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Greek village in the hills with a mountain range in the background on the book cover of North, Far North Of Gethsemane God Spared A Tear For The Promised Land - The Second Book Of Evlampia.

North, Far North of Gethsemane, God Spared a Tear for the Promised Land – The Second Book of Evlampia

$4.00

Discussions between an emperor and a heresiarch run predictable courses: the one’s curiosity will slowly but surely give way to suspicion, the other’s audacity will eventually grow uninhibited to outright encroachment. But when it becomes evident to both of them that the reasons for their encounter are not simple and that the outcome of their deliberations is not for them to decide, they resort to extraordinary measures: one puts on a disguise to find facts, the other reveals secrets in order to better serve a secret faith.

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At the end of the eleventh century, the Roman Empire was threatened by formidable foes. Exhausted from prolonged wars and having established long before that neither territorial expansion nor civilizing missions were likely to bear fruits anymore, the Romans of that time were forced to face, for the first time in more than one thousand years, the possibility of a decline; some were already entertaining thoughts about the ultimate survival of the State. What was at stake was not prestige, a republic, the achievements of a sophisticated society, or the comforts of a certain way of life, but the very idea of civilization, and, if one were to believe certain prophecies, even more basic values, such as the very concept of time, man’s relation to God, and the current state of humanity. It was in those years that a heresy arose in the northern territories of the realm which was characterized by one distinct feature. Its unyielding dualism, a basic trait of all heresies, having first encompassed a variety of radical ontological considerations and then, unexpectedly, graduated to organized political action, would demand from its adherents one additional and unprecedented moral choice: universal and unconditional duplicity. Duplicity had, of course, not been unknown among the various kinds of dissenters of times past, but this time its modes, scope and benefits would have to be differentially applied to the Heresy’s various levels of initiation. Protected by a veil of profound humility, subjected to intense Biblical indoctrination, and constantly professing reason, simplicity and righteous selflessness, the majority of the heretics were forced into a life of poverty, abstinence and fasting, while their spiritual leaders were deliberately encouraged to embrace debauchery, crime, embezzlement and usurpation, but again, never on an equal basis: the kind and scale of allowed transgression would be in accordance to their position within a strictly defined but very secretive class system.

In a thoroughly documented incident, the presumed leader of the heresy is apprehended and brought before Alexius Comnenus. The exchanges between emperor and heresiarch, the multitude of considerations that were generated by this unusual encounter, and the extraordinary measures that would be required to turn deliberations into conclusions, are recounted by a scrupulous officer who, in typical manner, will keep seeking perspectives and meanings that lie beyond the words of the two men. As it happens, his account parallels the testimony which Anna Comnene, the Emperor’s daughter, gives in the Fifteenth Book of her Alexiad. In fact, his observations are constantly cross-referenced to Comnene’s description of this curious episode, and little action is described here that has not already been witnessed there. Beyond, however, the description of facts, as the narrator explains in the beginnings of his story, there are other priorities which have to be addressed. His position has allowed him a privileged view of interactions and thoughts which would have remained inaccessible to the natural modesty of a princess born in the purple. And this is how this account now comes to complement the otherwise comprehensive presentation by Anna Comnene.

Book Sample

Excerpt from Chapter 1:

It must have been Hippocrates who first recorded, centuries ago, the influence that external conditions exert on character and breeding, and how significantly they contribute to the long and arduous shaping of a political conscience.a Having lived too early, the famed physician did not enjoy the opportunity, amply afforded to our generation, to appreciate this simple fact: that the exceptional constituents of a given place’s fortunate makings, the ones which are conducive to a generous and free spirit, are not accidents of geography any more than they are accidents of history, and that, in fact, they are no accidents at all, because there is logic in the dispensation of space, and such logic is actually even more evident and open to study than the logic of time. Hippocrates also knew – but would not write of – other places, where unrelieved melancholy, petty animosity and essential malice are bred daily; again, not by some kind of coincidence but because such is the demon that holds on to them, and he does so with the resolute tenacity that characterizes their species. Perhaps this is what the Latins tried to express by that strangely pedantic tautology of theirs; the so often quoted, rarely heard, and never fully appreciated “cuius regio, eius religio.”b

Hippocrates assessed accurately the unique impact that life in the mountains has on the breeding of free men, but now the passing of centuries has also allowed for the intellectual constituents of a free conscience to be made equally available to all, independently of their birthplace or way of life: in our republic. And it is whole mountains, indeed, mountains the size of Olympus, that the seven hills of our city are; there is no place like this. Polybios, three centuries after Hippocrates, described in one succinct sentence the unique attributes of the City.c And yet the precise and detailed evaluation of the scientist never surpassed the coveting admiration of the legendary Persian satrape for the keen eye of the ancient Byzantines.d Such is the City, our city. And in such a place – “the eye of the world’s desire,” the Damascenes call her – it is only natural that there would be no end to the series of remarkable and weighty events that come to pass every day. One of them, significant but not famous, once storied and now rarely discussed, I intend to present here as I happened to witness. This is the record of an examination which I am sure, or only hope, will remain unparalleled for centuries to come, or until, of course, the Lord, resigned to the realization that our actions are no longer amenable to our reasoning or to His mercy, decides to deliver our race to trials commensurate to our transgressions. It is my innermost desire that, by having writen down my observations, the burden will be relieved which was placed on my shoulders; it is a burden that I owe to fate as much as to my own negligence. And if such are my hopes, my faults cannot be left unsaid; first among them, that irresponsible benevolence which managed to consume no small part of my youth. I am certainly not without sins, and although no tragic hero, or victim of a god’s jealousy, or philosopher tortured to death by his own questions, to my past applies aptly the notorious defect that breeds the randomly escalating disorders that ruin families and cripple states: the kind which is solidly built upon the triple, triscelic and triangular cornerstone of wishful thinking, ignorant righteousness and a great deal of erudite inertia

Of the evil, so prevalent in our republic, which landed me here, adequate descriptions have been provided by no less a writer than Saint Basil, the great hierarch, who aptly asserted that “the benevolent negligence of good men will alone suffice for any evil to prevail.” He says so because the inertia of the virtuous is no coincidental bystander in the manifestation and realization of evil; nor are the inactivity of the righteous or the inebriation of the wishful thinker mere prerequisites for its triumph. Instead, they are, by themselves, conditions necessary and sufficient for evil’s unhindered generation and propagation. Others will have it said better, and it is from one of them, in future times – when all this will have been forgotten – that the student of philosophy shall still be luckily able to quote: “How rarely does it happen that, in the right moment, a great man is found to head the execution of vast and noble designs; and for that reason, when such a providential concurrence of circumstances does occur, History is prompt to record the name of the chosen one, and to hold him up to the admiration of posterity. But when Satan interposes in human affairs to cast a shadow upon some happy existence, or to overthrow a kingdom, it seldom happens that he does not find at his side some miserable tool, in whose ear he has but to whisper a word to set him at once about his task.”1 Of such occurrences and happenings is the story that will follow.
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