Justinian

JUSTINIAN

All the while we were traveling through the country the Bulgars had stolen from my father, during the battle against them, and on the road through Thrace back to the imperial city, I studied Neboulos. He affected not to notice me, but his blue eyes were watchful, too. Yet he said nothing, knowing, I suppose, his fate was not in his own hands.

Like any barbarian seeing Constantinople for the first time, he gaped at the city's walls and then, all over again, at the wonders they contained. "So many people, all in one place," he marveled, and then, in his clumsy Greek, asked me, "With so many people here, why do you want us Sklavenoi, too?"

"The countryside is emptier," I told him. "Even Constantinople has fewer people and more open spaces than it did a hundred years ago."

"Hundred years?" He shook his head. "Who remembers so long ago?"

"Augustus, the first Emperor of the Romans, ruled in the time of our Lord, Jesus Christ, almost seven hundred years ago," I replied. "God has never allowed a break in the line of Emperors from that time to this."

Neboulos looked at me. By his expression, he thought I was lying to impress him. Then he looked from me to the marvels of Constantinople once more. They presented a better argument as to my truthfulness than any I could offer, for no barbarians, their thoughts rooted only in the present, could have conceived of them, let alone built them. When he turned back to me, his face was troubled. "How do you stand living in shadow your ancestors cast?" he asked.

"They are our guides," I said. "We follow them as best we can. And, because we know Christianity, whe re they were mired in pagan falsehoods, we have surpassed them."

"This god who gives you fire is strong," he admitted. "He drives away all other gods you used to have?"

"Yes, you might say that," I answered: how to put it any more clearly to a letterless barbarian ignorant of the true and holy faith except insofar as he might have delighted in plundering a church of its treasures should he have managed to take a Roman city.

"And I," he said, thumping his thick chest with a big square fist, "I will be strong for you. I drive away all enemies you have now."

He had not pestered me about that notion of his, not in Thessalonike, not in the Bulgars' country, not on the return from that country to the imperial city. Had he pestered me about it, I should naturally have come to suspect him. But now, when we were just across the Bosporos from the many Sklavenoi I had resettled in northwestern Anatolia, seemed an equally natural time for him to inquire about my plans for him. In my mind's eye, I saw him leading a force of fair-haired warriors combining Sklavinian cunning and Roman discipline. Further, I saw myself loosing him, like an arrow from a bow, straight at Abimelekh's heart.

Not yet having learned the full depths of Sklavinian cunning, I said, "So you will make me an army from among your fellow tribesmen, will you?"

"Yes, I will make you army," he said, and his eyes glowed bright as stars. "I will make you special army. You show me your enemies. You take me to them. I drive them all away."

That fit in so perfectly with my own thought of a moment before, I said, "Let it be so. I shall send you to Anatolia. Make me an army. Make me a special army, Neboulos, and I will show you all the foes you want."

"I am your slave," he said.

Stephen the Persian prostrated himself before me, as he had in the days when he served in the palace rather than the treasury. "Emperor," he said in his eunuch's voice on arising, "I have seen how much gold your campaign against the Sklavenoi and the Bulgars cost, and I am pleased to be able to tell you that, when the tribute from the Arabs and the taxes collected within the Roman Empire are both taken into account, we have gathered in more than you expended."

"That is good news," I replied. "Your predecessor always seemed to be finding reasons for me not to do the things the Roman Empire requires of me. You, now, you find the gold with which I can do those things. That is what I want in a sakellarios, Stephen."

"So I have interpreted my duties from the beginning," Stephen said. "I should also like to commend to your attention a certain Theodotos, a former monk from Thrace, who has ably served your cause, being most ingenious in sniffing out those who would keep from the fisc monies rightfully belonging to it."

"If he does that, he is truly given by God," I said, playing on the meaning of Theodotos's name. Stephen's beardless cheeks plumped as he smiled. I went on, "Bring his name to me again, that I may reward him for his diligence."

