Mren Cathedral
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Mren Cathedral The wind pushes, and the steppe moves before it. Clouds sweep overhead, the short grass bends, and the only fixed points in the rolling landscape seem to be the snowcapped mountain on the eastern horizon and the distant silhouette of Mren Cathedral. As you walk a lonely hour from the village, and the wind whirls dust through whispering grass, details of the cathedral become visible: first the conical tower, then the lichen-spotted roof, and finally the shattered south wall. At last, clambering over the ruins that surround it, you reach the building. After a dubious look at the cracks fissuring the façade, you step inside. Light spills through the collapsed wall, illuminating a floor torn apart by treasure hunters. Although centuries of neglect have stripped away most of the interior’s frescoes, a few patches survive in the apse, where faded figures of Christ and the prophets gaze down on the rubble. Emerging into the sun and wind, you notice a large relief over the north door. Although the stone is badly weathered, you can make out two figures, standing on either side of a tall crucifix. To the right, a bishop carrying a censer walks toward the cross. A man in a plain tunic approaches from the other side, having just dismounted from a saddled horse. This relief commemorates an historical event. On March 21, 630 CE, the Roman Emperor Heraclius formally returned the True Cross to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The relic had been stolen sixteen years before by the armies of the Persian king Khosrow II in the opening stages of a devastating war that nearly destroyed the Roman Empire. Against all odds, Heraclius had managed to win the war with a daring series of campaigns launched from the high steppes of Armenia – not far from the place where, just after the war’s end, an Armenian prince built Mren Cathedral to celebrate his part in the victory. To understand both the cathedral and the victory it commemorated, we need to briefly discuss the region that provided a setting for both. Ancient Armenia was much larger than the modern country of that name, extending over a substantial part of northeastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. For 700 years, this mountainous region played a crucial role in Rome’s relationship with Persia, the other superpower of late antiquity. During Rome and Persia’s periodic wars, two zones of conflict tended to emerge. The more important was northern Mesopotamia, a strip of fertile territory where the empires’ borders met. In this theater, wars were usually characterized by long sieges of the fortress-cities on both sides of the frontier and an occasional dramatic battle between the legions and the Persians’ dreaded cataphracts. The other zone of conflict was Armenia, where Rome and Persia fought a long series of proxy wars through local kings and nobles. Although most of late antique Armenia lay within the Persian sphere of influence, the region’s conversion to Christianity around the beginning of the fourth century strengthened ties with Rome. Thereafter, kings of Armenia, alternately bribed and prodded by Persian shahs and Roman emperors, played a balancing act, inclining to one side or the other as circumstances dictated. In times of unrest, coalitions of Armenian princes and nobles played the same game. A partition of Armenia between Rome and Persia in 387 imposed a degree of stability. Persian attempts to impose Zoroastrianism and close ties between nobles on both sides of the new border, however, sparked periodic unrest. And so raids and counter-raids continued to be staged across a nebulous border, none changing, or expecting to change, a balance of power that seemed settled in the natural order of things. Year in and year out, season after season, for two centuries – until one September morning in 590, when Roman sentries at Circesium, a border fort in northern Mesopotamia, were startled to see a group of Persians in disheveled court clothes galloping from the east. The riders drew up beneath the gates; and their leader, a man of about twenty, called up in passable Greek, asking for asylum and an audience with the commandant. The gates were opened, and the young Persian was led to the commandant’s office. There he revealed himself to be Kosrow, the newly-crowned King of Persia. Until a few months before, Kosrow had been heir-apparent to his father, King Hormozd. Hormozd was a harsh ruler, hated by his nobles; and when one of his generals revolted in the fall of 588, many of the great families swiftly joined the rebel. The king’s forces were driven back to the capital, where he was successively deposed, blinded, and executed in a palace coup. The conspirators then declared young Kosrow king. Kosrow marched out against the rebels at the head of the last loyal army, but was too badly outnumbered