Pollux stopped reading the parchments.
The Latin appeared on both pages in thin straight lines with minimal margins. The black ink was heavy, but mostly faded to gray thanks to seventeen centuries. He sat in the plush cabin of a private jet, flying north toward Rome. After leaving Kevin Hahn at the tower, he’d made it to the airport on Malta without incident, tossing the contents of the duffel bag away in three different dumpsters he’d passed along the way. The Glock was thrown into the ocean from a cliff. All of the evidence was now gone. He’d also stopped in Mdina and retrieved Kastor’s overnight bag, including his Vatican passport. His mind was tired from months of worrying, scheming, and dreaming. But in a few hours he’d be inside the Sistine Chapel. And not as an obscure knight in a nine-hundred-year-old brotherhood. But as a sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae cardinalis, a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church.
For years he’d studied Latin and Greek, reading one text after another on Christianity and the Catholic Church, especially the time between its founding with Christ and the end of the third century. The formative years. Like when puberty shaped a child.
Then A.D. 325 came and everything changed.
Constantine the Great summoned the Christian bishops to Nicaea, bringing all of the players to one place for the first time, his terms simple. Agree on a universal—a catholic—church, and the Crown would drape the new religion with great political advantage. Fail to do so and the persecutions would continue. Nobody knew for sure how many clerics heeded the call, but enough that they were able to forge a statement of their beliefs, one that to this day defined what it meant to be Catholic. They transformed the philosophy of a man who’d preached poverty, forgiveness, and nonviolence into a government ideology of power, one Constantine used for cohesiveness. Earlier, before sending his two acolytes to meet their God, Pollux had thought it appropriate that those ancient words—the famed Nicaean Creed—be uttered.
The history books loved to tell of how Constantine saw a vision in the sky, then won a great battle, crediting Christ with his victory. In gratitude, he supposedly converted and proclaimed Christianity as the official religion of the empire. But that was merely half right. Constantine only converted on his deathbed, though even that is open to debate. He spent his life hedging his bets, worshiping the old gods but using the new. The whole conversion story was but a way to make the new faith more acceptable in the eyes of the people. If it was good enough for the emperor, it was good enough for them. He did not create Christianity, but he did mold it in his image. And wisely, he never tried to defeat Christ, but he certainly wanted to define him.
And what Pollux had just read confirmed that conclusion.
Constantine wanted his own religion.
And why not?
Faith was the death of reason. Faith relied on blind allegiance, without thought, only an unquestioned belief. Irrationality seemed the nature of faith, and to institutionalize faith man created religion, which remained one of the oldest and strongest conspiracies ever formed. Look at what they fought about at Nicaea.
The nature of Christ.
The Old Testament was simple. God was singular and indivisible. That’s what the Jews believed. The new religion had a trinity. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Of course, that had been created by man as part of the new religion. But exactly what was Christ? Different from the Father since he’d been human? Or merely the same, immortal and eternal, despite being human? It all sounded so trivial, but the debate threatened to tear Christianity apart. Even Constantine had thought the argument silly, worthy of inexperienced children, not of priests and prelates and reasonable men. He ended the division, proclaiming that Christ was begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.
Religion had always been a tool. Its power came from capturing something dear, then offering a spiritual reality, with benefits, to all those who chose to follow. Didn’t matter whether that was Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or even paganism. All of them created their own peculiar truths, then constantly misconstrued them to their advantage.
But all good things come to an end.
For the Catholic Church the end came in 1522 when Martin Luther translated the New Testament from Latin to German. For the first time the people could read God’s word and they saw no mention of the church, indulgences, sins, cardinals, or popes. They could read the Gospel of Luke where it clearly said that the kingdom of God is within you, or Romans, which said the spirit of God dwells in you, both with no mention of any other place where God supposedly resided. Before Luther the scriptures were only for priests to read and the church to interpret, both providing a clear measure of control.
Exactly what Constantine had advised.
Priests shall become a special class unto themselves. I am the natural choice to ultimately lead those priests, as religion is a vital part of politics. The first duty of the state is to stay right with God and keep God on good terms with the people. The priests’ duty is to keep the people on good terms with me.
Constantine wanted the bishops unified. He wanted his new religion to become a constant. Fitting, as his own name meant “steadfast.” He realized that consistency bred confidence, and once the people acquired confidence they would unquestionably believe.
He made that clear at the end of his gift.
And indeed unto Abraham, who was a justified man, there was given by God a prophecy in regard to those who, in coming ages, should be justified in the same way as he. The prophecy was in the following words: And in you shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed. And again, He shall become a nation great and numerous; and in him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
What then should prevent those who are of Christ to practice one and the same mode of life, and have one and the same religion, as those divinely favored men of old? It is evident that the perfect religion committed to us by the teaching of Christ is a gift. But if the truth must be spoken, it should be spoken in one voice as the true religion. It is my hope that these directives will guide us all to that result.
The deal had been simple. Stay unified, follow his commands, and Christianity would flourish. Divide and disobey and imperial protection would end. Christians would find themselves back where they’d been before Nicaea. Ostracized and persecuted.
