“Bruno died at the stake in the Campo de’ Fiori,” she went on, “for suggesting that the earth not only moved around the sun, but that there were several solar systems, all revolving around their individual suns. He was far ahead of his time—even ahead of Galileo. But it didn’t obscure his sense of God: he felt God was everywhere, in everything, in everyone. His most offensive heresy was to question Jesus’s birth from a ‘virgin’ mother—he knew the classical models for this idea, the many mortal, beautiful women whose exceptional sons were fathered by invisible, immortal gods. While he believed in the beauty of Christ’s teachings as a man, he wanted us to open our eyes and ask questions—to see what was irrational. He also doubted that the bread was actually made into flesh at the Eucharist—a major part of my Catholic upbringing. Such moderate revisionist questions that it’s hard now, centuries later, to see the outrage it provoked then.

“And it was similar for Dee,” she added. “The effort to avoid doctrinal differences turned them to explore the mysteries of nature—in a religious spirit. It contributed to a climate in which science could advance. They all sought expressions of a religious life without hard-line adherence to a tissue of impossibilities. But, Simon, you’re saying that the people who still read these metaphors as actualities—including those who took me in France—might really have enough influence on politics in the West today to be pushing the world back into the chaos and dogma Dee and his kind were trying to escape from four hundred years ago?”

“It’s teetering, for sure—unless those who try to be tolerant of others’ views are still allowed to speak and think independently, still allowed to ask rational questions, be intelligent skeptics—or even thinking believers. Unfortunately, Calvin’s teammates see no holes in their theory—they believe it to the letter, which curtails any debate. It’s the most negative, doom-and-gloom stuff. Calvin himself has, I think, reservations, but his right-wing associates believe unquestioningly that your Dr. Dee talked freely to the angels. And if this little clique gets their hands on how to do this, the alphabet he used, the instructions for opening the cell phone to heaven, they believe they can have a little chat and find out exactly what the deal is. Or what has already been revealed. And they’ll push others out of the way as aggressively as is necessary to get the angels’ contact number. Interesting, no?”