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The Rudolstadt Colloquy

Virginia DeMarce

April 1633

 

Ed Piazza squirmed as inconspicuously as possible on the hard bench of the University of Jena's anatomy amphitheater, as the debate on differing Lutheran views of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, both up-time and down-time, flew over and around his head in three different languages. Before he'd made the acquaintance of the different parties that existed among Grantville's new citizenry, he had just been naive in his assumption that only his own Roman Catholic church encompassed communicants with views as divergent as those of Francisco Franco and Dorothy Day.

The brightest idea that anyone—anyone at all—had had last winter had been Samantha Burka's suggestion that the growing tensions among the Lutherans of the United States could be dodged by taking advantage of political geography. Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt had not only built St. Martin's in the Fields Lutheran Church, of currently uncertain orthodoxy, for the benefit of Grantville's huge influx of Lutheran citizens but had also built it on his own land. True, Rudolstadt was part of the new little United States; but, on the other hand, the United States was a confederation and that territory was not the responsibility of Grantville itself. Thus, the Grantville government could take the high road, virtuously declaring that it did not interfere in ecclesiastical disputes, and dump the whole squabble into the lap of the Rudolstadt administration.

Consequently the count, with the assistance of his chancellor and consistorial advisors, was presiding over this circus, while Ed was watching. In any station of life, a man can find something to be thankful for.

* * *

Somebody made another reference to the Formula of Concord. This, Ed had learned in his desperate pre-conference dash through the applicable chapters of the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, supplemented by a briefing book that the new Grantville Research Center had pulled together for him from the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, had been produced fifty years earlier as part of a major effort to get all the Lutheran theologians on the same wavelength. It still served as a sort of measuring-stick for orthodox Lutheran views in 1633—and had in the twentieth century as well.

Ed glanced down toward the floor as the conscientious young man at the chalkboard, using his one good arm, quickly wrote the page reference for the audience to follow along. Jonas Justinus Muselius had been in Grantville for almost the whole two years since the Ring of Fire and had a pretty swift head and hand when it came to getting around in three languages at once. He now taught at the new Lutheran grade school next to the controversial church just outside Grantville's borders.

In his own copy of the Concordia Triglotta, Ed leafed over to the proper page in English. The tome not only had the Formula of Concord, Latin and German on the left-hand page and English with a blank column on the right-hand page, but most of the major Reformation documents that had led up to it—the Lutheran catechisms, the Augsburg Confession, the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, etc. Ed guessed that they were lucky that the Lambert kid was a devout Lutheran. He'd had that book, with the whole thing conveniently lined up in all three languages so the content matched on each pair of pages—all 1,285 of them, index included. Every participant in the Rudolstadt Colloquy now had one, included in the registration packet, which made for a hefty weight in the tote bags.

The publisher in Jena had been happy to get the order. He said cheerfully that if he had any copies left over after the conference, he'd just get someone to smuggle them into England and cause that half-Papist Laud some trouble.

Ed's pencil wiggled. A doodle bloomed on the upper left-hand corner of page 123 (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Art. IV. (II.), English version) and gradually expanded to become an illustrated border all the way around the scholastics, the good works, and the "many great and pernicious errors, which it would be tedious to enumerate." The speaker, clearly, had no problems with tedium. It looked like he was going to enumerate them all. The full sleeve of his gown snagged on a corner of the book; its skirt scrunched up under him, even though he had smoothed it out before he sat down.

* * *

"What is a colloquy?" Ed remembered asking that question when the project of having a colloquy in Rudolstadt to smooth over the differences among and between the various factions of Grantville's up-time and down-time Lutherans was first brought up. Innocence, blessed innocence! Now he knew. Colloquies were events whereby someone put dissenting parties of theologians and their adherents into a room with spectators and insisted that they keep talking until they reached some sort of a resolution on the controversial issues.

Colloquies did not have time clocks.

This colloquy involved the Flacians, orthodox Lutherans on the model of Matthaeus Flacius Illyricus, and the Philippists, slightly less stringently orthodox Lutherans on the model of Philip Melanchthon—from the 1633 here and now. The two factions had been disputing since Luther's death, and they were disputing still. In addition to these by-now classic components, it had as a plus factor those interesting up-time equivalents, the Missouri Synod, a largely German-heritage and theologically orthodox organization of Lutherans in the up-time USA, and the ELCA, or Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which appeared to Ed to be pretty much the outcome of a multi-stage amalgamation of the descendants of Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, and some portion of German Lutheran immigrant churches.

The colloquy was thus providing an excuse for half the academics on the continent, plus a few from the British Isles, to see the Americans for themselves while billing the trip to their employers. As a result, it had grown to the point that no place in Rudolstadt, a county seat that had a population of slightly over a thousand residents two years ago and only half again that many now, could cope with the attendance. Therefore, they were having the Rudolstadt Colloquy some twenty miles down the Saale River to the north, in the university town of Jena, whose permanent population regarded it as a great financial boon. A rousing theological colloquy was an event which attracted not only theologians, but politicians, visitors who came for the entertainment, souvenir salesmen, and food vendors. Outside, in Jena's market square, beverage booths were vying with street musicians, while booksellers displayed their wares next to pretzel bakers. Almost every house in the town was crammed to the rafters with temporary boarders.

Ed thought idly that if the debate should degenerate into a riot, anyone with a strong right arm and the three and a half pounds of the Concordia Triglotta in a tote bag could do a lot of damage to an opponent—though, luckily, it was a paperback. In the seventeenth century, book printing and book binding were separate trades, and anyone who wanted a cover on his book usually took it to a binder after he had bought it. True, Count Ludwig Guenther had assured him that any riot was more likely to take place outside in the streets rather than among the participants themselves, but half the people outside—farmers and artisans, students and merchants, journeymen and apprentices, male and female—had bought a copy of the book, too. It was by far the most popular souvenir for visitors to take home.

The man next to him shifted restlessly. Ed looked over and saw that his Latin text had acquired an even more elaborate decoration than his own, in pen rather than pencil. The thin-faced little man returned the glance, with a surreptitious grin, and penned a question in the margin of page 122.

You American?  

Yes. Ed Piazza. Grantville.  

Leopold Cavriani. Geneva. Beer when they stop? 

* * *

The two men came out of the university grounds into what Ed still couldn't help thinking of as a picturesque, old-fashioned, German town that would delight any right-thinking tourist. It was, he reminded himself, a picturesque contemporary German town in which dozens of people who lived in what they considered to be modern times were standing around an old-time West Virginia fiddler. He was sitting on an upside-down keg that had once held imported Norwegian salted herring and playing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" A skinny teenaged German girl was selling the sheet music.

Ed chalked up one more "Benny sighting." Old Benny Pierce, a childless widower, had been 79 at the time of the Event. He must be 81 now, Ed thought. Benny kept wandering around south central Thuringia with the single-minded focus of preventing the legacy of Mother Maybelle Carter from being lost. Some people—especially his nephew's wife Doreen—worried that he was going to get himself into trouble. But, after all, even Doreen admitted, you couldn't keep a grown man pinned down. Still, Ed did sort of try to keep track of him. There was no predicting where, when, or if he might someday need to be bailed out, since the grandly-named Department of International Affairs was still doing double duty as the Consular Service.

The weather was nice: that is, it wasn't actively raining. Yet. Ed and Cavriani took their beers to an outdoor table behind the restaurant. "Ahh," Ed said, as he sat down.

"Do you prefer 'Signor' Cavriani?" The Italian that Ed had learned from his grandparents was rusty, but serviceable.

"Not for a long time," Cavriani replied in German. "My first language is French. Seventy years or so ago, my grandfather was a university student, thinking modern thoughts. Seventy years ago, those thoughts were about Protestantism, naturally, but he was in Naples. So he found it prudent to leave. Of course, it's much easier to leave Naples than to leave a lot of these inland places—he just took a boat to Marseilles and from there went over to Geneva. He wrote home, telling his family that if they would send him enough money to buy citizenship, he would open up a branch of the firm. They did, he did, and we're still there—Cavriani Frères de Genève. Neapolitan politics are fun, of course. I still keep my hand in, a bit. Just as a hobby, you know."

"And Cavriani Frères deals in . . . ?"

Cavriani waved his hand. "Oh, a little of this, a little of that. You could think of us as brokers, I suppose. I rather like your up-time word—facilitators. Smoothers of paths. Those who make the rougher places plain."

Ed's mouth quirked. "You're in road construction?"

"We can ensure that a road is constructed. Or that a boat is built and crewed. That an enterprise is financed. Or even, sometimes, that an idea is spread. As the fiddler whom you watched is ensuring that an idea is spread."

Ed cocked his head. "Would it be indiscreet to ask just whom, or what, you have been facilitating in or near Grantville?"

"Ah," said Cavriani. "Not at all. My meetings with Count August von Sommersburg, if not public as to their specific content, have not been concealed. Nor has their general purpose, which is financing the expansion of his slate quarries southwest of Grantville. I assure you that my presence is known to your Saale Development Authority. I paid Mr. Bolender at the Department of Economic Resources a courtesy call as well."

Ed thought privately that if Count August was slick, his backer was likely to be even slicker. Nonetheless, Cavriani was a pleasant man to have as a new acquaintance. But "facilitators" usually were pleasant. Amiable. Courteous and easy to talk to. It was part of their stock in trade.

Cavriani was continuing. "If we could meet for dinner, I would be happy to explain the proposals we will be presenting."

But Ed had an out, at least temporarily. "Unfortunately, Monsieur Cavriani, I have a prior commitment." Ed dangled a tidbit of information to gauge Cavriani's reaction. "Margrave George of Baden-Durlach—who, as you know, is here as King Gustavus Adolphus' personal observer—has invited several gentlemen to a private supper this evening."

Ed was gratified to see Cavriani's eyes brighten, ever so slightly. He thought that, undoubtedly, the man would make it his business to find out just which among the "several gentlemen" in attendance at the colloquy would be meeting with the margrave, and equally undoubtedly would know the answer before the dinner even took place. And why not? Information would certainly be one of the major trade items purveyed by Cavriani Brothers of Geneva (not to mention by Cavriani cousins, current Cavriani in-laws, and potential husbands of Cavriani daughters, sisters, and nieces, wherever they might be found). It would be very surprising if the firm didn't have permanent correspondents at every major Imperial and CPE post office, picking up the news as fast as it came in.

Ed glanced down at his watch. "But our break is over. Back to the discussions."

They returned their beer mugs to the vendor. Ed noticed that, under the stern eye of Jena's new Public Health Security Force, the booth actually had a couple of pans of dishwater in the rear, and a boy who was washing the mugs before the owner re-used them. He refrained from commenting that the practice would be even more helpful if they occasionally changed the dishwater. One step at a time. Apparently the sanitation squad hadn't gotten to Chapter Two.

