Daphne & Sebastian: Part Two (Graven Images)

a novella of war, politics, theater, sports, and religion

“Medallion with Christ from an icon frame” (met open access)

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THREE MONTHS LATER

Valentino and the Iconoclasts

Valentino sat peacefully one night in his small chamber within a secluded monastery in Italy just several miles outside Ravenna. His face illuminated by the candle burning on his small desk, he crouched down in his chair, elbows pressing into the wood, fervently praying to God. All around him were the icons he cherished: golden images of saints and the Virgin Mary; the dark face of Jesus flickering in and out of the candlelight; books full of images from stories in the Bible.

He had been living in terror ever since news came that a group of bishops had arrived in Ravenna accompanied by a large detachment of soldiers from eastern Anatolia. “Isaurians,” he had said while trembling throughout the day, and the word felt exotic and foreign: Isauria, almost as far away as Armenia, was a cradle of ferocious warriors who had conquered the empire before. Now those same Isaurians, in a constant struggle against warriors representing the new religion following the Prophet Muhammad, had arrived in Italy under orders from the emperor, and they were coming for the monks.

“They’re coming for us,” he had said matter-of-factly throughout the days prior, but none of his fellow monks believed him. “They’re coming for all of us.”

Now it was night. And as always, nearly everyone was sleeping but him. Valentino stayed up each night praying to Jesus, Mary, and the saints, pleading with them to intercede and save him and the others from the coming attack.

They had all laughed at him, the other monks. They had heard news of the iconoclasts destroying images of Jesus in Constantinople. The emperor had torn down an image of Jesus from the entryway to an enormous church and replaced Christ with a simple cross, sparking riots throughout the capital and street-by-street battles between iconoclasts and “iconophiles,” between those who wanted to destroy all graven images in the empire and those who cherished these same images.

“It’s all happening in Constantinople and Anatolia,” the other monks insisted to Valentino. “Sebastian does not care one way or the other about icons.”

They were forgetting that Sebastian could simply be replaced.

The emperor himself had proclaimed against icons, demanding their destruction: what did Sebastian matter?

As Valentino prayed late into the night, he heard the boom of knocking on the monastery’s entrance. He jumped up from his seat.

“They have come for me,” he said aloud. “They have come for us all!”

He rushed out of his small rectangular room, the container of all his possessions — a blanket, some candles, and the golden icons of saints, Jesus, Mary, the apostles: he sensed that these images, so precious to him, adorned his walls now for the final night. And yet still he prayed to Mary that she would save him.

“Open up!” a man was shouting from beyond the monastery’s modest walls.

Valentino heard other monks coming out of their rooms.

He rushed with a candle through the corridors and then out into the courtyard where several other monks had gathered near the great doors against which a soldier was banging the handle of a sword. Soon dozens of monks were in the courtyard.

“Open up or be slaughtered where you stand, idolaters!” the man shouted.

Panicked whispering spread amongst the other monks. At first none of them dared look Valentino in the face; each was terrified for his own life.

Several other men shouted the same: “open up or be slaughtered where you stand!” How many were there? Valentino and the rest of the monks were completely defenseless. Constantinople’s troubles had found them here after all.

Not one of the other monks was laughing at Valentino now. They were frozen in the courtyard, staring at him, as if demanding he take some sort of leadership role. But Valentino was not prepared for leadership; he was only prepared to plead for his life.

“Valentino!” one monk who had mocked him exclaimed. “What do we do?”

“We pray to the icons,” Valentino blurted out. The pounding on the doors continued, the accusation of idolatry flung over the walls again and again. Valentino was trembling, shaking, stuttering as he spoke. Somehow he managed to fight through the fear. “We show these men the power of God. The Lord will strike them down the moment they try and destroy our icons.”

“It’s true then!” another monk exclaimed, his voice shrill. “They have come to destroy the icons!”

“We have come to end the pagan worship in this unholy place!” a soldier shouted. “Open up or be slaughtered where you stand!”

“They’ve come to kill us all,” said Valentino, reminding the man of his warnings. “Open the doors and we all die. None of you listened to me and now they’re here to kill us all!” His voice turned shrill, desperate.

Valentino wondered: would it even matter if they had listened to him?

“Open up!” the booming voice continued. “Idolaters!”

And then came a dozen arrows, each of them on fire, hailing down from the other side of the wall, striking dead two monks with shots through their chests. A cluster of arrows made contact with a stable off to the side of the courtyard: the horses neighed in terror as the whole roof caught fire. Then came the least expected: an enormous ball of fire, launched from a catapult, smashed into a cluster of monks, each of whom burst into flames and began running in circles.

