September 18th, 1196
“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
The words echoed off the stone walls and ceiling of the cathedral attached to the Lateran Palace, the same stones that for five months had absorbed the noise of a city under siege. The words came from the mouth of a man generously described as short and thin, his alert, intelligent brown eyes now cast at the ground. As Pope Innocent III, Vicar of Christ and Bishop of Rome recited the Lord’s Prayer, his mind went back, again and again, on how he’d reached this low point.
The fact that the Eastern Empire wanted Rome was no secret. When Emperor Thomas began making noises and preparing for war much as Manuel had almost fifty years before, Innocent had offered to meet the Greek Emperor in person to discuss the situation, only to have his courier return with a curt note from someone named Andreas Mourtzes that the Emperor was not in Italy, and that as general of the Imperial command, Mourtzes would follow his orders to secure the city of Rome for the Roman Empire. This instantly took the wind out of the Latin sails – Innocent II had deflected a major Roman attack by meeting the Emperor in person and shaming him. There would be no such chance this time.
So, while praying to divine providence to assist them, Innocent took two-fold action. First, the local Roman nobility mustered itself for battle, whilst the Pope himself stayed behind to supervise the city defenses. If the Roman Emperor was not in Italy in person, few expected a truly large scale invasion – a raid maybe… a few thousand troops at most. So when 25,000 Romans crossed the border and decimated the merchants and wealthy caste of the city of Rome near Segni, shock and horror rang through the city.
After the debacle near Segni, Innocent had ordered the entire College of Cardinals to flee north. Lotario, Count of Segni, who had so valiantly resisted the Greek juggernaught, was placed in over of their armed escort, and under Papal oath, charged with ensuring the cardinals safely reached the closest great prelate of the Church – the Archbishop of Provence. From there, the cardinals would elect a new pope, and begin the process of finding a new home for the Papacy.
There had been some controversy. The cardinals had repeatedly urged that they should flee to France, but now, after having his naivete stripped away, Innocent saw the wolf under the sheep’s clothing. When the Greeks had first moved, couriers from Rome had ridden to all the city-states of Italy, and even up into France, calling on the great lords and barons to exercise their Christian duty and defend the Vicar of Christ. For a while, Innocent had maintained hope – the Italian city states had begun marshalling a formidable army near Padua, but the force moved only to the border of the Papacy, then stopped.
The Italian city states – most principally Florence, Pisa, Bologna and Milan – started marshalling their civic levies near Padua in July of 1196. Despite massing well over 20,000 under arms, this force has yet to move any further south than its current camp…
Innocent closed his eyes, and purposefully uttered a short prayer for the soul of King Drogo of France. The words came slowly to his mouth, but they came.
Innocent had continued the long tradition of his forebearers, from Innocent II, to Gregory VII long before, in attempting to divest the spiritual world of the Church from undue corruption and influence of secular lords. The King of the French for decades had stymied efforts by Pope Innocent II, then later Pope Boniface, to gain more Church control in the appointment of French bishops. Drogo had abjectly refused until Innocent had threatened the ultimate punishment – excommunicating the King of the French and placing all of France under interdict. Only then did the infamous King of the Franks yield to Papal wishes…
…and the sudden refusal of the Italian lords to assist the Pope smelled of Drogo’s influence.
Only now, five months after the Greeks arrived, when all of the city’s defenders knew the siege could not last a day longer, did the true enormity of what happened sink into the Pope’s mind. Drogo was letting Rome fall, cajoling the princes of Italy to do the same, hoping the Papacy would flee to the most obvious place of safety.
His arms.
A weakened Papacy in the arms of the French crown would mean the Church would be effectively dominated by the French state, at once undoing all the work of Innocent’s predecessors. The Church would leave its spiritual glory, and descend into a realm of secular hedonism, a pawn amongst kings instead of a voice for Christ’s glory. So Innocent had demanded the Cardinals head immediately for Provence, and from thence north, over the Alps towards Trier, out of the seducing hands of Drogo Capet. The Papacy must get away from Italy, true, bit neither could the Church trade an Eastern overlord for a Capetian one.
