Chapter 52: Golden Ouroboros (Part 2)
◎Astasinia◎
The Pope's convoy arrived in the city of Valladolid in the evening three days later. They will rest here for a day and then take a train to the Roman capital of Belleri. Valladolid is the last city close to the Roman border on the Papal States. Because it is adjacent to Roman and other free city-states, its commerce and trade are very developed. There are seven banks in the city alone.
The mayor borrowed a baron's holiday castle and barely settled the Pope and his entourage. Raphael took a shower and came down the stairs with his long hair still a little wet. Several black-robed monks were standing scattered in the hall on the first floor. There were two soft chairs in front of the fireplace, and Ferrante stood beside the empty chairs.
Raphael walked over and sat down in the chair next to Ferrante.
Ferrante turned his head and looked at him, with a hint of helplessness in his eyes. He reached into his sleeve, took out a roll of silk ribbon, and tied up Raphael's long hair. His movements were so skillful that it was astonishing, as if he had repeated them countless times.
Raphael obediently let him play with his hair, staring at the person in the armchair opposite with curiosity and inquiry.
That's a woman.
But at first glance, it is really difficult to tell her gender.
Her hair was shaved shorter than that of ordinary men, like randomly trimmed straw stubble, and was piled on her head in a messy manner. A tattered felt hat covered most of her forehead, revealing a pair of exceptionally energetic blue eyes, high cheekbones, a pointed chin, and a masculine facial feature. She was thin, wrapped in a men's loose short coat, and her lower body was long trousers tied at the waist with a straw rope. She was really not a woman who could be praised for her beauty. Rather, according to the current standards of judgment, a woman who looked like a man could be called ugly, especially since she did not seem to regard herself as a woman. Both her dress and expression revealed masculine aggressiveness.
"Ms. Anastasia, I'm sorry to invite you to visit me in this way. I hope my children are not rude to you." Raphael smiled at her apologetically. "In fact, my original plan was to visit you, but my aide said that you have been staying in the mass grave these days-"
Astasia curled her lips and sneered, whether in mockery or silence.
Seeing her alert face, Raphael gently placed the book he had been rolling up in his hand on his lap and showed her the cover.
As soon as she saw the book, Astasia's expression changed. Her eyes were fixed on the cover. The vigilance on her face melted away like water, and turned into another kind of joy and excitement: "Have you read this book? Do you agree with my point of view? I'm saying! There are still smart people in the world! Are you here to exchange academic ideas with me..."
Her questions came at Raphael like a string of cannonballs. The young Pope leaned back involuntarily, revealing a surprised smile. He had not expected that the woman who had been on high alert just now would let down her guard so easily. He did not know whether to praise her for her innocence or criticize her for not being alert enough.
Astasia was completely unaware of Raphael's complex psychological activities. She seemed to be immersed in her own world and began to preach her own "academic theory": "...After my research, I found that everyone's structure is exactly the same. God created us and gave us perfect bodies in the womb. This is not a feat that humans can accomplish. Every organ has its purpose, and the direction of blood flow is fixed. No theory can explain this. Except for the omnipotent and supreme God, who can formulate such a sophisticated system and make it work? In fact, after my research and confirmation, I think-"
Raphael listened to her enthusiastic preaching with a smile, picked up the porcelain cup beside him, and gently sipped the sweet tea with the fragrance of flowers and herbs. This sweet tea made of seasonal flowers and herbs is a specialty of the city of Valado. The mayor of Valado is promoting this product to the merchants accompanying His Majesty, and Raphael does not mind tasting this unique tea more often during his subsequent journey.
As soon as the sweet tea flowed into his mouth, he heard Astasia's firm and loud announcement: "-God has gender, and God is female!"
"Cough, cough, cough, cough..." Raphael choked on a mouthful of water and his trachea immediately issued a solemn protest. The Pope almost couldn't hold the cup in his hand. Ferrante took the cup and put it on the table, smoothed his back, and glared at Astasia with a cold look.
"Very, very creative insights, but I sincerely hope that you haven't yet promoted your new discovery to others." Raphael absolutely meant it when he said this.
This involves the Vatican's current interpretation of doctrine.
At present, when theology and religion have not yet developed to a perfect stage, the Holy See holds all the rights to interpret doctrines in its hands. Any new interpretation of scriptures and doctrines is not allowed. Once there is a different interpretation of the doctrine, the person will be judged as a blasphemer by the Holy See and will be subjected to severe education. If the education is ineffective, the Holy See has the right to legally sentence him to death.
Of course, within the Vatican, there are different schools of interpretation on an issue, and the Pope often has to be involved in the debates among these schools. Of course, except for the most devout believers, many debates are based on whether it is beneficial to themselves and whether it can increase the Vatican's ruling power.
