Historical Setting, 610 C.E. Besançon Fortress
One of the guards stationed at the bridge gate of Besançon is guiding me through this walled city to the place where prisoners are chained.
Inside, besides the church of the archdiocese, is also an old Roman amphitheater made of quarried stone which still remains. The wood floors have long since rotted away, which were once the ceiling of the dungeon area where maybe gladiators waited and lions were caged. So, with the floors gone that now, dungeon area is exposed to the main level. Only some of the old Roman things are disintegrating from rot. We still have these guardsmen and young soldiers in training coming to this main arena where gladiators once made sport of death. Here they practice lining up and moving in unison as one body, where order is the order.
Today the unison they practice is drawing wooden sword facsimiles. In this more advanced age, the Seventh century, C.E., maybe humanity has finally outgrown the lust of audience applauding the spectacle of violence as entertainment.
And here the practice swords are made of wood. I suppose Greg and Galliard will be at an advantage with their smelted swords if weapons would be needed. Of course, all the weapons I see here are not made of wood. The fortress guards have actual spears – polearms — with sharpened metal tips. And I still have bad memories of these things.
The guard leads me across the practice area to the northeast wall of the amphitheater where we enter a dark hallway that would have been the place for the gates and cages used in the spectator sport. A cage, probably for a lion, is here on the main level and I can see that two men are inside this cage – one a bishop and the other is Father Columbanus.
With the rotting of the floors, this cage is now supported from below on old arches, and a makeshift structure of beams setting it high up on the main level above the earthen dungeon area. But to get to the cage we must first descend one ladder to the earthen level, then, use a second ladder placed from the dungeon level up to the door of the cage where the Father is captive. Now on this lower level I see the wall is set with chains and manacles and here are five prisoners chained to binding stones.
This is how we expected to find the Father. We didn’t plan on finding a main floor cage with a lock.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 