Justinian

by Harry Turtledove

  So did many other leading theologians, so many that my great-great-grandfather recognized he had gone too far. But he also wanted to maintain such goodwill as he could from the monophysites of Syria and Egypt, for the ungrateful wretches, far from aiding him in the fight against the followers of the false prophet then erupting from Arabia, were welcoming the Arabs as liberators from Roman rule: to those who denied Christ, one group of Christians was no more offensive than any other.

  And so, thinking he was doing something great, Herakleios put forth his statement of faith, forbidding discussion of whether Christ had one energy or two and declaring that, as Pope Honorius had said, He had but a single will. The monophysites, once more, were pleased, the orthodox dismayed. This new doctrine prevailed in Constantinople, but was condemned in Jerusalem, in Carthage, in Numidia, in Mauretaniaa160… and in Italy, where all the popes after Honorius rejected his formulation.

  My grandfather Constans attacked his theological opponents with as much energy as he used to fight back against the followers of the false prophet. He sent troops from Ravenna in Italy down to Rome and seized Pope Martin and Maximus, who had crossed from Africa to strengthen Martin's zeal against the monothelite doctrine. The two holy men were fetched back to the imperial city, tortured when they refused to renounce their faith, and, that also failing to make them recant, exiled to Kherson.

  Having known exile in Kherson, I declare that my grandfather was truly a hard man.

  So matters stood when my father became Emperor of the Romans. In the early years of his reign, he had little time or energy of his own to devote to affairs of the church, though I know God was always in his mind and in his heart: all his strength went first toward avenging the murder of his father in Sicily and then to defending Romania against the great Arab onslaught.

  Those things accomplished, though, he turned his mind toward matters spiritual- and also, I do not deny, toward matters purely pragmatic. When he announced he was going to convene an ecumenical synod and formally overturn monotheletism, my uncle Herakleios demanded, "How can you go against the will of the founder of our dynasty and that of your father- and mine?"

  "Nothing simpler- I have a will of my own," my father answered. I was studying irregular verbs with a pedagogue certainly old enough to have known Herakleios the founder- and maybe Phokas before him. My attention wandered away from the aorist passive participle of syndiaphero. Theology is far more important than grammar; misspeaking will get you laughed at, true, but misbelieving endangers your immortal soul.

  And watching my father and uncle quarrel was fascinating, too. My father, Uncle Herakleios, and Uncle Tiberius were all Emperors in name, but every bit of power lay in my father's hands. The only things his brothers got to do was wear fancy robes and appear beside him on ceremonial occasions. How they resented that!

  Now Herakleios shouted, "We'll be the laughingstock of all Christendom, east and west, if we turn our backs on beliefs we've supported these past fifty years."

  "And what have we got for all that support?" my father shot back. "Will the monophysites in Syria and Egypt rise up for us against the Arabs because we confess Christ's two natures have but one will? It doesn't look that way to me. By the Virgin, they're even starting to go over to the creed of the false prophet. And the popes have been throwing anathemas at us ever since Honorius dropped dead."

  "If it weren't for our great-grandfather, we'd be nothing," my uncle insisted. "If it weren't for him, the Roman Empire would be nothing. Just on account of that, his views deserve respect."

  My father glared. "Even with the great Herakleios at the root of the family tree, you are nothing," he said. "And my views prevail now, not his. And most especially not yours, my brother."

  A short, deadly silence followed. At last, Uncle Herakleios bowed very low. "Emperor," he said. I have never heard a word freighted with so much poison. He stormed out of the chamber, his robes flapping as he went.

  My pedagogue had been blind to all this. In truth, he was almost blind, being so shortsighted that anything out past the end of his beard was but a blur. I was told he had grandchildren, but I wondered how, for if ever a man was wedded to ink and papyrus, it was he. I am not surprised I have forgotten his name. Now, with my uncle's furious footsteps still echoing in the hall, he said, "And the genitive singular of the participle is-?"

