The Triumph of Christianity

by Bart D. Ehrman

  In a similar vein MacMullen also stressed one of the key differences between Christianity and traditional pagan religions that we too have already seen: the centrality of religious ethics. True, pagans were as a rule no more or less ethical than Christians. But in pagan circles ethical teachings fell under the province of philosophy, not religion, with rare exceptions, such as cases of parricide. For that reason pagan cults did not take a stand on matters of daily behavior or misbehavior. Not so Christianity. And that, MacMullen asserts, meant that strong Christian commitments among imperial powers led to harsher punishments for ethical misbehavior. In his words: “For pagans, only correct cult mattered. Christian zeal in contrast was directed over all of daily life. Hence, threats and torture, the stake and the block, spread over many new categories of offense.”23

  Constantine’s harsh judgments did not fall only on anonymous inhabitants of his empire. They were felt by his own kin. We have already seen how, upon his accession to power, he had his ten-year-old nephew, the son of his rival Galerius, executed. More shocking still, and the source of considerable puzzlement, were the deaths, possibly on his orders, of his eldest son, Crispus, and his wife, Fausta.

  Constantine had four sons, the first, Crispus, with Minervina (possibly his concubine), and the other three with his wife, Fausta, daughter of the emperor Maximian, whom he had married in 307 CE. As a young man—we are not certain of the year of his birth—Crispus was made a junior emperor, or Caesar. This was in 317 CE. He became an entrusted officer in Constantine’s military and played a key role in several armed conflicts, most notably as a leader of the naval forces in the defeat of Licinius in 324 CE. But two years later, in July 326, both he and his stepmother died under mysterious circumstances, one after the other. Their deaths were obviously connected. Crispus was either murdered or executed on order of the emperor; soon thereafter Fausta suffered a grisly fate, cooked to death in a steam bath overheated for the occasion.24

  Attempts to explain the two deaths go back to ancient times. The sixth-century pagan historian Zosimus and the twelfth-century Zonaras both provide salacious details. In the fuller version, Fausta attempted to seduce her stepson, only to be repudiated. In her fury she accused him of attempted rape, and Constantine had him executed. When he later found the accusation was false, he ordered for her a particularly gruesome execution.

  Many modern historians doubt the story. But Noel Lenski points out that Constantine did have a highly moralistic streak (see the legislation above) and that he was especially averse to adultery. So Lenski supposes that “there may then be a kernel of truth in this pagan version.”25

  On the other hand, Timothy Barnes, one of the most prolific and controversial modern scholars of Constantine, has worked out an alternative scenario, less sexy, equally speculative, but entirely plausible. He begins by arguing that Crispus was indeed executed on order of the emperor. But since none of our sources reveals the charges, Barnes concludes there must not have been a public trial. It was a private affair carried out by Constantine himself, “with only his most trusted advisers present.” Fausta, on the other hand, could not have been executed. Emperors, including Constantine, never resorted to massively overheated steam baths for their executions. What, then?

  Barnes considers but rejects the various options, including an even more titillating theory that Crispus and Fausta had in fact consummated a tryst. When she unintentionally became pregnant, he was executed and she attempted to facilitate an abortion through the excessive heat of a steam room, inadvertently dying in the process.26 But Barnes is not convinced. There is no real evidence for sexual misconduct, and there are other plausible and far more common reasons for an emperor to execute a son who was the future claimant to the throne. Barnes thinks Fausta told Constantine that Crispus was planning a coup, inventing the story so as to remove the heir to the throne and make way for one of her own sons. Constantine responded as tyrants do: he had his son executed. But then Constantine’s mother, Helena, informed him of Fausta’s insidious plot. Rather than face what would surely be a gruesome execution, Fausta committed suicide in a steam bath. It may not have been the most sensible choice, but frantic people are not always rational.

  We will never know what really happened or why. It is one of the many puzzling episodes of Constantine’s relatively well-documented reign.

  THE DEATH OF CONSTANTINE

  For some historians of antiquity, the most telling aspect of Constantine’s final days is his decision to wait until the last minute to be baptized. Would he have done so if he had really been a Christian for twenty-five years? As we have already seen, however, not only would Christians conceivably delay baptism; they often did so. Constantine’s own son, the vigorously Christian Constantius II, who was theologically Arian, did the same thing. The afterlife was much safer for those with no time to commit post-baptismal sins before arriving at the Pearly Gates. And so they both delayed.

  Less puzzling is the sequence of events leading up to Constantine’s demise. Throughout his long reign, Constantine had to deal with the problems of foreign invasion. In 337 CE, when the Persians began to flex their expansionist muscles in the East, Constantine decided once more to lead his armies to the frontier. Conveniently for his purposes, the march would take him north of Palestine, allowing him to make a detour en route to be baptized in the Jordan River, just like Jesus himself. Constantine knew he was on his last legs. But his legs were not destined to last even that long. Constantine took ill soon after beginning the journey and was forced to stop in Nicomedia, in the western part of what is now Turkey. There he called in the bishop of Nicomedia and was baptized on his deathbed. He died on May 22, 337. His sons were to take over the reins of the empire, and the Constantinian dynasty would last to 363 CE.