The Papacy must survive.
The Church had come a long way in two centuries, moving towards an effort to truly unify the fractured, Latin Christian world in spirit. There was little these days in which Innocent could take comfort – but there was one thing. Try as he might, this Eastern Emperor could not destroy the Church. Rome could fall; Rome was but a place. The Church, however, could not – for the Church did not reside in Rome, Innocent believed. It did not even reside in the eminent College of Cardinals so quickly fleeing north along the ancient Appian Way. It laid in the hearts and minds of the millions of faithful across Europe, the priests who tended the flock, the scholastic monks who questioned and probed man’s role in God’s great design – all things that lay far beyond the reach of one malevolent Emperor, or a King that would seek to dominate the See of St. Peter.
“Amen,” Innocent finished yet another prayer, opening his eyes briefly. He felt the cold emptiness of the chapel all around him, and shivered. The Romanesque vault arching over him reminded the Pope of the earth of a tomb, the dancing candlelight making shadowy specters fluttering across the grey walls. There was the muffled noise of more shouts, and yet another whiff of smoke greeted the Pope’s nose.
So the Greeks had finally entered the city.
“Bloody Greeks are in the streets,” Innocent heard a familiar voice hiss, “Sounds like they’ve reached the Coliseum quarter.” Innocent turned, and looked at the portly, aged figure of Friedrich Hohenstaufen, the rough-hewn commander of the small Papal Guard. A thin, ragged red line ran from his temple down the side of his face – a gift from the briefest kiss of a Greek sword at Segni. A small smile came to the Pope’s lips – when His Holiness had ordered the College of Cardinals to flee, Friedrich, one of the most skilled fighting men seen in Rome and a devout servant of the Holy Church, had refused to leave his charge’s side. Friedrich had argued that it was his duty to protect the person of the Pope till the very end. So now he stood next to the kneeling Pope, uneasily holding his sword, his chainmail clinking as he nervously moved about. For all his devotion, the Pope mused, Friedrich was so tempermentally inclined to the worries of the world. When the German saw Innocent’s eye on him, he looked mortified.
“Sorry, Holiness, my tongue, using such…”
“I care not, Friedrich, what language you use,” Innocent said with a tired half-smile, “I think the Almighty might disagree with that word inside a holy sanctuary.” He saw Friedrich’s face blanche, and knew the mild chiding had done far more than the harshest rebuke. Slowly, Innocent rose from his kneeling, and made his way out of the cathedral – the dark light was entirely too dismal for his liking. Behind him, the clink of Friedrich’s chain hauberk echoed off of the stone walls.
Slowly the two passed through a series of corridors hewn from stone, as ancient as the Lateran itself. They passed the stairway that led down past the cellars, into the Silent Room where Innocent had heard all the reports from priests in south Italy on the Greek military preparations. Then they passed the doors that led, eventually, to the Papal residence itself. Finally, they made their way to the Lateran’s balcony, which overlooked the Old City of Rome.
Innocent’s eyes went wide.
God have mercy…
From the Lateran, all the Pope could see were flames licking the sky. As he stepped out onto the balcony, the muffled murmurs that had greeted his ears in the sanctuary of the Lateran now showed themselves to be the screams of women dragged into the streets from their homes, and the shouts of men being gutted for their gold – the terrifying song of a city being pillaged by an uncaring foe.
“God have mercy,” Innocent muttered, the sheer brutality of the scene unfolding below rooting him in place. There were no other words. The horrible images from below and the stinging, acrid smoke made his eyes water. How could Christians do this to a Christian city?! A holy city of God?!
Innocent had expected harshness when the Greek’s arrived in the city – a military occupation, his person confined to the Lateran at best, imprisoned at worst. But this?! Before his eyes, a woman was dragged from a home across from the Lateran, and defiled by a slew of soldiers as her husband was cut down by some Greek blade. In the distance, smoke and flame erupted from the Castel Sant’Angelo, the Pantheon, and a host of other landmarks, homes, and churches. Men clad in the armor of the Greeks dashed through the streets, gold plate, chopped arms and legs from statues and other decorates snugly in their grasp.
