It would take me a few days to take in everything that had happened in that fleeting visit with Fovel. That night I felt as if our second encounter had drained me of all my mental energy, leaving me so exhausted that I went straight to bed without even eating dinner or watching any TV.
Luckily, my presentation the following morning on prophecies and the war in the Gulf went much better than I had expected.1 That one little spark of lucidity raised both my grade and my self-esteem. Unfortunately, when I tried just a little later to write down what had happened during my encounter with Fovel, or to relate it all to Marina, I found it impossible. All I could process were sensations, flashes of memory. Fleeting glimpses of images that proved difficult to make sense of. Overall I had the sense that I’d fallen into the grip of an unhealthy obsession, a kind of icon overdose that would only subside with time. I held out the hope that the Christmas holiday break would help calm things down. For ten days I could forget about the Prado and its strange Master.
I would have had my calm were it not for a lightning trip that I had to make first to the heart of Castile—to Turégano—which came up more or less out of the blue. I was never so happy to have a car as I was in those days. In Turégano, in the shadow of that spectacular Segovian castle in which King Philip II’s all-powerful secretary, Antonio Pérez, was held prisoner, the actress Lucia Bosè had acquired an old flour mill with the intention of turning it into the world’s foremost museum of art about angels. And right there, in the middle of that old ruin, among sacks of cement, ceiling tiles, scaffolding and plans tacked up on the walls, with an old radio pumping out Christmas carols, Lucia Bosè had made an appointment with me for coffee.
It was really my doing. Some time back, I’d been intrigued by some comments she’d made in a prominent Madrid newspaper about being an avid reader of Rudolf Steiner. My intrigue grew exponentially when Fovel brought Steiner’s name up, and right after our Tuesday encounter I called her on a whim, leaving a long message on her machine. Not expecting her to respond so quickly, I was surprised to come back to my dorm and find a note waiting for me at the front switchboard: “Venite presto. Lucia.” So of course I went.
My hostess turned out to be the living embodiment of the illusion—Miss Italy 1947, international film star, married at one time to mythical bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín, mother of Miguel Bosé, and grandmother to several artists. Lucia had agreed to meet me when she heard my name, which she actually recognized because earlier that year I’d had a notable article about angels published in one of her favorite magazines. As she told me later, “I read everything I can about angels and I memorize every detail.”
It had been a strange piece, coming out just after an incident in February of 1990 when several youths from Paiporta in Valencia had appeared in the media with the story that they had met with actual flesh-and-blood angels who had given them a mysterious two-thousand-page book, filled with apocalyptic prophecies about the future.2
In my article, I uncovered the existence of a second group of similar “receivers,” led by an artist, a painter. This is what had caught the actress’s attention, as she was developing her idea for a museum of angel paintings.
I was no sooner in the door, receiving a rushed peck on each cheek and an invitation to follow her into the depths of the construction, than she asked me, “So, do you think those kids really saw actual physical angels?”
I shrugged, a little intimidated by the question. I was soon to discover that beneath her volcanic persona there was a very kind heart.
“Well . . .” I hesitated. “It’s their word against anyone else’s. The truth is, I don’t know.”
“But, io si credo—I do believe it!” she blurted out, in that delicious and easy mix of Spanish and Italian.
“So do I!” added a tanned, fortysomething man with receding hair and an intelligent look, who was waiting for us in the site’s improvised kitchen.
“Oh, caro. This is my friend, Romano Giudicissi. Since you mentioned you were interested in talking about Rudolf Steiner and his theory about the two baby Jesuses, I asked him to join us. I hope you don’t mind, he’s quite an authority on the subject.”
“Of course not,” I replied.
“There’s nothing strange about believing that a flesh-and-blood angel can appear here among us,” Romano said with aplomb as he shook my hand. He smiled and motioned toward a bench for me to sit down.
“In the Bible there’s the story about how two angels appeared before Abraham, and sat at his table and ate and were seen by the whole family. Why shouldn’t they appear now, if they want to?”
“With any luck, Romano is one, too,” teased Lucia. “Here to drink some of my famous coffee!”
“Certo!” he replied, smiling broadly.
The three of us spent a good while discussing this idea: Can the invisible become physical and take on a body? The question intrigued me. From what I’d read since meeting Fovel, I also knew that this was one of Raphael’s most urgent preoccupations. And unlike Leonardo, the divino of Urbino had not renounced painting the supernatural. In fact, he believed that it should be painted with the same physicality and realism with which you would paint anything else in the material world.
Which is exactly why the Master of the Prado had cited St. Thomas Aquinas as one of his sources of inspiration. As I was on the point of discovering for myself, this great medieval theologian had attempted to come up with scientific and rational explanations for such questions as these. According to him, the invisible can sometimes become visible, tangible, and therefore able to be painted.
“St. Thomas!” exclaimed Romano when he heard me mention his Summa Theologica. “Did you know that, at one point, he enthusiastically discussed the ideas of another important theologian—another stubborn Milanese like Lucia here—Pietro Lombardo, who also believed that angels had a physical existence.”
