Meridiana -- a Fiction

[JM]

My name is Sylvester, but my friends call me "Sylly" which as you
might guess sounds a bit, like, "silly," or to be more precise,
exactly that, but there is nothing to be done. This is just as it is.
As for those who are not my friends, they call me a "sorcerer" who
they say is in "league with the devil," if you can fathom such a
thing. What I say is, whatever! Just don't call me "Sly" and that will
be just fine with me.

Just of late, my celibacy as a Roman Catholic priest has been called
into question, and as the result I have been brought under orders of
the Inquisition to present myself at Rome for a full and final
determination of my case. And why would the matter not be settled
right here in the good old U.S.A at Indianapolis or whichever regional
diocese for whatever priest as would usually be the case? Well! I
don't mean to be immodest, but it has to do with my sometime visiting
position at Notre Dame as a scholar of some note who has for a time,
even previous to the present charges, been under scrutiny of the
Vatican due to the nature of some writings and lectures that
colleagues of mine had long been warning me were highly ill-advised.

Enough, already with all the fusty, musty, dusty academic dirges of
verbiage, for none of that is the reason I write. We are here to speak
rather of Meridiana, the love, the soul, the purpose, the beginning,
middle and end of my life. Meridiana -- have you ever heard such a
name? It came to me, I must confess, at first on the Internet, and
then in dreams, and if only it had there remained, I should not be in
the fix I find myself today.

It all began one night in my study, while doing some on-line research
concerning the name of a certain mythical 'demon-woman', mentioned in
the prophecy of Isaiah, which search had brought me to the site of a
very well credentialed feminist scholar, "The House of Lilith,"
christened under name of the very mythical feminine creature mentioned
in the said prophecy.

It appeared that I'd come to the right place, for it was immediately
clear that this scholar had been doing her homework. Every known
reference to the figure of Lilith was here, noted and expounded upon
at quite some length, with passages quoted from each source, whether
the ancient Babylonian text for the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the
Babylonian Talmud, or that well known kabbalistic Midrash on the Torah
of the 13th Century known as the Zohar. Everything was here to suit
the purposes of my research, in just one place.

On the third night of my studies, for there was indeed that much to be
found on the Lilith site, just around midnight by the stroke of the
Microsoft Windows clock down in its cozy little corner of my desktop,
a most surprising thing occurred as an image in lavender began to
resolve into view behind the text of Gilgamesh on my screen, a graphic
display of the face and shoulders of an uncannily beautiful woman,
posed in 3/4 view, as if looking at me over her shoulder, and a
gossamer sheathed arm which held a small bundle of scrolls.

My goodness! I thought. They or she must be doing some updating on the
site. Whatever the case, it was most distracting! For now, it was all
I could do to tear my eyes away from the lovely image filling my
screen, and return them to the text superimposed. But now, as if this
were not troublesome enough, just as I had taken a flame to the bowl
of my pipe, upon the first puff of sweet Dutch cavendish, music began
to play from my speakers -- and oh, such music! It sounded very old,
a capella, a choral motet entirely of female voices.

I had settled back in my chair to listen, puffing pleasantly on my own
not very musical pipe when a pop-up appeared on screen with the
message, "Want to Chat?" What -- I? Would I like to "chat"? I am not
a chatter. I never chat. I am very good at email and googling, or
posting typed messages to various professional forums, but not that. I
was just about to click the little "x" when the message changed to,
"Come now! Don't be shy, Father Sylly. You live only once."

Can you imagine the G-forces with which I was then pressed back into
my chair? How could they have known who I am? But what a question! Of
course they have their ways of hacking into your computer while they
have you. But why? And on such a scholarly site as this? It was all
too much, what with the terrible trouble I was already in with the
Church over my lectures and articles.

I sat up with the thought that this pop-up had nothing to do with the
site itself. Reaching for the mouse, I moved the pointer once again to
the x-box, when the silken shoulder on screen moved, and in such a way
that the garment dropped just slightly to bare it. The pop-up pulsed
and a new message appeared. "My name is Meridiana. Does that ring a
bell, Father Sylvester?" It pulsed again before I'd barely an instant
to think back to the year 1,000 C.E. and my namesake, Sylvester II, a
pope on the throne at that time, and a scandal . . . "Meridiana!"

A voice was now coming over the speakers with the music. Migod! "Say
the name, Sylvester, and then you'll remember me. Go ahead. Don't
bother with the typing. I can hear you. I've been hearing you, and
seeing you for the past three nights, Father. Nothing is hidden from
Meridiana!"

It was all too much! And though it took all my strength to push the
little arrow toward the X-box on the big window, at last I'd managed
it for the click. Both pop-up and browser window disappeared, and it
was done. I hit the power button on my computer and leaped from my
chair. A minute later I was in the kitchen pouring cognac over ice
into my favorite Mickey Mouse coffee mug--for you see, a priest never
knows when he may have a surprise visit from a deacon, a bishop or a
housekeeper with whom discretion is not the better part of valor. With
my cognac and ice rattling quite unsteadily in hand, I returned to my
study, stopping there at the door to sip with both hands at my drink
while I stared across at that computer on my desk. Then my eyes lifted
to the shelves of books completely surrounding the room, coming at
last to rest on the large folio volume I had in mind, still in its
place halfway up between floor and ceiling, and midway between the two
casements of darkened windows.

With the volume now open on my desk , I moved Mickey Mouse a little to
the side to turn a page, lest I should get dust in my drink. and here
it was. I began to move the stem of my pipe down the finely printed
column. Pope Sylvester II (999–1003) on the throne of the Holy See at
the turn of the first millennium. Yes. I scanned further. He had the
distinction of being the very first French pontiff. French! Of course,
what would anyone expect--that of all the holy fathers, here would be
the one accused of maintaining a romantic liaison with a Babylonian
succubus. Leave it to the French. What else?

I made note of his otherwise distinguished career. Appointed
Archbishop of Ravenna in 998 after serving as private tutor to Holy
Roman Emperor Otto III, but before all this, making his reputation in
Cordoba as a scholar of Arabian mathematics, and then at Rheims where
he was appointed to teach in the cathedral school, after which he was
promoted to be placed as abbot to a monastery in Italy where he turned
to a study of astronomy and other scientific matters which in a later
day would be described as "mechanics". With this steaming head of
knowledge. after being brought back to Rheims, there he was, for a
short time elevated to the position of Archbishop. It was then that he
designed an hydraulic system for powering the bellows to the cathedral
pipe organ, an accomplishment that became the talk of the entire
Empire.

All the while there were envious schemers about him attributing all
this successes to what they supposed to be the dark arts of Islam he
had studied at Cordoba. Thus he was charged with having brought things
of Babylon and its Whore into the realm of the Holy Cross of
Christendom. Whatever the case, those 'arts' had they been real, they
had also been so powerful as to levitate the man all the way to the
seat of the Holy See at Rome.
--
JM