The Anchoress of Shere

Shaking hands, the two men sized each other up. The American’s round spectacles and beard gave the impression of an identikit inhabitant of the ivory tower, while the tweedy jacket with leather elbow patches hinted at what later became apparent: the American was a passionate anglophile. For his part, Gould noticed that the priest was ill at ease, so he determined to be as friendly as possible, despite what he sensed as intellectual suspicion or even rivalry. That, at any rate, was the impression he had garnered from their brief correspondence, but maybe Duval would be more relaxed face to face.

The professor suggested dinner in the hotel. As they sat down in the empty restaurant, Gould explained that he was spending most of a sabbatical leave from Georgetown University in his beloved England. He had already visited the country home of Lewis Carroll, who, as the Reverend Charles Dodgson, had preached at the Saxon church in Guildford. The two enthusiasts of church history soon jettisoned all pretence of small talk: within five minutes they were becoming animated by the concepts of the new Guildford cathedral. Gould admired the original designs by Edward Maufe while Duval did not, although their disagreements were politely academic.

Eventually, the priest asked Gould about his current research.

“Well, I’ve spent a lot of time in France in recent years, pursuing my work on the Inquisition…”

Duval cut in: “You speak French?”

“Not too well, but I’ve worked damned hard on being able to read medieval French and Latin. They look after their archives over there almost as well as you folks do here in Guildford.”

“But what has the Inquisition got to do with English mystics?” Duval asked, a little cautiously. “Surely the Inquisition was a continental affair which hardly ever risked a trip across the water to England?”

The American nodded. “True, of course, but a large number of English people and Frenchmen living under English rule in France were taken by the Inquisition.”

Duval side-tracked the professor into a discussion of the Inquisition’s methods, a diversion eagerly followed until Duval commented: “Innocent IV’s Bull Ad Extirpanda approved of the use of bodily torture only in Italy, professor.”

“Yes, that’s true, Father…”

“Please call me Michael,” the priest said, a little too self-consciously.

“Oh, I’m ‘Irv’ to everyone back in Georgetown. Yeah, that’s true, Michael, but by the end of the thirteenth century some form of physical torture was employed by the Inquisition throughout Europe.”

Duval did not like to be contradicted, but he struggled to keep up the facade of professional charm and let the American develop his point.

“Initially, of course, inquisitors were not allowed to torture, but you’ll remember that in 1256 Pope Alexander IV gave them the right to absolve one another mutually and grant special dispensations to their colleagues, so it was all hunky-dory. One inquisitor could torture and then his companion could absolve him. No guilt.” The professor’s eyes twinkled over the top of his spectacle frames.

“But torture was not as widespread as anti-Catholic propaganda would have us believe,” insisted the cleric. “The records of torture are very limited. Libraries are stuffed full of records of patient attempts by the clergy to persuade people to recant, and there is little evidence to support your assertion.”

The professor was too decent to suspect Duval’s hypocrisy. He could not know that the priest’s intellectual sophistry was in utter contrast to the primordial drives of Duval’s debased secret life in the cellar; nor how easy it was for the very intelligent to lie, to separate the soul from the body, the mind from the heart, that very denial which was at the centre of Duval’s existence.

So the well-meaning academic took his collocutor at face value, continuing the debate in all sincerity. “Ah, Michael, you can’t argue a posteriori that the absence of such documents from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries means that the inquisitors were more lenient. The verbal ingenuity displayed in the records to gloss over repeated torture suggests that it must have been common practice…”

“No, I don’t agree, Irv.” Duval’s use of the Christian name was obviously strained. “Usually the mere sight of the instruments of torture was enough to extract confessions of heresy.”

The professor would have been interested in debating the quality of the records, but Duval chased off after the instruments of the Inquisition: “I am sure you know that there were six main methods.”

Gould knew the methods, and felt no need to discuss them. He thought he showed this in his face.

Duval, ignoring the hint, began to pontificate: “The ordeal by water entailed a prisoner being forced to swallow a quantity of water, either by means of a funnel or by soaking a piece of silk or linen jammed down the throat. When the prisoner’s nose was blocked, and water was dripped continuously into his mouth, it could result in blood vessels bursting. Lenient treatment involved about two and half pints, and severe about five pints. Not very pleasant, I should imagine.”

Gould fingered the menu, another cue which the priest either missed or deliberately ignored. Duval pressed on: “The ordeal by fire demanded that a prisoner was tied so that he could not move, and his feet were placed before a roaring fire. Fat was applied to his soles and they would be fried until a confession was obtained.

“The strappado was very common, of course. Prisoners, regardless of gender, were stripped to their undergarments and then had their ankles shackled and their hands secured firmly behind their back. The wrists were tied to a second rope that ran over a pulley in the ceiling. The poor heretic was hoisted about six feet above the floor, sometimes with iron weights attached to the feet, and left hanging there from wrists tied behind the back. And this was the gentle version of the strappado. The rack and the wheel were also popular. The stivaletto, or brodequins, were often used in Italy. Nasty way of crushing the bones, sort of an early type of vice.”

The priest’s delivery was rapid, almost staccato. He was obviously excited by the topic, thought the professor, who tried to look interested.

“The point I am making,” Duval continued relentlessly, “is that I have researched the details in some considerable depth. Yes, there was torture, but not as much as the critics make out, and then only after non-violent investigations and trials which sometimes went on for years.”

Gould was becoming increasingly bored by the rehearsal of information he knew in detail and cared little to talk about, but he understood fellow medievalists: too enthusiastic for their own good. Since Duval insisted on projecting his skewed history of the Inquisition, Gould tried to manoeuvre him into more contemporary interpretations.

“I still maintain,” the professor said confidently, and a little provocatively, “that the six-hundred-year Catholic onslaught on supposed heretics killed between eight and ten million people. The last victim, you know, was hanged in Valencia in 1826-the Spaniards were always the most bloody-minded about what we might today term genocide. They targeted forcibly converted Jews and Muslims throughout Spain. And in Italy, remember, the Vatican turned a blind eye to the Nazi holocaust. But what I find curious is today’s lesser-known inquisition, the current persecution of dissident Catholics, even in the USA…”

Duval interrupted him: “You are indulging in poetic licence. I thought America was the home of the free.”

Gould smiled. “I’d like to think that, but the fact is the Vatican has simply renamed the Inquisition the ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.’ They don’t burn heretics any more, but they use anonymous reports- you would call them ‘delations’-to silence anyone, especially theologians, who advocates or even discusses anything contentious, such as artificial birth control, for example.”

Duval became slightly prickly. “I am not a theologian, but a simple priest with an interest in Church history; I am not privy to the intrigues of the modern Vatican.”

Gould smiled tactfully: “Nor am I.”

The professor was keen to move on to Duval’s knowledge of the self-mortification techniques of English mystics. He did not know very much about herbal purgatives, and in the priest’s single letter, as well as in one or two of his published articles, Gould had been impressed by the evidence of Duval’s apparently encyclopaedic knowledge of the properties of medieval herbal cures.

Gould’s mention of herbs prompted a long monologue, until finally he interrupted Duval’s flow: “Michael, I don’t believe that mystics used leeches for other than medical reasons. It couldn’t be seen as any form of self- mortification. But there were one or two recorded examples of self-branding with a crucifix mark on the cheek.”