Humanity

Church of the East: Barsauma

Each book in the Humanity series is supposed to be easy to read while hewing as closely as possible to the historical record. At the end of the book, endnotes for each chapter explain what sources the story is based on, followed by a brief overview of only those things that are attested in the historical record. That way, the Humanity books offer an entertaining reading experience while also making clear which parts are fact and which are speculation or invention.


Chapter 1: Brothers in Christ

457, east of Edessa

They rode at the rear of the caravan, two men wearing the gray garb of secretaries accompanied by four servants on foot. The caravan had set out from Antioch on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea five days ago, bearing wares bound for Persia and beyond along the Silk Road. The two men, however, had only joined it at its second major stop, in the ancient city of Edessa near the Persian border. They were neither traders nor secretaries, nor emissaries, spies or adventurers like many of the others who traveled eastward with the long column of camels, horses and donkeys. Under their shifts, the two men — both still youthful, one bearded and one shaved — hid pendants with consecrated crosses made of gold. Both were men of the faith; but while the shaven one, named Barsauma, would have given his cross as a bribe to a border official without hesitation if the need arose, the bearded man, named Acacius, would gladly have died defending his. Each suspected as much of the other, though they would never ask; and neither thought ill of the other for it. They were friends, educated together at the famed school of theology at Edessa, where they had long enjoyed debating and challenging each other. Now, departing into hostile territory, where Christians were hunted for sport by the Magi at unpredictable intervals, they felt closer than ever.

The caravan grew silent as they passed through the city of tombs that surrounded Edessa. Birds cawed and a wild dog was cackling somewhere in the distance — or perhaps it was a mad ascetic trying to prove he did not fear the dead. Once the last of the tombs were behind them, Barsauma and Acacius took a long look back over their shoulders at the city of their youth.

"Farewell, Edessa," Barsauma said. "I would have liked to stay, but since my teacher's death you seem more dangerous to me than even Persia."

"You are being dramatic," Acacius said. "Bishop Ibas died of natural causes…"

"We don't know that."

"He was old, Barsauma. And getting worse ever since his return from Antioch." Bishop Ibas, the Rabban or director of the Edessan school, had been slandered, excommunicated, and imprisoned for years before finally being acquitted at the Council of Chalcedon six years before. There was no doubt that Ibas had been a diminished man when he came home to Edessa; but neither was there any doubt that his enemies were still active in the city, and looking for ways to bring down anyone who had been close to him.

"Besides," Acacius said, "Rabban Narsai is on your side." The new Rabban, a Persian who had fled to Edessa during an earlier round of persecution by the Magi, clearly favored Barsauma's position over that of Acacius in their debates on the nature of Christ. During Ibas' imprisonment, Narsai had served as interim head of the school, but had remained a friend and brother to them both. "Theologically, perhaps," Barsauma replied. "But politically? Physically? Would you trust Narsai to stand between you and murder?"

Acacius frowned. "As hot as our tempers run when we debate, I don't think any of our brothers have murder in their hearts."

"Not towards you, I am sure." Barsauma reached across the distance between their camels and clasped his friend's arm. "Which makes me all the more grateful that you've chosen to come and join me in my exile."

Acacius smiled. "I'm glad to join you," he said, "but I don't think of it as exile. It's a calling. We are carrying the Gospel into the land of heathen fire temples. We're relieving our brothers there, who suffer under the yoke of the Magi."

"That we are." They turned around their camels and rejoined the caravan. The slow-moving column traveled along the Scirtus, a temperamental river that liked to leap over its banks in spring, but which now burbled alongside them in the guise of a meager brook.

Where the Scirtus cut through the ring of hills that surrounded Edessa, Barsauma looked back at the city once more. Its castle stood tall upon the rocky ridge; its white walls shone in the afternoon sun. "I sometimes wonder," he told Acacius, "what the world would be like if Christ had accepted King Abgar's invitation and had come to Edessa to live out his days in peace."

