How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 465

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

“Come on, let’s go out. What you see over there is the cathedral of the Venetian Archdiocese.”

“Wow….”

As soon as Elias emerged from the alley, he looked around like a tourist. He carefully walked across the plaza where shallow water had risen and was captivated by the Roman architecture of the plaza reflected on the water’s surface. The morning glow covered the world in blue. The water’s surface could not escape the light either. I too whispered as I gazed at the city where medieval and Renaissance styles naturally harmonized.

“The city is glowing.”

Nature illuminated the city, but the buildings that had endured and stood for long years, worn with age, were admirable in themselves. The unique appearance of the façade visible in the distance was the same. The arched entrance of the cathedral’s main gate was representative Romanesque architecture, but the dome-shaped decorative sections tinted yellowish by sunlight, the five massive domes rising above the basilica, and the curved column capitals exuded a Byzantine atmosphere, while Gothic traces could be read in the array of small spires filling the gaps of sky between buildings. The beauty that Venice emanated as a maritime gateway connecting East and West was somewhat heterogeneous, but for that very reason, it touched the heart deeply. Narke walked toward the plaza of this beautiful island and answered.

“Right? They brought many things from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Thanks to turning Constantinople into ruins, they monopolized Mediterranean trade, and being well-positioned, they prospered greatly, so it’s bound to look magnificent even now.”

As far as I knew, Venice was the city that benefited most from the Fourth Crusade. Venice, which had been a tributary state of the Byzantine Empire, reversed its position by capturing Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium, during the Fourth Crusade and even devoured half the empire. Therefore, it was natural for Narke to bring up the Fourth Crusade story while looking at Venice’s scenery. Even if you grabbed any passerby and asked them to recall Venice’s history, they would inevitably pass through the Crusades.

Moreover, after the Fourth Crusade, the Venetians made St. Mark’s Basilica and plaza their cultural axis and changed many things, so for us who had business with ‘St. Mark,’ this was an even more indispensable story at this very moment. However, when sensitive topics came up, Elias began watching Narke’s expression, which was also unavoidable. Knowing this, Narke smiled and surveyed Venice’s panorama. He gestured toward where St. Mark’s Basilica was located.

“Let’s go closer.”

“Good!”

Then Narke smiled and began speaking quietly.

“Initially, there’s a story that the church built before the current cathedral was constructed was modeled after a church in Constantinople. It was built when Byzantine influence was substantial, so that would make sense, right?”

“I wonder if it’s true. We could know if we could time travel.”

Elias muttered in response. Narke kindly explained so that Elias could gather as much information as possible to decode Ainsiedel’s cipher.

“St. Mark’s Basilica was gradually built into its current form when they brought St. Mark’s relics from Alexandria, Egypt. No, this entire plaza flourished when they received St. Mark’s relics. So you can’t separate St. Mark from Venice.”

Narke spoke, I remembered, and Elias connected. Actually, all three of us shared the same role. I too was pondering what kind of traitor ‘St. Mark’ might refer to in the Papal States while listening to Narke’s words.

St. Mark was more deeply connected to Venice than I had thought. We reached the center of the plaza and listened to Narke’s words as he pointed to the basilica’s façade.

“After putting Byzantium under their feet, Venice illuminated Venice with the spoils they plundered from Byzantium. Their desire to seize Mediterranean hegemony is clearly revealed. In this process, this place was also packaged as a holy site of early Christian relics, and Doge Geno spoke very importantly about how the Christian relics here were moved from Jerusalem to Constantinople, and then from there to Venice, saying that he too reached Venice through St. Mark’s grace. Actually, in that regard, Enrico Dandolo was the best—he was the person who used relics most propagandistically to say that God’s will resided in Venice.”

“Geno, Enrico. Okay.”

Elias repeated with gleaming eyes, determined to absorb everything as Narke had initially requested. We scanned the plaza with the feeling of listening to a docent’s explanation.

“If you look over there, you can see sculptures of Mark and angels standing toward heaven above the arched entrance. Below that are winged lion reliefs.”

Elias pointed to the angel sculptures with sharp eyes.

“What angels are those? This is important.”

“Well, it’s not an important sculpture in terms of who they are. They just represent angels. Instead, the bell tower to the left of this cathedral, do you see this tall building? The golden sculpture on top there is the Archangel Gabriel.”

Following his pointing direction, there’s a bell tower made of thick red walls clearly distinguished from the cathedral with a faded green spire. Elias craned his neck to check the top of the spire and muttered.

