THE PELAGIAN HERESY, A THEME IN FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS

One of the major characters in The Flight of the Sorceress is Pelagius, also called Morcant in the novel. Morcant is an alteration of the name “Morgan the Celt” an a.k.a. for Pelagius. The character in the novel is an actual person. Born around 354 A.D. in South Wales, Pelagius came from a Christian Romanized Celtic background and was the son of a Roman official. As such, he came from a culture that had a history of women in positions of influence and power. His teachings are known in theology as “The Pelagian Heresy” and this “heresy” is reflected in the themes woven into the novel.

Pelagius, aka Morgan (or Morcant) the Celt

“The Pelagian Heresy” was a challenge to the Church’s business model. Let’s say you’re in the business of “saving souls” and you’re selling tickets to heaven. In the mid-to-late fourth century, the Catholic Church was anything but catholic. There were numerous Christian sects and cults. You don’t want just anyone to sell those tickets. And you certainly don’t want people to get in on their own. You want to max out your profits. What do you do?

What you need is a reason for folks to buy “Catholic.” Enter Augustine, with his Original Sin theory.  Everyone born is a sinner. Sinners can’t get into heaven. And God, according to Augustine, is a real stickler on this original sin. Under the Church dogma, to get to heaven you have to be absolved through the receipt of properly administered “sacraments.” So you tell your customer base (which is everybody) that there’s only one place to get a genuine ticket to heaven: from an authorized dealer, a priest duly ordained by the Catholic Church. No other clergy can do it and you can’t do it yourself. God doesn’t care if you’re a newborn or led the life of a saint. All God cares about is whether you got your soul inspected and cleared by one of his authorized franchisees. If you buy at another store, before you know it, you’ll be standing in front of those Pearly Gates and St. Pete will be going “Tsk, Tsk. You bought yourself a counterfeit, sucker. Tough shit. I know you led a good honest life and all that, but you can go the Hell. Oh excuse me a moment. I see Hitler and Stalin waiting in line. They got themselves absolved on their deathbeds. Go right in gentlemen. God’s glad to see you.” That’s the Augustinian business model. Anything else is heresy, punishable ultimately by death.

Well Pelagius was having none of that. A monk, not ordained, and thus technically a layman, Pelagius first got into trouble with the Church when he visited Rome around 380. Appalled by the showy wealth of the Church hierarchy and especially the Papacy, he railed against its profligacy and corruption. He attributed this hedonism to Augustine, who in his Confessions taught that mankind is basically evil, that good works do not count toward salvation and that sexual desire was inherited depravity. He disputed Augustine’s doctrine of original sin arguing that man’s nature was not tainted by the sin of Adam.  He advocated free will and that anyone could get into heaven by being a good person. No one needed the assistance of a Church administered sacrament. Pelagius placed on each individual the burden of and blame for every sin as a fully deliberate act. He held that everyone is born free to make one's choices as one will. A person can be saved if he or she makes up his or her mind to live a correct, moral life, to choose good and reject evil. For Pelagius, Jesus was more model than savior. He contended that the Christianization of the Empire was not making true Christians of people, rather only 'conforming pagans.’ Contrary to Augustine and subsequent Christian theologians who have almost always taken a negative view of sexual pleasure and women in general, Pelagius did not believe sexuality was tainted and argued that it could be enjoyed fully within marriage.  His outspoken opposition to the prudishness, misogyny and opulence of the newly developing Church attracted a following and he soon became a well-known spiritual adviser and influential theologian.

In 415 Pelagius was accused of heresy by Augustine and St. Jerome, the editor of the new Vulgate Latin Bible. He was acquitted twice but his treatise, "On Free Will" got him into trouble again in 417. Finally he was convicted of heresy by a council in Carthage in 418 and was excommunicated by Pope Zosimus. He and his followers were banned from Rome and after they left the city were never seen again.

ALCHEMY: Science or Sophistry?

ALCHEMY: Science or Sophistry?

When you hear the word “alchemy” do you think of a wizened, myopic geezer toiling over smoldering ethers while attempting to turn base metal into gold? Do you think of sorcerers? Witches? Do you conjure up images of evil? Would you be surprised to learn that the very earliest theoreticians propounding an atomic theory called themselves alchemists? Or that they came up with their atomic theories nearly three thousand years ago! Would you believe that their theory was essentially correct?  Can you imagine that alchemy once was synonymous with reputable scientific inquiry? 

For those who have read, or intend to read The Flight of the Sorceress, you will find several references to alchemy. My research, in preparation for writing the novel revealed that Hypatia, who is portrayed in my novel as a philosopher, mathematician and scientist, was accused by her enemies of being an alchemist. By the time of the novel, (410-415 A.D.) “alchemy” was becoming associated with magic and the occult as a result of a Church-instigated campaign to destroy the study of science. Why? What the hell happened that turned science into magic? What was the Church worried about? To figure that out, I delved into the history of alchemy and learned something about how its suppression as the study of science caused it to be warped into something occult.

