The amen resounded through the great church. Before its echoes had died away, Arsakios stepped forward, his hand upraised. “May I add a few words to your brilliant discussion of the issues, your holiness?”
“Er, yes, go ahead,” Eutropios said nervously. Like everyone else, he knew the patriarch of Alexandria was a better theologian than he. Emperors tended to pick the prelates with whom they worked most closely for pliability rather than brains.
“Thank you.” Arsakios bowed with exquisite politeness. Despite a vanishing trace of Egyptian accent in his Greek, his smooth tenor was an instrument he played masterfully. “Your address covered many of the points I wished to make, thus enabling me to achieve the virtue of brevity.” Stifled cheers rose here and there; Arsakios ignored them.
He went on, “I am not quite certain, for example, your holiness, of your conception of the relationship between this present dispute over images and previous disagreements over how Christ’s humanity and divinity coexist.”
“I do not see that there is a relationship,” Eutropios said cautiously. Argyros frowned; he did not see it either.
But Arsakios raised an eyebrow in feigned disbelief. “But is not an icon of our Lord a statement of christology in and of itself?”
‘The man’s mad,” Lakhanodrakon whispered to Argyros at the same time as Eutropios demanded, “In what way?” of Arsakios.
And the patriarch of Alexandria, smiling, sank the barb: “Let me state it in the form of questions: What does an image of Christ portray? If it depicts His human nature alone, is this not separating His humanity from His divinity, as the heretic Nestorians do? But if it portrays His divinity, does it not attempt both to circumscribe what may not be circumscribed and to subordinate His humanity altogether, in a Monophysite fashion? In either case, then, the validity of the use of images comes into question, does it not? So, at least, decided the synod held in my city this past fall.” With another elegant bow, he gave the floor back to his brother of Constantinople.
Eutropios gaped at him in dismay. NikephorosIII scowled from his high seat, but he could do little, autocrat though he was. The Egyptian’s attack on the icons had been perfectly-respectful and raised an important question Eutropios’s opening statement had left untouched.
The prelates from the three eastern patriarchates also realized that. They crowded round Arsakios, showering him with congratulations. Eutropios was no great theologian, but he did have some political sense. “I declare this first session of the council adjourned!” he cried. His own supporters left quickly and quietly. The Emperor stalked off toward the private passageway that led back to the palaces. No sooner had he disappeared than the clerics still crowding the floor of Hagia Sophia raised an exultant shout: “We’ve won! We’ve won!”
“Arrogant devils, aren’t they?” Lakhanodrakon said indignantly.
“Hmm?” A glimpse of motion behind the screen of the second-story women’s gallery had distracted Argyros. For a moment he saw a pair of dark, avid eyes peering down through the filigree work at the churchmen below. He wondered to whom they belonged. The Emperor’s wife and mistress were both blue-eyed blondes; Nikephoros had a weakness for fair women. In any case, neither Martina nor Zoe was devout. The magistrianos scratched his head. He had the nagging feeling that barely seen face was familiar.
Shrugging, he gave it up and accompanied the Master of Offices out of the great church. The Augusteion was crowded with people wondering how the first day of the council had gone. Some of Arsakios’s monks harangued the Constantinopolitans: “Anathema to the worship of lifeless wood and paint!
Destruction to idolatry!”
When an iconophile took violent exception to the anathemas hurled at him, a monk ducked under his wild swing and hit him in the pit of the stomach with his staff. The evasion and counter showed soldierly skill. Truly Arsakios had come ready for anything.
“His imperial majesty is not going to be pleased at the prospect of a council out of control,” the Master of Offices said.
“No,” Argyros agreed, “but what if the Alexandrians are right?” His head was still spinning from the subtlety of their argument: to justify the use of images now, somehow the Emperor’s theologians would have to steer between the Scylla of Monophysitism and the Charybdis of the Nestorian heresy. Lakhanodrakon looked at him reproachfully. “Not you, too?”
“The Holy Spirit will guide the assembled fathers to the truth,” the magistrianos said confidently. Being a veteran of years of bureaucratic infighting, he added, “Of course, we may have to help things along a bit.”
The summons to return to Hagia Sophia, or rather to the residence of the patriarch, which was attached to it, woke Argyros in the middle of the night. “What is it?” he asked, yawning in the face of the messenger.
“A gathering of scholars seeking to refute Arsakios,” the man replied. I le was one of Lakhanodrakon’s servants. “I am to tell you that your earlier exposition was clever enough to make Eutropios hope you can help find a way out of our present difficulty.”
Eutropios was an amiable nonentity who barely knew Argyros existed. Like the fellow standing in front of the magistrianos, the order came from the Master of Offices. That made it no less flattering. Rubbing his eyes once more, Argyros dressed quickly and followed the messenger, who had a linkbearer waiting outside.
“Careful here,” the magistrianos warned, steering them around a pothole in the street in front of the house of his neighbor Theognostos, who was a senior member of the bakers’ guild.
“That should be filled in,” Lakhanodrakon’s servant said. “I almost fell into it a few minutes ago.”
On the way to the great church, they passed the hostel where the archbishop of Thessalonike was staying. The archbishop supported the use of icons. A couple of dozen of Arsakios’s monks stood in the street, ringing cowbells and chanting, “Bugger the images! Bugger the images!” A few more, their throats tired from such work, sat around a bonfire, passing a jar of wine from one to the next.
“They’ll make no friends that way,” Lakhanodrakon’s man observed.
“No, but they may wear down their foes,” Argyros said.
The monks’ chant broke off as someone hurled a chamberpot at them from a second-story window. The ones befouled shouted curses that made their previous vulgar chant sound genteel by comparison.
“Go on ahead,” Argyros told his companions. “I’ll catch you up soon.” They stared at him as if he were a madman, but went after a little argument, the linkbearer gladly, the servant with misgivings. He yielded only when Argyros pulled rank.
Whistling, the magistrianos strode up to the men by the bonfire and said cheerily, “Down with the icons!
How about a swallow of wine for a thirsty man?”
One of the monks rose, none too steadily, and handed him the jug. “Down with the filthy icons it is,” he said. Showing decayed teeth, he opened his mouth in a tremendous yawn.
“Wearing work, going to the council of the day and harassing the damned iconodule in there by night,” Argyros said.
The monk yawned again. “Ah, well, we’re just little fellows out here. Arsakios and his bishops are sleeping sound, but we’re caterwauling for all the head picture-lovers tonight, and we’ll serenade ‘em again tomorrow, and the next day, and as long as it takes to bring home the truth.”
“A clever man, Arsakios, to come up with such a scheme,” the magistrianos said.
“Here, give me a slug of that,” the monk said. His throat worked. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his black robe, then chuckled. “Aye, Arsakios’ll sleep sound tonight, with that doxy of his to warm his bedding.”