  "Syndienekhthentos," I answered absently. I did not love my lessons, but I learned them. Fear of my father made sure of that.

  "Very good!" The old man beamed. He had not expected me to know that one. He raised his creaking voice: "Your Majesty, you have here a scholar among men."

  He meant it as nothing but one more piece of the idle flattery the Emperor hears every waking moment of every day. It was more idle than most, too, by God; Romania needs soldiers these days, not scholars, if she is to survive.

  "Let him be wise," my father said, "so long as it does not harm his piety." My pedagogue looked dismayed but, lacking the spirit to disagree with the Emperor of the Romans, bowed his old gray head in acquiescence.

  The very next day- my father being a man who wasted time neither in making up his mind nor in acting once it was made up- the patriarch Theodore was summoned to the palaces. Like his predecessors since the days of Herakleios, Theodore held to the monothelite doctrine. When my father announced he intended to convene an ecumenical synod to overthrow monotheletism, the patriarch protested, "But, your majesty, consider the holy words of Dionysios the Areopagite, who spoke of a single human-divine energy in Christ. Surely this also applies to His will, which unites the natures in His person."

  "I do not believe that," my father said, folding his arms across his chest and glaring at Theodore. "How can Christ be perfect man if he lacks a human will?" Theodore tried to go on justifying his belief. My father cut him off: "You will not confess that Christ has two energies and two wills, without division, without change, without separation, without partition, and without confusion?"

  Theodore had courage. "No, Emperor, I will not. I cannot."

  The following day, my father removed Theodore from the patriarchal throne. He replaced him with a certain George, who was reputed to be more pliable and who lived up to his reputation. The imperial summons to an ecumenical synod went out in short order.

  MYAKES

  You weren't yet born when that synod was held, were you, Brother Elpidios? No, of course you weren't- that was fifty years ago now. And yet, when I reach back into my memory, it seems like I can touch it. That's what happens when you get old: time squeezes together, till everything that ever happened to you feels like it happened year before last, no more.

  I can't see, but I don't need to see to know my beard is white, and my hair, too, what I have of it. I can hear how mushy my voice is, and no wonder, for I haven't many teeth left these days, either.

  But in my memory, I'm just a stone's throw from the young, strong, swaggering excubitor who guarded the Emperor- and his son- at the ecumenical synod, and who kept order there, too. And order needed to be kept, let me tell you.

  What do I mean? You're a learned man, Brother, so surely you'll know: how many bishops came to Constantinople for the synod? Two hundred eighty-nine, you say? How fast you rattle out the number! I said you were a learned man. If it's in a book- the Book or any other- you know where to find it and what to do with it once you have it. Think for a moment, though. Here were two hundred eighty-nine bishops, from all the ends of the earth, brought together in one place. Some of them, now, wanted monotheletism done away with. Some of them, though, some of them didn't. Like Theodore the patriarch that was, they believed what they believed.

  Much good it did them.

  JUSTINIAN

  The ecumenical synod was convened at the great church of the Holy Wisdom in November of the twelfth year of my father's reign, which was also the eleventh year of my age. By then my father had concluded no more bishops than the two hundred eighty-nine already present in the imperial city would arrive, bad weather ha
ving made the Mediterranean unsafe for further travel in that season- as the followers of the false prophet had discovered, to their sorrow and our great joy, two years before.

  How gorgeous the bishops were as they stood to hear my father speak from the ambo of the great church to open the synod, how gorgeous and how varied. For though they were all Christians, all part of God's holy and universal church, yet they were also from many lands, with robes of different cut and many colors so that, assembled there, they put me in mind of Joseph's coat.

  As my father spoke, setting forth the reasons for abandoning the false doctrine of the one energy and one will in Christ, his words came echoing back from the high dome of the church. When the Justinian for whom I am named first saw that dome, which his architects created in accordance with his vision, he cried out, "Solomon, I have beaten you!"

