Introduction
As is widely known, the ecclesial Laws were compiled from speeches and conversations with King Dav the Everlasting upon his return from his Travail. Their development into a codified system began the moment that members of the Order interpreted his words and experiences into the Five Declarations. The Holy Tome, the complete transcript of Dav’s world-altering speeches, is said to have been lost in the Great Burning along with many other valuable artifacts. After the Five Declarations came into existence, scholars continued to develop the fundamental ideas of the Declarations. Sometime after 146SC, the Nine ecclesial Laws were put forward by the scholars of the Church and became the pillars of the faith as we know it.
The three remaining examples of canonical literature - the Primus from the Erra Pater, the recently reconstructed St. Remiel poem and the fifteen rung Ladder will be largely excluded from this discussion as they are nearer to the public mind than the Laws. The poem, rebuilt from fragments recovered by a member of the University in 350SC, was originally composed by St. Remiel as a means of containing and solidifying years of spoken, widely believed tradition. The Primus and the Ladder, I believe, were constructed for the sake of easing the digestion of dogmatic matters for the general population. As they are not directly descended from the Dav’s Words, they will be set aside.
The following tracts were compiled over the course of several months during travel from the Farin diocese into Lithmore. Now, as I put together the final annotations and order, I reside in the Rectory attached to the greatest Cathedral in the kingdom.
-Father Thierry dul Dieudonne
The Law of the Spring and the rite of Pilgrimage
“All Davites shall drink from the spring of Dav. Lithmorrans may drink from the source, but conquered people must properly drink from the lower part of the holy spring.” – The Nine Laws
“All servants of the Church, during the course of their life, shall make pilgrimage to the Springs and drink of their waters. Lithmorrans and their descendants partake of the Upper Spring where the water issues from the rocks. Converts from the Supplicant States are only allowed to drink from the lower spring.” – Recollected Verses, Petrus of Lundsend, 160SC
When I was a child growing up within the Order in Vavard, our duchy had only been established for two or three generations through the machinations of the late Sivernus. The Church in Lithmore was very distant. The Vavardian culture was extremely robust after almost two hundred years of independence and wealth. My own family, the Dieudonne, had some minor prestige as traders before my father’s death on the Kirulean Sea. With the Order of King Dav establishing itself in earnest in the generation of my father and his father, I was often told that the Order’s best were sent into the East to cultivate virtue as the Capuans did grapes. Their rigorous hand, though later tempered by years and old Vavardian ideas, always began with the most fundamental lessons.
What is more fundamental to life than thirst? The Law of the Springs tells us that when Dav returned from his Travail in 109, he commanded that all of his subjects, native and convert, follow in his footsteps to drink from the Springs. Since that event, it has become tradition that all subjects of these Laws make the pilgrimage at least once in their lives. One of the keys to interpreting this Law through history, I believe, is the concept of emulation. While modern church ceremony represents the Pilgrimage through its use of the gold and silver chalices – representatives of the Upper and Lower Springs, respectively – the experience that the ritual builds on must exist within congregation to truly understand them.
After hearing about the Pilgrimage for many years as a child, I asked my superior, Father Guillard, why I could not go to this place. In his usual cryptic fashion, he told me that it would like be pouring water into a pot with a hole in the bottom. I did not understand him for many years until I was finally a teenager and on the long road west from the Darton gate of Lithmore. A child’s mind is clouded by youth. They are wide-eyed and curious, yes, but they must be carried to the Source. To emulate Dav, one must make the journey under their own power and understand that it is not just the Waters that slake the Thirst of the soul but how the soul has become Thirsty.
The Rite of the Pilgrim stands as a testament to the needs of Man. Through our lives and our travels, we become tired and injured. The soul depletes the flesh, the flesh depletes the soul. A Pilgrim in modern times often wears travelling clothes of very simple make and carries little more than a walking stick. They have little armor against attackers or the World. As the Pilgrim journeys across the fields and into the mountains, they must come to rely on others in the kingdom to help shelter and feed them. By leaving behind their lives and focusing upon a singular task that all subjects before them have attended to, the Community that Dav so loved is cultivated. Like Dav, they return from a unique yet universal trial with wisdom.