“Rush to the icons!” Valentino shouted. “Call upon the power of Christ, Mary, the saints!”

The survivors all listened to him, he assumed, although the whole courtyard was now in a state of chaos where almost no one was even looking at him. Fire was all around. Horses neighed and trembled. Arrows rained from the sky. Valentino could feel the heat of fire already as a burning monk ran screaming into a wall, knocking himself out.

“Pray to the icons!” Valentino repeated, and he rushed back to his quarters.

Once there he fell prostrate to the ground before the dozen icons adorning his wall. He wept and pleaded for intercession: from Jesus, from Mary, from ten different saints. As he cried he heard a heavy boom: the wooden doors had fallen to Byzantine forces. With sound as his guide, he imagined what was happening: there were swords coming out of scabbards and plunging into the chests of the monks who had not rushed to their icons; there were men pleading for mercy before gurgling and collapsing dead on the ground; there were horses burning up in the stables.

“Save the horses!” Valentino heard a Byzantine soldier shout in Greek, and then several more men were cut down: all at once he stopped hearing anyone scream.

In his small rectangular room, surrounded by all his meagre possessions and his icons, he rocked back and forth on the ground, praying through tears to Christ.

Then he heard the door behind him slam open. He felt a sharp point in his back, saw the tip of a sword come thrusting through his rib cage, felt another sword make contact with his neck, and then he fell dying into a growing pool of his own blood.

Before he died, he saw the soldiers smashing his icons into pieces. He saw them rip up one of his books which told the story of the Gospels through images. And then he felt an overwhelming sense of peace: he had died a martyr’s death, standing for Christian values in the face of heresy. As he lost consciousness, he felt himself drifting into the arms of the Almighty Savior.

Sebastian’s new orders

Sebastian’s forces had gained substantial control over the countryside spreading out from Ravenna. He and his men had stopped the raids against Ravenna’s farmlands; they had captured several poorly defended towns. Each day he had felt his domain growing larger, all in the name of providing security to the people of Ravenna and its surrounding regions.

And then the iconoclasts had shown up. “What has become of the Emperor?” Sebastian wondered. “A man bent on living out a peaceful life, transformed into a religious fanatic.”

“You have new orders now, Sebastian,” one of the bishops seated before him said. This was Konstantinos, a man for whom Sebastian had felt particular hatred ever since they had met a few days earlier.

There were four of these stupid bishops here, newly arrived from Constantinople and crammed into his office in the palace. They sat in the same location where Daphne had sat when Sebastian met her, and they had come from the east with orders from the Emperor.

Looking at these serious men, who took themselves seriously when no thinking person could, sent a shiver through Sebastian’s whole body. They all wore the same robes, showcased the same cropped haircuts, and spoke with the same mindless zealotry.

“The bishop of Rome is an idolater,” a second bishop explained. “He must be called back to Constantinople to answer for his crimes.”

“How can we claim purity against the Muslims when we worship images?” a third bishop asked. “The Muslims call us pagans, and it seems to be true.”

“That is why the pope must stand trial in Constantinople,” the fourth bishop said.

“It’s been too long that the bishop of Rome is able to act with independence,” Konstantinos chimed, a stupid grin on his face. “And there are filthy icons, graven images, all over the city for which you take charge! All over Ravenna I have seen people praying to images of Mary and Jesus and saints. This is a disgrace, Sebastian, and you know this in your soul to be true! God’s Word itself warns against worshiping graven images, and here we have them all over the cities of Italy.”

The fourth bishop began babbling again, but now they were all going off on him:

Each of them accused Sebastian of having been too lax on “idolaters” under his rule in this western outpost of the Empire. Their voices raised over one another as they spat out accusations.

“Should we search your home, commander, for the images you’ve been hiding?”

“Is this your pagan wife’s doing? She must worship plenty of graven images.”

“Have you ever even studied the Scriptures? Have you not seen the commandments?”

Sebastian sighed. He should have known that no bishops would care that his wife had been baptized; she would always be suspect to these men. He knew there had been conflicts about icons in Constantinople. Muslim armies had conquered imperial lands in Palestine, Egypt, and portions of Isauria — dishearteningly some of the same lands he had once helped to reconquer from the same Arab armies. These provinces seemed doomed to swing back and forth. And the Muslims storming through these cities, from Alexandria to Jerusalem to Antioch, proclaimed a supposedly purer form of monotheism that did away with the Trinity, “idols,” and “graven images,” as all these men called them. “Practically Muslims themselves,” Sebastian thought to himself as he glanced over the bishops and took in their hysterical hatred for images.