  Thanks to the wicked Babylonians, we have not the chance to compare Solomon's temple to the church of the Holy Wisdom. By the awed looks on the faces of the bishops- especially those from beyond the borders of the Roman Empire- who gaped at the wonder Justinian had wrought, most would have agreed with him.

  I was particularly struck by the amazement on the face of one man, a plump, fair-haired latecomer from somewhere in the west who, as luck had it, had been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem when my father sent out the summons for the synod, and who came up to Constantinople to take part. You would have thought he found himself unexpectedly transported to heaven, not in a human church, no matter how magnificent. I wondered in what sort of drafty cow barn he did his own preaching.

  His robe was among the plainest there, being merely dark blue wool, but, as he had been a pilgrim before coming to the Queen of Cities, that said nothing as to the wealth of his see. He joined with the other bishops in applauding my father. After my father stepped down from the ambo, George the ecumenical patriarch replaced him there. He proceeded to make the same points my father had, but took four times as long doing it, as he cited every relevant Scriptural text and passage from the holy fathers to bolster his position.

  Most of the bishops listened attentively. Some were scowling: they, I guessed, were those who still favored monotheletism, and who were mentally preparing texts and passages of their own with which to defend the doctrine in the sessions that lay ahead. Even as a boy of eleven, I could have told them they were wasting their efforts. When the Emperor convenes an ecumenical synod of the church, it ratifies the doctrine he has established. So it has been since the days of the first Constantine; so it shall always be. The Emperor, after all, being God's vicegerent on earth, is specially concerned with maintaining the faith.

  Learned though it was, I found George's oration tedious. Watching the bishops, trying to guess who would cling to the doctrine of the one will and energy and who would gladly abandon it, was a more interesting game. And then my eye fell once more upon the pilgrim bishop from the distant west. His jaws were working furiously as George spoke. I thought he was about to burst out in a tirade against the holy ecumenical patriarch, thereby disrupting the synod.

  Then he tilted his head to one side and spat something onto the floor of the great church. That done, he popped something else into his mouth, whereupon his jaws began working once more. Chew, spit,… chew, spit,.. After several of these cycles, I realized he was eating salted olives.

  I had all I could do to hold my face still. Here we were in the grandest shrine ever built by man, on the solemn occasion of an ecumenical synod- only the sixth such in nearly seven centuries of Christendom- and this backwoods bishop reckoned nothing more important than the snack he had brought with him. Had my father stayed and seen him, he would have been less amused than I was.

  At last, George droned to a halt, having run out of citations to hurl at the clerics assembled before him. He had not noticed the hungry bishop; like my pedagogue, he believed the most perfect reality lay in ink on paper.

  The pious bishops broke up into knots. The murmur of theological disputation rose up into the dome of the church of the Holy Wisdom. I turned and caught Myakes' eye. "Do you speak Latin?" I asked him.

  "A little, Prince," he answered; I had outgrown "Goldentop." "Soldiers, we use it some."

  "Good," I said, and pointed to the peckish bishop. "I want to meet that man, and he may well speak no Greek. You will accompany me." I was learning to command, even so young.

  Accompany me he did. We steered our way through the assembled prelates, some of whom moved toward me to give me their views on the one or two wills and energies, presumably in the hope these would reach my father (a wasted hope even if realized, his mind being unalterably made up), while others drew back from Myakes' shield and spear. The western bishop looked up in surprise at finding himself my target.

  He had manners. He bowed and said, "Good day, Prince Justinian," in Greek not too vile. He must have learned it on his long journey from the barbarous west.

  "Good day," I answered. "Tell me your name, and where you are from."

  He bowed again. "I am Arculf, bishop of Rhemoulakion, a small city in Gaul," he answered, and paused to eat another couple of olives.

  I saw more pits than I had expected on the ground by his feet. "Do you do nothing but eat?" I asked him, pointing down to them.

  The Gallic bishop flushed; as he was so fair, you could watch the color mount from his throat to the very top of his head, exposed by his tonsure. He was so flustered, he forgot his Greek, and spluttered out something in Latin. I glanced over to faithful Myakes, who translated for me: "He is embarrassed, for you have seen what a glutton he is. He fights the sin as best he can, but that best is not yet good enough."

