Jean (or “Jehannot”) and Abraham were both respected and trustworthy Parisian merchants. Between these friends of different faiths, the topic of religion was no infrequent topic of contention. Jean dependably failed to convince Abraham to convert.
After many years, Abraham finally made a bid to resolve the question for good: he would travel to Rome to observe the lives of the Pope and Cardinals to evaluate their spiritual merit. If they were holy men, indeed, then Abraham would loose no time in effecting his conversion. Naturally, Jean was aghast because the wickedness that pervaded the lives of the Roman clergy was hardly a secret. Convinced that Abraham would never convert if he were to behold the true state of affairs, Jean tried every means to dissuade his friend from making the excursion. But Jean’s efforts proved fruitless and Abraham made ready to depart for Rome.
Once in Rome, Abraham studied the behaviour of the Pope, cardinals, and other prelates. Boccaccio describes the scene:
The Jew mounted to horse and as quickliest he might betook himself to the court of Rome, he was honourably entertained of his brethren, and there abiding, without telling any the reason of his coming, he began diligently to enquire into the manners and fashions of the Pope and Cardinals and other prelates and of all the members of his court, and what with that which he himself noted, being a mighty quick-witted man, and that which he gathered from others, he found all, from the highest to the lowest, most shamefully given to the sin of lust, and that not only in the way of nature, but after the Sodomitical fashion, without any restraint of remorse or shamefastness, insomuch that the interest of courtesans and catamites was of no small avail there in obtaining any considerable thing.
Moreover, he manifestly perceived them to be universally gluttons, wine-bibbers, drunkards, slaves to their bellies, in the fashion of brute beasts, and given, more than to aught else, after lust. Looking farther, he saw them all covetous and greedy after money, insomuch that human, nay, Christian blood, no less than things sacred, whatsoever they might be, whether pertaining to the sacrifices of the altar or to the benefices of the church, they sold and bought indifferently for a price, making a greater traffic and having more brokers thereof than folk at Paris of silks and stuffs or what not else. Manifest simony they had christened 'procuration' and gluttony 'sustentation,' as if God apprehended not,—let be the meaning of words but,—the intention of depraved minds and would suffer Himself, after the fashion of men, to be duped by the names of things. All this, together with much else which must be left unsaid, was supremely displeasing to the Jew, who was a sober and modest man, and himseeming he had seen enough, he determined to return to Paris and did so.
Upon his return to Paris, Jean inquired, reluctantly, after Abraham’s experience, to which Abraham responded, “may God condemn them all!”
He elaborated, “I tell you this because as far as I was able to determine, I conceived there no holiness, no devotion, no good work or exemplary life, or anything among the clergy fitting of the slightest sliver of praise. Instead, lust, avarice, gluttony, fraud, envy, pride, adultery, covetousness, backbiting, and the like prevailed above all. Nay, I should say, it is even worse, for so completely in order were these things that there that I can only conclude that the city is a laboratory for Satan himself, together with his minions, and be it far from me or anyone in his right sense to conceive it to be a dwellingplace of God. It is evident besides that the clergy are trying, as swiftly as they can, and moreover, with all the talent and industry that they possess, to reduce the Christian faith to a heap of ashes and to banish its remnants from the face of this Earth. The very ones who should be serving as its foundation1 seem intent to burn it to the ground, to commit its relics to the flames, and scatter its ashes to the four winds.”
To Jean’s astonishment, Abraham concluded that, under those circumstances, only the Holy Spirit could have sustained the Church to the present day and must, therefore, be its true foundation. And the friends hied themselves to Notre Dame for Abraham’s baptism.
In allusion to the play on words in Matthew 16:18, in which Jesus gives Simon the name Peter, which is “rock” in Greek (πέτρα):
And I (Christ) say also unto thee (Simon), That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Hi Max,
Here is what I had in mind for Stewart, who has written an excellent essay on JPI recently. Your own foray into Thomas Kuhn and Robin Collingwood was the motivational force, along with Stewart's dogmatic remarks from the church theocracy.
"From outside, cosmic thoughts work into us, from inside, humanity's will works outward. Humanity's will and cosmic thought cross in this crossing point, just as the objective and the subjective element once crossed in the breath. We must learn to feel how our will works through our eyes and how the activity of the senses delicately mingles with the passivity, bringing about the crossing of cosmic thoughts and humanity's will. We must develop this new Yoga will. Then something will be imparted to us that is of like nature to that which was imparted to human beings in the breathing process three millennia ago. Our comprehension must become much more soul-like, much more spiritual.
Goethe's world conception strove in this direction. Goethe endeavored to recognize the pure phenomenon, which he called the primal phenomenon, by arranging the phenomena which work upon man in the external world, without the interference of the Luciferic thought which stems from the head of man himself; this thought was only to serve in the arranging of the phenomena. Goethe did not strive for the law of nature, but for the primal phenomenon; this is what is significant with him. If, however, we arrive at this pure phenomenon, this primal phenomenon, we have something in the outer world which makes it possible for us to sense the unfolding of our will in the perception of the outer world, and then we shall lift ourselves to something objective-subjective, as it still was contained, for instance, in the ancient Hebrew doctrine. We must learn not merely to speak of the contrast between the material and the spiritual, but we must recognize the interplay of the material and the spiritual in a unity precisely in sense perception. If we no longer look at nature merely materially and, further, if we do not “think into it” a soul element, as Gustave Theodore Fechner did, then something will arise which will signify for us what the Yahve culture signified for mankind three millennia ago. If we learn, in nature, to receive the soul element together with sense perception, then we shall have the Christ relationship to outer nature. This Christ relationship to outer nature will be something like a kind of spiritual breathing process.
We shall be aided by realizing more and more, with our sound common sense, that pre-existence lies at the basis of our soul existence. We must supplement the purely egotistical conception of post-existence, which springs merely from our longing to exist after death, by the knowledge of the pre-existence of the soul. We must again rise to the conception of the real eternity of the soul. This is what may be called Michael culture. If we move through the world with the consciousness that with every look we direct outward, with every tone we hear, something spiritual, something of the nature of the soul element stream out into the world, we have gained the consciousness which mankind needs for the future."
GA 194, November 30, 1919
This story has given me a beautiful spark for the day