1118, the Year of Our Lord

SETTING: The Monastery at Cluny, the largest church in Christendom and the heart of the Benedictine Order, play is adapted from actual dialogue recorded by St. Eric Y--- of Monza, who kept the GroupMe ParchmentMe alive for all posterity

CHARACTERS: THE ABBESS - the head of the entire Benedictine Order and the Mother Superior of the Abbey at Cluny, historical sources found a note in the manuscript telling St. Eric of Monza to "please list all titles in full," but we do not have space for that here

VICE-ABBESS - the second-in-command of the Benedictine Order

BROTHER ADAM - formerly the Third Earl of Transport under King Henry I of England, rose up in revolt in 1116 with Louis VI of France and banished to the monastery as punishment

TREASURER - actual name is Tristán Diego García Garcés Cortés, but demands to be only referred to as "Treasurer" by his peers at the Abbey, to their eternal annoyance. Cluny also happens to be the wealthiest church in Christendom, thanks to his and his forebears financial expertise.

SISTER IZABELA OF THE SOCIAL CHAIR - joined the monastic order after finding the social chair of St. Benedict of Nursia, which he used to dictate many of the Benedictine Order's highest tenets

BROTHER SAMUEL "THE SEAMSTRESS" - joined the Abbey as a young boy with the goal of outfitting everyone in Cluny with matching checkered robes in accordance with the uniforms of crusading knights, although no one is sure why he is "the seamstress" rather than "the tailor," many historians have later posited this is a derogatory nickname propagated by anti-checkered partisans at Cluny

OTHER MEMBERS OF THE ABBEY WILL POP IN AT RANDOM INTERVALS - except for Abby of the Abbey, who was on a trip to Belgium at the time of this meeting, this trip was marked down in the historical record as "Abby of Abbey about-faces abruptly abrogating abbreviated Abby Abbey abstinence aberrantly"

(line break)

ABBESS: Hello friends, welcome back to another great season of Cross Country, in which we continue to run around spread our version of the Gospel to everywhere in the world.

EVERYONE (in unison): Praise the Lord!

ABBESS: I hope you have all distributed our flyers with our Brother Adam walking on water with his arms outstretched in anticipation of Easter. 

VICE-ABBESS: Yes, we did our best.

ABBESS: Good, although everyone in this entire monastery complex is already Catholic, it's worth reminding them of their apostolic duty to remember that we are, in fact, doing our best for God, which is really the point of the exercise. Ever since Cluny started admitting female members in the 10th century, it's worth noting that attendance at Cluniac events has doubled. I, of course, deserve some credit for this, as does Sister Izabela of the Social Chair, and some credit should also go to the feet of Abbot Patrick, even if his post-departure ego is already big enough as he is trying to be canonized as St. Patrick 2, Electric Boogaloo, or whatever. But he doesn't have control of that. So here we are.

VICE-ABBESS: I miss Abbot Patrick.

ABBESS: Yes, I do too, sometimes. But I suppose he just really had to go on that top-secret, classified Crusade which we will never, ever hear about ever again.

TREASURER: Well, it cost us a fortune. Brother Adam, how much did we spend on transportation for this event?

BROTHER ADAM: It was only slightly above budget.

[TREASURER falls out of chair and takes several minutes to get up as Adam continues to speak]

This is the seventh consecutive year that the Abbey at Cluny is hosting the annual Networking Conference of the Benedictine Order, and I am pleased to announce all transportation has been successfully arranged, although I'd also like to note that just because I was the Earl of Transport in England doesn't mean I actually enjoy arranging travel.

ABBESS: But you were the Earl...

BROTHER ADAM: Yes?

ABBESS: ...of Transport.

BROTHER ADAM: Yes, Transport is a charming parish in East Anglia.

ABBESS: So your point is, what exactly?

VICE-ABBESS: According to the laws of the realm and of nature, can anyone actually be landed to a title like "Transport" or "Logistics"

SISTER IZABELA: No.

ABBESS: But you still were the Earl...of...Transport! So, by right, I should assign you to be the Earl...of Transport! Are the caravans for the next two meetings of the Order ready, by the way?

BROTHER ADAM: (sighs) Yes Ms. Mother Superior, they are ready.

TREASURER: I will note that several delegates arrived late due to heavy traffic. My return trip was also delayed.

BROTHER ADAM: That's completely out of my control. I don't necessarily understand why you blame every event in God's hands on someone who is definitively not God, Tristán.

TREASURER: (ignores him)

BROTHER ADAM: Can somebody not allow Tristán Diego García Garcés Cortés to just call himself Treasurer at all times?

ABBESS: Would you rather just say all five of his names? It's pretty convenient, in my opinion.

