Steinfeld Abbey is a tenth century monastery positioned in west-central Germany close to the French border. Though it has no legends of a treasure-hiding, alchemist monk, it could not have been stunning to M. R. James had he unearthed such a convention whereas he was inventorying the abbey’s ornate stained glass home windows in 1904.
From Faust to Frankenstein, German-speaking facilities of studying have a protracted custom of being related to students who have been unhappy with the standard paths of studying – males who skulked in locked rooms, consorting with otherworldly counselors.
Like Canon Alberic, Abbot Thomas is an archetypal character who appears to embody some deep, historic evil which moderns could also be fast to dismiss or downplay. If Alberic represents the sin of sloth – of discovering fast fixes to a lifetime of productiveness and trustworthy work – then Thomas, undoubtedly, represents the sin of greed.
The story is exclusive in James’ catalogue in that’s crosses over into the all the time in style “cash diggers” style, popularized by Washington Irving (“Golden Desires,” “Dolph Heyliger”), Edgar Allan Poe (“The Gold Bug”), Arthur Conan Doyle (“The Musgrave Ritual”), and Robert Louis Stevenson (“Treasure Island”).
“Abbot Thomas” was the final entry in James’ first anthology of his annual ghost tales: a group marked by stunning brutality (“The Mezzotint,” “The Ash-Tree,” “Misplaced Hearts”), and unrelenting evil (“Depend Magnus,” “Oh Whistle”), and whereas “Abbot Thomas” is actually no pastoral romp, it does act as a palette cleanser to the woeful gloom of what’s arguably his greatest and most haunting anthology.
James genuinely appears to have enjoyable with this one, creating a hidden code a la Poe’s “The Gold Bug,” and luring the reader right into a false sense of safety by emphasizing the joys of the hunt – the euphoric rush that just about all of his antiquarian protagonists fall prey to. And in the event you aren’t cautious, you too could also be so swept away by the joy of uncovering the treasure that you could be neglect the Abbot’s sinister promise to set a guardian over it.
Our story begins with a prolonged Latin citation that particulars the curious historical past of a infamous German monk. In the early sixteenth century, the Premonstratensian Abbey of Steinfeld was ruled by Abbot Thomas von Eschenhausen, a person remembered for each his architectural enhancements and a persistent rumor that he dabbled in each alchemy and treasure-hoarding. In accordance with the chronicle Sertum Steinfeldense Norbertinum, the abbey students lengthy preserved gossip —“de abscondito quodam istius Abbatis Thomæ thesauro”— a few sure cache of gold hidden on the monastery floor by the mysterious (and, certainly, mischievous) abbot.
It was mentioned that whereas nonetheless vigorous in life he had hid an incredible mass of gold someplace within the monastery. When pressed as to its location, he would chortle and reply: “Job, Johannes, et Zacharias vel vobis vel posteris indicabunt” — “Job, John, and Zechariah will inform both you or your successors.” He would generally add — maybe with one thing of a sinister air — that he “ought to really feel no grudge” in opposition to any intrepid seeker who may discover it.
The Abbot was additionally identified for putting in an incredible painted window within the east finish of the south aisle of the abbey church, and for restoring a lot of the abbatial home, together with digging and adorning a nicely in its courtroom. He died instantly in 1529 on the age of seventy-two.
Centuries later, the English gentleman and armchair-antiquary Mr. Somerton turns into enthusiastic about tracing painted glass from Steinfeld Abbey that had been dispersed after the French Revolution. In a personal chapel in England, he discovers three giant figures occupying a window: Job, John the Evangelist, and Zechariah. Three figures with nearly nothing in frequent. Every holds a scroll or e book inscribed with a textual content. The texts, nevertheless, are weird misquotations of three unrelated Bible verses.
Job’s scroll reads: “Auro est locus in quo absconditur”—“There’s a place for the gold the place it’s hidden.” John’s e book reads: “Habent in vestimentis suis scripturam quam nemo novit”—“They’ve on their vestures a writing which no man knoweth.” Zechariah’s scroll reads: “Tremendous lapidem unum septem oculi sunt”—“Upon one stone are seven eyes” (the one verse, Zechariah 3:9, which is not misquoted; and the creepiest of the three).
