by Baker, Simon
The whole structure collapsed spectacularly. Soldier heaped upon soldier fell into the rushing river and drowned. Others, desperate to save their lives, tried to cross the original bridge. The route was too narrow and they were crushed to death. After the mayhem of the rout had subsided, the banks of the Tiber were littered with thousands of anonymous corpses. One of them, however, was distinguishable by his high-ranking clothes. These clung to the dead body of Maxentius.
The general Constantine had won his greatest military victory. He was now sole ruler of the western empire, and he had achieved the knockout blow under the favour, protection and patronage of the Christian God. His success, it seemed, was thanks to Him. However, Constantine’s personal conversion, if indeed he had already converted, had been the easy part. Translating his new religion into the world of Roman politics, to the emperors of the east, and to the pagan majority of Romans throughout the empire was another matter altogether. As it happens, Constantine had only scratched the surface in invoking the protection of God. Although he did not yet know it, the full potential of his new allegiance was yet to be tapped.
LICINIUS, BROTHER IN ARMS
When Constantine the liberator entered Rome, he passed through a pleasant blizzard of incense, flowers and the bright faces of men, women and children shouting his name. They thronged in their thousands to greet him, and joined the celebration ‘as if released from a cage’.25 Constantine rode in a chariot, and in the procession following him the head of Maxentius was prominently displayed on a spear. The people greeted the dead tyrant with vitriolic abuse. By contrast, gifts of money distributed by soldiers into the eager hands of hungry Romans were met with cheers. However, despite the jubilation of Constantine’s victory march, the successful general knew that this was no ordinary triumphal procession.
In reality, he was not simply riding into Rome – he was walking a political tightrope. He owed his victory to the Christian God; the followers of that God would now expect him to find a suitable way of recognizing that fact. Yet at the same time the emperor was entering the ancient city of the traditional pagan gods, the seat of the Roman senators who upheld those traditional beliefs. To them and the majority of Romans, the Christians were nothing more than a strange alien group whose behaviour was highly suspect. They renounced slavery; they led a humble, ascetic and pleasureless existence; they believed in a heaven after death; and, for some strange reason, they prized sexual chastity as a virtue. Pleasing both these audiences was not going to be easy for the new emperor of the west. By both pagan senators and the Christians, Constantine’s every action was going to be very closely observed.
For the traditionalists, matters did not start well. Many senators, to their disgust and horror, would have noticed that the military standards borne into the Forum as part of the procession were certainly not those they were expecting to see. These ones bore the symbol of Christ. But this was not to be the most unwelcome surprise in store for them. After Constantine had exchanged the cuirass and sword belt of a general for the purple toga, rods of office and laurel crown of an emperor, the crowds waited expectantly for him to perform the customary sacrifices to Jupiter. The priests prepared the sacrificial animal, but Constantine hesitated. He was fearful of his soldiers’ reponse if he refused to participate, but knew that it was not to this deity that he owed thanks. Eventually, he refused to ascend the Capitol to oversee the sacrifice. He did not place a laurel wreath in the Temple of Jupiter, and neither did he take any part in paying tribute to the pagan deity.26 After these affronts to Rome’s traditional past, he would need every bit of political nous when facing his next hurdle: a meeting in the Senate House.
Constantine broke the ice by painting his predecessor as a monster. The regime of Maxentius, he began tactfully, was the responsibility of the tyrant and a few of his henchmen. It was not the responsibility of Rome at large. In this way the senators who had collaborated with Maxentius were excused their guilt. The emperor was equally deft in dealing with Maxentius’s army: the compromised Praetorian Guard was to be redeployed on Rome’s frontiers. Facing barbarian enemies would be a sure-fire way for them to rediscover their loyalty to the emperor. However, Constantine went much further than excusing the senators and the army: he declared that he wanted to restore their prestige. Under his new regime he would restore authority and responsibility to the Senate. Senators would no longer rest on the laurels of rank and privilege. They, and not just men promoted from the army, would be given an active hand in government once again – as provincial governors, as prefects of Rome, as judges and holders of office.27 Although this process would actually take place gradually over the years to come, for the moment Constantine had struck just the right note.
