An Hour of Heartfelt Rue

Here is an excerpt from Thomas Mann’s “The Holy Sinner”, the fantasied tale of Pope Gregory in which Mann re-tells the medieval legend of a brother and sister who fall into sin and have a child. The child is sent away in secret only to come back years later when he discovers his true origins, in search for his sinful parents. Though he doesn’t realize it, he finds his mother whom he chivalrously defends against a rather rude wooer and they are married. They live happily ever after, both concealing their secret pasts until they realize their secret is one and the same and husband and wife are really mother and son.

They exchange these words before the son goes to his severe penance of spending seventeen years living on a rock and advises his mother to seek her own atonement. (It’s while on this rock that the Church of Rome finds itself without a pope. Two men receive a similar vision to come and seek out the ‘Father of the Christian world’):

[The mother says] “Grigorss, my child and lord….My horror grows every minute and with amazement that long before now flaming anger has not crashed down upon the accursed, that earth still dares to bear me, after what my flesh committed. I, I am the chief criminal, I know too well, and unspeakable dread mounts in me of the hellfire that threatens me…Is there no counsel that if I, poor woman, must dwell in hell, it might be after all a little milder than to other damned?”

“Lady,” said he, “speak not thus, neither give way to despair, it is against command. For of himself may man despair but not of God and His fullness of grace. We are both thrust into the marsh of sin up to our necks, and if you think you are deeper in, that is pridefulness. Add not this sin to the rest or the pool will go over mouth and nose. God’s hand is stretched out that that may not happen; this consolation I gathered in many books. Not for naught have I seriously studied Divinitatem in the cloister of God’s Passion. I learned that He takes true contrition as atonement for all sins. Be your soul never sick, if your eye be wet only an hour from heartfelt rue, believe thy child, thy spouse and sin, then you are saved”