Holy Pictures

Holy Pictures by Jem11

At the signing of the peace Harun Al Rashid, styled Caliph, Commander of the Faithful, the Rightly Guided, True Descendant of the Blessed Prophet and Messenger of God met Augusta (Irene) Empress of the Romans.

“Your Majesty, Greetings,” he hailed the Empress.

“Your Eminence,” said Irene, “at last we may have peace. For as I am christened for peace it is what I most desire in all the world.” [Note: In Ancient Greek mythology, Eirene was the goddess of peace]

“I was informed otherwise, Majesty”

“Really?” She was taken aback. What was this infidel trying to insult her under a flag of truce?

“Forgive me, Empress. Daughter of Augustus. The First of the Emperors. I meant no disrespect. Peace you desire. Yes. But what you most desired were the restoration of the holy pictures of Mariam the Virgin and Isa her son. May the peace and blessings of God Almighty be upon them both. Is this not true?”

“I wonder that you refer to it, Eminence, since I understood that you Saracens opposed all images being made. Even mundane images let alone precious holy ones.”

“God has revealed to His Messenger through the Angel Jibril that we may make no vain images. I spoke to your husband of this when he was alive and he would allow no images to appear in his churches. I do not say I influenced him for his mind was already set in that direction as was that of his father before him. Does it not say in your Tawrah which God revealed to blessed Musa on Mount Sinai (though many distortions were later added by the Jews), Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image? ANY image, Majesty?”

“That was the old dispensation given to the Jews, who as you know are now cursed because they murdered God's son. As God was incarnate through Jesus Christ He has already shown that He may be depicted as a man.”

“Blessed Isa we do much honour and respect as a Messenger of God but he was not God nor the son of God, Empress. It is written that God had no son.”

“And there is our difference, Caliph, and why I will always love and support the holy pictures. By the way the Pope in Rome was much displeased with my husband because of his opposition to the images. It is a rift I hope now to heal.”

“The Great Imam of the Franks disapproves of so many things, Majesty.”

************************

Irene had loved the holy pictures for as long as she could remember, before she had even married Leo.

“Come my lady, no lying abed. You need to prepare yourself to meet the Emperor's son”

Charmian, Irene's maid really found the girl a handful. She was still at that difficult age for girls. Hopefully marriage and the children that would surely follow would be its cure.

“That silly boy Leo. What would I want to get up just for him. To be paraded like a slave at the palace with all those other girls.”

“No slave led a life as charmed as yours, my lady. Now get out of bed and get ready! If you don't want a red backside!”

“Don't I give the orders around here, Charmian? I'm the Mistress.”

“Not while you're still a girl, my lady. You're only two months short of eighteen. When you are married to the Emperor's son then you can give out all the orders you want.”

“Hmm. Yes. I may order the eyes of certain disrespectful maids to be put out once I am Queen.”

“Once you're Empress, my girl, you can order the whole of Constantinople's eyes put out and no one can stop you. Ever! Now up! Otherwise your uncle will know about it!”

************************

“Is that you, Mother, I can't see! Mother, they've taken my eyes! Oh God! They've taken my eyes!”

Irene looked at her only child lying helplessly on his bed in the prison cell. Weeping. Blinded on her orders. She felt nothing.

“Yes, Constantine darling, it's Mother here. Your eyes? Oh yes. Well you were already blind.”

“Mother?”

“Spiritually speaking. I and the Metropolitan did try to reason with you about the destruction of the holy pictures, darling. We told you it was sacrilege but you wouldn't listen.”

“But Father also wanted the pictures removed. He said it was a blasphemy against God.”

“And now he's dead.”

“Mother?”

“Get some rest, dear.” She called the guard who came to open the cell.

“Mother!”

Outside she spoke to the guard.

“How often do you feed him. He looks so thin.”

“About once a day, Highness.”

“Once a day? That's too often.”

“How often then, Majesty.”

“What about never?”

“Yes, Highness!”

************************

The Emperor Constantine V was seated beside his eighteen year old son Leo as they awaited the bridal parade to commence.

