Thomas Allies - Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III

At this time St. John the Almsgiver – the last great patriarch of Alexandria – gave every help to the fugitives from the Persian seizure of the Holy Land. It is a sign of the secular power wielded by the Egyptian patriarch that he ordered the confiscation of the goods of those who used in his city false weights and measures. After he had lovingly received and supported the fugitives from Syria and Palestine, he had, in the next year, 616, to fly himself in order to escape the sword of the Persians. He was on his way with the patrician Nicetas to Constantinople, when, at Rhodes, he had a vision, in consequence of which he said to his companion: “You invite me to the king of this world, but the Lord of heaven comes before you”. He told Nicetas the vision, and left him to go to Amathus in Cyprus, his birthplace. There he made his will in these words: “I thank Thee, O Lord, that Thou hast heard my prayer, and that only one-third of one gold piece remains to me, though at my consecration I found 8000 pounds' weight of gold in the bishop's house at Alexandria, not reckoning those countless sums which I have received from the friends of Christ. Therefore, I order that this small remnant be given to Thy servants.” Ten years he sat in the See of Alexandria. George was his successor. But from this time nothing more is known of this Church's history. Alexandria fell first under the Persians, and then under Amrou, the Mohammedan. The Arabian domination supported Christian errors only, and from that time the Church of St. Athanasius has never lifted its head again, and the land of the Desert Fathers is become the chief seat of the religion which puts an impostor in the place of the Redeemer.

In the year 616, the Persians broke into Egypt, took and plundered Alexandria, and carried their ravages to the borders of Æthiopia. Another Persian army besieged Chalcedon. Still Heraclius remained inactive. He only sent an embassy to Chosroes. In 619 he sent another, beseeching mercy in the name of the senate. Chosroes replied: “I will spare the Romans when they renounce their Crucified One and worship the sun”. He remembered not that he had to thank the Romans for his crown, that in his time of trouble he had found help only from the God of the Christians. Heraclius lost courage at this answer. Since the loss of Egypt Constantinople was suffering from famine, as well as a grievous pestilence. The emperor resolved to quit his capital, and take refuge with his father in Africa. He embarked his chief treasures, and directed the fleet to Carthage. Most of it was wrecked in a storm. A panic fell on his people, and they besought him with tears and cries not to forsake them. The patriarch Sergius went to the palace, led Heraclius to Sancta Sophia, and compelled him before the altar to swear aloud not to desert his capital. Heraclius submitted against his will.

In 619 he was very nearly taken captive by the Khan of the Avars, who had asked him for an interview, ostensibly to settle terms of peace, in reality to secure his person and riches, and to fall upon Constantinople. The emperor came in great pomp, was surprised, and scarcely escaped in disguise. The Avars obtained an immense booty, and, according to the patriarch Nicephorus, carried away captive beyond the Danube 270,000 men, women, and children.

At length, in the twelfth year of his reign, Heraclius awoke from his torpor, and his awakening was one of the most marvellous events recorded in history. His treasury was empty and his credit not good enough to borrow; but he resolved to attack the Persians in their own country. To secure Constantinople he made peace with the Avars, and to hold them in check he ceded provinces to other races, Slaves, Croatians, and Servians. He made churches and monasteries supply a forced loan. He took even the candlesticks and holy vessels of Sancta Sophia and coined them. When all was ready for his departure, he declared his eldest son, Heraclius Constantinus, ten years old, regent of the kingdom under tutorship of Sergius the patriarch and Bonosus, patrician. Then he celebrated the Easter festival, 4th April, 622. The next day he went to Sancta Sophia, threw himself before the altar and cried: “Lord, deliver us not for the punishment of our transgressions to our enemies, but look upon us in Thy mercy and grant us victory, that the wicked cease to exalt themselves and to mock Thine inheritance”. Then he turned to the patriarch Sergius with the words: “My city and my son I leave to God's protection, the Blessed Virgin's, and thine”. Upon this he took into his hands an image of our Saviour, which was said not to have been made by hands, marched to the Bosphorus and crossed over to Asia.