* * *

Knowing I'm on the street where you live . . .  

Ed Piazza's attendance at the Rudolstadt Colloquy had not been uncontroversial within the Grantville administration. To quote Mike Stearns' explosion of the previous December: "Damn it, Ed. We've got six to a dozen major projects going and all of them need you more than we need to have you sitting in on an academic debate and listening to a bunch of guys argue about who's going to be the minister of one single Lutheran church."

Ed hadn't kept on top of every turn of the kaleidoscope for the past twenty years, watching Grantville High School's cliques and allegiances shift on the basis of both current interests and longstanding family feuds, for nothing. If any occupation could have prepared a resident of Grantville to conduct early modern diplomacy, it was experience as a social studies teacher and high school principal.

"Look, Mike," he said patiently, "we can't just do things according to our own priorities. We have to factor in the priorities of our allies. Yes, they're arguing about who's going to be minister at St. Martin's. Okay. Point One. Specifically, they're talking about whether the minister, whoever Count Ludwig Guenther's appointee turns out to be, will be a Matthaeus Flacius Illyricus-style Lutheran or a Philip Melanchthon-style Lutheran. Point Two. Even more important for us, they're arguing about whether, if he's a Flacian, he can exclude all of the followers of Philippist-style teachings who are now living in Grantville from taking communion. And, I suppose, vice versa. I'm still not sure on that one."

"That still doesn't mean that you can afford to spend a week listening to them. Much less two weeks. Or three. Or a month!"

Ed continued unperturbed. "Point Three. More generally, the result of this specific decision about this church just outside of Grantville is going to be a weather vane about the overall direction that the Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt consistory is going to take. If they do make an exception from strict Flacian orthodoxy for the church serving Grantville—or the churches, since Count Ludwig Guenther is building another one on the other side of town to take up some of the overflow—then he'll be getting requests for exemption from other congregations in the county, and he knows it. If the theology faculty at Jena swallows hard and accepts an exemption in this county, they know that similar requests will be coming in from every other little city, county, and dukedom in Thuringia. What's more . . ."

Mike groaned. "There can't be more."

"Yes, there can be more. There is more. Point Four. Every Lutheran ruler in the CPE is sending a 'personal observer.' Which means that they're sending their chancellors. Gustavus Adolphus is sending a 'personal observer,' for Chrissakes! He's sending Margrave George of Baden-Durlach, and even if the man is old and getting very, very, tired, he's still been one of the most consistent defenders of the Protestant cause from the very beginning of this war. Don't count him out just because he lost a battle in 1622. He's never given up and he's taken exile rather than compromise with the Imperials."

Ed paused, then started again. "Listen, Mike. This colloquy is a big deal. Colloquies are academic debates, in a way, but they're academic debates on steroids. They're academic debates that affect the real world. If this war wasn't on, they wouldn't be sending 'personal observers.' They would be coming themselves: John George of Saxony, Wilhelm of Hessen-Kassel—even though he's a Calvinist himself—George of Hessen-Darmstadt, the Anhalt mini-princes, all of the Saxe-Whatever dukes. Reuss. Probably Brandenburg, even though the elector himself has turned Calvinist like Hessen-Kassel, because he's taken the unusual measure of not imposing his faith on anyone but the court personnel. Most of his subjects are Lutheran. Maybe even Prussia. The Prussian duke will be sending an observer if he has someone suitable on retainer who can get here in time. Count Anton Guenther of Oldenburg is coming in person, but there has to be something else behind that. If it weren't for the war, Gustavus Adolphus himself might have come. When the Reformation got started, the Holy Roman Emperor sat in on some of the religious debates."

Mike looked sour. "It didn't do the Holy Roman Emperor a lot of good, either. They've been having religious wars ever since."

Ed sighed. "Sometimes, a smaller scale can be more effective. The theologians will debate and discuss. The 'personal observers' will listen and report back. And, Point Five. At some point, while the public debate goes on and on, the 'personal observers' will get together and pool the collective wisdom of the 'patrons' of German Lutheranism about the way to go. If the 'way to go' turns out to be maintaining orthodox exclusionism, the different Lutheran parties will be back at each other's throats and the CPE will fall apart. If it turns out to be enforced mutual coexistence, no matter how much the theologians argue, we've maybe got the lever in place with which we can move the rest of Germany when it comes to religious tolerance. Capisce?"

"So the Lutheran princes will tell the Lutheran churches what to do." Mike pulled a sour face. He knew that he would have to live with the "established church" phenomenon, but he didn't have to like it.

"For the time being." Ed leaned back, touching his fingertips to one another in a reflective manner. "There really have been quite a lot of changes in the past century. Lay patrons still appoint ministers to the Lutheran churches—that's true enough. Connections still help in getting an appointment—that's true, too. But they can't appoint just any ne'er-do-well cousin who needs a sinecure. Not anymore. They pick off a list of church-approved candidates who've finished a theological course, sometimes at a university and sometimes at a seminary, and who have been examined and approved by their own church board for the principality—the consistory, it's called, mainly, or sometimes the general synod. There's no rule about what it's called. It works pretty much the same in the Calvinist principalities. Actually, a lot of it has rubbed off on us Catholics, as well. Compared to the middle ages, one thing that Europe has now is a clergy that's a lot more literate, a lot more educated, and a lot more committed to the job."

Ed grinned. "Of course, all of those things mean that as a general rule they spend a lot more time reading and arguing about fine theological points than back in the days when quite a few rural priests could barely stumble their way through the liturgy. Not to mention that the fashion for long sermons means that the parishioners hear a lot more about points of theological controversy, too. A fair number of homilies seem to encapsulate the major points that the local pastor intends to make in his next letter to a neighboring minister with whom he disagrees about the nature of the Real Presence or the significance of Christ's Descent into Hell."

Mike's eyebrows were still raised—high.

Ed persisted. "Shall I go over it again? We can't just do things according to our own priorities. We have to factor in the priorities of our allies. Mike, we're living on their street. They're our neighbors. They care about this. They really, really, do. Therefore, we care about this. Whether you want us to or not. And we will send a delegate of equal status to the chancellors of all those allied territories. That's me."

"So everything else gets dropped for a month?"

"No. I'll just make Arnold Bellamy 'acting.' He's perfectly capable of keeping everything else on track. If I die of the plague or get thrown off a damned horse and break my neck, he will be doing the job. That's why there's a Deputy Secretary of State."

* * *

Mike frowned a little, thinking that almost a year ago, when Grantville's delegates first met with Gustavus Adolphus, Ed hadn't been anything like this assertive. He had stood there looking very behind-the-scenes, very advice-but-not-policy, very subordinate-in-a-clear-hierarchy-of-authority. He'd had a lot of on-the-job experience as Secretary of State since then, of course, but still, how had he changed so much?

Then Mike reconsidered, and decided that it was last April that was the aberration. Ed's whole career track had been aimed at being a principal: not a vice-principal or a deputy principal. He'd run the high school with a fair amount of input—there was a faculty senate and a student council. He'd run it with good cheer, common sense, and an even temperament. But somehow no one, neither teachers nor kids nor even the county superintendent of schools, had doubted that the hand that directed Grantville High School belonged to Ed Piazza. Before the RoF, after the mine had closed, Ed had managed the single largest enterprise in Grantville, from the standpoint of budget and personnel, and he'd never been afraid to make a decision once he had the data on which to base it.

"What if I directly order you not to go?" he asked.

"If you directly order me not to go, I will stay here. But I will continue to think that you are wrong." Ed leaned forward in his chair. "Don't just take it from me. Ask the rest of the cabinet, if you want to. Bring it up for debate. But I should go. From beginning to end. That's where I stand."

* * *

They also serve who only sit and sit. 

Ed had only brought the essentials for this stay in Jena. In his view, the essentials included an old aluminum Drip-o-lator and a thermos bottle with the kind of top that nested six different sizes of plastic cup. He could remind himself a thousand times that this was not a quaint Renaissance Faire staffed by costumed reenactors but rather the modern world—insofar as there was a modern world. Nonetheless, the thought of beer for breakfast turned his stomach. His wife Annabelle had concocted some reusable filters out of an ancient roll of gauze she had turned up somewhere. Turkish coffee arrived in beans rather than pre-ground, but he'd managed to modify a peppermill to deal with that problem. He stood in the public room of the Black Bear Inn the next morning, brewing coffee with a dramatic flourish for the benefit of his entourage.

Since the secretary of state's support staff in Jena consisted entirely of kids who had gone to high school since he joined the staff, they expected the flourish—even early in the morning. They would have been disappointed not to have it. Before he became principal, Mr. P.'s "extracurricular" had been directing all the school plays—usually teaching by doing. Ed could drop into any role. His students never quite understood how, when a demonstration was called for, a burly man of about five and a half feet, wearing a yellow polo shirt, could turn into an imaginary six-foot-tall rabbit (Harvey), a psychopathic killer (Night Must Fall), a Russian empress (Anastasia), or a ditzy spinster (Arsenic and Old Lace)—without even putting on a costume. When he became principal, his first addition to the staff had been Amber Higham as a full-time drama teacher, but he had still dropped in on the rehearsals whenever he could find a minute.

But they all knew his favorite role. "Hey, Mr. Piazza," said Tanya the radio operator, as Ed poured boiling water into the Drip-o-lator, "Give us the serenade."

The serenade was Ed's glory. Six times, during his life, he had been called to this acme of thespian desires—in high school already; in college; while he was in the army, during an R&R in Guam; three times for community theaters. He had met Annabelle during the first community theater version. It was never enough. There couldn't be too many productions. So as Leopold Cavriani came in, hoping to extract data about the previous evening's conclave of chancellors, he found the odor of coffee, six apprentice diplomats (only one of whom officially worked for the Department of International Affairs) sitting around their breakfast table wearing borrowed St. Mary's second-best choir robes that they tried to pretend were seventeenth century academic gowns, enthusiastic applause, and the secretary of state, garbed in a matching choir robe, throwing himself into a glorious basso rendition of "Some Enchanted Evening" as the sun rose.

That was another thing that Ed had learned about colloquies. They started early. The participants were not inclined to waste daylight.

* * *

"Ah, M'sieu Cavriani, good morning. Do join us. My staff—Tanya Newcomb, our tech. She's based in Grantville, in my department. I've borrowed two of them from our administrative delegations assigned to the cities of the U.S., just for the conference, to broaden their perspective a bit. Peter Chehab, Suhl; Joel Matowski, Fulda. Zack Carroll—he's in the army and will be sent to Erfurt in the fall. By the way, his sister Sara just graduated from our high school this spring and joined the army, too. Jamie Lee Swisher—she's been working as a page at our National Library, but she did such a good job getting stuff together for this conference that I've borrowed her—and if I can, I'll steal her for my permanent staff. Staci Matowski—she's taking teacher training and we hope to have her in the social studies department at the high school in a few more years. Right now, her folks said that she could come along because she's Joel's sister and he could keep an eye on her."

