“Wait; we shall find them.”
Another informer came near, a young Persian named Mercurius, court-pantler, little more than a lad. He was feared not less than Paul Catena and had been pleasantly nicknamed “Chief Diviner of Dreams.” If the prophetic dream could be twisted into any meaning even remotely unfavourable for the person of the Emperor, Mercurius would make careful notes of it and hasten to make a report. Many a victim had paid with their goods and their prospects for the imprudence of dreaming what they had no business to dream; and, aware of this, prudent courtiers would declare themselves martyrs to insomnia, enviers of the legendary dwellers in Atlantis, who, according to Plato, are lapt in slumber without visions. The Persian signed to a distance two Ethiopian eunuchs who were knotting the laces of the Emperor’s green and gilt shoes. He kissed the feet of the sovereign, and as it were basked a moment in his eyes, like a dog who affectionately gazes up for his master’s orders.
“May your Eternity forgive me,” whispered little Mercury, “I could not refrain from running to your presence. Gaudentius has had a bad dream! You appeared to him in a torn chlamys and crowned with blasted ears of corn....”
“What does that mean?”
“The blasted ears announce famine, and the torn chlamys ... I dare not....”
“Sickness?”
“Worse still, I’m afraid, if possible. Gaudentius’ wife confessed to me that he had consulted the augurs. God knows what they told him!”
“Well, well! We will discuss it. Come again this evening.”
“No! I will come this afternoon. Permit me to mention a slight matter, something not so grievous.... There is also the matter of the table-cloths....”
“What table-cloths?”
“Have you forgotten? At a supper in Aquitaine the table was spread with two table-covers with purple borders—borders as wide as those on the Imperial chlamys!”
“Do you mean to say they were more than two fingers wide? Remember, I’ve authorised the width of two fingers.”
“Ah, much, much wider I fear! It was a regular Imperial chlamys. Can such sacrilege be permitted?”
Mercury did not succeed however in reciting all his reports:
“At Delphi a monster has been born—four ears, four eyes, two snouts, all covered with hair. The augurs say it is a bad omen—that the Holy Empire will be split up....”
“We shall see! we shall see! Write it all down in due order and submit it to me.”
The Emperor went on with his morning toilet. He consulted his mirror again, and with a fine camel’s-hair brush took up a morsel of rouge from the casket of filigree silver, shaped like a reliquary and crowned by a little cross, at his elbow. Constantius was devoutly religious; enamelled crosses and the monogram of Christ adorned every trinket in his private rooms. Exquisite and expensive paint called purpurissima, extracted from the scum on the purple mollusc while in a state of ebullition, was specially prepared for him. Constantius adroitly spread a faint flush of this over his withered brown cheek. From the room called Porphyria, where the regal vestments were kept in a pentagonal wardrobe, eunuchs bore forth the Imperial dalmatic. It was stiff, heavy with gold, encrusted with precious stones, and with lions and dragons embroidered on its amethystine purples.
In the main hall of the palace on that day was to be held the great Arian council. The Emperor slowly took his way thither along a gallery of pierced and fretted marble. Palace guards, or palatines, two-deep formed a long lane, mute as statues and holding lances fourteen cubits long crossed above the head of their master, as he paced in state between them. Constantine’s banner of cloth of gold, the Labarum, surmounted by the monogram of Christ, shone rustling behind, borne by the officer of the Imperial largesses (comes sacrarum largitionum). Mute body-guards (silentiarii) heralded the procession, imposing silence on everyone they met.
In the gallery the Emperor encountered the Empress Eusebia Aurelia. She was a mature woman with a pale and weary face, delicate and noble features, a mischievous raillery sometimes kindling her keen eyes. Crossing her hands on the omophorium covered with sapphires and heart-shaped rubies, the Empress bowed profoundly and pronounced the habitual morning salutation:
“I am come for the joy of beholding you, O spouse well-beloved of the Lord! How has your Holiness deigned to sleep?”
