With God’s ministration, on Good Friday of Anno Domini 1348, the knight Dagobert overcame the heretics’ resistance, killing the scum, and taking the culprits — Callistus, Enguerrand and the Marquis de Rocheteau — in shackles to Paris. Using the cover of night, Josephus Ferrarius, followed by a small band of the heretics, escaped the hands of justice. From the righteous flames that engulfed the Rocheteau castle, Dagobert temporarily saved the manuscripts of the heretics so that they could serve as irrefutable evidence of their service to Satan. However, when the Inquisitor and Guillaume of Poitiers, having prayed to God, began to research the manuscripts, they found that, except the first page, all the pages were filled with complete nonsense, random series of letters, drawings that imitated texts, which indicated that the Devil was attempting to cover their tracks and save his servants. In vain. The first page was enough to send them to the stake. The parchment read:
THEOLOGIA FRATERNITATIS
and beneath that stood the emblem of their heresy — the cross stuck into some kind of pagan symbols.
At the bottom of the page, moreover, there were verses bursting with heretical ravings:
When you fall asleep, die
to this world. Then arise from your corpse and go
Straight ahead regardless of the apparitions.
Know that those unfortunate beings exist only
When they trick you into believing that you exist, too.
Withstand, you must, the burden of death.
The interrogation of the heretics was carried out immediately after Easter. The Inquisitor, Robert de Prevois, warned them that he had the means to torture them available and that it would be better for them to admit their intercourse with Satan outright, which the Devil’s servants refused to do, and which was, after all, expected of them. Then the Inquisitor began the interrogation of the accused.
The monk, Callistus, was the first to speak.
“Two years ago, at this time, I was a monk on the holy mountain of Athos. I lived with the brothers in the community, I was an obedient hegumen and behaved, insofar as my weakness allowed me, according to the rules established by the holy fathers.
“One night I dreamed St. Gregory Palama in the company of a king. The saint told me: ‘Callistus, Callistus, do you think you will reach the Kingdom of Heaven by digging in the garden? You got away from evil, hiding behind the monastery walls, but you did not defeat evil.’ So, I asked him: ‘Father, what am I to do?’ The saint told me: ‘Go out into the world!’ Thus, I left the monastery. I went out into the world, and every night that king appeared in my dreams showing me more details of the machine that you call demonic.
“I arrived in Paris where Providence led me to the home of honorable master Enguerrand, and there I met Josephus Ferrarius. And that was how the three of us made the first two-wheeler. Combining our dreams into one, we fulfilled the inconceivable will of God. I don’t know what purpose the two-wheeler will serve, nor do I want to know; I am unable to say anything about the secrets of the brotherhood. I think that the two-wheeler is the omen of the new age, the vehicle of man that will rise from the earth, one who leaves the house and raises his eyes into the heavens.
“But a man who stares into heaven long enough, sooner or later finds out that an even greater chasm exists inside himself and that, at the bottom of that chasm, hidden in the darkness, is an opening that leads to God. I interpret our actions as the will of the Savior for us to return to his words: ‘The Kingdom of God is within you!’ Those whom the devil convinced to build the Tower of Babylon, those wolves in sheep’s clothing, are among us again. We, the Little Brothers, have turned our face from this world and from idolatry and have returned to a spiritual faith. That is why I refuse to admit that I am in collusion with the Devil, and I am ready to suffer if I must, not turning back from the path dictated to me by my conscience.”
It was difficult and abhorrent for everyone who attended that interrogation to listen to these blasphemous words. Enguerrand did not wish to use his right to speak. He looked at the Inquisitor with impudence, at times scoffing at him, exchanging glances with his comrades. But the Marquis de Rocheteau magnanimously made up for Enguerrand’s silence, pouring out a flood of noxious words, insults and blasphemies:
“You wonder why we break mirrors? What kind of magic is this? Here is the answer: we break mirrors because that way the deception has only one side, this one where we all are. That is not enough for you. You don’t want God inside you, where you cannot hide your iniquities from Him, but you rather place him in front of you. On the outside you are whitewashed tombs, and on the inside you are rotting. And you think that you can frighten us with torture, while death and torture are exactly what we want. You try to scare us with the fire of the stake, and you already have one foot in the fire of hell, you hypocrites. But Ferrarius has escaped and you will never find him. He is now far away, followed by a few of the brothers; he has slipped out of the hand of your earthly justice. I know the date of my death, just as I know the date of my birth. I’ve got nothing else to say.”
Robert de Prevois, seeing that the heretics were not showing the slightest inclination toward recanting, ordered that Callistus, Enguerrand and the Marquis be tortured, for the salvation of their souls. But Satan, who finds hellish pleasure in ruining actions pleasing to God, filled the bodies of his subjects with supernatural strength and they were able to withstand the most strenuous of tortures, occasionally joking about it or ostensibly forgiving their torturers. Seeing that the Devil was winning, and fearing for the souls of others, Robert de Prevois ordered a public-wide repentance and dressed himself in a goat’s hair shirt.
In the meantime, one of the bandits who had slipped away from the justice of Dagobert raised a rebellion among the people and the crowd arrived in front of the prison, demanding that the heretics be set free. What was worse, the Satanic machine of Enguerrand and his company began to be replicated in Paris. The people, quick to do evil and slow to think, accepted the demonic two-wheelers because the rumor began that whoever could cover a certain distance sitting on such an apparatus without falling would have all sins forgiven. Hundreds of such monstrous two-wheelers appeared in Paris, disturbing public order and causing such scandals that it was shameful for an honest man to go out into the street.