Raptor (138 page)

John showed one last flicker of righteous resistance. “You are asking me to assist the cause of
Teodoric.
An Arian. A heretic. How could I persuade even my own conscience that I am thereby helping Mother Church?”

I said pointedly, “You are saving her having to seek a new archbishop for her episcopate of Ravenna. Now come along, and tell Theodoric that he has the unconditional surrender he wanted.”

And so, because I made sure that my king knew nothing of the “co-rulership” pact that Odoacer had agreed upon, it came to pass that Theodoric commenced his reign with one regrettably unwise deed. I might have foreseen it, because I knew how he had acted on other such occasions, without hesitation or compunction. And later, looking back, I often wished that I had somehow managed to advise against this impulsive action. But at the time I thought nothing except that Theodoric had every reason and right to do what he did.

On a March day in the year 493 by the Christian count, Flavius Theodoricus Rex made his triumphal entry into Ravenna, but what he did on that spring day would cast an autumnal shadow down all the years to follow. When the rites and ovations and prayers were concluded, he and we attendants proceeded on to the Laurel Grove palace, and there met Odoacer for the first time face to face. He was old, bent, bald—and apparently unembarrassed by hypocrisy, because he came to meet us with a welcoming smile, with his arms outstretched for the fraternal embrace. But Theodoric ignored the gesture and reached instead for his sword.

On that March day in the 1,246th Year of Rome’s Founding, the Western Roman Empire was given rebirth and renewal. It would flourish splendidly in Theodoric’s keeping, but it would never quite forgive what he did on that day. Theodoric drew his snake blade. Odoacer backed away in surprise and terror. He gasped, “Huar ist gudja? Ubinam Iohannes? Where is Bishop John?” and his eyes sought here and there about the hall, but the complicitous archbishop had prudently not come with us from the cathedral.

On that March day began a reign the most laudable that any nation in Europe had enjoyed in many centuries. But Theodoric would have his detractors and rivals and enemies, and they would remember—they would see to it that others remembered—what he did on that day. He swung his sword like an ax, two-handed, and cleaved Odoacer from collarbone to beltline. Then, as the sundered corpse crumpled limply to the floor, Theodoric turned to us and said, “Herduic, you were right. You once remarked that Odoacer must have gone boneless with age.”

From that long-ago day to this, there would ever be a cloud darkening even the brightest skies of the goodly reign of Theodoric the Great.

Not even Odoacer’s closest friends and associates would have denied that he had deserved his execution. And not even Theodoric’s most critical opponents would have denied that a victorious monarch, in dealing with his defeated foes, had every right to play judex, lictor et exitium. Certainly no one anywhere murmured the least complaint when the traitorous Georgius Honoratus was fetched from Haustaths and Theodoric sentenced that old wretch to a punishment rather more severe than mere death. What did cause so many people to look askance at Theodoric, after his slaying of Odoacer, was one particular circumstance: Ravenna’s Archbishop John told an outrageous lie.

Although John had been indignantly reluctant to tamper with the truth when I asked him to, he later told a greater lie of his own volition, even though, according to his professed Christian beliefs, that sin put his Christian soul at hazard. What happened was this:

Theodoric had barely got his saddlebags unpacked in Ravenna when a delegation of Church dignitaries arrived from Rome. The Patriarch Bishop Gelasius was not among them—he regarded himself as too exalted to go calling on a king—but the embassy of “cardinal deacons” said he had given them authority to speak for “all of Holy Church.” Their speaking was at first obsequious, almost cringing. Indeed, they talked for such a long time in looping circumlocutions that it took Theodoric a while to determine what they were talking
about.
At last he grasped that they and the Church were worried, well-nigh frantic. And what about? Well, he, Theodoric, had overthrown a king who had been a Catholic Christian. He, the new king, was an Arian. The deacons were anxious to know: did he intend (as anyone would expect of a Catholic monarch) to impose his own religion as the state religion?

Theodoric laughed. “Why would I? I do not care what beliefs or superstitions my people choose to hold, so long as those do not cause disorderly conduct. Even if I did care, I could not legislate or enforce any change in men’s minds.”

That put the cardinal deacons at ease—so much so that they shed their servile manner and ventured upon cajolery. If Theodoric did not care what his people believed, then would he have any objection to the Church’s doing its best to convert the new Arian and pagan immigrants to the locally prevailing belief, the true belief?

Theodoric shrugged tolerantly. “You are free to try. I say again, I have no power over men’s minds.”

So now the deacons moved from cajolery to importunity. It would greatly aid the Church’s campaign of conversion, they said, and would greatly gratify Papa Gelasius if—since Theodoric really did not care what the Church did—he would give his sanction to what it did. That is, if he would publicly proclaim that he was letting Catholic missionaries and evangelists, with his blessing, move among his Arian and pagan subjects, with the intent of sowing sanctified wheat where only wicked weeds had grown before, and…

“Hold,” said Theodoric stonily. “I have given you permission. I will not give you privilege. I will no more endorse your proselytizing than I would that of an Old Religion wise-sayer.”

At which, the delegation did much forehead-clapping and hand-wringing and dolorous moaning. This might have impressed some observers as sincere affliction, but Theodoric was only annoyed by it. He gruffly bade the clerics begone, and that
did
distress them. Considering how worriedly they had arrived, they should have left relieved, but they departed grumbling that they had been rudely turned away without a fair hearing.

Theodoric clearly did not forget the incident, or minify it. Very soon thereafter, he published a statement that he would stand by throughout his reign. Then and since, many of the world’s rulers and divines and philosophers have marveled at the novelty of a monarch’s uttering such a sentiment, and just as many others have ruefully shaken their heads at the folly of it:

“Religionem imperare non possumus, quis nemo cogitur ut credat invitus. Galáubeins ni mag weis anabudáima; ni ains hun galáubjáith withra is wilja. We cannot command religion; no one can be forced to believe against his will.”