Cavriani recognized them—not the individual young people, but the type. He had been one, at their age. His son had recently become one. Trainees: the pool from which the designated successors would someday emerge. The only really, ah, interesting thing about the American staff was that half of them were girls. He stashed this in his mental file, for future consideration. Obviously, he couldn't put his daughters—four girls to one boy! What had Potentiana been thinking of as she conceived?—as assistant factors in most of their branch offices. It just wasn't feasible in the environment of European business. But, in a couple of years—maybe in this Grantville . . . If daughters could become contributing members of the firm, it would far more than double their personnel. In this generation, the Cavriani Frères were very short on Cavriani Fils. He would think about it. Idelette was fifteen now . . . 

* * *

As soon as they were sufficiently fortified with coffee and hard rolls, Ed collected his tote bag and joined Cavriani for the walk over to the medical school. Cavriani was clearly pumping for information, but at least Ed had something to offer that was both news and would shortly be public anyway. He said solemnly, "No, Margrave George's guests found that the situation is not yet opportune to move the colloquy toward a conclusion. Late yesterday afternoon, the delegation from the University of Tuebingen theological school arrived. Nothing will be decided until they have had their chance to speak. Anything else would be gravely discourteous."

Cavriani nodded with equal gravity. Both men knew what this meant in terms of hard-bench-days.

The delegation from the University of Tuebingen theological school included all of the faculty and most of the students. Down toward the southwest, in Swabia, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar (theoretically on behalf of the French component of the League of Ostend, but mainly for himself) and Gustav Horn (for Gustavus Adolphus and the CPE) had spent the past six months campaigning with a lot more energy than generals usually brought to the late autumn, winter, and spring seasons. Both of them were young men—Horn just turned forty and Bernhard a good decade younger. Both were energetic; both were ambitious; both had funds. They both regarded war as a combination of job and sport.

The results had been rather hard on the civilian population of the Duchy of Wuerttemberg. Among other consequences, the University of Tuebingen had closed down for the spring semester. Since staying in Tuebingen did not appear to be the best of options, any theologian who could get out of town had prudently withdrawn to Darmstadt. With a colloquy on the spring schedule, the Tuebingen Ensemble had just relocated again. After three months of exile from their classrooms, they would certainly be prepared to speak. At length.

* * *

Andreas Osiander had been a rather heterodox theologian—the Flacians had hated him. His grandson, Professor Lukas Osiander Jr., was one of the most vociferous spokesmen in favor of strict orthodoxy. He was a controversialist. He was a polemicist. He was willing to take on the Catholics and he did. He was willing to take on the Calvinists and he did. It was to be anticipated that he would relish a chance to confront not just the concept of open communion among different schools of Lutheranism, which was technically the subject of the colloquy, but more generally the dangerous underlying ideas of religious tolerance and separation of church and state. Professor Lukas Osiander Jr. was able to recognize the thin edge of a wedge when he saw one.

Cavriani winced—at the prospect of another two weeks of non-stop quotations, Ed presumed. "And, I suppose, the Jena faculty has welcomed these reinforcements with open arms?"

Ed shook his head. "Not so entirely as one might think. They're orthodox here, of course, very orthodox. But, generally, their approach isn't as confrontational as the Tuebingen style. Additionally, along the way, Osiander has attacked the works of Johann Arndt. He's proclaimed that Arndt's 'True Christianity' is contrary to the proper Lutheran doctrine of justification. Arndt was the pastor who inspired the dean of the Jena faculty to enter the ministry. . . ."

"Ah." Cavriani's hand circumscribed a spiral in front of him. "Indeed, so much of life is like that. It's not what you know, but whom you know."

The colloquy came to order.

* * *

There could be no doubt about it: the theologians of Tuebingen knew really a lot about the doctrine of ubiquity. They appeared to know even more about the supposed or alleged errors that Philip Melanchthon had made in regard to the doctrine of ubiquity. They were prepared to pursue every detail of how these errors had been maintained by Melanchthon's successors and followers since 1560.

It was not as if the communion question that was now plaguing St. Martin's in the Fields in the County of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was new. The Tuebingen delegation was prepared. As far as its members were concerned, they already had the answers, fully worked out. Wuerttemberg's consistory in Stuttgart, which was basically the Tuebingen theological faculty wearing different hats, had been through this only a few years ago before—with a lot of publicity—in the case of that irritating, arrogant, hard-headed, and (God be praised) recently deceased native son of the duchy, the astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler.

Professor Osiander was loaded for bear, Ed thought.

"No minister of the church, who wants to be a true caretaker of God's secrets, may admit a person in communion who outwardly boasts of the true evangelical religion, but in the articles of faith is not exact in all things."

Ed looked for Gary Lambert, who was in his place on the bench, far enough around the curve of the anatomy theater from Ed to be visible. He was nodding solemnly, as if to say, "Of course!" Gary was the sole representative in Grantville of the Missouri Synod, the conservative American up-time branch of the Lutheran church.

"No one who maintains a formal membership in the Lutheran church, but who privately deviates from sound doctrine, obscuring it with dubious meanings and absurd speculations, both being confused and confusing others, may be admitted to communion."

Ed frowned and penned a note to Cavriani. How do they know whether or not he's deviating, if he does it privately? 

Cavriani cocked his head, then scribbled. I suppose when they go to the pastor to make confession and pre-register for communion, he asks them. 

Ed frowned again, grateful for the comparatively large blank spaces in the Concordia Triglotta that had resulted when the three different languages used more or fewer words to say the same thing. Catholics go to confession. Protestants don't go to confession. 

Cavriani scribbled another response: Lutherans do. Maybe not where you came from. Or when you came from. But they do here. Or now. Whatever. 

Cavriani flipped over to a largely empty page. It's the old "laudable custom" maneuver. Luther threw out five of the seven Catholic sacraments in the sense that he defined them as "not sacraments." But since the people were attached to them, they turned into "laudable customs" and kept hanging around. That's why we proper Calvinists think they're still half Catholic. Confession is a laudable custom; marriage ceremonies are a laudable custom; ordination of ministers is a laudable custom; confirmation is a laudable custom. I think some of them still perform last rites. 

Professor Osiander, at the podium, was not showing any sign of winding down. "Anyone who does not wish to commit to the definite form of pure doctrine, and shrinks from subscribing to the Formula of Concord as the symbol of the orthodox Lutheran church founded in the Holy Scriptures, may not be admitted to holy communion. Unless such a person drops his erroneous opinion and harmonizes his beliefs with those of the church, he must and shall be excluded. A minister who so excludes a person who denies the omnipresence of the Body of Christ—as the Calvinists do and as these crypto-Calvinists who are a malignant growth within Lutheranism do—acts in a manner that is clearly pleasing to God."

Dramatically, Ed thought, this would be a fine conclusion, and a really good place for Professor Osiander to stop and let everybody else get some lunch.

Professor Osiander, however, was drawing another breath. He clearly did not approve of people who thought for themselves in matters of religious doctrine, "being carried away according to their own judgment in matters of faith."

Ed thought that this was a distinctly peculiar opinion on the part of someone who claimed to be a successor of the man who started the Protestant Reformation by insisting that he had to rely on the conclusions of his own conscience and not on what someone else told him. Evidently, for Professor Osiander, the "priesthood of all believers" didn't have room for all of "all."

Gary Lambert, again, was nodding solemnly. His up-time opponent Carol Koch, Grantville's ELCA representative to the colloquy, on the other hand, was scribbling madly, trying to keep notes.

* * *

Ed thought for a moment. He didn't think that Grantville's ELCA Lutherans had deliberately chosen Carol as their delegate in order to "make a statement" about the role of women in the church. There just weren't many up-time Lutherans in Grantville. None of them were natives of the town. It hadn't been a Lutheran kind of place before the Ring of Fire. Gary was the only one who had belonged to the Missouri Synod except for his wife, who had been at work at the hospital in Morgantown when it happened. The ELCA—Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, to use the full title—had had a grand total of ten members. Ten adults, anyway, and three teenagers who had to be pretty close to eighteen by now, if the Kochs' two weren't already older than that.

According to the story Ed had heard, the ELCA bunch, however many, had met at the Sutters' house. Billy Nelson and Melvin Sutter had declined the honor of presenting their case—before the Ring of Fire, Billy had been a truck driver and Melvin had run a filling station. Ron Koch, the only mining safety engineer in town, clearly couldn't be spared for a week or a month—he didn't have a deputy. Those three were the ELCA's sum total of adult men. There really was only one person who could take the time. Ron's wife.

"You'll just have to do it," Roberta Sutter had said. The victim—um, nominee for the honor—had been looking appalled. Roberta had reached into the armory that was available to her in her secondary role as president of Grantville's genealogy club. "Your mother's father was a minister. Your mom was an organist. You're bound to have inherited some kind of a knack for it. You'll have to do it, Carol."

* * *

When the colloquy finally—finally!—broke for lunch, Ed saw that Benny Pierce was once more established on his herring keg in the market square. The girl who had been selling the sheet music yesterday was singing. She had a high soprano, a little reedy, but with good carrying quality—a mountain kind of voice. Ed waved Cavriani to go on to the beer stand and wandered over. She was singing "Lorena"—not the soupy Civil War ballad, but Mother Maybelle's "The Sun Shines No More on Lorena," in which a slave, taken to Kentucky when his master moved, hears many years later that his wife has died back in Virginia. She was singing it in German: "Und man sagt mir, Lorena, Du bist tot." The more sentimental members of the audience had tears dripping from their eyes. Ed never ceased to be astonished at how smoothly a lot of English verse, such as, "And they tell me, Lorena, you are dead," went into German, and vice versa.

Benny stopped playing, leaned back, and stretched his arms. "Hi'ya, Ed. Meet Minnie Hugelmair. Minnie, this guy here is Ed Piazza. If anything happens to me, head for Grantville and ask for him. Play something—keep 'em entertained." He handed his fiddle over to the girl.

As Minnie started a skipping rendition of "Wildwood Flower," Benny said, "Y'know, Ed, if you felt like it, you could radio down to Grantville and ask someone to bring me up my autoharp when they're coming. Dave and Doreen have got the key to my bedroom. It's in there. I rented out the rest of the place. We're doing pretty good here. I think we'll stay to the end of this foofara, so there'll be time for it to catch up with me."

"Sure, Benny, I can do that. People go back and forth every day, so it won't take long."

"Minnie should do real good on the autoharp." Benny studied his calluses. "It might be that you'll be hearing from her ex-boss. I helped her run away."

"Might be?"

