I would like to emphasize the extraordinary attachment of the neophytes to their leader. Everything he tells them is sacred, and they accept it without reservation. When one of them commits some offense, the Lord, as they call him, determines a corporal punishment, and then they all agree, as a group, to administer this punishment together.
I also got out of them that they believe that the Antichrist has been born in the Turkish lands and that Frank saw him himself. He will soon work certain miracles and persecute the Catholic faith. As well as the fact that to them the words of the Gospel are unclear, that Christ will arrive from Heaven as the Messiah. For—they say—is he not perhaps already in the world, in a human body? I had the impression here that, although they did not wish to say it clearly, they believe that the Messiah is hidden in the person of Frank himself. I would put this point to Your Excellency and the next inquisitions.
I learned, as well, that the village in Wallachia where Jacob Frank would visit Mr. Moliwda is in all likelihood one of Whips or Philippians, or some other sect that offends against our holy faith. Their knowledge of the Muhammadan religion also does not come from a single source, but is rather equally sectarian and disseminated amongst the officers of the Janissaries, known as Bektashi.
As for Your Excellency’s questions about whether or not it is true that, as they themselves say, there are many thousands of them, I believe that, calculating carefully, there might be between five and fifteen thousand in Podolia. But not all the followers of this Sabsa Tsivi will be inclined to be baptized and—what is more—only a minority will do it, those who cannot possibly be received back into their congregations and who have no other choice than to go to Christianity, like so many dogs shooed from a yard who will seek shelter under any old roof at all. I do not think that many of them had a pure heart and accepted baptism believing in true salvation under the care of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
At the same time, I wish to inform Your Excellency that as the plague maintains its hold over Lwów, the people have been saying that this is a divine punishment against the converts, and for that reason the fervor for baptism has abated a bit. The truth is that many of the neophytes have been afflicted by the illness, both before and after baptism. Some of them believed that baptism would bring them eternal life, not only spiritually, but also materially, here on earth, which merely goes to show how little versed they are in the Christian faith and how great is their naiveté.
I now turn to Your Excellency the Primate with the urgent request that you read through all of the reports we have prepared here and, being guided by your heart and by your wisdom, determine for us what we are to do next. And as a part of Frank’s company, which they themselves call giaours, has already set off after their commander to Warsaw, they ought to be carefully watched, lest their muddy views of Christianity, their effrontery, and their unregenerate ambitions disgrace in any way the Church, Our Holy Mother.
Father Pikulski has finished writing now and sets about to do his other correspondence, but then he puts it aside and adds to that first letter:
It would be an act of very little faith, however, to consider that the Holy Church could be in any way diminished by such a band of fraudsters . . .
The cornflower-blue ?upan and the red kontusz
Moliwda ordered from a Polish tailor—since that’s what they are called now, the people in Warsaw who sew Polish garments, as opposed to the more fashionable French or German ones—a silk ?upan and a thick wool broadcloth kontusz lined with soft fur. He must also commission a S?uck sash for it, although those cost a fortune. He has looked around for one already and liked several that he’s seen. In Warsaw they cost three times more than they do in Stamboul. If he had any talent for business, he would import them here.
Moliwda looks at himself in the mirror. The thick kontusz adds even more volume to his belly. But that is fine—he looks like a member of the szlachta. Now he tries to think what it was about him that Primate ?ubieński had taken such a liking to, what had placed him in such high esteem—it certainly would not have been this belly, nor indeed any part of his physical aspect. Moliwda has lost half his hair, and the remaining half is dully flaxen. His face has grown fuller in the past few years, while his eyes have become even less colorful. His beard has grown out in every direction and looks like a bunch of old straw. It will not do for a primate’s secretary to have such a skein under his snout. What the primate must have liked about Moliwda was his eloquence at the disputation in Lwów and his noble relations with the neophytes. And of course the languages Moliwda knows. Not to mention So?tyk’s recommendation, since it could not have come from his cousin Kossakowska, whom ?ubieński does not like.
That same day he receives two urgent letters regarding one and the same thing. Both of them put him in a state of high alert—in one he is summoned by the church commission “for imminent interrogation of the ContraTalmudists,” while the other is from Krysa. Krysa writes in Turkish that Jacob has vanished like a stone in still water. He went off alone in the carriage and never came back. The carriage was recovered near the house, but empty. No one saw anything.
Moliwda asks the primate for a delegation to Warsaw. The things the primate has to do have multiplied, in any case, and now there’s the church commission, too. When the nice English carriage sets off, Moliwda takes a big gulp of the tincture, of which he has packed a whole bottle—for warmth, for digestion, for clarity of mind, and as a remedy for anxiety, since Moliwda feels as if something bad is impending, something that might swallow him up, just when he had grabbed on to that blade of grass, which, though not the most secure of moorings, had at least prevented him from sinking. When he makes it to Warsaw without having had any sleep or rest, his head hurts, and he has to squint, so aggressively does Warsaw’s sun shine. The chill in the air is terrible, but there is not much snow, so the mud has frozen into clumps with just a light covering of frost, and there are sheets of ice over the puddles that anyone might slip on. Barely even conscious, Moliwda meets with Wo?owski, from whom he learns that Jacob has been imprisoned by the Bernardines.
“What do you mean, ‘imprisoned’?” he asks in disbelief. “What did you all tell them?”
Wo?owski shrugs helplessly, and then his eyes fill with tears. Moliwda’s horror mounts.