Shroud for the Archbishop Read Online Free PDF

council at Hilda’s monastery at Streoneshalh, by the coastal town of Witebia where, together, they had solved the dark mystery of the murder of the Abbess Étain of Kildare. Their abilities had complemented one another, for Eadulf had once been hereditary gerefa, the magistrate, of Seaxmund’s Ham before he had
been converted to the Faith by an Irish monk named Fursa and taken to Durrow in Ireland for his religious education. Eadulf also possessed a physician’s knowledge having also studied at the great medical school of Tuaim Brecain. Then Eadulf had spent two years in Rome and had chosen to follow Rome’s teaching, rejecting the rules of the Columban order, before returning to his native land. He had been at Hilda’s abbey in support of Canterbury and Rome while Fidelma had travelled there to support her fellow Irish clerics from Lindisfarne and Iona.
    The two youthful religious stood facing each other for a moment, smiling happily at their chance encounter, on the sunbaked white marble steps of the Lateran Palace.
    ‘How goes your mission to Rome, Fidelma?’ Eadulf asked. ‘Have you seen the Holy Father yet?’
    Fidelma shook her head.
    ‘No. I have only seen a bishop. One who calls himself the nomenclator , who has to assess my petition from Kildare and ascertain whether the Holy Father should be bothered by it. The bureaucrats who surround the Bishop of Rome do not even seem interested that I bear personal letters to him from Ultan of Armagh.’
    ‘You sound disapproving.’
    Fidelma sniffed in agreement.
    ‘I am a simple person, Eadulf. I dislike all this temporal pomp and ceremony.’ She gestured with hand outstretched to the rich ecclesiastical buildings surrounding them. ‘Do you remember the words of Matthew? The Lord instructed: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal …” These temporal treasures are blinding to the simplicity of our faith.’

    Brother Eadulf pursed his lips and shook his head in mock censure. Although his expression was serious there was no disguising the quiet humour in his eyes. He was aware that Fidelma had a keen scholastic mind and could readily quote scripture to enforce her arguments.
    ‘It is their history, the sense of their past, that causes the Romans to keep such treasures, not their financial worth nor their faith,’ he replied in defence. ‘If the church has to exist in this world to prepare people for the next then surely it must be of this world with all its pomp and circumstance?’
    Fidelma disagreed immediately.
    ‘It was clear, as Matthew said, no man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon. Those that live in this fine palace and parade in temporal aggrandisement must surely be placing Mammon before God.’
    Brother Eadulf looked slightly shocked.
    ‘You are speaking of the household of the Holy Father. No, Fidelma; it is part of Rome’s heritage as well as the Christian heritage to be in this beautiful palace. Everywhere you go in Rome you will stand in history.’
    Fidelma grinned derisively at his enthusiasm.
    ‘Anywhere in the world you would stand on a spot that has an historic memory to someone,’ she replied dryly. ‘I have stood on the poor bare hill of Ben Edair where the battle-torn, bleeding body of Oscar, son of Oisín, was taken for burial after the catastrophic battle of Gabhra. I have seen the cairn which was raised over the grave of Oscar’s widow, Aidín, after she had died of grief on seeing the body of her husband. A small cairn of grey stone can encompass as heart-rending a history as this big edifice.’

    ‘But look at this …’ Eadulf waved enthusiastically to encompass the great Lateran Palace and the adjoining basilica of St John. ‘This is the very heart of Christendom. The home of its temporal leader for the last