Stark: Studying real history is essential for staying grounded and it’s also a source of really good ideas. My latest acquisition “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean”, could be very interesting…
ImperatorAlexander: Arletian and Castilian are the language of the Mexican court. Except for David himself and a few Roman retainers, his expedition was Arletian and Castilian in composition. A few Greek terms are used for various things (tagma/tagmata for example) but that’s it.
JohnSmith: The Empire of All the North has territory in OTL Canada and the Triple Monarchy is setting up an ATL Thirteen Colonies. Al-Andalus has colonies in northeast Brazil and Portugal in Panama and in southern Brazil and Uruguay. That’s it for the mainland. I go a little more into detail about Caribbean colonies in a later update but there are a lot more players involved there.
1619: Demetrios Sideros finds himself, for the first time since 1613, back in the capital. It is not a metropolis for which he particularly cares, finding it overly crowded especially after living on the outskirts of Abydos and the sprawling suburbs of Smyrna. Worse still he has been promoted again from Kephale of Smyrna to Eparch (Prefect) of Constantinople itself. It is not an assignment he desired, having grown accustomed to eating garlic shrimp pho in the Tea Room with a gentle breeze blowing off the Aegean.
Jahzara on the other hand is delighted. Unbeknownst to Demetrios, it is Jahzara’s intrigues that were largely responsible for Demetrios’ promotion, both to Kephale of Smyrna and now to Eparch. As Eparch her husband will work from the White Palace, the seat of Imperial power, and as an Imperial relation he and his family will live there as well. She can rub elbows, and perhaps more, with some of the most powerful figures in the world. Tensions have been strained between her and her husband since his first meeting with the head of the Prostitute’s Guild in Smyrna, a tall Varangian with blond hair that goes down to her ankles. They’ve had many meetings.
Demetrios’ new posting is immediately demanding as just two weeks after his investiture the first delegates for the Sixth Council of Constantinople and Tenth Ecumenical Council (by Roman counting) begin arriving. There are a total of 552 bishops and metropolitans attending. The Patriarch of Aira arrives with one Metropolitan and six of his bishops in tow, along with the youngest son and eldest grandson of the Japanese Emperor both of whom are enrolled in the University of Constantinople. The Metropolitans of New Constantinople, Pekan, and Jaffna are also in attendance along with twenty other eastern bishops.
Most of the delegates are put up in new housing between the Theodosian and Herakleian land walls, a still largely underdeveloped district which until recently has functioned primarily as a gigantic vegetable patch for the capital. The population though is back above 320,000, just beating out Beijing for the second-most populous city in the world (Vijayanagara is around 510,000), and growing rapidly. The Empire itself, not including despotates, vassals, or eastern territories, has a population just over 17 million in comparison to the Triple Monarchy of 20 million and the Holy Roman Empire of 21.5 million.
Emissaries from the Pope in Rome also arrive unexpectedly, claiming innocently that their invitations must have gotten lost. Despite declaiming this as the Tenth Ecumenical Council neither Pope was invited. Considering what follows surprisingly the emissaries are allowed to join and open negotiation for church union. This is placed at the top of the docket.
All things considered, the negotiations go surprisingly well. On the issue of the azymes, whether or not communion wafers should have yeast (Orthodox practice) or not (Catholic), the initial theological argument that sparked the Great Schism of 1054, it is agreed that either is acceptable. In this case this is a concession on the Orthodox part; Catholics had proposed such an accord on earlier occasions and been rebuffed. On the matters of clerical celibacy and whether or not priests can have beards both Orthodox and Catholic practices are delineated as local traditions and thereby both theologically acceptable.
Even the matter of the filioque, the bane of all attempts at union, is resolved. It is pointed out that saying ‘the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son’ as in Orthodox liturgy means technically the same as the Catholic ‘the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son’. Grammatically there is no contradiction. This is the Catholic argument and that therefore both phrases are acceptable. Surprisingly the Orthodox generally agree. Those of a cynical mind suspect that the Orthodox attitude, considering what comes later, was merely a ploy to highlight Orthodox reasonableness to contrast with Catholic intransigence.
Then comes the clincher. The Orthodox delegates insist though that the Pope must formally acknowledge his error in adding the filioque to the creed on his own initiative. That action was outside his prerogative; only an Ecumenical Council could perform such an innovative.
