moment that the actions he in fact took were correct. And, of course, the journalist did not suspect the existence or the importance of Julien Barneuve in the matter.
THE PROBLEM was simple: Manlius regarded the Burgundians as the best hope for the security of Provence. He could make a distinction between one group of barbarians and another, while his friend Felix saw all as a threat to the ideal of Rome. By the time Manlius left the king’s palace and began his trek back home, the starkness of the opposition was clear to him. Events had made them enemies. One or the other must give way. And time was short; the Burgundian king was willing to move his army to a line south of Vaison, but would not invade. He wanted no opposition, and if there was any either he would not come at all or he would feel free to pillage at will. Then everything Manlius had tried to achieve would be lost. Their savior would become their destroyer.
As he voyaged, the journey taking ten days when a generation ago it could have been done in two, Manlius was confident that he could carry the day in the town and the region; his position as bishop gave him an unrivaled, indeed a unique voice to the townspeople, and there was, of course, no doubt that his estates would obey. Nonetheless, he was aware that there would be opposition, and that with Felix at its head, it could be formidable.
He was reassured by the belief that Felix had headed south, to try once again to raise troops to send to Clermont; it was because of this confidence that the news Vaison had rebelled against him under the leadership of Caius Valerius came as such a shock. It was one development he had not foreseen, for like Felix himself, he had never taken seriously the devout but simplistic fool whose bishopric he had taken.
In fact, Caius had been preparing since the moment Manlius was elected some four months previously, and knew that the absence of both the bishop and Felix from the region gave him the one chance he was likely to get. Within hours of the delegation leaving for the court of the Burgundians, he began to move with those he had persuaded, bribed, and frightened into supporting him. The church was captured, and its treasury—newly filled with Manlius’s gold—opened. Work details were set onto the walls, building and strengthening. All of Manlius’s men in the town were disarmed and given the choice: abandon their master or have their hands chopped off so they could not fight for him. Most chose the former option. No move was made to deprive Manlius of his position, however; that would be done later; charges of peculation were prepared to lay against him when he returned. For Caius did not underestimate his bishop or his cousin, and knew that he had little time. Manlius was immensely powerful, and could raise a substantial number of troops from his estates. Moreover, the townspeople were uneasy; Manlius had been elected by acclamation. He had the support of Faustus; he was God’s representative.
Nor could the town be easily prepared for a siege, or defended. The walls were feeble and weak. The inhabitants had almost no idea how to fight. Caius sent urgent messages south, along with all of Manlius’s gold, to hire mercenaries, but nothing had happened. Until they arrived, or his cousin Felix returned with troops to face a fait accompli, a full and open declaration of war against the bishop was unthinkably stupid.
So Caius Valerius worked to prepare the walls, and to stiffen the resolve of the townsmen. Here something dramatic was needed; something to ram home just how unsuitable Manlius was. Who better than Sophia to make this point?
The rumors about her had already started in any case. It took little effort to fan them into a flame of outrage. Sophia was strange, haughty, and aloof. She spoke in a way—the purest Latin, in fact—that the Gallic ear could scarcely even understand anymore. She practiced medicine, so easily confused with necromancy. She was, undoubtedly, the bishop’s consort, he who was supposedly dedicated to celibacy and chastity now his wife had gone to a woman’s house. Above all, she was a pagan, who preferred the company of Jews to good Christians, who openly sneered at the truth and had corrupted the mind of youths throughout the land with her teaching. Sophia, when she heard this last, laughed out loud. She couldn’t corrupt them even if she wanted to.
She was in the habit of coming into the town every few weeks, not so much because she needed to—her slave was more than capable of seeing to her small needs—but because she needed to breathe the air of civilization, however diminished and provincial it might be. She stayed in the great house Manlius had given her, generally only for a day or so, and went walking through the streets, listening to the noise of human activity, constantly surprised by how much it reassured and soothed her. For she had absorbed little of pastoralism in her education; she lived in isolation on her hill to escape the omnipresent signs of decay, rather than to bask in the revitalizing aura of nature. Nature, indeed, she had little time for; she had always been a city dweller, and was more appalled by cruelty of the wild than she was awed by its beauty.