“Bloody hell!” Friedrich hissed.
“God, have mercy on Rome, on all of us…” Innocent whispered. So much destruction! So much death! A part of Innocent’s mind wondered if, indeed, the end times had finally come, if this Emperor Thomas was the Antichrist…
“Holiness!”
Innocent turned towards Friedrich, and saw the German staring behind them, sword out at a ready stance. Innocent followed the German’s gaze, to a gaggle of armed men standing in the entrance to the balcony. They parted, as if some Moses wanted commanded them to open the sea of steel, and a man clad head to toe in gilded armor, an enormous, grimacing mask covering his face, strode confidently onto the balcony. Behind him came another man, clad less richly, the flowing red cape of a general hanging from his shoulders.
The gilded statue of a man took a few steps forward, before lifting that emotionless mask. Innocent’s heart raced. He had seen enough engravings, heard enough descriptions, that he knew that face anywhere. Embers fluttered lazily in the air inches from his head, as the great orange glow of hundreds of fires reflected off of the man’s imperial armor, making the gold shine a bloody red in the smoky night.
“Your Holiness,” Thomas said darkly, a deadly smile on his face.
Anteminos Mourtzes had never expected to be here.
The
strategos of the
Italikon Stratos had spent the better part of a year gathering troops from Imperial Sicily as well as the lands of Leo Komnenos, building the force of 25,000 that had laid siege to Rome’s immense walls for over five months. He’d led the delegation that had bribed the castellan of St. Angelo’s fortress, and watched his men scale the walls late that afternoon, and the fighting on the city ramparts into the night. Now, well into the early morning, the city of Rome, long coveted by the Emperors of the East, was Roman once more.
Mourtzes had planned to occupy the city, leaving behind a significant detachment of over 10,000 to secure it while he rapidly marched north to defeat the Italian city states before they could fully marshal their forces. The Pope would be placed under house arrest, the College of Cardinals detained in the Quirinal Palace until the Emperor could make proper negotiations with them. Speed would have been the essence – scouts had reported a column of men, carts, and litters leaving Rome only days before the siege was to commence. Yet before he could organize a pursuit, a courier had arrived from Konstantinopolis.
The Emperor would be arriving in mid-July to personally supervise siege operations. Furthermore, Thomas had demanded that Mourtzes devote his
entire force to the siege – no detachments would be allowed to head northward. Mourtzes wanted to protest, but he could not do so until Thomas arrived in person, delayed as he was by some assassination business in the capital. By that point, the long train of people, animals and treasure, which Anteminos assumed included most of the College of Cardinals, was long gone to the north.
Mourtzes had hoped to salvage something from his campaign once it became apparent that morning the city would fall, but once again, the Emperor had interfered. Instead of rapidly leaving the city behind and making all haste north, Thomas had insisted, in polite terms at least, that the army be “given liberty” in the city. One of Mourtzes’
chillarchoi had loudly protested, and earned an imperial gauntlet in his crotch for his efforts. After that, no one questioned the Emperor’s designs. Mourtzes still shuddered at the Emperor’s exact wording:
“Loot, pillage, and burn – I want all remnants of Rome built between Constantine and the present to be wiped out, as if God Himself had scrubbed the city clean!”
As the
strategos had expected, the army, once told they had free leave, had run amok. Throughout their ride to the Lateran Palace, Anteminos had been shocked at the blood running freely in the streets, the looting, the burning, the violence unleashed by soldiers bored to death by a five month siege. And now, in the midst of this chaos, Mourtzes stood side by side with his Emperor, facing the most prominent man in all of Christendom…
“Majesty,” the Pope said quietly, visibly swallowing hard. Only a moment later, the tall, burly man standing next to the Pope interposed himself – sword drawn. By his hair, and the way he held his blade, Mourtzes knew the man was German – south German, probably. For all his long graying hair and fierce demeanor, he looked too clean to be a Saxon.
