Hierarch of the Third Seal

#On the Attested Designation

"...the Hierarch of the Third Seal." — Bureau of Relics, Bureau of Tithes and Bureau of Festivals, each in passing

This entry is a documentary survey commissioned and sealed in A.S. 201 (1911 CE). It surveys a title. That title is the Hierarch of the Third Seal, and it turns up in the published accounts of three Bureaus: Relics, Tithes and Festivals. Each record uses it the way a clerk uses the name of the reigning Archbishop, sure the reader knows who is meant and unwilling to spend ink saying so. None of the three gives a name, a seal impression, a date of accession or a likeness. I have supplied none of these either. A Hieromnemon who invents a Hierarch to fill out a survey has committed an offence with its own subsection, and I have read the subsection.

Under the Concordat of Strasbourg of A.S. 90 the constitution recognises the Seven Seals of Faith: Doctrine, Discipline, Martyrdom, Concord, Purity, Vigilance and War. No instrument I have been shown numbers them, and the Synod's own lists disagree about their order. The descriptive catalogue of Hierarchs puts Martyrdom third. This Codex's entry on the Seven Seals treats War second and Martyrdom sixth. The survey of the Hierarchy calls War the Seventh Seal. If a Seal can be second in one register and seventh in another, no one can identify it by its number.

A reader who reaches for Martyrdom has a reason. The Hierarch of Martyrdom commands the Bureau of Relics and governs the sanctioned dead and their remains, and the fullest of the three attestations concerns a relic vault. That is a reason, but it does not certify anything. This survey records the comparison and leaves it open.

The title should also be kept apart from the Third Hierarch of the Seal of Discipline. He was the third man to hold a named Seal. The Hierarch of the Third Seal holds a Seal that is called third. His black canvas and moth-eaten file belong to his own entry, and the moths may keep them.

#On the Location Kept from the Record

"...communicated only to the sitting Archon-Custodian and the Hierarch of the Third Seal." — Bureau of Relics, On the Great Holdings

The Bureau of Relics reports a sub-vault within its custody that it calls the Forbidden Stacks. According to that report, the sub-vault holds relics confiscated during the Rationalist era: weighed bones, chalices tested with reagents, crucifixes that were burned and would not stay burned. The Bureau says the location is communicated to two persons only, the sitting Archon-Custodian and the Hierarch of the Third Seal. The Codex dossier on the Archon-Custodian repeats the claim that two persons hold this knowledge, so it rests on two published accounts.

The Relics account also sets out the conditions of entry. An applicant must hold a Synodal licence and attest in person before the Bureau of Purity. Since an amendment of A.S. 170, the applicant must also pass a physical examination confirming that he is "corporeally consistent with their filing." The amendment followed an incident the Bureau will not discuss. The Archon-Custodian's dossier says the amendment bears the Custodian's countersign. It does not say who drafted it.

From these reports a survey may record one thing: the title is credited with knowing where a door is. The reports do not show that the holder of the title carries a key to that door, decides who passes through it, wrote the A.S. 170 amendment or owns what lies behind it. Knowing where something is gives no title to it. If it did, every cleaning woman beneath the Cathedral Close could claim a share of the Vault.

The name raises a second problem. The Codex entry on the Forbidden Stacks describes, under the same name, an archive of suppressed texts beneath Strasbourg. The Bureau of Silence holds physical custody of it. The Bureau of Records and the Bureau of Doctrine hold co-seals, and Purity has a right of inspection. The Bureau of Silence's own entry draws the line the same way: Purity condemns a text through the Index, and Silence keeps the paper. That archive is made of paper. The Relics sub-vault is made of bone and confiscated vessels. Neither account cites the other. Neither records an annex, a shared stair, a transfer of custody or a settlement between the two Bureaus. This survey keeps each description under its own source. Nothing in it moves Silence away from its shelves.

#On Offerings and Their Classification

"...whichever Bureau has more recently bribed the Hierarch of the Third Seal." — Bureau of Tithes, On the Rivalry with Pilgrimage and Other Feuds

A woman leaves a coin at a wayside shrine. The Bureau of Rites calls this a voluntary offering and a spiritual act, which places it outside taxation. The Bureau of Tithes calls the same coin voluntary revenue, which places it under the standard levy. The coin stays where it is either way. The quarrel is over whose ledger it belongs to.

The Tithes account of the quarrel is short, and I am fond of it. It says the distinction between the two definitions collapses roughly once in a decade. When it does, a jurisdictional tribunal convenes, rules for whichever Bureau most recently bribed the Hierarch of the Third Seal, and dissolves without leaving a precedent behind. The sentence appears in this Codex under my submission, and I have let it stand. It is a satire set down as an administrative observation. It names no tribunal, no sum, no verdict and no year, so this survey names none either. The interval it gives is approximate, and I will not turn it into a timetable.

The account still tells a survey something. Tithes speaks of the Third Seal as a power whose favour can tip a tribunal. That is an attributed influence, recorded by an interested Bureau in a mocking tone. The account gives the title no constitutional authority over every dispute, and it proves no payment to any person. A satire works only if the audience recognises its target, though, so the title was recognisable to whoever read Tithes' account.

Doctrine, which I serve, profits when the matter stays unclear and has never asked for it to be settled. A precedent would close a market. An unresolved question can be sold again every ten years.

#On the Bear at Lyon

"...an unlicensed puppet show depicting the Hierarch of the Third Seal as a dancing bear." — Bureau of Festivals, On the Present Condition

The Tumults of Lyon took place in A.S. 170. The Bureau of Festivals records that masked celebrants handed out seditious pamphlets, assaulted two Attendance Auditors, and staged an unlicensed puppet show in which the Hierarch of the Third Seal appeared as a dancing bear. Doctrine later classified the performance as "creative blasphemy." The consequences are in the record. The masks were confiscated. The puppeteers were immured. Carnival was prohibited in three provinces and has not returned. Festivals still posts additional Auditors in Lyon for every major observance, and the citizens call the arrangement "the second occupation."

The bear was wood, cloth and string, worked by a hand under a little stage in front of a masked crowd. It tells the survey that by A.S. 170 the title was familiar enough in a western-heartland city for a crowd to laugh at it on sight. It says nothing about the holder's body, temper or gait. A puppet is not a portrait. No record consulted puts the holder in Lyon or attaches the Third Seal to the immurements. The punishment is credited to the Bureaus that carried it out.

The vault amendment was also made in A.S. 170, and the coincidence of years tempts a reader. The two events share a year and nothing else, not even a file. Neither one marks an accession. Neither shows that the person mocked in Lyon was the person later credited with knowing where the Relics door lies. A title can outlast its tenants, and no record of the period lists them.

#On the Present State of the Dossier

The file can be summarised in four entries. Three Bureau records attest the title, and all three use it as though it needed no explanation. Relics reports that the title is privy to the location of a relic sub-vault, and the Archon-Custodian's dossier repeats the report. Tithes credits the title, satirically, with influence over a recurring tribunal. Festivals records that the title was mocked in public at Lyon in A.S. 170.

Two gaps remain. The consulted records identify no holder and give no name, and they do not settle which constitutional Seal the ordinal refers to. The relationship between the Relics vault and the textual Stacks held by Silence is unproved. Both gaps are entered here as limits on what the records support. Neither is a secret the Bureau is keeping, and I do not promise to fill either.

This survey certifies no present occupant and no unbroken tenure from Lyon to the present. It certifies only that the title is current in the records of three Bureaus. In the Synod that is enough to make a title formidable, and more than enough to make it worth bribing.