to reverse the tide. Desperate, he decided to throw himself on the mercy of the Roman emperor. Having heard Kosrow’s story, the commandant at Circesium sent the refugee king and his retainers to general headquarters in nearby Hierapolis. From there, Kosrow dispatched a delegation to the emperor Maurice, promising generous territorial concessions in exchange for Roman aid. Maurice agreed; and the following spring, Roman forces flooded into Persia, seizing the capital and decisively defeating the rebels. Kosrow was re-installed as king, and remained on excellent terms with Rome, and particularly with emperor Maurice. Then, in 602, Maurice was overthrown in a mutiny. The usurper, Phocas, promptly executed the emperor and his six sons, displaying their heads in Constantinople’s main forum. There were rumors, however, that Theodosius, Maurice’s eldest son and heir, had escaped by bribing the executioner; and a few weeks later, a man claiming to be Theodosius arrived at the Persian court, seeking asylum. Though almost certainly aware that the real Theodosius was dead, Kosrow had the imposter crowned emperor, and began to attack the Roman frontier, ostensibly to restore Theodosius to his rightful throne. The experienced frontier garrisons fought resolutely. But over nearly a decade of relentless campaigning, the Persians forced every frontier city to capitulate, and finally broke through the inmost line of Roman defenses. At just this moment, as the eastern provinces lay open to invasion for the first time in centuries, the Roman Empire was torn by another civil war. Two years before, the governor of Africa (modern Tunisia) had raised the standard of rebellion, and sent a fleet under the command of his son Heraclius to Constantinople. After gaining the allegiance of Egypt and the other African provinces, Heraclius sailed on to the capital, where he orchestrated a coup that overthrew Phocas. He personally beheaded the usurper, and was crowned emperor shortly afterward. Kosrow, taking advantage of the chaos in Constantinople, began to occupy territory far inside the old frontier. In 612, he seized Antioch, the Empire’s third-largest city. Damascus fell the following year. Heraclius, who had been trying to shore up the collapsing Danube frontier, marched to Syria at the head of the largest army he could scrape together. His ill-trained troops, however, were defeated, and he was forced to retreat. In 614, after a brief siege, the Persians took Jerusalem, burned most of the city’s churches, and captured the True Cross. The loss of this relic, which was revered throughout the Empire as the instrument of Christ’s Passion, was a serious blow to Roman morale, particularly after the Cross was carried back to the Persian capital, and installed in the private chapel of Kosrow’s Christian wife Shirin. As one Persian army began to conquer Egypt, another marched across Anatolia to the Asian suburbs of Constantinople. Desperate to end the war, Heraclius attempted to negotiate with Kosrow, promising dramatic territorial concessions if the Persian forces would withdraw. By this point, however, Kosrow had achieved too much to return to the old status quo. Having long since discarded any pretext of avenging Maurice, he dreamed of destroying the Roman Empire, and extending Persia’s borders to the Aegean. All diplomatic overtures were refused, and the war continued. Syria, Palestine, and Egypt were annexed to the Persian Empire, and a Persian camp was established at Chalcedon, directly across the Bosporus from Constantinople. In the meantime, the Avars and Slavs swept over the Danube, and occupied most of the Balkans and Greece. The Roman Empire was on the brink of collapse. Heraclius, however, continued to fight. Melting down the gold and silver plate of Constantinople’s churches to pay his soldiers, he reorganized Rome’s last army, supplementing the usual heavy infantry with brigades of archers and light cavalry for fast-moving skirmishes. With this force, he began to attack the Persian armies in Anatolia, and scored a series of minor victories. After outlasting a Persian counter-attack on Constantinople, he made the bold decision to base his army in and around Armenia, where he could disrupt enemy troop movements and launch raids into the Persian heartland. This strategy proved remarkably successful. From bases in Armenia and the Caucuses, Heraclius attacked cities throughout northern Mesopotamia, forcing the Persians to withdraw troops from the conquered territories and engage with him. After he inflicted serious defeats on Persia’s two best generals, Kosrow ordered a massive assault on Constantinople, knowing that the Roman Empire would collapse if the city was taken. Heraclius managed to crush one of the Persian armies marching on the capital. The other, however, eluded him, and joined a colossal force of Avars and Slavs in a coordinated attack on Constantinople.