“Stand aside!” Thomas barked a stentorian command. Mourtzes started to draw his own blade. The German was a brute, and plainly desperate to defend his charge.
“My name is Friedrich Hohenstaufen,” the burly German snarled, “Captain of the Papal Guard. I am charged with defending His Holiness with my life, and, if need-be, I shall take all of you with me!”
“Friedrich…” a voice said from behind the brute.
“Stand aside, or I will cut you down…” Thomas’ voice had dropped to a threatening tone.
The great German charged the Emperor with a roar, sword raised high above his head. Before Mourtzes could even start forward, Thomas blocked Friedrich’s wild swing with the steel shaft of his mace. One second, the German was flashing a steely grin, shoving downwards with all his might. The next, his grin disappeared, a look of wide-eyed surprise on his face. Mourtzes looked down – the Emperor’s off hand was twisting a dagger into the man’s side. It was Thomas’ turn to smile darkly, and the Emperor shoved Friedrich back with one great heave. The big Latin brute stood, silhouetted against the flames, like some tottering giant of old, before the Emperor brought his mace in a low, sweeping strike. The German’s left leg snapped with a dull crack under the force of the hit, and he crumpled to the ground.
“That the last of your dogs!?” Thomas barked towards the Pope with a harsh laugh. The Emperor turned, looking over his shoulder. “Dismissed!” he said curtly to the guardsmen, still standing awe-struck, blades only half drawn as their Emperor casually kicked Friedrich’s sword from the injured man’s grasp. As if to reinforce the point, he casually stepped over his wounded opponent, walking towards the Bishop of Rome in slow, measured, deadly steps.
One by one, the
Hetaratoi turned and filed back into the Lateran Palace. As Mourtzes turned as well, Thomas called out to him.
“No, Mourtzes, you stay,” Thomas pointed, without turning around.
“Me… Majesty?” Mourtzes said weakly. He’d seen the look in Thomas’ eyes plenty of times before – on the hunt, at Kirkuk…
“Yes,” Thomas turned, eyes ablaze. “I want a witness to my negotiations with the Bishop of Rome.”
Mourtzes nodded emptily. “Yes, Majesty.”
The Emperor finally stopped his slow, measured march towards the Pope. Mourtzes searched for any sign of fear in the small, bare-headed man. Innocent III merely looked at the self-styled Emperor of All Christians, Divinely-Appointed Emperor of the Romans with a look that bordered somewhere between blank and placid, but Mourtzes could see the man’s hands shaking ever so slightly. The Pope was afraid, but no, he would not show it – not to Thomas.
“I am Thomas, Emperor of the Romans, Divinely Appointed Vice Gerent of Christ on this Earth!” the Emperor haughtily announced, that dark, half sane grin on his face. “You, Guilio di Rossi, called Innocent III, will surrender all legal and spiritual rights to me! You will kiss my feet, you will acknowledge me as…”
“I know who you claim you are,” the Pope interrupted, his voice as calm and even keeled as his face, “And I know you want what I cannot give you. I may surrender my broken body, but I cannot surrender the Church. You hold the power of man, but you hold no power from God. That alone is reserved for Mother Church.”
Innocent III’s answer to Thomas summed up in a single word.
Mourtzes saw the Emperor take in a deep breath, his hands visibly starting to shake from rage.
“You… impudent…” Thomas sputtered. “I am God’s personal instrument of vengeance and destruction! I am God’s representative on Earth, as
all Roman Emperors have been before me!” Thomas shouted, the fingers of his right hand flexing along the length of the immense gilded mace in his hand. He stalked a few more steps towards Innocent, menacingly. “God has always intended for
me, a
Roman Emperor, to rule Rome and all her dominions, of this world and the next!”
“Take the city, if you must,” Innocent said quietly, “but you cannot have Mother Church. That is beyond the purview of any mortal king…”
“What?” Thomas cocked his head to one side, his voice dropping dangerously to a whisper. The Emperor took another step forward.
