Harry Turtledove: Justinian

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.

Is that where he came up with his idea? Brother Elpidios, you could knock me over with a feather, and that is the God's truth. If I've thought of Bishop Arculf of Rhemoulakion or whatever the name of his town was three times in these past fifty years, it's a miracle, nothing else but. But it seems he never escaped Justinian's mind, which only goes to show you never can tell.

Old fool that I am, I'd forgotten about that icon of the Mother of God, too. I wonder how the Emperor Leo would explain its power, I do, I do. But he might have a way. He was always tricky, Leo was. Well, enough of that. Go on.

As have all such, the sixth holy and ecumenical synod, the third held in Constantinople, proceeded on the course the Emperor had set for it from the beginning. I headed an ever-increasing number of the sessions myself, for my father began to be concerned with reports that the Bulgars, a loathsome tribe then newly arrived at the Danube, were raiding Roman cities and farms south of the river. He dared not let my uncles preside; both Herakleios and Tiberius, as I have noted, were vehemently of the monothelite party (although I feel certain they would have espoused orthodoxy with equal vehemence had my father favored monotheletism).

Thus I presided over the debates of the learned- and the not so learned- theologians as they worked their way toward consensus. Only one voice was consistently raised in opposition to the doctrine of Christ's two wills and two energies: that of Makarios, patriarch of Antioch. His patriarchal see being under the rule of the followers of the false prophet, he could uphold his own misguided beliefs without fear of retribution from the Emperor.

Like Theodore, former patriarch of Constantinople, Makarios justified his vile and erroneous dogma by means of Dionysios the Areopagite's phrase referring to the divine-human energy of Christ. The rest of the bishops hurled against him a great barrage of quotations from the Scriptures and from the writings of the holy fathers of ancient days. He refused to own himself beaten, but his views, plainly, were those of but a tiny minority of the assembled clerics.

Winter wheeled round toward spring. Lent began, ushering in the approach to the day of our Lord's holy resurrection from the dead. And then, at the fifteenth session of the ecumenical synod, one of Makarios's few backers, a scrawny cleric named Polykhronios, who had made himself notable both for ostentatious piety and for what was obviously a lifetime's abhorrence of cleanliness, presented me with a memorial addressed to my father.

"Thank you, your reverence," I said, thankful mostly that he withdrew once more into the ranks of his fellow bishops.

"Read it, Prince!" he called in harsh, Syrian-accented Greek. "The salvation of your soul depends on it!"

A man who is ostentatiously pious can sometimes also get by with being ostentatiously rude. And, since the synod had been summoned for the salvation of souls, I could hardly disregard him. The memorial was legibly written; I could not dispute that. My lips moved as I rapidly took it in. "Your reverence," I said, "I see little here different from the views the assembled bishops have decided to be heresy and error, and so I-"

"They are not heresy and error!" Polykhronios shouted in a great voice, so that his words came echoing back from the dome of the great church. "They are the truth!"