clothes.
“Where are you going?”
Tess picked up Hosius’s letter and held it up. “I want to know what’s in here before we leave.”
Reilly shot her a look. “Tess, come on.”
“Relax. I’m just going to see if they’ve got a computer I can use. Maybe a scanner too. I could use some help translating this.”
Reilly studied her for a beat, then shook his head. “What is it with you and these books?” He sighed with exasperation. “I ever tell you about my friend Cotton Malone?”
“No.”
He leaned back against the pillows. “Great agent. One of the best. A few years back, he decides he’s had enough intrigue for one lifetime. Looking for some peace and quiet. So he leaves the service and moves to Copenhagen and opens an antique bookshop.”
Tess gave him a look that said she knew where this was going. “And … ?”
“His days as a gun-toting government agent? Much more peaceful.”
Tess grinned. “I bet. I should meet him sometime. Sounds like he might have some good stories to tell, starting with where he got that name. In the meantime,” she said as she held up the document and crossed to the door, “I’ve got some translating to do.”
Reilly shrugged and slid down the bed. “Knock yourself out,” he told her as he curled up with a pillow, deciding his mind and body could use a break.
“SEAN, WAKE UO.”
He sprang up at her voice, his eyes stinging in protest. He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep.
“What time is it?” he asked groggily.
“Doesn’t matter.” Her voice was alive with excitement as she bounced onto the bed next to him and held up the ancient sheets to his face. “I got this translated. It reads like Hosius wrote it in his own hand. In A.D. 325. In Nicaea. At the end of the council.” Her eyes were dancing left and right, scrutinizing every reaction on Reilly’s groggy face. “He wrote it himself, Sean. Right after the big meeting.”
Reilly’s mind was still booting up. “Okay, so—”
Her enthusiasm blew over his words. “I think I know what Conrad had in those trunks.”
Chapter 50
NICAEA, ROMAN PROVINCE OF BYTHINIA
A.D. 325
The imperial palace was quiet. The long, drawn-out council was now over. Weeks and months of heated debate had finally ended with grudging compromise. All present had signed off on what had been agreed and were now heading back to their dioceses, to the east and to the west, all over the emperor’s dominion.
Constantine was pleased.
Resplendent in his imperial purple robes, festooned with a dizzying array of gold and jewels—the same as he wore on the first day of the proceedings, when he’d addressed the assembled clergymen, fully conscious of the awe his glittering outfit would instill in them—he looked out the window at the sleeping city and smiled.
“I’m pleased, Hosius,” he told his guest. “We have accomplished a lot here. And I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Hosius, the bishop of Cordoba, nodded graciously from his seat by the large, roaring fireplace. Mild and conciliatory by nature, the priest was in his seventh decade. It had been a hard few months for him, and they had taken their toll on his mind as well as his body. Like virtually all who held high office in the Church, Hosius had suffered under the persecutions of the Roman emperors. His wrinkled skin still bore the traces of it. Then everything had changed with Constantine. The rising general had embraced the Christian faith, and as he consolidated his hold on the throne, he’d ordered an end to its suppression. Hosius’s reputation had gotten him invited to the emperor’s court, and eventually, he’d become the new emperor’s chief theologian and spiritual advisor.
They’d come a long way since then.
“These disputes,” Constantine said. “Arius, Athanasius, Sabellius, and the rest of them, and all their petty contentions … Was Christ divine, or was he a created being? Are the Son and the Father of one substance, or not? Was Jesus the son of God or not?” He shook his head, angered by the reports—he hadn’t seen them with his own eyes—of mosaics in Arian churches in which Jesus Christ was depicted as a man who aged to a ripe old age, white hair and all. “You know what the real problem is? These men have too much time on their hands,” he said, his tone quietly angry. “They don’t realize that besides being unanswerable, the questions they keep asking are dangerous. Which is why they had to be stopped before they ruined everything.”
Constantine understood power.
He had already done what no emperor had done before him: He had unified the empire. Before his ascendancy, the Roman Empire had been divided into eastern and western parts, each ruled by its own emperor. Betrayals and territorial wars were commonplace. Constantine changed all that. He took power through cunning political maneuvering and a series of brilliant military campaigns, defeating both emperors and proclaiming himself the sole emperor of east and west in the year 324.
But his people were still divided.
Beyond east and west, he had major religious chasms to bridge: pagan versus Christian and, even more troublesome, Christian versus Christian. For there were many different interpretations of the legacy of the preacher they called Jesus Christ, and the disputes between the various groups of converts were turning violent. Accusations of heresy were hurled and counter-hurled. Incidents of torture grew more gruesome. One victim—Thomas, the bishop of Marash—was particularly frightful to look at. He’d had his eyes, nose, and lips cut out. His teeth had been pulled, and he’d had his arms and legs chopped off. He’d been kept prisoner by his Christian tormentors in Armenia for more than twenty years, suffering an additional mutilation on each anniversary of his captivity.
It had to stop.
Which was why Constantine had called all the bishops and senior church dignitaries from across his empire to the city, to attend the first general council of the Church. Over three hundred prelates, accompanied by many more priests, deacons, and presbyters, had heeded the call of his strongly worded epistles. Only the bishop of Rome, Pope Sylvester I, wasn’t in attendance. He’d sent two of his most senior legates to represent him. Constantine didn’t mind his absence. The emperor already had enough to contend with, what with the presence of the more authoritative bishops of the East. He was happy to preside over matters himself and wave his big stick to get them to sit down, have their debates, argue over who and what Christ really was and what he did, tangle over how they were going to share in the jurisdiction of his bountiful legacy—and agree.
On everything.
Constantine had long been aware of the unstoppable popularity of the Christian faith. His mother was a fervent Christian. Twenty years earlier, he’d witnessed Diocletian’s Great Persecution, when the emperor had ordered churches across his empire to be destroyed, their treasures plundered, their scriptural writings burned, acting on the advice of the oracle of Apollo—and he’d seen it fail. He’d seen the wide appeal of Christianity’s inclusive and hopeful message, and its relentless spread across the empire. He knew that painting himself as the faith’s great defender, rather than emulating his predecessors as its great persecutor, would buy him a lot of followers. Furthermore, the distant lands he’d conquered held diverse tribes of barbarians, from the Allemani to the Picts and the Visigoths. He needed to find a way to unite them all.
One religion, common to all, would achieve that in spades.
Christianity, he knew, was that religion.
And, as he’d discovered, not even he was immune to it.
