During the course of 549, Ursicinus and a small force of some four thousand men had been patiently establishing a secure beachhead in Bithynia. He was able to recruit significant numbers of Romans and Lombards into the army – troops left disorganized and jobless after the collapse of the legitimist Lombard forces in the region under Rotharios. These expedients doubled his effective troop strength, so that, from his base at Nikomēdeia, Ursicinus was able to seize outposts at Prousa, Klaudiopolis, and Hērakleia. He faced little effective resistance. No organized Egyptian garrisons lay in his way – the work, not of plague, but of civil war. And the Goths were too busy dismantling the Syrian state to bother with a tiny Roman expeditionary force in Bithynia.
At the same time, Serena and her advisors were determining the best course of action with regard to Anatolia and the East. Several generals, including the
comites domesticorum and Litorius, were convinced that even the Balkan entanglement was too risky, and to extend the war deep into Anatolia and beyond would mean weakening imperial resources beyond reason. Better instead to employ the Egyptian civil war as a breathing space, during which Rome could consolidate what it had. Theodoros’ partisan Avitus, who held the post of
comes Hispaniæ, and the new
magister militum per Illyricum Constantius instead argued that it was best to exploit this temporary state of affairs in the East. Rome was fiscally and militarily exhausted, true; but Egypt was even worse off, the Goths were distracted, and the Sāsānians might well draw off more of Rome’s enemies. The Romans, Avitus argued, would not get this kind of chance again. Serena was convinced by his arguments and by the lure of the glory of a successful conquest, and dispatched reinforcements to Theodoros
et al., with the brief of reestablishing authority over as much of Anatolia and the East as was possible.
By the spring of 550 Theodoros had the reinforcements in hand and was prepared to cross the Straits. Having bought more time with a winter campaign against the Gepid raiders, he left several thousand troops behind to form the core of a new Thracian army under the command of
magister militum Constans. He and twenty-five thousand of his own men sailed to Asia and met with about the same amount of resistance Ursicinus had, i.e. zero. Upon his chief’s arrival, Ursicinus, with a smaller detachment, set about overwhelming the garrisons of Egyptian-held cities and forts along the Aegean coast in concert with Priscus’ fleet. Theodoros himself struck out for central Anatolia and the Gothic heartland. After some abortive negotiations, Fridereiks drew up an army of Ostrogoths to oppose the Romans at Pessinous. The canny old eunuch placed the Roman army in a strong defensive position, and smashed Gothic attacks with sustained arrow fire. With his army in disarray, Fridereiks pulled back into the depths of Kappadokia, pursued hotly by Theodoros and his Romans.
Gūdarz of the Ispahbudhān had spent the past few years plundering Syria, but never actually attempting to occupy it – it was too militarily costly (and unsuited to the Sāsānian military) and there were too many potential enemies about from which to plunder. With his erstwhile Ostrogothic allies suffering a heavy defeat at Roman hands, Gūdarz decided that they were now a perfect target. Presuming that the Goths’ new defenses in the Tauros would be denuded of troops, he ordered simultaneous attacks on several passes to overwhelm the already stressed Gothic defensive net. The city of Anazarbos fell within days, and Tarsos was captured not long afterward. A gaping hole was soon torn in the Ostrogothic frontier, and Sāsānian raiders poured in.
Terrified of the Sāsānians, Fridereiks made a fresh attempt to come to terms with the Romans, and this time they were more willing to listen. Provisionally, Theodoros gave Fridereiks a viceregal command –
comes Orientis – and defined his responsibilities as covering most of the old Roman
dioeceses of Pontus and part of Oriens. Ostrogothic settlement was cordoned off to the Kappadokian and Galatian provinces. With Gothic and Roman forces at his back, Theodoros marched into the Tauros in fall 550 and dealt the Sāsānians a defeat at Faustinoupolis, scuttling Gūdarz’s plans for a cross-Tauros offensive. It was all well and good to defeat Iranian troops in the mountains, though – but on the plains of Kilikia, the heavily armored
dehkāns would annihilate the cavalry-deficient Roman army. Until Theodoros had solved the tactical problem of dealing with the Sāsānian horse, the two sides would be at an impasse.