“A false lead. Gabriel… Okay. Then returning to the façade, what do these mosaics under the arches depict?”

“This depicts the process of stealing Mark’s remains from Alexandria.”

“…So everything was stolen….”

“Haha. They say it was done to protect the saint’s remains from Muslims. If you go over there, the picture in the very center has a slightly different style, right? This was painted in later periods. It depicts the Last Judgment from the Bible.”

A saint carrying a massive wooden cross on his shoulder holds one hand in the air while angels around him blow trumpets. People look at the saint, filled with awe and fear.

“Hey, there’s quite a bit of information to store here.”

“Elias. Is there anything connecting organically yet?”

“Well, I wonder.”

Elias drawled his words and played dumb. Since Elias began observing the sculptures and reliefs plundered from Constantinople one by one, I also looked around and enjoyed the scenery.

“It’s really magnificent. I can really feel that I’ve come to Italy.”

“It’s splendid. If you go inside, you can see walls and ceilings painted with gold. When you look up, wherever you turn, there are paintings by artists who dominated the Renaissance. The Crusaders plundered countless columns and reliefs from Constantinople, and you’ll see them up ahead too.”

“Hmm, that might be true, but since earlier… are you okay?”

Elias was asking whether it was alright to openly discuss what Christians before the Reformation—that is, Catholics—had done. Although the Crusades were long ago and evaluations of those actions didn’t resonate much, not many clergy brought up Crusade stories. This was because those who regarded the Crusades as glorious achievements coexisted with those who considered them unavoidable given the times but believed they could never happen with modern intellect and should never happen. Hearing this, Narke thought for a moment and then answered calmly.

“I can’t package facts to hide them. How complete would be the peace and majesty that comes from falsehood? History is Clotho’s fabric woven from the intersection of the misdeeds and current actions of those who challenge God’s will. I cannot deny that.”

“It’s refreshing to hear a Greek god’s name from a Christian’s mouth.”

Elias, who said this, is also a Christian and probably knows he goes around doing anything, yet he says this. Without the revival of Greece and Rome, wouldn’t this era be lacking? Narke also found such Elias curious and burst into laughter, then whispered and continued speaking.

“Among those heading toward the broad path, the most fearsome and pitiful group are the Christians who believe they’re walking the narrow path. Was the massacre that occurred on the night of St. Bartholomew’s Day truly doing Christ’s will? But the Catholics who killed the Huguenots believed it was justice advancing toward Christ’s will. This is the appearance of the ignorant masses walking the broad path. That day, Christ would say, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness,’ but they could neither hear what Christ said nor see what Matthew wrote. They carried around crosses symbolizing human sin while remaining ignorant of their own sins, remembering only Christ’s sacrifice. And in a very simple and superficial way….”

Thus teachings fade. We said nothing and waited. Without even looking our way, he continued speaking as if he knew our intentions.

“Even an absolute monarch commanding a continent cannot wield his scepter with unlimited power before the masses. If a monarch who doesn’t know his tyranny is stimulating the threshold doesn’t fulfill a certain amount of good governance, his end will only be the guillotine. Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince,’ which received the choice of Enlightenment thinkers like a trick of fate thanks to paradoxically describing the monarch’s weakness, and Nero’s end both teach us this. That is the masses’ driving force, greatness, and danger. The masses have the power to overcome unjust oppression, but they also have the power to oppress other groups themselves. Then can the guillotine punish the masses’ wrongs?”

I looked at Elias. Elias was quietly gazing at Narke’s back. Elias had summoned Narke into his inner self, and Narke too was sitting before us. We were standing in front of the façade watching the white sun rising above it, but at the same time, we would have been looking into each other’s eyes.

“Execution cannot punish the masses. Only history can reveal that the masses’ beliefs were sinful.”

The historian’s duty is to lead a Copernican revolution at every moment. Borrowing the words of a historian who dominated the 20th century—humanity finally becomes mature through Copernican conversion. On the day when the truth that the sun revolves around the earth no longer functions as truth, knowing the fact that the earth revolves around the sun completely destroys the worldview we believed to be true. The next world opens from the destroyed cracks. Then can the historian escape from contemporary consciousness? He can define the beliefs that predecessors followed as truth as heresy, but in later generations, couldn’t that very thing be revealed as the historian’s bias and hasty judgment bound by the era’s limitations?—Such counterarguments were already extremely natural premises for us, so no one questioned them, and he continued.

