Harry Turtledove: Justinian

And so, thinking he was doing something great, Herakleios put forth his statement of faith, forbidding discussion of whether Christ had one energy or two and declaring that, as Pope Honorius had said, He had but a single will. The monophysites, once more, were pleased, the orthodox dismayed. This new doctrine prevailed in Constantinople, but was condemned in Jerusalem, in Carthage, in Numidia, in Mauretania\a160… and in Italy, where all the popes after Honorius rejected his formulation.

My grandfather Constans attacked his theological opponents with as much energy as he used to fight back against the followers of the false prophet. He sent troops from Ravenna in Italy down to Rome and seized Pope Martin and Maximus, who had crossed from Africa to strengthen Martin's zeal against the monothelite doctrine. The two holy men were fetched back to the imperial city, tortured when they refused to renounce their faith, and, that also failing to make them recant, exiled to Kherson.

Having known exile in Kherson, I declare that my grandfather was truly a hard man.

So matters stood when my father became Emperor of the Romans. In the early years of his reign, he had little time or energy of his own to devote to affairs of the church, though I know God was always in his mind and in his heart: all his strength went first toward avenging the murder of his father in Sicily and then to defending Romania against the great Arab onslaught.

Those things accomplished, though, he turned his mind toward matters spiritual- and also, I do not deny, toward matters purely pragmatic. When he announced he was going to convene an ecumenical synod and formally overturn monotheletism, my uncle Herakleios demanded, "How can you go against the will of the founder of our dynasty and that of your father- and mine?"

"Nothing simpler- I have a will of my own," my father answered. I was studying irregular verbs with a pedagogue certainly old enough to have known Herakleios the founder- and maybe Phokas before him. My attention wandered away from the aorist passive participle of syndiaphero. Theology is far more important than grammar; misspeaking will get you laughed at, true, but misbelieving endangers your immortal soul.

And watching my father and uncle quarrel was fascinating, too. My father, Uncle Herakleios, and Uncle Tiberius were all Emperors in name, but every bit of power lay in my father's hands. The only things his brothers got to do was wear fancy robes and appear beside him on ceremonial occasions. How they resented that!

Now Herakleios shouted, "We'll be the laughingstock of all Christendom, east and west, if we turn our backs on beliefs we've supported these past fifty years."

"And what have we got for all that support?" my father shot back. "Will the monophysites in Syria and Egypt rise up for us against the Arabs because we confess Christ's two natures have but one will? It doesn't look that way to me. By the Virgin, they're even starting to go over to the creed of the false prophet. And the popes have been throwing anathemas at us ever since Honorius dropped dead."

"If it weren't for our great-grandfather, we'd be nothing," my uncle insisted. "If it weren't for him, the Roman Empire would be nothing. Just on account of that, his views deserve respect."

My father glared. "Even with the great Herakleios at the root of the family tree, you are nothing," he said. "And my views prevail now, not his. And most especially not yours, my brother."

A short, deadly silence followed. At last, Uncle Herakleios bowed very low. "Emperor," he said. I have never heard a word freighted with so much poison. He stormed out of the chamber, his robes flapping as he went.

My pedagogue had been blind to all this. In truth, he was almost blind, being so shortsighted that anything out past the end of his beard was but a blur. I was told he had grandchildren, but I wondered how, for if ever a man was wedded to ink and papyrus, it was he. I am not surprised I have forgotten his name. Now, with my uncle's furious footsteps still echoing in the hall, he said, "And the genitive singular of the participle is-?"

"Syndienekhthentos," I answered absently. I did not love my lessons, but I learned them. Fear of my father made sure of that.

"Very good!" The old man beamed. He had not expected me to know that one. He raised his creaking voice: "Your Majesty, you have here a scholar among men."

He meant it as nothing but one more piece of the idle flattery the Emperor hears every waking moment of every day. It was more idle than most, too, by God; Romania needs soldiers these days, not scholars, if she is to survive.

"Let him be wise," my father said, "so long as it does not harm his piety." My pedagogue looked dismayed but, lacking the spirit to disagree with the Emperor of the Romans, bowed his old gray head in acquiescence.

The very next day- my father being a man who wasted time neither in making up his mind nor in acting once it was made up- the patriarch Theodore was summoned to the palaces. Like his predecessors since the days of Herakleios, Theodore held to the monothelite doctrine. When my father announced he intended to convene an ecumenical synod to overthrow monotheletism, the patriarch protested, "But, your majesty, consider the holy words of Dionysios the Areopagite, who spoke of a single human-divine energy in Christ. Surely this also applies to His will, which unites the natures in His person."

"I do not believe that," my father said, folding his arms across his chest and glaring at Theodore. "How can Christ be perfect man if he lacks a human will?" Theodore tried to go on justifying his belief. My father cut him off: "You will not confess that Christ has two energies and two wills, without division, without change, without separation, without partition, and without confusion?"

Theodore had courage. "No, Emperor, I will not. I cannot."

The following day, my father removed Theodore from the patriarchal throne. He replaced him with a certain George, who was reputed to be more pliable and who lived up to his reputation. The imperial summons to an ecumenical synod went out in short order.

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.

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.