The problem was solved in an unexpected manner: the abrupt end of the Egyptian civil war. Having attempted to remain safe in his Palæstinian fastness for years, Eutyches Melanos had elected to take his chances with Apollinarios’ armies after learning of his brother’s defeats in Europe and Anatolia. With a strong force, including part of the Ġassānid army and a contingent from Damaskos, Eutyches had marched down the coast from Raphia to Pēlousion, where he fought an Egyptian army under the command of Apollinarios’ general Zoilos in the summer of 550. After gaining a defensive victory, Eutyches foolishly dispersed his army to pursue the routed Apollinarid army. He and his cavalry guardsmen were killed by a group of Egyptian infantry that turned and fought. Upon discovering this, his army disintegrated and Apollinarios became the victor by default. He attempted to reoccupy Palæstina, only to find it strongly held by the Ġassānids.
In the decades since their arrival in the Roman East, the Ġassānids had been heavily influenced by the Palæstinian view of Christianity, a synthesis of views on the controversy between Chalkēdōnian and anti-Chalkēdōnians over the issue of the nature(s) of Christ. Palæstinian “irenic” theology, which had evolved out of the need to reconcile the Chalkēdōnian views of the archbishops of Jerusalem with the opposed ones of the Alexandrian popes, was perhaps best formulated by the monk Leontios, who argued for the concept of uniting the (Chalkēdōnian) “two natures” – human and divine – of Christ in one “
hypostasis”. He used easily understood metaphors for comparison: the
hypostasis was like how water and a sponge come together in one entity, but remain separate by nature, for instance. Leontios and others had managed to convert many of the Banū Ġassān by the 550s, supported enthusiastically by the
phylarchoi, who saw the alternative theology as a way of maintaining “independence of the mind” from the overlords in Alexandria.
Irenic Chalkēdōnianism contributed to al-Mundhir’s complete break with Egyptian authority, but the Ġassānid move was motivated by other, arguably more important factors as well. Like Eutyches, al-Mundhir saw an Egypt weakened by plague and civil war and unable to exert its will upon others. Now was essentially the perfect time to seize power. With his religious bent – and, more practically, his geopolitical position – al-Mundhir could almost certainly count on Roman approval, perhaps even Roman support. So in the aftermath of the Battle of Pēlousion, al-Mundhir seized control of most of the Palæstinian provinces and Phoenikē and sent a request to the Romans for aid and recognition. Over the winter of 550-551, Theodoros passed the message to Serena at Ravenna, who enthusiastically agreed to naval support and recognition of “Alamundarus” as
rex totius Palæstinæ – essentially an extraordinary command theoretically in the Roman hierarchy, but in practice quite independent. Further contacts between al-Mundhir and Theodoros led to strategic planning, and by spring the Ġassānids were prepared to launch an offensive against the southern flank of the Sāsānian corridor in Syria.
What ensued in the spring and summer of 551 was an elaborate campaign of maneuver warfare in northern Syria. Gūdarz and his Sāsānians attempted to link up with their Arab allies of the Banū Lakhm and crush the isolated Ġassānid army, while Theodoros endeavored to move quickly enough to reach the Ġassānids before they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Everybody’s troubles were compounded by the distances involved, poor reconnaissance (especially on the Romans’ part), and the inherent difficulty of coordinating and uniting two armies when all communications are by runner or rider. Near Laodikeia, al-Mundhir nearly fell into Sāsānian hands, but was saved by the arrival of Priscus and the Roman fleet, along with a sizable contingent of marines, which helped the Arabs hold the city until the Sāsānians exhausted their local supplies and were forced to draw off. Theodoros himself almost led his army into a Lakhmid hornet’s nest in the desert near Berroia, but managed to escape before the Lakhmids were able to close the net with the Sāsānians. At Kyrrhēstikē, the Roman and Ġassānid armies finally came together and narrowly defeated the Sāsānian army, employing trenches offensively to cover the Roman infantry’s flanks. The decisive blow was delivered by, of all people, some of Fridereiks’ Ostrogoths.
