comes to an evocation of the life of Jesus and His teachings.

THE VALTORTA ENIGMA. A Fictionalized Life of Jesus? - PDF

Extremely rare is the author who can achieve this. And it is exactly in this that The Gospel as Revealed to Me excels, if its enthusiastic readers are to be believed. A work of great scope, a conclusive result, a gripping read: To declare that The Gospel as Revealed to Me is nothing more than a Clumsily romanticised life of Jesus appears therefore to be a purely arbitrary opinion that does not stand up to analysis.

This opinion even becomes unjustifiable when we base it, as we have just done, on objective and widely accepted criteria. Great works of art are great because they are accessible and comprehensible to all Thus, it seems legitimate to ask the following question: Shouldn t Maria Valtorta s novel be placed on the same level as the works of Dante, Shakespeare and Manzoni or Hugo, 58 On average, we find one example of this kind on each page of the work, but they are so discretely integrated into the context that only a closely attentive reader can pick them out.

When, in addition, we recall that Maria Valtorta composed these thousands of hand-written pages in barely four years, crossing out practically nothing, immobilised on a sickbed, and with only a few, very summary, documents at her disposal and that although her intelligence was lively and her memory excellent, she had not even finished secondary school, we can legitimately wonder how she could have written such a work. We are thus faced with what must now be called the Valtorta enigma. There is a treasure hidden inside. I don t know where, but a little courage will lead you to it, you will find it Jean de la Fontaine, the Ploughman and the Children If you look for it as though for silver, search for it as though for buried treasure, then you will discover the knowledge of God.

Proverbs 2, 1 9 Seek and you shall find. Luke, 11, 9 There are treasures everywhere, but you have to look for them This requires fatigue, work and audacity. And, above all, there should be no bias In the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith recommended for private revelations, base discernment less on the fruits attributed to the private revelation, than on the reality of the fact.

To this end, its advice was to answer a few questions in succession: Does the message conform to Revelation and Church Tradition? Does it agree with Faith and morals? Is the visionary credible? What are the fruits of this revelation? Before we started seeking rare gems in Maria Valtorta s text, we made sure we were not treading on mined ground: The first two questions proposed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith were thus answered in the affirmative.

Furthermore, it is surely not a bad novel, as some claim after a superficial or incomplete reading. We will therefore base this work on the examination of the third point Is the visionary credible? In so doing, we will follow the observation of St. Introducing reason is not mixing water with the pure wine of the Word of God; it is converting water into wine.

In order to seek precious pearls in Maria Valtorta s text, there are, in theory, two possible methods: The first is like the person who goes looking for mushrooms, armed only with his instinct for finding them. The gems are so numerous that whoever looks for them, here and there in the work, will find them regularly and each new find will be a source of enchantment for the seeker.

The second method is the archaeologist s. This is to mark the land into squares and meticulously search the smallest piece.

THE VALTORTA ENIGMA. A Fictionalized Life of Jesus?

Every gem is then taken, without any preconceived idea as to its value, listed, numbered and carefully put away Who knows whether this stone will not later fit into a splendid set of jewels, or whether that insignificant tessera will not one day complete a superb mosaic? First and foremost, order and method. Although from my earliest years I ve always loved mushroom-picking, my scientific training led me to choose this second method of systematic research. All the material details. To do this, I adapted the classifying methods for books on technical norms to the data contained in Maria Valtorta s books.

As I had no reason to prefer any particular classification, and I remembered what Pascal wrote: The last thing that you find as you create a work, is to know what you should put first, I have indicated this classification in alphabetical order of merit Lunar phases, the sun, planets, stars and astrological data. This classification alone gives us an idea of the variety of subjects treated in The Gospel as revealed to me.

In addition, as we went on, these headings, although somewhat arbitrary, enabled us to classify the wealth of details excerpted from the work and, above all, to find them later without undue difficulty. How can the credibility level of the work be objectively estimated? Test everything, keep what is good 1 Ts 5, 21 Over ten thousand details two per page on average!

Theoretically, this is easy: The multiple attestations criterion: This, in fact, requires time, but the means at the disposal of present-day researchers are far more sophisticated than those of previous decades. Internet has made it possible on condition that the sources are carefully compared! Each detail studied can be qualified by one of the eight following attributes: This particularly concerns details crucial to the verification of time-space coherence, such as chronological dating and geographical localisation.