“And did St. Thomas argue against this?” I asked.
“Not exactly, Javier,” replied Romano. “He did reject the idea that they could have a body from nature, as it were. But he believed that if they needed to have one for a particular reason, like for example to appear before Mary to tell her of her conception, then that they had the means to create one.”
I was fascinated. “What kind of means?”
“In Summa Theologica he says that angels were able to form a body from condensed air. Even from clouds,” said Romano.
For some reason the idea sounded familiar to me. Then I remembered why. Raphael had been the first modern painter who began to represent holy, sacred figures, like Jesus in all his majesty, or the Holy Spirit, or even God, without the usual glowing almond shape that medieval painters had traditionally surrounded them with. These aureoles, as they were called, had been used to show the presence of something sacred. For the faithful, they acted like a sort of traffic signal, indicating when a figure or image was of a divine nature. Raphael did away with this, and instead substituted clouds, or glowing skies. Could he have read St. Thomas?
Romano seemed to put a lot of stock in Summa Theologica, so I made a note to consult it at the first opportunity. I soon learned that he had been modest in his praise. Conceived by Thomas—or “Doctor Angelicus,” as he was known after his death in 1274—over endless nights kneeling before an altar that was lit by a single candle, his great work was a source of infinite surprises. He dedicates a significant number of the over two million words in the work to supernatural questions, suggesting such daring theories as the following, on the occasional corporeality of angels:
So that the air, when it is vapor, has neither figure nor color, nonetheless when it is condensed, can take both form and color, as is clearly shown in the clouds. So do the angels take the forms of physical bodies, formed of the air, condensing these by divine spirit as necessary into the physical forms they wish to take.3
“Veramente, that’s a very poetic notion,” said Lucia, serving us a generous and dense caffè italiano. “Angels made out of clouds—how enchanting!”
“So all those people who say they’ve seen an angel can at least say they’re in the good company of Thomas Aquinas.”
“But if we start to think of these biblical figures in such physical terms,” I objected, “then don’t we end up with a very materialistic reading of the Bible overall?”
“It becomes more balanced,” interjected Romano gravely. “It causes us to think that the physical is part of the same whole as the spiritual. Both sides are in a constant and perfect interaction. They’re not different places, as they were thought to be by the theological scholars who came before Thomas Aquinas.”
Lucia finally moved the coffee pot to one side and sat down with us. “Enough of this discussione! It’s time for the pasta!”
In her presence, the conversation relaxed, and she recounted her plans for the new museum and the trouble she was having getting her proposal looked at by the local politicians.
“All they want to talk about is voter fraud and the pork industry. Imagine if I threw the grande segreto of the two Jesuses at them!”
After our third coffee and our second pastry, we were finally at a point where we could tackle the issue that had brought me there. Romano handed me a small volume that I opened with interest. On the cover, there was a reproduction of the first version of The Virgin of the Rocks, beside some other religious paintings I couldn’t identify.
“I wrote this,” he said modestly.
The book was titled The Two Baby Jesuses: The Story of a Conspiracy and had been published by a small, niche press.4
“The first thing you should know,” he began, “is that the evidence for there being two child Jesuses comes not only from Rudolf Steiner, but also from the Gospels themselves.”
Romano seemed to be quite serious.
“The Book of Matthew tells of a baby born to a couple of newlyweds in which the husband, Joseph, is a descendant of King David. This meant that the baby was a candidate to fulfill a prophecy of the time, that a son of kings, born in Bethlehem in Judaea, would rise to become an immensely powerful king himself. Moreover, it is also Matthew who tells us that King Herod, blind with rage, cooks up a plan to destroy this infant who threatens his lineage, and who plans to use some nomadic wise men to find him.”
Another damn prophecy, I thought to myself. But I said nothing and let Romano continue.
“Luke, on the other hand, describes quite a different genealogy, which goes through Nathan, the son of King David, all the way back to Adam and Eve. The Jesus he refers to is from Nazareth, and not the same Jesus that Matthew describes. Luke supports this fact with evidence, citing points of timing deduced from the Roman census. According to this, the two Jesuses were born at least four or five years apart.”
Romano then opened his book to a quote of Rudolf Steiner’s and handed it to me to read.
At the beginning of our era there lived two men, both named Joseph, one in Bethlehem and the other in Nazareth. Both had wives named Mary. The Mary from Nazareth was pure and virginal, while the Mary from Bethlehem carried with her the full legacy of a painful past. Both of the men named Joseph were descended from David—the one from Bethlehem by way of the royal line of Solomon, and the one from Nazareth by way of the clerical line of David’s son Nathan.5
Romano smiled. “That’s the beginning of the story. Both couples have a son and they both name him Jesus. The royal, or Solomonic, one that Matthew mentions is the one who was found by the Magi. The other, the one descended from Nathan, the priestly or clerical one in the Book of Luke—he is the one adored by shepherds. When we talk about these various stories, which we do mostly from memory, we tend to blend them as if all the evangelists basically told the same stories, whereas in fact that’s not the case. The different Gospels sometimes tell different stories, and these often contradict each other.”