Benny grinned. "I don't guarantee he'll figure out that I'm the one who helped her. He didn't seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. I expect he's more likely to think it was a young guy who wanted to put his hand up her skirts than an old guy who wanted to put her hand on a fiddle bow. But anyway, he was as mean as a generous skunk and she's better off working for me, even if she was indentured to him for another three years."

"Where were you when you, ah, provided this assistance to a damsel in distress?"

"Minnie wasn't distressed. Minnie was mad. He'd promised to pay out her wages yearly and went back on the bargain—said that according to the law, he didn't have to pay until her indenture was up. She only stole what he owed her—not a pfennig more. Well, I watched to make sure that's all she took. Left to herself, she can be a lying little sneak, but what can you expect? She's the first real, live, foundling I've ever come across. I thought that was real interesting. She's going to be the best fiddler I've ever taught. Oh, the other? Somewhere up around Halle, on the other side of the river. I'd hitched a ride on a barge."

Somewhere up around Halle, on the other side of the river equaled Saxony. Mentally, Ed moved the concept of possibly needing to bail Benny out to a slightly higher rung on his ladder of priority items for the Department of International Affairs.

Waving to them both, he picked up his beer and joined Cavriani, who had acquired two bratwurst as well as a beer, plus two of Ed's staffers for company. Ed joined them happily. Among the advantages of being a Roman Catholic "personal observer" at a Lutheran conference was that he never had to sit among the head table guys when the topic was theology. They only needed him when the subject veered into politics. Behind him, he could hear that Benny was handling the fiddle again. Minnie started to sing "Coal Miner's Blues." By the time the lunch break was over, they'd made it through "Bury Me Beneath the Willow" and a bilingual version of "When the Roses Bloom in Dixie Land."

They had also attracted a new audience that Ed recognized—the delegation of Tuebingen theology students. Minnie started to sell music again, while Benny treated them to "San Antonio Rose."

* * *

It was hard, hard, hard to go back to Professor Osiander, who, when they slid into their seats a few minutes late, was announcing that: "Christ, who is the purest bridegroom of His church, does not share His love, as expressed in the sacrament, with those who have vain and blasphemous opinions."

Osiander explained the rationale which had led the Tuebingen faculty to this conclusion in the most minute detail, with frequent references to the Concordia Triglotta, throughout the afternoon. He defined "church" and he defined "sacrament." He defined "vain" and he defined "blasphemous." He advanced comparative instances of usage of the words in the Bible, both in Hebrew and in Greek, along with variant translations into Latin and German.

Then he defined "opinions."

Ed had picked up a rumor that there had once been an attempt to assassinate Professor Osiander during one of his sermons. Now if I had been on the jury . . . he thought. On his right, Leopold Cavriani was sleeping quietly.

* * *

Cavriani, in fact, had not been sleeping. He had been pondering the question of who had been doing the German translations for Benny Pierce. He thought that Secretary of State Piazza must be so familiar with the words of Benny's songs in English that he really hadn't paid any attention to the German lyrics. Cavriani had paid attention and he knew enough of both languages to catch that, "When the roses bloom in Dixieland, I'll be coming home to you" bore a reasonable relationship to "Als die Rosen naechst im Suden bluh'n, kehr ich ein, mein Schatz, bei dir." 

But the next verse of the English, which talked about birds singing music to the sweetest girl that the boy ever knew, bore no relation at all to: "Wenn wir endlich von dem Kriege ruh'n, kehr ich ein, mein Schatz, bei dir!" 

The English words said nothing at all about finally resting from this war. There was a reason why he had made that "ensure that an idea spreads" comment to the American. He'd been vaguely disappointed that Piazza hadn't picked up on it. This evening, he thought, he would see where the old man and the girl went after they packed up in the market square. It would be interesting to find out who their associates were.

* * *

"My life hasn't been much, really," Benny said to Cavriani. "I graduated from eighth grade, but that's as far as it went. Fought in the Second World War. Down in Italy, it was—your name sort of rings a bell, but we've got a lot of Italians in Grantville, too. Got married. Mary Ann's family came from Lebanon. She was Catholic. I've got to say that bothered me a bit—we were Methodist teetotal at home and I was really brought up on the 'no popery' line. But she switched over, so it was fine. I used to play 'The Romish Lady' in her honor. Hmm . . . haven't played that one in quite a while. Maybe I can polish it up tonight. If you come by the market tomorrow, I'll play it for you."

Benny stopped talking for a moment to eat before his grilled cheese sandwich got cold. "These aren't bad, are they, Mr. Cavriani? They aren't burgers, but they aren't bad. Do you really want to hear more? Well, I worked in the mines most of my life. After the mine exploded at Farmington in sixty-eight—that was bad, seventy-eight men killed; only four got out—Mary Ann carried on 'til I gave in and quit. I was forty-seven then and went to driving the trucks; did that for twenty-three years. I'd figured on keeping on 'til she could collect her social security, but she died in ninety-two, before she'd even applied. I'd fiddled all my life, but after I lost her, I started fiddling pretty much full time. Galax; other competitions. Even did a few gigs at the big Tamarack tourist center down by Beckley. Wish you could have seen that place—it had quilts, jams, hand-carved duck decoys. You'd have liked it, I think. A marketplace with a roof over the top."

Benny looked at his new friend, who nodded solemnly. Cavriani wasn't able to identify half the references, but they weren't going past him. He was storing them in his mind, to be written down later in the evening and checked out as soon as he had a chance.

Cavriani glanced at Minnie, who quite obviously didn't understand what Benny was talking about either. But, right now, she didn't care. Cavriani had ordered two whole sandwiches and a large glass of milk for her. Minnie was apparently a focused woman: she was definitely going to finish eating it all before the men stopped talking and left the Freedom Arches. For a minute, Cavriani was afraid that she'd try to cram that last half-sandwich into her mouth all at once and try to wash it down with the rest of the milk, but Benny started talking again.

"Well, anyway. Then we landed here. Sort of cramped my style, at first, but then I figured that I could hitch a ride on the carts going off to markets and I started bumming. In the beginning, all I could do was instrumentals. A guy can't sing with a fiddle under his chin. Sometimes, I'd put the fiddle down for a couple of minutes and do a verse. That went over okay, I guess. But I knew it would be better if folks could understand the words."

The old man had ordered a kettle of boiling water for a beverage, and had dropped some odd dried roots into it. He poured some of it out into a mug and rinsed his mouth.

"Sassafras tea, if you're wondering. I told you I was brought up teetotal. Still am. Want to try some?"

Cavriani had consumed stranger things when he was doing his training in the firm's various branch offices. His digestive system still remembered Aleppo well. "Aendere Laender, aendere Sitten," he murmured. "How did the Americans say it? 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.'"

He nodded. Benny poured three mugs and gave the third to Minnie before continuing.

"At first, I just did the towns and villages around Grantville. After about a year, I guess, I worked myself all the way up to Magdeburg, mostly playing one night stands—stayed a little longer in Erfurt when I passed through. Well, anyway. In Magdeburg, I met this kid who's a friend of Jeff Higgins' wife. He writes poetry in German, and said that if I sang my stuff for them, he had a friend who would copy it into sheet music. I could sell that, and make a bit more. And he'd translate the words of some of them into German for me, free. Real nice of him, I thought. He did three that first trip, but every time I run across him, he's done a couple more."

Cavriani nodded. His face showed genuine interest. Benny loved an audience.

"I didn't do so good at singing the German words, but most people didn't care. At least, they got the idea. Then I found Minnie. She can really sing them. He brought four new ones for me when he came down for this foofara. So he's the one you want to talk to, I guess. Name's Joachim. Let me write it down—they spell it like that, but they say it just like Yokum in the L'il Abner cartoons."

Benny was starting to wind down. His hands met behind his neck and he pushed his elbows and shoulders back.

"Well, Mr. Cavriani, I must say that it's been a pleasure. I do thank you for the invitation. But I'm getting to be old bones. If I'm going to polish up 'The Romish Lady' before tomorrow, we'd better be going."

"The pleasure was all mine," said Leopold Cavriani. He meant it. Sincerely.

* * *

It was Benny's favorite hymnbook. His grandma had a whole stack of them, bound in red oilcloth covers. Apostolic Hymns. A Collection of Hymns and Tunes for all Occasions of Religious Worship and Social Singing. Containing Selections of Upward of Fifty Ministers, Music Teachers, and Singers. And a Comprehensive Gamut by Prof. Blackburn, Pilot Oak, Ky., edited by Elds. J. V. And R. S. Kirkland, Fulton, Ky., Assisted by Prof. A. M. Kirkland, Como, Tenn. J. V. & R. S. Kirkland, Fulton, Ky. Copyright 1898. It was thin enough to fit in the larger bib pocket of his overalls. Whenever he felt like Mother Maybelle's "Lonesome Homesick Blues" were going to take him over, he pulled it out to remember the sing-alongs they used to have.

Funny how things worked out. He had a brother and two sisters. He and Mary Ann never had any kids. Emmie and Lester never had any kids; Lester had been dead for years and he didn't think that Emmie would last much longer—she was the oldest. Homer and Hattie's kids had been left up-time; Hattie had died in ninety-eight and Homer sure wasn't well. Betty and Fletcher had a boy and a girl, but then of those two, Louise and Bill didn't have any kids and she wasn't likely to have any now, being forty-three. One little baby. Betty's great-grandson, Dave and Doreen's grandson, born in February. Benny had been back to see him once, already. Suddenly, he decided. He was going back to Grantville to see that little buster again before he started his summer tour.

Well. Back to the hymnal. He'd already taught the whole "Rudiments" to Minnie. What is a lyric? What is a tune? What is pitch? Treble clef. Base clef. Whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes, with how to draw them. The most frequently used times, such as 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4, with how to accent them. Rests, measures, bars; how to draw them. It was only six pages. The kid who had turned his vocal music into sheet music had acted like it was manna from heaven.

No. 35. "The Romish Lady." Benny loved "The Romish Lady." Political correctness had never advanced very far into the life he lived. He loved all eleven verses of it.

So, it turned out the next day, did the members of the Lutheran theological faculties of the universities of Jena, Wittenberg, and Tuebingen, with assorted associates and accompanying students.


There was a Romish lady brought up in popery,
Her mother always taught her the priest she must obey.
O pardon me dear mother, I humbly pray thee now,
For unto these false idols I can no longer bow. 

 

Professor Osiander cast a rather apprehensive glance in the direction of the U.S. Secretary of State. Herr Piazza was known to be a Roman Catholic.


Assisted by her handmaid, a Bible she concealed,
And there she gain'd instruction, till God his love revealed.
No more she prostrates herself to pictures deck'd with gold,
But soon she was betray'd, and her Bible from her stold. 