“Choose a beautiful one for me won't you, father. I want my wife to be beautiful.”

“Beauty be damned, boy. She needs to be fertile. With child bearing hips and a womb capable of producing emperors.”

“If I don't like her then I won't feel like making emperors with her ..”

“You'll do the two backed beast with whatever girl I order you to, boy. Even if I have to stand over the marriage bed on your wedding night with a whip.”

“It won't just perform on command, Sir.”

“Oh, Jesus, are you my son? When I was your age I could do it standing up against a tree. Twenty times a day. Tell me, had you done it with any of the serving girls in the palace?”

“Certainly not. The Bishops say we need to keep ourselves chaste until holy matrimony.”

“The Bishops? What would they know about it? Ah it begins ...”

The fat Major Domo appeared leading a procession of young noble ladies all dressed in their finest silk dresses. About fifteen girls in all. All not more than 17 or 18 year of age. The Major Domo led the girls around the room in a circle with all the courtiers watching. The Emperor and Leo sat enthroned together at the head of the room. Constantine watched them pass. They stopped and demurely curtsied before the throne as each girl was presented and her name announced by the Major Domo.

“Irene of Athens. Sarantapechaena,” he said saying the girl's family name last. Both her parents were dead. Constantine had known the father. She'd been raised by her uncle in Athens who was also called Constantine. She was fair and pretty with hazel eyes. Her uncovered blonde hair was arranged in rippling braids coiled in a simple knot behind her slender and lovely neck. Around her neck she wore a pearl necklace whose amethyst lustre reflected the sheen of her perfect skin. A little on the skinny side thought the Emperor but decent sized hips and arse for mounting and child bearing. The women in the family were known for their fecundity.

As she raised her pretty face from her curtsy she looked directly at Leo. Unheard of. The boy looked back. With interest. Constantine noted it. Well, he thought, if they were going to start on emperor making as soon as they were wed they might as well find each other attractive, he thought. He was beginning to wonder if his son actually liked women. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing as such but not good for reproducing a dynasty. For that you needed to keep it hard. Homosexuality was an acceptable imperial vice to indulge in but only after you'd first performed your imperial duty to maintain the imperial line. Personally he found he lost interest in a woman after about six months so you didn't want to waste any time.

The following day Irene's uncle was summoned to the palace for an audience with the Emperor. The wedding date was set two months hence on Irene's eighteenth birthday.

************************

On their wedding night the couple lay together. Naked.

Leo lay on his back. He wasn't sure what to do.

“Are you alright, Leo?” she asked him in the half light of the room as dusk fell outside.

He brought himself onto his elbow and looked down at her soft, white nakedness lying there. She looked beautiful.

“I'm afraid to touch you,” he said.

“Why?”

“You're like the Goddess Athena. Like marble. Like fire. But also like ice.”

“Like in the Acropolis?”

He nodded.

She laughed a little. “You're not afraid of me are you, darling?”

He didn't answer at first.

“You seem older.”

They were silent for a little while.

“Have you ever even done it?” she asked.

He hesitated.

“N-no, not really.”

“Is that no?”

He didn't answer.

“What about you?”

“Me?!” she laughed, “Of course, I'm a virgin! The Emperor would never allow a girl who wasn't a virgin to marry his son. My uncle would've sent me to a nunnery if he'd suspected anything.”

“So you don't know what to do either?”

“Didn't your father tell you anything?” she responded.

“My father? Huh!”

“He seems nice.”

“That's because you're a girl and you're pretty. He's a soldier. When he talks about it at all it's just something like 'You just do the two backed beast, boy'.”

“The two backed beast?” she laughed, “I never heard it called that before.”

“And his generals aren't much different. They talk the same. It's all just smut to them.”

“My maid, Charmian, told me something about it.”

“Your maid?”

“Yes. She's had three husbands. She was first married when she was just thirteen.”

“And what did she say?”

“Well ….”

************************

Irene was in her apartments at the palace. It was hot. She felt fed up carrying around this baby inside her.

“Charmian?”

“Yes, my darling.”

