Byzantine Publishing – Emperor Constantine’s Dilemma (Part 1)

Emperor Constantine finished reading the latest memo about the Second Testament project, threw it angrily towards the waste basket, pounded a closed fist on his desk top, and bellowed for the eunuch on guard just outside his office door:  “Pass the word, editorial meeting here in thirty minutes.  Late-comers lose their dicks if they’ve still got one!”

Constantine was royally pissed.  For nearly two years, his production staff had been working on the manuscript for the Bible’s Second Testament, the Christian testament, but was no closer to publication.  Development costs were rising faster than the Emperor’s blood pressure.  Oh, they all had their excuses.  The list was endless:  freelancers don’t understand deadlines; translators disagree; Persian pirates keep hijacking the mail; and the Apostles didn’t have their stories straight.  And now the project was plagued by acrimony between the Markites, Johnites, Timites, Paulites, Tomites, termites, sodomites, and so on and so on.  All these mites made his skin crawl.  All claimed to adhere to True Christianity while they slaughtered each other and burned villages all over the Empire.  They couldn’t even agree when to celebrate Christmas or Easter.  Idiots.

“It’s fuckin’ Byzantine,” he chuckled sardonically to himself, shaking his head.

Then the figgin’ Christian bishops keep scheduling new feast days for an ever exploding list of new martyrs and saints.  And of course, scribes, monks, and nuns all needed the day off.  The Emperor could tell by their smirks, he was being used.  It was particularly annoying since many newly elevated saints were silly or stupid men Constantine had himself ordered crucified, burned, or decapitated back before he ‘converted’ to Christianity.  Pay-back’s a bitch, even for the Big Dog himself.

While it might have started off rationally with Peter, Paul, and Mary, now his own mother, Helene, was maneuvering for sainthood, mostly, Constantine suspected, to impress her coffee klatch, as in, “so Clitoria, your son gave you a puppy for your birthday.  Well, my son...did you know he’s the Emperor?  Well, he’s making me a Saint!” 

Jesus fuckin’ Christ!  For the umpteenth time he considered unconverting.  Free of all this Christian charity and “do unto others” bullshit, he’d get the damn manuscript finished and published in no time, regardless how many had to die to make it happen.  And in truth, now abandoned, his status as a pagan sun king had been pretty neat shit, what with all the naked nymphs and virgin priestesses.  He sighed wistfully and shrugged.

continued in Part 2 of 5