Many, indeed, most of them, did not even exist in her time: The extreme abundance of apparently insignificant details should normally expose the author to imprecision, errors or contradictions that could result in the discrediting of the work as a whole. However, in Maria Valtorta s case precision and coherence are so high that in order to examine each instance, a book per theme would not be enough 62!

This harmony of celestial things. Chateaubriand 63 The case of the coherences deserves an explanation. First of all, their number is truly exceptional in the work. I have compiled and verified close to five thousand, and cannot pretend to have detected them all. The whole forms an intricate web which, at first sight, appears inextricable until it has been sorted, classified and listed.

If it is relatively easy to verify that the different descriptions of a monument or a landscape are mutually coherent, or that this character has already come across Jesus on the road, an allusion to a piece of advice, a teaching, or a past discussion is quite another thing. As the context of these 62 Some examples may be found in each of the following chapters of the present work. The promise to teach them the Our Father is one of the simplest illustrations of this. At the very beginning of His public life, Jesus announces His intention: I will also teach you to pray.

I will teach you the most holy prayer, but so that it will not be a vain formula that you recite, I want your heart to already be steeped in a minimum of saintliness, light and wisdom I will teach you the holy prayer later Further on, it is Peter who brings up the subject again: Master, said Peter, one day you said to John, James, Andrew and me that you would teach us to pray I also answered then: When you are sufficiently prepared, I will teach you the sublime prayer Then it s John s turn: You promised us that you would teach us your prayers.

Will you do it this year? I will do it But only after one year does Jesus remind them and keep His promise: It is such a perfect prayer that the waves of heresies and the course of centuries will not alter it Maria Valtorta also mentions, page after page, over two hundred promises made by Jesus, ranging from simple projects like, I will come here often If you are at the Temple, you will see Me I will come You will see Her. You will come to My house one day. Mary will greet you. You want this sign and you will have it! I repeat the long-ago words: The bricks of the Lord s Temple will tremble at My last words I analysed these promises made by Jesus, and all of them, without exception, find their accomplishment somewhere in the work, if one only pays a little attention.

Personally, I know of no literary work nor do I think that another such exists in which the author has so intertwined into her text promises which were kept further on in the work, sometimes thousands of pages later! There are other examples that can be provided by the numerous descriptions of the house in Nazareth, the city of Jerusalem and the Temple, of Joanna s palace in Tiberias, the house of the Clear Water, those of Lazarus or Simon the Zealot in Bethany, etc.

There is such an abundance of detail throughout the work that little by little the reader gets a precise mental picture of these places. Lorenzo Ferri, an Italian artist, in collaboration with Maria Valtorta, even attempted the delicate task of illustrating some of the scenes that she describes But the coherences arise from numerous other causes: We should also mention all the 64 See the work Valtorta and Ferri. Centro Editoriale Valtortiano Cf above the illustration of the house and gardens of Lazarus of Bethany with the kind authorization of the editor.

Finally, every coherence, whether immediately noticeable or not, contributes massively to the irresistible impression of harmony, of true-to-life reality and personal experience that the majority of Valtorta s readers feel. This level of coherence should dissipate the doubts and the reticence of the most sceptical of them.

I cannot imagine that a human being, however great his genius, however methodical his work, could invent and memorise, without the smallest error, a storyline of such extreme complexity in which the actions, words, memories, projects or promises of over seven hundred characters are so harmoniously interwoven!

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However, I have not yet mentioned what, to my mind, are the most surprising instances of coherence, that is to say, those which spring from the random order in which Maria Valtorta received certain visions. For example, in Book 4: These visions, which were not all received in chronological order, are not the least mysterious facet of this. When replaced in their context, they fit in perfectly and easily. In the myriad of details tested, the level of credibility for a work of this type is absolutely unique and exceptional: It is also noteworthy that in the remaining 0. There is obviously nothing in common here with anything that can be analysed in other, previous mystical works.

I have even wondered whether all these authentic details were given precisely to our incredulous times, yet another gift for all those who humbly and sincerely seek the Truth. Seneca Even if the material errors remain exceptional, the work is, fortunately, not totally exempt of errors. Jesus Himself gives Maria Valtorta the reason for this: This is consistently true of all private revelations. This should not shock us, as they are human testimonies into which illusions of the imagination, or personal interpretations, intrude. When the Church canonises someone, it canonises his heroic virtues, never the veracity of his revelations!