Besides, she had begun to give instruction to Syagrius. The young man had come to her one day and asked to speak. Then, in a rush, he had asked her for lessons, his eyes beseeching her not to turn him away or ridicule him in the way that his adoptive father did as a matter of course. Sophia would never have done that; but she did not, initially, want to instruct him either. She knew perfectly well that he did not ask out of any craving for philosophy; rather he wished through her teaching to come closer to Manlius and demonstrate his worth.
Ordinarily, she would have refused, but now she had no other pupils, and as he stood there, proud but so young and lost, his wish to win Manlius’s respect and affection so clear, she could not turn him away. Instead, with a sigh of misgiving she had smiled, and agreed. “Of course. It would be a pleasure.” His smile of relief and gratitude—a charming smile, with real beauty in it—reassured her.
“And the first thing you can do in my company is to stop standing to attention like that. I will not be your teacher but your guide. I will help you, not instruct you. This means you must speak freely, and I forbid you to believe anything I tell you. Do you understand?”
A look of puzzlement and distress crossed his face. Sophia’s heart sank. “Come in, young man. But if you call me ‘my lady’ once again I will throw you into the street. You will, I hope, think of me with respect. But I have not earned it from you yet. When I have, you may address me thus.”
And so she began with poor, simple discourses. His ignorance was total, the lad was scarcely capable of understanding the basics. Sooner or later, he would say:
“How can you say this? The Bible says . . .”
“What do you mean that life is a quest? What are we looking for? Surely faith should be enough.”
And she would try to explain in a way he could understand, but knew that she lost him, almost every time. “Now, how can we define the difference between understanding and believing?” she would say, continuing because he wanted her to continue, and she was determined not to stop as long as there was any hope that, one day, she might spot some flash of recognition in his eyes.
But she never saw it; his mind was long closed, barricaded by priests and Bibles. She was not strong enough, not a good enough teacher, perhaps, to burst through and let in the light of reason. She should have given up, but she saw also that, although Syagrius’s understanding was feeble, his soul was good. There was no malice or cruelty in him, nor did he ever give up, even though at times he came close to tears in his desperate wish to understand. “Let us take our premise that the individual soul likens himself to God through the refinement of understanding reached through contemplation, and that virtue is a reflection of this understanding . . .”
A cliché of philosophy, repeated endlessly for near eight hundred years; Sophia hardly even thought it controversial. Even in Marseille, she had never had the proposition queried. However, it came to the ears of Caius and he saw it as the pyre on which Manlius might be consumed.
The bishop’s woman taught that men could become God. She challenged the Almighty, taught youth that no savior was necessary, that faith was absurd, that she was the equal of Christ. She contradicted Revelation, poured scorn on believers, and all the while was supported and defended by Manlius himself. What sort of bishop encourages men not to believe?
She was sufficiently unworldly, or perhaps arrogant might be the better term, not to notice that more people looked at her askance as she walked through the streets; that there was more muttering as she emerged from her house. She paid no attention; the opinions of such people had never been of the slightest importance to her; their talking no more registered with her than the noise of buzzing flies occupied her mind.
Southern Gaul was not like the East; monasticism had not taken so strong a hold that hundreds or even thousands of monks were gathered in almost every town. Yet there were many who had gathered informally in such associations, often moving in and taking over abandoned villas or town buildings, asserting—sometimes violently— their ownership and priding themselves on the purity of their faith. More than anyone, perhaps, they feared invasion, for an Arian, heretic king would have little sympathy for them and be open to the complaints of aggrieved property owners.
It took little to persuade them that True Religion must be defended, and that the corruption Sophia