In one fell swoop he had extinguished the memory of Maxentius and successfully boosted unity by proposing to make the landed aristocracy of the west his partners. In return, the senators reciprocated his trust. Constantine was declared sole emperor of the west. He received a golden shield and wreath as liberator of Italy, and a statue of Victory was dedicated in his honour in the Senate House. As a final tribute, the grand Basilica Nova adjoining the Forum, which had begun construction under Maxentius, was now completed and dedicated to Constantine. With this last honour, his new recognition of the Christians would be clearly expressed. A colossal statue representing him was to be set up in the west apse, and the statue’s hand was to hold the military standard bearing the symbol of Christ.
Over the next few months Constantine remained in Rome. They were critical, highly influential months. It was perhaps during this time that he began to think through what had happened during the battle of Milvian Bridge, what the implication of God’s favour on him might be. Perhaps he took an active interest in finding out more about the Christians. Perhaps he visited their communities and discovered how they lived. We know that he invited Christian ministers and bishops to be his guests at dinner during this time. Perhaps Lactantius and Ossius were present too. Certainly the Christians who had travelled unofficially in his entourage on campaign were now promoted to hold the more official posts of court advisers on Church politics and practice during the winter of 312–13. Whatever Constantine discussed with those men in private, it would not be long before the fruits of their deliberations were revealed very publicly.
As Constantine prepared to leave Rome for Milan in mid-January 313, he could look back with pride on a successful few months in the old imperial capital. The clever balancing act between pagans and Christians had so far been expertly and delicately handled. With Rome now rebranded and reconciled, the emperor had successfully consolidated his power in the western half of the empire. Now he set about bringing peace and unity to the east. To that effect, he sent a letter to the eastern emperor. It was a shot across Maximinus Daia’s bows. It informed him of Constantine’s new status in the west as conferred by the Senate. It also revealed the western emperor’s new religious loyalty by warning Daia to stop persecuting Christians in his domain. However, to bring him to heel, Constantine needed help. He had in mind a new alliance, one to be cemented in the traditional way. The emperor and his entourage set off for Milan: Constantine had a wedding to attend.
The marriage ceremony took place in February in the city’s imperial palace, carefully orchestrated and supervised by Constantine himself. The eighteen-year-old bride was the western emperor’s sister Constantia. Like many women of the élite in the early fourth century, she was a Christian – faith was important to her, a key part of her personality. It was a personality, however, less suited to what she was being asked to do by her brother: to marry a man many years her senior, whom she did not know, whom she did not love and to whom she was to be wed for political expediency. Undertaking such a task required a much thicker skin than perhaps Constantia possessed. Yet she was given no choice. Constantine insisted that she marry a man who would be crucial to his plans in the east. The name of her groom was Valerius Licinianus Licinius. He too held the title of emperor.
Born of pe
asants from Dacia (modern-day Romania), Licinius was nearly in his fifties when he married Constantia. Like many of the other tetrarchs, he had risen to prominence as an able and effective soldier. On campaign on the frontiers of the Danube he had become a close friend of Galerius. It was through him that, just as Diocletian’s system of four emperors was falling apart, Licinius received his greatest break: in 308, at a conference in Carnuntum, he was appointed to be co-emperor of the west with Constantine in place of the dead Severus. When the eastern emperor Galerius died, however, Licinius negotiated a peace with Daia and took partial control of the dead emperor’s territories in the east. But now the fragility of the peace between Daia and Licinius was being exposed. The alliance between Constantine and Licinius, sealed with the dry, diplomatic marriage taking place in Milan, reflected the new lie of the Roman political landscape. The empire was to be shared by the two men alone. There was no room for Daia.
