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