Then, at a sign from her, the attendant maids of honour drew to a distance and she murmured sweetly, in a simpler and sincerer tone—
“Julian is to be received by you to-day. Receive him kindly! Don’t believe these spying reports. He is a poor innocent boy. God will repay you, sire, if you grant him favour.”
“You ask favour to him as a favour to yourself?”
The husband and wife exchanged a rapid glance.
“I know,” she said, “you always have confidence in me; let it be so now. Julian is a faithful slave. Don’t refuse me.... Be kind to him....”
And she gratified him with one of those smiles which hitherto had wielded irresistible power over the heart of Constantius.
In the portico, which was separated from the great hall by hangings (behind which the Emperor used to ensconce himself to hear what was going on at the councils), a monk, wearing a cruciform tonsure and in a hooded robe of coarsest drugget, came near. It was Julian.
“I salute my benefactor, the triumphant and glorious Emperor Augustus Constantius. May your Holiness pardon me!”
“We are happy to receive you, my son.”
Julian’s cousin magnanimously extended his hand to Julian’s lips. Julian kissed the hand dyed with the blood of his father, of his brother, of all his relatives. Then he rose erect, pale and with sparkling eyes fixed upon his enemy. He gripped the handle of a poniard hidden under his robe. The grey eyes of the Emperor lighted with pride and cautious malice, seldom dropping their scrutiny. He was a head shorter than Julian, large-shouldered, solidly-built, and bandy-legged like an old cavalry soldier. The tight brown skin over his temples was disagreeably glossy. The thin lips were severely closed with the expression of folk that set order and punctuality above all other virtues—the expression of a pedant and a schoolmaster.
To Julian he appeared detestable. He felt an animal fury getting the better of him, and, unable to utter a word, his eyes fell and he breathed with difficulty.
Constantius smiled, imagining the young monk unable to bear the superhuman majesty of the Imperial glance. With ostentatious benevolence he continued—
“Fear nothing! Go in peace! Our kindness shall bring no danger upon you. On the contrary we shall from this day forth heap bounties on our cousin who is an orphan.”
Julian bowed and proceeded into the hall of council; and the Emperor, hidden behind draperies, lent an ironic and attentive ear to the debate beginning within.
He immediately recognised the voice of the principal dignitary of the Imperial post, Gaudentius. It was he who had suffered from the bad dream.
“One council treads on the heels of another,” Gaudentius was complaining; “now it’s at Sirmio, now it’s at Sardis, now at Antioch, and now here at Constantinople. They discuss and discuss, but never come to an understanding. And I would ask you, for pity’s sake, to consider the horses that have to carry these gentlemen about! Out of a relay of ten horses you will hardly find one who is not foundered by the bishops. Another five councils, and my beasts will only be fit for the knacker’s yard—not a car will have a wheel on it. Yet, in spite of all, you’ll see that the bishops will still be at loggerheads and boggling at the Trinity!”
“Why then, Gaudentius, don’t you send in a formal report on the subject to the Emperor?”
“Nobody would believe me. I should be accused of irreligion and lack of respect for the crying needs of the Church.”
In the vast round hall, crowned by a cupola on columns of Phrygian marble, the heat was already stifling. Slanting sun rays fell in through uncurtained windows. The noise of voices was like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. The Imperial golden seat—sella aurea—
was prepared on a daïs. It rested on lions’ paws of carved ivory, crossed like those of the curule chairs of Roman consuls.
Close to the throne, the high-priest Paphnutis, with a face empurpled by argument, was declaring—
“For my part, I shall keep to the opinions my fathers taught me! According to the creed of our holy father Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, we must worship a single God in a Trinity, and the Trinity in a single God; the Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Ghost is God, and nevertheless they form together but one God!”
And as if he was smashing an invisible enemy he brought down his enormous right fist into his left-hand palm and glared triumphantly round the assembly.
“That tradition have I received from my fathers, and that tradition I will keep!”
“Who is it? What’s he saying?” asked Ozius, a man of a hundred years old, who had been alive in the time of the council of Nicæa. “Where’s my trumpet?” Harrowing perplexity could be read on his face. He was deaf, almost blind. The deacon who accompanied him set the ear-trumpet to his ear.