These figures puzzle Somerton. There appears no apparent theological or symbolic bond between them. The passage about Abbot Thomas supplies the clue: these are the very names the Abbot invoked in response to questions on his treasure. Somerton examines the glass fastidiously and confirms that it matches the fashion and date of Thomas’s window. The primary textual content about hidden gold means that the window itself could conceal the important thing to the treasure’s location.
Scrutinizing the figures, Somerton notices that every mantle has a broad black border. Throughout cleansing, a brush by chance scratches considered one of these borders, revealing yellow-stained letters beneath the black pigment. The black has been painted over after firing and will be eliminated. Somerton fastidiously scrapes away the pigment from all three figures and finds that every gown bears a hid inscription—“a writing on their vestures which no one knew.”
The revealed letters seem at first to be meaningless strings:
Job: DREVICIOPEDMOOMSMVIVLISLCAVIBASBATAOVT
John: RDIIEAMRLESIPVSPODSEEIRSETTAAESGIAVNNR
Zechariah: FTEEAILNQDPVAIVMTLEEATTOHIOONVMCAAT.H.Q.E.
He notices scratched Roman numerals on the borders indicating the variety of letters, confirming the inscription’s deliberate nature. After failed makes an attempt with identified cryptographic strategies, he reexamines his notes. He recollects the hand gestures of the figures: Job raises one finger, John two, Zechariah three. This means a numerical key. Making use of a sample of skipping one letter after the primary, two after the following, three after the third, and repeating, he extracts a Latin message:
“Decem millia auri reposita sunt in puteo in atrio domus abbatialis de Steinfeld a me, Thoma, qui posui custodem tremendous ea.
“Gare à qui la touche.”
Translated from Latin and French:
“Ten thousand items of gold are laid up within the nicely within the courtroom of the Abbot’s home of Steinfeld by me, Thomas, who’ve set a guardian over them.
“Woe to him who touches me.”
Resolving to seek out the treasure, Somerton travels to Steinfeld along with his unimaginative, rustic valet, Brown. They find the abandoned three-sided courtroom south-east of the church and establish the nicely described within the chronicle: a finely carved construction with reliefs of assorted biblical nicely scenes. The nicely descends some sixty or seventy toes, with stone steps constructed into the inside wall.
One night time, beneath a full moon, they put together to descend. Outfitted with rope, lantern, crowbar, and instruments, they decrease themselves into the nicely, counting the steps. On the thirty-eighth step Somerton notices a slight irregularity within the masonry. Putting it along with his crowbar, he dislodges cement and divulges a stone slab engraved with a grotesque cross composed of seven eyes—fulfilling Zechariah’s message: “Upon one stone are seven eyes.”
He pries the slab free, revealing a cavity past. Lighting a candle and ready for foul air to clear, he glimpses rounded shapes inside, like heavy luggage. Reaching in, he feels “one thing curved, that felt—sure—roughly like leather-based; dampish it was, and evidently a part of a heavy, full factor.” He pulls it towards him. As he does so, Brown instantly cries out in shock and defensively rushes again upward with the lantern, having seen what he thinks to be an aged, hollow-faced man peering down into the nicely and laughing. When Brown reaches the highest, nobody is there.
Alone within the darkness, Somerton continues pulling. The thing slips ahead onto his chest and Somerton is instantly conscious that no matter it might be, it’s alive — or acutely aware, no less than — and desperate to make his acquaintance:
“I used to be acutely aware of a most horrible scent of mould, and of a chilly type of face pressed in opposition to my very own, and transferring slowly over it, and of a number of—I do not know what number of—legs or arms or tentacles or one thing clinging to my physique. I screamed out, Brown says, like a beast, and fell away backward from the step on which I stood, and the creature slipped downwards, I suppose, on to that very same step.”
He screams and falls backward, held solely by the rope harness. Brown, regaining his composure, hauls him up and out of the nicely…
Somerton is bedridden afterward, shaken and terrified. He describes a second night time during which he senses one thing watching exterior his door, accompanied by the identical mouldy stench. “There was somebody or one thing on the watch exterior my door the entire night time,” he says. The scent comes from exterior, and faint sounds persist till daybreak, after they fade. He concludes that the creature is “a factor of darkness,” powerless in daylight.