“What was it like when you were pregnant?”

“Oh much the same dear. It can be difficult carrying another person around all night and day.”

“Does it get any easier?”

“You mean for a second or third baby? Not really.”

Suddenly there was a knock at the apartment door. It was an attendant advising that the Emperor intended to pay the Princess a visit within the hour.

“You'd better remove these, Mistress,” said Charmian pointing to some icons of the Virgin that Irene had resting upright on a table, “you know how much the Emperor detests the holy pictures.”

Irene loved the holy pictures of Mary and Jesus as well as the Apostles and Saints. But the Emperor and her husband Leo were both against them. Leo indulged her keeping them in her apartments provided the Emperor didn't get to see them. In fact the Emperor had even killed monks, nuns and priests who refused to give up the images, including burning their churches and monasteries to the ground. He was implacable. She couldn't understand it. He was worse than the Saracens who didn't believe in God or the Jews whom God had forsaken.

“You know what, Charmian, if I ever get the chance I'm going to bring back all the sacred images of Jesus and Mary and the Saints. The people love the holy pictures.”

“I think your husband will have something to say about that, Mistress, when he becomes Emperor.”

************************

Irene and Leo stood together in the Church crypt next to the corpse of Constantine V lying in state, killed while on campaign against the northern barbarians.

“He was great man. Flawed like all great men. I will have to try to carry on his legacy,” said Leo.

“Maybe one of his flaws was his hatred of the sacred images, husband.”

“Sacred images? You mean blasphemous images, wife. For it says in Deuteronomy that we may make no graven images. Father was right to ban them. Patriarch Nicetas [of Constantinople] also disapproves of the icons as do most of the other Patriarchs.”

“Well no wonder. They were all appointed by your father. Was it really necessary for him to kill monks, priests and nuns? To burn monasteries and churches?” Constantine was worse than the Saracens who actually protected some monasteries, she thought. But Irene decided it wouldn't be politic to mention that to Leo.

“If they are heretics then yes.” He was emphatic but after a moment he relented. He sighed. “I won't be as harsh with the monks provided they don't openly defy me. Here in the Capital I expect full compliance but in the provinces I'll look the other way. But the official policy of the Empire will always be opposed to the icons. I'll make one small condition however.”

“Yes?” She looked at him carefully.

“As my wife here in Constantinople I'll require you not to keep any icons in your room or anywhere else in the palace or on your person. Out of my love for you as my dear wife I indulged it while we were both still a Prince and Princess, even though I know it would have enraged my father if he'd found out, but now we are Emperor and Empress and both the chief ornaments of the government, I can't have you openly defying the government's policy. You must give up the pictures of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Saints that you've been keeping in your room until now.”

“And you'll adopt a moderate policy?”

“Yes.”

************************

“What is the matter, husband?”

“What is the matter, Madame, is that you have wantonly defied me.”

“How so?” She looked worried whilst also trying to look innocent.

“This.” He held up two icons of two saints, one in each hand: Stylianos of Paphlagonia and Theodora of Alexandria.

“What I want to know is where did you get them from? I found them under a pillow in your room. I thought you'd surrendered all of your icons.”

“I .. I had a couple I'd forgotten I had ...”

“And you never thought to tell me about them? Oh please, Madame, don't lie to me. For Gods sake. I'll be conducting a thorough investigation and I'll find out who brought these into the palace since you're obviously not going to tell me.”

Leo launched an investigation and discovered the courtiers who had brought the icons into the palace and given them to Irene. He had them both arrested, tortured and imprisoned.

“Madame. It seems I cannot trust you to follow my laws. You will no longer be given the same freedoms you once had and will be more closely watched.”

“As I said, my Lord, I had no idea they were there.”

“Very well, Madame. You leave me with no choice. Until you admit your fault I will cease having marital relations with you. I will never come to your bed ever again.”

After this Leo began to adopt the harsh policies of his father, including executing courtiers, monks, nuns and priests who were discovered keeping holy images.