Once again I began to object. “Yes, but it’s difficult to believe that—”
“Hold on, Javier. Aspetta,” Lucia broke in. She began to refill my coffee cup. “The best part is coming up.”
Romano smiled again. “Grazie, Lucia. You see, Steiner is the only person who has managed to give a clear explanation for these contradictions. And he does it using a complex system of thought he developed that he claimed allowed him to get at hidden truths. In his books and conferences he used to refer to a ‘spiritual science’ as a counterpoint to our traditional science. Under this spiritual form of science, concepts such as the soul, reincarnation, and higher or lower planes of existence, are taken for granted. And it was through this other science, and using decidedly nonmaterial sources, that Steiner somehow managed to reconstruct the life story of those two boys.”
“You mean he had some kind of revelation?” I asked, thinking of Amadeo and his raptures.
“Call it what you like, Javier. To experience this spiritual science, you have to actively separate yourself from the physical, material world. This is what Steiner did.”
“Was he a medium?”
“No, of course not. Steiner was a philosopher. You know, if he had died at the age of fifty, before he got into the occult, he would now be considered alongside such names as Bergson, or Husserl, or Karl Popper. But his curiosity took him in other directions, which had nothing to do with spiritualism.”
“So how did he arrive at these revelations, then?” I asked.
“We can only speculate. Steiner was convinced that behind this material world that we know through our senses there exists a spiritual one. He believed that everyone carried the ability within them to access both worlds. With just a little training, for example, we could learn to take control of that twilight space between waking and sleep, and launch ourselves into the invisible world from there.”
“He thought anyone could do that?” I was incredulous.
“Actually, we do this now. When we’re reading a book that moves us, we go into an altered mental state, like going into a different world. When a painting or a piece of music reaches into us and really touches us, the same thing happens. It’s as if we raise ourselves above the material world and, just for a moment, are part of the sublime. Steiner experimented quite a bit with these altered states of consciousness, and got a lot of information from it.”
“Like about the two Jesuses?”
“Exactly. Steiner revealed details in a few of his conferences on how both of the Jesus boys—the Solomonic one and the Nathanic one—ended up living in the same village, and how their fathers actually got to be good friends. “The boy that Matthew describes distinguished himself early and was noticeably gifted, while Luke’s counterpart had trouble adapting to life and the world. The first one had normal, mortal siblings; the second was an only child. When the first boy was born, Gabriel appeared to his father in dreams, according to Matthew, whereas the second Jesus was born after Mary saw the archangel in a vision. As you can see, there were a lot of differences between the boys.”
My head was spinning. “Wow, okay—let’s say I believe all this. How did we end up combining them into one Jesus?”
Romano looked at me gravely. “Something happened.”
It sounded ominous.
He sighed. “This is the part that our rational minds have the most difficulty accepting. I’ll do my best to describe it.”
I nodded, extremely curious, willing him to continue.
“Well, according to Steiner, when the Nathanic—Luke’s—Jesus turned twelve, the two families traveled to Jerusalem with the boys for the festival of Passover. Do you remember the story in the Book of Luke, when Jesus is lost in the temple? The Jesus who was lost was the one who found life difficult, and didn’t say much. But when they finally found him, three days later, he was transformed, with an erudition and knowledge of the scriptures that was remarkable for someone his age.
“Steiner writes that while in the temple, the souls of the two boys fused together and became one in a spiritual process that lasted three days. It’s difficult to explain, to understand. It left the Salomonic—gifted—Jesus debilitated to such an extent that he died shortly afterward, leaving all his knowledge with the other, Nathanic Jesus.”
I stared at Romano. “That sounds like science fiction, if you want to know the truth.”
“I agree.” He nodded. “We’re talking about a different kind of logic, you understand. But all four evangelists drop any reference to Jesus from that point in his life until much later, when he reappears in the river Jordan for his baptism, and begins his public life. That’s when the Christ that we know emerges—the anointed one, who understands what his mission is and is prepared to die for it.”
“And no one figured any of this out before Rudolf Steiner?” I asked, teasingly, recalling what Fovel had told me a few days ago.
“Oh, but of course they did! A number of painters stumbled over this idea unconsciously and even dared to put it into their work. They probably figured it out going down the same path as our philosopher, Steiner. The most famous of these was probably Bergognone,I a painter from the beginning of the sixteenth century who created a fresco depicting what happened to Jesus in the temple. You can see it in Milan, in the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio, the church of his patron. It really is unique. That is why I have it on the cover of my book, right here.”
I looked where he was pointing, and my jaw dropped. I knew that church! I’d run across it by accident while wandering around the streets near the Sforza Castle in Milan during a study trip. I remembered admiring the solid gold altar at the time, and the bronze serpent that would, according to legend, fall from his column as the end of the world approached. I even remembered pondering St. Ambrose’s skeleton, displayed in the church’s crypt. But I hadn’t seen the fresco. Romano explained that it was among the treasures housed in the museum.