John Powys - The Brazen Head

The head of Albert of Cologne was if anything not larger, but smaller, than most human heads. He had a long straight nose with wide sensitive nostrils. He had small ears close to his skull, extremely full and very attractively curved lips, a large mouth that was often open and even had a tendency to dribble, an unaggressive and retreating chin and a pair of small hazel eyes under bushy grey eyebrows, eyes that searched affectionately and longingly into every person and thing he looked at, as if seeking to trace “within” this person or thing the Universal in which he believed, the Universal that had been “before” it and would be “after” it. The truth was he was always aware of the contrast between the touchingly pathetic brittleness, feebleness, silliness and conceitedness of the particular small creature he was regarding and the enormous life-force which brought it to birth.

“What I would like to be able to tell you, Doctor,” replied Raymond hesitatingly, fully aware that his Cone Castle friends were glancing quickly from one to another as they followed his words, “would be that I have steadily tried hard, ever since I realized the bewildering complexity of all these ultimate problems, to keep my mind entirely open and my personal conclusions undecided and hanging in the balance. But such is the weakness and such is the pride of human nature, or at any rate, great Doctor, of my nature, that I cannot resist bringing into the workings of my will and of my faith in myself all manner of obstinate prejudices and too-quickly reached conclusions.”

Albert of Cologne made a quick little inclination of his head, upon which for this journey through the forest of Wessex, he wore above his white skull-cap, a traveller’s variant of a Dominican cowl.

“Please give me, my dear young guide, and let me tell you I shall certainly congratulate your future parents-in-law on having secured for their daughter such a thoughtful and resourceful bridegroom, some general notion of these fixed ideas of yours before we have to separate.”

“Well, master; to confess the truth,” and Raymond de Laon looked nervously round him at a receding glade of sun-illumined bluebells in one direction, and at several sumptuous bunches of horse-chestnut blossoms in another direction, and finally at the illimitable gulf, of that early June’s noon-deep, noon-blue infinity above them, and then, with a quiver of unquestioned sincerity in his voice: “What I feel myself, great master,” he said, “is that it’s wrong for the church to forbid Friar Bacon to work at his self-chosen inventions. And I also feel that it’s wrong, and worse than wrong, in fact I think it is devilishly wicked in this Bonaventura, who by some pious people among us is regarded as a saint, and who at one time was the Pope’s Legate, to start the rumour”—here the young man’s voice became broken by a sound in his throat that was clearly a choked-down sob—“that my pure-minded young betrothed and her serious-minded elder-brother Tilton have committed the shocking sin of incest.”

His voice rose stronger at this point. “This man Bonaventura knows absolutely nothing of us people in the west of England. He knows nothing of the childlike and innocent character of the young man and young girl he is attacking in this gross manner. And further, great master, you must understand that he actually went so far as to urge on a band of notorious outlaws from a castle in this neighbourhood called Lost Towers whose lord is known far and wide as an enemy of God and man, but whom this Bonaventura, for his own secret ends, pretends to have converted, to attack Friar Bacon. It was this rabble who under his direction smashed a shrine which my betrothed’s brother was building, and were on the point of destroying Friar Bacon’s Brazen Head, if it hadn’t been for—”

Albertus Magnus interrupted him. “You’ve not forgotten I hope, my young friend,” cried the famous teacher, “that it was only your promise that I should be allowed to sleep in the same chamber as this Brazen Head that made me put off my return to Cologne? This particular invention interests me profoundly. To tell you the truth, Raymond de Laon, what I had been hearing from England about the experimental theories concerning physical science originated by your great Robert Grosseteste had led me to aim at something very much on Friar Roger’s lines. It was when they made me a bishop that I had too much work and too much responsibility to be able to go on with such things; and I warrant it was the same with your Grosseteste who must have been both a real scientist and a real saint.

“But I can tell you this, my lad — I can tell you this, my friends — when a thinker gets an appointment all his thinking’s done. We are just idiots if we imagine we can accept responsible positions in Church or State and go on thinking just the same. I tell you, my dear lad, I tell you, my excellent friends, the noble words I have already read written by this Friar Bacon have interested me greatly. He knows Aristotle through and through and few scholars have better interpreted the secretum secretorum of all matter, I mean the energeia-akinesis, or ‘energy without fuss’, that is at the heart of the world.

“And as for his Brazen Head, I have tried myself in my own blundering and amateurish way to invent a machine that can use what we have come to call the agens intellectus , or the mental driving-force, that exists in the ultimate substance of things and which we are told in the scriptures is the Spirit of God. But I seem to be saying things contrary to what you are feeling about all this, my dear son, and I beg you to tell me at once where your difficulty lies; for I can see that many of our friends here are interested in this point, and I shall perhaps have more to tell you when I have spent a night under your betrothed’s roof and in company with your Friar’s Brazen Head.”

Raymond de Laon looked round at the faces about him, and he was forced to admit to himself that they did indeed look surprisingly interested as to what he would say in reply to all this. He made up his mind to blurt out the precise truth.

“You are quite right, master,” he said, making a peculiar gurgling noise in his throat before each word he uttered, as if it had been projected out of him by squeezing his wind-pipe. “There is a thing that I really must ask you, master, while I have a chance, for there is no telling how long my destiny will enable me to remain at Cone Castle where already I am by no means, as my friends here could tell you, what at Oxford they call a persona grata with everybody. But what I want to ask you is this, for my betrothed’s younger brother, whose name is John, and whose quickness in learning things has been a tremendous help to the Friar, has recently, in his talk anyway, shown a tendency to follow some of the more satirical Latin poets and to grow sceptical about our holy faith and I am not clever enough, nor is my betrothed, to refute young John’s arguments; but I certainly think he goes much further in the direction of unbelief than the Friar himself does, who indeed, from what I’ve been able to pick up, remains an entirely orthodox Christian. My question, great doctor, is simply this: Where , in a world composed of matter possessed of this energeia-akinesis , does God come in? What place in fact is left, in a world of such self-creative energy as you describe, for any sort of Creator?”

The moment was a singularly intense one for that small group of about a dozen men. The average intelligence among the retainers of the Lord of Cone was a good deal higher than it was at the Fortress; and ever since Raymond’s official betrothal to Lil-Umbra, whose young brother was known to be a reckless supporter of the Friar, there had been lively discussions in the ground-floor reception-hall, as well as in the kitchen, as to whether the Friar was inspired by God or by the Devil.