The Church of Rome was, of course,
committed
to making all mankind adopt and embrace and be subject to its creed. So if, until now, its clerics had only mistrusted Theodoric as an unbeliever and an interloper, his “non possumus” pronouncement made them hate and condemn him as a deadly enemy to their mission in this world, their holy calling, their livelihood and their very existence. They could cite the words of Jesus, “He that is not with me is against me.” From this time forward, the Catholic Christian Church would ceaselessly, unrelentingly work for Theodoric’s downfall, and would implacably oppose his every act of rulership.

That is why, when Ravenna’s Archbishop John was stricken with a sudden illness, there were many who whispered that he had been poisoned by his Church superiors, in punishment for the part he had played in securing Theodoric’s regnancy. If that was so, John obviously forgave his poisoners, because, on his deathbed, he told a lie intended to discredit his Church’s enemy, Theodoric. To the priests giving him the last rites, John repeated what he had once told me: that he had got Odoacer to surrender Ravenna only on condition that the two kings would thereafter reign as co-equals. But then John added the untruth: that
Theodoric had also agreed to that.
And then John died, presumably into hell. But the lie endured and was repeated—the Church saw to that—and the charge was widely believed forever after: that Theodoric had pledged his word to both a holy man and a fellow king, just to get easily inside Ravenna, then had treacherously slain an unarmed, unresisting old man who had trusted his word.

There was no one to refute the accusation except Theodoric and myself. And our word had little weight against that of a high priest about to stand before the Judgment Seat. Not many would believe that John had lied and thereby deliberately invited damnation. But I knew it to be a fact, and I knew that he had done it to
make
the lie that much more believable. For the sake of his Church, John had done a thing that, however reprehensible, was certainly a brave act of self-sacrifice. It earned him a tomb burial with all the Church’s honors and reverence, and I—even I—hope that hell dealt leniently with him.

Meanwhile, some of Theodoric’s best-intentioned actions were giving the Catholics opportunities to find fault with him—or to impute fault, if they could not find any. When he set his troops in Verona to demolishing the tumbledown old Chapel of St. Stephen there, an outcry of course went up from the churchmen. They were not at all mollified by his patient explanation that the chapel’s removal was necessary in order to strengthen the city’s defensive wall. Even louder protest went up when Theodoric began
employing jews
in his service. He recruited a number of Jewish merchants to handle certain treasury accounts, for the very good reason that Jews, however cunning they may be at using numbers to their own business advantage, are certainly scrupulous and dependable in the counting and adding of numbers, and Theodoric wanted his accounts to be accurate.

That brought Laurentius, the Catholic Bishop of Mediolanum, storming all the way from there to Ravenna to thunder, “Christians could do that work just as well! Why do you give preference to filthy Jews?”

Theodoric placidly retorted, “Christian workers, Laurentius, are overly concerned with their right to rest during one day out of every seven. Jews are more concerned that on the other six days a man ought to
work.
And you, do not ever dare to shout at me again.”

It goes without saying that the Jews in the cities of Italia, like the city Jews everywhere in the world, had forever been resented and reviled by their Christian neighbors, and for the same reason: not because they were of alien religion, not because they bore the blame for the killing of Jesus, but because they generally had made themselves more prosperous than their immediate Christian neighbors. Now, however, Italia’s Jews began to suffer worse things than revilement. That was because the Catholics, while they could safely go on preaching and ranting against the “heretic Arians,” obviously could not raise their hands against an armed occupying force. Against the unarmed, pacific, defenseless Jews, they could and did.

In Theodoric’s own capital city of Ravenna, a crowd was whipped to riot—apparently by some Christian citizen protesting the rate of interest charged by a Jew who had lent him money—and, during the commotion, the Jews’ synagogue was set afire and badly damaged. Since it was impossible, after the frenzied crowd had been dispersed, to find the actual arsonists who had set the blaze, Theodoric announced that he was holding the entire Christian population guilty. He levied a punishing fine on every Catholic
and
Arian Christian, the money to be used to repair the damaged temple. At that, every last priest of the Church of Rome—from the Patriarch Bishop Gelasius to hermits in the hinterlands—roared out accusation that the heretic Theodoric was
worsening
his persecution of good Catholics, and
now
on behalf of those sworn enemies of the faith, the diabolical, irredeemable, unpardonable Jews!

It was at about this time too that the Patriarch Bishop published his Decretum Gelasianum, with its index of books recommended for the Christian faithful to read and those books which they were forbidden to read. We advisers to Theodoric suggested that he might want to take action against this infringement on the rights of his subjects.

“Vái,” he said dismissively. “How many of the Christian faithful can read? And if they are so faithful as to be spineless, I can hardly care if they do get trampled by their priests.”

“Gelasius addressed the decree to every Christian, not just Catholics,” Soas pointed out. “It is one more attempt to enforce the position that the Bishop of Rome is the overlord of
all
Christendom, and this decree further claims that at no time has he not been.”

“Let Gelasius pretend what he likes. I cannot pretend to speak for all Christendom and refute him.”

“Theodoric,” Soas persisted. “It is no secret that, ever since Constantine gave them leave to preach, the bishops of the Church have been preaching one notion in particular. That there is no hope for mankind until it is
Christian bishops
who decide which man is to wear a crown—until every king and emperor is the bishops’ anointed
creature.
That might not be an utterly unthinkable notion if it meant a conclave of bishops doing the deciding. But here we have one bishop asserting that he is the mind and the voice of them all.”