Apollo Versus the Crucified

We recall today the apparent victory of the principalities and powers of this world. And we are weeks into the Iran war. So I thought this would be a good time to share Chapter 20 of Rajah Versus Conquistador. I’ve been thinking about violence and Christianity for years. As someone who benefits from the order rooted in a nation-state’s near-monopoly of violence, Christian pacifism always felt like an escape more than actual understanding. As someone from a cultural minority who has felt the weight of the state’s dominion, nationalism also felt the same—a simple comforting answer paid for by willing blindness.

What I failed to make sense of through explication, I've experienced through story. For more than a year, I lived inside the lives of the characters of my historical novel which imagines 1521 not only through history but through the anthropologies and psychologies of the Southeast Asian strongman and the 16th century Iberian hidalgo. The Magellan in my novel is a conflicted man. His iron will broke through his king's rejection, drove him to defect to Spain, and held his fleet together through mutiny and desertion. But the Pacific broke him. Months of scurvy, starvation, and empty horizon stripped him of the certainties he carried out of Seville. In the novel, the conquistador and the Christian in him come to a head right before the battle of Mactan, where he will lose his life.

It was inside this conflict that I’ve glimpsed an answer to the question of violence after Christ’s entry into history, while acknowledging the evil in and around me, and the cost of keeping them in order. David Bentley Hart’s opening of his critique of René Girard’s (1980s-era) understanding of sacrifice in The Beauty of the Infinite (2003), where he unveils the Apollonian underpinnings of this order, gave me the grammar to write this chapter. The conclusion, however, was a surprise.

A Cebu rendition of Picasso's Guernica that served as backdrop for a performance art piece by XO — Raymund Fernandez, Roylu, and others — circa 2007, echoing Tony Shafrazi's 1974 act of spray-painting 'KILL LIES ALL' across the original at MoMA (which was thankfully saved by its varnish). Photo by Dr. Ted Gonzales.

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Chapter 20

Apollo Versus the Crucified

April 24th, 1521

In his cabin aboard the Trinidad, Magellan kneels before his small altar, the evening’s candle guttering in the tropical breeze. The worn logbooks lie open before him, their precise columns a comfort after the unsettling events for the past days. He had prevented the ritual killing of the negrita slaves, yes, but then witnessed something that shook him deep: the miraculous healing of the raja’s brother. Not a private revelation during desperate prayer, but God’s power manifest before all.

The memory of the petite black women they had planned to sacrifice haunts him—the same dark skin and tightly curled hair as the people of Africa. Yet even as he had intervened to prevent this demonic practice, an uncomfortable parallel gnaws at him. Had he not seen Portuguese ships packed with African captives? True, Christian Europe had abandoned the ancient practice of sacrificing slaves in religious ritual, had restricted slavery among its own people. The Church’s influence had slowly transformed the old Roman ways. But now Christian nations found new justifications for bondage in distant lands. Was there truly such difference between blood offered to idols and souls sold to commerce?

Perhaps it was these thoughts of ritual death and procedural violence that made him more sensitive to the growing whispers. Something stirred in the ships again—that familiar presence he first felt before the great ocean crossing, when the men turned against him. He senses it in the restless movements during night watches, in conversations that cease when officers approach. Even here in prosperous Zubu, with its abundant food and willing women, discontent spreads like fever through the crew. The novelty of the port has worn thin, and what once seemed paradise now tastes of delay, neglected duty, and thoughts of lovers, wives, and children waiting across an ocean they may never recross.

He hears it in their grumbling: The Portuguese captain cares more for converting heathens than finding spices. He forgets his orders from the king. Old sailors knew of it—that presence that came upon crews in their darkest hours, driving men to turn on their captain. He had dismissed such talk as superstition then, but he had felt it too: that gathering pressure, that whisper of power and vengeance that demanded blood to restore order.

The memory of Quesada’s execution rises unbidden. He had felt that same presence then, during those desperate days in Port San Julian. The Castilian officers had moved against him, whispering of the Portuguese captain who commanded the ships of the crown, who led them into these endless waters. The mutiny had spread like fever through the fleet until that ancient spirit awoke in him, demanding its tribute to quell the rebellion.

Even now, he can smell the salt air of that desolate shore, taste the iron-tang of fear in his mouth. The scratch of his quill echoes in memory as he documented each detail of the sentence. Such care he had taken to follow proper procedure, to maintain the forms that transformed execution into justice. Every step had to be recorded precisely—the formal charges, the testimony, the sentencing.