 

But Herr Piazza was calmly drinking his beer and grinning. "Just wait," he said to Cavriani. "It gets better."

As Benny proceeded through the verses, the issue of whether it got better or worse was probably a matter of interpretation. The comparatively few English speakers in the square summarized the plot development for their friends:


With grief and great vexation, her mother straight did go, 
T'inform the Roman clergy the cause of all her woe. 
The priests were soon assembled, and for the maid did call, 
And forced her in the dungeon, to fright her soul withal. 

"I've got to have him sing this for Spee and Heinzerling," Piazza said to Cavriani. "In it's own way, it's a classic."


Before the pope they brought her, in hopes of her return, 
And there she was condem-ned in horrid flames to burn. 
Before this place of torment, they brought her speedily, 
With lifted hands to heaven, she then agreed to die. 

"You've got to admit," Ed was saying, "that it goes a long way toward explaining why two-thirds of the people in Grantville are expecting a man as civilized as Urban VIII to burn Galileo any day now. Even if they've never sung it themselves, their grandparents did. It's part of their cultural heritage."

Benny kept merrily on, as the maids-in-waiting commiserated, the victim's gold jewelry was confiscated by the avaricious inquisitors, and the raging mother reappeared:


O take from me these idols, remove them from my sight; 
Restore to me my Bible, wherein I take delight. 
Alas, my aged mother, why on my ruin bent? 
'Twas you that did betray me, but I am innocent. 
 

So the tormenters proceeded to light the fire. With her dying breath, the Romish Lady asked God to pardon the priest and the people, "and so I bid farewell."

About ninety-nine percent of the people in the marketplace in Jena broke into a mad storm of applause. If ever there was a song with the Right Stuff, this was it.

Benny didn't have any sheet music copies of it.

Crisis. Until Ed volunteered that if Benny would lend him the hymnal, he would take it down to the printer, stay there while he copied it off, and bring the book right back. There would be sheet music tomorrow, even if some unfortunate apprentice had to stay up with a candle all night carving out a woodcut of the musical score.

Professor Lukas Osiander, Jr., really did not understand what was happening here.

Benny segued into an encore. "Mother's Bible" was always a good one.

As Ed headed for the printer's, Benny's voice called after him: "Ed, get him to copy 'Standing on the Promises,' too. And No. 261. 'Deliverance Will Come.'"

* * *

The colloquy came to order.

Maybe Grantville's ELCA members should have thought again before they elected a delegate whose maiden name was Unruh. Her responses to the colloquy discussions had been—disturbing. "Unrest" was a pretty mild description of the reactions that Carol's contributions to the dialogue at the Rudolstadt Colloquy had caused.

As in the matter of what she now presented as the ELCA response to Professor Osiander's exposition of the doctrine of ubiquity. The ELCA delegate's response was, as usual, brief. Carol Koch's maternal grandfather had been a pastor, but her father had been a newspaperman.

"We thank Professor Osiander for his extensive explanation of the doctrine of ubiquity. Jesus said, 'Unless you become again as a little child, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.' I'm pretty sure that no little child has ever understood all the fine points that are so important to Professor Osiander. I'm pretty sure that no little child ever will. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill!"

Carol sat down.

* * *

Joachim von Thalheim's eyes were glittering with enthusiasm. He had thrown himself into Committee of Correspondence politics wholeheartedly—but even among his colleagues, there were so few who really appreciated what he was trying to do. Most of them just didn't see political propaganda as an art form. Not even Gretchen. He looked across the breakfast table at the guy Benny Pierce had sent over to his room the evening before.

"So, you see, just look here." Joachim pulled out the English and German words to "When the Roses Bloom in Dixieland" and placed them side by side. "Down here."

I've been saving all my money, to buy a little cabin home for two. 

"Now," he said, "I've translated it as, 'Ich werde all mein Geld ersparen.' That's good, in itself. Most people will understand it that way, literally, just like the original words. But for a mercenary, his pay is his 'Gelt' and they sound exactly alike. If we're lucky, he'll hear the song somewhere and start thinking that he can save up, and then when he's discharged, he can go home and see if there's a girl for him to marry instead of turning to banditry."

"Isn't that expecting a bit of deep thought from your average mercenary?" Cavriani asked sardonically.

"Oh, I don't expect that it will have any effect on most of them. But, nothing ventured, nothing gained. It's not as if it costs us anything. And every mercenary who does go home and settle down after the war will be one less problem for Gustavus Adolphus. One less problem for Grantville. One less problem for all the rest of us."

Joachim, clearly, would have been more than happy to explain all the ramifications and potential multiple subliminal levels of meaning, allegorical and anagogical, of every single line. He was a product of the same educational system that had produced Professor Osiander.

"I'd love to talk about it again," said Cavriani. "But I have to get over to the meeting. Perhaps this evening?"

"That's fine. I've got some people to talk to this afternoon, and that could run into supper. Eight-ish to nine-ish, at my place?"

"I'll be there," said Cavriani. "Probably closer to nine-ish." He started to leave; then turned back as if something had just casually crossed his mind. "'Geld' versus 'Gelt' may not cost your organization anything. But you and your friends still have to eat. I know some people who might be willing to pay a fee for Italian translations of your German versions of these songs. If you're interested, I'll be glad to put you in touch."

* * *

Count Anton Guenther of Oldenburg called upon Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. Upon behalf of his cousin Emelie of Oldenburg-Delmenhorst, who freely consented, he announced that she was delighted to accept Count Ludwig's marriage proposal.

With the foundation of the long-standing ties of blood between the two families reinforced and renewed for another generation, the two counts were able to proceed to further discussions. Each realized that the other had a problem; each realized that the other had something to offer in the way of a solution.

In spite of its strategic geographical placement vis-a-vis Denmark and the Netherlands, Count Anton Guenther's prudent management had kept Oldenburg neutral throughout the war. Well—he'd bribed Tilly to stay out of his lands with a gift of lots of the famous Oldenburg horses. It had been worth the cost. He had added Varel and Knyphausen to his domains. He had obtained an Imperial grant for the Weser River tolls that added substantially to his income.

There was some suspicion by orthodox Lutherans that he harbored crypto-Calvinist tendencies. Not just plain crypto-Calvinist tendencies, but Arminian, Remonstrant, crypto-Calvinist tendencies. Over the past three generations, Oldenburg had repeatedly offered sanctuary to men tossed out of the Netherlands by the stricter Calvinists. Justus Lipsius had thanked his host by complaining that the town "stank of brown coal and bacon." Count Anton Guenther's grandfather had replied calmly that this smell only signified that all of his subjects were prosperous enough to have a warm fire and meat for supper every night. Within the last few years, Hugo Grotius had enjoyed full run of the count's library while he was temporarily between employers (or, depending how one looked at it, on the lam). Oldenburg's sympathy for those in religious difficulties was sometimes extended even more widely. Jan Amos Comenius had spent some time in the library of Anton Guenther's neat little Renaissance-style residence.

Or, in other words, the counts of Oldenburg were Philippists. Tolerant Philippists. Lax, even as Philippists went.

The Count of Oldenburg's problem was a longstanding attachment to a woman of unequal birth. Elizabeth von Ungnad was scarcely a kitchen maid—her grandfather had served as Imperial ambassador to Turkey. But she was not of the higher nobility. Ferdinand II's uncompromising introduction of the Counter-Reformation had driven her family out of Austria and they had found refuge in Oldenburg. By this relationship with Elizabeth, he had a dearly-beloved namesake son, very promising, who was not entitled to inherit Oldenburg. He foresaw that his snug, well-governed, little corner of Germany would some day be torn apart by feuding cousins from Denmark and Holstein, as Juelich and Cleves had been by cousins from Brandenburg and the Palatinate.

The Count of Rudolstadt's problem, obviously, was how to resolve the quarrels among the disputatious groups of Lutherans encamped upon his doorstep.

Surely, the two of them thought, something could be arranged.

Count Anton Guenther proffered the first hypothetical suggestion. If Ludwig Guenther could see his way to granting the exemption to let Grantville's Philippists take communion at St. Martin's near Grantville, he suggested, then, in view of the upcoming marriage alliance, he himself might extend feelers through his new cousin-in-law that could possibly lead to an alliance of Oldenburg with the CPE.

If Anton Guenther were interested in an alliance, Ludwig Guenther replied, he was sure that Gustavus Adolphus would be happy to discuss terms. He cleared his throat. It was possible, of course, that such terms might include support for young Anton's succession to his father. There might be ways for an interested ruler to legitimate his status, since neither of his parents had ever been married to anyone else. If it should be found that the mother's family were to have been raised into the higher nobility prior to the boy's birth, but that somehow this had been inadvertently overlooked . . . ?

Once the hypotheses were out in the open, more or less, the conversation advanced to procedural concerns. Count Ludwig Guenther commented that he would be willing to invite the King of Sweden's personal observer, Margrave George of Baden-Durlach to dinner the next evening. If Margrave George proved to be open to further discussion, the American secretary of state, Mr. Piazza had a radio operator from Grantville here in Jena. There was a radio operator from Grantville with the King of Sweden. With a judicious use of these marvelous radio communications, one might . . . 

The conversation continued for several hours, every sentence carefully kept in the subjunctive. It never referenced the doctrine of ubiquity. Not even once.

Both men were, in their own ways, very sincere, faithful, practicing Lutherans. Ludwig Guenther, to be sure, was considerably more pious, but, still, Anton Guenther was also. The doctrine of ubiquity had never played a large role in either of their religious lives, any more than it did in the religious life of Carol Koch.

* * *

If men are from Mars, then Carol is from . . . some planet outside the solar system. (Attributed to her husband, Ron Koch.)

Privately, Ron did think that she might be from Venus. But also, as a good Lutheran, he thought that the Venus aspect of her life wasn't anyone's business except her husband's. Besides, it didn't have anything to do with the way she conducted a debate.

Ron never argued with Carol. Over the past twenty years, he had realized that there wasn't any point in it. It wasn't that she pouted. It wasn't that she sulked, or screamed, or threw things. It wasn't that she didn't fight fair.

She just didn't follow the argument script. A proper argument was like a minuet. The first speaker performed a step. The second speaker responded with the appropriate riposte. The first speaker took the next step in the dance. The second responded with the expected answer. In Ron's view, a proper argument was almost liturgical in form.

It didn't work with Carol. If he advanced with the first minuet step, she offered a mental pirouette. If, disconcerted but persistent, he nevertheless performed the second step in the minuet, Carol did a bit of a tango and added some cha-cha-cha as a codicil.

Just because they were on opposite sides of the official debate, Gary, Jonas, and Carol didn't see any reason why they shouldn't eat supper together. It was a relief just to speak plain American English for a change. While the two counts were dining with one another, the three of them occupied a corner bench at the Freedom Arches.