  "Thank you," Bishop Arculf told him. He went on for himself, in Greek once more, "I pray in Jerusalem at the church of the Holy Sepulcher for God to take this sin from me. It does not happen yet." He rolled his eyes mournfully. "Now I pray here, too, at the church of the Holy Wisdom. Sooner or later, God will hear me." His round face filled with serene faith.

  "How do you stand on the question of Christ's wills and energies?" I asked. I was jealous he had been to Jerusalem, which the followers of the false prophet stole from us in the days of my great-great-grandfather.

  "I believe with your father the Emperor of the World," Arculf said. "Christ has and must have two wills, two energies. All Christians in the west believe this."

  "What of Pope Honorius?" I asked. "He agreed with Sergios of Constantinople that Christ has only one will."

  Arculf looked at me in a new way before he answered. "You know these things," he said, almost accusingly. Before, he had been polite to a boy who was a prince; now he saw he had to weigh his words, as if to a man. I looked smug. At my side, Myakes looked proud. He had no learning to speak of, but admired mine. Arculf went on, "If Pope Honorius says this, if the holy ecumenical synod decides he says this, let him be anathema with others who say this."

  "I agree," I told him. "Let all who confess one energy and one will be anathema. Let their bones be dug up." He did not understand that, not even after Myakes did his best to turn it into Latin. I realized it was Constantinopolitan slang, not ordinary Greek, and explained: "It means, 'Down with them. No mercy to them.'a160"

  Little did I dream then that one day the worthless, fickle city mob would be screaming for my bones to be exhumed. Well, the wretches who led and misled them are mostly dead now, and those who still live shall not live much longer.

  "a160'Let their bones be dug up.'a160" Arculf fixed the phrase in his memory. He said, "You are very sure of the right dogma, Prince."

  "Of course I am," I told him, surprised he was surprised. "My father has decreed it, the ecumenical patriarch has agreed to it, now the holy ecumenical synod will ratify it. It must be true."

  Had he argued with me, I would have screamed for all the assembled bishops to hear that he was an infamous heretic, and likely would have ordered Myakes to clout him in the side of the head with his spear shaft, too. But he had already said he supported the doctrine of two wills and two
energies, and all he added now was, "Yes, and the popes of Rome also confess as you and your father do."

  "Yes, and the popes of Rome," I agreed politely. The popes do deserve honor, for their line goes back to Peter, the rock upon whom Christ founded the church, but Rome itself, from all I have heard, is a village if set alongside Constantinople, which is also the true and only capital of the Roman Empire these days. To remind Arculf of the difference, I waved my hand all around, saying, "Is this not the grandest church you have ever seen?"

  Words failed him- literally. He was eating yet another olive, and choked on the pit. I thought for a moment God was about to punish him most severely for profaning the church of the Holy Wisdom, but he spat out the stone when Myakes thumped him hard on the back. Even afterwards, he was reduced to spluttering in Latin, which I could not understand.

  Myakes followed enough to make sense of it for me: "He says this is the grandest church he has ever seen. He has seen many in the west and in Jerusalem and in Alexandria, but this is the finest. He says he thinks God must be holding up the dome, because otherwise it would fall."

  I smiled at that, which was a thought I have often had myself. Arculf recovered his Greek then, and went on, "Constantinople and the Roman Empire are full of holy things."

  "I should hope so," I exclaimed, and pointed to a large, ornate silver chest heavily encrusted with precious stones that stood not far from the ambo where first my father and then the patriarch George had spoken. "In that chest, for instance, lies the holy and life-giving wood of the cross upon which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ suffered. We venerate it each year at Easter, as you shall see if you stay with us."

  Arculf made the sign of the cross himself. I and then Myakes imitated him. He said, "This is a great and holy thing, truly. But I also see and hear of many small and holy things. The icon of Saint George, the one on the stone column."