(urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

Craig Brewer cnbrewer at yahoo.com
Sun Nov 23 09:07:31 PST 2008


Ah, thank you guys! This is what I get for jumping back into the conversation with only Sword and Claw fresh in my mind. I think I will, with belated wisdom, keep my ramblings to myself until I finish the whole series again.




________________________________
From: Nessun Sapra <nessun-sapra at web.de>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2008 10:14:37 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

 
Sword, ch. 31:
"And the secret is only that we torturers obey. 
In all the lofty order of the body politic, the pyramid of lives that is 
immensely taller than any material tower, taller than the Bell Keep, taller than 
the Wall of Nessus, taller than Mount Typhon, the pyramid that stretches from 
the Autarch on the Phoenix Throne to the most humble clerk grubbing for the most 
dishonorable trader—a creature lower than the lowest beggar—we are the only 
sound stone. No one truly obeys unless he will do the unthinkable in obedience; 
no one will do the unthinkable save we."
 
Nessuno
 
 -----Ursprüngliche  Nachricht-----
Von: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net  [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net]Im Auftrag von Dave  Lebling
Gesendet: Sonntag, 23. November 2008 17:03
An: The  Urth Mailing List
Betreff: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or  something)

The secret that I recall is that of all the  parts of the Commonwealth supposedly subject to the Autarch, the Guild is the  only one that will always obey. At least that is what Severian was told by one  of the Masters.

(I thought it was near the end of Citadel, but I didn't  find it with a cursory search.)

-- Dave Lebling, aka  vizcacha

Craig Brewer wrote: 
Where and when, exactly? I've never been sure if I quite caught what was going on with that. (Am I dense and it's apparent to everyone else?)



----- Original Message ----
From: "brunians at brunians.org" <brunians at brunians.org>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 4:35:56 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

Severian certainly does tell the Secret Of The Guild.



.


  
There is, of course, the "secret" of the Guild which Palaemon and Gurloes
tell Severian when he's made journeyman. Some people on the list have,
interestingly enough, speculated that this "secret" is that the Torturer's
Guild used to be the Catholic Church itself. The speculation that they
used to be the Inquisition would fit rather well with that. As far as I
recall, Severian never says anything else about this "secret," although he
does claim to have broken his promise never to tell it.




________________________________
From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
To: urth at lists.urth.net
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 2:02:46 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

 I don't have any textual basis for this, but I thought of the Torturers
as tracing their lineage back to Typhon. This is sort of the reverse of
your impression; the institution would have started out as secular, and
then acquired its mystical aspects in order to maintain its cohesion over
time.

--
"When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about
to set." -- Lin Yutang



    
From: sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org
To: urth at lists.urth.net
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:44:16 -0800
Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)


On Nov 22, 2008, at 10:19 AM, Dave Tallman wrote:

      
David Stockhoff wrote:

In similar vein, discussing "what offices a Christian man may
hold", he refers to a recent case wherein a Church member had the
opportunity to receive high public office as a magistrate.
Tertullian argues that it would be morally impossible for this man
to satisfy both the Gospel's demands and those of Roman law, for
that would require him to abstain not only from all public pagan
sacrifices, oaths, etc., but also from "sitting in judgment on
anyone's life or character, . . . neither condemning nor fore-
condemning; binding no one, imprisoning /or torturing no one/".^*2

<http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html#FN_2 
* These are the earliest known explicit Christian statements on

the morality of torture.


Wolfe may have drawn some ideas from Tertullian, but he surely
wouldn't consider him to be the last word on Christian morality. A
couple of centuries later St. Augustine wrote on the idea of a "just
war," which could be fought by righteous Christian soldiers.
Tertullian ended up being declared a heretic (not about pacificism,
but about whether a new prophecy could have the same force as
scripture).

Tertullian had the luxury in the third century of belonging to a
persucuted group that could stand outside and condemn the system.
But later the Church became the accepted state religion, and took
over a great deal of power in the Middle Ages. At that point,
soldiers, magistrates, and even torturers were at least nominally
Christians. It's a difficult moral dilemma and one that Wolfe
doesn't shrink from presenting in all its horror.

On that note, I've taken the Torturer's Guild as a sort of Inquisition
that's become a more or less secular institution of the State. As if
the State absorbed them and gradually became more and more ashamed of
the Guild, yet kept it around in diminished form for their dirty work.
but it's lost it's original purpose.   Of course that's all
speculation, but it works for me.
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