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Authors: Jane Langton
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gold!"
She watched him go. Povero ragazzo! He looked so thin and stooped. The incessant demands of the conference had worn him out.
But at home there was a surprise. The first package of relics from the Treasury of San Marco was waiting for him.
"There was an armed guard," exclaimed his mother-in-law. "He made me sign for it. He wanted to stay until you came home. I was insulted! Did he think I was going to make off with his precious package? I told him he had another think coming. I asked him what was in it, and, do you know, he wouldn't tell me? I told him you were my son-in-law and that we had no secrets from each other, no secrets whatsoever, but he wouldn't say a word. I insisted that he leave my house, and he made a dreadful scene, but at last I literally pushed him out."
Sam smiled wearily. He could imagine the cowardice of the guard in the face of his bullying mother-in-law.
He went to his study and put the box on his desk. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and the knots in the string had been fastened with sealing wax. And yet the package had a disheveled look, as though someone had tried to undo the wrapping without untying the string. Perhaps his mother-in-law in her wounded pride and everlasting inquisitiveness had tried to unwrap it and failed.
Well, no matter. Sam cut the string, removed the wrapping, and opened the box. The relics from San Marco were in numbered packets, each one enclosed in tissue paper. He set them down carefully on a big piece of drawing paper and gently withdrew one of the relics from its packet. It was a piece of sacred wood. All together there were five fragments supposed to have come from the True Cross and ten pieces of unidentified bone.
Had they ever been looked at critically before? For how many hundreds or even thousands of years had they been objects of veneration? How many tragic appeals had been whispered to them, how many agonized prayers? It struck Sam with sudden force that his irreverent hands, picking up and testing these most sacred of Christian relics, were the hands of an infidel. He had to remind himself that it was high time these pieces of bone and fragments of sacro legno were looked at with a clear and objective eye.
The questions he would put to them were obvious. Were the bones human? And how old were the pieces of wood? Only if they had existed for nearly two thousand years could they have any claim to authenticity.
The determination of age would require carbon dating, and that was beyond his power. But at least he could determine whether or not the pieces of the cross were all from the same kind of tree. Were they oak or pine or cedar of Lebanon? His microscope could at least tell him that. And what if they were from trees that never existed in that part of the world at all? They would be exposed at last as frauds.
He gazed at the sacred fragments, smiling to himself. If he proved that they were not from the original cross, in other words that they had not been discovered by Saint Helena and distributed all over the believing world, what would people say? Well, of course they would be outraged by the sacrilege.
Putting his head down on his arms, he told himself sleepily that it didn't matter now. In fact it was liberating, in a way, not to care anymore. Sam closed his eyes and began thinking about the Crucifixion.
It had really happened. There was no doubt about that. It had been a genuine historical incident. The man called Jesus had been convicted and brought to a place of execution and crucified. None of the Gospel writers had seen it, but all of them had described the horrible succession of events as though repeating the account of an eyewitness.
Sam fell asleep imagining the cross itself, a few pieces of timber hammered together and stuck in the ground, leaning to one side until shored up by leftover scraps of lumber, and stained over the years with the blood of many a crucified wretch. Perhaps it was true that there had been
She watched him go. Povero ragazzo! He looked so thin and stooped. The incessant demands of the conference had worn him out.
But at home there was a surprise. The first package of relics from the Treasury of San Marco was waiting for him.
"There was an armed guard," exclaimed his mother-in-law. "He made me sign for it. He wanted to stay until you came home. I was insulted! Did he think I was going to make off with his precious package? I told him he had another think coming. I asked him what was in it, and, do you know, he wouldn't tell me? I told him you were my son-in-law and that we had no secrets from each other, no secrets whatsoever, but he wouldn't say a word. I insisted that he leave my house, and he made a dreadful scene, but at last I literally pushed him out."
Sam smiled wearily. He could imagine the cowardice of the guard in the face of his bullying mother-in-law.
He went to his study and put the box on his desk. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and the knots in the string had been fastened with sealing wax. And yet the package had a disheveled look, as though someone had tried to undo the wrapping without untying the string. Perhaps his mother-in-law in her wounded pride and everlasting inquisitiveness had tried to unwrap it and failed.
Well, no matter. Sam cut the string, removed the wrapping, and opened the box. The relics from San Marco were in numbered packets, each one enclosed in tissue paper. He set them down carefully on a big piece of drawing paper and gently withdrew one of the relics from its packet. It was a piece of sacred wood. All together there were five fragments supposed to have come from the True Cross and ten pieces of unidentified bone.
Had they ever been looked at critically before? For how many hundreds or even thousands of years had they been objects of veneration? How many tragic appeals had been whispered to them, how many agonized prayers? It struck Sam with sudden force that his irreverent hands, picking up and testing these most sacred of Christian relics, were the hands of an infidel. He had to remind himself that it was high time these pieces of bone and fragments of sacro legno were looked at with a clear and objective eye.
The questions he would put to them were obvious. Were the bones human? And how old were the pieces of wood? Only if they had existed for nearly two thousand years could they have any claim to authenticity.
The determination of age would require carbon dating, and that was beyond his power. But at least he could determine whether or not the pieces of the cross were all from the same kind of tree. Were they oak or pine or cedar of Lebanon? His microscope could at least tell him that. And what if they were from trees that never existed in that part of the world at all? They would be exposed at last as frauds.
He gazed at the sacred fragments, smiling to himself. If he proved that they were not from the original cross, in other words that they had not been discovered by Saint Helena and distributed all over the believing world, what would people say? Well, of course they would be outraged by the sacrilege.
Putting his head down on his arms, he told himself sleepily that it didn't matter now. In fact it was liberating, in a way, not to care anymore. Sam closed his eyes and began thinking about the Crucifixion.
It had really happened. There was no doubt about that. It had been a genuine historical incident. The man called Jesus had been convicted and brought to a place of execution and crucified. None of the Gospel writers had seen it, but all of them had described the horrible succession of events as though repeating the account of an eyewitness.
Sam fell asleep imagining the cross itself, a few pieces of timber hammered together and stuck in the ground, leaning to one side until shored up by leftover scraps of lumber, and stained over the years with the blood of many a crucified wretch. Perhaps it was true that there had been
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