“Tell me.”
“Yes; you listen to me, but you don’t believe me, when I tell you the truth, and you are afraid of all new thoughts.”
“What is new under the sun? Does not St. Augustine say regarding our holy faith, ‘What is called in our days Christianity, already existed since the creation of mankind to the birth of Christ. It was then that they began to call Christianity the true religion, which had already existed before. The truths taught by Christ are the same as the ancient ones, only more developed’?”
“Heretic, beware! You do not know what is taking place in the world.”
“Let me hear.”
“Pilgrims from many lands have been here, and tell of prodigies, visions, and wonders. In the south of France there are pestilence and famine, and human flesh has been sold in the butchers’ shops; in Germany a fiery iron rod has been seen in the sky, and here in Italy these endless pilgrimages have recommenced. In Jerusalem the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been plundered, and the temple of the False Prophet erected. The whole of Christendom is trembling, for in the immoral Popes of the last century they have seen the Antichrist. Christ’s ambassador is murdered; yes, my friend Adalbert was the last up there in Poland: the heathen have reconquered all Christ’s conquests in Asia and Africa. The followers of the False Prophet are in Spain, Sicily, and Naples, and threaten Rome. This can mean nothing less than the Last Judgment and destruction of the world, as announced in the Apocalypse.”
“So it is the old story again?”
“Story! Get thee hence Satan, for thou savourest not the things which be of God, but those which be of men.”
“Do you call me Satan?”
“Yes, when you deny the Word. Is it not written in John’s Apocalypse, ‘And when the thousand years are accomplished, Satan will be let loose from his prison. And he shall go to deceive the nations which are in the four ends of the earth, Gog and Magog’? There you have the northern peoples who are now in England, Normandy, and Sicily. Is not Theodora the great Babylonian Harlot? Is not the deceiver Muhammed the Wild Beast?”