Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

She always checked my garments during her visits, and occasionally found something that needed modification. As the scars on my face healed under the constant pressure, the mask needed to be adjusted. Sayuri would sand it down accordingly, and a few times even took it to the hospital to be reshaped. Once, the mask came back having been altered incorrectly; when I pointed this out to Sayuri, she muttered to herself in Japanese: “Saru mo ki kara ochiru.” When I asked what that meant, she answered, “‘Even monkeys fall from trees.’ It means-”

I cut her off. “-that even experts make mistakes. Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

When she asked where, I told her she should ask her boyfriend. I must say, I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone who could turn such an adorable shade of red as Sayuri.

One aspect of the medieval story had been bothering me more than any other: the claim that Gertrud was producing a German version of the Bible. This was, remember, a full two centuries before Martin Luther began work on his famous translation. The Church vehemently disapproved of Luther’s work, so how could they have sanctioned Sister Gertrud?

I approached the problem as I always did, and the first surprise of my research was the discovery that by the time Die Luther Bibel appeared, there already existed numerous other German biblical translations; Luther’s was simply the first written with the language of the common man in mind. Previous versions had been literal translations rendered in obsolete idioms and were, for all intents and purposes, understandable only to readers who could also read the source Latin.

The earliest Germanic version of the Bible was a Gothic translation by Ulfilas in the fourth century, which predated the Latin Vulgate by decades. A remarkable man, Ulfilas needed to devise an entire alphabet to write his text and thus created much of contemporary German Christian vocabulary. Only one partial handwritten copy of this Bible, known as the Codex Argenteus or Silver Bible, still exists, at the University Library of Uppsala. After that there is a ninth-century manuscript from Fulda, which contains Old High German translations of the first four books of the New Testament, and a suggestion of a fuller, but unsanctioned, biblical translation from about 1260. Some passages from the Bible, such as the Lord’s Prayer, had long existed in German, but there is no compelling evidence that anyone had put together an entire German Bible at the time Gertrud was reputedly working on it-although it is said that shortly afterwards, in 1350, a complete New Testament surfaced in Augsburg.

So far, so good: it would seem the time was right at the start of the fourteenth century for someone to tackle the whole project, so why not Sister Gertrud of Engelthal?

There are plenty of reasons, actually, but perhaps none more compelling than Gertrud’s own intense piety-or at least, her attempts to appear pious. She would not have wanted to proceed in any manner that might be construed as sacrilegious, and few things were more heretical than producing an unsanctioned translation of the Bible. Before embarking on such an extraordinary task Gertrud would have needed permission from a higher authority, and such consent would have been nearly impossible to secure. But that is the crux of the matter-“nearly impossible” is not the same as “impossible.”

Engelthal’s prioress was an elderly woman; could senility have led her to permit a translation that any able-minded administrator would have rejected? Stranger things have been known to happen. However, this assumes that Gertrud’s permission came from within the Engelthal monastery, which is not necessarily the case. Perhaps she had stepped outside the gates to find a church official with his, or her, own agenda; one needs to remember that the Church was notoriously a web of conflicting backroom politics. Conceivably a superior might have authorized Gertrud’s work as a part of a larger scheme, and Gertrud might have been happy to overlook her position as a pawn so long as she was allowed her project. It would have been a most dubious arrangement, but it is always easier to skirt the rules when encouraged to do so by a higher-up.

This is all conjecture, of course. Why Gertrud thought she could progress with the project is a question with no clear answer, but I can forward another possibility: perhaps I have underestimated her desire to be remembered. Vanity is both a great motivator and a great deceiver, and the idea of leaving behind an everlasting legacy can spur even the most cautious person to proceed recklessly. Possibly she convinced herself that she was doing nothing wrong even if she lacked full consent. She was working from the Latin Vulgate, after all, and her unwavering belief in the excellence of her translation may well have pushed her to gamble that, in the end, her Bible would be too good to warrant punishment. One can imagine her rationalizing that Die Gertrud Bibel ’s very existence would excuse its secret genesis and, as the work was being completed towards the end of her life, perhaps she was simply willing to take the risk. What could the authorities do to an old woman who believed that her place in Heaven was already reserved?

When I finally asked Marianne Engel on whose authority Die Gertrud Bibel was being produced, I was hoping to get either a definitive answer or a clear contradiction that would disprove the story once and for all. But her answer was neither.

“I was so young I never thought to ask, and Gertrud never said. But she was always very secretive about it and none of the nuns were allowed to talk about the work outside of the scriptorium.”

“Wouldn’t they have rebelled,” I asked, “if they believed it wrong?”

“Perhaps they might have to answer in Heaven for what they had done,” she said, “but I think they were more scared of Gertrud and Agletrudis here on earth.”

Marianne Engel seemed quite pleased that I was so carefully considering these aspects of the story she had been telling, and it prompted her to ask whether I would like to hear more.

“Of course,” said I.

Behind me lay the only life I had ever known, and ahead of me stretched a life I could not even imagine. As we walked, I looked over my shoulder to see Father Sunder’s figure disappear into the night. He’d been in my life since my first memories, and now he was gone. Only then did I realize that neither you nor I had any idea where we were going.

You led the way, pretending that you knew what you were doing, putting distance between us and Engelthal. I doubt you were worried about a posse of nuns chasing us down; you were probably more concerned that I’d lose my nerve and turn back. So you kept moving forward, despite the fact you were still suffering from your burns, and I had to struggle to keep up. My feet slid in the mud but I was determined to show that I could keep any pace that you set. I suppose it was important to me because I didn’t know if it was true.

I could see that your battles had taught you to forget the physical body and push forward on willpower alone. I had assisted in your recovery, I knew this effort was far beyond anything you’d attempted since being brought to Engelthal, and I was amazed by your endurance-until, all at once, it failed utterly.

Your feet slipped in the mud and you went down awkwardly. You tried to jump up immediately, but it did not work: as soon as you were upright, you lost your balance again. This time, while falling, you put out your arms to brace yourself, but the contracted skin across your chest caused you to cry out in pain. You withdrew your arms instinctively and dropped face first into the mud.