The Sect of the Thirty by Jorge Luis Borges

The Sect of the ThirtyThe original manuscript may be consulted at the University of Leiden; the text is in Latin, but one or two Hellenisms justify the conjecture that it was translated from the Greek. According to Leisegang, it dates from the fourth century a.d. Gibbon mentions it in passing in one of the footnotes to the fifteenth chapter of his Decline and Fall. The anonymous author has recorded:

. The Sect was never large, and now its proselytes number but a scant few. Decimated by sword and fire, they sleep by the wayside or, since it is forbidden them to build any form of dwelling place, among the ruins spared by war. They also journey about quite naked. These facts are common knowledge. My aim here is to leave a written record of what it has been vouchsafed me to discover of the Sect's beliefs and customs. I have argued at length with its masters and have met with little success in converting them to the Faith of Our Lord.