Some scholars, Petrus among them, have written about their concern over what could be political motivations secreted away in the corollaries of this Law. The separation of the Upper and Lower Springs – Lithmorrans and Supplicants – occasionally draws its share of debate. There are several layers to this discussion, some logistic and certainly some symbolic. The intention of separating the Upper and Lower Springs could have been the establishment of a lineage of priests to follow in the footsteps of Dav. Petrus conjectured that the emulation we see in the Pilgrimage was likewise reinforced through those selected to safeguard the spiritual welfare of the Kingdom. The Order, as we will see in the Law of the Land, was established with King Dav at its head and all priests (though certainly not in secular terms) are his descendants through the rites and rituals that he established. While all Davites are called to shepherd the community, the Lithmorrans were first. Therefore, the separation of Upper and Lower is the creation of a nominal division between those ministers of the faith ordained by their blood and those ordained by the Lithmorrans.
Related, though somewhat different, it was said by the late Adelbert of Irisum that the division was created as an honorific for the people that Dav originated from and was in no way meant derisively to the rest of the Kingdom. The Lithmorrans, perpetually close to the Springs and the first among the believers, were forever honored through the ability to drink from the Upper Springs: the source of the Water that feeds the rest of the Kingdom.
The Law of Giving and the Law of Caring
“Every Davite is required to give one tenth of their income to the Order. The tithe is due at the beginning of every month and must be brought to the Church. If it is not given the Holy Inquisitors shall appear. The Order is also allowed a third of all a conquered enemies’ wealth. The Order is to spend part of this wealth upon its people. To build public buildings, churches, acquire food for the hungry and build houses for the population.” – The Nine Laws
“The Mercers, unwilling to share their wealth with Dav the Everlasting, did set the docks ablaze and sail into the East.” - A Brief History of Lithmore, Adelbert of Irisum, 203SC
“A member of the clergy is as much a shepherd as they are a mason. We are as much a banker as a servant. Our duty lies in the greater good.” - Recollected Verses, Petrus of Lundsend, 160SC
It is easy to know the mind of a merchant. When faced with an uncontrollable expense, one of the first reactions is most certainly fear. One of the key aspects of finance is maintaining a firm hold on both income and expenses. Margins may be miniscule, especially in times of upheaval, and the early Mercers relied on themselves and their organization. Individuals to the last, they preferred to flee rather than to join their wealth to the common good. There is some irony in their unification as an organization resulted in their splitting away from an effort to unite the known world into a single community.
During the Consolidation, a third of spoils and income was taken in by the Church and the Kingdom to facilitate the development of infrastructure. The unrest within the city, the fires set by the Merchants and the building of a fighting force to carry the Word of Dav into the world required vast sums of capital. Today, this tradition has been in effect for over two hundred years. Though the income of the Church has subsided and our enemies have lessened, the coffers it has produced have seen the local community through myriad disasters. The tithes also support the meager needs of the clergy and go toward the upkeep of the cathedrals, churches and shrines throughout the kingdom.
There are those that have asked me personally about the Law of Giving, especially in Vavard. While most of my career as a priest was in the Farin diocese where communal giving is a part of the Farin culture, the Vavardi were often still ingrained with the notion of personal riches. Some would argue that I, as a priest, was being supported by the Church and its congregation without necessarily putting forward a day’s work like a freeman or supporting myself through lands like a nobleman. These methods of material progress were familiar to them. The Church and its clergy were a bizarre exception in their manner of thinking.
Within the apparatus of the Church, I have said, there is the potential for a system that does not rely on monetary exchange. It is an idyllic system and sometimes does not function as it should. Instead of currency exchanged between men for services, there are stations and duties that are fulfilled through a sense of duty and communal enrichment. Lands managed solely by the church, such as thoseart around missions or retreats – the abbey at Irisum called Honeyfield, comes to mind – exist as small cities where coin arguably does not exist. Indeed, these facilities support themselves in part with monies gathered from their diocese, but these monies are sent onward to the Church to overcome any shortfalls due to acts of the Lord in the weather, famine or wars. If the process of tithes were to be theoretically removed from this system, the brothers and sisters that make honey and mead at Honeyfield would be able to simply trade these provisions for whatever other things they would require.
