The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (44 page)

He himself had never had any time for theological speculation: of the doctrine of the Single Will he probably understood little and cared less. Originally intended as a constructive compromise, it had only added to the prevailing bitterness and confusion. The sensible thing, clearly, would be to forget all about it and pretend that it had never been put forward. Unfortunately, however, it still had influential adherents in the capital, led by the Patriarch Paul in person, while a vociferous opposition had been organized in Africa by an alarmingly articulate monk known as Maximus the Confessor. Early in
646
Maximus arranged for a manifesto condemning the heresy to be endorsed by a synod of African bishops and forwarded to Pope Theodore; and the Pope, understandably irritated that his predecessor's action of only six years before should have had so little effect, wrote to the Patriarch demanding a full statement of his beliefs. Paul replied, defending the offending doctrine in the strongest possible terms, whereupon Theodore promptly excommunicated him.

Constans was still only seventeen, but his reaction was so characteristic of him that it must clearly have been his own initiative. Whereas his grandfather would have defended his Patriarch in a long and closely reasoned document - as Paul doubtless urged him to do - he remained determinedly impartial, while contriving at the same time to be both firm and decisive. Early in
648
he published an edict known as the
Typos,
or
Type.
It did not seek to
weigh the pros and cons of mono
thelitism, still less to pronounce on its validity; it simply decreed that the whole dispute should be consigned to oblivion, and that the state of affairs that had prevailed before it began should continue 'as if the issue had never arisen'. If a bishop or a clerk should dare even to raise the subject, he would be immediately deposed; if a monk, he would be excommunicated; if a member of the army or civil service, he would be deprived of his rank or office; if a senator or the equivalent, he would lose his property; if a private person, he would be flogged and banished.

It is hard not to sympathize with Constans; at the same time he should have known, even at his age, that it is impossible to put back the clock. The problem would not go away, and the
Typos
satisfied nobody. In

October
649
Pope Theodore's successor, Martin I, summoned a Council of
105
bishops in the Lateran Palace which duly condemned it; he then sent the Emperor a full report of the Council's findings, considerately translated into Greek for his benefit, under cover of a letter of studied politeness in which he required him formally to express his abhorrence of the monothelite dogma.

Constans, it need hardly be said, had no intention of doing any such thing. Little did Pope Martin know that before his letter was even written the newly appointed Byzantine Exarch of Ravenna, Olympius, was on his way to Italy with a small armed force, bearing orders to arrest the Pontiff - on the somewhat shaky grounds that his recent election had not been submitted to C
onstantinople for approval. Ana
stasius, Pope Martin's biographer, claims that Olympius had decided to kill the Pope rather than take him prisoner but, being continually thwarted in his attempts to do so, concluded that his intended victim was under divine protection and made a complete confession to him; what is beyond doubt is the fact that he then tried to take advantage of the widespread anti-Byzantine feeling in Italy to detach the whole province from the Empire and seize the secular power for himself. He did not succeed, but retired with his army to Sicily where he died three years later.

One year after his death, however, in June
653,
his successor as Exarch, a certain Theodore Calliopas, landed in Italy. Theodore had similar instructions, and was determined to carry them out. Within days of his arrival, Pope Martin - already a sick man - had been duly arrested and put on board the ship that was to carry him to face trial in Constantinople. For some unexplained reason he was not taken there directly, but was held for a year on the island of Naxos; only in September
654
did he reach the Bosphorus - to find that his tribulations had hardly begun. Arriving early in the morning, he was obliged to remain on board till sunset, being subjected throughout the day to the jeers and mockery of the populace. At nightfall he was taken off to the prison of Prandearia, where he was held for the next ninety-three days. Finally, half-starving, freezing cold (for it was now mid-winter) and unable to walk, he was brought before the tribunal.

To the original charge of having assumed the Papacy without imperial consent, a new and graver one had now been added: the Pope was accused of having conspired with Olympius against the Emperor. He naturally denied all the allegations, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion: he was found guilty, sentenced to death and led out into a
large open courtyard where, in the presence of a dense crowd, his papal robes were torn from his shoulders. Even his undershirt was ripped from top to bottom, 'so that he was naked in several places'. An iron chain was then flung around his neck and he was marched through the streets to the
Praetorium -
the imperial prison - with the executioner's sword carried before him. On arrival there he was obliged to share a cell with murderers and common criminals, and was treated with such brutality that his legs were badly cut and the floor of the cell was stained with his blood.

Patriarch Paul, meanwhile, was on his deathbed. There he was visited by Constans, who gave him - presumably in an attempt to raise his spirits - a full account of Martin's trial and his subsequent sufferings. To the Emperor's surprise, the dying man was much distressed. 'Alas,' he murmured, 'this too must I answer for'; and he begged the Emperor as his last wish that the Pope should be subjected to no further ill treatment and that his life should be spared. His request was granted - though only after Martin had spent another eighty-five days in prison - and the sentence commuted from death to banishment. The old man was sent off to Cherson in the Crimea where, less than six months later, on
16
September
655,
he died. Nor was he the only martyr to the doctrine of the Single Will: soon after his condemnation it was the turn of Maximus the Confessor. He too was brought from Italy to stand trial in Constantinople, where he was subjected to unspeakable brutalities - including the removal of his tongue and the cutting off of his right hand - in attempts to force him to recant. But like Martin he stood firm and -thanks largely to his immense reputation as a theologian
1
- also escaped execution, finally dying a natural death in
662
in his place of exile, at the age of eighty.