And though I have the power of prophecy, to penetrate all mysteries and knowledge, and though I have all the faith necessary to move mountains And what counts in revelations of course, is the message and its conformity with the teachings of the Church rather than the precision of details. But what is perhaps the most remarkable thing about Maria Valtorta s text is that on the one hand its coherence highlights certain instances of incoherence in other, 65 The notebooks, Friday March 3 rd, page G. Emmerich, for example , and on the other hand, her errors, seen up close, and although this might seem paradoxical at first tend to reinforce the credibility of the whole.

The inaccuracies are, in fact, almost exclusively due to Maria Valtorta s personal interpretations. It is easy to distinguish between the words of Jesus, always precise and coherent 67 even when they are simple observations like the moon in the last quarter , and Maria s impressions or initiatives, whose descriptions can sometimes be inaccurate or approximate, as when she writes: I see the moon rising, when the context and other details supplied show, on the contrary, that it is setting.

Or again, when she experiences a beautiful summer s morning, while the scene that she describes is clearly set in spring. Elsewhere, Maria Valtorta writes a screwdriver I think that falls twice from the workbench And again, when she does not differentiate a papyrus from a parchment, all that she proves is that her personal knowledge, like that of so many other people, is not infallible.

In all humility, she repeatedly informs her readers of her own limits, as for example, when she says a length of about 30 metres or a volume of 10 litres, her advice to her readers is not to take my indications as articles of faith The advice that Jesus gave her after she had made a mistake was undoubtedly ever-present in her mind: Just notice how only one sentence omitted or one word miscopied can change everything. And you, who are alive, can correct the 67 The very rare cases that can be problematical are honestly indicated by the editor s notes in the Italian version.

Think about it and you will understand to what extent twenty centuries have deprived the Apostolic Gospel of certain parts. This in no way alters the doctrine, but it does make the Gospel more difficult to understand. This explains many things. If we go back to the origins, we will find yet another of Disorder s manoeuvres and many more can be attributed to the sons of Disorder. You see how easy it is to make transcription errors The fact is that Maria Valtorta wrote down the descriptions of her visions, as well as the dialogues of her dictations, immediately and as they arrived, with extreme care and attention.

Eliminate the few imprecise details and the rare personal errors that she makes and you are amazed to find that you are left with fewer than ten indications among all the verified points in the work that can still appear to the presentday researcher as improbable, illogical or false. Fewer than ten indications analysed as improbable out of a whole of over ten thousand material data gathered and verified!

This is clearly an extraordinarily low level of error in comparison with any other similar work! This a priori unimaginable and totally unexpected result constitutes, if not proof, at least a strong indication of credibility for the work as a whole And this, without doubt, contributes to the multiple and mysterious aspects of the Valtorta enigma Ecclesiastics, 3, 1 Historians and exegetes have for centuries tried in vain to reconstitute the existence of Jesus precisely, in a logical, chronological sequence. Chronology and geography are like the two eyes of history.

Without them, everything that has come down to us, facts and knowledge, is nothing but murky chaos that overburdens the memory without enlightening the mind. The historicity of the time Jesus spent on earth has never been seriously contested by historians. But after centuries of more or less sterile debates and research, their certainties about His time on earth finally come down to very little: Jesus, born in Bethlehem in about 4, 5 or 6 AD, was crucified and died, probably on April 7th in the year 30 AD, after having taught publicly for about three years. And even this consensus minimum is not unanimous today!

It has reached the point that, following the studies carried out from to by exegetes, theologians or historians 70, many people thought that it was impossible to establish a biography, a life of Jesus and arrived at this peremptory, supposedly definitive, opinion: The historian now knows that it is impossible to reconstitute the existence of Jesus precisely and in detail, apart from His life in Galilee and His death around 69 Th.

As for situating any of His words within the framework of His life on earth, it is definitively impossible The dating of the important events of the life of Jesus. Fortunately for us, Maria Valtorta did not know that it was impossible! So she transmitted to us such a coherent chronology of the time Jesus spent on earth that Jean Aulagnier 72, after long and scrupulous studies 73, managed to date day by day all of the details of the life of Jesus as reported by the four evangelists.

Having thus accomplished what the historians of his time considered impossible, he thought that in the same way that we judge the tree by its fruits, his study would be judged by its results, without his having to justify every last detail of it. As I belong to the generation of the anti-establishment protesters of May 68, I started by doubting his analysis as too good to be true. Despite the excellent relations I enjoyed with Jean Aulagnier, he could not totally convince me. Just to make sure, I decided to go over his work systematically, using the powerful modern-day IT tools 74 at my disposal.

