Chronicles of Aristhenus

From LanceaSanctum

The Chronicles of Aristhenus are a collection of works written by the ghoul of St. Leoninus of Alexandria. The chronicles deal in part with Aristhenus’ early life as a Greek scholar and traveler before the birth of Christ, but pass volume by volume into an account of the life of Saint Leoninus.

The Chronicles explore Saint Leoninus’ teachings and philosophies through various essays and recorded arguments and debates. The last volume is merely a ledger slowly counting down the years since Saint Leoninus’ disappearance in 391 AD, the commentary merely growing more certain and more sad that his master would not wake and appear in Aristhenus’ remaining lifetime.

The Chronicles were first discovered in 552 AD, where according the legend they were delivered to the Bishop of Alexandria by the ancient ghoul himself, before he perished of old age. They caused some local excitement as those kindred old enough to remember Saint Leoninus recalled his exploits from their own memories. Although there was some debate as to the orthodoxy of the Chronicles, both because of their deviation from the Monachal Creed, and due to the non-vampiric nature of the author, they remained a subject of popular study, particularly to Sanctified who visited Alexandria.

By the start of the eighth century, Saint Leoninus and his abridged biography from the surviving volumes of the Chronicles had become a matter of common education for the Sanctified of the Mediterranean world..

[edit] Excerpts from the Chronicles

On the Past, from Volume II of the Chronicles of Aristhenus

On Virtue, from Volume IV of the Chronicles of Aristhenus

[edit] Saint Leoninus

The following, while not part part of the Chronicles, provides a basic biography of Saint Leoninus. This information is by no means complete; perhaps when more of the Chronicles have been recovered, we will come to know St. Leoninus even better.

It is known that Leoninus began his early mortal life as the son of an engineer in Hannibal’s siege train, and served during the last years of the conflict which laid low the Carthian Empire.

He was taken as a slave of war, and made to fight in Roman arenas at Ephisus during funerary rites. It is at this time that he gained the title Mathos ‘Leoninus’, or Mathos the Lion-like. For several years the ‘Lion of Carthage’ was a popular sight, made to fight wild beasts, and occasionally other slaves. Leoninus was sold several times over the course of his life, and it became clear that he would soon grow too old to fight in the arena.

Little is known of the particulars of his embrace, save that he was purchased from his wealthy patrician master by a savage from the north known only as The Gaul. Leoninus would later refer to his sire as the Blood-God of the Glen, suggesting that he was a sort of proto-Crone in the same sense that Leoninus became a proto-Sanctified.

Leoninus was scorned by the Roman vampires of the Camarilla, and scorning them in turn, ventured to Alexandria, where he would live out the remainder of his life. He is known to have had discourse with early followers of the Christ, and based as he was in the center of learning in the Ancient world, was well placed to consider the philosophies of the young cult.

Leoninus was still in Alexandria when rumors of Longinus first crossed the Mediterranean, and it was Leoninus who saved Saint Maron, one of the Five Martyrs, from a mob of angry vampires in Alexandria, during the reign of Constantine. This appears to have been his first direct contact with the nascent Church of Longinus, and it was profound enough that the elder gangrel made his own pilgrimage to the Black Abby, where he was a respected visitor and teacher, despite his many disagreements with the Monachus.

When Leoninus returned to Alexandria, the age of the Roman Empire was nearing its end. Very little is known of his death, save that he vanished into the Harbor of Alexandra after a fire claimed the Temple of Serapis, destroyed by a Christian mob as a center of pagan idolatry.

Aristhenus, the loyal ghoul and chronicler, appeared to sustain himself upon the Reliquaries left behind, for nearly two hundred years. Thus in 552 AD, an aging and frail ghoul appeared upon the doorstep of the Alexandrian Monastery of the Lancea Sanctum. Upon meeting the local Bishop, he identified himself as a ghoul of the great Leoninus of Alexandria (at this point dead and martyred for two hundred years), and named an address in the oldest part of the Greek Quarter, then faded from sight, dying soon after.

When the vampires of the Alexandrian Lancea Sanctum investigated the address, they found a small monastic cell filled primarily with books and decaying scrolls, including works thought lost hundreds of years earlier. Of greatest import, however, were the Chronicles of Aristhenus, written from the standpoint of Leoninus’ servant during his Alexandrian ministry.

In 615 AD the Archbishop of Alexandria held a Midnight Mass in which Leoninus was canonized posthumously. Saint Leoninus' miracles include holding the angry Camarilla mob at bay with the force of his faith that Saint Maron might escape, as well as surviving Alexandria's many fires without a single mark, except the searing scar of a crucifix upon his chest.

[edit] Notes

It has been rumored that Leoninus was raised from the Harbor at Alexandria in 2005 by a secret coalition of modern Lancea Sanctum elders, and that the aged Gangrel still bears the brand of Roman slavery upon his right forearm. Those who believe his return claim that despite his long slumber, Leoninus is believed to be of very potent blood, a reward for his unswerving faith during his long exile.

It has long been whispered that Gaius Cornelius of the First Estate was either Leoninus's Roman master, or is descended from his Master's family.

Finally, it is said that Leoninus has regular discourse with werewolves.

Saint Leoninus is widely believed never to have sired.

St. Leoninus was reported to have met Final Death in Early 2007.