Justinian

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.