This demand though strikes at the core of the doctrine of papal supremacy. By issuing an apology the Pope would implicitly be recognizing that he is subordinate to a church council. It’s doubtful any Pope, either in Rome or Avignon, would concur without a literal gun pointed at their heads. The leader of the papal delegation categorically refuses, insisting loudly on the doctrine of papal supremacy. This only infuriates the Orthodox clerics, things escalate, and by the end the Bishop of Arezzo is missing three teeth courtesy of the Patriarch of Aira’s right fist. The Pope’s emissaries are thrown out of the council, a few anathemas are exchanged (it is considered sending one the way of the Pope in Avignon for the sake of tidiness although eventually rejected). Thus ends the last attempt at church union and reminded why they hate Catholics, the Council gets down to its original business.
The first matter is calendar reform. It is clear that the calendar of Julius Caesar is no longer in line with the seasons and needs to be replaced. A new calendar, developed by the University of Smyrna and named the Demetrian after the Emperor, is revealed. It is adopted in the first hearing. Ethiopia and the Despotate of Egypt, although Coptic countries and thereby not represented, both adopt the calendar immediately after the Orthodox nations. Castile-Portugal and Arles both sign on in 1623 but it is not until 1737 when the Triple Monarchy also does so that the calendar is in general use across Europe. It is the calendar in use today around the world.
Another significant change regarding astronomy is the recognition of the Menshikovian system, a system of astronomy whereby the earth, along with all the other planets, orbit the sun. This is in contrast to the ancient Ptolemaic system. The term itself dates from the late 1550s but has had proponents in Rhomania as far back as 1473. However the insistence on circular orbits, in accordance with Aristotelian thought, has meant that the Menshikovian system also contains numerous discrepancies in relation to actual stellar observations.
But in the last decade Krikor Zakari, an Armenian astronomer working out of Trebizond (and a descendant of one of Andreas Niketas’ Megas Domestikoi), has made some startling revisions to the Menshikovian system. In a pamphlet published in 1612 titled The Movement of the Celestial Spheres he lays out for the first time the Three Laws of Planetary Motion, known starting in the 1690s as Zakari’s Laws.
At first sight it seems odd that an Ecumenical Council is declaring on astronomy but considering the furor raised by the first presentation of a heliocentric model back in the 1470s it was decided to lay down the church’s position clearly to avoid any confusion. Furthermore it is a way for the Orthodox to thumb their noses at the Latins. Astronomers in the west too are agitating against Ptolemy’s model with stout opposition from the Catholic Church, much of that centered on Joshua’s demanding the sun, not the earth, to stand still when pursuing the Canaanites. Some mockery of the narrow, literal Latin interpretation is included in the Council’s declaration.
Incidentally at the same time Krikor’s Georgian assistant, David Avashvili, is taking a dalnovzor and using it to look at Jupiter, in the process discovering its four largest moons. Named Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, and Io, together they are called the Avashvilian Moons also since the 1690s.
Another matter is the Russian church. With the breakup of the Great Kingdom there is resistance at the Metropolitan of Kiev having seniority over all the bishops in the Russian lands. Each Russian state demands its own metropolitan. Neither Empress Helena nor Emperor Demetrios want to encourage the regionalization of Russia but are unable to oppose the motion. New Metropolitans are established at Novgorod, Pronsk, and Kazan, although given the historical significance of Kiev it remains the senior metropolitan of the four. Scythian bishops are put under the Metropolitan of Theodoro.
Initiatives are also established to encourage the missionary work in the east, with church funds set aside to finance schools for local clergy and for translations into native tongues. Furthermore local customs are examined for their compatibility with Orthodoxy but the general rule throughout is to try and be as accommodating as possible with said local customs. Church funds are also organized to help support the Japanese Emperor who faces significant opposition to his centralizing and Christianizing efforts. The Patriarch of Antioch speaks for everyone when he declares ‘the conversion of the noble Japanese race is the greatest boon to the True Faith since the Rus were brought to God’.
The proceedings are broken briefly by the marriage of Andreas and Elizabeth. The German princess is growing into a beautiful young woman, always a good way to win over the populace of Constantinople. It is a dazzling wedding, with golden silks shrouding the streets and ambassadors from all over Europe in attendance.
Elizabeth’s beauty serves her well as her grandfather’s activities aren’t winning her any points. Bavarian garrisons, ‘in order to maintain order over disturbed territories and protect the common good’, have yet to leave Austria. As the Council begins Austrian representatives from the Estates petition Emperor Friedrich IV to take Austria under his protection, given the patent Hungarian inability to maintain order. Friedrich naturally obliges this ‘spontaneous’ offer.
The annexation of Austria deals a death blow to the regency council led by Janos Zapolya. It’s rather surprising he has lasted this long. Into the gap comes Krsto Frankopan, who immediately starts arranging for his Croatian relations and friends to take up key position in the administration. Naturally this causes tensions with the Hungarians but Krsto is ‘supported’ by Friedrich. Friedrich’s reward is twofold, firstly a formal decree from the Crown of St. Stefan signing over the Kingdom of Austria. The second is that Hungary, which has followed the Avignon See since the start of the Catholic Schism, transfers its allegiance to Rome.