The Battle of Kyrrhēstikē by no means destroyed the Sāsānian and Lakhmid armies, but it battered them sufficiently that Gūdarz was convinced the campaign would cease to be profitable if it were continued. His sovereign was also worried about cost. Ardašīr III saw the Syrian campaign as having accomplished its goals. The Syrian state had ceased to exist, and the region had been plundered. Further glory and perhaps actual conquests awaited in the east, where the hated Hayāṭila qagans were suffering major defeats against a poorly-known group of rebels, the Tiele. Sugd and Dihistān lay wide open for the taking. With the tacit approval of their sovereigns, Theodoros and Gūdarz concluded a truce and went their separate ways, with the Sāsānians confined east of the Euphrates. Both Romans and Iranians prepared more formal diplomatic missions to hold talks at Hierapolis. But Theodoros himself had more important things to do. During the course of 551, Apollonarios’ armies had seized Raphia, and were preparing to bring Jerusalem under siege. That fall and winter, the Roman-Gothic-Ġassānid army made tracks for Palæstina. In the spring of 552, the Romans and allies won another victory at Ioppē that cleared the Egyptians from Palæstina and secured al-Mundhir’s control over the region.
Even as the Romans were winning signal military victories, and reestablishing control over an astonishing portion of the Empire of Constantinus Magnus, trouble was brewing in several quarters. First: the Gallic provinces. After the Visigoths were finally crushed in 543, Litorius had spent five years harassing the Vascones. The Romans could not invade and occupy their territory, nestled in the mountains along the sea-coast and nearly impossible to reach. But they were able to conduct punitive raids, burning crops, slaughtering villages, and so forth. Litorius also resettled many of those troublesome Visigoths in Vasconia, as a sop to Gallic landowners and to provide a better military basis for fighting them. The wily old Æghyna eventually brought the Vascones into the fold in 549, retaining significant self-government privileges and exemptions from military service and recruitment. Litorius had then turned on the Franks in full force, only to find that his troops were barely needed there.
During the course of the 540s, one of the great organized migrations in European history was picking up steam. Like the Huns before them, the Avars came from parts unknown. Some historians claim that they were Hayāṭila, others that they were from a qaganate north of China called the Tantan, and still others that they were neither of these groups at all, but a coalition formed by ethnogenetic pressures on the steppe. Whatever their origin, they had reached the Pannonian Plain by the early 540s, and were exerting serious military pressure against the Gepids by the end of the decade. Other migratory groups went further north, either as part of the Avar coalition or as groups “pushed” west by Avar movement. These northerly groups exerted serious pressure on the Thuringii, who started moving of their own accord. During the course of 549-551, the Thuringii crossed the Rhine and established dominance over many of the disorganized Frankish groups in Roman Germania and Gaul. Those that didn’t enter Thuringian “protection” were annihilated straight out. By 552 a Thuringian overking, Badereiks, had assumed sufficient power over the new Thuringian polity to negotiate with the Romans. Since effective Roman control changed little from the Thuringian migration, and a military campaign against him would be costly and arguably pointless, Serena and Litorius agreed to recognize Badereiks as
rex Turingorum.
The Avars themselves caused other problems. By the early 550s they had more or less assumed control over the entirety of the Pannonian Plain, wiping out, driving away, and assimilating the Gepids that ruled there before. In 553, the
magister militum per Illyricum, Constantius, at the head of an army of Romans and Heruli, drew a bloody battle with the Avars at Sopianæ. Further attacks on the Heruli by Avar chieftains weakened the Heruli so badly that they voluntarily revoked their semi-independence as
foederati and asked permission to settle in the Empire as Romans. Avar raids didn’t stop, though; Constantius was hard pressed to deal with attacks through the gaps in the Adrianic Alps on the Dalmatian coast. As for what was left of the Gepids, they crossed the Danube into Thrace and settled north of the Haimos, which Constans, the Thracian
magister militum, was powerless to prevent.
Serena was no fool; she fully recognized the vulnerability of her new conquests and the danger inherent in these new enemies. Realistically, there was little that could be done, except continue efforts to revive the economy and rearm. Manpower was only just beginning to recover from the disasters of the 530s, as was the imperial fisc. New conquests helped, but many of these were not under direct imperial control. Anatolia, for instance, ended up contributing very little to the Empress’s exchequer, as did Oriens. Many of the conquered territories were also in a ruinous state from the war, and only so many funds could be spent on improvements to infrastructure, like aqueducts or city walls. There was also imperial ceremonial and the Church to consider.
