Death and the Devil

“Hm. Right then. I’ll have to go back a little. Pour yourself more wine. There’s still some in the jug?”

“Should be enough.”

“Good. You’ve heard of the Holy Roman Empire, I suppose?”

“Of course.”

Jaspar shook his head. “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. To be precise, it’s a divided empire; holy or not, it has disintegrated over the centuries. On the one hand there’s the East Roman empire with Byzantium as its center and the West Roman with Rome. If you think things are pretty turbulent now, let me tell you they were much worse when the old empire finally collapsed, about two hundred years ago. The pope inveighed against the supposed depravity of the kings and emperors. The old story. When the spiritual and secular powers are at each other’s throats they like to use our Lord Jesus Christ as a figurehead. The king got them to elect an antipope. Suddenly there were two popes. God had two representatives on earth who couldn’t stand each other and always proclaimed something different from their opposite number. One spoke of the dunghill of Rome, the other of the king’s whore. All very edifying. The Roman pope excommunicated the king. Unfortunately that was only valid for the West Roman empire. There was also the East Roman, with an emperor in Byzantium who didn’t give two hoots for Rome. He was a rather dubious character anyway, who had got to the throne by a bloody intrigue, which had really irritated the Vatican. So what did the pope do in his righteous anger? What do you think?”

Jacob shrugged his shoulders. “Difficult to say.”

“What would you have done as the pope of Rome?”

“I would have excommunicated the other one as well.”

“Very good, Fox. That was exactly what the pope did. Not that the Byzantine emperor cared. He didn’t care about much. Not even about the Seljuks who were at the gates—”

“Seljuks?”

“Sorry. Seljuks, Pechenegs, all Turkish tribes that Mohammed had united with the Arabs. So their empire stretched from Khorasan across Iran and the Caucasus, over Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine as far as the Hejaz. A huge area. And now the infidels wanted Byzantium as well. Given the conflict of interest within Christendom, the most they were likely to be faced with was a few toothless quotations from the Bible. The emperor of Byzantium was as false-hearted as he was weak, which was probably a good thing because it made him easier to depose. There was the usual palace revolution and a remarkable young man by the name of Alexios came to power. Once he was firmly established, he took stock and the result was not encouraging. Many parts of the empire had fallen into the hands of the Turks and the rest threatened to follow suit.”

Jaspar licked his lips and had a drink.

“In addition to which,” he went on, “Alexios had problems with Rome. The excommunication had been passed on to him like foot-and-mouth disease. No hope of help from the West. So Alexios tackled the Seljuks, Pechenegs, and what have you on his own, drove them back and managed to negotiate a peace, a pretty flimsy affair, but still. For the benefit of Christendom, he announced, though basically all he was interested in was regaining his territory. He couldn’t have cared less about the fact that the holy places—Palestine, the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, Antioch, where St. Peter had lived—were under Seljuk rule, which was what the pope was so concerned about. All the horror stories about the ungodly Turks who slaughtered Christian pilgrims by the thousand, cooked and ate them, were products of the overheated imagination of deranged hermits. The Christians in the occupied territories had the advantage of Islamic law, the most tolerant there is, if you ask me. They were allowed to practice their religion and had very few complaints, certainly not enough to send a call for help to the West. Is this all beyond you, or would you like to hear the rest?”

“Of course. Go on.”