Merchants have regularly argued that such a barter system is implausible on a large scale. Great works of architecture or art could not be achieved by these idyllic farmers and beekeepers. If everyone were a devotee of the Lord in the manner of the Order’s clergy, one such merchant argued, there would be none to dig in the mines to find the gold and smith, much less knowledgeable enough to smith it for our sacramental Chalice. To suggest that all men and women could somehow be equal in station was sinful, especially to a Vavardi. The tithes and Good Works of the Law of Caring and Giving are not about making all walks of life equal in station, but about teaching everyone from monarch to milkmaid that they are equal in responsibility.
The Law of Observance
“All Davites must observe the holy days with the appropriate celebration, lest the order suspect that one does not feel the will of Dav in one's life.” – The Nine Laws
“Every good gift that Man possesses or employs comes from the Wellspring, the Father of Lights. He is the Cause of being, the Principle of knowledge, the Pattern of human life and the illumination pouring from the Fount.” – Recollected Verses, Petrus of Lundsend, 160SC
Many years ago in Montford, after I had finished giving mass at one of the smaller churches, I was approached by a child of one of the local brickmen. It was refacing season for a good many of the homes in her part of the city. Her hands were dirty from the mud and her hair still had some straw in it from the mixing fields. The little girl asked me why we passed a silver cup of water around and had everyone drink from it. Her father, she said, used water to make the houses better.
The Law of Observance does not simply apply to holy days, but our rituals as well. Why, like the brickmaker’s daughter asked, do we repeatedly take part in these rites as a community? I answered: to remember. By participating in the holy celebrations and the weekly rituals of our Church, we remove ourselves from the world of mercantile and martial interests. While those that congregate may be familiar with each other through their social interactions - many of our citizens are shopkeepers, teachers, artisans, soldiers and nobility – how easy is it for us to lose ourselves in these titles? How far are we from shameful behavior when we label people only as soldiers or artists? We will next remember them only for their faults: this man a gambler, this woman a gossip.
Our observance of rituals – mass, pilgrimage, cleansings and holy days – is to witness what has happened before and through the unification of our shared faith and history to recognize that the people that we live with in this city are not just members of a particular caste, culture or profession. By recognizing ourselves as a part of a unified culture we can put aside the violence that marked the youth of this divine enterprise. The Consolidation has done much of our work for us. While we cannot fulfill the destiny that our predecessors did by participating in the great change, we can honor it by continuing our vigil over the monuments, traditions and scars they have left behind.
What is the root of Observance? To see and share. Call to mind that young girl in Montford. Every morning she arose with her parents and began their work, seeing a sunrise that every member of her family has seen since they were children. Does she scorn the sun for warming her? No. As a child, she may witness without prejudice, consuming these sights afresh. She is not yet burdened by an adult’s wisdom, knowing to turn away from the brilliance in fear of being blinded. In her daze, she will ever remember in her soul a sun that is warm, but cannot burn, that sheds light and never sets. Her parents, perhaps more focused on the concerns of the family than the beauty of the sun, may grow jaded to its warmth and serenity. The sun in their souls may have set long ago. But in their child’s joy, they too may remember how they once felt and rejoice.
So it is with us, the children of old mother history and father faith. Like the young girl in Montford and her parents, each remembrance time we re-enact and participate in our rituals, we are able to resurrect the same child-like wonderment as if we are seeing something for the first time. Our rituals remind us that we are not alone in this world; we celebrate them with our neighbors so we might remember they are here for us. We celebrate them for our predecessors so their insights might live again in us.
The Law of Obedience
“All Davites must assemble when the Order calls them to assemble, be it for Mass or for the public punishments of heretics and mages that are necessary to demonstrate the fate of wrongdoers to the populace. Failure to assemble shall render one suspect of heresy.” - The Nine Laws
“For the Lord of the Springs stirs the waters of the firmament as the waters of the Urth,
And by His command, bade both stars and men to move into being and out of being.”
