From: mary whalen <marewhalen@yahoo.com>
Subject: (urth) Torturers as priests
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 18:46:42 

This is Sean Whalen (prion).

It seems to me that the original form of the torturers guild was the
Roman Catholic Priesthood.  Gene Wolfe has said that he believes Jesus
Christ was actually a torturer, and that God created pain for a purpose.

They wear black, live in what has often been compared to a symbolic
church (the spaceport puts people in contact with "heaven").

There are many different kinds and orders of religious men named in
the books, but it is all unorganized.  Also, all of these might have
only come about after the arrival of the Conciliator.  The torturers
say that they are much more ancient than the Conciliator.

Also, when Palaemon and Gurloes are asking Severian if he wishes to
enter the guild or leave, they immediately compare being an initiate
of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence (a religious-sounding title if
I ever heard one) to being an epopt (initiate) of religion.  Then they
tell him the final secret of the guild.

Severian later reveals part of the secret when he leads the lake
people against Baldanders's keep.  He says the only purpose of the
torturers is to obey, immediately after a long speculation about his
knowledge of the Increate (God) and his relation to Him.  The main
purpose of the Church is to serve.

It seems quite likely to me that the RCC, over the huge span of
history separating Earth from Urth, became the torturers guild, as the
world changed.

prion




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