MALACHI OF HEREFORD (c.1190-1227)
The flaking manuscripts uncovered in the remains of a stinking, miniscule twelfth-century hovel found in the midlands of England in the late 1950's were to rock the religious world to its foundations for some thirty-six hours. It would have been much longer, but attention shifted to the discovery of the then Pope's chronic incense addiction - it was revealed he was orally ingesting up to fifteen kilos a day - and Malachi sunk back into obscurity.
A little-followed serial heretic, he had apparently lived a life of simple solitude, not through any self-enforced religious hardship, but as a result of his blistering halitosis and tendency to spend all received alms on chasing loose peasant skirt. As a young novice, he had been expelled from many a respected religious thinkery, mainly for dripping what he claimed to be molten wax on rare, intricately illuminated texts, particularly wherever the phrase "plenary indulgence" was used.
His educational progress was severely limited, mainly due to the gibberish he spouted in both written and oral work. Malachi repeatedly claimed it was an obscure dialect from the Isle of Man, but it soon transpired to be just a complete lack of grammatical ability. Disillusioned with the church and its disturbing lack of regular hot meals, Malachi abandoned his studies to devote himself to his twin passions of translating biblical texts and working on a prototype for a machine that fired nails at diseased illegitimate children.
Malachi's separatism from mainstream thinking was compounded with the arrival of his major work, "Ecce Follis!" ("Behold the Fool!"), an almost impenetrable tome thanks to Malachi's pidgeon Latin and excessive use of scatological expletives. In it, he presented radical interpretations of the Gospels, which he felt had always underplayed Christ's humanity. He portrayed the Son of God as a flustered, mistake-prone oaf, purporting that previous accounts of his miracles had omitted a litany of first-time mistakes - for example, the Wedding at Canaan, when Jesus had publicly embarrassed himself by initially turning water into cats.
In the same chapter, he claims that some rereadings of the original Hebrew point to Jesus spending weeks drying off his tunic as he tried to perfect walking on water, and that it only came to pass thanks to physical underwater support from Svevonius Gurn, a hulking local fisherman.
Scholarly reaction was swift and emphatic. Pubis of Toledo immediately wrote the epoch-defining rejoinder, "Crucify the Sweaty Heathen Lunatic", the entire Franciscan order simultaneously induced vomiting in protest and Tebbitt of Yarmouth physically tailed Malachi for thirteen years, repeatedly poking his cassock with a shitty stick.
Malachi eventually took the hint and fled Britain for France. Here he briefly managed to make a lucrative living presenting himself as Geoffrey Christ, the last remaining descendent of Jesus Christ Our Lord Himself, re-enacting miracles before crowds of pernod-ridden locals at each stinkhole excuse for a town.
Sadly, he contracted Weils disease whilst trying to re-create the Lazarus miracle by sucking out the pustules from a recently deceased troglodyte. His dying days were spent frantically trying to record his remaining academic theories, having turned his attentions to the Greek philosophers. He only got as far as calling Plato a "posturing little Hellenic runt" before passing away. He was used as a draft excluder by the local mayor for some months.
BACK TO GEOFF TORMENT'S EXTRAORDINARY LIVES
The flaking manuscripts uncovered in the remains of a stinking, miniscule twelfth-century hovel found in the midlands of England in the late 1950's were to rock the religious world to its foundations for some thirty-six hours. It would have been much longer, but attention shifted to the discovery of the then Pope's chronic incense addiction - it was revealed he was orally ingesting up to fifteen kilos a day - and Malachi sunk back into obscurity.
A little-followed serial heretic, he had apparently lived a life of simple solitude, not through any self-enforced religious hardship, but as a result of his blistering halitosis and tendency to spend all received alms on chasing loose peasant skirt. As a young novice, he had been expelled from many a respected religious thinkery, mainly for dripping what he claimed to be molten wax on rare, intricately illuminated texts, particularly wherever the phrase "plenary indulgence" was used.
His educational progress was severely limited, mainly due to the gibberish he spouted in both written and oral work. Malachi repeatedly claimed it was an obscure dialect from the Isle of Man, but it soon transpired to be just a complete lack of grammatical ability. Disillusioned with the church and its disturbing lack of regular hot meals, Malachi abandoned his studies to devote himself to his twin passions of translating biblical texts and working on a prototype for a machine that fired nails at diseased illegitimate children.
Malachi's separatism from mainstream thinking was compounded with the arrival of his major work, "Ecce Follis!" ("Behold the Fool!"), an almost impenetrable tome thanks to Malachi's pidgeon Latin and excessive use of scatological expletives. In it, he presented radical interpretations of the Gospels, which he felt had always underplayed Christ's humanity. He portrayed the Son of God as a flustered, mistake-prone oaf, purporting that previous accounts of his miracles had omitted a litany of first-time mistakes - for example, the Wedding at Canaan, when Jesus had publicly embarrassed himself by initially turning water into cats.
In the same chapter, he claims that some rereadings of the original Hebrew point to Jesus spending weeks drying off his tunic as he tried to perfect walking on water, and that it only came to pass thanks to physical underwater support from Svevonius Gurn, a hulking local fisherman.
Scholarly reaction was swift and emphatic. Pubis of Toledo immediately wrote the epoch-defining rejoinder, "Crucify the Sweaty Heathen Lunatic", the entire Franciscan order simultaneously induced vomiting in protest and Tebbitt of Yarmouth physically tailed Malachi for thirteen years, repeatedly poking his cassock with a shitty stick.
Malachi eventually took the hint and fled Britain for France. Here he briefly managed to make a lucrative living presenting himself as Geoffrey Christ, the last remaining descendent of Jesus Christ Our Lord Himself, re-enacting miracles before crowds of pernod-ridden locals at each stinkhole excuse for a town.
Sadly, he contracted Weils disease whilst trying to re-create the Lazarus miracle by sucking out the pustules from a recently deceased troglodyte. His dying days were spent frantically trying to record his remaining academic theories, having turned his attentions to the Greek philosophers. He only got as far as calling Plato a "posturing little Hellenic runt" before passing away. He was used as a draft excluder by the local mayor for some months.
BACK TO GEOFF TORMENT'S EXTRAORDINARY LIVES