The Muslims’ charge that Christianity was idolatrous had generated substantial debate among the Empire’s insecure churchmen, many of them fearing that the Muslims had been sent as a punishment by God. The Muslims, these Christians thought, were tools used by God to eviscerate idolatry. By now, the bishops from the east had been around Ravenna for only a few weeks, and yet Sebastian had already seen the most fanatical of them burn or smash even images of Christ Himself.

Now here they were in his office, babbling fanatically at him.

“Silence, all of you,” Sebastian said, raising a hand.

The bishops went silent and looked at him.

“You don’t order men of god to be silent,” one of them said, and Sebastian rolled his eyes.

“Look,” Sebastian said, “I deal with reality, not idealism. I understand you want to continue sending men off to raid the monasteries.”

“Hot beds of idolatry!” Konstantinos, bishop of Nicaea, exclaimed.

“Yes, yes, fine,” said Sebastian. They had after all shared much of the gold from melted or crumbled icons with him. “But the moment we turn the sword against ordinary people in this city — for worshiping Jesus! — is the moment I have to deal with a full-scale rebellion against imperial rule. Do you have any idea how far away we are from Constantinople? Of course you do; you came here from there. So then you must know the people here will never tolerate smashing icons, and Byzantine rule won’t last here long if that’s what we decide to do throughout the city.”

“The Word of God is what matters, not the will of the people,” Konstantinos said. “The Emperor demands that we root out idolatry wherever we find it!”

Sebastian groaned. “You men are completely unrealistic,” he said, thinking back on his lessons in politics with Daphne. Each night she taught him a new chapter of Roman history. “You’ll lose the whole peninsula over this.”

“But we will be right with God,” one of the bishops said matter-of-factly, and it almost sent a chill down Sebastian’s spine to look into this crazed man’s eyes, to feel his certainty that the destruction of icons was of paramount importance to God.

“Give me the decree,” Sebastian said. The scroll had arrived that day, delivered not to him but directly to the bishops, according to orders from the emperor. He reached across the desk and one of the bishops handed him the scroll which he quickly unsealed and read.

Just as the bishops claimed, the emperor’s sealed letter wanted Sebastian to march on Rome. He was to capture the pope and send the old man in chains to Constantinople where he would stand trial for heresy: specifically, the “worship of graven images” and the promulgation of such practices.

“We have lost Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria to the Muslims,” Konstantinos said. “Is this not a sign from God? Only the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople remain. Half the Christian world has been swallowed up by the Muslims.”

“You know a march on Rome cannot now succeed,” Sebastian said, ignoring the theological details. He tossed the scroll onto the desk and it slid back toward the bishops. “I have hardly established myself here with my army. We’ll be marching across hostile territory. Lombard territory.” He had imagined the march on Rome as an event very distant in his future, and he had never imagined the emperor himself would give the order for Sebastian to conquer the eternal city. Now here was the order.

“You will succeed,” the bishop assured him. “God is on your side.”

Daphne’s advice to Sebastian

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t have you in that meeting,” Sebastian told Daphne as soon as the two of them were alone in his bedchamber that night.

“I understand men like the bishops,” Daphne said.

“They would be completely scandalized by the presence of a woman in that meeting.”

“I know,” said Daphne. “They are religious freaks.”

Sebastian chuckled.

“They’re idiots,” Daphne went on, reaching out and holding his hand. They were both lying on the bed together. “But you have orders to march on Rome. Is this not exciting? The emperor is signing his own death warrant sending you to Rome.”

“Rome is a backwater now,” Sebastian said. “Only the bishop of Rome provides that city with any relevance. I wanted to conquer Italy, not Rome. What does Rome give me? I already have the harbor of Ravenna. I already have coastal towns stretching down toward Sicily.”

“But sacking Rome carries weight, Sebastian,” Daphne said. “All throughout history capturing Rome carries political weight. It will matter, even if just for the symbol.”