"They're going at it all backwards," said Carol with annoyance. "If the confirmation class mothers had taken this, 'I won't give an inch' sort of attitude, we'd never have agreed on a class time that everyone could make."

"I think," said Jonas cautiously, "that the schedule for a confirmation class really is adiaphoral. Possibly even from Professor Osiander's perspective."

"Not if one person digs in her heels and says it will be nine A.M. on Saturday or else and four of the kids can't make it then. Men! They go in and toss all these demands on a table. 'This we've got to have.' Well, they can't both eat the whole cake, so even when they negotiate a compromise, they all go home with a grudge, thinking that they've lost something."

If Dickens had been writing Carol's dialogue, she would have added, "Bah!" Bah! was inherent in her tone of voice.

"Er," Gary said. "That's the way negotiations are done. It's laid out in all the business textbooks."

"No." Carol was firm. "Yelling, 'it was at 9:00 on Saturday morning when I was growing up' or 'we always had it on Tuesday in our church' just causes fights. The way to do it is to make up a paper with squares, right at the beginning. The days of the week and the hours of the day. Then you take a red hi-liter and mark out what's impossible—like school hours, or when the pastor holds services at the retirement home. Everybody gets a copy of that. Then, at the first meeting, all the mothers say what's impossible for them—like Kevin's sports practice or Alyssa's flute lesson. Mark those out in orange. Then everyone says what would just be a little difficult—like, 'We might be ten minutes late some days if the traffic gets tied up.' Mark that in yellow. When you finish, you look at the white spaces that are left and you know what you have to work with. It might be that nobody in the whole room would have suggested 'after supper on Thursdays,' but if everyone can make it then, it'll do. You're down to what everyone can agree on, or at least work with. And nobody goes home mad."

Both Gary and Jonas looked deeply saddened. There had to be something wrong with that, philosophically. Politically. Somehow, such a procedure reflected a lack of strong convictions. A guy who thought that confirmation classes ought to be at nine a.m. would stick with it, come hell or high water—a firm ideological commitment. If Carol Koch was a reasonable specimen of the workings of the female mind, they could only reach one conclusion. Women were frighteningly, terrifyingly, pragmatic.

Gary had started to suspect that already, during the eighteen months of his marriage to Sheila. The all-too-short eighteen months—Sheila had been left behind by the Ring of Fire.

Jonas leaned forward, resting his chin on his good hand. "Have you guys noticed that we've got a problem?"

"Yeah," said Gary. "That's why we're here."

"No," said Jonas. "A new problem. The Tuebingen people weren't here yet when the conference started. They missed the opening statements. They had heard that Carol spoke before she delivered the ELCA response today—that I guarantee. But they hadn't seen it. They hadn't sat there when it was happening. We could get a rerun of the first couple of days of the colloquy."

Gary rested his chin on both hands. "Well, I don't care what the Saxon chancellor said, Carol, they can't have you beheaded. Two swords or no two swords. I went down to Rudolstadt last Saturday and looked it all up in the count's library. According to the law, they beheaded those crypto-Calvinists in Saxony for treason, not for heresy. You can't commit treason to the Elector of Saxony or even to the Duke of Wuerttemberg. You're not one of their subjects. He's just blowing smoke. And I'm inclined to tell him so."

"Oh, I never really thought that he would have me beheaded here." Carol looked a little reflective. "But if I ever went up there, I think he might actually try. His mouth was pretty frothy. And the professors from Wittenberg were just egging him on. But these guys from Tuebingen are even more so."

"It was the 'Philip had four daughters who prophesied' reference that really got to him." Jonas grinned. "Especially since Melanchthon's name was Philip."

Carol looked injured. "He annoyed me with the 'women should keep silence in the church' bit. I still don't understand, though, why he slammed that baton on the table so hard when I pointed out that we were in a lecture hall and not a church."

"Um," said Jonas. "Carol, has it ever occurred to you that you have a rather literal mind?"

Gary referred back to her earlier comment. "The guys from Tuebingen are 'even more so,' in a way. But they didn't ever try to behead Kepler. They just excommunicated him and wrote lots of letters. It really wasn't even them that were involved with having his mother tried for witchcraft—that was accusations from her neighbors and a local judge who didn't like their family. It's not as if these guys were out to get her . . ."

His voice trailed off. "I think, maybe, I'm getting an idea. Give me a couple of days to work it out."

* * *

As the colloquy droned on the next morning, Gary sat quietly at his place on the bench, fingers laced in front of him with his thumbs going around one another in circles, first clockwise and then counterclockwise, closing out the speeches and examining his idea. Gary didn't come up with a lot of ideas. He didn't have one of those sparkling, scintillating minds that threw out innovative concepts right and left. Consequently, when he did have an idea, he tended to react with a certain amount of apprehension. He was looking at this one very carefully—sort of the way that Red Riding Hood would have examined the wolf if she'd been on high alert.

* * *

The weekend came. Ed, who had conscientiously refrained from asking Tanya why the counts of Oldenburg and Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt had needed four hours of private, uninterrupted, radio communications with Magdeburg, nevertheless rode home for a long talk with Mike.

The weekend went. Ed dutifully returned to Jena. With every day that passed, those benches got harder.

Monday evening, the "personal observers" again met for supper with Margrave George. Later, Ed would describe the conversation to Mike as "acrimonious," although, in fact, as the representative of the state that had dumped the problem in the lap of the others, he had rather enjoyed it. The German word was Schadenfreude: delight in the tribulations of others.

It ran late. In seventeenth-century Germany and Scandinavia, religion was a matter of doctrine, but for the rulers, it was more. From the perspective of the princes, religion was important in the "here and now" because religion here and now was a way of making the population behave. In Lutheran countries the church was, if not simply, at least also, a branch of the executive government. Any change in church practice would affect the maintenance of public order—which was the reason, for example, that Christian IV of Denmark promoted orthodox Lutheranism although he privately favored Calvinism. The chancellor of Hessen-Kassel had made more than a few pithy remarks about the unsettling effects of religious change—he had lived through Kassel's switch from Lutheranism to Calvinism.

* * *

On Tuesday morning, Count Ludwig Guenther opened the colloquy with the bland statement that since all views had now been given a sufficiently full and fair hearing, the morning would be free. He carefully failed to look at the Tuebingen delegation as he made the statement about a full hearing, for fear of observing any signs that there might be a contrary opinion. The afternoon, he stated, would be devoted to short summaries. He would permit four summaries only—each of the plaintiffs, the Philippists and the ELCA, might have one representative speak. Each of the opponents, the Flacians and the Missouri Synod, might have one representative speak. He would announce his decision in regard to St. Martin's Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon and evening would be devoted to the closing ceremonies and a state dinner. Any delegates who lived near enough to Jena were encouraged to bring their gracious wives to the banquet. Please notify his steward of the number of attendees from each delegation. He smiled and rose.

The down-time delegations started to buzz. Who would snag the prestigious opportunity to serve as closing speaker for each position? They adjourned to squabble.

The up-time delegations didn't have to wonder who would be speaking, since each delegation consisted of one person. Within ten minutes of the count's rising, the only occupants of the anatomy theater were Carol, Gary, and Jonas, who was leaning against the chalk board, looking a little deprived at not having a full morning of multilingual page references ahead of him.

"What now?" he asked. He dropped his chalk into the holder and sat down.

"I sure wish that I had some idea what the count's going to decide," said Carol.

"Me, too," said Gary. "But we don't."

Jonas looked at his pupils sternly. "Write! You've each got two hours to get down the basics of what you want to say. Then I've got one hour apiece to turn your English into German that says what you probably intended for it to say. Move it, guys."

"I've already got mine written." Gary started poking around in his pockets. "I knew this thing had to end some time." He fished out a sheet of paper, neatly hand-printed on both sides. "The points are in order, and I've numbered them." He handed it over to Jonas. "You can work on this now, while Carol's writing, and then you'll have more time for hers. I've got to go down to the printer's."

* * *

Gary Lambert believed, very sincerely, that he did not have the right words. If he had ever heard the maxim, "We are dwarfs, standing on the shoulders of giants," he would have subscribed to it on the spot. For the time being, he would be content if he could just achieve one goal—to sound as much like his grandfather in the pulpit as possible.

Gesturing toward the door, he said: "I have brought printed copies of the speech upon which my words are based. There are enough copies for everyone here. If you need more copies, you are certainly all welcome to have it reprinted. It was made by a far greater man than I—by the first president of the Lutheran synod that it is my honor to represent here. His name was C.F.W. Walther and he spoke these words in 1848. He spoke them just over a century and a half before the intervention of God transported Grantville to this place and time."

Gary glanced up at Count Ludwig Guenther a little nervously. The man had been good to him and had done many fine and commendable things for Grantville's refugees.

"These words are also mine, and I'm glad that I can say them before the honorable Count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt announces the outcome of the colloquy. We don't know, yet, what his decision will be in regard to the church of St. Martin's. Yet, there is one thing that we do know. Whatever the decision is, it will have been taken by a secular prince—a Lutheran prince, but still, a secular prince. Because of that, whatever the decision may be, we must fear that it will not have been taken entirely upon the basis of Scriptural teaching. We must fear that it will have been influenced by considerations of political expediency and pragmatic necessity. That is the very nature of civil government."

In the chair, Count Ludwig Guenther kept his face very stiff. If the young American had been speaking defiantly, the count might have reacted otherwise. But Gary's words were said more in sorrow than in anger.

"The views expressed by Professor Osiander here," Gary continued, "are in great part the views of Synodical President Walther. The church must not compromise its doctrinal stance. It cannot accept being forced to grant communion to people who hold heterodox opinions."

He paused, straightened his shoulders, and drew a deep breath. "However, the Church has no proper authority but that of the Word of God. It must not try to use the State as a tool to force the consciences of others. The position of my Synod is that there is one proper remedy for the orthodox Lutherans—a remedy that will avoid the parallel danger that the State will try to use the Church as a tool.

"Gentlemen, it is the position of the Missouri Synod"—all one of us, you arrogant, stupid, idiot; what do you think you are doing? a niggling little voice in the back of his mind screeched at him—"after careful and conscientious consideration of the argumentation presented here, that the orthodox Lutherans of Germany should withdraw from the State churches and form an independent synod, neither funded nor controlled by the princes."

The assembled authorities of German Lutheranism looked down from their elevated benches. From the podium that had been set up on the floor of the operating theater, a not very tall, slightly stocky, prematurely balding, dishwater-blond man with a round face, thick glasses, and a very worried expression looked back at them, all the way around the circle.

