Chapter 2

The Schism

As the Order grew with Christianity itself, the men who would come to oversee the warriors of God grew increasingly troubled. Though Jesus had invested Peter as the head of the Church in Rome, the patriarchs of the other sees grew contentious, seeking to steer stewardship away from the successors of Peter and to themselves. This trouble only increased with the decline of Rome and the ascension of Constantinople. The Patriarchs of Constantinople grew evermore independent, straining the relationship of the patriarchal sees.

When Byzantine Emperor Leo III issued his edict against saint iconography in worship, the strain turned into a tear which was widened each time the iconoclast controversy was reversed. Seeing turmoil in the winds and keeping their ultimate responsibility in mind, the leaders of the Order in the five patriarchal sees and the various chapterhouse cities around the world met in 787 A. D. under the cover of the 7th Ecumenical Council. The head of the Order and his archskopi decided to view the inevitable Schism as fact and agreed to ignore the split in the Church where their responsibilities were concerned. They would all still look to Rome and the head of the Order installed there. They also arranged for a system of electors to select the new Exarch at the death of the old which gave equal representation to each archdiocese as drawn by the Pope and the various patriarchs in which there was a chapter of the Order. When the Schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church was complete in 1054, the Order and its archskopi were already well used to ignoring the papal and patriarchal politics which divided the Christian world.

Islam's Coming

In 622 A. D., when the Archskopos of Jerusalem began hearing of what was happening in the deserts of Arabia, a conclave of the Order was called in Jerusalem. The archskopi of the Order, now numbering eighteen, were assembled by the Exarch. By the time they had gathered, the Quraysh Arab Muhammad was already fleeing to Medina with his followers to escape persecution at the hands of his fellow Quraysh tribesmen. The elders of the Order discussed what this new prophet to the south would mean should he be able to survive the attempts to silence him. Through much discussion and prayer, the archskopi agree to saturate the region with observers and withdraw all of its other operatives but those housed with the Archskopos of Jerusalem.

By the end of Muhammad's life, the wisdom of the conclave was borne out. This new religion, Islam, was expanding rapidly and those converted were joining the swell of the Arab armies which were sweeping over Arabia, Persia, and North Africa. With the fall of the Visigothic Kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula in the first decades of the eighth century, the Order began to worry about the influence behind the successors to Muhammad. The Exarch began sending some of his best and holiest warriors to investigate the people working behind the scenes in the new Islamic Empire. After nearly three decades and scores of deaths to his people, the ailing Exarch was informed that there were sinister forces behind some of the more powerful men running the Empire. Sensing that his own death was imminent, Exarch John IV the Mighty wrote The Inquest of Islam by the Order and sent it to Rome. In the Inquest, he suggest to Pope Zacharias that he instruct the next Exarch to infiltrate Islamic areas with agents in an attempt to find allies within Islam to battle the subversive forces working within the Islamic Empire.

Before Zacharias died in 752, the Order had infiltrated nearly all of the major cities of the Islamic world and began maneuvering various people towards conflict with those who were backed by the evil powers against whom the Order was founded. Unfortunately, those very people discovered the Order's intent and orchestrated a massacre of the ruling Umayyad family, forcing one of the few to survive, Abd al-Rahman, to flee to Spain and form his own emirate.