“And then what?” he asked. “I kidnap the pope and send him to Constantinople? And what then, Daphne? All the people of Italy will be against me. They love their icons. I haven’t met a person from this peninsula who is in favor of destroying images. These bishops are men from the east, obsessed with a purity test they’re putting on against the Muslims. They’re terrified of being conquered by Muslim armies; they think the loss of provinces to the Muslims is a divine punishment for icon worship, and that God is blessing the Muslims with conquest so as to drive the so-called ‘graven images’ out of the Empire. Italy was supposed to be my power base. If I march on Rome to destroy icons and kidnap the pope, who is going to follow me? Who?” He got up from the bed and began to pace back and forth. “Who?” he demanded. “I’m supposed to kidnap the fucking pope so he can be deposed? For what? For supporting the people in their adoration of icons. Even I have icons; now I have to hide them. I wanted to provide security to Italy. I wanted to provide safety on the roads, end the raiding, create safe conditions for commerce to prosper, like we have discussed!… that is how I was going to gain support. Then I’d be able to use Italy as a power base. How else does a would-be emperor gain support? By keeping traders and commerce safe! Not by destroying the people’s religion. I’m going to lead an army of men, half of them with icons of their own, against Rome for image worship? It’s absurd.”

“You talked about destroying cities too,” Daphne pointed out. “You’ve talked about destroying cities so that your men can have more booty, is that not so? How would that win you political support in Italy, if all you are is a raider?”

Sebastian stopped pacing and stared at Daphne in the bed beneath the canopy.

“Goddamn it,” he said finally. He did not know how to answer. He had only recently begun, under Daphne’s instruction, to understand the multifaceted avenues toward building political support. “These fucking bishops!”

Daphne thought for a moment. The whole affair symbolized for her how stupidly the Byzantine Empire was run: an empire on a suicide mission. And she wished for only a moment that Sebastian was an iconoclast; if he were, he could amass ludicrous amounts of gold raiding the monasteries where the monks were still hiding their precious relics and icons. He wouldn’t have to settle for scraps from the bishops. With that kind of gold from so many melted images, they would be one step closer to conquering the whole empire.

But as a crypto-pagan with a history of using idols and a half-hearted baptism, Daphne found iconoclasm repulsive, and this instinct of hers won out over the practical side which saw value in destroying objects of worship.

“The destruction of icons disgusts me,” Daphne said frankly. Her cold calculating manner, which she tried to put on during official meetings, left her now. She would never understand anyone bent on obliterating holy images that aided people’s worship. “You could choose a side,” she said. “Stand up officially for the iconophiles.” But she knew this suggestion was absurd; Sebastian was not strong enough to resist the imperial army that would be sent after him. Then again… could he not pick up support in the countryside? Rally the peasants to defend their icons? Raise a massive army to deal with the emperor? Her mind raced with ideas.

“It’s too risky right now,” Sebastian said, and Daphne knew he was right. “I don’t know how many soldiers would follow me at this point if I challenged the emperor.”

Daphne sighed. “So you will march on Rome?” she asked.

Sebastian took a deep breath. “I will march on Rome,” he said.

“I have a good feeling about it,” Daphne said. “You sack Rome, you’re a force to be reckoned with, even if Rome is a backwater. It doesn’t matter, Sebastian. It’s Rome. Sack it. Strip it down and make your men rich.” That support mattered too.

Sebastian on the outskirts of Rome

Sebastian sent detachments of soldiers to seize papal estates in southern Italy and Sicily and appropriate them to the imperial treasury. These missions were accomplished with almost no resistance. The sacking of Rome, Sebastian suddenly anticipated, would be easy, but where he would stand politically afterward was a mystery: Italy was full of iconophiles, and he was arresting an iconophilic pope on behalf of an emperor trying to destroy Italy’s treasured relics, icons, and images, all of which were considered wicked forms of “graven image worship.”

When his army finally arrived on the outskirts of Rome’s hills and half-fallen walls, he saw the eternal city in decay.

The people were like little ants from his vantage point, but he could see several groups rummaging through the ruins scattered around the city. As soon as his army appeared these people rushed back into the poorly defended and desolate capital. What could the population even be by now, Sebastian wondered, after centuries of neglect? A city built for over a million collapsed to a few tens of thousands?

He gazed down from a hilltop at his army. Rows of legions with heavy swords, supported by several units of armored cavalry men riding horses from Anatolia, were lined up and awaiting his command. He knew the bishop of Rome had an army, and the absence of any visible defenders left Sebastian wondering at the potential of a trap. There were still riches in that city; there were old Roman noble families, buried deep within the rubble but living well enough.

“Give the order!” one of his officers suggested. “We can take the city now, Lord.”

Sebastian, mounted on an armored horse, ran an absent hand down his armor and glanced with uncertainty at the man. “This is a trap,” Sebastian said. “The bishop of Rome knows the emperor is coming for him over the ‘graven images.’”