His fingers tremble slightly against the parchment before him. The quartering had been necessary, he had told himself. A message written in blood and ink to remind the men that order must be preserved, whatever the cost.

His hand moves unconsciously to his sword hilt. Was it the same presence that had moved through armies during the Reconquista? The old warriors at Manuel’s court had spoken of it in hushed voices—scarred veterans who had served alongside Castilian hidalgos. They told how it came upon men in battle, how it turned Christian knights into vessels of divine wrath. Some called it the Spirit of Santiago, seeing themselves as instruments of God’s justice.

With practiced efficiency, he begins the familiar ritual of checking his records. Everything must be properly documented. Everything must be in its place. But as he reviews the careful lines, the entries take on new meaning:

March 31, 1520. Following proper judicial procedure, the body of Quesada was quartered, the parts displayed as warning...

He had written it so carefully then, each detail precisely recorded. The proper forms had been observed. The Articles of War properly cited. Just as they had cited proper procedure in Toledo, as Father Pedro relayed to him, during the cleansing of the conversos.

He had believed himself different then. Had he not shown mercy to many of the mutineers? Had he not spared Cartagena, merely marooning him instead of demanding his blood? Even as he ordered Quesada’s quartering, he had told himself it was justice, not vengeance, that guided his hand.

December 20, 1520. The body of Antonio Salamón was committed to the deep, following execution for crimes against nature. Proper ceremony observed...

The boy’s face haunts him still. Antonio Ginovés, barely sixteen, who had caught Salamón’s predatory eye. The Articles of War were clear regarding such “crimes against nature,” and he had followed them to the letter—execution for the perpetrator, mercy for the victim. Everything properly documented, properly justified.

But mercy had turned bitter. The whispers had started immediately—cruel jests, mockery, threats barely veiled as jokes. He had posted extra watches, ordered an end to the persecution. But the boy’s terror-stricken face at meals, his increasing isolation... Three days later, they found his hammock empty.

Some claimed he jumped. Others whispered darker tales of rough justice dealt in the night watches. He had investigated, of course, documented everything with his usual precision. But the sea keeps its secrets, and the crew closed ranks with practiced ease. Another offering to that ancient god of order—whether by his own hand or others’ made little difference now.

His thoughts turn to Father Pedro’s stories of Toledo, of how that same spirit had moved through its streets in his grandfather’s time, turning neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother. All in the name of limpieza de sangre—the purity of blood.

And did not Caiaphas speak of the cost of peace too? The parallel strikes him like a physical blow. Did he not say it was better that one man should die than that the whole nation perish?

He rises abruptly and paces to the stern windows. Was it not right and just that Rome destroyed Carthage, ending the reign of Moloch who demanded children in his fires? Yet even as Roman senators congratulated themselves on their civilized laws, they fed Apollo, god of order and light, with conquered peoples and broken bodies. Just as he had broken Quesada’s body to maintain order, had he not? Just as every empire feeds that ancient hunger, speaking of law while offering up its broken bodies for dominion.

Beyond the window, gongs still mark unfamiliar rhythms along the shore. Similar alien rhythms had once echoed from mosques in Granada, before the Reconquista purified those lands...

Purified. The word tastes bitter now. He remembers the priest he had marooned, how carefully he had documented the judicial reasoning. How he had felt that familiar spirit moving through him as he pronounced sentence, demanding its price to preserve order.

Just as it moved through Pilate, he realizes with sudden horror. Just as it moved through the mob crying ‘Crucify him.’

His hand clutches the cross at his throat so tightly the metal edges cut into his palm. Sweat breaks cold across his forehead. All these years he had worn this cross proudly, thinking he served Christ’s kingdom. But Christ had not been the one demanding sacrifices. Christ had been the one sacrificed.

“And yet...” he whispers into the empty cabin, his voice unsteady, “did that order not protect the innocent?” Did not those same forces guard the gates of Christendom against the Moor? Guard Castilian shores against pirates and slavers?

The candle gutters in the breeze from the stern windows, its dying light casting frantic shadows before the flame is snuffed out, plunging the cabin into darkness. In this blackness, memories flood through him, each one burning with new significance…

The quartered body of Quesada displayed as warning, like Christ’s broken body on the cross…

The marooned priest abandoned to die, like Christ abandoned by his disciples…

The boy who threw himself into the sea, like all the innocent blood that cried out from the ground…

He rekindles the candle, its flame steadying in the night air. In its renewed light, he sees the logbooks with new eyes. Each careful entry documenting proper procedure, proper authority, proper ending of lives—all of it feeding that ancient spirit that has always demanded blood to maintain its order.

