July 23, 1945prev home
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In the Evening: The Martyrs Flora and Mary of Córdoba
Perhaps to console me for the vision I lost,65 and help me get over the anxiety I am left with when, on account of entirely human affairs, I am prevented from devoting myself to my work, I am now clearly presented with the strange vision of a cellar, certainly a jail in some castle - a Moslem castle - for I see an ugly-looking fellow dressed as a Turk or an Arab, but he looks to me more like a Turk from a former period, with a long brown caftan from which a petticoat made of a dark red shiny cloth like silk emerges, with long trousers which are clasped at the malleolus. He is wearing heelless slippers of red Morocco leather. He has a brown hat in the shape of a truncated cone, with a circle of emerald-green cloth twisted around it like a turban. The apparent jail or cellar - its windows are at ground level - is structured as follows: from a low corridor into which a short step-ladder descends, the entrance is through an aperture in the form of a rounded arch into a low, dark room like a cellar. In the center of the room is a square rock with a big iron ring in the middle. The floor is beaten earth. This is the place, which I am not at all able to depict with a sketch.
A very pretty young woman is brought in. Her hands are tied behind her back, and she is practically thrown down the five steps leading into the corridor which precedes the gloomy room, where the personage described above is waiting for her, pacing restlessly. In his high belt - I forgot to mention this before - which keeps his robe in place, there is inserted a long curved scimitar with a bejeweled hilt and a scabbard damasked in gold.
“I am asking you for the last time: do you want to leave the religion of the Jewish dogs and return to the holy faith of the Prophet?”
“No.” “Be careful. You know that in the land of the Moors there is veneration of one alone: Mohammed, the true prophet of Allah! And you know the fate which awaits the apostates.”
“I know. But remain believers in your faith, and I’ll remain a believer in mine. Believe in yours, which is false, and I’ll believe in mine, which is true.”
“I’ll have you stripped of life amidst torments.”
“But you will not strip me of Heaven, with its rejoicing.”
“You will lose health, life, joy, everything.”
“But I will find God and his Mother, the Virgin Mary, and my mother, who begot me for God.”
The man stamps his foot with rage and orders that she be flogged with iron rods. They tear the clothes off the girl’s body, and she appears naked down to her waist. They pull her clothing down over her hips, without untying her hands, which are thus left covered by her clothes. They tie a rope around her neck as if it were a necklace and secure her to the ring, after making her kneel alongside the square block, in such fashion that her chin is touching the hard rock. And then two sinewy jailers from the escort that has dragged her there start fiercely striking blows to her young shoulders, neck, and head. Each blow raises up a bloodfilled blister on her tender, white flesh. Her chin, as her head is being stricken, knocks harshly against the stone and gets wounded, and of course her teeth crack against each other, bringing pain. Since she is kneeling at a distance from the block, with her hands tied behind her back, and forced to remain bending over at nearly a right angle, she cannot find relief in any way, and, in addition to the blows, that position itself is a torture.
The judge is not yet satisfied and, as he stands overseeing the torture with his arms crossed, as if he were watching a peaceful spectacle, he orders that the blows to her head be intensified - “to make her more like her accursed Christ,” he sneers.
And the executioners beat and beat with the thin, nearly flexible rods - I think they are made of steel - which fall in clusters upon the poor head after whistling in the air. Her hair gets entangled with the rods and is pulled out in clumps. What remains is reddened with blood, for her skin is broken and the skull bone is exposed, as blood runs down her neck and behind her ears, continuing over her naked chest and halting at her waist, where it is absorbed by her clothing.
“Enough!” the judge orders.
They untie her, put her clothes back on, and lay her on the floor, as she is half-conscious. The judge gives her a kick and, when the young woman opens her eyes (the meek, pained look of a tortured lamb), asks, “Will you apostatize?”
“No.” It is no longer the previous triumphal “no,” but in its feeble tone it is quite sure.
“Your brother will take care of that. And he will be worse than I. Call him and give her to him.” And, after giving her a last kick, the judge goes off....
...And the vision ends in another place, clearly a prison, too, for there are enclosures with heavy gratings over the windows, and voices are heard cursing and chattering, alongside Christian songs coming from inside.
Now the young woman is with another woman of her age, and they are led into a pompous room where I see the same judge as before, surrounded by other Moslems, servants or judges of lesser rank.
“I must still interrogate you, then! This is the last time. So what do you want?”
“To die for Jesus Christ.”
“To die for Jesus Christ! But, Flora, do you know what torture means?”
“I know what Jesus means.”
“But do you know that for your whole life I could keep you among the... [I say “prostitutes,” but he used an ugly term], the way you’ve been these last few days? What will you take into your Heaven then? Slime and filth.”
The other girl speaks: “You’re mistaken. That remains here, with you. I firmly believe that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, of Mary Most Holy, his Mother, whose name I bear, and of all the saints in Paradise, the most recent of whom is my brother, the deacon, martyred by you, once we rise to Heaven, we will be able to make the seed blossom which was cast into so many poor hearts enclosed in vile flesh and thereby redeem our very unfortunate sisters, among whom you have placed us, hoping they would corrupt us and our firmness in faith would be shattered, whereas - know this - we have emerged even purer and more steadfast and wishing more than ever to die so as to add our blood to Christ’s and redeem our hapless companions.”
“Call the executioner. Let them be beheaded.”
“May the true God reward you for opening Heaven to us and touch your heart. Come, Flora. Let us go singing.”
And they go out with the escort, singing the Magnificat....
Jesus says to me, “You have come to know the story of the martyrs and virgins Flora and Mary of Córdoba, in the time when Spain was in the hands of the Moors, in the ninth century. Holy martyrs, almost unknown, but how blessed in Heaven!”66
65 In the preceding paragraph the writer explains that she has had to summarize a vision in a few lines since, because of “the chaos I had to deal with in the house this morning, I could not write while I was seeing.”
66 We pass over almost forty-two handwritten pages, dated July 24-28, 1945 (leaving out the 26th), which contain four episodes belonging to The Second Year of the Public Life.