Sistine Chapel,

Vatican, Rome, Italy

Cardinal Julio looked at the bride in her tailor-made dress of white Spanish silk and knew that this was an event that only happened every ten years. The wedding dress, with its foot-long train embroidered by hand with real pearls and antique lace, had cost far more than the average Roman employee earned in a year and was reminiscent of the wedding of kings in its splendor. And the location would also have been more than worthy of a royal wedding: the Sistine Chapel, where the popes were usually elected.

Julio looked up.

Michelangelo completed the Sistine Chapel ceiling painting in 1512 for the Feast of All Saints and is considered one of the greatest works of art ever. The Creation of Adam, in which Adam's and God's fingers came close together, not only anchored the image of God as an older man with a beard deep in our cultural memory but had even reached Hollywood.

More than twenty years later, Michelangelo, then already in his seventies, had begun to paint the Last Judgement. After the sacking of Rome by German mercenaries in 1527, which was seen as God's punishment for the sinful city, this gigantic painting was a kind of atonement for the entire city. Julio looked to the front of the chapel and beheld Christ separating the redeemed from the damned amidst the countless figures that populated the considerable work. It was horror and redemption in equal measure that Michelangelo masterfully depicted. Just as Shakespeare could write anything, Julio knew that Michelangelo, a sculptor, could paint anything. The hope for the eternity of redemption, the trembling expectation of the damned, sinking into eternal torment. Two centers in this picture, two polarities that explain the whole world: overwhelming joy and devastating pain, heaven and hell, good and evil.

The cardinal's gaze fell on Christ again. But Christ did not return his gaze. Christ only had eyes for one: St. Bartholomew, who had been flayed in the Persian part of Syria. They had removed his skin, even from his face. And the features of the skin that the saint carried with him as he went to paradise bore the features of the artist Michelangelo himself. As if Michelangelo, Bartholomew's companion, also wanted to secure his entry into paradise. If he ever became Pope, Julio thought, he would give himself the name Bartholomew.

The guests should have noticed this, not the impressive ceiling painting or the considerable work of art of the Last Judgement at the front of the chapel, for all eyes, were on the bride, who had just entered on the arm of her stepfather to the sounds of Pachelbel's Canon in D major. The canon was played by a string quartet, accompanied by the chapel organ, which had only been installed in 2002. Aurelia Sforza, daughter of the noble Donatella Sforza, was to marry Vincente Visconti, the godson of her stepfather Paolo Visconti. Paolo Visconti was now eighty years old and had married again very late in life to Donatella, who was thirty years his junior. Vincente had become like a second son to him, Aurelia like his daughter. His only daughter Carina had disappeared without trace ten years ago. At least, that's what people said under their breath. In Florence, it was noted that the walls had ears and mouths.

The Visconti originally came from Milan and now live in Florence. Milan Cathedral would also have been a very worthy address, and there was also a statue of the flayed Bartholomew there. Still, the wedding had to take place in Rome, in the heart of the Vatican, in the Sistine Chapel, to demonstrate the faithfulness, but especially the power of the family. If you didn't have Bartholomew to take you to paradise, like Michelangelo, you had to use the backdrop of the Vatican.

Old Visconti put one foot carefully in front of the other while Aurelia held his hand and strolled out of consideration for the man who had become her second father.

The bride was all in white, innocent, beautiful.

And the most significant moment of her life was about to come. Marriage was one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, alongside baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, the anointing of the sick, ordination to the priesthood, and penance. As Aristotle said, marriage was the union of two bodies in one soul. Just as the Eucharist united the body of Christ with that of the faithful, the spouses now became one flesh, as said in the Old Testament. The marriage covenant was first made between God and the people of Israel, then between Christ and the Church. Julio turned his gaze once again to the Last Judgement. A fitting painting because the Apocalypse was the marriage of Christ and the Church. After all, apocalypsis in Greek means nothing other than unveiling.

And the unveiling of the bride played an essential role in a wedding.

Aurelia also wore a veil, behind which her even face was only dimly visible.

The large candles on the altar flickered as the bride and bride's father slowly moved forward while the canon of strings filled the high hall. At the front, the couple was about to kneel, and Cardinal Julio stepped forward and asked all the questions from the ritual. The old book was open, and the chapter title was De Sacramento Matrimonii - Of the Sacrament of Marriage.

Julio went over the words he would read again in his head. He knew them by heart, but he repeated them.

Vis accipere hic praesentem in tuam legitimam uxorem juxta ritum sanctae matris Ecclesiae?

Voglio ...

I do.

Vis accipere hic praesentem in tuum legitimum maritum juxta ritum sanctae matris Ecclesiae?

Voglio ...

I do.

Ego conjugo vos in matrimonium. In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

I wed you, man and wife. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

For a moment, his gaze was drawn upwards.

On one side of the painting, the dead who had risen, the resurrection of the flesh on the Last Day, the dead who were working their way up, crawling out of the earth and supporting themselves with their arms until they began to float towards eternity. The damned, on the other hand, were pulled into the afterlife with faces contorted in pain.

It happened at that moment. Julio immediately sensed that something was wrong as if someone had dealt a blow to the solemn atmosphere as if someone had caused damage to the universe.

Cardinal Julio looked forward again. The bride's father and bride had slowed their steps. But it wasn't the old Visconti who suddenly stopped. The bride's face contorted into a grimace under the veil.

Julio's gaze flashed briefly to Charon in the painting, the ferryman who led the damned across Hades and poured out his boat of lost souls as if it were a boat of fish. It is as if Michelangelo had heard the words of Dante's Inferno while painting: You who enter, abandon all hope.

Now Julio saw it even more clearly. Aurelia stopped, her face contorted in pain. Visconti, who realized that suddenly he was walking faster than the bride, also stopped and looked at his foster daughter in horror.

A murmur went through the congregation in the nave, shouts were raised, and people stood up. What was happening could not be real; it could only be an illusion the devil sent to him, Julio.

Red stains appeared on the bride's spotless white dress. First, the dress clung particularly tightly to the bride's body but also to her stomach, legs, and arms,

Blood ran down her body while Aurelia looked down at herself, trembling and full of panic, and finally sank to her knees with a cracking sound. The old Visconti, who was trying to hold the bride, also dropped to the ground, panic and abysmal horror in his eyes.

The bride's dress changed color from white to red, and blood oozed everywhere, transforming the white, angelic bride into a red blood demon, her face contorted in pain and horror. Aurelia toppled forward. In a terrible gush, she vomited frothy blood onto her dress, onto the old Visconti, and onto the floor of the Sistine Chapel while her white dress was now almost entirely red, and she collapsed, choking and gasping in the face of the Last Judgement.

Aurelia, bathed in blood and spitting blood, writhed in convulsive spasms in front of the altar and finally lay still.

Julio's hands detached themselves from the railing where he had been standing, and he sank to the floor, unconscious.

The Pope's private doctor, who rushed over immediately, could only confirm the bride's death.