“Punishment of the masses can only be made possible by those who have an objective view of past eras, those not bound by interests connected to that era, so even if removing subjectivity from judgment is impossible, wouldn’t it be worth believing that at least those who have escaped that era and possess some measure of objectivity can restore the rights of the dead? From St. Bartholomew’s Day to the days after, only our consciousness can proclaim the innocence of the Huguenots who died. For the same reason. Could I hide that the Crusaders turned Constantinople into ruins and took spoils from temples, private homes, and palaces, and let everyone regard the sins of ancestors who committed shameless fratricide in Byzantium that day, making the people there shed tears of blood, like a midsummer night’s mirage?”

Elias slowly blinked. He knew that his question about whether it was uncomfortable for a Catholic to mention Catholics entering heathen lands and turning them into ruins was unnecessary for Narke, yet after hearing a definitive answer from Narke, he had been wearing an unknowable smile.

Listening to his story, one theme raised its head from deep consciousness. I looked up at the towering cathedral and the gray-blue dawn sky breaking and quietly asked.

“Do you know damnatio memoriae?”

“The record erasure punishment executed by the Roman Senate.”

Narke was swift, befitting a cardinal who had the duty to master all European records since childhood. After answering thus, he continued speaking as if he knew exactly why I had summoned the chisels and picks that erased records.

“How arrogant humans are—they wanted to make what happened into what didn’t happen and be forgotten by everyone. But as you know, damnatio memoriae isn’t a story that ended in the Roman Senate era. If I, being Catholic, hush up that the Crusaders did wrong things, if all Christians are reluctant to talk about what their ancestors did while being blind to religion, that’s no different from record erasure by willful negligence. Therefore, ignorance sometimes becomes sin, and creating an environment where nothing can be said while hoping the masses remain ignorant is an unspeakable grave sin, isn’t it?”

“Interesting.”

“That’s trampling on the unresolved rights we must settle. We must remember. Eternal remembrance is our portion.”

He was facing facts in front of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, which prospered from the Fourth Crusade. I know nothing about him, but nevertheless, after hearing his long story, I felt as if I had touched another person’s inner self, even if slightly. Though in reality, I might not have heard anything at all. He spoke like someone who had passed through many things, like a ninety-year-old man, as I had felt before, and precisely because of that, I felt I had grown one step closer to him. His thoughts matched mine frighteningly. At least in parts other than his interests in theology. Yet he remained distant still. As if sensing my thoughts, Narke whispered once more.

“If you want to follow Christ’s will, you have no choice but to go against the Church’s will in some aspects. Unlike secular historians, the Church is the father and mother of the Catholics who committed the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day, even if it escapes this era. So wouldn’t it have no choice but to not fully acknowledge the masses’ and its own responsibility?”

The Vatican of the world I lived in acknowledged the Huguenot massacre that occurred on St. Bartholomew’s Day and over several months afterward in the late 20th century and washed away the 800-year-old grudge with the Eastern Orthodox Church from the Fourth Crusade in the early 21st century, but it wasn’t time for that yet. This was why Narke spoke this way. However, Narke didn’t seem particularly angry at the Church. As if speaking of something that happened long ago, as if recalling a topic he had chewed over hundreds and thousands of times in thought, he just seemed to say—such things happen. Silence continued.

“It’s fun being with you guys.”

Placing his hand on the entrance of the cathedral where Mass hadn’t started yet, Elias suddenly said. I looked at him.

I agreed with his words. Having people nearby who you can communicate with is an incomparable fortune. When the probability of the real world that things not converging to the average cannot happen simultaneously limits the limitlessness of the vast battlefield called the individual, my existence is denied along with it. The belief that because I had acted since childhood, it was impossible to store knowledge other than acting in my head; the belief that even though I tried to choose paths other than acting to survive, this was impossible by ordinary common sense; the belief that it was impossible for one person to have two or three attributes that the masses view positively; and the fact that all the attributes they view positively were closer to diseases I had no choice but to select—these disconnect me from the world. The self-defense that only averages don’t exist in the world sounds hollow to others. Even though the fact that this type of human also exists in the world made my existence real, nothing can be made to understand to those who couldn’t accept it. Because their world and my world were different from each other, not because of their fault, I couldn’t hold anyone responsible, and that meant nothing could come out of my mouth and everything piled up layer by layer beneath my heart. Even when I was in the middle of crowds, I wasn’t… I realize only now that I had felt this way without knowing it. I realized it every time. Every time I conversed with friends.

