Richard Blake - Conspiracies of Rome

The pope had this right of election, he claimed, on account of some grant of power by Constantine, which gave him supremacy throughout the West.

Standing together in the Lateran, the pope and new emperor should declare a twenty-year toleration of Arianism, during which time all peaceful means should be employed to convert the Lombards to the True Faith. In return for this election to the purple, the pope should get written confirmation that the Church was the supreme spiritual power in the West, and all military assistance possible to assert this status over any refractory Churches in France and Spain.

The cities of Italy, excluding Rome, should be ruled by joint councils of the Church and the Lombards, the surplus of any revenues to be shared equally. There was to be a common citizenship of the new Western Empire for all inhabitants of Italy, and a common obligation of service in both administration and army. All were to swear allegiance to pope and emperor jointly, and utterly to renounce allegiance to Constantinople, whether civil or military or religious. Rome was to be ruled jointly by pope and emperor, both of whom were to live there. It was to be the capital of the new Italy, with a revived Senate of Roman and Lombard nobles, who should be urged to intermarry and become a single order, and from which would be drawn all the highest officials of Church and State.

The pope had been in contact with Great King Chosroes of Persia, and with the Eastern barbarians. These were prepared, on acceptance of the terms proposed by Agilulf, to mount a coordinated attack on Constantinople. If successful, this would entirely destroy the Empire in the East. The imperial forces there, as directed by Phocas, would be outnumbered and outclassed. And there would now be no hope of reinforcements from Italy. In any event, the combined assault in the East would prevent reinforcements from being sent to Italy. There was also a strong possibility that the Ethiopians could be brought to invade Upper Egypt, thereby tying down still more of the imperial forces.

In token of his good faith, the pope signed his own name to the letter. In addition, he sent with it a sealed letter from the great king himself, together with one of the most holy relics of the Church and thirty pounds of gold. This would pay the first expenses of the march on Ravenna. A further three thousand pounds would be handed over once Agilulf had sealed his declaration of papal supremacy.

The letter was dated a few days before that encounter with the bandits on the road between Populonium and Telamon. The combined attack on the Empire was proposed for the early autumn.

The letter in Persian I couldn’t read. But what I could follow of the Greek translation said enough. Great King Chosroes had written to Agilulf, confirming the proposed deal from the pope. He swore he would so far as possible tie up all imperial forces in the East, and would open full diplomatic relations with any emperor of the West on the same basis of equality as had long existed with Constantinople. Within a mass of Oriental flattery, he hailed Agilulf as his ‘dearest brother’ and ‘Joint Eye of the World’.

We looked and looked at those letters.

I looked up first. It all made perfect sense to me. The emperor was clearly unable to protect Italy from the Lombards. But he was able to keep the Lombards from the peaceful enjoyment of what they had conquered. An alliance of pope and Lombard king would give Italy its first chance of peace in forty years. Indeed, with the Greeks sent off to fuck themselves, it would return Italy to the good old days of King Theodoric – only this time without the problem of heresy that had brought his experiment in coexistence to an early end. Who in Italy could object to this?

Lucius, I could see, objected. He was furious. I’d never seen him show the slightest concern for the common good. Now, he banged his fist on the table and was shaking with anger. ‘Those shitty clerics!’ he shouted. ‘I should have guessed they were up to something like this. They’d make a pact with the Jews – no, they’d make a pact with their devil – if they thought it would advance the interests of their Church.

‘You know something? When Alaric – the first Alaric, that is – was outside Rome, the pope of the day was told the city could be saved from sack by propitiating the Old Gods. Did he turn the advice down? Did he fuck! He said the ancient sacrifices could go ahead, but only if they were held in private to save his face. Because of that, Rome had its first foreign conqueror in a thousand years. Of course, there was a private deal before he was let in, and Alaric spared the churches.

‘These people don’t believe in anything but power! You know how they fuss on about heresy. Well, here they are, coolly offering to tolerate what they’ve always denounced as the most damnable heresy of all. So long as they get their hands on the full machinery of state, they’re perfectly happy to share it with a bunch of Arians.’ He paused and looked down again at the papal letter.

‘But Lucius,’ I protested, ‘this would mean no more Phocas.’

He turned savagely to me. ‘For all we know, sitting here, Phocas is already out of power. Whatever the case, he’ll be out soon enough. If it isn’t the exarch of Africa or his relatives, it’ll be someone else. It’ll be another of my noble relatives. He’ll then set affairs right again.

‘Yes, I’m no lover of Phocas. That doesn’t mean I’ll stand by and watch what’s left of the Empire that my ancestors won with their blood and sweat handed over to a pack of fucking barbarians and clerics. It’s bad enough to have barbarian kings in Italy. A barbarian emperor – a barbarian emperor tied by every possible interest to the Church? Never!’

He stood up and grabbed the letters, stuffing them back into the leather bag. ‘I’ve been thinking for a while of a trip of Ravenna. Now, I’m going there with you.

‘I had a message from the dispensator first thing this morning. He said he was sending men over to examine me for apostasy and blasphemy. The fucking nerve of it! Well, the next time I see him and that stinking old wreck Boniface, they’ll be shitting themselves together in Ravenna as they face charges of treason.’

He turned to me and lowered his voice. ‘And it might have all gone to plan if you hadn’t stepped off that road outside Populonium. By now, those letters and all that went with them might now be with Agilulf.’

I broke in again: ‘But surely, the exarch’s men were on to this in any event? We ran straight into them.’

‘And can you be sure they would have got there in time?’ Lucius asked. ‘Your One-Eye was well ahead of them. How do you know he’s with the Column of Phocas? What do we really know about him, other than he’s been hanging round you? Perhaps he killed Maximin. Perhaps he was up to something else that night.

‘No, I can see now why the Church was so desperate to get those letters from Maximin once it was known he had them. As for the Column of Phocas – as for that, you’ll need to ask Phocas himself if you want an answer.’

‘I don’t think it’s so uncertain as that,’ I said, speaking slowly as I gathered my thoughts.

I’d known awhile that rendezvous outside Populonium was a big thing. I’d never imagined it involved the fate of the whole world. I knew nothing yet at first hand about high politics. One thing, however, was already plain. Little people who get involved in them see their lives changed fundamentally. Most often, their lives come to a sudden end. So it had been with Maximin. How much did I want to join him?

‘Maximin wasn’t killed by the Church,’ I continued. ‘All the dispensator wanted was those letters back. He could have had that from his summons to Maximin. It was the Column of Phocas that was so desperate to get the letters. Those are the people who stopped Maximin from going out. Those are the people who prevented the second summons. They called Maximin out eventually. They killed him.