I’d sit with Martin, telling him to get a grip on himself and fighting back my own despair. It swept over me in black waves. I wanted to be in Rome. I needed to be in Rome. I was sick of these meetings. I was sick of Constantinople and my regular dinners with Theophanes. I was even sick of the libraries. I wanted to go home.
Under different circumstances, of course, I’d have loved the place. I’ve spoken already of the University Library. The Patriarchal Library, where most of our research was done, was less exciting in its contents. But there was the same convenience and even luxury of accommodation. Even so, we were exhausting its resources in technical theology. We were finding that – as with the heresy uncovered in Ravenna, which was turning out more serious than expected – there were no comprehensive refutations from the past. It was then that I had to approach the Professor of Theology at the University. I’d send over written summaries of the points to be covered. A day later, I’d go in person with Martin to take down authoritative answers culled or interpreted from the Church Fathers.
What the Dispensator chose to make of all this I left to him. Now I knew my presence in the city was a cover for something else, I’d given up on much more than a token effort. We were there for a particular period of time, and the amount of work required would expand to fill that time. So, while Martin still worked himself and the copyists at breakneck speed – and it did seem to keep his mind from giving way entirely – I’d gone back to spending every morning in the University Library. I might as well get something out of this visit. And it kept me from that dreadful counting of days and from moping over the stream of optimistic chatter Gretel was issuing from Rome.
At last the conference was over and I could go out into the courtyard of the Theology Department for a breath of air and to stretch my legs. Behind me, I could hear Martin fussing with the slaves to get everything back to the copyists.
Turning a corner, I nearly bumped into Sergius, the man who had so mysteriously and in so sinister a fashion warned me off the students back when all had been so new in the City.
‘Hello,’ he said, in a manner as close to friendly as I’d ever seen in these people. We had, you see, struck up an odd sort of friendship during the regular conferences in the previous month. It didn’t run to things like dinner and sharing of confidences. It was more an implicit agreement on the stupidity of every other party in our discussions.
‘I thought you’d be straight out of here – back to the sinful books of the ancients.’
That had been my intention. But you don’t snub people like Sergius. I still hadn’t been able to work out his position. He didn’t sit in on every conference. When he did, he’d sit quiet beside the Professor. If he did have advice or questions, he’d whisper them to the professors. No one presumed ever to whisper back.
We walked together down the long colonnade, keeping to the inner wall to avoid the sun, still powerful when full in the sky. We spoke in a desultory way about the difficulty of finding exact Latin equivalents for some of the terms of Greek theology. As I found myself defending Pater Omnipotens as the translation of ‘Father the Ruler of All’ I noticed his attention was wandering just as mine had earlier.
I waited for what I suspected was coming.
‘I feel I should apologise,’ he said, ‘for a certain coldness you may have noted in some of my colleagues. But you are beginning to raise questions that many do not at present find welcome.’
‘If I am taking up your time,’ I answered, trying for an apologetic tone, ‘with repetitions of what you find obvious-’
‘But they are not obvious at all, Alaric,’ he broke in. ‘And they do open issues the practical implications of which you Westerners might not fully understand.’
‘How so?’ I asked. I’d managed to hit the note I wanted of respectful ignorance.
He looked at me. ‘You will understand’, came a reply of sorts, ‘that I am speaking entirely for myself here. If you want authoritative statements for sending back to Rome, the Illustrious Professor must be consulted. But I meet so few persons of ability from the West that I cannot resist the temptation to exchange a few random thoughts with you – always, of course, in a spirit of brotherly love.’
‘I suppose the withdrawal of His Excellency the Permanent Legate’, I replied, smiling, ‘has been a great loss to you.’
‘Not such a loss as we at first thought,’ came the reply. Sergius looked up at the coffered plaster of the ceiling. ‘Tell me what is meant by the Trinity,’ he suddenly asked.
That was easy. I opened my mouth and recited:
‘“And the Catholick Faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance… The Father is made of none: neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone: not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father: neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding… And in this Trinity none is afore, or after another: none is greater or less than another; but the whole three Persons are co-eternal together: and co-equal…”’
‘Good,’ said Sergius, ‘and you will agree that nothing could be more obvious or more simply expressed.’
I nodded. Of course, it all makes sense. You only have to believe that there is a God, and that He has a sick sense of humour, and that He has chosen to make understanding this mass of nonsense one of the requirements for not burning in Hell. Believe all that, and one is three and three is one. Equally, the seventh inch on a ruler is followed by the fourth, and lustful thoughts are wrong.
But I kept this to myself, and followed the nodding with what I hoped was a look of devoutness.
Sergius continued: ‘This follows by necessary implication from the words of Saint John. Moreover, the True Faith is impossible without it. If, as Arius claimed, Christ were just a Creature of God – no matter how superior to other created beings – where does that leave the Faith? What difference would remain with the Platonists who tried to sustain the Old Faith? Christ becomes indistinguishable from the pagan gods, which are said also to be emanations of the One True God. What then would it matter if we directed our prayers to Christ or to Apollo? The difference between our Faith and any other cult might be of no more consequence than the difference between one house painted white and another painted blue.