Of all these issues, one of the most important is naturally the debate over the gender of God.
Is God male or female? Is it gender-specific, gender fluid, or genderless?
This issue has been debated in the Vatican for over a hundred years, but the current mainstream thinking is that God walks on earth in male appearance. This choice symbolizes the absolute dominance of men over women, indicating that men are the perfect first gender and deserve a higher status than women. Of course, such an explanation is entirely an explanation for gender oppression in a patriarchal society.
The believers of the "Goddess Sect" proposed that only women can give birth to offspring, and the first child in the world was also born by a woman. By analogy, the god who gave birth to the eldest son should be a woman. This is absolutely certain. It is women who are in charge of the most primitive power to continue bloodlines, so God is a woman.
However, once this theory was put forward, it would overturn the fundamental legitimacy of the Pope's rule: the Pope claimed that he was the incarnation of God on earth, and the legitimacy of his power was based on this point. If it was proved that the God at that time was a woman, then all the popes in history would be labeled heretics - as we all know, the first condition for participating in the election of the Pope is that the candidate must be a man.
So there is no doubt that no matter what the purpose is, the Pope is definitely a staunch supporter of the "male god faction".
Raphael didn't care whether God was male or female. He was not the kind of stubborn and conservative classicist who insisted on forcing people to recite every word of the scriptures and would jump up and threaten death if there were different opinions. But this did not mean that others could so unscrupulously promote "heretical" ideas in front of him.
"Oh, I did say that," Astasia admitted carelessly, "but no one believes it. Men are all stupid and arrogant. They are unwilling and dare not admit that the Supreme God who created everything is not a man. And women... they have been domesticated for too long and don't even dare to listen to my words. It's not their fault. They have been imprisoned and brainwashed since birth. Men are terribly afraid of women, so they have to tame them - wait, I admit that you are smarter than other men. At least you discovered my work."
The woman raised her head haughtily, her blue eyes twinkling with amusement.
When she was halfway through her speech, Lucreza came downstairs holding a book. When she found out there were guests, she quietly hid behind the curtain of the oriel window. Her actions obviously could not be hidden from the monks who were keeping an eye on everything, but since His Majesty did not give any instructions, they pretended not to see anything.
After hearing this, Lucreza felt like she had met an unreasonable lunatic. Everything this woman said was so crazy, and every word was worthy of being sent to the gallows and burned to death as a witch. She even criticized His Majesty to his face! But in the midst of the soul-shaking shock and fear, Lucreza could not help but hold her breath. She could not suppress her desire to listen, just like a bird cannot suppress its instinct to spread its wings.
Raphael rubbed his brows. He understood why the crows reported that this was a "madman, a psychopath, a mentally retarded person". Astasiania's current performance... was indeed extremely abnormal in the eyes of most people.
It's not just abnormal, it's worthy of being taken to a monastery and having an exorcism performed by the monks!
In fact, Astasia really experienced three exorcisms and lived in a monastery for a year and a half. In fact, she was forcibly locked up in the monastery as a lunatic. Finally, this woman took advantage of the nuns' inattention and crawled out of the underground drain. She hid outside for a year until others completely gave up on catching her.
This is the case in the city of Vlado, where commerce is developed and people are open-minded. If it were in the more conservative inland, Astasia would surely have died.
"I'm glad to be praised by you, ma'am, but I'm not here to discuss this with you today," Raphael said slowly, while opening the book in his hand, quickly turning to one of the pages, and holding it up again to show the other side, "but this."
Astasia's eyes froze for a moment. "Oh, this... This is just an accessory on my path to discovering the great truth. It's not worth mentioning. If you are smart enough, you should know that what I just told you is the truth for centuries! The absolute truth hidden by the Church!"
Raphael coughed hard a few times, forcibly interrupting her words. In Astanisia's fanatical and shining eyes, he suddenly realized something and asked calmly: "Madam, do you know who I am?"
"What?" the woman asked back instinctively, looking confused.
Raphael and Ferrante sighed at the same time and looked at each other.
Ferrante said: "You are before His Holiness Pope Saint Sistine I, Lord of Florence and the Papal States, Vicar of God on Earth, Shepherd of the Pious."
As his voice fell, Astasia froze completely, her eyes widened and bulged like fish eyes, and she fell into a comic silence.
Then, to everyone's surprise, she suddenly jumped up from the chair like a cat whose tail was stepped on - it was simply unimaginable that a person had such superior jumping ability. The woman was as flexible as a water snake and as agile as a black cat. She slid past Raphael and rushed towards the open door before anyone could react.
Raphael:?
Ferrante: ?
The two of them stared blankly at the empty soft chair in front of them, with various expressions on their faces.
Finally, Raphael covered his face with his hands, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, and raised his voice: "Bring her back!"