Unable to revive the slab himself, he sends for his good friend, Mr. Gregory. Gregory arrives and, at Somerton’s request, replaces the engraved stone and secures it firmly. Whereas doing so, he notices among the many well-head carvings a bizarrely grotesque, toad-like determine ominously labeled “DEPOSITUM CUSTODI”—“Guard that which is entrusted to thee.”
Somerton recounts all the story to Gregory and Brown, asserting that the guardian talked about within the cipher is actual. Gregory, having glimpsed shapes within the cavity and heard suspicious sounds at his personal door, believes him. The slab is changed, the doorway sealed, and the treasure left undisturbed beneath the abbey nicely, guarded by no matter Abbot Thomas set over it.
Almost all of James’ ghost tales construct as much as a culminating encounter: a “assembly” between a residing man and a few extra-living entity which represents the subliminal a part of his personal character which he refuses to acknowledge. It’s totally probably that James himself would have rejected such a studying as psychobabble worthy of considered one of his overly theoretical protagonists, however it might even be attainable that James’ personal discomfort with psychoanalytical interpretations of his tales might need a relationship to his characters discomfort with the snugness with which his beasties cozy as much as them: as in the event that they have been previous buddies who had identified one another eternally.
That is particularly clear in tales like “A Warning to the Curious,” “Oh, Whistle,” “Mr Humphreys,” “Depend Magnus,” and “Diary of Mr Poynter,” the place the entity appears virtually gleeful about spending time with its sufferer, usually going as far as to embrace, or – as in “Abbot Thomas” – even press its leathery face in opposition to the sputtering antiquarian in a type of mock kiss.
The psychosexual subtext of this will – and has been – simply be interpreted as expressing a deep anxiousness surrounding sexual expression and intimacy, however greater than this, I believe, is a kind of horror of religious intimacy: the bumbling protagonist’s sudden realization that he and this shrouded, bony Factor have extra in frequent than he was ever keen to acknowledge earlier than it was made completely clear via their bodily proximity.
In “Oh Whistle,” Parkins learns this when the ghost manifests as his bedfellow; in “Mr Humphreys’ Inheritance” it’s made clear when the charred stays of his ancestor scuttle out of a map and attain out for a fatherly embrace; and in “Abbot Thomas,” Somerton is nearly catatonic after the slimy, tentacled guardian wraps its grasping arms round him in recognition and fellowship: they’re religious brothers reunited by Somerton’s clandestine efforts at recovering the gold.
It’s virtually as if the toad-like elemental sensed that Somerton beloved its horde of gold almost as a lot because it did, and pressed its face in opposition to his in a bonding embrace over a shared obsession. The analogy is made all of the extra hanging once we think about the place this revelation happened – within the depths of a nicely, an historic image of the unconscious (and it gained’t remotely be the final time that James makes use of such a tool – be it a nicely, pit, tunnel, or maze – to represent the subterranean portal to the unconscious).
Having plumbed the depths of his personal psyche, Somerton expects to be greeted with one thing of nice value and worth – symbolically, to substantiate that he’s a person of excessive character and mind, worthy of breaking Thomas’ code and extracting his treasure.
Though he does seem to substantiate that he’s worthy to be Thomas’ successor, he learns this by encountering this unevolved, troglodytic avatar – a ghoulish doppelgänger who illustrates the true nature of Somerton’s meddling: not lofty and aspirational, however vulgar and corrupt. Horrified by this realization (which additionally seems to be an ethical lure laid by Thomas, whose ghost cackles with glee on the sight of Somerton confronting his inside ickiness), Somerton is pushed to mattress and may’t handle to interchange the stone out of concern of as soon as once more coming head to head along with his supernatural brother.
Revolted and dismayed by this self-discovery, he lets Brown and Gregory – who each notably lack Somerton’s deadly hubris – return the hoard, somewhat than run the chance of encountering a kindred spirit within the loathsome guardian.
