Cathedral of the Sea

“What do you think?”

“I think Arnau is much closer to Mar than to his own wife.”

“You know Arnau adores her.”

“I am not talking about that kind of love, Brother Joan,” she insisted, lowering her voice. Joan sat upright in his chair. “Yes. I know you find it hard to believe, but I’m sure that girl, as you call her, wants my husband for herself. It’s like having the Devil in my house, Brother Joan!” Eleonor brought a tremble to her voice. “My weapons, Brother Joan, are those of a simple woman who merely wishes to comply with the precepts of the Church to married women, but every time I try to, I find that my husband is so blinded by her charms he is prevented from even seeing me. I have no idea what to do!”

Was that why Mar refused to get married? Could it be true? Joan reflected on it: the two were always together, and he had seen her fling herself in his arms. And the way they looked each other, the way they laughed and smiled! How stupid he had been! He was sure the Moor knew it, and that was why he always defended her.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said evasively.

“I have a plan ... but I need your help and, above all, your advice.”

43

As HE LISTENED to Eleonor’s plan, a shudder ran through Joan’s body.

“I have to think about it,” he told her when she insisted how dramatic her situation was.

That evening he shut himself up in his room. He excused himself from dinner. He avoided Mar and Arnau. He avoided Eleonor’s inquisitive looks. Instead, he consulted his volumes of theology, which were neatly arranged in a cupboard. He was confident he could find the answer to his dilemma there. During all the years he had spent apart from his brother, he had always thought of him. He loved Arnau; he and his father were the only ones Joan could turn to in his childhood. Yet there were as many hidden folds to his affection as there were in his black habit. Lurking somewhere among them was an admiration that came close to envy. Arnau, with that frank smile of his, those easy gestures: a little boy who claimed he could talk to the Virgin. Brother Joan clenched his fists when he remembered how often he himself had tried to hear that voice. Now he knew it was almost impossible, and that only a chosen few were blessed with that honor. He had studied and disciplined himself in the hope that he might be one of them. He fasted until his health was threatened, but all in vain.

Brother Joan buried himself in the doctrines of Bishop Hincmaro of Rheims, those of Saint Leo the Great, of Master Graciano, the epistles of Saint Paul, and many others.

It was only through the carnal communion of the married couple, the coniunctio sexuum, that matrimony among human beings reflected the union of Christ with the Church, which was the main objective of the sacrament. Without that carnalis copula, matrimony did not exist, according to the first of these authors.

Only when a marriage had been consummated through carnal relations was it regarded as valid by the Church, ruled Saint Leo the Great.

Graciano, his master at the university of Bologna, went further in this doctrine, linking the symbolism of marriage, the consent freely given by the bride and groom at the altar, and sexual relations between man and woman: the una caro. Even Saint Paul, in his famous epistle to the Ephesians, had written: “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

Joan pored over the teachings and doctrines of the doctors of the Church until far into the night. What was he searching for? He opened one of the treatises a second time. For how long was he going to ignore the truth? Eleonor was right: without copulation, without the union of the flesh, there could be no true matrimony. “Why have you not lain with her? You are living in sin. The Church does not recognize your marriage.” By the light of a candle he reread Graciano, following the words with his finger. He was looking for something that did not exist. “The royal ward! The king himself gave her to you, and yet you have not copulated with her. What would the king say if he found out? Not even all your money ... It’s an insult to him. He gave you Eleonor in marriage. He himself led her to the altar, and you have spurned the offer he gave you. What about the bishop? What would he say?” He went back to Graciano. And all because of a stubborn young girl who was refusing to fulfill her destiny as a woman.

Joan spent hours with his books, but his mind continually strayed to thoughts of Eleonor’s plan and possible alternatives. He ought to tell Arnau straight-out. He imagined himself sitting face-to-face with Arnau, or possibly standing, yes, both of them standing... “You must lie with Eleonor. At the moment, you are living in sin,” he would tell him. What if this made him angry? After all, he was a Catalan baron, and consul of the sea. Who was he to tell Arnau what to do? He returned to his books. Why on earth had they ever adopted that girl? She was the cause of all their problems. If Eleonor was right, his brother might feel closer to Mar than to her. Mar was the guilty one. She had rejected all offers of marriage in order to keep tempting Arnau with her charms. What man could resist her? She was the Devil! The Devil made flesh, temptation, sin. Why should he risk losing his brother’s love when she was the Devil? Yes, she was the evil one. She was the guilty one. Only Christ was strong enough to resist temptation. Arnau was not God; he was a man. Why should men suffer if the Devil was the guilty one?

Juan plunged into his books again, until finally he found what he was looking for:See how this evil inclination is so ingrained within us, that human nature of itself and through its original corruption, without need of any other motive or instigation, turns toward this vileness, and were it not for the grace of our Lord in repressing this natural inclination, the whole world would fall into this loathsome temptation. So it is that we read that a young and pure boy, brought up by saintly hermits in the desert far from contact with any female, was sent to the city where his mother and father dwelt. And as soon as he entered the place where they were living, he asked those who had brought him what all the new sights he had seen might be: and as he had seen beautiful, finely adorned women, he asked what they might be, and the saintly hermits told him that these things were devils who brought turmoil everywhere they went, and while they were in his father and mother’s house, the hermits who had brought him there asked him as follows: “Of all the beautiful, new things you have seen and had never seen before, which did you most admire?” And the boy replied: “Of all the beautiful things I have seen, what I most liked are those devils which bring turmoil to the world.” And when the saintly fathers replied: “Oh, wretched creature! Have you not often heard and read the evil that are devils and their works, and that their dwelling place is Hell: how then can they have so much pleased you on your first sight of them?” They say the boy answered them: “Even though the devils are so evil, and do so much harm, and although they may dwell in Hell, I would not care about all that evil or to be in Hell if I could be and live with devils of that sort. Now I know that the devils of Hell are not as evil as is said. Now I know it would be good to be in Hell, since those devils are there and I would like to be with them. Would that I could join them, God willing.”

It was dawn by the time that Brother Joan had finished reading and closed his books. He was not going to take the risk. He was not going to be the saintly hermit who confronted the little boy who preferred the Devil. He was not going to be the one who called his brother a wretched creature. It was there in his books, the ones Arnau