Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [183]
“The six groups settle in six places, but only one place is called the Refuge. Odd. This must mean that in the other places, like Portugal and Britain, the Templars can live undisturbed, although under another name, whereas in the Refuge they are completely hidden. I would say it is where the Templars of Paris went after they left the Temple. To me it seems economical for the route to go to England from France, but why not assume that the Templars took an even more economical course and set up a refuge in a secret and protected place in Paris itself? Being sound politicians, they reasoned that in two hundred years the situation would change and they would be able to act in the light of day, or almost.”
“Paris it is. And the fourth place?”
“The colonel was thinking of Chartres, but if we make Paris the third place, we can’t put down Chartres as the fourth, because obviously the Plan has to involve all the centers of Europe. Besides, we’re leaving the mystical trail to work out a political trail. The pattern appears to be a sine wave, so we should go to the north of Germany. ‘Beyond the water,’ that is, beyond the Rhine, there’s a city—not a church—of Our Lady. Near Danzig, there’s a city of the Virgin—in other words, Marienburg.”
“Why meet at Marienburg?”
“Because it was the seat of the Teutonic Knights! Relations between the Templars and the Teutonics hadn’t been poisoned like those between the Templars and the Hospitalers, who had waited like vultures for the suppression of the Temple in order to seize its wealth. The Teutonics were created in Palestine by German emperors as a counterbalance to the Templars, but they were soon called north to stem the invasion of Prussian barbarians. They succeeded so well that in the space of two centuries they became a state that spread out over all the Baltic lands. They moved between Poland, Lithuania, and Livonia. They founded KQnigsberg. They were defeated only once, by Alek-sandr Nevski in Estonia. About the time the Templars were arrested in Paris, the Teutonics established the capital of their realm at Marienburg. If there was any spiritual-knighthood plan of world conquest, the Templars and the Teutonics had divided the spheres of influence between them.”
“You know what?” Belbo said. “I’m with you. Now the fifth group. Where are these Popelicans?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You disappoint me, Casaubon. Maybe we should ask Abu-lafia.”
“No. Abulafia can only connect facts, not create them. The Popelicans are a fact, not a connection, and facts are the province of Sam Spade. Give me a few days.”
“I’ll give you two weeks,” Belbo said. “If, within two weeks, you don’t hand the Popelicans over to me, you’ll buy me a bottle of twelve-year-old Ballantine’s.”
Beyond my means. A week later I delivered the Popelicans to my greedy partners.
“It’s all clear. Now follow me, because we must go back to the fourth century, to Byzantium, when various movements of Manichean inspiration have already spread throughout the Mediterranean. We begin with the Archontics, founded in Armenia by Peter of Capharbarucha—and you have to admit that’s a pretty grand name. Anti-Semitic, the Archontics identify the Devil with Sabaoth, the god of the Jews, who lives in the seventh heaven. To reach the Great Mother of Light in the eighth heaven, it is necessary to reject both Sabaoth and baptism. All right?”
“Consider them rejected,” Belbo said.
“But the Archontics are still nice kids at heart. In the fifth century the Massalians come along, and actually they survive until the eleventh century, in Thrace. The Massalians are not dualists but monarchians, and they have dealings with the infernal powers, and in fact some texts call them Borborites, from borboros, filth, because of the unspeakable things they do.”
“What do they do?”
“The usual unspeakable things. Men and women hold in the palm of their hand, and raise to heaven, their own ignominy, namely, sperm or menstruum, then eat it, calling it the Body of Christ. And if by chance a woman is