The Mandrake and the Sword (2015)

Olaf Krätke: Mönch

Quotes 

• Bauer : You said, the world isn't your concern ? And yet your order saves souls for coins. Of those who don't have the time for prayer! Noblemen, Kings... I have seen your opulent monasteries.

  Mönch : We spend the donations for noble causes. The poor are not in need of our prayers. Christ says - A camel goes through the eye of a needle rather than a rich man enters heaven!

  Bauer : [throws a coin at the monk's feet]  Here - pray for me! It's not much, so it will be a short prayer !

• Bauer : What brings you to these whereabouts?

  Mönch : I'm delivering an important letter for my abbot.

  Bauer : I recall the nice humid smell of your walls. I happened to be in monastic school as well. One day a priest came and took me there. Years later I found out why. I'm the result of an affair with a bishop. But I didn't stay for long. It is not my fate to renounce the world.

  Mönch : We put ourselves in service of God. Pray and work.

  Bauer : [sarcastic]  Yes. And you get drunk on wine there as well.

• Bauer : [the monk and the peasant discover an castle ruin in the woods]  What kind of place is this, Brother?

  [laughs] 

  Bauer : The forest has spat out a fortress here.

  Mönch : What a sublime shelter for us! Razed to the ground. Long before we were Born this castle was conquered and wrecked. Only ruins bear witness to the proud line. Mother nature has got this site back. Sic transit gloria mundi!

  Bauer : This seems a good place to rest.

• Bauer : The harvest was very bad.

  Mönch : What did you say ?

  Bauer : My wife and daughters were starving. That's something you don't know. The little ones got thinner and thinner. Soon their arms were like twigs. I had to do something! God didn't help us. A full plate was in front of us though. I killed a deer. Salvation for my family. But the forest is under comital law. Only for the count and his People. Who can be so cruel to punish that?

  Mönch : That is why you are pursued?

  Bauer : Yes. A knight of the count is hunting me as if I was a piece of game myself.

• Bauer : [they encounter a corpse hanging on a tree]  We have to be close to a town.

  Mönch : What might be his misdeed ? Domine, dona pacem animae suae.

  Bauer : Mandrakes normally grow in these places. The root looks like a little man. When you pull it out, it screams so horribly that it ruptures your ears.

  Mönch : [annoyed]  And you put wax into your eyes and you should harvest it at midnight...

  Bauer : It is believed to revive the dead.

  Mönch : This is just common superstition.

  Bauer : It would be wonderful, if it was true.