Alchemy didn’t start out as a pastime of kooks, crazies, magicians and sorcerers.  It had its origins in the search for knowledge.

“The word “alchemy” is actually a combination of two words: Al means the Mighty Sun. Chemi means Fire. Khem was the name of ancient Egypt, where alchemy is believed to have begun. Someone named Hermes Trismegistus is supposed to have invented the concept of alchemy. Whether this was a single person or a group of “initiates” is in dispute. Hermes is a generic name associated with “initiates.” Trismegistus means "Thrice-Great." Whether one man or a group, Hermes Trismegistus produced a collection of writings, at least 42 volumes, called the Books of Hermes. Supposedly, this encyclopedia contained all of the knowledge of the world at that time, including six volumes specifically dedicated to medicine.

As early as the seventh century B.C. the Books of Hermes was being used to teach by Greek philosophers including the noted Greek alchemist Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras was the originator or an atomic theory. He taught that space was filled with a countless number of atoms and that the atoms formed physical substances. Later alchemists refined this atomic theory by theorizing that these atoms were always in motion.

The practice of alchemy seems to have become so popular that by the third century A.D. Diocletian felt threatened.  In the year 296, he set out to destroy all Egyptian books on alchemy. Despite this attack by Diocletian, neo-Platonists adopted alchemy as part of their philosophy in the fourth century A.D. By then, the word “alchemy” was in common usage.

Since alchemy claimed to be able to explain the secrets of creation, the newly empowered Catholic Church declared it to be (knowledge) a forbidden fruit, given to humanity by the fallen angels. Acquiring such knowledge, like eating the apple, allowed man to become more like God.  As such, investigations into the hidden works of nature were deemed sacrilegious. In addition, since a large body of alchemy originally had to do with the healing arts the Church was not only attacking an entire compilation of everything people knew, it was specifically attempting to eradicate the teaching of medicine. [1] In many parts of the civilized world, healing was an occupation allowed to women, and thus this attack had both scientific and misogynistic impact.

It took the concerted efforts of the Church over the next two centuries to eradicate alchemy’s association with real science. This involved the systematic destruction of hundreds of years of research and experiments. When The Flight of the Sorceress takes place (the early fifth century A.D.) the Church was well into its own campaign to wipe out all teaching and references to this subject.

The destruction of the records of scientific discoveries paved the way for a bastardization of alchemy, allowing for the publication of a work called The Divine Art of Making Gold and Silver in the early fifth century. No longer would alchemy be portrayed as the study of pure science in combination with philosophy. Now it would become associated with greed: a search for devilish knowledge on how to transform God’s creations into physical wealth. This was the beginning of the end for alchemy as a science and the beginning of its transformation into a cult of magic. And it permitted the Church to ban alchemy (meaning the quest for scientific knowledge) as an evil, even diabolical activity of witches and sorcerers who were condemned to death by stoning in the Bible.

Hypatia was a neo-Platonist. That is why, as related in The Flight of the Sorceress, Cyril, the Alexandrian prelate, accused Hypatia of teaching from the Book of Hermes and of being an alchemist.  Her murder in 415 A.D. caused pagan scholars to flee Egypt for Athens where they managed to survive until 529 A.D. when Emperor Justinian closed down their last academy.

From then until the present alchemy has evoke images of wizened crackpots toiling over steaming cauldrons while attempting to find a solution that would turn base metals into gold —precisely the image the Church desired to pin on anyone who might have the temerity to search for knowledge through scientific experimentation.

---

[1] . A facsimile of one of these medical treatises of Hermes apparently exists at Astor Library of New York and contains descriptions of over 700 medicines, some of which can not be identified.

Read How I Turned into THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

Read how Hurricane Carol turned me into THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and caused me to attack a restaurant. A true story right out of the 1950s. http://agauchepress.com/category/whats-new/

THE LATEST E-BOOK STATS:

• In February 2011 e-books ranked as the #1 format in all categories of trade publishing,
• In January/February 2011 e-book sales represented 27% of book sales.
• 2010 e-book sales almost reached $1 billion.
• E-book sales were up in 2010 by 400-600% from 2009.
• 2010 e-book sales revenue was 7-10% of total book sales.
• 2009 e-book sales revenue was just 1%.
• 13 million e-book readers were sold in 2010. 50% of those sales were in last quarter of 2010.  
• Only about 4 million e-book readers were sold in 2009.
• The average  reader of e-books currently reads about 41% of his/her books in digital form.

OPEN INVITATION

If you have a book group, study group or chat group and any of the topics raised in this blog or THE FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS involve something you want to discuss or debate, feel free to reply to this blog and I am happy to work out a schedule for a time when we can connect. I am available on Gmail video chat as well as through the blog. Barry