The monks around all took action, and after a chaotic battle, they finally caught Astasia who was trying to escape and pressed her into a chair.
This time she was not treated as well as last time. Two monks stood behind her, one on the left and one on the right, ready to hold down this activist at any time.
After realizing that she couldn't escape, the woman glared at Raphael angrily: "Liar! You hypocritical liars! You use whitewashed lies to deceive the ignorant people, and you arbitrarily tamper with God's will to realize your own greedy ambitions. You blaspheme the Most High God!"
She cursed the Church and the Pope with spit flying all over the place, wishing she could single-handedly blow up the entire Church, sweeping across the clergy of Florence, tearing up all the doctrines and flushing them into the cesspool. Seeing her getting more and more excited, her cheeks flushed, and her blue eyes were like fire. Raphael took a deep breath and said, "Madam, if you don't want to go to jail for desecrating corpses because of digging up other people's bodies without permission, you'd better shut up before my patience runs out. According to what you did to those poor people, perhaps an unprecedented huge bonfire will need to be erected for you in front of Piazza Valado."
Astasia's voice suddenly stopped.
Her face also turned colorful, and after a long while, she responded muffledly: "Oh."
Obviously, this seemingly fearless woman also knew that what she was doing was not legally legal.
He is bold, aware of current affairs, and adaptable to an astonishing degree. He looks crazy, but is actually sober and rational.
A very powerful woman.
Raphael once again pointed the page with the human figure towards her and said simply, "People here have also speculated about what you did in the mass grave, but they haven't had such wild imaginations. They just think you are studying witchcraft. In fact, the punishment for both is burning at the stake. If you don't want to be suddenly reported and exposed in the future, please keep silent at the appropriate time and on the appropriate topic. I came here to find you for this matter. I think you should know about the great epidemic in Florence in the first half of the year?"
Astasia snorted reluctantly through her nose.
"...some of the medical discoveries you put forward in it have been studied by my doctors and are considered to be very valuable, so I hope you can go to Florence and become my personal medical consultant to assist my doctors in establishing the Florence Medical School. At that time, you can study these openly instead of secretly going to the mass grave at night... stealing from those poor people."
Astasia raised her head sharply, almost twisting her head off with such force: "Are you serious?"
Raphael didn't care about her rudeness and said tolerantly: "I never lie."
The woman looked at him cautiously for a few seconds, then smiled and said, "Deal."
Raphael was surprised to find that this woman with a hard and sharp face had a unique and heroic temperament when she smiled. This temperament made her stand out from the crowd instantly, and she possessed the wisdom and invincibility of a female warrior in some classical oil paintings.
"Just watch, without women, you can do nothing." Astasia raised her head arrogantly.
Lucreza watched this scene from behind the oriel window, her slender hands
Grasping the cover of the book with her fingers, she suddenly felt that this strange, ugly, dishevelled woman seemed to be glowing.
Future history books will record this meeting in detail, telling how Astasia, known as the mother of modern medicine, a woman born in poverty and without even a surname, tore open her own sky in this chaotic and gloomy era.
She was a staunch feminist and the earliest initiator of the women's movement. She saved countless people with her medical talents and was the first doctor to systematically conduct anatomical research on the human body and the first doctor to try to establish a systematic modern medical system. Her research greatly reduced the risks for women in childbirth, abandoned the primitive belief-based method of inducing labor, and adopted a more scientific midwifery method, which greatly improved the survival rate of mothers and babies. Therefore, although she remained unmarried and childless throughout her life, she is also called "our mother."
She single-handedly proved that women can radiate brilliance that is no less than that of men in any field, and completely trampled the derogatory term "male appendage". In her time and after, women with the same talents began to emerge. Their brilliance is so faint in the entire history, but these faint points of light connected together are enough to illuminate the sky.
A personal statue of her was built in Piazza della Signoria. The woman with short hair and long trousers looked forward, holding a notebook in her hand and a thin robe on her shoulders. She had a proud smile on her strong face and looked high-spirited as if she was running non-stop from one ward to another. On the bronze base was engraved a personal saying of hers. Because this saying went against doctrine, it was not engraved until more than 50 years after her death when the will left by Saint Sistine I came to light.
——Women created women, and women must become women.
The author has something to say:
Da dada, a unique new character hahahaha, I quite like Astasiania hehe, I try to create a character that has never been seen in any text, I hope you like it!
The last sentence was inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s “A woman is not born, but made”, which is so insightful.
However, the "women" in "women should be women" is defined by Astasia as being wise, brave, strong, and independent, which is different from the public's impression at that time that women were virtuous, gentle, and completely devoted to their families. It is impossible to say who is better or worse. Please interpret it in the context of the times in the article.
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