"I've also brought copies of Synodical President Walther's manual about how to set up an independent synod. The title is, The Proper Form of an Evangelical Lutheran Congregation Independent of the State. There are copies of that over by the door, too. I'm not a theology professor. I'm not even a pastor. My college major was in business administration and I'm the business manager for the hospital in Grantville. I'm not saying this to you from me, the person, because I have any authority. I'm saying it to you because Lutherans had tried out a lot of ways of governing their churches between the seventeenth century and the twentieth century. This—which was worked out by your descendants, who were also my ancestors—was the only one that let them hold to pure doctrine. When the Ring of Fire happened, I lost my wife and my parents. I lost all my friends and my job. But I didn't lose my faith. So I'm not going to give you any more of my words. This is how Synodical President Walther ended his speech."

Gary lifted his head.

"'Even though we possess no power, but that of the Word, we nevertheless can and should carry on our work joyfully. Let us, therefore, esteemed sirs and brethren, use this power properly. Let us above all and in all matters be concerned about this, that the pure doctrine of our dear Evangelical Lutheran Church may become known more and more completely among us, that it may be in vogue in all of our congregations, and that it may be preserved from all adulteration and held fast as the most precious treasure. Let us not surrender one iota of the demands of the Word. Let us bring about its complete rule in our congregations and set aside nothing of it, even though for this reason things may happen to us, as God wills. Here let us be inflexible, here let us be adamant. If we do this, we need not worry about the success of our labor. Even though it should seem to be in vain, it cannot then be in vain, for the Word does not return void but prospers in the thing whereto the Lord sent it. By the Word alone, without any other power, the church was founded; by the Word alone all the great deeds recorded in church history were accomplished; by the Word alone the church will most assuredly stand also in these last days of sore distress, to the end of days. Even the gates of hell will not prevail against it. "For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.'"

"Amen," Gary said.

* * *

Gary Lambert had just achieved something that no one else in human memory had achieved. Professor Lukas Osiander, Jr. was temporarily speechless.

He recovered quickly, but he realized that he was also going to have to rewrite his carefully prepared summary statement. It seemed a little . . . irrelevant.

He called for an overnight break. Count Ludwig Guenther gave him two hours.

* * *

It was possible, of course, that if Count Ludwig Guenther had granted the full overnight break that Osiander requested, the world would have turned on a different axis. But there was no way to peer into time and find out the what ifs and the might have beens of history. The count, like many others, was getting very tired of those hard benches. His secretary was writing up a draft of the decision he had already taken after his supper with the "personal representatives" at Margrave George's rooms, even as the summary statements were being publicly presented. He was fifty-two years old and he was feeling every one of them. He wanted to go back to his own quarters and sit on a comfortable chair. He definitely did not want to stretch this meeting out for another day, especially since the provisions for the scheduled closing banquet were being delivered to all the contributing—and unrefrigerated—kitchens of Jena at this very moment.

Professor Osiander spent very little of the two hour break looking at the Walther material. His colleagues and associates were alternately reading random sentences from it out loud and shouting at one another. There was no chance that they would reach agreement on a modified summary statement within the allotted time. Osiander suddenly thought that no secular ruler should have the right to prevent the church from making a full and conscientious examination of a crucial issue before it.

He ended up presenting his original summary. With one more sentence at the end.

"If the decision of the count should be to require an orthodox minister to extend communion to lay persons who claim to be members of his congregation, but who are not in full doctrinal agreement with the teachings of the Formula of Concord, then the defenders of Lutheran orthodoxy feel that they must take the step of consulting with their brethren of the Missouri Synod on possible changes in the constitution and structure of the visible church."

* * *

Wednesday morning, the chancellor of Saxony and his entourage left Jena at first light, riding hard for Dresden. The Wittenberg theologians, however, stayed behind.

Cavriani, who just happened to be leaning against the city gate when it was opened, took down a list of those departing. He and his list made it back to the Black Bear in time to have breakfast with Ed Piazza. "The distinction between Saxony's politicians and theologians is, to say the least, an ambivalent signal," he mused out loud.

Tanya promptly roused up the people napping next to other radio sets and relayed a copy of the list to Magdeburg and Grantville.

* * *

In the matter of the ministerial appointment at St. Martin's in the Fields, near Grantville, United States. 

In the matter of the associated appointments of the teaching staff at Countess Katherina the Heroic Lutheran Elementary School, near Grantville, United States. 

In the matter of the anticipated ministerial appointment at St. Thomas the Apostle, near Grantville, United States. 

In the matter of the associated appointments of the teaching staff at the yet-unnamed Lutheran Elementary School to be constructed in connection with the church of St. Thomas the Apostle. 

Count Ludwig Guenther rechecked the heading to make sure that his secretary had included everything. He didn't want to go through another one of these in the foreseeable future. Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was a small county, only about 35,000 in total population. It had a limited budget. This colloquy had been a big financial drain, coming on top of the mandatory war contributions. He would, once it was over, have to call his Estates—the county's legislature—and request a special tax levy to cover the debts that he had incurred.

Count Ludwig Guenther had a well-known streak of financial prudence, two miles wide and two miles deep. He loathed asking for special tax levies. The Estates always wanted some kind of a quid pro quo. It was much better for a man to live within his means.

His announcement of the decision proceeded at a measured pace. In addition to the actual decision itself, which would come at the end, his presentation covered all the possible approaches, as his consistory saw them and upon which it had advised him, as well as the points debated in the colloquy.

There was the option of appointing an orthodox minister to both churches, allowing them to exclude those unwilling to subscribe, without reservation, to the Formula of Concord and unaltered Augsburg Confession, from communion; 

There was the option of appointing an orthodox minister to both churches, but requiring them to admit such persons to communion; 

There was the option of appointing an orthodox minister to one of the churches and a Philippist to the other; 

There was the option of establishing a parity arrangement, in which one group used the church facility for part of the time and the other group used the church the remainder of the time, each group having its own minister; 

There was the option of appointing Philippist ministers to both of the churches—who would, it was assumed, be willing to admit Lutherans of all theological views to communion. 

* * *

The count evaluated the advantages of each option—carefully. Ed Piazza was a little surprised by some of the analysis. Nobody else who had spoken at the whole colloquy thus far had, for instance, addressed the question of just how far any given arrangement would require the Grantville parishioners to walk in order to attend church.

Clearly, the count said, the first option would be preferred by the theologians from Tuebingen and Wittenberg and, indeed, by those of Jena, as well as by the clerical members of the consistory of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. However, in his capacity as Landesvater, advised also by the lay members of his consistory, he found that his duty to ensure the provision of religious services to so many Lutheran immigrants, displaced from their former homes by this tragic war, was more important than the maintenance of the strictest orthodoxy. He did not feel that he could agree to an arrangement by which St. Martin's and St. Thomas would not be open to them.

Steadily, Count Ludwig Guenther moved through the points. He had, he said, concluded that on the basis of experience with applying parity between Catholics and Lutherans for using the churches in certain German Imperial cities, the arrangement was most inconvenient for all concerned and led to ongoing, persistent, disputes and ceaseless controversies. Such an arrangement would be very difficult to administer.

The whole parity idea was new to Ed. He'd never heard of any such thing. But once more he pulled to the front of his mind the general maxim that in the 1,000-plus little political entities that made up the Holy Roman Empire, any imaginable arrangement probably existed somewhere.

Yeah, Ed thought, contemplating Tino Nobili's probable reaction to any such proposal if it were instituted at St. Mary's. I can see how it might cause ceaseless controversies.

Tino was one of the crosses he had to bear. If Opus Dei had ever invited Tino to join, he would have been honored to accept. Tino's kids had already finished CCD classes by the time Ed took over as chairman of the parish education committee; his grandchildren hadn't been old enough yet. Ed breathed a short prayer of thanks for God's infinite mercies and brought his attention back to the count.

Who, clearly, had moved on quite a space while Ed's mind was wandering.

"Thus, in the matter of the faculty appointments at both of the Grantville schools that our consistory is currently subsidizing, given that the teaching of religion to children prior to the age of confirmation rarely demands more than a good knowledge of the Shorter Catechism, we will not require more than a willingness to subscribe to the Augsburg Confession, with no specification as to altered or unaltered."

Ed looked around the room and saw young Muselius smiling brilliantly. And, why not? He had just been told that he was going to keep his job. Carol Koch had formed her thumb and forefinger into a circle. Gary Lambert's face was completely impassive.

"In regard to the ministerial appointments . . ." The count paused.

"While we do not believe that it would be feasible to institute simultaneous parity, we have decided that the ministers appointed to each parish shall be, alternately, of the Flacian and Philippist persuasions. There is sufficient legal precedent for this in the arrangements for some of the North German dioceses, whereby the administrator is alternately Catholic and Lutheran. No candidate for the ministry will be required to accept an appointment to these parishes. Therefore, any man of the orthodox persuasion who has qualms of conscience about extending communion to all of his parishioners may simply refuse the post. This, we believe, should be an adequate reservation in cases of conscience."

When Ed looked at the Tuebingen theologians, the expressions on their faces gave him the distinct impression that they did not regard it as an adequate reservation in cases of conscience.

But the count was not finished. Switching from the formal "we," he continued: "I specifically wish to avoid the problem that the northern dioceses have encountered, of both Catholic and Lutheran rulers appointing young, untried, untested, and insufficiently mature men to the dioceses in hopes that they will be long-lived and extend either Protestant or Catholic control for as long as possible. Such pursuit of purely political advantage is unconscionable among those who claim to hold a divinely entrusted responsibility for the spiritual welfare of their subjects."

He looked rather firmly at the "personal observer" from the Duchy of Brunswick, who had almost single-handedly caused the Monday evening meeting at Margrave George's quarters to run so late by insistently demanding that Ludwig Guenther remove this comment.

"We have decided to apply, in these cases, a concept that is not entirely strange to our own law, and which was well established in the law of the ancient Romans, but is in practice much more frequently applied by our American friends." He bowed toward Ed—the first official recognition of his presence inside the lecture hall since the first day, when all the "personal observers" had been introduced. "The appointments to these parishes shall be five-year terms, alternating. If one incumbent dies during his term of office, another candidate of the same opinion shall be nominated by the consistory to complete the term."

"This decision shall stand." The count publicly signed and sealed about two dozen copies of it that were neatly stacked on the table next to him.

"The County of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt extends its most sincere thanks to all who have contributed to its deliberations on this important matter. The colloquy is adjourned."

* * *

To the work! To the work! There is labor for all . . .  

None of the university students, whether Jena's own or the visitors, would be attending the state dinner, of course. Now that the formal closing ceremonies were over, they were milling around, somewhat at loose ends—and, in the case of those from Tuebingen and Wittenberg, bitterly disappointed with Count Ludwig Guenther's decision. Most of them decided to have another beer, since the booths that sold beer weren't even starting their close-out.