This is not as surprising a shift as it seems at first glance. There has been growing estrangement between Hungary and the Avignon See, which despite its early promise is now as corrupt and filled with nepotism as ever in papal history. The College of Cardinals is dominated by Arletians and Iberians; in the last one hundred and fifty years there have been three Hungarian cardinals and one died after only five months in office. The Pope in Rome, seeing the opportunity, immediately promotes two Hungarian archbishops to the cardinalate.
Friedrich has been massively strengthened and Hungary looks suspiciously like a de-facto puppet state. Moreover the Triple Monarchy, after re-attempting another assault on Flanders after the humiliation at Antwerp, has been decisively beaten yet again by the skilled generalship of Blucher. With German horse raiding the suburbs of both King’s Harbor and Paris, Arthur II has sued for peace. Aside from some border fortresses little territory trades hands but the massive Triune indemnity practically wipes out Friedrich’s debts from the Brothers’ War.
The Romans can do nothing overtly against all this but as a sign of disapproval that summer Helena the Younger, Andreas’ mother, is promoted to the purple, becoming Empress Helena II. It was originally planned to elevate Andreas as well but then there would be no good reason not to christen Elizabeth as Empress besides deliberately insulting Friedrich so he and she will have to be content as Kaisar and Kaisarina. (Andreas’ lack of promotion though should come to the relief of history students; if it had proceeded as planned there would be two Emperors-Demetrios II and Andreas III-and three Empresses-Helena I, Helena II, and Elizabeth-two reigning in their own right and one as a consort, all at the same time.)
The shadow of the Reich hangs over the Council as it reconvenes. Orthodoxy has seen some great triumphs the last few years, Japan brought to the faith and Serbia made free. But these triumphs can always be imperiled. In the minds of the Romans it is a matter of when, not if, the Latins will try to enslave them again. The Norman attacks, the Fourth Crusade, the War of the Five Emperors, the Smyrnan War, the Tenth Crusade, the Time of Troubles-the pattern is clear. The Serbs and Vlachs, on the periphery of Latin Christendom, are also fearful. For the Russians, for all their arguments amongst themselves, they have not forgotten the traumas of the Great Northern War. On this day Orthodoxy is free, but for how long, and what is to be done on that dread day when it is no longer the case?
Enter Konstantinos Mauromanikos, Bishop of Nakoleia. A short, squat man with a thick black beard and bushy eyebrows, Demetrios Sideros describes his face as ‘perpetually having the look of a man who has decided to ram his head through a stone wall and about to do so’. From Kastoria, his mother and sister were both raped and murdered by Hungarian marauders during the early stages of the Mohacs War. Unsurprisingly he despises Latins.
It is a fact, he argues, that when a Muslim or other heathen ruler, conquers an Orthodox people, he takes command of their possessions and bodies but leaves their souls alone. But that is not enough for the Latins; they insist on taking the souls of the Orthodox as well. How far must a believer go to avoid such a fate?
It is well known how far the Latins will go in their quest to steal Orthodox souls. William Adam, a prominent crusade theoretician and contemporary of Raymond Lull, had suggested that a child be taken from each Greek family to be brought up as a Catholic (Author’s note: This is OTL. See Deno John Geanokoplos, “Byzantium and the Crusades, 1261-1354,” in The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, vol. 3, A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth M. Setton and Harry W. Hazard. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), 52). Andrew VII had instituted said practice with the Serbian nobility, the act that had sparked Stephan Tomasevic’s rebellion.
“They would steal our children.” Few arguments can ensure such fanatical rage. Some kind of response must be made. In the words of Demetrios Sideros, “The Latins must be made aware of how much we hate them. Perhaps if they realize the depths of our disdain they will cease trying to conquer us.” Bishop Mauromanikos proposes that committing suicide to avoid Latin conquest if escape is infeasible is actually not a sin but an act of ultimate devotion, sacrificing the body to preserve the soul, a deed similar to the martyrs of the early Church.
This argument causes quite a bit of furor in the chamber. It is eventually rejected as being too extreme but neither is it condemned. The proposal earned quite a bit of support from the Japanese, Sicilian, Serbian, and Vlach bishops, plus many from the Macedonian, Epirote, and Thessalian regions (Mauromanikos is himself an exception to the rule as his see is in western Anatolia but he’s Thessalian by origin). As a compromise it is eventually stated that the faithful should be made fully aware of the danger to their souls imposed by Catholic dominion and that ‘all measures should be taken to avoid such a fate’. What that exactly means is left unmentioned.