  THE CHRISTIAN EMPEROR CONSTANTINE: IN SUM

  In summing up the rule of Constantine, it is simplest to begin by again emphasizing what Constantine did not do, contrary to what many people have thought and some scholars have argued. He did not make Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire. He almost certainly would not have objected to doing so had he been in a position to make it happen, but that was not the case. If our numbers are correct, no more than four million of the empire’s sixty million inhabitants shared his religious preference when he himself converted to the Christian faith. He was vastly outnumbered and it probably never occurred to him to legislate Christianity for all his subjects.

  On the contrary, Constantine had no mission to convert the masses of pagans who continued to follow traditional religious practices. He remained remarkably open to those of other persuasions, especially to those who, like his father, embraced some kind of pagan henotheism. He was content to practice Christianity himself, to support and promote the activities of the church, to intervene in ecclesiastical affairs when issues of unity arose, to fund the building of churches, and to provide social and economic advantages to Christian clergy. It may have been his duty to be Christian, in some sense, as an emperor, but it was not his duty to proscribe pagan practices, shut down large numbers of temples throughout the empire, or prohibit the practice of sacrifice, even though he personally detested it.27

  During Constantine’s reign, Christianity was certainly a favored religion, and it probably did not require extraordinary intelligence for members of the imperial elite to realize that converting to the faith would not hurt their chances for advancement. This was especially true for elites who were then tabbed for official church service, given the economic privileges enjoyed by the Christian clergy. In any event, most of the pressure Constantine applied came through acts of persuasion, either overt or subtle, but not through force.

  This much we can say about what Constantine did not do. Obviously more important is what he did do. He certainly converted to worship the Christian god alone in 312 CE, in connection with the battle at the Milvian Bridge, even if it took a long time to realize fully what it meant to embrace the Christian faith. Still, this was a genuine conve
rsion. At that point Constantine dedicated himself to honoring and obeying the god of the Christians. He did not do so with complete success, if being a faithful Christian means loving your enemies and turning the other cheek. Then again, he was not the sort of figure Jesus would have envisioned while preaching in rural Galilee. Constantine was an emperor with enormous burdens and responsibilities. Harsh legislation and the occasional ruthless act were all part of the job.

  Possibly the most important thing Constantine did for the future of the religion is that he saw that his sons were raised in the Christian tradition in preparation for what was to come next. The Tetrarchic experiment of Diocletian had died nearly as soon as its policy of meritorious succession was carried out. Constantine returned to the dynastic principle that emperors had regularly followed, or tried to follow, since the early days of the empire. In his case, that meant succession would come to Christians. With the exception of the nineteen-month reign of Constantine’s nephew, Julian, in 361 to 363 CE, every remaining Roman emperor was Christian.

  Constantine also set an important precedent in his decision to intervene in ecclesiastical affairs. His intervention makes perfect sense in a Roman imperial context. All of Constantine’s predecessors had been the chief priest, the pontifex maximus, of the religions of Rome—as was he, despite the fact he was a Christian. The Roman emperor, like the Roman state, was not removed from the religious sphere but was at the very center of it. And so, even though he was a complete neophyte, a theological child, Constantine thrust himself into matters of Christian polity and theology. A unified church was important for a unified empire. And a disunified church—or at least parts of it—obviously failed to carry out the will of the God over all. That could lead to disaster. Constantine entered into the fray with what might look like wild and naïve abandon, but his decision to do so makes sense both politically and theologically.

  These interventions may have seemed good and natural at the time, but they were to have a domino effect in the years and decades to come. If emperors actively dictated the direction of religion in the empire, and of the church in particular, what might happen when the Roman world experienced a sea change, when the Christians overtook the pagan majority, and when there was no longer any real fear of massive uprisings or reprisals against the Christian cause? What might happen should emperors more aggressive than Constantine arise—rulers with no qualms about using the power of state to promote the purposes of faith?

  It was almost bound to happen. By the end of the fourth century the first Christian emperor’s decision to prefer persuasion to coercion had become a thing of the past. Christianity was declared the state religion. Traditional pagan practices were proscribed, temples were leveled, and sacred cult objects and art were destroyed.

  Chapter 9

  Conversion and Coercion: The Beginnings of a Christian Empire

  The most significant Christianization of the Roman world occurred throughout the course of the fourth century. The massive conversions over this period—as the church grew from two or three million to something like thirty million—do not mean that the rate of Christian growth increased; on the contrary, it slowed considerably. That is the miracle of an exponential curve: once the raw numbers start to increase, they snowball.

  One major reason the rate of growth must have decreased is that new additions to the faith left fewer persons to convert. Still, even as the rate of conversion slowed, the ease of conversion increased. It became easier and easier to become a Christian. With Constantine the persecutions had ended. No longer was conversion dangerous to life and limb. On the contrary, the emperor himself claimed allegiance to the church; more people were joining the Christian ranks daily; church buildings were being constructed; members of the elite were starting to convert.