‘We must, therefore, assert that Christ was God. At the same time, though, we cannot agree, with Eutyches and the Monophysites, that He has but a single Nature, which is God. Christ could not be a mere projection of God, as He suffered in ways that are inconsistent with the notion of Godhood.
‘Therefore, again, Christ must be both God and man. The notion that His Human Nature is subsumed in His Divine Nature, as a drop of honey is dissolved in the sea, is a most damnable heresy, and was rightly declared such at the Council of Chalcedon.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, breaking in. I had no wish for a basic lecture on matters I’d been studying for the better part of three months. But Sergius was coming to the point.
‘We have been discussing’, he said, with a downward glance, ‘your proposal made in writing that the Creed might usefully be clarified by adding the words “and of the Son” to the phrase “the Holy Ghost is of the Father”.’
I looked closely at Sergius. We’d stopped on our round of the colonnade and were standing by a large plaque on the wall that recorded a gift in the old days from a Roman benefactress. Still avoiding my eye, he continued:
‘This is unacceptable. The words may do no more than clarify. But the Creed cannot be altered except by a General Council of the Churches. And we do not think, bearing in mind their continued slide into the Monophysite heresy, that the Churches of Alexandria and Antioch would accept any wording that might imply more than One Nature.
‘We continue to hope for a settlement of differences between all the Churches in the East. We cannot risk this by helping you to proceed against a heresy that has been dead everywhere but in the West for hundreds of years.’
Oh, I thought – just like in Rome, it was politics. The Syrians and Egyptians had to be kept happy. Because of that, we could look to ourselves.
‘This being said’ – Sergius was walking again: I kept pace with him – ‘This being said, we might think more favourably of certain incidental changes that did not require a General Council.
‘For some while now, the various Churches of the Empire have taken what we regard as an unsatisfactory approach to the use of language. The Gospels, the Letters of Saint Paul, and all the Fathers of any note, are in Greek. It is obvious that Greek is the language most acceptable to God. However, claims have been made by His Holiness in Rome for Latin to be regarded as a co-ordinate language. For historical reasons, these claims could not until recently be challenged. At the same time, Coptic and Syriac liturgies have been tolerated in Egypt and Syria. With the decay of Greek in those regions during the past hundred years, the vulgar languages have risen in importance.
‘We might be willing to consider a regularisation of linguistic use. Greek would be regarded as the one authoritative language of the Church – as the language in which God has most recently spoken to man. All would look to Constantinople for final authority on any matter of doctrine. Other languages, though, would be formally accepted for those unfortunate peoples unable to receive the Word of God in its original. Such languages might be Coptic, Syriac and Latin. These would all be equal in status, below Greek.
‘Once this was agreed, new liturgical translations could be prepared. Being regarded as secondary statements of the Truth, these could contain such additions as might render them comprehensible to the people. Rome could then make what glosses it pleased on a new translation of the Creed. The Syrians and Egyptians could also gloss other texts so that what may be verbal differences rather than points of fundamental difference might be removed from dispute.’
‘A “new translation” of the Creed?’ I asked. I knew what was coming but wanted it spelled.
‘Oh, indeed,’ Sergius said airily, ‘a new translation. We have already agreed that Pater Omnipotens is not a precise translation. My Latin is not all that it might be, but would not Pater Omniregens be more precise? There are many other words and phrases that might bear a second look.
‘It would be an honour for us to help in these translations. We accept that our brethren in Rome are less able in Greek scholarship than we remain in Latin. We could very quickly supply new Latin translations of greater accuracy than those undertaken in the past by Westerners.’
‘That is unacceptable to us,’ I said flatly. I was competent to reject this purely on my own initiative. ‘Latin is the official language of the Empire. We could never consent to a settlement that degraded it to the same level as Syriac – or, given time, Lombardic or even English. Whether or not you accept him as Universal Bishop, His Holiness is the senior Patriarch. The language in which He addresses the faithful is to be respected by Greeks and barbarians alike.’
And so we passed the remainder of the afternoon, wrangling over words – and, behind the words, over whether Rome or Constantinople should rule the Churches. I couldn’t care less about the relative status of the Father and the Son. But I was a Westerner, and I wasn’t having our priests and bishops put in leading strings by a pack of shifty Greeks – being doled out a new set of translations every time we went begging for support.
Not even the dangled promise of no objection to the Universal Bishop title could shake me. It wouldn’t have shaken the Dispensator, I could be sure. What point in settling words when the facts they described had been altered?
Our voices rose occasionally as Sergius and I walked up and down the colonnade. We switched back and forth between cit ations from Scripture and the Fathers and arguments over historic meanings. Martin, who’d sat himself at the far end with a book, was mostly out of hearing. A few Greeks from the conference lounged inside one of the doorways. Again, they were mostly excluded from this exchange of ‘random thoughts’.
