Inspired by Martha’s fervour, Cunoarda was already doing so. I had freed both women when I took Martha into my household, for I could not treat the Alban girl as a slave when we had laboured together like fellow priestesses in the hospital.
“Then you are a Christian!” Constantine exclaimed.
“Call me what you like,” I said tiredly. “The Truth does not change.” I did not tell him that it was not his example that had inspired me, but the simple faith of a Syrian slave.
“Praise be to Christ, by whose Name we shall be saved!”
Constantine’s deep-set eyes blazed with conviction and I found myself recoiling, trying to remember where I had seen such a look before. It was not until evening, as I was preparing for bed, that it came to me. In that mood, Constantine had been the image of Ganeda, laying down the law with self-righteous certainty.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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AD 325-6
“In Christ’s holy name, why can they not agree?” exclaimed Constantine. “I called this council so that the bishops might resolve their differences.”
“Yes, Augustus,” said Bishop Ossius, his face reddening, “but these matters are both subtle and important. A single syllable may make the difference between salvation and damnation. We must proceed carefully.”
Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who had come with him to report on the deliberations, was frowning. The pagans in the room looked confused, and my old tutor Sopater, who had become a noted teacher of rhetoric and a member of Constantine’s court, was suppressing a smile. The two thousand bishops who had come to the Council at Nicaea at the beginning of May were already arguing about the nature and relationship of God and His Son.
My hip-bones had begun to ache, and I tried to shift position unobtrusively on my ivory chair. The first time I had seen the Emperor’s audience chamber in the palace at Nicomedia I had felt overwhelmed by its splendour. But that had been over fifty years ago. Now that I was accustomed to Constantine’s ideas of the state befitting an emperor, Aurelian’s throne room seemed classic and restrained. Only its human ornaments showed the taste of the Constantinian age.
Where Aurelian had allowed the vivid purple of his toga to proclaim him Emperor, and contented himself with a simple curule chair, Constantine’s gilded throne was raised on a dais, and his robes, which were of cloth of gold over purple and adorned with precious stones, outshone it. And where Aurelian had presided alone, Constantine was flanked by his two empresses, for he had given both me and Fausta the title of Augusta the preceding year, when he finally defeated Licinius.
I had been placed at the Emperor’s right hand, resplendent in amethysts and cloth of silver, and at his left was Fausta, glittering in emeralds and bronze. Imprisoned in the heavy robes, we sat like the images of Jupiter flanked by Juno and Minerva in the temple at Rome, though I knew better than to say so to Constantine.
“Do they not understand that the unity of the Church is essential to the unity of the Empire?” he exclaimed.
It did no good to point out that the Empire had flourished for more than two centuries while tolerating a wide variety of cults and creeds. The bishops who had come to the council were representing the people who had let themselves be slain rather than throw a pinch of incense on an altar fire. I wondered sometimes if they had become so accustomed to persecution that now that they were the Emperor’s favourites they were compelled to attack each other.
Even after several years of Christian instruction, I, like Constantine, found it hard to understand the fine distinctions over which the bishops were arguing. What ought to matter was what Jesus had said, not whether he was God or Man.
“Indeed,” objected Ossius, sweating, “but if the Empire is not founded upon truth, it will fall. If the Son and the Father are not one and the same, equally God, then we are no better than the polytheists.”
“We are no better than fools if we deny logic!” exclaimed Eusebius, a flush animating the intellectual serenity of his features. A high forehead merged into his tonsure and he wore his beard long, like a philosopher. “If the Father begot the Son, then there must have been a time when the Son did not exist.”