The Shattered Frontier by Francis Hagan

Author:Francis Hagan [Hagan, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

A fragment of a funerary inscription survives from Amida which allows us a rare insight into this moment of change and discovery. It was unearthed only four years ago during renovation work on an apartment block up against the northern wall of the city. In the process of that work, a small Christian cemetery was uncovered and a rescue dig subsequently initiated. Some thirty inscriptions were removed and restored as a result. One in particular, using the seven day week inaugurated by Constantine only forty odd years earlier, is inscribed as follows:

‘To my well deserving sister, Illyria, blessed under Christ, who lived thirty eight years. She died on the second day of the second week of Maius, at the eight hora and five minutiis under the mantle of the Apostle, Thomas, whose arrival washed away the bitter storm.’

In Christian burial practice in this period, the twelve hours of the day are now synonymous with the Apostles under Christ, whose body itself is the day and night of birth and resurrection. It is a curious intermingling of pagan astrology and Christian/Jewish mysticism which allows those recently dead to be identified as Christians so that when the Resurrection arrives they will be set apart from those unbelievers about them. This moment of death, which is recorded by the hour and where each hour now is linked to a specific Apostle - in this case St Thomas, the eighth hour - signals that moment when the dead one is reborn again and therefore evades the fate and determinism of the older pagan zodiacal system. It is both an adoption and also a refutation. In the case of Illyria quoted above it allows us a fortuitous glimpse into the time of day when that sand-storm ceased. The reference to minutes usually indicates nothing more than a rhetorical expression of longevity but here in this case the fact that it specifically mentions the storm seems to argue for precise timing.

Five minutes after two o’clock on the afternoon of the Ninth of May in the year 367 AD, the great sand-storm which had raged about Amida and its territorium vanishes as if it had never existed. Atop the Black Walls of the city, legionaries and officers blink unexpectedly up into the glaring blue of the sky and marvel at the sight which greets their eyes. For while Sergius fancifully describes what he sees as a mosaic all revealed about him, it is only high up on those basaltic walls that the full effect can be seen. All along those parapets and towers, men crane forwards in astonishment. Some fall to their knees in prayer and others shout out orders and messages to those deep below and out of sight. A single tuba cry echoes around the bastions about the New Gate as one startled soldier blows on his instrument again and again, perhaps hoping that by maintaining that clear sound the wind and the dust will stay at bay.

It falls to our Candidus, alone at

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