To try to explain the extreme precision of some instances of dating in an understandable way, we might need to briefly resort to mathematics. A lunar phase for example the full moon is visible for, let us say, three days every month. But when Maria Valtorta adds for example that the olive trees are in flower, or that the wheat is ripe, occurrences which last less than 30 days a year, this gives us 1.

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But what is there left to say when we notice that there are several dozen of these key dates 76 that can be established by crosschecks with at least three or four other criteria of this kind, and sometimes more! What is even more unsettling is the fact that these criteria are more often than not scattered, apparently at random, throughout the work, sometimes separated by hundreds of pages and can go completely unnoticed without a systematic search and meticulous data collection!

In addition, hundreds of other dates appear to be attached to these key dates by decisive details 77, as for example the next 76 In fact, at least two key dates per month during the three years of the public life of Jesus! A systematic study of all these decisive details then shows that the dating of events is thus totally interlocking, forming a whole that is unimaginably homogeneous, humanly inconceivable and almost incalculable. What is even more remarkable and paradoxical is that Maria Valtorta does not for one moment appear to be aware that the precision of her descriptions will make it possible to establish this exceptional calendar of the life of Jesus, and that in fact, she does not provide a single date, stricto sensu, from start to finish throughout the six thousand pages of her work!

In addition, if you think about it, chronology, the knowledge and the order of events in the course of history seems richer in what it teaches and more useful than mere dating determining the date of events. But what historian, once he has painstakingly reconstituted the chronology of his story, could resist the temptation to provide a few dates to support his hypothesis?

Furthermore, if, as I have already indicated, you add that Maria Valtorta did not receive all these visions in the right order, then the mystery thickens even more! The first meeting with Peter and Andrew The clues: The meeting takes place on a Saturday, in front of the synagogue in Capernaum, just as they are leaving after the Sabbath service.

The day before, at the dawn of Friday, James and John, returning from their nocturnal fishing, came to tell Peter and Andrew that they had met the Messiah. They had spent the whole day listening to Jesus We stayed with Him all day until late into the night In March 27 AD, the moon was full on the 9 th. On Thursday 11 th, it went into the zenith at midnight and it was the only Thursday in that month on which the moon was high at sunset. This example shows how patient the reading must be Indeed, in book 9 Peter, remembering his first meeting with Jesus, mentions this apparently insignificant detail of an Adar morning, firmly and irrefutably placing in time a scene described in book 2!

The lunar positions and phases were checked using several types of astronomic software among them, the Redsift software and ephemeris published by NASA. The scene is set in 28 AD, just after the apostolic group s retreat for a week in the Arbel gorges, at the end of the scebat moon , and just before the five days of the Sermon on the Mount They ve been waiting for You for three days, because they didn t want to be late.

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Afterwards, Jesus joins His Apostles at sunset, a ray from the new moon coming right down to His level, a little comma in the sky, a blade of light The analysis: Consequently, only Sunday, February 13 th 28 AD fits the bill here. The Roman women waited for three days, which is another way of confirming that the meeting took place on a Sunday. This can only be Sunday, February 13 th 28 AD. This is the only possible evening that corresponds to this lunar description in the whole month!

In this example, the surprise is born of the abundance of decisive clues no fewer, in fact, than a total of 25! These numerous clues enable us to pinpoint the same date via three different reasonings. This is wholly unexpected and totally stupefying! The death of Uncle Alpheus The clues: Throughout the year 27 AD, Alpheus s health was declining.

At the beginning of September, when Jesus had been travelling for two weeks and was in Ptolemais, He received a letter from His Mother, brought by the shepherd Joseph, informing Him that Alpheus returned to the bosom of Abraham at the last full moon with the advice not to come to Nazareth before the end of the period of mourning But Jesus decides to return immediately to weep with them before the end of the period of mourning The very next day, they arrive in Nazareth as evening is falling and the arc of the rising moon Alpheus died at the full moon, between the 1 st and the 3 rd of September, the full moon having been on Thursday, 2 nd September 27 AD.

Mary advises Jesus not to return before the end of the period of mourning, on account of the atmosphere in Nazareth. She tries to inform Jesus as quickly as possible in order to prevent an unexpected return on His part. As the 4 th was the Sabbath, the messenger Joseph the shepherd could not have left until the 5 th and could only have arrived in Ptolemais, 30 km from Nazareth that evening. So Jesus could not have reached Nazareth until the next day, Monday 6 th in the evening, that is, between the 4 th and the 6 th day of mourning.