"I shall send you a written memorandum, Emperor, detailing his contributions in full," Stephen said.

"Better yet," I told him, and he bowed his way out of the throne room.

That evening, I took supper with my mother. I had, I confess, been avoiding her since my return to Constantinople, for she kept assailing me with the multifarious virtues of my daughter Epiphaneia, a subject on which I remained resolutely deaf. The more she praised the child, the less desire I had to learn whether any of the praise was true.

Indeed, the only reason I consented to dine with her was her promise not to raise the subject of Epiphaneia at the meal. That promise she kept… in a way. Instead of talking about Epiphaneia, she talked instead about prospects for my remarriage. "How happy you will be," she said, "when you hold a child in your arms and give it all the love that pours from your heart."

"You know, Mother," I said, "if you were looking for a way to put me off the idea of remarriage for good, you couldn't have found a better one, not in a year of trying." For I heard all too clearly the unspoken reproach that I did not hold Epiphaneia in my arms and give her my love.

I now realize my mother was right; I had an obligation to my family and to the Roman Empire to remarry and to produce an heir as soon as possible, thereby securing the succession and reducing the risk of civil war. But I still mourned Eudokia, and the thought of yoking myself to a new wife held no appeal. And if I lost a second wife as I had the first, grief, not love, would pour from my heart. The previous few years, I had had enough of grief and to spare.

And I was still very young. When you are twenty or so, an endless sweep of years seems to stretch out before you. Ignoring the past history of my family, I was certain I had all the time in the world to marry again and get an heir. Little did I know then the fate God, in His ineffable wisdom, had decreed for me.

And further, not to put too fine a point on it, I was and am a man of my house, meaning a man of strong will. The quickest way to set me against an idea forever was and is to urge it on me too strongly. No donkey or mule could dig in his heels more stubbornly than I under such circumstances. The course my mother advocated was one for which I did not care, the more vehemently and persistently she advocated it, the less I cared for it.

She was stubborn herself, no doubt having acquired the trait from my father if it was not inborn in her. All through the time before my throne was stolen from me, she kept urging- no, she kept nagging- me to wed again. I can think of no more important reason for my failure to do so then.

Thinking to distract her so I could finish my supper in peace, I said, "I hope you don't miss Stephen the Persian too much here in the palace. He is as good in the treasury as I hoped he would be, and the hopes I had for him were of the highest."

Distract her I did. "That eunuch is a shark in man's clothing," she said, her eyes flashing angrily. "Were it not for his robes, you would see the pointed fin on his back. He has not held office long, but already everyone in the city hates him."

"What better recommendation for a tax collector?" I said with a smile.

"Don't joke about it," my mother snapped. "He goes too far- he goes much too far. Anyone who dares protest either how much he collects or how he collects it suffers. He is fond of the switch and, if that fails, the whip."

I shrugged. "The fisc must be fed, or the Roman state starves."

"He is a bloodsucking wild beast, and he thinks the fisc is the soul of the Roman state, not its belly. I told him as much, to his smooth, fat, evil face. I told him he was making you hateful to your subjects, too."

"And what did he say to that?" I asked.

"He said that, if he didn't collect all he could, he would make himself hateful to you," my mother replied, "and that is not all-"

"And do you think he was wrong?" I broke in.

My mother held up her hand. "You are the Emperor now, and so you may speak when you like. But you are also my son, and so you will hear me out. I had not finished." She paused, waiting to see how I would respond. She was indeed my mother, no matter how annoying to me she made herself at times, so I waved for her to go on, which she did: "As I was saying before you interrupted me, that is not all your precious Stephen the Persian said, nor all he did. He said I should mind my own business and let him mind his-"

"An excellent idea," I said.

She kept on talking, right through me: "And he picked up one of the switches he uses to thrash those who will not pay what he demands, and he hit me once across the back with it, as if I were a schoolboy who had not learned his lessons."