– Remiel 109SC, Wiktor von Mircea, 350SC
“The thunderbolts I scare back to their clouds, the tainted I user to their purity, the voice of the Lord I echo and the peace after bloodshed I proclaim.” – Inscription upon the Great Bell of St. Aelwyn’s
To live in a city within this kingdom is to know the clear peeling of bells. Though each voices similar calls, be they to Mass, weddings or cleansing, each of them is unique in their character. The great bell in the tower of St. Aelwyn’s was cast two hundred years ago; the same time that St. Remiel’s scripture was being committed to paper. Its size and bulk earned it the nickname Grandfather Garth from its casters. Garth, as some may recall, was well known among Dav’s predecessors for his voracious appetite. It took Gweran op Melthun, a bard and friend to the King, an entire month to tune the massive bell until it was pitch-perfect. To my knowledge, it is the largest bell ever constructed.
What was Dav looking for in this Bell? What possessed him to order cartloads of brass brought into the capital and melted down into an instrument six feet tall and ten feet wide? The answer, hints Adelbert of Irisum, lies in the Voice. When Dav returned from the Wilderness and these Declarations were compiled from his speeches and conversations, it is certain that the Voice of the Lord still rang in his ears. He could share the message with his citizens, but how could a monarch approximate the language of the Lord?
Though the Travail has always proven to be a source of artistic inspiration, it has been church dogma for many generations that artistic representations of these events exclude any visual representation of the Lord. As well, poetry, narrative or stage plays of the events must treat their portrayals gingerly. One must, when writing of the Lord in philosophical tracts or meditations like these, write and quickly withdraw the pen or risk inviting insult. The words we speak are shallow placeholders of true Language, the words that only Dav was able to survive and interpret.
In my time as a priest, I have come to believe there is only one medium which comes close to the language of the Voice. Poetry and prose may attempt to convey the divine beauty through imagery, but the voice will always be that of a human. Art and works of the hands like the great cathedral of Lithmore attempt to create a domain for the Lord. Our windows and their streams of light, our flowing water and the swirl of incense hint at an otherworldly presence but cannot give it Voice. So we must look back to Dav; in his employ of Gweran op Melthun and the construction of the Bell, we may see that it is Music which he had in mind. The Bell that hangs above our heads speaks in Music more fleeting than thought and more transparent than the inked word. Its sound reaches further than any singular spoken voice, speaking for many and speaking to many. The ability to transcend distance and language surely mirrors the Divine.
What does Music have to teach us about obedience? Petrus of Lundsend wrote that “As the Bell was forged by Dav to bring the unhearable Voice to the ears of the people, so is the clergy forged to echo its tones.” Doctrine tells us that only one man to ever hear the Voice directly was Dav at the Springs. Its emulation, carefully guarded by dogmatic law, resides within the clergy. We, like the Bell cast to emulate the Voice, are trained and experienced to ring properly when we are tasked to do so. It is not an easy task. It took Gweran, an artisan of sound, a month to tune Grandfather Garth. How many years of study and training does it take for a member of the clergy to speak with authority and with the same far-reaching Language as is worthy of the Laws?
The Order’s words are echoes, given to us from Dav’s ears to his lips and into the sacred chain of custody from Saint Aelwyn to our possession. The Holy Tome, a sacred text now lost, was transcribed from Dav’s speeches upon his return from the Wilderness. From these words, the Declarations or Laws were born. These five original tenants, now expanded to the Nine Laws, are ingrained within each and every Davite from birth; and we the clergy spend our lives not only meditating upon these words – the law of their words and grammar – but the evanescence of their music. And so we speak them to our people, ringing aloud like the Bell above our heads, calling out to the community so that we might emulate the first among Pilgrims. His weariness is ours, his sorrow are ours. But within emulation of heavenly music we may claim more. Listen and follow our voices, all you of faith, and claim his victories as ours as well. Listen and claim his wisdom.
