book presupposes that, without violating human freedom, God acts in history in order to give opportunities for repentance to all. In it He administers mercy and justice, albeit only partially; for the fullness of both mercy and justice must await the Day of the Last Judgement, which both brings history to an end and goes beyond history into eternity. It also presupposes that we can see, albeit through a glass darkly, whither we are going, that God lifts the veil, albeit partially, on His judgements.
The historian generalizes from the lives of saints and sinners to the more abstract processes, structures and laws that work in their lives in the context of GodÕs Providence. The story this book tells, therefore, following the terminology of the historian Christopher Clark in Sleepwalkers, involves answering not only the hows and the whys of history but also its whithers. Thus, for example, when considering the death of Julius Caesar at the hands of Brutus, we can ask ÒWhy did Brutus do it?Ó, which can be answered in terms both of individual psychology and of the influence of despotic and republican ideas, and ÒHow did he do it?Ó, which can be answered in terms of the details of the senatorial conspiracy. But there is third, higher question: ÒWhy did God allow it?Ó or ÒWhither was God leading mankind in allowing the murder?Ó And the answer to that might be along the lines of: ÒGod allowed it in order to bring down the republican system, and bring in the imperial era of Roman history, in order, eventually, to create the Orthodox Christian Autocracy, the New Rome of St. Constantine the Great, as the main protector on earth of His Holy Church.Ó