Not much of a choice.
In the beginning churches were started by planters, apostolic workers who moved from town to town, creating congregations. Each one of those became a religion unto itself, isolated and closely held. Eventually, elders emerged within those congregations, not special or set above the flock, merely serving within, chosen by seniority with no special powers or permanancy. But Constantine seemed to realize the political opportunities those elders presented. He saw an opportunity to cultivate an army of local supporters, men who did not wield a sword but instead could affect the hearts and minds of the people.
Smart.
Pollux knew his church history.
Constantine elevated the clergy. He granted them a fixed annual salary and exempted them from taxation. They were not required to serve in the army or perform any mandatory civil service. They truly became a special class, not subject to secular law or imperial courts. They dressed differently and groomed differently. They became the supposed guardians of orthodoxy, more powerful than local governors. A spiritual elite of holy men, supposedly vested with gifts and graces others did not possess. No surprise that so many men experienced a sudden call to the ministry.
Yet despite all of those privileges, the church languished for nearly five hundred years. After Constantine died his heirs made a mess of the empire. It split, the eastern portion becoming Byzantine, the western remaining Roman. Christianity likewise split. And though bishops were scattered across Europe, Africa, and Asia, the one in Rome began to assert himself over the western portion, rising above the others, claiming a lineage back to St. Peter and taking a pagan title. Pontifex maximus. Supreme pontiff.
By Christmas Day A.D. 800 the church was ready to expand.
It happened in Rome while the Emperor Charlemagne knelt in prayer. Pope Leo III placed the imperial crown on the king’s head, then anointed the feet of the new emperor. History liked to say that the entire event had been spontaneous. Not in the slightest. It had all been planned. A Christian ruler could not be a god. That smacked of paganism. But he could be chosen by God, becoming the nexus from heaven to earth. In one masterful stroke, the king of the Franks became the first Holy Roman Emperor and the church became the means through which any claim to that throne acquired legitimacy.
A classic win–win.
Which changed the world.
All but a tiny portion of Europe eventually came under Rome’s thumb. The Catholic Church became the dominant force in the world for the next eight hundred years. It systematically erased and replaced all competing spiritual beliefs, destroying every competing religion. It deadened the search for knowledge, persecuting mystics and heretics, and forced the mass conversion of anyone and everyone. At the same time it deprived its members of beliefs in prophecy, dreams, apparitions, visions, reincarnation, meditation, and healing. It assumed control of everyday life by claiming a divine authority to rule, then dominated every moment of the faithful’s life.
A virtual stranglehold.
To keep its army of clerics special the church conceived the sacrament of ordination, modeled after the Roman custom of appointing men to high civil office. No one ever questioned that the New Testament made no mention of selective preaching and that baptizing new souls was to be limited only to the ordained. The Bible’s personal access to God was replaced with the church’s rigid rules.
And now Pollux knew where it all started.
Constantine’s Gift.
No wonder the church never wanted the document public. What faster way to lose control than by exposing it all as an illusion. For the masses to learn that none of the so-called church doctrine was divine, that all of it instead had been created by man for the benefit of man, would have been a public relations disaster. All fear would have dissipated. All wonder quelled. Irrationality would have been replaced with reason.
He stared at the two parchments.
The past had come back to the present.
What would the modern world think of Constantine’s Gift?
An excellent question.
In ancient times the church relied on ignorance and fear. Modernity demanded much more. Education was no longer a rarity. Television, radio, and the internet all captured people’s thoughts. What would the modern world think once it knew that a Roman emperor, from seventeen hundred years ago, laid out a framework for a new religion that ultimately prelates in the Middle Ages implemented to ensure obedience of the faithful and promulgate its own importance. No divine intervention. No heavenly influences. No conduit to God. Just a bunch of men who liked living high and wielding power.
He imagined that revelation would not be welcomed.
But was it fatal?
Hard to say.
No doubt, in a world where religion was waning and faith in authority disappearing, where people were leaving the church far faster than coming toward it, proof that the whole thing had been concocted would not be good. Kastor had thought it enough to pressure key cardinals into supporting his candidacy. The threat worked in the Middle Ages with many different popes, most of them immoral and corrupt. It worked in the 1930s with two more named Pius, who faced an uncertain world that ultimately went to war. Would it work again today? Maybe. Maybe not.
It certainly would not help things.
Thank goodness he now had Spagna’s flash drive loaded with incriminating information on important cardinals.
That would definitely work.
The jet began its descent.
He leaned back in the leather seat, made a steeple out of his fingers, and rested his chin on the point, trying to check the anxiety that threatened to swallow him. His eyes burned. His nerves screamed. There was always a possibility of failure. That element of chance. The threat of error. Which would be catastrophic considering the sins he’d committed. Thankfully, he was a man of precautions.
Always had been.
Outside, the sun had crested on the eastern horizon.
Daylight had arrived.
If all went according to plan—
By tomorrow evening, or the next day at the latest, he should be pope.