De Profundis

Excerpta Critica ex Commentariis A.-M. Delacroix (1723)

On Certain Difficulties Concerning the Cardinale Manuscript of De Profundis

— attributed to Antoine-Michel Delacroix, 1723, Lyon

The text known as De Profundis Cardinale survives only in a single anonymous manuscript. Its paper, ink, and notational forms may be dated broadly to the late seventeenth century; yet its Latin grammar, lexical choices, and rhetorical habits clearly do not belong to any known liturgical tradition.

First, the text lacks a clearly defined referent.

Conventional forms of address are deliberately avoided, replaced instead by a series of ambiguous, non-personalized appellations, such as:

1. Qui non-nominaris — He Who Is Not to Be Named

2. Custos Cinerum Antiquorum — Keeper of the Ancient Ashes

3. Domus quae iam non est locus — The House That Is No Longer a Place

These expressions are neither theological terms nor purely poetic metaphors. It is as though the scribe were deliberately walking along the edge of language—seeking to invoke, while refusing to name.

Second, the text repeatedly emphasizes notions of “preservation,” “retention,” and “constancy,” while systematically avoiding concepts such as “redemption,” “resurrection,” or “grace.” This compels me to suspect that the work is not a prayer in any religious sense, but rather a kind of—oration:

a declaration of the value of human art, addressed to some existence that transcends time.

More disturbing still is the conception of time articulated in sections seven and eight. “The future” is depicted as a devouring force, while the entity being addressed is endowed with the capacity to resist the future itself.

Such an idea finds no parallel, to my knowledge, in any Christian, Jewish, or Islamic text.

I can therefore record only a cautious conclusion:

this De Profundis is not heretical,

but rather—non-human.

The Place Where the Story Begins

In 1688, Cardinale joined a cultural exchange mission led by the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, officially charged with documenting the religious music and ceremonial practices of the delegation. It was in that same year that, while crossing the Balkan region, the mission was unexpectedly drawn into violent clashes between the Polaniak resistance forces and local powers.

In the official records, the matter is noted with cold brevity:

“Olivier de Cardinale, missing amid the chaos of war; fate unknown.”

Yet the truth did not end there.

In later generations, an unverified legend—never proven, yet recurring across multiple anonymous manuscripts—continued to circulate: Cardinale did not die on the battlefield. Instead, he was rescued from among the corpses and gunpowder smoke by an unnamed ancient noble of immense authority, and secretly taken away.

This noble was known as “the Lord of Incense and Decay.”

According to descriptions, the Lord always appeared in the guise of a youthful aristocrat: refined features, graceful bearing, seemingly untouched by time. Yet in local genealogies and territorial legends, the rightful heir of the estate had perished decades earlier in an accident, at the age of only ten. From that moment on, the great hall of the domain was said to be perpetually filled with dense clouds of burning incense—used both for religious rites and to conceal an unspeakable odor: the very scent of death itself.

An increasing number of signs suggest that the “Lord” who now walks among the living and issues commands is not truly alive, but a body manipulated by a higher-dimensional presence. This entity originates from an ancient realm beyond the stars, a being inaccessible to both human reason and theology. It can simulate metabolism, breathing, and speech, yet can never dispel the shadow of death. The incense serves both as disguise and as a partial manifestation of its presence in this world.

Legend holds that this being foresaw the inevitable decline and oblivion awaiting human civilization. Thus, it chose to intervene at the height of the Baroque era, when artistic form and emotional expression reached their utmost extremes. Its purpose was not destruction, but preservation: to safeguard the crystallized essence of the human soul—music, ritual, art, and beauty.

Cardinale, by virtue of his talent, his solitary disposition, and his gradually estranged perception of human society, was chosen by the Lord to become both retainer and scribe. Under secret protection, he continued to compose music, striving to record—through forms intelligible to humanity—a compassion that transcended the human condition itself.

Nearly all of these works have been lost.

One surviving fragment, however, is known to later generations as:

De Profundis — A Cry from the Abyss.