Conversations with them give me the belief that such people can also exist. For me, conversation flowing without obstruction was a signal that it was okay for me to exist as I am. The vague stuffiness I didn’t even know to consider painful transformed into brief joy. I smiled and answered briefly.

“I agree. Being with you guys… in some sense, it’s fortunate.”

“In some sense?! What sense?”

Elias glared and grabbed my shoulder. I rolled my eyes in confusion and pushed away his face that had come right next to mine. It was true that I was happy to meet Elias, but if I said it was fortunate in every sense, it seemed like I would be committing a sin against Luca, who had gone somewhere unknown.

“Really?”

Narke paused for a long time. When we had walked around the cathedral and were erasing our previous conversation from consciousness, he spoke faintly as if whispering a secret he couldn’t even tell himself.

“Me too.”

* * *

Elias turned his head to scan the surrounding buildings and opened a travel booklet to acquire information. I took out a notebook from my clutch and briefly organized what Narke was saying. It seemed he thought we wouldn’t easily remember since Narke had poured out too much information earlier. Elias wandered around here and there, then came back to the middle of the plaza and pointed to the red, tall flagpoles in front of the cathedral building.

“What’s this?”

“These are flagpoles symbolizing Venice’s prosperity. The color is pretty~”

“It is. Is there any reason why there are specifically three?”

Very astute… Elias tried to understand the meaning embedded in numbers this way too. Though he looks rough, he always does his best at assigned tasks. Yes, even if his goal was something like rebelliously becoming last in the entire school, didn’t he always do his best…? Narke stroked his chin and answered kindly.

“They say it symbolizes the three kingdoms Venice conquered. Crete, Cyprus, and the Peloponnese. Some people also say they’re flagpoles emphasizing Venice’s maritime power.”

“Oh, good. But somehow it doesn’t seem useful.”

“Hahaha….”

“Then what’s this? This lion and human.”

Elias pointed to the massive columns on the left and right sides of the plaza. These were quite far from the bell tower.

“The winged lion column on the left is the San Marco column, and the human column on the right is the San Todaro column. Literally, the left one symbolizes St. Mark, Venice’s patron saint, and the right one… symbolizes Theodore of Amasea, who was originally considered this place’s patron saint before St. Mark became Venice’s patron saint.”

“Theodore of Amasea?”

“He was a Greek born in Amasea who was tortured severely and martyred for believing in Christ. Since St. Theodore was originally Venice’s patron saint, the chapel here was also dedicated to him until the 9th century, but the situation changed when Mark’s remains arrived. In the 12th century, his body was said to have been moved to Brindisi.”

“That’s rather unfair. Do you know anything more?”

“He’s often depicted as a saint who kills evil represented by dragons, but I’m not sure if what he’s standing on now is such a thing. Hmm… And there’s stained glass depicting Theodore’s life in Chartres Cathedral in France, but actually, he’s not very well-known outside Italy.”

He said ‘standing on,’ and indeed, he’s standing on something like a crocodile. Elias nodded and pursed his lips. Narke checked the time and pointed to the cathedral.

“You’ve observed everything outside, right? St. Mark’s body is enshrined inside there. Let’s go in to hear Mass and look around. There might be clues there too. In paintings or sculptures.”

“Good!”

Then Narke created a veil with illusion and wrapped it around my head. Purple-looking blue eyes glinted from under the shade. Then Elias grinned and extended his hand.

“Escort?”

“What escort for just entering a cathedral….”

Despite my reproach, Elias lightly took the hand that Narke—or more precisely, the complete stranger he was impersonating—extended and kissed it. Narke displayed his characteristic acting ability, not flustered at all, and walked into the cathedral gracefully like a real stranger. He seemed so much like a stranger that I thought I might need to use formal speech with him.

Narke dipped his finger in the holy water font, made the sign of the cross, and sat down holding crosses in both hands. Protestant Elias glanced at what Narke was doing and clumsily imitated him, sitting in the seat next to him. We who were awkwardly following the entrance hymn people were singing hoped the priest would appear as quickly as possible. At least I did.

As we sat there, finally the deacon and priest appeared in front of the altar holding the Bible. The priest bowed deeply to the altar, bowed again while standing in front of it, then headed to his position. When the entrance hymn ended, the priest made the sign of the cross.

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”

Elias, who had been making the sign of the cross, suddenly stopped his hand. Narke and I looked at him simultaneously. A familiar light flickered in Elias’s eyes—he gazed into space with the face of someone who had recalled an inspiration and whispered.

“I got it. I know who Judas is.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————