They had both read and discussed the letters at length that had passed between the King Abgar and the Savior near the end of his life: How Abgar had asked Christ to come and heal him, and offered Him shelter from the Jews plotting to have Him killed; and how Christ had responded that His work was not yet done, but He would send a disciple to heal the king. That was how Edessa came to be the first Christian city in the world, and a beacon of light in the disputed areas of northern Mesopotamia.

"The world is as God wills it," Acacius said, "so the question is moot."

"But what if Christ had gone against God's will?" Now that they were outside Edessa and away from the listening ears and judgmental faces, Barsauma felt his speculative spirits rise again. "What if He had said No to the crucifixion and the suffering and the death?"

Acacius scoffed. "What if He had refused to save us all, you say? But the question is moot, Barsauma. Christ's will is God's will. Christ is the son of God, and God himself."

"But He retained the rational mind of a man, and a rational mind will seek ways to avoid suffering."

Acacius jabbed his elbow towards his friend but missed. "Is that it?" he laughed. "Did you flee Edessa so you would feel free to spout your heresies again? Do you think that a few miles on camelback set you outside the rules laid down by the Council?"

Barsauma chuckled, but quickly turned serious again. The Council of Chalcedon had reaffirmed that God and Christ were joined in one indivisible nature, and had condemned Nestorius and Theodore of Mopsuestia for claiming that Christ's human nature was fully intact even as the divine spirit inhabited Him. Barsauma himself found the notion of a Christ without a free will of his own absurd and irreconcilable with Scripture; but he had learned to his detriment that to take either side in this question would earn you the enmity of half of Edessa's clergy, and the increasingly polarized laity as well.

"No," Barsauma replied. "No, we are not outside the rules." Not yet, he thought to himself. "And I'm not going for the sake of heresy. I am going to save Christianity in Persia."

***

They took the northwest road along the hills to avoid the robbers and lions infesting the plains. As the light fell, the caravan encamped on a low rise which the locals called Potbelly Hill. There they slept, surrounded by the smell of camels and the restless murmurs of the camp, ignorant of the fact that deep beneath them rested the remains of a millennia-old temple, steles carved with animal gods long before the first cities had risen.

Barsauma woke before dawn. Rising, he looked towards the east, where a pale brightness slowly crept up from behind the hills. The remains of a dozen fires sent thin trails of smoke into the empty sky, and a few men were stumbling through the camp with their heads bent, their movements clumsy in the morning chill.

The plains to the south were covered in fog. It formed a calm sea for the most part, but where it abutted the hills it swirled and shifted in some places, as if perturbed by movement from below. Intrigued, Barsauma watched the ethereal surf for a while — then he gasped when dark shapes began climbing out from the fog.

Acacius stirred, then sat up with an irritated grunt when Barsauma lightly kicked him in the side. "Robbers!" he called out, recognizing the shapes as crouching humans. The camels beside them huffed, annoyed at having their sleep disturbed, and a slow ripple of movement spread through the camp. Too slow, Barsauma thought, even as Acacius joined his voice to his in sounding the alarm. Realizing they had been spotted, the attackers straightened and hurried up the hillside at a run. They were armed with sabers and spears, Barsauma saw with rising horror, and they were coming straight at them.

They had knives, but neither of them knew how to use them in a fight. Their servants woke up groggily, reaching for anything they could use as a weapon; but it would not be enough. A full dozen figures converged on their corner of the camp. They were almost upon them when Acacius, pale with horror himself, pulled out one of the icons he had hidden in his pack and stepped forward.

"Help us!" he cried out, holding the icon aloft. It was an image of the Virgin Mary, shimmering gold and blue in the false dawn. "Theotokos, God-bearer, from whose womb the son of heaven shone forth to expel the darkness from the land – help us!" He stomped his feet to encourage himself. "You who stood tall before the Watcher — you, through whom the curse was lifted from the land — help, Theotokos!"

The servants were stomping the ground alongside him, and Barsauma found himself kicking the dusty soil as well. The hill seemed to ring under their feet — and then a swarm of scorpions rushed out from their burrows beneath them. Terrified of the noise, the insects fled from their stomping feet and directly into the path of the attackers.