A certain pale thin monk seized Paphnutis by the surplice—
“Father Paphnutis,” he shouted to drown the general clamour, “what is all this about?... It is a question of a single word; is not that so?” and forthwith he began to narrate terrible scenes he had witnessed in Alexandria and Constantinople. The Arians had opened with wooden pincers the mouths of those unwilling to receive the Sacrament in heretic churches, and forced the host between their lips. Mere children were subjected to inquisition; the breasts of women were crushed under leaden weights and branded with live iron. In the Church of the Holy Apostles so horrible a struggle had taken place between Arians and Orthodox that the blood, overflowing the cistern which received the drainage of the place, had poured down the steps in front of the western façade and streamed into the market-square. At Alexandria the governor Sebastian had caused virgins to be beaten with thorn branches, so that many of them had succumbed and their bodies lay unburied outside the city gates. All this contention was over a single letter, an iota.
“Father Paphnutis,” argued the pale monk, “for an iota! The word ‘substantial’ does not even occur in the holy Scripture. What are we then torturing each other about? Think, Father; it is horrible!”
“Then,” interrupted the Arch-priest impatiently, “must we be reconciled with those impious dogs who will not hunt out of their pestilent hearts the doctrine that there was a moment when the Son of God did not exist?”
“‘One Shepherd and one Flock,’” the monk returned: “Let us make them some concessions!”
But Paphnutis refused to hear anything, vociferating till the veins of his neck almost burst—
“Let the enemies of God be silent! Never will I give in! Anathema on the Arian heresy! Such have I received the faith from my fathers, and such will I keep it!”
Ozius the centenarian wagged approvingly his white head and long beard. On the other side of the hall two archdeacons were talking together.
“You keep very calm, Father Dorophas. Why are you taking no part in discussion to-day?”
“My voice is gone, Father Flavius. I am too hoarse with anathematising the cursed sectaries.”
In another group the deacon from Antioch, Aetius, a bold and fervent disciple of Arius, regarded as an atheist for his audacious and scoffing interpretations of the Trinity, was holding forth.
The career of Aetius had been remarkable for its extraordinary variety. At first a slave, he had afterwards become by turns a coppersmith, a sailor, a rhetorician, a pupil and teacher of Alexandrian philosophy, and finally a deacon.
“God the Father is in His substantial essence different from His Son,” Aetius was saying with a smile and evident gusto, to the dismay of his hearers. “The Trinity has differentiations, degrees of glory, according to the nature of the personalities comprised in it. The word ‘God’ cannot be used of the Son, because He has never applied it to Himself. The Son has never even comprehended the essence of the Father, because it is impossible for Him who had a beginning to imagine that which has neither beginning nor end.”
“Blaspheme not!” shouted an indignant bishop. “Where is this Satanic boldness going to stop, my brethren?”
“Drag not the simple-minded into perdition by your speeches!” shrieked another.
“Prove me wrong by philosophic reasoning, and I will acquiesce. But shouts and insults are proof of nothing but impotence,” replied Aetius calmly.
“It is written in the Scriptures....”
“What is that to me? God has given intelligence to man that He himself might be understood. I believe in logic of argument and not in texts. Reason with me on the basis of the syllogisms and categories of Aristotle....”
And with a contemptuous smile he threw his surplice around him like the cynic mantle of Diogenes.
Some bishops were beginning to speak in favour of a universal creed in which mutual concession should be made, when the Arian Narcissus of Neronia, a profound expert in all statutes, creeds, and canons of the councils, intervened in discussion. He was a man little liked, suspected of adultery and usury, but admired by everyone for his theological erudition.
“That is a flat heresy!” he declared decisively.
“Why is it a heresy?” demanded several voices.
“Because the assizes of Paphlagonia have already so laid it down.”
“The assizes of Paphlagonia?” repeated the desperate bishops; “we had clean forgotten them. What is to be done now?”
“May God have pity on us miserable sinners!” the good bishop Ozius was muttering; “I can no longer understand anything; I can’t get out of the labyrinth; my head is buzzing, my ears singing with Greek words; I’m walking in a fog and don’t know myself what I believe in and what I disbelieve; what is heresy and what is not.... Jesus help us!... We are falling into the snares of the Devil.”