************************

“Irene. I'm dying. I don't know how. But I'm dying.” Leo lay sweating on his bed whilst Irene sponged his brow with a cool damp cloth. She'd already sent the servants from the chamber. Outside in the ante-room to the Imperial bed chamber the anxious courtiers, generals, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Abbot of Stoudios waited. Even Olaf Magnussen the toweringly tall and broad shouldered, blonde and bearded Head of the Imperial Northern Guards, all specially brought from Sweden, Denmark and Norway to guard the Emperor for he could not trust Greek soldiers with any one of them apt to stab him because of his destruction of the holy pictures so dearly loved by the common people, stood outside the room.

“Silly boy. Of course you're not dying. You'll soon be well again. It was probably just something you ate.” She continued to solicitously sponge her husband's sweating brow.

The doctor was admitted to the room. He examined the patient shaking his head in the direction of the Empress once he'd' finished.

“The prognosis is not good, Highness. It's strange he was fine this morning. Yet I can find no ailment in him.”

“Oh, dear,” Irene said with horrified concern, “you don't think it's deliberate poisoning do you, Doctor? I mean from one of the Icon worshippers. They are I hear implacable.”

“Please don't be alarmed, Augusta. I don't detect any poisoning. Not of any deliberate kind anyway. It appears to be some sort of wind. Perhaps something he ate recently?”

“He's been eating a lot of fruit I believe lately which does cause terrible diarrhoea as well as other stomach problems if done to excess. Of course, I have been banished from his presence because of his imperial displeasure so I haven't been able to supervise his diet. I've been nowhere near his food.”

“Ah, yes, Augusta, fruit … that .. that's probably it ...”

************************

Once Leo was pronounced dead, Irene was proclaimed regent for her nine year old son Constantine VI.

“One of my first acts as Regent will be to restore the holy pictures starting in the Church of Saint Sophia here in Constantinople,” she declared at her first imperial audience. The courtiers and prelates clapped politely. The crowds in the streets outside the palace cheered wildly when they heard the news.

She arranged an ecumenical council in the city of Nicea not far from Constantinople attended by bishops from all over the church at which the veneration of the holy pictures was again permitted, even encouraged, whilst emphasising that true adoration was reserved for God alone. Veneration of the holy pictures could not be idolatrous because the adoration passed to the individual, Jesus, Mary or a Saint, who the picture represented.

“Well that's that then,” Irene announced with satisfaction to her new Patriarch of Constantinople, Tarasios, after the council had ended “we've restored the holy images and the blasphemous icon destroyers are no more.”

“We're already, Empress, going through the hierarchies of the Church and replacing treacherous Abbots and Bishops with people who love and want to restore the holy pictures.”

“Well done, Archbishop.”

************************

“It does say in Deuteronomy, Mother, that we may not have any graven images,” said Seventeen year old Constantine. Really the boy was becoming more and more of a worry the closer he approached to adulthood.

“Who's been filling your handsome head with such nonsense, Constantine darling?”

“I've been working things out for myself.”

“You should talk to Patriarch Tarasios. He'll set you straight on these matters.”

“I don't like Tarasios. Or any of his friends.” She smiled at him wanly. But her eyes had a gleam of anger that he was not able to detect.

“I see. Well, darling, Deuteronomy is in the Old Testament. That's for the Jews. And God doesn't like the Jews any more because of what they did to Our Lord. In the New Testament God became a man. He's already shown us that he can appear in human form, so it's right for us to make an image of him. In Deuteronomy he hadn't yet become God incarnate.”

“But people worship the icons, Mother.”

“They don't worship them, Darling, they get closer to God through them. Just as God came closer to his creation by taking on human nature, so his children can get closer to him by representing him in human form. And also all the other icons that represent actual humans such as the Saints and the Virgin Mother.”

“When I'm Emperor in my own right in few months I won't allow that sort of blasphemy to defile our Christian faith.”

************************

Pope Leo was holding conference with his secretary, Cardinal Vincelli, in Rome.

“A letter from the Roman Empress, Holiness.” The Cardinal handed the missive to Leo.