The assault faltered as the robbers were beset by frenzied scorpions. Some dropped their weapons; a few fled; and the servants made short work of those remaining with their meat knives and improvised clubs. Acacius, meanwhile, stood as if frozen, still holding the icon aloft as he looked at the chaotic scenes in disbelief.

Barsauma pulled at his arm, and when Acacius didn't react, he bodily pulled the icon out of his hands. Cradling it to his chest, he looked around. Most of the rest of the camp was still locked in a struggle with small groups of robbers, though it seemed that the main force had chosen to retreat when their attempt to sneak up on them failed. Breathing a sigh of relief, Barsauma wrapped the icon into his friend's spare robes again and stuffed it back into the pack.

Then he embraced Acacius, who was still breathing heavily, and pulled him back between the camels. "We are supposed to be traveling incognito, remember?" he told him.

"But the icon…"

"I put it back where it belongs. And now…" He looked towards their servants, three of whom were still standing. "Qasha, Sar, Mara," he called out to them. "How is Ya'qub?"

"Dead," Mara said bitterly. "But the danger is past," John reported. "Thanks to the miracle Mar Acacius worked…"

"It was not a miracle," Barsauma said sharply. "Listen to me." He gathered them around, making sure once again that everyone else in the camp was still too busy to pay attention to them. "Acacius produced the icon to raise your spirits. We all stomped the ground because we were afraid. The scorpions were living here, in holes beneath our feet – which, by the way, will make me doubly glad to be rid of this place." This drew a chuckle from Mara, the oldest of the three men. Barsauma pulled Acacius into the circle as well. "Clearly the Lord was on our side tonight; but there was no need for a miracle to save us." He looked at Acacius. "Or do you disagree?"

Acacius returned his gaze, his forehead creased in thought. "No, you are right," he said eventually. "There was no miracle here tonight. And I," he added, looking sternly at each of the men in turn, "I am not Mar Acacius. For the duration of this journey, while we travel through hostile land, you are to call me Aqaq or nothing at all."

"And we thank you for your homily and your inspiration, Aqaq," Barsauma said, "even as we hope our traveling companions did not hear, see, or understand it. It was meant for us, and us alone."

"We understand," Mara spoke for the others. "We will be silent on the matter, and deny any rumors we hear."

Dawn broke, and after burying Ya'qub with the other casualties of the raid they traveled on. Acacius waited until they were well underway and the servants were talking among themselves before he voiced his concerns to Barsauma. "Are we hiding a sign from God?" he asked. "Did we squander an opportunity to show this entire caravan the power of the Lord?"

"The power of the scorpions, you mean."

Acacius jabbed him. "Who put the scorpions there, you think? And who inspired me, and you and the servants, to stomp our feet?"

"God did," Barsauma granted. "Which I believe, and so do you, and our servants as well. But of this caravan, most believe in the fire god of the Magi, or they cling to the Roman gods, or they follow the false prophet Mani or worship Mithras the warrior… and all of them are as likely to slay us or cast us out for the presumption that they are to accept Christ as their savior." Let alone Mary, he thought to himself; but he was not ready to broach that subject with Acacius now. "We could have let ourselves be martyred, of course, hoping that the legend of our sacrifice might do more for the faith than we could while alive. But last we talked about martyrs, I seem to remember your stance being similar to mine."

"You are right," Acacius allowed, though disappointment still colored his voice. "Strategically, you are right. And I do believe that what we set out to do in Persia is important. But… Barsauma, I did feel the touch of Divinity. When I reached into that bag, I did not know which icon I would produce; but once I did, I knew exactly what to say."

"The Spirit moved through you."

"It did. And I worry that what you said — what we said — might have sown doubt in the minds of our servants. That instead of affirming the presence of God in everything, we have taught them to see this world as separate from God, perhaps even beyond His will."

"We might have; though I doubt our words penetrated this deeply into their conception of the world. In any case, there is a time for teaching and a time for survival, and this time is not the former."

