Religious authority and persecution

Religious authority and persecution are linked in the novel not only by the violence done in religion’s name, but by the power to classify, interpret, and silence. Sherzad’s account of her people’s suffering reaches Marie-Josèphe through song and sketches; Pope Innocent recognizes that account as true even as he denies Marie-Josèphe authority to determine truth and demands control over the sea creature. The tension is therefore both physical and intellectual: who may act upon the sea people, and who may say what their experience means?

Violence under the Cross

Sherzad’s story makes religious persecution visible first as an attack. A galleon appears on the horizon with a cross blazing from its flag. Its cannons are already thrust through the gunports; when the ship turns its broadside toward the small birth island and fires, Sherzad’s song breaks into discord. Men then storm the island with pikes and nets. The cross does not explain the attackers’ motives, but its placement on the ship’s flag gives the scene a religious sign that accompanies, rather than restrains, armed force.

The violence continues beyond the island. Sherzad describes her people being taken to the mainland, imprisoned, tortured, and killed slowly. Marie-Josèphe’s sketch gives that account a stark visual form: an Inquisitor breaks a sea person on the rack, while a human figure burns at the stake in the background. The image places the persecution of the sea people alongside human punishment. Its composition resists treating the victims as an isolated curiosity; the Inquisitor’s violence belongs to a wider world in which religious institutions can inflict suffering on different kinds of people.

Song, Sketch, and Testimony

Marie-Josèphe cannot simply translate Sherzad’s language word for word. She interprets as best she can from a language with no words, sketching rapidly as she speaks. The charcoal marks cannot convey the beauty of Sherzad’s songs, but they document the story; servants display and pin up the finished drawings. The movement from song to interpretation to public image is important: what the court can see is not the song itself, but a record made through Marie-Josèphe’s imperfect yet purposeful mediation.

That record challenges the authority of those who would dismiss Sherzad as a demon or treat her as an object of study. Marie-Josèphe stands by the truth of Sherzad’s testimony when Pope Innocent commands her to study scripture rather than what he calls demonic utterances. Her defense rests on the account’s content: Sherzad has told ugly truths. Pope Innocent himself concedes that they are truths. The exchange makes the dispute more than a contest between belief and disbelief. The testimony has been heard and accepted as true; the remaining struggle concerns who has the right to recognize it and what should follow from it.

Authority over Truth and Speech

Pope Innocent first frames knowledge as a question of jurisdiction. When Marie-Josèphe explains that she seeks knowledge of God’s will through material creation, he directs her toward the Word and away from Sherzad’s utterances. He then tells her that truth is not hers to determine, even while admitting that Sherzad has spoken truths. That contradiction exposes how authority can concede evidence without surrendering its power: the testimony may be true, but the person who carries it and the woman who interprets it are still denied the standing to judge its significance.

The conflict becomes explicitly gendered when Pope Innocent rebukes Marie-Josèphe for failing to follow his predecessor’s order that women remain silent and obedient. Her attempt to speak for Sherzad’s truth is treated not merely as a disputed interpretation but as a breach of the proper limits imposed on women. Marie-Josèphe’s silence after this rebuke marks the force of that pressure, while her earlier defense shows that she has already resisted it. The scene connects the silencing of a woman interpreter to the larger refusal to hear the sea people on their own terms.

Conversion as a Claim to Possession

Pope Innocent’s demand for the sea creature makes the stakes of religious classification concrete. He argues that it must be studied because it is dangerous: if Yves de la Croix is wrong, the creature is a demon and must be exorcised; if he is right and it is a miracle of creation, it must be brought to God and converted from its pagan wildness. The alternatives differ in their religious diagnosis, but both give the institution a claim over the creature. Even the possibility that it is part of creation does not secure its autonomy; it becomes a reason to convert it.

Louis XIV answers the demand by offering Pope Innocent his baboon, remarking that the chances of converting it are just as good. The retort punctures the assumption that religious conversion can simply be imposed on an unfamiliar creature, but it does not resolve the sea woman’s captivity or establish her freedom. Across these encounters, persecution appears as more than open assault: it also operates through the authority to name a people demonic or pagan, to decide whether their testimony is admissible, and to treat conversion as an entitlement. Against that authority, Marie-Josèphe’s sketches preserve Sherzad’s account, making visible what official classification would otherwise obscure.