Justinian

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 having 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."

Now I felt embarrassed, for I did not know of this icon. "Tell me what you saw and heard of it," I urged him, not wishing to show my ignorance.

"I only hear this," he said. "They say a man, a witless fellow, strikes at the image with his spear." The last word came out in Latin, but it was one Myakes knew. "The spear goes into the column of stone. The man's hands go into the column, too, and all his ten fingers; they are stuck there." Arculf held out his own hands, the fingers extended, to show what he meant. He made as if to pull back and be unable; he had no small skill as a mime, though olive oil greased the skin of his right index finger and thumb.

He went on, "He is stuck, as I say. He prays- with tears, he repents. And God, 'who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn and live'"- he quoted from Ezekiel-"lets him go. But the marks where his fingers go into the stone, these are there to this day. It is a great icon, true?"

"True indeed," I said, and crossed myself again.

Then Arculf told me of an image of the altogether immaculate Virgin Mother of God. Inspired by the devil, a Jew took it down from the wall on which it had been set, threw it into a privy nearby, and then shat on it to dishonor Christ. A pious Christian, learning what had happened, rescued the icon, cleaned it, and washed it in pure water.

"Ever since that day," the Gallic bishop said, "it gives out from itself a pure oil, a good-smelling oil, that cures sickness better than any man of medicine. I see this image, I see this oil, with these eyes." He touched each eyelid with his index finger so I could not misunderstand. "These icons have much strength, true?"

"True," I repeated, making the sign of the cross once more. Now I had always known of the power of holy icons; had not the one human hands did not create helped defend this God-guarded and imperial city against the attacks of the followers of the false prophet? But Arculf seemed to be seeing these things with fresh eyes, and he made me see them so, too. Since that day, I have advanced the holy images in every way I have thought of, including some never used before in all the days of the Roman Empire.