None of the ordinary visitors who had come to Jena to have a look at colloquy would be going to the state dinner, either, but those who hadn't already started for home were still wandering around, hoping to pick up bargains from some vendor who would rather not carry his stuff home. The marketplace was also full of apprentices and day-laborers who were packing up unsold merchandise, dismantling booths, and loading carts and wagons, trying to get things out of the way before the late-afternoon formal procession from the medical school to the city hall, which was where the banquet would be held.

Aside from them, as the booths were removed, the center of the square, beyond the cordoned-off route, was gradually filling up again, mostly with people from Jena itself who wanted to see the parade. Along the sides of the square, there was an unscheduled procession of maidservants and errand boys, delivering to the city hall, which had no kitchen of its own, all the dishes that the housewives of Jena had devoted their day to preparing from the provisions brought in by Count Ludwig Guenther. After they handed the roasts and pies in, at least half of them, whether with or without permission from their employers, were not returning home, but augmenting the group of spectators.

The procession was forming up, Count Ludwig Guenther's steward ensuring that all diplomatic representatives and their guests were in their proper places—that always minimized protocol disputes. It should be coming into the marketplace in just a few minutes.

Since Benny Pierce didn't have a booth, but just an upside down keg and an old backpack, he kept on performing. The sheet music sales of "The Romish Lady" had been really good. He wanted to pick up any last-minute loose change that might be flying around.

After the wild success of the week before, he'd decided to add more old-time Gospel to his Mother Maybelle mix. In spite of the fact that any thinking seventeenth-century theologian would ask a lot of questions in regard to doctrinal issues pertaining to "certainty of salvation," he'd gotten away with:


Let us labor for the Master from the dawn till set of sun,  
Let us talk of all His wondrous love and care.  
Then when all of life is over and our work on earth is done,  
And the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.  
 

Even "Work, for the Night is Coming" hadn't caused any catastrophe.

Alas! Joachim had just given him a quickly translated German version of "Toiling On." Joachim hadn't stopped to think about the theological implications—it had just struck him as a rousing call to action, usable as a song for the Committees of Correspondence meetings with only minor modifications.

He had, unfortunately, left out the line about Salvation is free.

As the formal procession to the state dinner rounded the corner and the heralds in front entered the marketplace, Minnie sang:


Schaffe nun, schaffe nun!  
Es gibt noch viel zu tun! 

* * *

The town was tense enough, as it was. One of the apprentices, more than half-drunk, and obviously not having been present during the rendition of "The Romish Lady," suddenly yelled:

"Work Righteousness! The Americans are secretly teaching Popery! Right here in Jena!"

* * *

Minnie reacted fast when she saw the first cobblestone coming. "Save the fiddle!" she shrieked, pushing Benny to the ground and snatching up the herring keg, which she proceeded to wield as a three dimensional shield above his body.

Benny saw nothing wrong with her priorities. He scrabbled around the ground with his right hand until he located the violin case, pulled it over, tucked in the instrument and bow, and covered them both with his body.

Minnie's past life experiences had not been such as to give her much confidence in the civil authorities. However, Benny had firmly told her that if there was trouble, she should call, "Help! Police!" Minnie's voice really did have carrying quality. On general principles, she switched to, "Hilfe! Polizei!" Under the hail of cobblestones, the keg was coming apart in her hands. She started throwing the staves.

Tanya and Jamie Lee were back at the inn with the radio, which was never left unattended, but the other four kids who had come to Jena with Ed were at one of the picnic tables behind the brewery booth. Pete, Joel, and Zack headed over toward Benny Pierce at a dead run. Staci grabbed a tub of very dirty dishwater from the back of the booth and dumped it over the head of the guy who had started it.

The police had been positioned to guard the procession of notables. To get to the scene of the fight, they had to go through the crowd on the south side of the parade route, toward the booths lining the edge—since these weren't in the way of the procession, they were the last ones that would be taken down.

It was slow going. The crowd was starting to turn to see what was going on. Parents with children were trying to go at a perpendicular angle to the police movement, to get them out to safety.

Somebody yelled, "What's going on?"

At the edge of the crowd, the reply came. "Papist spies! Somebody found a nest of Papist spies!"

Several dozen day laborers who had been working on dismantling the booths on the west side didn't have the obstacle that faced the movement of the police. They came around the edge of the crowd, not sure what was happening but anxious not to miss it, whatever it might be. One of them took a look and added another cry. "That girl's a thief! She stole money from my uncle in Dieskau. I recognize her. Thief! Thief! Thief!"

Then, to add to the general confusion, he shouted: "Hilfe! Polizei!"

Loudly.

* * *

Somehow, "Papist spies" had become "Imperial spies." The cry was spreading through the crowd, rapidly mutating into, "Imperial assassins! There are assassins here!"

The Tuebingen students, however, kept the original focus: "Work righteousness! Popery!" They threw themselves into the melee, swinging canvas tote bags that, by now, were weighted down not only with the Concordia Triglotta but with two treatises by C.F.W. Walther and any other miscellaneous books and merchandise they had bought in the marketplace. The Wittenberg students regarded this as an omen: they followed.

The two counts and the "personal observers" from the other principalities all had military experience. So did most of their invited guests. Who were, of course, wearing their dress swords. Which they drew, coming to the assistance of law and order by following the path that the police had blazed through the crowd and yelling for the spectators to get out of their way.

Most of the august and dignified theologians had participated in at least one riot during their student days. Additionally, they felt a certain responsibility for their current students who appeared to be, given the number of academic gowns being worn by those involved in the fracas, right in the middle of things. They plunged through the crowd after the swordsmen.

All in all, it took Count Ludwig Guenther's steward quite a while to get the procession re-formed. Dinner was delayed by three hours.

* * *

"Well, Mike, that's the way things ended up." Ed was finishing his debriefing. "The colloquy was about the dangers that orthodox Lutherans perceive coming at them from creeping Calvinism. That's what this 'crypto-Calvinism' is, when you get right down to it—Calvinist ideas sneaking into Lutheranism. The riot—well, it wasn't. So don't haul Erika and the others who are in Jena to train their police over the coals. We'd warned them, German and American alike, to be on the alert for anti-Calvinist slogans that might precede an outbreak of violence. There just wasn't any logical reason for them to have their ears open for, 'No Popery.' Not even though it's a good, all-purpose call to an urban riot in most Protestant cities in the here and now. If anything did break out that evening, we expected it to be aimed at someone in the procession, so they were all sort of looking that way, over toward the far side, where they could hear the trumpets. It was just a perfectly ordinary riot, as far as anyone can tell. Conspiracy theories to the contrary."

"Give me the body count again." Mike sighed.

"Not as bad as it might have been. All things considered. Quite a few bruises and broken bones, but those heal. The bad thing is that most of them are little kids who just got trampled. It would have been worse in a closed area, but that market square is pretty open, with lots of exits. My boys got Benny off the scene and behind one of the buildings. He was a bit shaken up, but not hurt. The fiddle's okay. Minnie has a concussion—we think she got that from a cobblestone. At best, she'll have a scar from her hairline down into her left eyebrow. At worst, she may lose that left eye—Doc Adams says that it's too soon to tell. Those things make mean weapons—it sort of makes you realize why city fathers in this day and age aren't fully convinced of the merits of street paving."

"Tell me," said Mike, "just how Minnie became a citizen of Grantville. As far as I know, she'd never set foot in this town."

"Oh, that." Ed looked a little abashed. "I didn't think of it myself, I'm sorry to say. It was a great idea, though."

"What idea?"

"Benny adopted her. Right there in the alley. Things had quieted down a bit, but the 'Thief! Thief!' guy was standing over her and the Jena police were going to arrest her and send her back to Saxony to be tried. Cavriani suggested it—he thinks fast. He asked whether, since Americans had so many other Roman laws, like public offices with terms, they also had the Roman ability to do adoptions that put the adopted child on the same footing as a natural one. Carol Koch looked at him and said, 'Sure.' He's a notary—apparently it comes in handy for a guy who does a lot of procurement. He wrote out the papers then and there. Then the boys witnessed it."

"And how did the, um, 'Thief! Thief! guy' take this development?"

"Not very well. The Jena police seemed more or less inclined to take his side. That was when Carol bent over, took a running start, and rammed him in the balls with the top of her head. It distracted him—and them—long enough that we were able to toss Benny and Minnie into the government truck that had brought you and your guests up to Jena to attend the state dinner. Sorry about that, by the way. But we figured that those two needed fast transportation more than you did. Right then and there, anyway. You'll probably be hearing from the guy's uncle. I bailed Carol out. She's feeling rather smug that she finally got to use one of the techniques she learned in the self-defense for women class that Ron sort of made her take. Not that I'd really classify the way that she used it as 'defensive,' but she says that she was defending Minnie, 'so it counts.'"

Ed stretched. "How was the dinner, by the way?" The exigencies of his post-riot diplomatic activity had caused him to miss it.

"Pretty stiff. The seating was according to protocol, which meant that half of those who were seated next to one another weren't on speaking terms. Since I was the only head of state there besides the two counts, I got to talk to the Oldenburg guy. He seemed pretty pleased with the outcome."

"He ought to be pleased," Ed said. "He engineered it."

"You know," Mike commented, "this isn't the way that the story is supposed to turn out."

"What do you mean?"

"It's backwards from what we expect. It's the liberals and the progressives who are supposed to revolt against the forces of princely tyranny, ally with enlightened ideas, and forge onward toward future progress. Melissa calls it 'the Whig interpretation of history.'"

He leaned back, smiling slyly. "I wish that Melissa was here, actually. I'd really love to see her face when she gets the news that the theological liberals are still happily in bed with the established-church guys and the ultra-orthodox are showing every sign of running with 'separation of church and state.'"

Ed frowned. "That's not quite right, Mike."

"What's not quite right?"

"Theological liberals." Ed thought a few seconds; then said: "The word 'liberals' is wrong. Really, the Philippists—the 'crypto-Calvinists' that the orthodox Lutherans are so opposed to—or at least a lot of them—aren't any more 'liberal' than the orthodox. They don't believe their doctrines any less. They just think that fewer of them are essential. They'll be just as stubborn about the ones that they do consider essential."

"Oh, grief!" said Mike. "Well, 'it's a great life, if you don't weaken.' Let's get back to work."

* * *

Ed went back to his office. Sitting on a bench outside the door was Leopold Cavriani, who smiled pleasantly and asked, "Would you be interested in talking about Naples, now?"

Ed studied him for a moment. Cavriani Frères de Genève—facilitators.  

"I'd ask who you were working for, at the moment," he said dryly, "but I'm sure the answer would confuse me even more than the fine points of theological doctrine argued at the colloquy."

Cavriani's smile now bore a remarkable resemblance to that of a cherub.

Ed shrugged. "Sure, why not? Let's talk about Naples. 'O brave new world, that hath such people in it.'"

 

 

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