After the marriage ceremony, the alliance was concluded behind closed doors. One can only guess what was said, but the outline is clear. Licinius was to control the east, Constantine the west. Each side would come to the military aid of the other. All was as expected between two emperors redrawing the Roman map. However, Constantine introduced a new, controversial term to their alliance: a policy of toleration of all religions in the Roman world. Although Licinius was not known as a persecutor of Christians, he was certainly pagan in his beliefs. Yet now he was being asked to put his name to a radical new policy in which every Roman was free to worship whichever god he wished. It must have taken him completely by surprise. But if Licinius was reluctant to agree to the policy, Constantine knew how to convince him.
Daia was a renowned persecutor of Christians in the east. The policy of toleration, Constantine might well have suggested, could be the key to winning their support against the eastern emperor. It is easy to imagine that, encouraged by his new Christian advisers, Constantine pressed the importance of this new policy on his pagan brother-in-law. Constantine’s belief in the Christian God was apparently sincere, but it could also be highly useful and expedient. Licinius clearly agreed.
The Edict of Milan, as it came to be known later, was soon proclaimed by both men. It was the first government document in the Western world to recognize freedom of belief. Henceforth persecution of Christians was disowned as morally wrong. But the edict’s principal benefit was more immediate and tangible than that. It decreed that all Church property previously confiscated from the Christians was to be restored to them. Crucially, it not did favour Christians above pagans, but stressed only their equal rights of worship, granting both full legal recognition to ‘follow whatever form of worship they please’. As Licinius did not share his brother-in-law’s religious belief, perhaps he had insisted on that detail. Perhaps he had also made sure that the edict did not commit him personally to the Christian faith; the wording ‘whatsoever divinity dwelt in heaven’ neatly resolved that question.28 Above all, the edict provided a unifying theme for the new empire; it also gave the government of Constantine and Licinius a unified voice of greater strength.
The agreement bonded two very different men. Constantine was well born, younger than Licinius and, so we’re told by Eusebius, charismatic, graceful and good-looking. In winning the west he had proved himself a gifted commander and an astute politician. Licinius, for all his military achievements, was somewhat overshadowed by the western emperor’s brilliance. Indeed, he had good reason to be jealous of the young pretender: Licinius had originally been appointed senior emperor in the west, but it was Constantine who, by defeating Maxentius, had successfully secured it for himself. However, there was no time for indulging in past resentments. There was an aggressor to defeat. Before the conference in Milan was finished, news arrived from the east. Daia had made the first move against the allies: he had crossed the Bosporus, invaded Licinius’s territories in Asia Minor and laid siege to Byzantium. War had been declared.
It took Licinius only a matter of months to gather an army, give chase to Daia’s forces and drive them on to a plain near Hadrianople (modern-day Edirne in Turkey). On 30 April 313, before the battle, Licinius showed he had taken Constantine’s message in Milan to heart: he ordered the rank and file of his army to recite, if not a Christian prayer, then a more perfunctory monotheistic one.29 It seemed to reap immediate dividends. Although Licinius and his 30,000 troops were outnumbered by a 70,000-strong enemy, he and his men enjoyed a comprehensive victory. Daia fled into the Tarsus mountains (in modern-day Turkey) where, to avoid the humiliation of surrender, he committed suicide by taking poison. Buoyed up by his extraordinary victory, Licinius then honoured his agreement with Constantine and, through a letter sent to provincial governors, communicated to the Romans of the east the regime’s new policies.
However, any impression that he was behaving out of a new-found sympathy with the Christian faith was quickly dispelled by his next move. To ensure that no one could stake a rival claim to the eastern empire, Licinius ordered a bloodbath. All Daia’s sympathizers, court advisers and family were executed. In addition, all the living wives and children of the old tetrarchs Diocletian, Severus and Galerius were hunted down throughout the Roman east and murdered. Although some Christian writers of the time heartily approved of the murder of persecutors, perhaps even they would have been shocked by the clinical nature of the purge. With that accomplished, Licinius, the man who had drifted into a toleration of Christianity for political expediency, took sole control of the east and settled down to administering it from his imperial capital of Nicomedia, with his new young bride alongside. The Roman empire enjoyed a new government and a new cohesiveness. But whereas Licinius’s dispassionate toleration of Christianity began and ended with the proclamation and enactment of the Edict of Milan, Constantine’s work, undertaken from his base in Trier, was only just beginning.