Acacius seemed to accept that, and they did not speak of it again. In the evening, when they camped under heavy guard in the ruins of an ancient fort, Barsauma overheard his friend asking God for humility as he prayed. He took that as a good sign: Had Acacius resisted his attempts to downplay this morning's events, Barsauma would have suggested that he might be clinging to the idea of a miracle out of a self-serving desire for fame. But his prayer, murmured in his native Persian tongue, proved that Acacius had come to that conclusion by himself and would not cause further trouble in this regard.

***

When they arrived at the Persian border, Barsauma found that all of his caution had been for naught. Across the river Cordes, which emerged from the shadow of a steep cliff on the hither side and broadened into a slow pearlescent band on its way south towards the Euphrates proper, a large host had assembled, made up of a minority of Persian soldiers keeping a mass of civilians in check. The crowd stirred as the caravan switchbacked its way down from the cliff, and then a cheer rose up that jolted Barsauma in his saddle.

"What is this?" he asked Acacius, alarmed. "Did you send word? Did anyone except Elisha know of our coming?"

"The bishop, most likely. And my cousin in Seleucia. But I don't see why either of them would betray us."

Barsauma dismounted from his camel, helped by his long limbs. "Qasha, Sar, Mara," he hissed at the servants. "Did you…"

"We did not say anything, Mar," Qasha assured him. "But the rumor has been all over the camp. Someone else must have seen you, Mar Acaci… Aqaq. They are saying you repelled the robbers with an image of our Lord."

Barsauma winced. "And you did not see fit to tell us that?"

"I…"

"We were afraid you would blame it on us," Mara said, all but interposing himself between Barsauma and the younger servant. "But we held fast, I swear it by the mother of our Lord."

Barsauma huffed and climbed back on his camel. "Aqaq," he told his friend, using his Syriac name, "get down."

Acacius hesitated only for a moment. He had a sharp wit, despite his tendency toward conformism: There was no need for Barsauma to explain his reasoning. Of the two of them, Acacius was much more likely to be recognized, perhaps even sought after, by the Persian soldiers. Both Barsauma and Acacius had been born in Persian territory before coming to Edessa; but while Barsauma's parents were unremarkable Christians in the north of the realm, Acacius' family had been steeped in the Persian state religion of Zoroastrianism, with many of his relatives becoming Magi. And the Magi, for all their hatred of foreign religions in general, were known to reserve their most bitter enmity for apostates who had renounced their false gods and embraced Christianity instead.

And if being a convert from Zoroastrianism was not enough to place Acacius in danger, the fact that his cousin Babowai had recently been elected to the highest office in the Persian church certainly did. If the Persian soldiers knew that a relative of the Catholicos Babowai was traveling with this caravan, they would not hesitate to carry him off to the Magi as a prize.

"Qasha, give him your headscarf," Barsauma said. "You lead the camel. Aqaq, you do your best to mingle with the others." Taking initiative in times of need had always come easy to Barsauma, and Acacius had inevitably grown used to it during their time at Edessa. He nodded briefly and pushed forward into the press of carriers and camel guides waiting their turn to cross the ford.

Barsauma considered his options while the caravan slowly made its way across the river. Acacius, walking on foot, would be getting wet; that was a good thing, because the Persian soldiers were less likely to look closely at a servant in sodden clothes. As for himself…

"You," a soldier said, waving his tall pike up at him. He had waded out into the river with two of his comrades to intercept Barsauma before he could reach the other bank. "Are you the Christian?"

Barsauma looked at him, then at the clumps of people watching from the shore. Most of them were dressed in simple garments, craftsmen and farmers and their wives, but there were some in finer garb as well. He recognized none of their faces, but the posture of those praying confirmed his suspicions.

"Christians of Nisibis!" he called out, sitting tall in his saddle. Out from the corner of his eyes he watched the pike's tip waver near his side, but he resisted the impulse to flinch away. Instead he raised his arms and exposed his flank to the Persian soldier, daring him to pierce him like Longinus did Christ. "I am Barsauma, a student from Edessa. I mean to offer my services to your bishop, and to help keep the peace with our neighbors." At this, he gestured vaguely towards the soldiers, which made the pike twitch again – but at a signal from his commander on the shore, the soldier refrained from skewering him for the moment.