He reads his own words, written with such certainty after Quesada’s death: Order has been restored through proper application of the Articles of War. The men now understand the price of discord. How proud he had been of maintaining protocol even in that desperate hour. How carefully he had built his wall of procedure and documentation against the horror of what he had ordered.

Perhaps they are necessary, he thinks. Perhaps there can be no civilization without its dragons to guard the gates. No peace without the sword.

Yet Christ had come to end the cycle of blood, not demand them. He came to be the final victim, to expose the lie of that spirit that has always fed on blood.

His quill moves across fresh paper:

I find myself compelled to document a revelation regarding the true nature of sacrifice, and of the spirit we have served thinking it was Christ’s...

He pauses, adrift in these thoughts as he had once drifted in that endless ocean crossing where his charts proved useless and men’s bodies rotted from within. Then, he had at least known what lay ahead—the spice islands that would vindicate the crown’s trust in him. But this... Was that ancient spirit truly necessary to maintain God’s order? Or was it something else, something that had always moved through armies and nations, demanding blood offerings while wearing the mask of justice? Each death had been carefully documented, properly justified—but to what purpose? The Articles of War demanded such measures to maintain discipline, yet Christ himself had refused the sword’s protection in Gethsemane.

The bells strike the hour for Compline prayers. He should rise, should maintain proper discipline. Instead, he remains at his desk, the carefully ordered pages of his logbooks now reading like a confession of sins he had never recognized.

Beyond his cabin, the night watch changes with crisp efficiency. Everything proceeds according to protocol. Everything properly documented. Everything in its place.

But he sees now what moves beneath all that careful order—not Christ’s spirit of mercy, but that ancient dragon that has always fed on blood, whether offered by heathens in their temples or Christians in their courts, by mobs in Jerusalem or captains in distant seas.

As in those endless nights when scurvy hollowed his men’s bodies and pride ate at his soul, his prayers shed their careful Latin formulas of authority for the broken whisper of the tax collector: ‘Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

* * *

The stars wheel overhead as Magellan and Father Pedro stand at their customary place by the ship’s rail. The night air carries the mingled scents of sea and distant shore, where ceremonial gongs still mark their unfamiliar rhythms. After hearing Magellan’s troubled confession about sacrifice and order, the priest remains silent for a long moment, letting the lap of waves against the hull fill the space between them.

“In Toledo,” Father Pedro begins, looking out at the dark water, “I knew priests who believed every moral choice could be plotted like stars on your charts. They called it ‘casuistry’—the study of cases.” Moonlight catches in the creases of his weathered face. “Volumes of books with rules for every sin imaginable.”

“Then surely such guidance would help resolve these...” Magellan’s voice falters, his posture stiffening, “...these uncertainties that plague me?”

Father Pedro shakes his head. “Casuistry is like your sea charts, Fernando.” He gestures toward the unfamiliar constellations above. “When you crossed the great ocean, did your charts show every current, every hidden reef?”

“No,” Magellan admits, “but we updated them as we sailed. Each discovery carefully documented...”

“And yet the sea remained greater than your parchment could capture.” The priest’s voice carries the weight of personal experience. “Just as the human heart exceeds our attempts to reduce it to rules and cases.”

Magellan’s hand moves from sword hilt to crucifix, knuckles white with tension. “But without such rules, without proper procedure—”

“Navigation requires more than maps,” Father Pedro interrupts gently. “It demands the cardinal virtue of prudentia—the wisdom to read wind and wave, to know when to hold course and when to tack.” His hand rests briefly on Magellan’s arm. “Just as the soul requires more than casuistry. It needs the courage to face each moment anew, to recognize when justice must yield to mercy.”

“Like Christ in Gethsemane,” Magellan whispers, something shifting within him.

The priest nods. “We are always in uncharted territory, Fernando. Each moral choice as new as these strange stars above us.”

Magellan falls silent. The weight of his logbooks, his careful documentation, his rigid adherence to procedure suddenly presses down on him like an invisible hand.

“Then how...” his voice breaks, “how does one navigate such waters?”

“The same way you crossed the great ocean,” Father Pedro answers. “With courage, with wisdom earned through suffering, and with trust in God’s guidance. But first, you must accept that no human system—not casuistry, not the Articles of War, not your beloved proper procedure—can fully capture the mystery of moral choice. Just as no chart can capture the full mystery of the sea.”

