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Chapter 23


The next day, the headline read:


SoTF National Guard Forces Identify Plague in Ingolstadt


That resulted in the descent upon Ingolstadt of large numbers of grimly experienced military medical personnel intent upon making certain that the plague didn’t spread farther into the Upper Palatinate, into Franconia, into Augsburg, into the rest of the SoTF and the USE.

There were only a few cases; it was spring. They evacuated the various groups and categories of Ingolstadt’s residents into “tent cities” outside of the walls and quarantined them there while carrying on a major decontamination of the shambles that the town and most of its buildings had become by dint of enduring quartering of troops, a siege, an occupation with quartering of troops, a siege, another occupation with quartering of troops, the withdrawal of the Bavarian forces, and a third occupation over the course of two years. On the outside, most of the houses still looked okay. There hadn’t been a lot of shelling. The stucco was pockmarked here and there; windows occasionally broken and boarded up, some damage to doors and frames. The interiors… Not to mention the heaps of garbage. Under the Swedes, most of the waste had been hauled out, because the gates were open to the north. Under the Bavarians these last few months, with the only usable exit the bridge across the Danube, it had been piled into the comparably open space between the two sets of walls. With the coming of spring. Down-timers described the result as a miasma: bad air. Up-timers were more likely to say something like, “try living in a hole where the donut is a landfill. Except that up-time landfills didn’t include manure and human waste.” Along with ruder comments.

The Jesuits and university personnel, secular faculty and students, were cleared, but the National Guard didn’t allow them back inside Ingolstadt’s walls. Some students went home or wandered away in search of another university to attend. The Jesuits and most of the students who were stubborn enough to have stayed in Ingolstadt this long headed for Amberg, making the space crunch at the Collegium acute. The secular professors from the university followed, hiring rooms in private homes in competition with the normal school faculty already there, and complaining to the Oberpfalz administrator that if he was granting refuge to the Jesuits in Amberg, they deserved it too, and should be allotted space for their lectures and approval for the schedule of fees they charged the students. One of their long-term grievances in Ingolstadt had been that the Jesuit professors didn’t charge fees, which they defined as unfair competition.

Father Hell suspected that the floors of Collegium might sink under the pressure of so many bodies crowded into the building. Or, more likely, that some epidemic might break out. It didn’t have to be plague. There were plenty of possibilities other than plague.

Balde was delighted. “We can make the play production so much bigger now. I know that only about three hundred of the Ingolstadt students came, but—that’s three hundred live bodies. Otherwise defined as cast members. Musicians; singers. Forget the hall in the Rathaus and negotiating with a mayor who is afraid to offend any of the factions on the city council. We can move it outdoors, outside the walls. With…”

“Well, of course we pretty well know already how Balde is handling it in the script,” Stentzel Grube said. “They can’t do their rehearsals outside in a field, with big, booming, voices, and not expect people to know. They’re not depending on the surprise factor to attract spectators on the day.”

Paolo didn’t boom when he was drinking Frau Mechthilde’s beer. He needed to save his voice for the production. “Unlike some commentators of the last couple of centuries, Balde is sticking to the story the way it’s told in the Book of Judges. His script takes the position that the girl was actually sacrificed as a burnt offering. Killed—not placed in perpetual confinement. Killed—not dedicated to lifelong virginity. Killed quite dead. Human sacrifice. He’s not trying to wiggle out of that.”

***

“No way am I going to that play, much less taking the kids. I think the whole thing is a nasty idea,” Maxine Pilcher protested. “It’s one of the most horrible stories in the Bible if you ask me. It’s about human sacrifice. Of a girl; by a man, killing his own daughter, even if that isn’t what he intended. I can’t imagine that Keith would ever swear an oath to sacrifice the first thing that came out the front door when he got home in order to conquer his enemies. But trust me—if he did, and if that first thing happened to be Megan, I’d never let him get away with it.”

“It certainly isn’t suitable as a school play,” Vanessa Ebeling said. “My parents sure wouldn’t use that story for a children’s program at First Methodist back in Grantville. No way!”

“These aren’t really children who are putting it on,” young Kromayer, one of the down-time instructors recommended by Ratichius, probably because he was some connection of Johannes Kromayer at Weimar, argued. “The students from the Collegium are college age, most of them; the rest at least middle school and high school. Several of the speaking characters will be played by adults.”

“In the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews, Jephtha is named as one of the great heroes of faith for his actions.” That reminder came from another down-timer, the even younger Johann Balthasar Schupp, who was, as a devoted follower of Jan Amos Comenius, teaching Philosophy of Education.

“There’s a clear classical thread in most contemporary literary presentations of the Jephtha incident,” Muselius said. The discussion in the faculty lounge at the normal school was becoming more than a little heated. “A tie to Stoic philosophy; the importance of self-control; of control of one’s own emotions. Jephtha doesn’t let his love of his daughter become a weakness in fulfilling his obligations to God. He prioritizes obedience over feelings; he suffers inner pain, but he controls it in order to fulfill his duties to a higher power.”

“That is,” Ronella protested, “an utterly, totally, completely, hideously, horribly outrageous idea.”

Vanessa’s final comment was, “When we had to study that stupid poem in English Lit, I thought it was ridiculous. I still think it’s ridiculous.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t remember the title. Or the author. I do remember, ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more.’ I thought then, and I think right now, I bet he could if he put a little effort into it.