“Majesty?” the
strategos looked over at Thomas, eyes wide in horror. The Pope’s hands were no longer shaking. They hung calmly at the small Italian’s side, one clutching a series of beads. Mourtzes didn’t understand…
“You may rule an empire in the world of men,” Innocent continued, “but you must still bend your knee to Christ, and Christ’s representative in this world, the Holy Church!” The Pope’s voice never rose above a whisper just above the noise of the dying city, but even Mourtzes could hear the sudden, deadly iron in those quiet words.
The Emperor moved even closer to the Pope, eyes flashing a deadly glare. “What?” he repeated, his whisper rising even higher in pitch.
“The Church belongs to Christ, not you.”
Thomas started to open his mouth, but no words came out. Slowly, unsteadily as his arm shook with rage, the Emperor raised his mace till the deadly head was only inches from the Pope’s. “Kneel,” the Emperor commanded in a voice at once calm and unsettling. “Kneel before Christ’s true representative on Earth.”
Mourtzes flashed back to the humble, small man in white, who looked at the Emperor but did not move. The man’s face was blank for a moment, then finally, his head started to bow, and his hand let go of the beads hidden in the folds of his vestments. A smile broke across Thomas’ face, until the Bishop of Rome folded his hands in front of him.
“
Avē Marīa, grātia plēna, Dominus tēcum. Benedicta tū in mulieribus…”
Instantly, the Emperor’s face grew dark. As the
strategos watched, horrified, the Emperor backhanded the Pope with his mailed gauntlet. Blood flew, and the small, unarmed man tumbled backwards towards the stone railings of the balcony.
“Kneel!” Thomas barked even louder.
“Leave him be!” the wounded German yelled. “Fight me, you sewer swine! Fight me!”
Mourtzes hoped the man’s bellow might distract Thomas, but the Emperor’s fury was fully focused as he stalked towards the Pope.
Innocent braced himself against the railing, and slowly rose to standing again. “
…et benedictus frūctus ventris tuī, Iēsus. Sancta Marīa, Māter Deī…”
“Kneel!” Thomas barked, his voice hitting a falsetto that bit into Mourtzes ears. The Emperor was now hovering only inches in front of the bloodied man.
“
…ōrā prō nōbīs peccātōribus, nunc et in hōrā…”
The rosary ended with sickening thud, as Thomas slammed his mailed fist into the man’s belly. Innocent stumbled backwards under the force of the horrendous blow.
“Are you finished with your worthless prayers?” Thomas snarled. “What, are you going to excommunicate me? Damn me for taking your city, taking your power that is rightfully mine as
Roman Emperor?” Thomas circled the hapless, bloodied man. “No stern lectures on how I’m damned, how you’ll remove me from God’s grace? Only a puny prayer…”
“No words I can say can compete with what you’ve done,” that bloodied, broken priest said. Not even blood and broken teeth could stifle his words. “Your Majesty, you’ve damned yourself more thoroughly than any excommunication ever could…”
Thomas’ eyes went wide, his nostrils flared, and Mourtzes swallowed hard. In a flash, the Emperor’s golden gauntlets had lifted the small man up, up into the air. Innocent didn’t smile, didn’t grimace, didn’t struggle – he was limp as a rag doll. Mourtzes didn’t know how to describe the look on the man’s face. Was it peace? Was it resignation?
“Majesty…” Mourtzes started to say. Thomas wouldn’t just murder the Bishop of Rome! He couldn’t!
He didn’t have a chance to say, for in a single movement, the Emperor heaved the Pope off of the balcony. Amidst the noise and clamor of a city being looted, no one heard the crack of the poor man’s head on the stone streets below.
Anteminos Mourtzes was horrified by the Emperor’s actions
Mourtzes ran to the edge of the parapet, and looked below in horror. Innocent lay crumpled, his head at an unnatural, deadly angle, the orange glow of fires reflecting off the growing pool of blood around his face. As the
strategos watched in horror, a man, weighed down by several goblets and pieces of gold plate, lumbered up to the broken figure and started tugging the rings on his fingers.