Speaking of the Church, the conquests helped to significantly change the nature of the Empire in religious affairs. In late 552, the anti-Chalkēdōnian archbishop of Antiocheia, Alexandros, died, and the Empress had Theodoros install one that was more in line with the 451 council. Efforts by the new archbishop, Ephraim, to impose Chalkēdōn on some parts of Syria were heavily resisted by local clergy. At the same time, there was a schism in the Alexandrian see; some monks, led by one Damianos, took anti-Chalkēdōnian miaphysitism to its logical extent and concluded that each of the parts of the Trinity had its own nature and substance. These “Tritheists” were attacked as being polytheistic by the Alexandrian pope Theophilos II, since if each element of the Trinity had its own nature and substance, they were essentially separate deities (according to his logic, anyway). The tritheistic controversy made Coptic Christianity look vulnerable, and the archbishop of Jerusalem, Anastasios II, wrote Serena, asking for her to convoke and support an ecumenical council to try to draw the Coptic church back into communion with the rest of Christianity. The Empress moved to Rome to hold the council, which was opened in July 555 in the Pantheon, converted to a church for the occasion.
Representatives were sent to this inventively named Council of Rome from the three Chalkēdōnian archbishoprics, as well as Antiocheia. Unsurprisingly, few Egyptian bishops attended due to threats from Apollinarios, and of these only four stayed for the entire council. During the proceedings, the irenic Palæstinian formula met with opposition from Pope Marcellinus II, who personally attended, and from most of the Coptic bishops, who argued that it didn’t actually concede them anything. One of the Egyptian bishops, Anthimos, demanded that the council condemn some earlier writings called the “Three Chapters”, writings from before Chalkēdōn that could be seen to approve of Nestorianism – Nestorianism being the grounds on which miaphysites disapproved of Chalkēdōn. In addition, Anthimos and the Coptic bishops wanted the authors of the Three Chapters anathematized as well as their works. It was to this last point that Chalkēdōnians, especially ones from the western sees, especially objected, feeling that it would be overly harsh to anathematize these men, who had died in good standing with the Church. Even though, ultimately, the
hypostasis formula was confirmed, the Three Chapters remained untouched, and eventually Anthimos and many of his colleagues stormed out of the council over that issue.
In addition to approving the
hypostasis formula, enthusiastically supported by the representatives from the sees of Antiocheia and Jerusalem, the Council formally recognized the “pentarchy” that had effectively existed since the Council of Chalkēdōn. The five great archbishoprics, those of Rome, Constantinople, Antiocheia, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, were given parity, with the position of Rome as “first among equals”, and all of the prelates were designated “patriarchs”. The problem of the Alexandrian patriarchy was resolved by the creation of what amounted to a shadow Chalkēdōnian clergy in Egypt, headed by a properly Chalkēdōnian patriarch. One of the Egyptian bishops that stayed for the whole council and signed its canons was appointed Patriarch Demetrios II by Serena to fill the need.
The 555 Council had not been the Church union that Anastasios II and others hoped it would have been, but in reality there was nobody around to seriously push for Church union in the first place. Perhaps if all five patriarchates were within the same territory, the secular ruler might have felt the need to push strongly for unification and badger the prelates into burying their differences over the Three Chapters and
hypostasis – if that would have solved the problem, and it may very well not have. But Serena felt little need to conciliate the Coptic bishops, and by and large she let the churchmen handle their own issues. This (relatively; the Antiochenes, for instance, may have disagreed) hands-off approach ended up placing her in the constellation of great imperial ladies like Flaccilla and Helena revered for their piety and all that good stuff that a stereotypical Empress was supposed to live up to. Eventually, that and her actions later in life got her canonized.
The Council may not have formalized the separation of Coptic Christianity – that had happened more than a century prior, and in practical terms the resumption of communion was no longer a possibility by the sixth century anyway. It did not even formalize a limit on Roman reconquests – even though Serena elected to not pursue the path of an immediate attack on Egypt, it was certainly beyond Rome’s reach anyway, and only a great deal of luck had allowed the Empire to get as far as it had. But in symbolic terms, the Council was important in both of those respects. It was the last quixotic attempt to bring the Copts back into communion with the rest of the Church, and it was the signal that Serena had finally recognized how much she could swallow without choking – and that she might already have something stuck in her throat. Even more importantly, it’s a convenient stopping point.
OOC: I apologize in advance for any theological errors committed in the writing of this installment. I also apologize for how scatterbrained it is. Product of working on it over such a long period of time, I guess. Constructive comments and criticism, naturally, would be great.
