Prayer to the Blue Saint #2
I, on the other hand—poor me, infinitely blind in my ignorance—get the opposite sense: Something bothers me about this flagrant innovation, though in the moment I can’t put my finger on what.
Might it not be inconvenient, even disrespectful, such a huge artifice in a sacred space?
My spirit isn’t open to wonder the way Thomas’s is, a quality that makes him exceptional.
Aware of my limitations, I don’t dare speak my qualms; I don’t want to bring him down from his soaring state of awe.
I keep silent and push down my unease, but inside I continue to brood on the matter.
It’s clear that this ostentatious stained glass window looks scandalous when compared with the discreet ones found in the old churches dotting our region of Lazio: small plain ocher rectangles made with the ancestral and almost monochromatic technique of dying glass with uranium oxide.
My own feeling is that nothing in this Strasbourg church invites zeal or seclusion.
On the contrary, everything here fosters fantasizing, distraction, even delirium.
Doesn’t Thomas realize this bold novelty borders on sacrilege?
No. Thomas is still staring at this architectural chimera, and I study his avid gaze and the beatific smile that lights his face.
I grow more confused, and wonder how the hierarchies of our strict Dominican order could have allowed the construction of such a stupid thing at the heart of the Christian world. What can I do to keep Thomas’s overwhelming, slightly childish enthusiasm from leading him into a trap?
“Master, I see your pupils are dilated. Might you feel ill?” I ask. “You’re sweating quite a lot. Do you feel all right?”
The truth is, Thomas Aquinas is sweating buckets under his black and white habit, perhaps because of the summer weather, or his ample flesh.
Without wanting to judge, much less offend, I can’t help but note the markedly different appearances of the two most revered male saints of the time: the ethereal, ascetic figure of Francis of Assisi, and the big, voluminous body of Thomas Aquinas, sensual and pulpy by nature.
My master sweats. But it doesn’t seem to be only from the summer heat. Perhaps there’s a fever behind his sudden flush. A rise in temperature from the intense emotions he’s experiencing? So much perspiration can’t be a good sign, not at all.
“Close your eyes for a moment, dear Master,” I say, and he complies. “Do you understand? All this is nothing more than lies and artifice, don’t let the light trick you, my dearest master. You see? If you close your eyes, the trickery goes away. The light doesn’t exist if we can’t see it . . .”
“Are you saying light exists only because we see it? No! We are the ones who wouldn’t exist if it did not see us!” Thomas Aquinas replies, preempting the famous phrase that Goethe would utter many years later.
I can’t help but notice that the master’s ecstasy doesn’t come from the rose window so much as from one of the oblong stained glass windows that flank it, specifically the one on the left, which shows a feminine figure directly lit up from behind, at this instant, by the sun, whose slant has shifted.
“You see her?” Thomas asks me.
“See who, Master?”
“Her, the woman in the stained glass, how can you not see her? Right now she radiates light . . . she seems to have emerged from the spell of a dream.”
An intense glowing blue aura surrounds the glass woman.
The sacristan approaches and explains to us that the local glassworkers have never before achieved that striking shade of blue.
In the East, however, it’s existed for a long time, thanks to an old technique of crushing precious lapis lazuli into a powder.
When it arrived in France, this lapis lazuli blue was hailed as extremely valuable and given the name blue ultramarine, because it came from across the sea.
It’s a deep and breathtaking blue, somewhere between azure and turquoise.
A sea blue that sometimes seems to belong more to the sky, but not just any sky: a sky of cosmic spectacle and mysterious comfort. 1
“Is she a saint?” I ask, hoping to justify my master’s enchantment by the svelte feminine figure beaming colored light from on high.
“A saint, yes. In her own way,” Thomas says, half lost in thought.
Thomas is indeed thinking about something else; he’s started turning around an idea Goethe would put into words five centuries later: What if colors are the actions and afflictions of light?
As he stands before the vision of this woman with her startling cobalt blue or ultramarine halo, Aquinas utters pompous words, declaring that, as they move through colored glass, sunrays pulverize time, gilding the everyday with beauty, making it eternal.
