The Conqueror
Page 56
“The lawyer has arrived with the documents,” he said with a bow.
“Very good. Send him in.”
Quintus cocked his eyebrow and glanced at the bishop. “Is it the deed to the former barracks? Soon to be a basilica?”
“No, that is still in the works,” Miltiades replied with a laugh. “It is a different deed.”
The lawyer arrived with another man behind him. The second figure was a slave wheeling a large rectangular object on a handcart. Clearly, it was heavy, but since it was wrapped in cloth, its exact identity was hard to determine.
“Would you care for wine?” Miltiades asked the men. The lawyer responded with a grateful nod.
The bishop poured a glass for the lawyer from Pompeianus’s old wine cart. The wine was a beautiful golden color, an excellent Falernian that shouldn’t go to waste. Miltiades turned and offered a second glass to the slave, whose expression of surprise was rivaled only by the shocked look on the lawyer’s face. After a moment, the thirsty slave snatched it and greedily gulped it down.
“All God’s children can enjoy good wine,” Miltiades said with a gentle smile.
After some initial pleasantries, the lawyer finally brought out the deed. It was written on fine parchment instead of a wax tablet. “My client, Senator Neratius Junius Flavianus, does not know who the buyer of his mansion is,” he said. “I think it’s best if we don’t make it widely known. He considers the price a good one. That is all he needs to know.”
“Rumors will not reach him?”
“Unlikely. Now that poor Lady Sabina has perished, he has left Rome for Sardinia with his new wife.”
The scoundrel took that little girl as a wife before his true wife “perished,” Miltiades thought, yet he refrained from comment. Many true things, despite being true, were better left unsaid.
“I am ready to sign,” the bishop announced.
Quintus handed him a reed pen, then offered a jar of ink. After dipping, Miltiades scratched his signature onto the deed for Neratius’s mansion on the Aventine Hill. Quintus signed it as a witness. When the lawyer took it back and put his seal on it, the transaction was complete. The catholic church in Rome now owned the hilltop property where a house church had been meeting for many years.
Miltiades found the transaction especially gratifying. The old mansion would be the perfect place for the neighborhood priest Felix to live, along with some deacons and perhaps even some monks—a relatively new vocation that many young men were taking up with enthusiasm. There would be chambers to store charity for the poor and a dining room with a kitchen for love feasts. The household baths could be used for baptisms. And of course, the senator had already consented to some modifications that created a spacious worship hall, thanks to the urgings of Sophronia and Flavia. Surely this property would serve as a beautiful house of God for many years to come.
A thought occurred to Miltiades as he reflected on church houses and basilicas. Domestic buildings, for all their many uses, limit the number of congregants a church can hold. But if a great basilica could be put up here at the Lateran, why not also on the Aventine? And for that matter . . . why not the many other house churches around the city? Perhaps the influx of converts would soon require larger buildings?
The bishop resolved to get wise counsel about this matter. The necessary supply of funds was in place now that Constantine favored the church. Perhaps it was time for a new sacred architecture to arise in Christian Rome.
The lawyer tucked the deed into his satchel and turned to the slave behind him. “Take the wrapping off,” he instructed. The slave began to untie the strings on the heavy object.
“What is it?” Miltiades asked.
“I don’t know. My client’s daughter instructed me to bring it to you. I believe it’s an inscription. She commissioned the epigraphist herself.”
“Do I owe you for it?”
The lawyer shook his head. “Lady Junia paid for everything.”
“Let us have a look.”
The slave removed the covering to reveal a milky-white slab of marble. It was a titulus: a large placard to be mounted above a door as a means of identifying the building. Words had been carved into one face of the slab:
Sanctae Sabinae Sophroniae Domus Ecclesiae
“The house church of holy Sabina Sophronia,” Quintus read aloud. “That is a fitting memorial for a Christian woman who gave up her life rather than lose her chastity.”
Miltiades pursed his lips. Though she was willing to give up her life, she was actually spared—thanks be to God! It was a wonderful truth, but here indeed was another secret that didn’t need to be uttered aloud. Yet since the deacon’s observation required a response, Miltiades said diplomatically, “That noble lady showed great virtue and courage as a disciple of the Lord. May the church that is marked by this sign honor Saint Sabina for many ages to come.”
“Amen,” Quintus replied.
A sudden sadness overcame Bishop Miltiades. He dismissed the lawyer, then turned away from the deacon and stared out the window at the steady rain. Lady Sabina Sophronia was alive, yes—but her life had taken a terrible turn. Her husband had divorced her, her household had been shattered, and she had lost the high social position she once possessed in Rome. Now she would take up the simple life of a nun in distant Sicilia, accompanied only by her daughter, who herself was bereft of the man she loved.