‘Well, Alaric,’ Sergius said at last, ‘I think this has been a most interesting afternoon. We must repeat it. Something I’d like to discuss in more detail is this heresy uncovered in Ravenna. As you know, some of us regard much heresy as stemming from a misunderstanding of words. The difference between us and the Monophysites is that we regard Christ as One Person with Two Natures, and they regard Him as One Person with One Nature.
‘It may be that the Monophysites can be brought to agree that Christ has Two Natures if He has but a Single Will. We might also agree that He has but a Single Will but Two Natures. We need to think about this. I am sure you will make a note of these discussions. All things considered, though, it may be best not to commit anything to the posts, but to wait until you are personally in Rome.’
It was my intention to write all this down. I might as well go through the motions for the Dispensator. But when I got back to the Legation I found myself in another of those acrimonious disputes with Demetrius. Unlike the other officials, he hadn’t warmed at all to the presence of a child in the Legation and was lodging endless complaints about the crying at night. He claimed that it was disturbing the sleep of the Permanent Legate. I found this unlikely, bearing in mind the size of the building, but usually found an apology was enough to shut the man up.
Now he’d been complaining to Authari, and had received a mild kicking for his impertinence. It was nothing much – just a scrape and a few bruises – but he was demanding that I have the man hung up and flogged.
‘No wine for the rest of today,’ I said to Authari, ‘and you’ll give Master Demetrius the respect in future that becomes a man of his station.’
To Demetrius: ‘I will, of course, apologise in person to His Excellency – just as soon as he sees fit to receive me.’
That stopped him short. With a scowl and a mutter about letters to Theophanes, he was off back to his part of the Legation.
21
The bells were still sounding the call to prayer. For all my connection with the Church, I’ve never been a frequenter of Sunday services. I’d been alone since dawn at my desk in the University Library. Sergius had broken my routine and, day of rest or not, I had work to do.
The Chief Librarian had finally made good on his promise to dig out the complete letters of Epicurus on government. This was a glorious find. Written over eight hundred years ago, the letters were as fresh today as when first dictated.
I’d guessed right about his political opinions. A wise man, he said, is one who wants to be left alone, who wants to leave others alone, and who wants others to be left alone. Therefore, the sole functions of government are to secure individuals in the possession of life and property.
‘Most unlike our own dear world of universal love and justice,’ I muttered, looking up at the frescoes of the Creation and Fall that adorned the ceiling.
I looked down again. The book rolls must have been four hundred years old. From the protocol still attached to one of them, the papyrus dated from before the reorganisation of the Egyptian factories. The last time I’d seen anything that old with proper attribution, it dated from the reign of Caracalla.
How they’d reached the Library was clear. The tag on one of the rolls recorded a confiscation about a century earlier. Less obvious was how they had survived for so long and in such an indifferent climate. A whole line of owners must have treasured them. Perhaps they too had been borne up by the knowledge of death as the end of things.
Half into the third volume, I decided to vary the pleasure of this find by taking a shit. The public latrines of Constantinople are best avoided unless the call of nature is particularly imperious. But the University Library had a nice, clean one that I didn’t scruple to use. It was scrubbed and polished three times a day, and gave off very little smell.
I took off my outer robe, hitched up my tunic, and sat on the common bench. Just as I was preparing to finish off, someone else sidled in and sat beside me.
Small, balding, he had the look of a Syrian or Egyptia
n. He wore good but nondescript clothing. He was rather old for a student, but might have been one of the Sunday lecturers. As I sat there with open bowels, I thought with vague interest that I might have seen him before.
There were five other places on the common bench, and I took a little more interest when the man chose to sit right beside me. Did he fancy me? I wondered, as I unfolded some of the linen scraps I carried for such purposes and leaned forward to dip one in the water channel. I didn’t fancy him at all, with his hairy legs and pallid skin.
But I was thinking most about what I’d been reading. Perceiving the truth and having a good shit are both pleasures, so far as they lead to peace of mind. But how to compare them? If they produce the same end, they do so by very different means. There had been nothing in Epicurus to suggest any answer. An idea was floating through my head about comparing not whole experiences, but small increments of each…
I got no further. The man next to me cleared his throat and shifted his position slightly.
‘That’s a good practice, young man,’ he said, with an approving look at the wet cloth in my hand. ‘I normally carry my own sponge with me. You never can tell what contagion may lurk in these places.’
In the Greek of an educated Syrian, he described various modes of cleansing he had observed on his travels through the East.
I grunted and set about wiping myself. Since he evidently had no sponge with him, I wondered if it might invite more familiarity if I were to offer him one of my private bum-wipes. I decided it would.
‘But you are’, he continued, ‘rather a fastidious young man in all respects. Isn’t that so, Alaric of Britain?’
‘What business have you with me?’ I asked, keeping my voice neutral. This wasn’t an attempted pick-up. More likely, I was being approached by some agent of provocation. If he was fishing for treasonable words, he’d get none out of me.
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