CHAPTER 56
The History of the Etrurian Peninsula Volume II: the Land across the Water
The thoughtful Reader will ask what place a Levantine kingdom has in a history of Etruria, but the very question, reflecting our generation’s theological amnesia, is its own answer. In the centuries since Jerusalem’s destruction, our ‘native’ religion has so altered that we forget it was forged in that holocaust. To the common Etrurian, perhaps, these scorched foundations are an irrelevant footnote, but this volume is meant for scholars.
Since the removal of the Curia’s dead hand, it is hardly controversial to observe that our ‘Madonna’ is a composite figure. After scraping away those characteristics borrowed from Etruscan mythology,16 we excavate the woman who led the First-Century Jewish rebellion that precipitated the rise of the Ebionite Radinate and the fall of the Etruscan Empire.
That fall was cataclysmic, yet our peninsula was reborn in and renewed by its new Marian faith. Although we have since abandoned all superstitions,17 it would be unwise to forget that its light led Etruria out of the Age of Darkness and that its values continue to shape our history, for good and ill.18