‘All that and much more,’ he answers without fear or shame.
What should I do now? I asked myself. I had no idea if these Leapers were violent, if they were capable of breaking into our rooms while we slept and slaughtering us like pigs.
As I was tired, I decided that we should spend the night here anyway and gave orders for the door of the bedroom allotted me to be well guarded and also told my soldiers to position themselves around the bed. Every castle, manor and lodge, after all, is riddled with secret doors and panels, and rooms contain various chests that can be opened by levers invisible to unknowing eyes.
‘You can be perfectly at ease,’ the knight says, as if reading my thoughts. ‘You are safe with us. We condemn violence – unlike you papists, who persecute people whose beliefs are different from yours; you blow up their temples and prayer halls and drive Lutherans from their homes.’
‘Oh, interesting. You’ve taken up with the Lutherans now?’ I look at him in surprise. ‘From what I know, if the Lutherans had just a little more power, they would accuse you and your sort of witchcraft and, sooner than us, have you roasting on those hot coals of yours, where you leap about and flagellate yourselves and fornicate with each other. You are naïve if you think you’ll find allies in the Protestants! They have their own vicious quarrels as it is. The Lutherans get on the Calvinists’ nerves, and those Flacians get on the Lutherans’ nerves – in fact, those ignorant Flacian peasants get on everybody’s nerves. But you and your sort are just plain deluded pagans – that’s something even the Lutherans, Calvinists and Flacians have got right.’
‘So you think there’s no paganism among you papists?’ The knight looks at me with contempt. ‘What about that bishop of yours who says Mass and consecrates Capuchin monasteries wearing a scarlet vestment made from the military coat of the Beylerbey of Bosnia, Hasan Pasha Predojević?’
To this charge, I honestly confess I had no answer. I have no explanation for the coat of Bishop Thomas Chroen, which this Flagellant, Leaper, warlock, or whatever he is, served up to me. I know that in distant lands people can go so far as to use the desiccated heads of their enemies in their rituals, or they ride with them in parades, a fate that tragically befell Herbard von Auersperg and Friedrich von Weichselberg, high commanders of the Military Frontier, whose embalmed heads were impaled on long spears and carried alongside Ferhad Pasha when he marched triumphantly into Constantinople after his victory at Budački. But the Ottomans are famous for being arrogant, cruel savages. Thomas Chroen’s coat, of course, is not in the same heinous category, but in my view, it is no less pagan than the superstitions of the populace. I mention my humble opinion in this report so that I might receive your clarity as to how I should reply in the future when heretics start waving Chroen’s Turkish coat in my face.
Otherwise, there is not much we can do at present to the nobility, a point I wish particularly to underscore in my report. The greater part of the nobility is an obstinate bulwark for the new religion and religious apostates, sheltering preachers so they can go into towns and even into villages, despite such activities being strictly forbidden there. From what I have heard, the political hotheads in our nobility are to be tolerated for some time yet. But let me note that among the voices of those present that evening, who kept glancing at the windows of the Knights’ Hall and had quite clearly been preparing some barbarian rite, there were people of various ranks and tongues. It was only our own presence that evening which prevented the sectarian ceremony from taking place. I heard not only German and Slovene being spoken, but I also detected, in the cacophony of voices, echoes of Italian and even Bohemian (unless perhaps it was Croat), which means they are all organized and joined in heretical alliance – consequently, we need a less subtle plan to control them. With heretics of this sort the
simplest thing would be to deal with them at a single stroke and accuse them all of treason, even if such types of heresy are rare in our parts. Superstition and witchcraft, on the other hand, are everywhere, and special visitations are required to uncover and combat them. For both the one and the other, I suggest that the quickest way to dispose of them is the tried-and-tested method of inquisition.
We set off the next morning, and at our first stop found a priest who, it turned out, could neither read nor write. At our next stop, we faced what we most often encounter on these visitations: church altars originally dedicated to a saint are now empty, lacking even a statue of the Holy Mother of God, while Mass is offered in not one, but both kinds. Catholic teaching is virtually unknown among the local populace. In all such places, therefore, I announce that I will give a sermon and order everyone who lives there, regardless of estate, age, sex or mental soundness, to present themselves in two days’ time at Mass, where God’s truth will be waiting for them – and I add that all absences will be individually investigated and penalized. These educational measures are effective. The people assemble for Mass. At first, they look uncertainly at the altar and struggle to keep up during prayers and find the right words, but then I bring out a well-proven recipe: the Virgin Mary, whose cloak is large enough to cover and protect all of sinful mankind. I speak of her miracles and appearances, which I illustrate with an example that never fails. I tell in my sermon how, far, far away, on the other side of the great sea in New Spain, the Virgin Mary once appeared to the Indian peasant Juan Diego – Johann in German, Ivan in Slovene. ‘Behold,’ I say, ‘even to them, to those red-skinned people across the ocean’ – colourful adjectives can be used to good effect, as vivid images are the best way for the populace to understand our stories, and the more exaggerated they are the better; playing on feelings brings results, while abstract reasoning, categories and concepts are nuts too hard to crack, given the populace’s limited abilities – ‘even there, far away in the New World, which is so very different from here, a world where forests are so thick that once you set foot in them you can never find your way out, where animals are so wild and dangerous they make our bears and wolves seem like cats and dogs, where snakes are so venomous and vicious they no sooner see you than attack you from pure beastly malice – yes, even there, where until recently no one had ever heard of Jesus and people worshipped their own vicious and venomous animal gods and offered to them not only crops and farm animals but people, too – yes, yes, living people!’ (I underscore the point.) ‘Even there the Virgin Mary appeared, to lead those people out of darkness, to pluck them from their savage, bestial kingdom and bring them to the kingdom of the spirit.’
I know that at this moment my proselytes are not thinking very much about the kingdom of the spirit, for they still have hissing snakes and roaring beasts before their eyes, and most of all they are wondering about those cruel Indian sacrifices. So I go on to paint them a wonderfully vivid picture that is based on what I have heard from Dominican missionaries and the Jesuits. ‘A young maiden, or several, is dragged by force,’ I continue, ‘to the top of a high stone pyramid not unlike the wooded hills around here, or children, even infants, are carried up, or adults are herded in droves, regardless of sex, if they are enemy captives, and there may be dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. The chosen victims are stripped of their clothes, their bodies are painted with blue dye and they are placed on the altar. The high priest runs his eyes from north to south and from east to west, invoking his cruel deities, then, turning his gaze to the victim on the altar, who in mortal terror is held in the firm grasp of his assistants, with one hand he plunges his dagger into the victim’s breast while with the other he pulls out his heart, which for a time is still alive and beating even after the body is dead. There is so much blood it streams down from the altar in specially made grooves; if there are several victims, the entire pyramid is swimming in blood.’
Whenever I include such Indian adventures in my sermons, whether we are in a church or in the open air, in springtime or winter, I feel the atmosphere thicken. People unwittingly grab at their hearts and cross their arms over their chests, as if trying to protect themselves from my words, which, like the red man’s weapons, might do injury to their bodies. The populace never tires of these crude, cruel pictures; they hold a special magnetism for them, so even if their ears are hurting, they want more and more. ‘Now do you understand?’ I ask, looking at them severely. ‘Even to these savages, whose only excuse is that they never heard of Jesus, for they never had the opportunity to hear of him before the Dominicans and Jesuits arrived