At that moment the hubbub and clamour ceased. The bishop Ursatius of Singidion, one of the Emperor’s favourites, mounted the tribune. He was holding in his hand a long scroll of parchment. Twosilentiarii, having mended their fine pens of Egyptian reed, got ready to write down the conciliar debate. Ursatius read out the message of the Emperor to the bishops—
“Constantius, the triumphant, glorious, and eternal Augustus, to all bishops assembled in this council....”
The Emperor demanded the dismissal of Athanasius, the patriarch of Alexandria, whom he called the most useless of men, the traitor, the accomplice of the insolent and abominable Magnentius.
The courtiers, Valentine, Eusebius, Axentius, hastened to sign the scroll. But a murmur arose.
“It is all a damnable device; a trick of the Arians! We will not let our patriarch suffer....”
“The Emperor calls himself eternal ... nobody is eternal but God! It is a mockery of holy things.”
Constantius, lurking behind the curtain, heard this last speech distinctly. Thrusting the hangings roughly by, he pushed unexpectedly into the hall. The lances of the guard surrounded him. His face expressed anger. A heavy silence fell upon the throng.
“What is it, what is it?” the blind Ozius kept whispering in restless perplexity.
“Fathers,” the Emperor began, bridling his anger, “allow me, the servant of the Most High, to use my zeal under His providence to a successful issue. Athanasius is a rebel, the chief violator of universal concord and œcumenical peace.”
Fresh murmurs arose. Constantius was silent and ran a surprised look over the array of bishops. A voice shouted—
“Anathema upon the abominable Arian heresy!”
“The faith against which you revolt,” replied the Emperor, “is my faith. If it is heretical, why has the omnipotent God assigned victory to us over all our enemies? Constans, Vetranio, Gallus, the abominable Magnentius, why has God Himself placed the power over the world in our sacred hands?”
The bishops were dumb; then the courtier Valentius, bishop of Mursa, bowing with great servi
lity—
“God will unveil the truth to your wisdom, sire, well-beloved of the Lord! What you believe cannot be heresy. Did not Cyril of Jerusalem behold a rainbow-surmounted cross in the heavens on the day of your victory over Magnentius?”
“It is my will,” interrupted Constantius, rising from the throne. “Athanasius shall be laid low by the power God has entrusted to me. Pray that all these conflicts and controversies may cease, that the murderous heresy of the Sabæans, the partisans of Athanasius, may be destroyed, that the truth may shine into all hearts....”
Suddenly the Emperor grew pale; the words expired on his lips.
“What! How is it that he has been allowed to enter?”
He pointed to a tall old man with a severe and majestic face. It was the bishop Hilarion of Pictavia (Poitiers), who had been exiled and ruined for his faith, one of the greatest enemies of the Arian Emperor. He had come to the council unsummoned, perhaps seeking martyrdom. The old man raised his hand to heaven as if calling down malediction upon the head of the Emperor, and his powerful voice thrilled the silent crowd—
“Brothers, Christ must be about to descend, for Antichrist has already conquered, and that Antichrist is Constantius! He does not break your backs on the wheel, but he flatters your proud bellies. He does not throw us into dungeons, but entices us into his palaces.... Emperor, hearken! I say to you what I have said to Nero, Decius, Maximian, all persecutors of the Church. But you are not, like them, the murderer of men, but the murderer of the Divine love itself! Nero, Decius, Maximian, have better served the God of truth than you! In their reign we conquered the Devil, the blood of the martyrs flowed, cleansing the earth, and their dead bones worked miracles. Whereas you, O King, cruellest of the cruel, slay and yet grant us not the glory of death.... Lord, send us a true despot like Nero, and let the kindly arm of Thy wrath revive again the Church dishonoured by the kiss of this Judas!”
The Emperor sprang to his feet—
“Seize him and the rebels!” he ejaculated, half-choked with rage, pointing to Hilarion.
The Death of the Gods Page 12