It is a great sacrifice you are asking of them, Lord. Grant them strength!
Quintus approached his bishop and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You seem downcast, my friend,” he said.
“I am.”
“How come? Everything is going so well for the catholic church. At last, Jesus is defeating the pagans who serve the devil.”
“Many good things are happening now. Yet many people still suffer.”
Quintus sighed and gave a little nod. “Wise words. A good reminder.”
“You know what I have come to realize?”
“Tell me.”
Instead of answering right away, Miltiades looked down to his hand and caressed the gemstone on his ring. It had been incised with a cross. On either side of it were an alpha and omega—the beginning and the end.
“The cross is the glorious emblem of our great Victor,” Quintus observed.
“Yes. He is Lord of all. And I repeat: all. He leaves no stone unturned in his conquest. It is total.”
“What does that mean, Your Holiness?”
A grim smile crept to Miltiades’s face as he shook his head in contemplation. At last he looked up and met the deacon’s eyes.
“It means you have to do hard things when you are conquered by the cross,” said the godly bishop of Rome.
A steady rain had been falling all morning. It was a gray day in the port of Ostia—a day for deep sorrow.
Rex sat below deck on a wooden bench about halfway from the front of the ship. The light in the Roman galley was dim. Fore and aft, all the other rowers were contemplating their grim fate. Across the aisle, many more dejected men did the same. And directly in front of Rex was the bloodstained oar that would bedevil him for the rest of his life.
He stared at the cruel wooden shaft, knowing the labor of a navy oarsman was long and hard. A rower’s muscles would burn like white-hot flames. Hands would turn raw and red. Thirst would torment parched throats. Skin would crack and peel in the salty air. Total-body exhaustion would set in. Under such a load, the strength of men would often fail. But Rex didn’t care. The torture of the oar was nothing compared to the eagle talons of grief that raked across his soul.
Absently, he touched the coarse wood of the oar’s handle. Ohhh, he moaned, unable to form coherent words. The aching bite of despair gnawed at Rex and refused to subside. Though he tried to push his heartache away, every thought, every imagination, every attempt at self-distraction quickly failed. No sooner would a daydream begin than it would collapse, and his mind would turn back to the woman he loved.
And the cycle of pain
would begin all over again.
Flavia! He could see her lovely face. She had chestnut hair . . . long-lashed hazel eyes . . . the high cheekbones of a regal queen. Her smile was gentle and inviting. Her body was soft and slim.
And she could not be his.
Forever and always, she would be out of reach.
Argh! It hurts!
Rex let himself slump forward, his forehead resting on the oar. Like the mythological figure of Tantalus, he felt trapped in an eternal punishment: condemned forever to stand in a pool that receded when he bent to slake his thirst, and to gaze upward at a branch that lifted its fruit when he reached to satisfy his constant hunger.
Always longing. Ever denied.
“Hawsers free!” cried a voice from the pier. Rex felt the warship move.
“Prepare to row!” the overseer barked to the men below deck. “Forward strokes on my command!”
Sweat broke out on Rex’s brow. His breath began to come in rapid pants. Desperate to escape, he looked around for a way out, but there was none. He was trapped forever. Nothing would free him from this terrible fate.
I can’t do this! Flavia! I love you! Who will take care of you? Stand at your side? Provide you a home? Clasp your body in the warmth of the night? Give you children and raise them up? Love you until the end of time? Who will do this, if not me?
“Forward strokes!” shouted the overseer.
In unison, the crew began to row. The pinewood shaft began to move, turned by the other man on Rex’s bench. The ship lurched ahead. Yet Rex’s arms hung by his side. He couldn’t bear to row away from Italy into the vast unknown.
The Christian amulet was around his neck. Rex clutched it and pressed it to his chest, more panicked than he had ever been in his life. “Jesus!” he cried. “I’m in agony! Have mercy on me!”
A hand touched Rex’s shoulder from behind. He turned to see the earnest eyes of a handsome young man staring back at him.
“I am Stephen,” said the youth. “A priest of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The man reached out and grasped Rex’s wrist, then placed his hand on the oar. He did the same with the other hand. The pole shivered against Rex’s palms, buffeted by the sea outside.
“Wh . . . what . . . what do I do?” Rex whimpered.
“Be strong and courageous, brave warrior,” Stephen said. His smile was gentle and kind. “Row now, and keep rowing, and wait to discover the plans of God. Forward strokes, one after the other.”