“Jephtha and his men were willing to sacrifice their lives in combat, defending the people of God.”

“And ended up sacrificing a girl when they got back home. ‘I’m so sorry’ doesn’t really cut it in that kind of a situation.”

When Maxine brought the discussion home with her, Keith said, “I think it’s more of a story about keeping your promises. Keeping a vow, keeping an oath, keeping your word. I’ve always been pretty strong on that.”

***

A rabbi recently settled in Amberg wrote a letter to the editor of the Global News. Was the vow foolish? Should Jephtha have taken measures to have it annulled? Should Phineas, the high priest, have taken measures to have it annulled; was his failure to do so the reason that the priesthood was taken from him? Was the daughter actually sacrificed?

The resulting rerun in the Comments section of the early Reformation controversy over the validity of vows to monastic orders proved to be so highly distracting that almost nobody who wrote a follow-up to the original letter even bothered to note that its author was Jewish. The one letter-writer who did mention it, did so only to remark that the rabbi was agreeing with Saint Ambrose’s commentary on the passage.

The rabbi said privately to his wife that, more likely, it was the reverse: that Saint Ambrose had been familiar with the Talmud.

In the faculty lounge at the normal school, the controversy continued without let-up.

“I still think it’s weird that they’re having the daughter played by one of the college boys. Collegium boys. Whatever,” Maxine declared. “He’ll be in drag.”

“They do that in England. In Shakespeare’s plays. We had to study that in English Lit.” College-level English Lit. had been a near-traumatic experience for Vanessa, roughly comparable to water-boarding.

“Master Massinger’s Men don’t, in Grantville. The women on stage are women. Sometimes, they’re pretending to be boys, but they’re women. Mistress Antonia, Lorrie Mundell, a whole bunch of the high school girls. Lorrie said that Germans don’t have any laws against actresses being…well…genuine esses, rather than ors.”

“But these are a bunch of monks.”

“I don’t think Jesuits are monks, exactly,” Maxine said. “The students aren’t. Someone said that Father Balde got as far as being in law school before he decided to be a Jesuit.”

“That’s odd.” Ronella stood up. “I have class starting in ten minutes; back to the salt mines. I wonder why it isn’t back to the coal mines.”

“What’s odd?”

“So did Martin Luther. Study law before he decided to be a monk. Do you suppose there’s something about law school that drives people to the point that they decide that absolutely any alternative is better? Even being a monk?”

“Not given the number of lawyers that there are around.”

Maxine was undeterred. “Still, you would think that in a town this size, there would be at least one actual female who could have learned the part. I know there aren’t any girls enrolled at the Collegium, but the normal school could have loaned them one, just for the play.”

Muselius thanked the stars, the fates, divine providence, or whatever had intervened to spare him from having to deal with such an eventuality.

***

“She spent two months lamenting her virginity, quote/unquote.” Carlo, standing at the edge of the rehearsal, spat on the ground. “I’ve read the whole story again, trying to get into the spirit of the play. What she did was spend two months lamenting that she’d never get a chance to lose it. She had a fiancé—the guy with the long Greek name. Why would an ancient Israelite fiancé have a Greek name?”

“I don’t remember a fiancé in the Bible story. I think Balde invented him,” one of the extras from Ingolstadt said.

“Anyway, she had one, so instead of lamenting for two months, why didn’t she just marry him and have at it? You celibate types spend way too much time thinking about virginity or the lack of it.”

“But…Our Lady!” The Ingolstadt student standing next to him quivered with outrage.

“Brothers and sisters, boy. Brothers and sisters. Our Savior had them, and the religious writers waste a lot of effort trying to explain that away.” Carlo grinned. “Or don’t you believe the Word of God?”

The student complained to Father Hell that Carlo was a heretic.

Father Hell expressed his doubts about that.

The student cited original source material, namely, a conversation with Carlo.

“In any case,” Father Hell said, “I recommend that you undertake a review of the USE laws on religious toleration. You’re not in Bavaria any more, Aloysius. We’re not burning him at the stake.”

“You could remove him from the cast of the play.”

“Not at this stage in the rehearsals.”


June 1636


Sebastian kept up a low-voiced commentary as the presentation went on, explaining Balde’s elaborate symbolism and anagrams to Dee Hardy, who remained wholly ignorant of Latin, whether classical or modern, aside from an occasional abbreviation such as etc. or ibid.

“Notice that although the Bible story does not give a name to the daughter, in the play she is Menulema.” He scribbled that in the margin of the program with his faithful fountain pen. “Now, see, it’s an anagram of Emmanuel. She voluntarily agrees to the sacrifice required of her, to fulfil her father’s vow. Balde has interpreted the story as one more prophetic Biblical prefiguring of the willing sacrifice of Christ to fulfil the divine promise given in Genesis that God would send a savior to redeem the descendants of Adam and Eve from their sins. So, just as God made the promise and Jesus fulfilled it, Jephtha made the vow to save the Israelites from their enemies and his daughter did not evade the necessity of sacrifice.”

“Isn’t that awfully feminist?” Dee asked. “To have a girl be a prophecy of Jesus? I don’t think it would have flown, up-time. Certainly not in a church. Well, definitely not at First Baptist!”



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Framed