As the eastern provinces of his Empire fell one by one to the Arab invaders, Constans began to turn his thoughts increasingly towards those of the West. In the past half-century they had given his predecessors and himself little enough trouble; his grandfather Heraclius had hardly needed to spare them a thought. He knew, however, that this happy state of affairs could not last. In the Balkans, the Slav settlers were

1
Maximus, even more than Pope Martin, had been the spiritual leader of the opposition both to the
Ekt
hesis
and the
Typos.
Indeed he had gone even
further, maintaining that the Empe
ror as a layman had no right to pronounce on theological matters. The author of no less than ninety major works, he was in many respects the forerunner of those medieval fathers who were to uphold the claims of the Church against the State in centuries to come.

growing restive and making difficulties over their annual tribute; in Italy, especially after the arrest and trial of Pope Martin, Byzantium was more unpopular than ever it had been; Sicily, meanwhile, was in very real danger from the Saracens, who had first attacked it as early as
652
and had since occupied still more of the North African coast, from which they would doubtless be launching further expeditions before long. If, in short, preventive measures were not taken, the western provinces might drop away from the Empire just as surely as those in the East had done.

The respite afforded by Muawiya's preoccupations with the Caliphate gave the Emperor precisely the chance he needed. Already in
658
we find him leading a punitive expedition against the Balkan Slavs, large numbers of whom he transported and resettled in Asia Minor; but it was only in
662
that he took the decision which might have changed the whole future history of the Roman Empire: to leave Constantinople for ever and establish his court permanently in the West. His grandfather Heraclius had had the same idea nearly half a century before, and had been dissuaded only by the combined entreaties of Patriarch and people. Heraclius, however, had been an outstandingly popular ruler; his grandson was not. Constans had antagonized the monophysite and monothelitist communities by refusing to give them the support they had hoped for, and the orthodox by his treatment of Martin and Maximus; worse still, in
660
he had shamelessly ordered the murder of his brother Theodosius, having previously forced him into the priesthood - not, as he claimed, because Theodosius had been conspiring against him but, as everybody knew, because he was under pressure to crown him co-Emperor and could not bear to contemplate any sharing of his own authority.

We can probably discount the suggestion by later historians that the Emperor fled his capital to escape from the hideous visions of his bloodstained brother which haunted his midnight hours; nor, surely, can his decision be attributed to his unpopularity in the city - even though this may go some way to explain why the inhabitants seem to have raised no objections.
1
He had never made any effort to be popular and, so long as his position remained secure, the degree to which he was loved by his subjects was a matter of supreme indifference to him. In any case his primary purpose in leaving was a far more honourable one: to protect Italy, Sicily and what was left of his African province from Saracen

1
Another reason for their apathy may have been that they did not know his true intentions and simply assumed that he was leaving on an extended tour of his western dominions rather than deserting them for ever.

conquest. If in addition he could drive the Lombards from Italy - or at least from the southern half of the peninsula - then so much the better.

Leaving his wife and three sons in Constantinople, the Emperor sailed in early
662
for Greece, where he seemed to have found more to do than he had expected. He remained there, first in Thessalonica and then in Athens, for a full year; and it was not until the spring of
663
that he finally crossed the Adriatic and landed with his army at Tarentum — now Taranto. The Lombards put up what opposition they could, but their local militias were small: Constans was able to advance without too much difficulty as far as Benevento, to which he laid siege. Unfortunately for him, the city had already sent an urgent appeal for aid to the Lombard King Grimuald in his capital at Pavia, and Grimuald had at once dispatched a relief force of considerable strength; if Benevento could hold out until its arrival, it would be the Byzantines who found themselves outnumbered.

At this point, as the Lombard army was advancing rapidly southwards, a messenger who had been sent on ahead by Grimuald to inform the Beneventans of its approach was captured and brought before Constans. Cunningly, the Emperor offered to spare his life if he would deliver a contrary message, to the effect that no help was to be forthcoming. The messenger - his name was Sesuald - agreed; but when he was brought beneath the walls he shouted, before his captors could silence him, that the army was indeed on its way and had already reached the Sangro River. He barely had time to add a plea for the protection of his wife and children before his head was struck from his shoulders; shortly afterwards it was loaded into a catapult and hurled over the walls.

But Sesuald had saved Benevento, and the imperial army had no course but to go on to Naples - which was a Greek city, and therefore friendly - and thence to Rome where Constans, despite his treatment of Martin, was accorded a formal welcome by Pope Vitalian and solemnly escorted into the city - the first Emperor to set foot in it since the fall of the Western Empire nearly two centuries before. The
Liber Pontificalis
describes approvingly how he spent the next twelve days visiting all the major churches; but the Romans were a good deal less gratified when he began stripping their city of what few valuables it still possessed -including even the copper from the roof of the Pantheon - and shipping them back to Constantinople. Great must have been their relief when, on
12
July, he returned to Naples.

In the autumn, having marched slowly south through Calabria, Constans crossed the Straits of Messina to Sicily; and for the next five years he kept his court at Syracuse. For the Sicilians, those five years were one protracted nightmare. The honour, such as it was, of finding their island selected for the capital of the Roman Empire was as nothing in comparison with the extortions of the imperial tax-gatherers - for the satisfaction of whom, we are told, husbands were sold into slavery, wives forced into prostitution, children separated from their parents. Nor can we tell how long these depredations might have continued had not the Emperor unexpectedly come to a sudden, violent and somewhat humiliating end. There was, so far as we know, no preconceived plan to assassinate him, far less any deeply hatched conspiracy; but on
1
5
September 668, while he was innocently lathering himself in his bath, one of his Greek attendants - in what we can only assume to have been a fit of uncontrollable nostalgia - felled him with the soap-dish.