But the 6 th is the last day in September on which the moon still rises as the first stars appear in the deep cobalt of the sky, just where the orient advances progressively with its stars Once again, this is the only compatible day! In this example, the motivations and movements of the characters must be analysed and the Sabbath, as well as the duration of the Jewish period of mourning 7 days , taken into account. We should also refer to the precision of the Italian text arco di luna crescente as the vaguer French translation le croissant de la lune the crescent moon would have made it impossible to pinpoint the date with such precision.

In ten days at the Fish Gate The clues: In the evening of Wednesday 25 th June 27 AD a known date thanks to several decisive clues Jesus gives the shepherds an appointment in ten days near the Fish Gate in Jerusalem, at the first hour On the following Friday, July 2 nd, Judas and John leave for Jerusalem in the morning and Jesus gives John this appointment: In four days, we ll meet again, then He specifies to Judas: Tomorrow at dawn is the appointment at the Fish Gate I was expecting You this evening This appears to be a double incoherence The appointment with the shepherds was made for Friday evening to our way of thinking , but, in fact, the Sabbath had already begun.

So, in ten days means Tuesday morning and not Monday, as we might have thought. Also, the appointment given to John at the beginning of the fourth day was on Monday evening, according to the Oriental way of counting days, and not Tuesday morning! There are many other instances in the work in which this Jewish way of counting days is naturally taken into account in the dialogues between the characters for example in chapters This example appears as a very clear indication of the authenticity of these visions. The miraculous healing of Joanna, wife of Chouza The clues: At the beginning of August 27, Jesus, who was passing through Tiberias to meet Jonathas the shepherd, learns that he has just taken Joanna toward the mountains of Lebanon.

He tells the old nurse: I waited for the five days I spoke of and, to be on the safe side, I added today Night has fallen: As soon as the moon rises, we ll leave and The sun is still in Leo for a little while Then Jonathas arrives and describes his journey: On the third morning, seven days ago, she sent for me and he tells them about Joanna s dream. Night has fallen and the moon, in its first quarter, is rising at this moment Further on, we read: In the moonlight, we left Cana behind Quite a long walk again in the moonlight The analysis: In Antiquity, an easy way to estimate the passing of the seasons was to observe, just before dawn, which constellation was in the place where the sun was going to rise.

As the months go by, each of the 12 constellations of the zodiac seems to replace the preceding one in a slow, ascending movement. This cycle is renewed every year in exactly the same way. So, when Jesus says that The sun is still in Leo for a little while, astronomy tells us that it s exactly as if He was saying it s almost the 18 th th of August. Now, if we observe, as Maria Valtorta does in this episode, that the moon rises at the. On the following days the moon rises late in the night and the crescent moon is waning, which would tend to invalidate Maria Valtorta s description.

Now, if we consider that Jonathas left 10 days before on a long journey, it was probably at the beginning of the week, on Sunday 1 st or Monday 2 nd of August, just before the full moon that is so propitious for night-time journeys in summer. So we can conclude, with remarkable precision, more or less one day that the healing of Joanna occurred during the night of August 12 th 13 th in 27 AD.

We note here that Maria Valtorta is mistaken when she indicates the first quarter, but as she stipulates that the moon rises after nightfall, then lights the night, this clearly proves that it is the last quarter. No human being is infallible when he relies on his knowledge or impressions. The raising of Jairus s daughter and the banquet at Simon s house Now, here is another example which fits into a sequence of about sixty consecutive days, all perfectly defined 80 by no fewer than seventy nine decisive details!

This period, beginning at the Passover in 28 the end of March , takes us, day by day, with a multitude of clues, to the end of May in 28 AD. Tomorrow, I can t come. It will be in two days time It is 80 After the Passover of the year 28 AD, a period described day by day from 30 th March 28 to 8 th June 28! Mary came to Me three evenings ago The analysis: The raising of Jairus s daughter thus took place on Monday, May 29 th, 28 AD, just after the full moon on May 25 th, 28 AD, the only Monday in that month on which the moon rises just after dusk, as it does the next day, Tuesday.

On the Tuesday, Jesus relates the parable of the Lost Sheep. It touches Mary Magdalen so deeply that she decides to convert. From Chapter to chapter , there is an uninterrupted sequence of events. The coherence seems even more remarkable here, as the different visions describing this sequence were not all received in the right order, but in fact cover a period of almost two years, between January and September , which in no way affects their space-time coherence!

And to round it off, here are two final examples illustrating the degree of extreme precision of certain descriptions by Maria Valtorta.