He also says that this Blue Woman, though nonexistent, is made real by the rare alchemy of light, color, and time.
“Are you suggesting, Master, that this woman exists in flesh-and-blood form?”
“Yes. She exists in flesh and light.”
I stare at the woman in the glass, and take in her sullen face—displeased, or defiant?
—almost a frown, or at least neither beatific nor friendly, nor is it long-suffering, as would be appropriate for the Blessed Virgin, Mater Dolens.
What’s more, her tunic is too tight on her body, and its cadmium yellow is hardly demure, so bright it borders on gold.
Her skin, visible on her face, neck, and hands, has been wrought in pale blue glass, unlike other biblical characters portrayed on the great rose window, whose skin is made of milky-white glass, as if the artist had wanted to mark this woman’s race as different, browner, though not Black: Moorish skin.
The warm, alluring skin of a North African woman.
I think with disgust that the mere presence of this foreigner mars a temple of the Christian faith.
“Look!” Aquinas shouts suddenly. “It’s Regina Sabae! It’s her, son, I’m sure, I recognized her immediately! I know you well.” Now Thomas was speaking directly to the glass image. “You’re the same Blue Woman who appears to me in dreams!”
“Listen, Master, that blue lady who you say visits your dreams must be the Blessed Virgin, remember that Mary is the only woman with the right to flaunt the sky’s color on her mantle, and no other female should be in friars’ dreams .
. .” I’m still trying to come to terms with a Thomas who’s carried away to the point of not hearing me anymore, he’s talking and talking, uttering words in a low voice as if just for himself or perhaps for the private audience of that apparition.
“Until now, she had only been a sweet flicker of blue light before my eyes,” Thomas murmurs. “But now she’s taking shape . . . she is incarnate!”
Goodness, I think, if that’s how we’re starting, where on earth are we headed?
I suppose it’s not my fault that I don’t understand what’s happening, it’s beyond what I can manage.
My devotion to the master sharpens my angst in the face of signs that, to me, suggest that he might be getting confused, straying from the rightful path, getting senile with age, or just plain going mad.
“Don’t be afraid.” Aquinas tries to calm me down.
“Nothing strange is happening here, Regina Sabae is nothing more than a waking of the soul . . . but even that is a great deal. Of course there’s nothing malignant here, nor even anything devoid of reason, capisci, ragazzo?
She, the Queen of Sheba, is teaching me to perceive secret vibrations, she’s an open window to a vast yet delicate power . . .”
The blue lady wears an extravagant crown, not bejeweled with precious stones, like those of queens, but topped with a pair of small deer horns.
“Look, please, Master,” I beg. “The woman in the glass has horns, that’s a bad sign, demonic, even, a message warning us to stay away . . .”
Aquinas pays me no mind; just the opposite, he gets closer to her, drawn like a fly to honey.
“Those horns of hers aren’t of the devil, my dear disciple, enough with the superstitions.
Little horns on her forehead demonstrate that she possesses a mystical, dual, visionary nature.
It’s been said by Jerome of Stridon, referring to the prophet Moses, cornuta esset facies sua, his face was horned, which meant he was blessed with light or clairvoyance.
And she too is crowned by horns! It’s a sign of transformation and extraordinary powers. ”
“What kind of powers, Master?”
“The power to blend two realms into one: animal and human, feminine and masculine, celestial and of the earth.”
I find this loathsome, and now I’m truly scandalized, suspecting all of this is very serious, and even more serious is the glow in the master’s face of one who’s gone astray.
I stare at Thomas and don’t recognize him, I think it would be best to get him far from this place as soon as possible.
But Thomas Aquinas doesn’t move. He stands in front of the stained glass for a long time, bathed head to toe in the ambiguous light that bursts through that window, pouring day into the sacred room’s night.
“A light suspended in the womb of darkness . . .” Thomas babbles.
I’m getting more and more nervous. What’s happening is alarming.
Why is Thomas still there, ecstatic and paralyzed?
What could be going through his mind, why all this effort to understand what this woman supposedly wants to tell him?
My master explains to me that, thanks to the varying effects of sun and clouds from outside the church, the glass woman comes to life and moves, her frown softens, her expression sweetens, and wind seems to stir her clothes.