"You have been told there was a miracle here," he went on quickly. "I am here to tell you the truth of it."

He had their attention now, he knew, the soldiers' as well as the Christians' and his fellow travelers' in the caravan. "Robbers attacked us on the way, meaning to sneak into our camp while we were sleeping. But the Lord was with us – with all of us," Barsauma emphasized, spreading his arms to encompass the caravan. "As He promised to do for the humblest of us, He struck fear in the hearts of our enemies – all of our enemies, the bandits of the plains. And he struck fear into our hearts as well, and we threw up our hands and trampled the ground in terror — isn't that right, Mara?"

"It's the truth, Mar Barsauma," the servant replied, loudly and without hesitation.

"And the anxious patter of our feet brought forth a plague of scorpions who fell upon the raiders. The Lord was with us!" he repeated, and this time the murmurs on the shore rose to a pitched "Amen." — "As the hand of the Lord is over us at all times, and nothing happens without His willing it. But was there a miracle? A miracle of the kind our Savior wrought? He healed the sick, it is true, and He raised the dead and calmed the storm. But did He ever work a miracle to benefit Himself, or save Himself? No, He did not. And neither will you find anyone here who presumes to sainthood, let alone Christhood, and who would claim the Lord worked miracles through him." Barsauma could picture Acacius wincing at the chastisement, wet as he was. "The Lord is with each of us in equal measure," he finished. "Rather than look for miracles in the desert, you should go home and feel His presence in your own lives."

There was more murmuring, but Barsauma's sharp eyes picked out some of the clergy on the riverbank nodding their heads in assent. More importantly, the soldier next to him finally lowered his pike, and a commander on the Persian side waved to let the caravan move on. As his camel, led by the quiet servant Sar, finally stepped ashore, Barsauma let out a deep breath. From the fact that the Christians on the shore were still alive, he had gathered that their persecution was not a priority for the Persians at this moment — perhaps on account of the succession struggles between the High King Yazdegerd's two sons, both of which were reported to be desperately looking for allies. So Barsauma had gambled his life on the assumption that the soldiers would be satisfied with him dispersing the crowd… and for the moment it seemed his gamble had paid off.

Then the commander had his camel stopped once it had climbed the banks up to his position. Barsauma dismounted and made a gesture of respect. "I apologize on behalf of my fellow Christians, Marzban," he said. Young and sharp-featured, the commander looked to be from one of the lesser noble houses of Persia. "I did my best to prevent the spread of the rumor that brought them here, not wanting to stir up unrest in your lands. But in a caravan of this size, it is hard to control every tongue."

"You will accompany them to Nisibis without further incident," the Marzban said. "You will not preach to them again in public, or to anyone else."

"By your leave," Barsauma said. "May I ask for your name, so I know whom to thank?"

"Qardag Nahwaragan," the young commander said. "I will expect to find you in Nisibis once I return there."

To enlist him and the bishop to whichever side in the succession struggle he was on, Barsauma was sure. "I look forward to the day," he said.

He climbed back on his camel, and Sar guided it towards the Christians. Most of them looked to him, likely waiting for him to speak; but he minded his promise to the commander and kept his peace. When a haggard man in a threadbare cloak gathered up dirt and threw it at him, yelling something about hubris and wantonness, the crowd gasped; but Barsauma took the clump of mud to the thigh without flinching and told Sar to lead on. There would always be desert ascetics for whom nothing but extreme poverty and self-degradation was virtue enough; there was no point in fighting them, here least of all.

The man kept yelling while the crowd moved past him, and soon another piece of dirt struck Barsauma's arm from the other side. He looked there briefly, then lowered his head to hide a smile. Disheveled and muddy, Acacius could pass for an ascetic himself if his face was a little less round. Barsauma scraped off the mud and threw it back at him.


Endnotes for chapter 1