The Inventor - W. E. Gutman

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faith, or depraved cynicism still prevents the pope from grasping the enormity of his counsel. Pro-life -- the protoplasmic kind -- but indifferent to the dignity of man, his outrageous directive condemns millions to an early, agonizing death.

      Tired, facing a busy schedule, Montvert surrenders to fitful, dream-haunted sleep. In the morning he will be speaking about the great Kandinsky, one of the most important innovators in modern art. The painter’s abstract, obsessively geometric, brightly colored canvases of incredible sensorial richness coalesce and break apart in a kaleidoscope of Montvert’s own nightmare-induced creation. Further along in the dream, he enters the Bauhaus, the legendary German art and architecture school from which so many modernists would emerge. Suddenly, the edifice crumbles around him, as it did figuratively in 1933 when the Nazis, fearing the “un-German” (Jewish) influence of social liberals and the impact of “degenerate art” on the pristine Teutonic psyche, shut its doors for the remainder of the war.

      This is no longer Joseph Goebbels’ domain but Montvert has yet to feel at ease in Germany. His discomfort is visceral. Germans may have collectively expiated the sins of their fathers but there is something about their country that he finds troubling -- the language, clipped, guttural, brusque, imperious -- the frosty aloofness, the uniforms, the mannerisms, the formalistic infatuation with “discipline” and “order,” the reemergence of Nazi cells, the transparent nostalgia for the Third Reich’s brief but intoxicating rapture. All hark back to a time, not so very long ago, when Germans enthusiastically goose-stepped to Hitler’s drumbeat. Even in his sleep, Montvert can’t wait to clear off.

      Albeniz, an insomniac, walks home as Madrid’s other self, iridescent and roguish, comes to life in the late evening hours. Lost in thought, brooding over Jan van den Haag’s baffling letter, he turns to another time when darkness reigned, when blindness to man’s inhumanity and deafness to reason were self-inflicted attitudes, not congenital infirmities. Somewhere in the distance church bells strike eleven.

      “We have learned nothing,” he says to himself as he unlocks his apartment door and retires for the night.

      Night in the Middle Ages is neither longer nor shorter than it’s ever been but it’s infinitely darker, filled with impenetrable shadows, and few venture into the sulfurous chasm for there, under a thick mantle of ignorance, superstition and aberrant beliefs, dwell in untold numbers the loathsome incarnations of man’s most hideous fears. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change. Fear of observable truth. Fear of witches, demons, ravenous incubi and insatiable succubi. Fear of temptation. Fear of God’s pitiless tribunal. Fear of Hades and Satan. Fear of sin and eternal damnation.

      As day slowly blanches away the blackness, only the sky dares to brighten. The monstrous visions that populate night retreat for a while but they do not vanish. They return at a time of their own choosing. Day scatters the gloom but it sheds no light. It’s just an optical illusion, a hesitant and fleeting sensation on the retina, not a higher state of consciousness or wisdom. It is in the full blaze of sunlight that the real horror resumes, this time inflicted upon the flesh, not dreamed; branded on the soul, not imagined. The nightmare is real, fed by a collective hallucination that will bloody the pages of history for the next four hundred years.

      In 1314, charged with heresy, Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar is burned at the stake on orders of Pope Clement V, King Philip IV’s all-too-obliging yes-man.

      “Damned,” “accursed,” “banned,” are Spanish epithets reserved for Marranos, the crypto-Jews of the Iberian Peninsula who, by coercion or out of pragmatism, convert to Christianity in the aftermath of the pogroms of 1391. These “conversos,” as they are also called, number more than 100,000. With them the history of the Jews enters a new phase. Hatred of the Jews sparks the introduction of the Inquisition in Spain and hastens their mass expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula.

      The Marranos and their descendants are divided into three groups. Some are indifferent to Judaism or any other religion; they welcome the opportunity to trade oppression for the lucrative careers and life of ease opened to them as Christians. The phenomenon inspires the bitter quip, “Conversion is an ignominy of which only Jews are capable….” Others cherish the Jewish faith, preserve traditions and secretly attend synagogue. Others yet, by far the largest in numbers, yield to circumstances, posture as Catholics but remain Jews in their home life and religious rituals.

      Incited by the Catholic clergy, Marranos, many among them cultured and affluent, arouse the envy and hatred of the populace. They are routinely hounded and mistreated. The first in a series of riots against them breaks out in Toledo in 1449 and is accompanied by murder and pillage. Prompted by two priests, the mob plunders and burns scores of homes. Another attack takes place in Toledo in July 1467. Some 1,600 houses are consumed. Many Marranos perish in the flames or are slain, some by hanging.

      Six years later, emulating Toledo, Córdoba erupts in a conflict pitting Christians and Marranos. On March 14, 1473, during a religious procession, a young girl inadvertently spills the contents of a chamber pot from her window, splashing an image of the Virgin Mary. Outraged, thousands join in a strident call for revenge. The mob pounces on the Marranos, accusing them of heresy, killing them and burning their houses. Girls are raped. Men, women, and children are put through the sword. The massacre and pillage lasts three days and nights. To prevent the repetition of such excesses, Marranos are expelled from Córdoba.

      Attacks on Marranos spread to other cities, where they are killed, their houses ransacked and their possessions purloined.

      The advent of the Inquisition is followed by an edict forcing Jews to retreat to their ghettoes. Issued by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella “the Catholic,” the edict lays the groundwork for the deportation and exile of the Jews from the country. The decree of expulsion materially increases the number, already large, of those who purchase freedom in their beloved homeland by accepting baptism.

      More obsessive than the Spaniards’, the hatred of the Portuguese toward the Jews, which had long smoldered, turns to violence in Lisbon. On April 17, 1506, a Dominican priest rouses the populace and, crucifix in hand, strolls through the streets of the city, crying “Heresy!” and calling upon the people to exterminate the Marranos. More than 500 Marranos are massacred and incinerated on the first day. The innocent victims of popular fury, young and old, living and dead, are dragged from their houses and thrown pell-mell upon the pyre. By the second day, at least 2,000 Marranos perish.

      In 1562, foreshadowing Kristallnacht and the ensuing genocide nearly four centuries later, and to facilitate the planned slaughter of more Marranos, high-ranking Church officials decree that they be required to wear special badges and confined to the ghettoes. The yellow star patch and crude tattoos would come later.

      Under constant threat of persecution, destitution and death, the Marranos take flight. Many emigrate. Some go to Italy. Others settle in France, Flanders and The Netherlands. Others yet flee as far east as Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and the Levant.

      Large numbers of Marranos, however, stay put. Many in Madrid, conscious of their Jewish heritage, are well disposed toward the Jews. Some, like Manuel Albeniz, patronize La Escudilla, a popular kosher restaurant.

      Accused by the church of being a relapsed heretic at a farcical trial engineered to placate the English Court, Joan of Arc is burned at the stake in 1431. Her ashes are dumped in the Seine. A retrial 25 years later establishes her innocence and she is declared a martyr. It will take nearly 500 years before she is “beatified,” a status that entitles the faithful to seek the intervention of a dead person in their private affairs. Eleven years later she is canonized a saint and granted a permanent

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