“But no, Master! She’s not moving, it’s just a still image.” I’m doing my best to make him see reason.
“It’s not an image, son, it’s an apparition.”
“Aren’t they the same thing, image and apparition? Do you feel all right, Master? Shouldn’t we go find something to eat in a nearby tavern, or a shady spot under a tree where you can lie down and rest a bit? Perhaps your breakfast was too light and you need to recover your strengths.”
But Thomas doesn’t respond, doesn’t even seem to notice my presence.
It’s as if I didn’t exist, as if Thomas no longer knew me, why does he seem so distant, he who until today has always been so thoughtful and warm?
I don’t recognize the great, wise Aquinas in this deranged, stubborn man standing before me.
Where could my master be, who was always calm and polite, large-hearted and of generous if somewhat distracted mind?
Where could his lamb’s meekness and natural patience, qualities of an exquisitely educated man, have gone?
Why is he startled by my touch? And what’s caused this change in his expression, as if he were watching something I can’t see?
It’s as if he had sight and I were blind, as if he flew through heights I cannot reach.
Foreboding floods my mind and I’m filled with terror, a sudden sense of abandonment.
Time has passed. It’s getting late. The miracle of colored light has faded and the Blue Woman has lost her halo.
“I warned you, Master. Didn’t I say all this was no more than a trick? You see? The stained glass woman is disappearing.”
“She’s not disappearing, son, don’t be obtuse. She’s not disappearing, she’s just surrendering to the night. Taking refuge in night.”
“Well, I’d say darkness swallowed her.”
“There’s no such thing as darkness, caro ragazzo.
What seems like darkness shimmers with a special kind of light.
Even in the deepest shadow, we can seek, and perhaps find, a hidden light.
2 Can’t you see the name this woman bears on the ribbon across her chest?
Her name is Aurora Consurgens! It says so right there!
You, doubting young man, are one of those who need to see to believe, and soon you’ll see, we’ll both be witnesses.
She’ll be reborn tomorrow at dawn, because she is Aurora Rising! ”
“Aurora Rising? Didn’t you say she was called Regina Sabae?”
“You don’t understand, or don’t want to.
Apparitions are timid creatures that frighten easily and don’t confess their true names.
This one is called Regina Sabae, yes, but at other times she’s called Shulamite, Sheba, or Balkis.
When she wants, she’s also called Aurora.
Apparitions are like that, intangible. They hide under various names, toy with you, play hide-and-seek, now you see it and now you don’t, they slide from visible to invisible, they’re tricksters above all. ”
We sleep in the elements, under a warm sky, and at dawn my master and I begin our return on mules along hot summer roads.
Although we travel side by side, for the first time there’s distance between us.
Thomas seems more and more engrossed in that other reality that calls to him and that his fingertips can almost touch.
He sings jovially, you might think his voice would be booming and operatic given his size, but no: Thou hast doves’ eyes, thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners .
. . In a clear, nostalgic voice, in a Neapolitan timbre, Thomas intones a blue melody, fresh as water in May.
I grow more and more worried and unsettled, I’m watching my master from the corner of my eye, I already sense what’s about to unfold from this moment forward.
Because something has changed, something extremely subtle but infinitely dangerous that has to do with women, sensory passion, pagan figures, breasts like gazelles, suspicious lights, and mistaken visions.
Something strange has burst through, an incubus perhaps, or the germ of an impurity, something that holds the master’s mind under its spell.
Or could it be lust, stealthy and malicious, that invades Thomas without him knowing, like thieves breaking into houses by night?
“I don’t believe in the kindness of that light he says he sees,” I murmur, out of my master’s earshot. “Thomas believes it’s divine, but to me it’s sinister. I’m afraid that light comes from a foul, unmentionable place, and brings with it an evil, corrupt intention . . .”
I mumble my fears to the beat of my mule’s steps; could my master’s wisdom or saintliness be starting to deteriorate?
“I’m not wise, dear boy, I’m just attentive and curious,” Thomas Aquinas replies, reading my thoughts. “Nor am I a saint. I’m barely a good man.”