“Oh God. What does she want? Blah blah. Her Imperial Highness, Empress of the Romans,” Leo sniffed derisively, “Empress of the Romans! Try telling that lot in this city you're their Emperor, or worse their Empress, and they'll dump you in the Tiber quick smart. And secondly, there's no Empress of the Romans without an Emperor of the Romans and since there is none of the latter, she can't be the Empress. Oh Christ. Who wrote this? Who writes Latin like that? Of course, a Greek. Here you read the rest. I can't bear it,” Leo said handing the letter back to Vincelli who read the remainder.

“She says that the veneration of the holy pictures now having been restored throughout the Empire there is no need for the rift between Constantinople and Rome to continue and we can go back to being in one communion again. Well that seems reasonable as well as hopeful,” said the Cardinal putting down the letter, “they've restored veneration of the holy images so I suppose we can go back to being one church again.”

“Except that we can't,” Leo replied. The Cardinal gave him a questioning look. “It's wonderful that she's restored the holy pictures. That's great, although I really don't like Tarasios.”

“Really, I didn't know you knew him.”

“Oh yes. He lived here in Italy for a while. You know before he became Patriarch he wasn't even a priest. Just her private secretary.”

“Well I suppose, Holiness, that the previous Emperors having killed, maimed or driven into exile any cleric who didn't believe in destroying the holy pictures, she didn't have much to choose from.”

“True I suppose. But that's not the reason we can't heal the rift in the Church. It should be obvious. The pictures are restored to veneration but something much much worse has taken its place. A woman sits on the throne of Augustus. That's almost as bad as having one sitting on the throne of St Peter. And I can assure you that will never happen. Or if it ever does we'll know that the Beast spoken of in the Book of Revelations is about to arise. She's made herself Empress Regnant for God's sake. The first in the whole history of the Roman Empire since Augustus. If a woman can't even raise her voice in the congregation of Christ's holy Church as St Paul taught us in the New Testament how can she be the ruler of the Christian Empire and rule over Christian Bishops. It's far more blasphemous than the destruction of the holy pictures. A woman ruling a Christian Empire? If it hadn't been for a woman, Eve who tempted Adam, sin would never have come into the world and Christ would not have needed to walk to Golgotha and die on the Cross in the first place. And what's worse she murdered her own son to get there and probably poisoned her husband to boot. She's the Whore of Babylon not the Empress of the Romans. She makes Clytemnestra seem like the Angel of Mercy.”

“But what you're saying, Holiness, is that the world no longer has a Roman Emperor.” The Cardinal looked shocked at the sudden realisation.

“Well that's not quite true or at least it won't be true for long.” The Pope rang a bell. His personal steward entered. “Send him in will you Marco.”

“Right away, Holiness,” said the rather beautiful young man bowing.

“Marco really is a treasure, you know,” said the Pope to his Cardinal in quite a confidential tone.

Vincelli was surprised when a very tall oafish looking barbarian walked into the room.

“Who is that?” the Cardinal asked aside.

“That, my dear Vincelli, is the new Roman Emperor.”

“This is one your jokes,” replied the other man grinning.

“No Joke. I can assure you. This is will be our new Roman Emperor. In fact he'll be better than the Roman Emperor. He'll be the Holy Roman Emperor and I intend to crown him this month.”

“But who is he?”

“Oh. Who is he? His name is Charles.”

“Charles Who?”

“Ahem. Oh great. Oh yes. Great. Charles the Great. Yes that's who he is. Charles the Great. Emperor Charles the Great. Meet Charles the Great, King Peppin's son.”

“The King of the Franks. He's a German isn't he?”

“A sort of Gaulish German.”

“You're making a German the Emperor of Rome?”

“Not the Emperor of Rome. We're done with that. The Holy Roman Emperor.”

Vincelli looked at the tall rather reserved young man who stank of horse sweat, was probably illiterate and as he soon found out, couldn't even speak Latin properly.

After the young man had gone, Vincelli expressed his concerns to Pope Leo.