Rex turned back to the oar. He gripped it hard in his fists and let its revolution carry him forward.
Flexed his powerful muscles.
And began to row.
MAY 313
The snow-capped mountain sent a plume of smoke and ash into the blue Sicilian sky. Volcanoes are deceptive things, Flavia thought as she stared at Mons Aetna from her seat in the open-air theater at Tauromenium. They look so peaceful on the outside, but great turbulence lies within. Fire and ice—two mortal enemies locked in a stormy embrace.
Will Aetna erupt one day? Perhaps. Until then, it lies dormant, its bubbling lava buried under earth and stone.
Buried deep, Flavia reminded herself. But can such seething devastation be contained forever? It was a question for another day.
Sophronia drummed her fingers on the stone riser next to Flavia. The theater was empty now, for it was only the Kalends of May and the summer production season had not yet started. “It is quiet here, my love,” Sophronia said. “I like it.”
“Yes. I have found it a good place to be alone. Today, though, I am glad you are with me.”
The rugged, windswept coast around Tauromenium provided the perfect seclusion for the convent of devoted Christian sisters. Since arriving two weeks ago, Flavia had made it a house of urgent prayer. Yet because the convent was tucked into a ravine, she sometimes felt the need to break out of its isolation, to reach up to heaven, to ascend a hillside where she could see the ocean. She stared at it now, that boundless expanse behind the theater’s stage. A bitter curse against the sea’s vastness sprang to Flavia’s lips, but she did not utter it aloud. She had learned the hard way that blasphemous ranting provided only temporary relief. It was not the way ahead.
A harbor was visible below, almost empty at the moment, though a few fishing boats rested alongside the pier. “Ships come and go quite often,” Sophronia said wistfully.
“I cannot look at them.”
Sophronia covered her daughter’s hand with her own. “I know.” Tears came to Flavia’s eyes then, gushing up from the deep well of desire. She didn’t wail, nor shake, nor even raise her hands to wipe away the tears. Instead, she let them flood her eyes and spill over her lashes and dribble down her cheeks.
“It hurts,” she whispered, dropping her chin to her breast. The utterance was so mournful that Sophronia began to cry softly too. Flavia accepted her empathy, though it brought no relief from the gnawing ache.
Rex! Where are you, my most beloved? We could have been so happy together—and now you are lost! Will the Lord of all let me see you again? Could he be so kind?
Have mercy on me, my God! Remember me in this endless night!
Oh, Rex! I miss you! Will you come to me again when I need you most?
A little moan escaped Flavia’s lips, and with it, her silence was broken. “God! I don’t want this!” she cried. “This is not how I thought my life would turn out!”
Sophronia put her arm around her grieving daughter, pulling her close. “God sees your suffering, my darling girl. He crowns your faithful obedience. The blood of the martyrs is precious to him. And so are the tears of the faithful.”
“This is a living martyrdom,” Flavia replied. “The death of a dream. Every . . . single . . . day.”
“Some say martyrdom is joyous.”
“I do not feel it.”
Flavia covered her face with her hands and groaned with an agony that could not be contained. Sophronia cradled her daughter as she wept until she could weep no more. After a long time, her tears slowed. At last they ceased. A heavy silence descended on the two women.
Flavia’s body felt numb. She raised her chin and cast her eyes across the ocean.
“I am completely broken,” she said.
But the heartless sea did not respond.
*This is the famous “Edict of Milan” that ended Christian persecution. The words are my own translation of Lactantius’s Latin text, and it appears in my book Early Christian Martyr Stories: An Evangelical Introduction with New Translations (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 163–66.
Bryan Litfin is the author of the Chiveis Trilogy, as well as several works of nonfiction, including Early Christian Martyr Stories, After Acts, and Getting to Know the Church Fathers. A former professor of theology at the Moody Bible Institute, Litfin earned his PhD in religious studies from the University of Virginia and his ThM in historical theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. He is currently an acquisitions editor for Moody Publishers. He and his wife have two adult children and live in Wheaton, Illinois. Learn more at www.bryanlitfin.com.
BryanLitfin.com
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Table of Contents
Cover
Endorsements
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Map
Ancient Rome
Contents
Historical Note
Gazetteer of Ancient and Modern Place Names
Glossary
Prologue
Act 1: Convergence 1
2
3
4
Act 2: Resistance 5
6
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8
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10
11
Act 3: Acquiescence 12
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14
15
About the Author
Back Ads
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Cover Flaps
Back Cover
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