The night watch changes with practiced efficiency. Everything still moves according to protocol, yet Magellan feels adrift in deeper waters than any he has yet navigated. The priest’s words have stripped away his careful certainties, leaving him alone with the harder task of true discernment.

“I will leave you to your prayers,” Father Pedro says softly. “Remember—Christ’s sacrifice transformed the very meaning of the word. Perhaps there lies your answer.”

Left alone at the rail, Magellan faces east where dawn will eventually break. But first, there will be darkness, and in that darkness, he must find his way without his usual stars to guide him.

* * *

Alone on the quarterdeck, Magellan watches the dark horizon where the sun will soon rise. His mind races with visions of glory—a new Christian kingdom here in these eastern seas, himself as viceroy, teaching these gentle people proper civilization. Just as the old hidalgos had done in Granada...

The thought stops him cold: while scorning their heathen sacrifices, he had been unconsciously serving his own demanding god—that eternal spirit of order and dominion that has always fed on blood, whether spilled on stone altars or carefully documented in ships’ logs. Each execution, each marooning, each brutal enforcement of discipline—all of them sacrifices to that ancient hunger for control, merely dressed in the language of law and procedure.

A warm breeze carries the scent of flowers from shore. He remembers how they had welcomed him, despite his domineering entry into their port. How Humabon had embraced him as a brother, not a conqueror. How even now, they prepare feasts to celebrate their shared faith, while his own crew plots against him.

His hand moves to the cross at his throat, remembering the blood compact. He had worried about contamination, about mixing his cristiano viejo blood with that of indios. Yet who had shown true nobility? Enrique, the slave whose pure faith shamed his own calculating devotion. Father Pedro, descendant of conversos, whose wisdom had guided him through his darkest hours. These newly baptized souls who embrace Christ with such joy, while his “pure-blooded” Castilian officers schemed to undermine God’s work.

Just as his maps had failed him in that great ocean crossing, forcing him to navigate by observation and instinct alone, now all his careful moral charts prove worse than useless. The neat categories of blood and rank, the precise procedures that had ordered his world—they blur and fade like old ink in tropical rain.

Lord God, he prays, you who guided us across that endless ocean when all our maps proved false...

A memory strikes him: that moment when he had ordered his charts thrown overboard, when their careful lines and measurements had become a dangerous distraction from the reality before him. Just as then, his carefully documented justifications for sacrifice, his precise procedures for dealing death—all of it now seems like those useless charts, obscuring rather than revealing the truth.

Looking out at the dark waters, he feels the weight of all those careful records—years of certainty captured in paper and ink, every death and punishment documented with proper procedure. That familiar hunger for order, for control, tightens in his chest until he can barely breathe.

Then, with the same resolution that had carried him across unmapped oceans, he lets it go. A shudder passes through his body as he watches in his mind’s eye all those rigid certainties—the careful distinctions of limpieza de sangre, the precise hierarchies of blood and rank, the meticulously documented procedures—slowly sink into the depths, like those useless charts he had once trusted. They drift away into darkness, leaving him stripped of their false comfort but somehow lighter, freer. His shoulders ease downward in relief.

Just as he had once learned to navigate by the stars themselves when his charts proved useless, now he must find his way by a different kind of light—not the cold logic of law and order, but something warmer, truer, shining from these souls he had once deemed beneath him.

The night air feels cleaner somehow. He breathes deeply, tasting salt and distant flowers on his tongue. The port’s gongs have fallen silent, but he imagines he can hear the soft chanting of evening prayers—not in Latin now, but in the local tongue, Christ’s words taking root in new soil.

A hurried step breaks his reverie. He turns to see Barbosa, the old sailor’s weathered face grave in the starlight, the lines around his eyes deep with worry.

“Captain-General,” his voice carrying barely controlled urgency. “The Victoria and Concepcion... the Castilians have taken control. They say they will search for the Moluccas with or without your order.”

Magellan’s hand moves to his sword hilt by habit, but stops at the cross at his throat instead. The familiar dragon of vengeance stirs within him, demanding its sacrifice to restore order. But now he sees it for what it is—not Christ’s spirit, but that ancient hunger that has always fed on blood.

“How many remain loyal?” he asks quietly.

“On those ships? None that dare speak openly.” Barbosa hesitates. “Even on the Trinidad... there are whispers.”

Magellan nods slowly. Once he would have reached for the Articles of War, for the carefully documented procedures of command. But those old moral charts no longer serve him. Now he must navigate by different stars.

“Have Pigafetta bring paper to my cabin,” he says finally. “There are letters I must write before dawn.”