The Laws of Consortion
“If one is caught consorting with an excommunicate or one who is branded, one is immediately suspect of heresy and shall be taken in by the Inquisitors for further examination. Any Davite sheltering a mage will be considered an accomplice in heresy and will be treated accordingly if the association is discovered. Those failing to report the mage will be given the same consideration by the Inquisitors as heretics of the highest order.” – The Nine Laws
"A witch would have you believe magic can change the world for the better, but they'd never tell at what cost to a man's soul." – St. Aelwyn Falsteph
Each of you has encountered heresy in your life. Some of you will carry scars upon your flesh. Others carry scars which cannot be seen with human eyes. Today we will speak of this pox, this infection that may mar flesh and soul. To begin, we must look back to what makes a human in this realm. You and I, we are flesh and blood. Scholars have determined that we are a system of fluids and organs. A butcher could tell you the uses for this crude matter any time he opens up a bullock or a sow. To be short, in spite of our art and our poetry, we are crude beings. We smell, we sweat, we kill and we consume.
From where do our greater qualities emerge? What enables us, unlike animals, to build great structures, compose texts and music, and relate to one another in a common language? A gift. The copy of the Remiel Scriptures reconstructed in 356SC state that:
“The Lord clenched upon Himself to yield to the budding creation and the new Urth,
Burgeoning with new forms and music, shook with the effort and suffering of His Will.
His infinite being, as it pressed inward, yielded shards and sparks of the Divine.
The Lord of the Springs and Father of All, witnessed as these sparks entangled in Matter.
From this selfless act, Life was born out of both triumph and sorrow, glory and pain.”
This gift, a fragment of divinity, was entrusted to us from the Lord. Like a cask of water, we are a vessel tasked with the transportation and enrichment our contents until we are able to return to His side. When we move on, our water comes to mix with His water and the small fragment of our souls may come to understand the gamut of the worlds, physical and spiritual, as He does. As with all things, there are obstacles. A man, through his life, may experience corruption of the body. A cut or bruise, given time, is healed by the purity of the soul. We may recover from illness, mend wounds and fight disease because we possess the righteous spark. Severe illness can weaken the soul, wearing through the layers of flesh, muscle and bone until its dark shroud rests over the inner core of the spirit. Weak enough and illness may kill the body. A dead man does not heal because his soul as departed from its cage, flown like a pet bird from an open window.
Likewise, a man, through his life, may experience corruption of the soul. A more nefarious infection than any of the flesh, the corruption of the soul may be quick or gradual. By filling his body to excess with vices and seeking no balance or redemption through selfless acts of work and charity, the ills of the flesh may seep into the soul and devour it. Mages, heretics, murders, liars and oathbreakers destroy their redemption by attacking their community. By assaulting society, they rend the fundamental covenant of creation. They spit in the face of the Lord and Dav. They are a curse upon us and themselves. Yet, for all but the mage and the excommunicate, there is hope. For the mage, they were never a part of our society and are dead to rights from the moment that reasonable evidence is brought against them. Likewise for the excommunicate, they are dead to all aid and lawful rights upon their judgment.
Dogma states that a mage, in spite of their moral stance or actions, is doomed to perform evil upon this world and its people. It does not matter what their actions were or will be in the future. Eventually their true nature will surface and render evil. Their existence in public is a lie, a living blasphemy. When a person is revealed to be a mage, those that knew them should do everything in their power to purge that presence from their life by confession. Unspoken truths about their relationship will remain within and fester like a splinter in the skin. To be innocent is to be free from these things. To keep the truth unspoken will cause it to rot and risk contamination of the soul.
Association with those that have been condemned by tainted blood or ecclesial recourse should be avoided at all costs. The severity of their crimes should not be met with a desire to aid or succor them; for that is the Law they have rejected. We exist to aid each other as members of this Church and of this Kingdom, but those that are exiled from its graces have already rejected our way of life. Do not pity what is lost, for it is lost; serve the betterment of your soul by leaving them behind in word, deed and confessed thought.