She was my mother. Had she not also been nagging me, pushing me in directions in which I did not wish to go, no doubt I should have been outraged. As things were, the first thought crossing my mind was, Good- you deserve it. Saying that, though, would only have made our quarrel worse. What I did say was, "Now that I am back in the imperial city, I will tend to matters of the fisc myself. You need never have anything to do with Stephen the Persian again."

It was not enough. Looking back, I see that. At the time, I deemed it the height of generosity. My mother's mouth thinned to a pale, narrow line. "Thank you so much, Emperor," she said, and left the dining chamber quite abruptly- and quite against etiquette.

I do not think she spread the story through the city. In spite of our spats, she was always loyal to the family. I know I did not spread the story. Nevertheless, it did spread, which meant it must have spread from the lips of Stephen the Persian, boasting of the power he wielded. Perhaps he made himself feared with such tales; he surely made himself hated. And, as my mother had warned me, he made me hated, too. We both paid the price for it a few years later.

"Emperor, have mercy!" The fat little man- John, his name was- arose from his prostration with a wail like that of a distraught mourner in a funeral procession. "Have mercy on the pitiful island of Cyprus!"

He was the archbishop of Cyprus. Even so, having learned that anyone coming before the Emperor of the Romans on his throne will make a small problem seem large and a large one seem the end of the world, I discounted at least half that anguished wail. What remained after such discounting, though, was enough to concern me. "Have mercy on Cyprus?" I said, raising an eyebrow. "I thought I have had mercy on Cyprus, arranging for the taxes from the island to be shared between us and the followers of the false prophet. The island has had no share of fighting ever since."

"Not no fighting, Emperor- less fighting," John said. "Your armies and those of the Arabs' miscalled commander of the faithful do not clash there, but s trife between their villages and ours remains. And we Christians there have to pay a tax for the privilege of practicing our true and holy faith."

"Do they make you pay that tax over and above their half of what they collect? Or is it part of that half?" I asked, knowing the deniers of Christ made their Christian subjects pay that tax through all the lands they ruled.

John's face twisted; he must have hoped I would not ask that question. "As part of their half of the total tax to be paid," he said unwillingly.

"Idiot!" I shouted, and he blanched. "Blockhead! Imbecile! Cretin! Dolt! For a tax which he is within his rights to levy, you want me to go to war with Abimelekh?"

"And for the harassment our villages endure, yes," John said.

"It is not enough, not close to enough," I told him. "Begone! Since you are in a Christian land here, go to the church of the Holy Wisdom and thank God for my mercy in not sending you home with stripes on your back. And while you are there, pray to God to grant you some of His wisdom, for plainly you have not got enough of your own."

He fled. Some of the oldest courtiers had served since the last days of my great-great-grandfather's reign, nearly half a century before. They united in telling me they had never seen anyone withdraw from the imperial presence so precipitously. "Anybody'd think he'd been struck with the urgent squats," one of them said, chuckling.

I froze him with a glance, whereupon he withdrew from my presence almost as fast as John the Cypriot had done. I remembered too well how my father had died. At the next imperial audience, the old fool did not attend me, pleading an indisposition. I sent word that the longer he remained indisposed, the happier I would be. He never returned to court, and died the following year. His funeral, for that of a man of such high rank, was remarkably ill-attended.

John soon went back to Cyprus, sadder and probably not wiser. His pleas, even if I could not honor them, left me thoughtful. If I resettled the Cypriots on territory definitively Roman, I could gather for myself all the taxes they yielded, sharing none with Abimelekh. Since the treaty between us said not a word about such resettlement, I would have been within my rights to do so.

But the time was not yet ripe. The war with the Bulgars might well have continued into the following campaigning season, and I did not wish to embroil myself with them and with the followers of the false prophet at the same time. So long as Abimelekh paid his tribute as he should, Cyprus would have to wait.