“Oh of course the boy's no brains trust,” replied His Holiness, “there's really nothing there, but I don't need someone clever. I need someone I can control. That the papacy can control. It's the right order of things. God, Pope, Emperor and then everyone else underneath.”

************************

Caliph Harun Al Rashid reposed with his Chief Imam of Baghdad during a hot afternoon by a flowing fountain in his palace gardens. The munificent refreshing fountain brought to the Calph's mind the wide eyed houris promised to the faithful in paradise.

“She certainly is a fine figure of a woman. And now she's unmarried and with the death of her son she's made herself Empress Regnant. You could become Emperor of the Romans and Commander of the Faithful all in one, Effendi,” said Imam Mamoud Bin Malik, “your days would be full of glorying and your nights full of hoarying.”

“I keep a lance for both occasions, Sheikh. She is very beautiful I admit but I don't think I could get it out of my mind that she also eats pork,” replied Harun.

“Of course, she would have to convert to the Faith of the One True God, giving up her false and blasphemous images that she apparently cherishes so much and her false gods and publicly say the sacred formula in the Church of Holy Wisdom which would become the Masjid of Holy Wisdom: La illa ha ila 'llah Muhammad Rasulu 'llah. There no God But One God and Muhammad is his prophet.”

“I suppose. She could be number four wife. I'd nickname her Thursday.”

“Effendi?”

“That is the day that I'd visit her.”

************************

Irene was alone meeting with Patriarch Tarasios in her palace in Constantinople.

“I've just received a letter from this new Holy Roman Emperor Charles,” she said to him.

“Oh God, King Hob of the Dung Heap. He probably didn't write it himself. Leo would have written it for him. He can probably barely say his alphabet. What does Leo say?”

“He proposes marriage.”

“Marriage?”

“Yes.”

“To you?”

“No to you. Of course to me! Who else would he write to me about proposing marriage to? I haven't got any daughters.”

Tarasios started laughing.

“What's so funny?”

“Leo. He always was a card. I knew him in Italy. He was a real kidder. Also a real arsehole but that's another story.”

“I don't think it's any joke. It's a serious proposal.”

“Oh very well .. ahem .. you're not actually entertaining this offer are you, Highness?”

“Why not. It would heal the rift between East and West. Also get me out of this pickle I'm in with the Caliph. These Saracens are more grasping than the damn Jews. He's demanding more money from me. Of course, I blame Leo for indulging these infidels in the first place.”

“Majesty if I may be so bold, the People of Constantinople will never tolerate a German barbarian as Emperor, who can barely speak Latin let alone Greek, who can't write his own name or wipe his shitty backside properly. Who stinks of horse sweat and wears those ridiculous red leggings. I can assure you, Augusta, if you ever married this man the women of Constantinople would storm the palace, drag us all down to the sea and throw us into the Bosphorous.”

“My Northern Guards ....”

“Your Viking show ponies with their blonde hair on their chests and on their arse cheeks will be dragged down to the Bosphorous and drowned in the ocean with you. You might as well accept a marriage offer from the Caliph. At least he doesn't smell like a stable and knows how to wipe his own bum.”

************************

Irene sat inside the small cottage on the Island of Lesbos where she'd been exiled after they'd forced her to abdicate when they found out she planned to marry the crude barbarian Charles the Great (or the not so Great depending on your point of view). The women of Constantinople who'd been her greatest supporters when she'd restored the sacred images, were outraged when they found out what she intended to do. Just as the women of Istanbul over a thousand years later would pull young male conscripts from their tanks and box the boys' ears during the 2016 coup attempt, so the woman of Constantinople were the one force that could easily overcome her big blonde Scandinavian guards as they stormed the palace. The young men couldn't bring themselves to raise their swords against people who reminded them of the their mothers and sisters.

“Well, Charmian, at least I brought back the holy pictures that the people love so much. The Empire is restored to the true faith of Jesus Christ.”

Charmian was now an old lady but she was the one person who had stuck with her until the very end.

“It was a journey we started on together a long time ago, Majesty. One day you'll be made a saint. They'll make holy pictures of you! Here drink the wine. It'll make you feel much better.”