A train of defeats by the Persians had demoralised the Greek soldiers. Heraclius reinforced his army with allied troops, amongst them a number of Turks. He spent some months at first in restoring courage to his forces. “See,” he said, “my children, how the enemies of God trample on our land, lay waste our cities, burn our sanctuaries, desecrate our altars, pollute our churches with the vilest abominations.” When he had thus enheartened them he reviewed them together, and swore to fight with them and on equal terms unto death, to share all their dangers, to be inseparable from them as a father with his children. And moreover, he kept his word.

Heraclius was ever at the head of his soldiers: he united valour with caution: he entered Armenia and defeated the Persians in several battles. Then he made a show of taking up his winter-quarters in Pontus, but suddenly burst into Persia, and utterly discomfited a large force. He took the enemy's camp, together with immense treasure. His troops were astounded at their own victories, and he wintered them in Armenia. The next campaign was no less glorious. He kept Easter Day in 623, which fell on the 27th March, with his family at Nicomedia. By the 20th April he was in Persia. He had written to Chosroes, and offered him peace. The Persian king not only rejected his offer, but put the bearers of it to death. Heraclius used all these circumstances to give courage and confidence to his troops. He penetrated to the heart of Persia: he burnt the cities and villages which he passed on his way, and marched on Ganzac, now Tauris, where Chosroes was encamped with forty thousand men. At the first onset, Chosroes took flight. His troops were mown down, captured, or scattered. Ganzac was the capital of Atropatene. The Persian kings kept there a treasure, said to be that of Crœsus and to have been brought thither by Cyrus. The most renowned fire-temple of the chief god of the Persians was in this city. Here Zoroaster, the founder of that worship, had been born and lived. There was also here a colossal statue of Chosroes. He was seated in the middle of the palace under a great baldachin representing heaven. Round him were the sun, moon and stars, and angels bearing sceptres. The statue, by means of machinery, caused rain to fall, and thunder to sound. In fact, Chosroes assumed here divine worship. The emperor ordered the statue to be overthrown and broken to pieces. Heraclius burnt palace and temple, with part of the city. Then he marched into Albania for the winter, and, out of pity, set free fifty thousand Persian prisoners, to whom he likewise gave maintenance. This humanity so won their hearts that they burst into tears, and prayed that he might restore freedom to Persia, and put to flight Chosroes, whom they called the Waster of the human race – so hateful had he made himself by oppression and cruelty.

In the campaign of 624, Chosroes brought up three armies against the emperor. Heraclius defeated them in three great battles. He made so sudden a night attack upon what remained that their general, Sarbar, wakened by the clash of arms, had scarcely time to spring from his bed on horseback, and ride away at full speed, while the conqueror took possession of his golden shield, and even his clothes. In his fourth campaign, that of 625, Heraclius was also victorious. Chosroes avenged the defeat of his troops by falling on the churches of Persia, which he stripped of all their ornaments: and to punish the emperor, he compelled the Christians of his realm to become Nestorians. Fifteen years before, he had, to please his physician, compelled the inhabitants of Edessa to become Eutycheans. Chosroes rallied all his forces for the campaign of 626. He raised three great armies, composed indifferently of freemen and slaves, of natives and foreigners. Sarbar led one of these armies to Chalcedon to besiege Constantinople, on the Asiatic side, while the Khan of the Avars, breaking truce, appeared on the European side, to demand the surrender of the city and all its wealth. Its inhabitants, however, defended themselves with such valour as to repulse both Avars and Persians. The fall of the Avar power begins at this moment. It was henceforth occupied by intestine struggles. Sais led the second army of Chosroes, which was defeated by Theodore, brother of the emperor Heraclius. Heraclius himself broke the third army under the command of Rhazates, at Nineveh, on the 12th December, 627. The battle began in early morning, and ended only in the evening. The Persians lost, besides the commanding general, his three lieutenants, almost all their officers, and nearly the half of their soldiers. The Romans had only fifty killed, but many thousands wounded. These the emperor tended with so much care that only ten died.