In 1294 Pope Celestine V abdicated after just five months on the job. The real story, which doesn’t end happily, is worth reading on Wikipedia. It is also recounted in The Friar of Carcassonne by Stephen O’Shea. This last was the source I shamelessly plundered to construct the following simplified fable. It is an outtake from a novel I’ve been writing about an AI named Rosalind. Pure hokum, but enjoy if you can.
Rosalind told the story of an elderly hermit who prayed long ago in a cave near a mountain peak. He rose early every day and watched the sky lighten, bruised orange and cut red by jagged peaks. As he contemplated, he heard the birds call amidst the trees of the forest beneath him.
One day, a party of cardinals arrived, each one silk-cushioned like a rich gift in his own curtained carriage. They were accompanied by soldiers and servants and a train of goods mules. When they climbed down, and peered around themselves nervously the hermit thought they looked like fine plumed exotic birds in their robes and hats. He invited them in to share his food. They agreed, but they had their own feast brought into his cave. There was capon and swan, there was wine, there were figs and pastries.
After they had eaten, the eldest and gravest cardinal told the hermit he had been elected pope, the head of the church, the closest to God amongst Christians.
“But I only want to pray.”
“And that,” said the cardinal, “is why you must be pope. We can’t find anyone good enough amongst ourselves.”
“What if I say no?” said the hermit.
“You can’t, Your Holiness. It is decided.”
And so the hermit became pope. He travelled to Aquila, and swapped his rags for fine cloth. He had his filthy hair cut short and perfumed.
Everywhere he looked, though, he saw intrigue and greed, and he longed for his cave, and the light of the sun in the morning as it gleamed on the mountain tops.
He called his cardinals to him one by one.
“Can I abdicate?” he asked.
“No,” said the first, a true devotee of The Lord in heaven, “God has called you.”
“No,” said the second, who knew nothing of God but laboured for the benefit of the world, “You are a good man, and we need a good man at the head of The Church.”
The third cardinal was a clever politician and he knew the law. “Maybe,” he said. “I’ll find a way. But only if you name me your successor.”
“And you’d let me return to my cave, where I can pray, and greet the dawn?” asked the pope.
“Absolutely,” said the cardinal.
And so, in due course, the cardinal found the correct words in an ancient volume, and the pope proclaimed them. Then he retired to pray in a simple room while the cardinal was invested as the new pope.
The next day, the new pontiff called for the old man. The hermit bowed and kissed the pope’s ring. He was already thinking of the long journey back to his cave, of the calls of the birds, the musical note of the brook, sweeter than any of the hundreds of fountains in the city.
“You have offended God,” said the new pope, “by denying your duty and rejecting his gift and his burden. I cannot suffer you to spread your poison abroad.” And he ordered the guard to take him away.
“But you promised!” protested the hermit.
“I was only a common man then,” said the pope. “I have a new name now. Now I am Boniface and I have heard the word of God.”
And they threw him into a bare cell with a stone floor and a straw pallet to sleep on. There, he contemplated and prayed. There was a small window and, in the mornings, he watched the sun rise over the spires. Sometimes he heard the birds call to one another. Eventually he forgot he had ever prayed anywhere else. And one day he died.
Some say he went to heaven for his devotion, and for rising above the venal squabbles of man. Others maintain he was dragged to hell for his disobedience to the will of God, and for promoting the notorious Boniface. Still others believe his spirit stayed where it was, and that, even now, the hermit watches the dawn from the window of his cell and listens for the birds.
