Leonardo da Vinci's mural Last Supper depicted a dish of roasted eel on the dining table. According to the fasting requirements of the time, it should not have appeared on the apostles' table.
After secularization, no one remembered this anymore. Changes in people's diets had also caused many fishing cities to decline, unless they transformed into trading cities like Amsterdam.
If there had been a fasting custom, she could have forbidden all the guests from drinking and eating. But even fasting required a reason, and this was not a fasting period.
Just then, Father Grégoire walked over to Georgiana.
"I heard you're meeting the Archbishop of Mechelen tomorrow?" Grégoire asked.
"Is that a bad idea?" Georgiana asked nervously.
Grégoire thought for a moment. "Have you read the Concordat of 1801?"
"Yes."
"Then do you know that the Diocese of Aachen was also assigned to Mechelen?"
Georgiana thought back.
The Archbishoprics of Cologne and Mainz straddled the Rhine River. When the land on the Left Bank of the Rhine River fell into french hands, those archbishoprics had been taken along with it and were no longer within the territory defined by the Papal Boundary Decree.
There was also all of Liège. She had not expected all of it to be assigned to Mechelen.
"Archbishop Roquelaure is eighty this year. Sometimes his memory fails him, and he cannot recall what happened during the French Revolution," Grégoire said.
Georgiana was still "digesting" what Grégoire had said.
"Do you think judges should not support equality and justice?" Grégoire asked again.
"Of course not," Georgiana said at once.
"Since the sixteenth century, Mechelen has been the seat of the Supreme Court. Though some refuse to stand on equal footing with others, there are still those willing to accept 'equality.' Most public opinion in Ghent supports