BROTHER SAMUEL: (interrupting) I just wanted to say y'all just look positively spiffy in your purple-and-white checkered monastic robes I ordered.

SISTER IZABELA: Hell yeah we do.

ABBESS: Excuse me?

SISTER IZABELA: Uh, uh, I mean, yes by the grace of the Father, the Son and the et cetera, et cetera.

VICE-ABBESS: But if we run too fast, is there any chance we could create an optical illusion such that the mind is transfixed by our checkered robes?

TREASURER: I can't believe we spent so much money on these purple-and-white robes. We had to get purple dye directly from the Byzantine Empire (NOTE: This is likely a historical anachronism added in by later readers in the 18th century for clarification as any mention of the "Byzantine" Empire was not in use until after its fall in 1453) and that was not cheap. We even had to ask for donations from other parishes?

BROTHER SAMUEL: Well, Treasurer, isn't the entire point of a monastic order to ask for donations??? [TREASURER glares at BROTHER SAMUEL]

ABBESS: Ahem, order please. This post-meeting meeting, some might even call it a post-meet meeting, is hereby in session, which means we all need to chillax. I think we had a great meeting today, in which many souls were brought closer to accordance with the rules of St. Benedict and we all ran pretty fast in the fourth-annual Benedictine Cross-Country Invitational, in which participants are obligated to lug an actual cross, just like our Lord and Savior, across a 5-8 kilometer distance as quickly as possible.

VICE-ABBESS: Someday, we'll just drop the country altogether and just carry crosses without the bounds of space and time!

SISTER HANNAH OF NEW JERSEY: And I'll still be the first one to finish.

BROTHER DAVID: Debatable.

ABBESS: Well, maybe next time we'll field enough women to have a scoring team, which is something I'd really like to do before I stop doing these Invitationals.

TREASURER: Yes, and we won't need to spend 50 ducats per entrant.

BROTHER ADAM: Well maybe some people can race at a consistent pace instead of varying their distance from former Earls of Transport by 30-50 seconds at any given time. But I PR'd anyway so it's no biggie.

TREASURER: I don't understand the question and I refuse to acknowledge it.

VICE-ABBESS: He didn't ask a question, he literally just stated what you did during the race in a snarky manner.

BROTHER SAMUEL: Does anyone want...more purple-and-white checkered material? I have socks, hats, tunics...maybe we can make a Cluny Team Store? And kick back the profits to the Church obviously.

ABBESS: I'm not sure the Papacy would really buy into that.

SISTER IZABELA: Well, I didn't get to participate in the Cross-Country competition because I didn't want to lug a giant piece of lumber around a completely flat loop surrounding the Abbey, but I concur that we should get more socks.

BROTHER SAMUEL: That's good sense, you know I badly strained my back will doing this cross-country thing and I might need to take a few days off.

TREASURER: I don't believe in days off because I work very hard all the time.

BROTHER DAVID: Changing the subject, can we discuss our new tent that Brother Adam so hopefully procured?

VICE-ABBESS: Honestly, Brother Adam deserves to be sainted for miraculously finding this tent in a nearby copse.

ABBESS: Ah yes, I'm convinced the tent was delivered from the Angel Gabriel himself.

BROTHER ADAM: Uh, well, I mean, I just got it for free from a local noble who was going to the Holy Land to fight in the Crusades but, okay if you want to canonize me for it, go right ahead.

TREASURER: Why does he get to get sainted for getting something for free? Do you now how miraculous it is that this Abbey which is technically supposed to be an ascetic monastic order is worth more money than any other church in Christendom?

ABBESS: Don't we have extensive property and the ability to tax farm from thousands of smaller Benedictine priories across Europe? How is that a miracle?

TREASURER: It's a miracle of financeeeeee, don't you seeeeeee.

BROTHER SAMUEL: If you line everyone along the top of the Abbey wall with their checkered uniforms, that's a true miracle.

BROTHER MAXWELL: Alright.

BROTHER PATRICK OF HOMBERINGHAM: You should see our living quarters, it's entirely decked out in purple and white.

ABBESS: I see everyone has once again devolved into side conversations. Before you start discussing the finer points of monastic living, I just wanted to congratulate everyone on putting together a great weekend of fun and racing. It really was a great time. And we're coming back to do this again for the next fortnight, so, I'm sure you won't be sick of each other by the end.

VICE-ABBESS: What if instead of running with crosses, we just ran with metaphorical crosses and didn't need to lug around the props? And then what if we scored every single event by assigning numbers to each finisher and then adding up the total? But only seven, of course, because that's a holy number.

And thus, in 1118 the Year of Our Lord, the first written incidence in Western Europe of the sport we know today as cross-country was recorded. Of course, as with all European "inventions" of this era, the Chinese had already created the sport 200 years prior.