“Majesty! Majesty… how?” Mourtzes stammered as he looked up, shaking. Yes, the Pope might have disagreed vehemently with the Eastern Church, but he was still a man of God! A holy man of God! For the Emperor to…
Thomas ignored his general’s sputterings, and leaned over the balcony for a moment longer, giving a satisfied huff after a few moments. The Emperor’s eyes flecked towards Mourtzes, and the
strategos saw that same deadly, dangerous glint in them. He started to back away, but Thomas stayed rooted in place, a sickening half smile coming onto his face.
“That pauper’s richer a few holy rings!” the Emperor laughed. It was a sharp, barking noise, sounding more like the baying of a rabid hound than the chuckles of a sane man.
Mourtzes wanted to run, he knew he should run. God’s wrath would surely fall on the Emperor for that act of murder! The Emperor’s unnerving gaze was still settled on him as the noise of a dying city echoed in all their ears.
“A curse on you!”
The shout instantly caught the Emperor’s attention, and Thomas spun around to face the still prone and bleeding Friedrich. Mourtzes could see the same great breaths as the Emperor stalked over to the wounded man, and with a mailed fist slapped him across the face also. There was a sickening crack.
“What did you say, cur?!” Thomas screeched, his voice sounded like some demon banshee.
“A curse on you!” the German snarled between the blood and pulp that were now his lips and teeth. “A curse on all your line bearing your name!” The German rocked as blood seeping from his jerkins, and ran across the stone balcony. “May every son in your family named Thomas die in raving, stark madness! May God strip them of their wealth, their name, their health, and their loved ones!”
The
strategos looked up at the Emperor, surprised. Thomas stood there, eyes flared wide, visibly heaving with each breath. Considering the speed with which Thomas had just casually tossed
the Pope over the balcony, why was this German, spouting epithets and things far worse still shouting his obscene threats and curses on the Imperial line?
“What?” Thomas asked yet again, that quiet, damning whisper returning.
“May their penises wither and crack!” the German snarled, grasping onto the stone railing, slowly, desperately pulling himself up. “May their wives die in childbirth, may they love men, not women! May they rise against you, and bring you bitterness and shame in your shortened days!”
The Emperor let loose one final yell, and the German’s words stopped with the crack of a heavy mace shattering bone. The Emperor swung not once, not twice, but again and again, shattering bone and rending flesh with each strike on the dead man.
Mourtzes felt bile rising in his throat. He looked away from the madness of the Emperor’s rage, only to have the flames of the city of Rome assault his eyes, and the screams of men and women rend his ears – exchanging one madness for another. Dizzy at all he’d seen, the
strategos retched over the edge of the balcony into the riotous streets below. When he looked back up, stomach roiling, he saw Thomas looking at him, blood dripping from his mace.
“What’s wrong,
strategos?” the Emperor said in a pleasant, conversational tone that did not match the wild, feral look in his eyes. “You look as if you’ve seen a madman!”
I went with getting the darker episode out of the way first. Thomas has Rome… and has genuinely lost his mind, as well as revolted one of his senior generals. While Pope Innocent III is no more, the College of Cardinals has escaped to the north. How will Latin Christianity react? Will Thomas’ barbarous acts force an unwilling Drogo to act? That’ll be answered the update after next… next update – once again, who is Lope de Normandie, and how will Mehtar’s plans for Rodrigo’s spymaster work out?
As a side note – during play, I actually missed the event where Thomas went nuts… I was getting vassal spammed (breakaway Russian principalities) *shakes fist* so I missed taking a screenie of it. Since it was such an important event, I went back to the save on my DV equipped computer and f12ed the screenies into existence…
A second side note - this was a really hard update to write, so I'm extra keen on people's ideas of how it went. For those of you who are extreme history buffs, there are two easter eggs hidden away in here. See if you can find them...
