The House of God filled with astonished murmur and half-supressed laughter as the Fra Loring fell on the ground. One of the chuckles belonged to His Holiness, who just couldn’t resist to giggle at the sight of the monk’s silly mien: but the Apostolic Lord stopped laughing when a cardinal, apparently scared, grasped his shoulders, pointing down at the monk, staring wildly at the monk’s cloak. Another cardinal leant to His Holiness, whispering something in his ear.
Silence returned as Clement VII, Bishop of Rome, rose from his throne with a face solemn and somber. The shuffling noise his slippers made was clearly audible as the Vicar of Christ went slowly downstairs, increasing the crowd’s astonishment with each step he took. When Fra Loring regained his consciousness only to see the radiant figure descending from above, he fainted again.
The Lord Pope stood before the brother monk for a moment or two. This rather large man then carefully removed his tiara, knelt, and pressed his lips to the bloodstained hand of the poor monk as if kissing an altar stone.
Fra Loring was already in a priory of his Order when he woke up from the swoon, in a hospital to be precise. The Brother Medic advised him rest, but apparently forgot to prohibit the brother monks from visiting him: as if the whole priory gathered in the small hospital every dawn, before the start of the silentium. They paid him great attention, which was at first understandable: after all, he had visited the Pope! But their attention just would not want to cease, and Fra Loring began to feel it not only uncomfortable but also unwarranted. The brothers would stare at him strangely, or would keep harassing him with odd questions: did he experience anything special? Did he feel as if some presence were taking control over his body? Was there a choir of angels singing? Were the stigmas painful? Did the booming voice of the Wrathful Lord really order His Holiness to humiliate himself? Did Raphael really appear to heal the Schism?
Lornig’s own questions went unanswered: each time, the monks would just giggle, as if he asked something silly. The Brother Prior claimed to know nothing about the results of Loring’s mission.
Gossips of miracles and saints possessed the city of Avignon in the early months of the year of Our Lord 1383. First, there was the rumour about the saintly hermit from Lorraine who preached to the Pope about the Schism, talking about terrible disasters to come, predicting that the Egyptian Darkness would come again, commanding the Pope to defend himself properly, preventing “Caine from slaying Abel again”. The saintly hermit from Lorraine had the stigma, they said, the blood of Christ flew from his wounds, which wounds closed just as miraculously as they opened. It was also rumoured that the blood was the Virgin’s, but this notion was generally dismissed in favour of the previous one.
Second, there was the saintly Pierre de Luxembourg, son of the Count of Ligne, a flearidden thirteen-year-old of remarkable austerity and penance. He had the habit of writing a diary of his sins all the times, and he drove his confessors mad with his passion of confessing even the least of the sins in great detail. An interesting freak, he’d been a local celebrity in Burgundy and then in Paris until recently when he’d been sent to Avignon because his asceticism had grown annoying to the lords and ladies of the court -- and his novelty had long passed anyway. The Curia had received him with arms wide open, seeing him a useful tool to counter Catherine of Siena. Pierre, already a deacon and by now convinced that Urban VI was the embodied evil, was ordained priest, was made an Apostolic Prothonotary, then in February, 1383, he was appointed Bishop of Metz during a special consistory.
Two weeks after his stormy audience with the Pope, Fra Loring of Lorraine was given a mule to ride, a bag to be delivered to his abbot, a company of Gascon lancers for escort, and a thirteen-year-old bishop to obey.
“His Holiness wishes to thank you for notifying him about the terrible situation of your homeland,” Jean Cardinal de la Grange, O.S.B., said to Fra Loring, “and he apologizes he cannot bid you farewell personally. Oh, and His Holiness hopes the contents of the bag will cover the losses of your abbey,” the cardinal added with a wry smile on his face.