Publicly, Constantine continued to steer a shrewd non-committal path: although he declined to participate in pagan sacrifices, he still held the highest office of the pagan religious establishment, held by every emperor since Augustus, that of pontifex maximus (High Priest). The coins issued in his name were slow to depict any Christian symbolism; instead they carried the name of the monotheistic pagan god Unconquerable Sun, and would do so for many years to come. A speech delivered in 313 at Trier survives: it is a masterpiece of ambiguity, emphasizing Constantine’s closeness with the divine, but cleverly not excluding devotion to one faith or another. For all the poise of this balancing act, however, the reality was very different. Constantine had found his unifying theme for the empire. Now he began industriously applying it to the administration and running of the empire.
A letter from 313 shows his first action: Christians, it said, were exempt from civic public duties such as serving as jurors, overseeing the collection of taxes, or organizing building projects, festivals and games. Previously such exemptions had been given to those whose profession benefited the state in other ways, such as doctors and teachers. Now Constantine declared that Christians were just as deserving. Being able to devote more time to worship of the Christian God, said Constantine, would make ‘an immense contribution to the welfare of the community’.30 Christianity, the imperial message made plain, was essential to the good of the empire. In addition, he granted payments to the clergy, and also made Christians of privileged and propertied rank exempt from paying taxes. Indeed, bishops were not only taking on administrative roles at court, but also across the empire: Christians engaged in civil lawsuits were granted the legal right to refer their dispute from a secular magistrate to a bishop. But these utterly unprecedented changes did not just take the form of benefits in rank and privileges. They had a physical manifestation too.
Constantine gave generously from the imperial treasury so that churches across the western empire could be built or improved, or sumptuously decorated. The legacy of his munificence can be seen today in Rome, where he paid for no fewer than five or six churches. The greatest of these was the enormous Basilic
a of St John Lateran. Although the cathedral that stands there today is a later construction, the proportions of the original building are known. It was no less than 100 metres (330 feet) in length and 54 metres (180 feet) wide. The design of this and other churches was innovative. Although the word ‘basilica’ is used today to mean a religious building, at the time of Constantine a basilica was simply a secular, public building, normally thought of by Romans as a law court or a marketplace or a venue for public assembly. Under Constantine, this hall-like design now became the structure for the principal church of Rome – and the template for Christian churches in the future.31
Normally churches in Rome were built outside the city walls on sites associated with the veneration of apostles and martyrs. The Basilica of St John Lateran, in the heart of Rome, was an exception because it was founded on a plot of land adjacent to an old imperial palace, a residence which Constantine duly donated to the bishop of Rome (namely, the Pope). The Basilica of St Peter’s, another church endowed by Constantine, venerated an early Christian cult. On the side of the Vatican Hill, the site of the cult centre of St Peter, a huge terrace was created. The clearing of the ground revealed an ancient pagan and Christian burial ground and it was on top of this that the massive basilica of the first St Peter’s was built. In the modern sixteenth-century St Peter’s, constructed on the site of Constantine’s original church, it is still possible to access the cemetery below.
The new churches not only looked different from pagan temples – they served a different function. The temples had simply housed the deity; the Christian churches, by contrast, were not only houses of God, but places in which His followers could congregate. Here on Sundays, the day that Constantine would later make holy (in 321), Roman soldiers would be seen, for the emperor gave them leave to attend church. When in the house of God, slaves too were given a radical new privilege: they were temporarily free. The sheer physical presence and majesty of these buildings spelt a revolution: Christianity was important and Christians were special.32