Not long after John had returned to Cyprus, the ecumenical patriarch Paul approached me, saying, "Emperor, your piety is renowned among Christians throughout the civilized world."

"For which I thank you," I said. His opening obviously being preface for a request of one sort or another, I said no more, waiting instead to see how he would proceed.

"The sixth holy and ecumenical synod was a splendid jewel in your father's crown of accomplishments, perhaps the most splendid in all his reign," he said.

"Perhaps, though he would have been in a poor position to call the synod had he not protected Constantinople from the deniers of Christ," I returned.

"Rooting out the misguided doctrines of monotheletism and monenergism weighs more in the scales of God, Who surely aided him in preserving the imperial city so that he could restore correct dogma to the true and holy faith," the patriarch said.

"It may be so," I admitted after a little thought, for who can deny that the world to come, wherein we shall exist for all eternity, is of greater moment than our tiny eyeblink of life here on earth?

"It is so," Paul declared, luminous faith on his face. After a moment, he went on, "Magnificent as the ecumenical synod was, however, and marvelously as it established the doctrines of the holy Christian church, its work, regrettably, was incomplete. As had the fifth ecumenical synod before it, convened by the great Roman Emperor who bore the name with which your father endowed you, it dealt with doctrine at the expense of discipline."

I knew that, as my father had known it before me. Some questions of discipline, now, had awaited settlement for nearly a century and a half: not surprisingly, dogma had to be established first, whereupon, all too often, the zeal of the holy fathers flagged. I asked the question he no doubt expected me to ask: "What remedy do you propose?"

"A new synod, Emperor," he replied, "one that will deal solely with the matters of discipline the last two holy and ecumenical synods failed to cover. You must agree, these matters have gone neglected too long."

"I do agree," I said.

Paul took no notice. Once started on a chain of thought, he would pursue it link by link, even if the person to whom he was speaking had skipped several links and reached the end before him. Now he said, "Matters such as ordination, proper clerical dress, simony, and alienation of monastic property stand in urgent need of definition and legislation. So do less purely ecclesiastical matters like marriage and public morality, manumission of slaves, and the correct representation of our Lord Jesus Christ and the suppression of base and ignorant superstition."

He ticked off the points on his fingers, one by one, as if to make sure he omitted none. Plainly, he had forereadied them. I thought more of him for that, not less, having had many hours of my life wasted by lackwits unprepared for the audiences they had gained with me.

"All those matters, and others as well, do need regulation," I said. "I agree."

He gaped at me in glad surprise. "You do?"

"I said so. Twice, now." I put a hand on his shoulder. "Begin getting ready for the synod at once. Send out letters to bishops within the Roman Empire, to those under the control of the Arabs, and to those in the western lands the blond German barbarians rule. Set the date for the synod as, hmm, two years from now. That will give all the clerics wishing to attend time enough to come to Constantinople, and will give us plenty of time to prepare for their arrival."

He bowed. "Emperor, you are generous beyond what we deserve."

"Nonsense. Without the church, how shall we be saved?" After a moment, I went on, "And I want as many bishops from the western lands as possible to come. There were only a few"- I particularly remembered Arculf of Rhemoulakion-"at the holy ecumenical synod, which I suppose is why they would not admit their Pope Honorius was anathematized at the synod. I want no such, ah, misunderstanding after the synod to come."

"Quite right, Emperor," the ecumenical patriarch said. "The pretensions of the bishop of Rome grow tedious at times. Peter may have founded their church, but Andrew founded ours, and he too was an apostle. And Rome, these days, is a contemptible ruin of a town, as your grandfather discovered when he traveled to the west, while Constantinople is and shall always be the grandest city in Christendom. Let the ignorant western bishops see our magnificence and taste of our learning and return to their own lands better and wiser men."

"They will be as good as they will be," I replied. "Let them return with correct doctrine, and spread it through those barbarous regions."

"Yes, Emperor. That, too," he said.