News that the followers of the false prophet had agreed to make peace and pay tribute spread all throug h the world with amazing speed, proving to the lesser rulers that the Roman Empire, while diminished in extent from what it had been in the reign of Justinian my namesake, yet remained, as of course it shall forever, the grandest and mightiest empire of them all.
Realizing this once more, the lesser rulers hastened to send envoys to Constantinople to congratulate my father for what he had achieved and to confirm that he was also at peace with them. First, for their lands were nearest, came men from the Sklavinias, the little territories the petty kings and princes of the Sklavenoi have carved out of the land between the Danube and the sea. They brought bricks of beeswax and pots of honey to lay at my father's feet.
One of those feet was bandaged when he received the Sklavenoi, with myself, my uncles, and my little brother once more ranked beside him to lend ceremony to the occasion: he suffered from gout, and, when it flared, the slightest touch was to him like the fiery furnace into which the king of Babylon cast Daniel long ago. The whole of the Empire presently suffered from this, as I shall relate in its own place.
The Sklavenoi, fair-haired, round-faced men in linen tunics elaborately embroidered with colorful yarns, stared in awe at our crowns and the shimmering silk robes we wore and at the jewels and pearls decorating our raiment. Their pale eyes also went wide at the marble and gold and silver in the throne room, at our thrones of gold and ivory, at the precious and holy icons of Christ and the Virgin and the saints on the wall (although, being pagan, they appreciated the beauty and ornament that went into their creation, not the piety), and at the floor mosaics, which I believe they took for a moment to be real things rather than images.
While they spoke to my father in bad, mushy Greek, I turned to my uncle Herakleios and said, "It's as if they've never been inside a building before."
"They haven't, not a building like this," he answered. "They live in little huts with straw roofs, mostly by riverbanks. Christ crucified, if poverty is a virtue, they're the most virtuous people in the world. But they can fight."
I did not fully understand him, not then. How could I? I had spent all my life in the palaces. What did I know of huts made of sticks and straw? But I have learned. And when you are cold and wet and hungry, a hut is more a palace than a palace is when you have all you want.
Afterwards came emissaries from the khagan of the Avars- swarthy men with narrow eyes set on a slant, flat noses, and even flatter faces, all of them bowlegged from spending most of their time in the saddle. Their gifts to my father included a double handful of fair-haired young women: slaves taken from among the Sklavenoi, several of whose tribes were under the dominion of the khagan.
I reckoned them a paltry present- some of them looked to be only a couple of years older than I was myself. But my father and my uncles inspected them with scrupulous attention to detail. At last my father said, "I shall put them to work here in the palaces. I expect we'll get good use from them."
He laughed, something I had never heard him do at an audience, which is in most instances almost as formal and solemn as the celebration of the divine liturgy. My uncles laughed, too, and so did the Avar envoys.
Again, I did not understand. I had but nine years at the time.
We also received ambassadors from the Lombards, whose possessions in Italy were and are mixed promiscuously with our own. After all these years, I do not recall which of their dukes and princes sent us men along with those who came from their king. There were several; I remember that much. The Lombards fight among themselves and seek our support in their quarrels, just as we try to use them to our own advantage. As he had with the various Sklavenoi and the envoys of the Avar khagan, though, my father made peace with them and sent them away happy.
There also came to this God-guarded and imperial city an emissary from the king of the Franks, the blond tribe now ruling in Gaul. I was excited when I heard of his arrival, for, as I told my brother, "The kings of the Franks are called the long-haired kings, which means they have hair growing all down along their backs like hogs. Maybe their ambassador will, too."
Herakleios, who by then was four years old, received my news with the usual amount of fraternal trust: "You're making that up," he said.
"What? About the Frankish kings? I am not," I said, and hit him, whereupon the little wretch ran and tattled to my father, who hit me a good deal harder.
I still believe, though I have never seen one, the Frankish kings have hair growing down their backs like swine. Their ambassador did not. He had no hair on his cheeks and chin, either, though he let his mustache grow long and droop down over his mouth to show he was no eunuch. He could not even speak Greek, but had to mumble away in Latin while his interpreter- an Italian, I suppose- turned his words into ones we could understand. Once translated, those words seemed friendly enough. After an exchange of presents and of good wishes, he departed from Constantinople on the long road back to his cold, gloomy homeland.
When the Frank had left the throne room, my father, though still in full regalia, abandoned imperial solemnity for a moment. "We've got it!" he cried. "Full peace, complete peace, freedom from all care, north and south, east and west- we've got it!" He turned to me, to drive home the lesson. "Not since your great-great-grandfather's day, since Herakleios beat the Persians and the deniers of Christ had not yet burst out of Arabia to torment us, has the Roman Empire been at peace against all its many foes at once."
"Then it will probably be just as long," I said, "before we know such peace again."
He boxed my ears, right there in front of everyone. But I was right.
Having made peace with all our neighbors, my father decided to see if he could also create peace within the holy orthodox church. This was no easy task, for the clerics had been at strife with one another for as long as we had been at war with the Arabs and our other enemies.
Indeed, the two struggles bore no small relationship to each other. The Christian folk of what were in Herakleios's day the provinces of the Roman East, Syria and Palestine and Egypt, have for centuries wrongly emphasized Christ's divine nature at the expense of His humanity, even claiming that after the Incarnation He had but one nature, the divine. The fourth holy ecumenical synod, that which was held at Chalcedon, condemned the impious heresy, but the foolish obstinacy of the Syrians and Egyptians made them cling to it nonetheless.
By my great-great-grandfather's time, the Roman government had been trying to root out the monophysite heresy for almost two hundred years. This, of course, was as it should have been, for the one true and God-guarded Empire must have only one true faith; how else is unity to be maintained? But, as I said, the heretics were stubborn, and would not abandon error.
My great-great-grandfather Herakleios sought a theological formula both the orthodox and the monophysites could accept, seeking to plaster over the differences between them rather than destroying the heresy. The patriarch of Constantinople in his day was himself of Syrian blood, and had monophysite ancestors. This fool of a Sergios suggested the Emperor declare that, while Christ did indeed have two natures, a single- divine- energy animated them.
Herakleios, being a better soldier than theologian, duly did this. The patriarch of Rome- the pope, as he is often known- at the time, a man named Honorius, assented in the doctrine of one will, if not energy, in Christ. The monophysites rejoiced, recognizing this doctrine as their own heresy in sheep's clothing. But the patriarch of Jerusalem anathematized Herakleios's formula.
So did many other leading theologians, so many that my great-great-grandfather recognized he had gone too far. But he also wanted to maintain such goodwill as he could from the monophysites of Syria and Egypt, for the ungrateful wretches, far from aiding him in the fight against the followers of the false prophet then erupting from Arabia, were welcoming the Arabs as liberators from Roman rule: to those who denied Christ, one group of Christians was no more offensive than any other.
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.