“Maybe, but Rome is nothing, Lord!” his officer shouted. “Look at the city!”

He already was looking. The walls no longer surrounded the entire city and stone ruins of old pagan temples dotted the landscape. “Destroyed by the Christians,” thought Sebastian. But also by scavengers who had now been descending upon Rome for centuries, or even simply by the city’s own residents who took apart old structures to build new ones for themselves. He saw the colosseum itself rising up into the air, portions of it eerily removed, and he tried to imagine what it would be like to walk through those ruins to the pope, who was living luxuriously in a palace deep inside the city. Scavengers would no doubt be everywhere, but perhaps soldiers too, and the dilapidated ruins all through the streets were places for soldiers to wait in ambush. “This is a waste of time,” Sebastian said to his officer.

Peasants, scattered on farms around the countryside outside the walls, were running from their homes and into the city, seeking shelter deep inside the ruins.

“Sacking Rome?” his officer asked. “The men will think differently when they’re carting off the pope’s gold and melting down his graven images.”

Sebastian glanced at his officer. He took a deep breath, disturbed by yet another confirmation that even some among his own men had become iconoclasts.

“The bishop of Rome is nothing compared to the emperor, Lord,” the officer said. “And besides, we have our orders, Lord.”

Sebastian sighed. He had no choice.

“Fire the catapults,” he ordered.

Moments later, enormous balls of fire were flying through the air and landing inside the city. Many of the new structures were built of wood, and fires would soon be spreading throughout the entire capital, driving defenders from their hiding places. He felt like they would be entering a ghost town only to face off with ferocious soldiers tucked away somewhere in those ruins. How many abandoned temples? How many abandoned homes? The ruins of half-collapsed tenement buildings, portions of them still towering into the sky, testified to a city with nothing left.

Sebastian gave the order: advance.

He road beside his columns of legions as they made way toward the walls. They were just a hundred feet from an enormous opening in the dilapidated wall when another army appeared on the horizon to the north.

“Halt!” Sebastian ordered, and his men stopped even as balls of fire continued to fly over their heads and land at various points behind the disintegrating walls.

Sebastian looked at his officer. “How did our scouts not catch them?” he demanded.

And what was this army? A papal force? Could they be the Lombards?

A chilling scream answered his question. The Lombards, positioned in the distance and barely Christian, gave out a battle cry which could only come from barbarians.

“Are they here to sack Rome first?” his officer asked, laughing. “We’ll take care of them, Lord,” but Sebastian could hear the fear in the man’s voice. They risked being surrounded.

“No, you fool,” Sebastian said, remembering his conversations with Daphne about the political situation in Italy. “The pope has found allies among the barbarians.”

The Bishops in Ravenna

Konstantinos, bishop of Nicaea, stood in the center of Ravenna’s cathedral looking upward at the dome overhead. Images were everywhere in that church: the dome itself told the story of Creation, man’s fall, and redemption through Christ. All around were relics, gilded icons, and the thick scent of incense as a few scattered worshippers prayed to various pictures of saints.

“Disgusting,” Konstantinos whispered, and another bishop approached him.

“What are we to do?” this other bishop whispered. “These people are truly fallen creatures.”

“It’s clear that Sebastian has no intention of purifying Ravenna for the Lord,” Konstantinos whispered, his voice still echoing a bit off the walls. He was nervous that the scattered worshippers could hear him, maybe even understand him as he spoke in Greek when most people here spoke Latin, but he was too disgusted to contain himself after seeing what he’d seen on this visit to what was supposed to be God’s dwelling. “And why do you think that is?” Konstantinos continued, looking the other bishop in the eye. They both had exactly the same cropped haircut and exactly the same robes. “It’s because he’s married to a witch,” Konstantinos continued, “a crypto-pagan with a fake baptism. An actress. A dancer. A harlot. Now married to our own general. What we need here first are witch trials. Witches love all this — the incense, the sensuality of it all, the worship of graven images instead of God. What we are seeing here is nothing less than a pagan revival.”

“We can hold the trials and kill her,” the other bishop said.

“Yes, Daphne has to die,” Konstantinos whispered as quietly as possible.

The bishops left the cathedral and plotted for their witch trials. The emperor had advised them that such trials might be necessary, and he’d sent scrolls — not seen yet by Sebastian — that specified how they were to be carried out.

As soon as the bishops left the cathedral, one of Daphne’s spies hurried back to her.