The Laws of Truth and Confession
“It is a blasphemy to falsely represent facts in the face of the Lord of the Springs and his representatives.” – The Nine Laws
“Any Davite who has thoughts contrary to church teaching must confess the thoughts to a priest or priestess in proper confession in order to be led back to the proper worship of the Lord of the Springs. Anyone who confesses their heretical thoughts in confession will be spared an Inquisition as long as the priests believe one is trying to return to the will of the Lord.” – The Nine Laws
“The common man understands the world as he is able to understand it. A man that is not blind knows that blindness is the absence of sight and may only catch glimpses of understanding when his eyes are shut or darkened by absence of light. And to man, what is the Lordly Source? Before that, all men are blind, catching only glimpses. We can no more describe in certainty the length or breadth of the Wellspring than a blind man may describe the color of the sky. “ – Recollected Verses, Petrus of Lundsend
As previously discussed in my commentary on the Laws of Consortion, a person is a dual entity composed of both crude matter and a spirit gifted from the Lord. Our understanding of the Truth, as Petrus of Lundsend stated, is limited by our ability to perceive. In philosophy, Truth is an ideal absolute. It is eternal and no more subject to the laws of Man than the wheeling stars in the heavens. Free from the limitations of bias, perspective and prejudice, the Truth is what occurs. Truth is fact. How does any man discern Truth from natural forms, their motions, color and character?
The first among these, originating from the Lordly Source, is that of internal knowledge. This is a boon from the Lord, something that is known within the self without the assistance of external information. Soldiers may call this gut instinct. Clergy tend to call it faith. All of us know this feeling, yet as we are material within a material world we cannot subsist on the knowledge it provides us alone. In order to live, a man must eat and drink, find shelter and comfort so that he is free to contemplate the higher things. In order to discern this material world, we must utilize our five senses. Touching upon some of humoural theory, each of these senses is linked with an element – a lower corporeal division of the perfect light that originates from the Wellspring.
It is by light that we see, and the abundance of this in the corporeal world is provided to us by the element of fire. This basic illumination is thought to be tempered in its interaction with other forces. Commingled with air, this purity is the essence of hearing; with vapor, this purity is the essence of smell; with fluid, it is the essence of taste; with the solidity of earth, the foundation for material presence, it is the sense of touch. All of these things we are able to discern because of our physical forms, but it is only through the greater Light given to us that we are able to understand and process these sensations into a semblance of the Truth.
It is inevitable for the flesh to acquire bias. We are men and women raised in particular parts of the kingdom; within a value system tempered by our local cultures. Our experience wears upon us like a millstone around our necks, contorting what we experience through the filter of our flesh. When we give witness to our neighbors, friends or servant, we may see things in them that obscure their Truth. Are they great men and women? Are they devout and humble? Are they dishonest? Are they less than us? Are they sinful? Perhaps they are all of these things. They are human, after all. Their truth rests in their complexity as material creatures, yet at their core, there is the fragment of a greater Truth. If they falter in their cultivation of this jewel, their Lord given soul, then is it not our duty to render them aid? To place them before those that may help them and righteously judge them so that a better path might be taken?
Likewise, it is our responsibility to look to ourselves and make sure that our own soul is properly tended. Our soul, a portion of this divine Truth, is situated within us for safekeeping. In the end, our souls will be laid bare for judgment and will have no flesh to hide in. It is our duty to ensure that this gift is returned, not just in good order but enriched. We are directed by Laws both secular and mundane in this life, but it is not enough to lose ourselves in prayer or the contemplation of these laws. The fabric of our society rests upon action: we must live the spirit of these laws, not merely their letter. Behind the written words there is the Truth.
The soul is a fragment of the Truth given to us. To maintain it and cultivate it is our mission. When we attempt to alter the Truth for ourselves or in the perceptions of others, we murder a part of the world, the part within ourselves. By speaking an altered Truth to others, we share a poison of the soul. By looking toward the rite of confession, we may relieve ourselves of everything that we carry, poisonous or otherwise with those that are trained and fortified against it. By purging ourselves of thought and deed, we may regain the path and sap the poison of Falsehood from our souls.
