Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

LIFE AND TIMES 7
Maurice’s daughter, regarded him as his father and protector. When,
a decade later, Maurice was deposed and murdered, Chosroes seized
the opportunity to avenge him by renewing the war with the Byzantine
Empire. By 610, the Persian army, supported by Avar allies, had
already reached Chalcedon, across the Bosphorus from
Constantinople. The senators of the Queen City looked for help from
Heraclius, the exarch of Carthage, who sent his son, also called
Heraclius, with a fleet that reached Constantinople on 3 October.
Phocas, the usurper and murderer of Maurice, was deposed and
Heraclius crowned as Emperor by the Patriarch of Constantinople,
Sergius. Chosroes refused a peace settlement, and so Heraclius spent
the first eighteen years of his reign engaged in an ultimately
successful war with the Persians.
To begin with the Persians made the running: they conquered the
Middle East—Syria, Palestine and Egypt—in 614 capturing Jerusalem
and taking the relic of the True Cross, that had been rediscovered by
the Empress St Helen, the mother of Constantine, in the fourth
century. Eventually in 627 Heraclius led the Byzantine army from the
north, through Mesopotamia, to the Persian capital, Ctesiphon, not
far from modern Baghdad, where he recovered the relic of the True
Cross. Chosroes was deposed by his son and murdered. The
Byzantines quickly re-established their rule in the Middle East.
Before this, however, the Persians with the support of the Avars and
Slavs had laid siege to Constantinople. The defence of the city had
been led by the Patriarch Sergius, who had carried the icon of the
Mother of God around the city walls: the successful defence of the city
was ascribed to the Mother of God, and the kontakion that
now prefaces the older Akathist hymn was probably composed to
celebrate this great deliverance, perhaps by Sergius himself. The
changing fortunes of the Christians in the Middle East in these two
decades (610–30) exposed the dangers caused by the religious disunity
of the Church of the Empire.
BACKGROUND TO THE RELIGIOUS
PROBLEMS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE
To understand the religious problems of the seventh century, it is
necessary to go back even further, to the fourth century at least. From
the very beginning Christians had believed that Jesus stood in an
especially close relationship to God the Father. In the course of the
fourth century this relationship was defined by saying that the one
who became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth is ‘consubstantial’ (Greek:
homoousios) with God the Father: that is, that he is God in exactly the
same sense as God the Father is God, save that he derives his divine