  A shift of religious commitments could be so propitious that we have records of fake conversions. The biographer of Constantine, the church father Eusebius, mentions people who converted in order to take advantage of the benefactions coming to the Christians from the emperor himself (Life of Constantine 4.54.2). The pagan orator Libanius maintains that coercive means of conversion led to phantom Christians: “If [the Christians] tell you that some other people have been converted by such [forceful] measures and now share their religious beliefs, do not overlook the fact that they speak of conversions apparent, not real. Their converts have not really been changed—they only say they have” (Oration 30.28). The bishop of Milan, Ambrose, mentions pagans who converted to raise their stock with Christian women with whom they had a love interest.1

  The bulk of the conversions, however, were certainly real. Most people turned to the Christian faith because they had become convinced of its message and looked forward to the divine benefits that could be provided by the Christian god. Once a family converted, the children would be raised Christian, and at that point, just in familial terms, no conversions were needed. That was true of most of the imperial families who came in the wake of Constantine, beginning with his own sons and heirs. They were Christian from infancy.

  Emperors after Constantine—with the one exception of his nephew Julian—publicly declared their commitment to the Christian god, promoted the Christian religion, and with increasing frequency openly opposed traditional pagan cults with their practices of sacrifice. But there was no one moment when the world stopped being pagan to become Christian, no single breaking point. Most of the inhabitants of the empire did not perceive that they were in the midst of a momentous shift or that anything like a life-and-death struggle—a fight to the finish for the soul of paganism—was occurring around them. Most people were pagan up until the end of the fourth century, and many continued to be pagan well beyond that. For the majority of the population, theological questions and religious allegiances were probably not overwhelmingly important, even if they did matter a great deal to a number of people in power, all the way up to the emperor.

  Even among these powerful elites one could find a large range of religious commitments, both pagan and Christian. As historian of late antiquity Peter Brown has argued, even into the 390s “polytheism, in fact, remained prevalent on all levels of East Roman society.”2 Indeed, if pagans kept to themselves, they were for the most part left alone, unmolested, despite the legislation issued against their practices and the occasional acts of violence that occurred. But legislation did appear and violence did sometimes raise its ugly head as the shift from pagan to Christian occurred, especially in the high reaches of government, with the emergence of Christian emperors far more vocal and forceful in their religious views than Constantine had been.

  THE SONS OF CONSTANTINE

  Constantine’s father, Constantius, became Caesar of the West in 293 CE and then senior Augustus in the imperial college with the abdication of Maximian in 305 CE. His dynasty was to last seventy years, until the death of Constantine’s nephew Julian in 363 CE.3

  It was not a peaceful and closely knit family, as seen nowhere more clearly than in the vicious bloodbath that occurred after Constantine’s death on May 22, 337, with the event known as “the massacre of the princes.” Constantine’s three remaining sons—Constantius II, Constans, and Constantine II (the eldest Crispus having been executed earlier)—were to divide his empire among themselves, but there were eleven other male relatives who could, in theory, have a stake in the succession and for that reason could be seen as a threat to those already in power. Almost immediately upon the emperor’s death, nine of these were summarily murdered in cold blood—all except two young boys, Gallus and Julian, Constantine’s nephews.

  Later in life, Julian named Constantius II as the culprit for the slaughter, and he was probably right. Constantius II was the first son to arrive in Constantinople after Constantine’s death and he had command of the military who carried out the executions. With no rivals, the three sons then divided the empire among themselves, with Constans ruling over Italy, North Africa, and Illyricum; Constantine II over Gaul, Spain, and Britain; and Constantius II over Thrace a
nd the eastern provinces.

  The three did not rule harmoniously. In 340 CE, Constantine II attempted to wrest Italy from the control of his younger brother Constans, but died in battle. A decade later, in 350 CE, Constans himself was murdered by a usurper. After putting down the usurper, Constantius II then survived as sole ruler. Four years earlier Constantius II had elevated his cousin Gallus to the rank of Caesar, but in 354 he had him executed because of a suspected coup. And so, just seventeen years after Constantine’s death, of the fourteen male relatives alive at the time, only two remained: the emperor and his young cousin Julian.

  All this lust for power and loss of life may make the post-Constantinian imperial court look somewhat less than Christian. But imperial support for the church grew as the blood flowed. Constantius II himself became an outspoken and even vehement proponent of the Christian tradition. Unlike his father, he was committed to the theological views of the Arians that had been denounced at the Council of Nicaea. Numerous internecine Christian controversies occurred during his reign, but more important for our purposes is the heightened anti-paganism. Constantius II ordered pagan temples closed and sacrificial practices stopped.

  We have already seen a law issued in 341 CE: “Superstition shall cease; the madness of sacrifices shall be abolished” in accordance with “the law of the sainted Emperor, Our father.” Anyone “who performs sacrifices . . . shall suffer the infliction of a suitable punishment and the effect of an immediate sentence” (Theodosian Code 16.10.2). In a law of 346 CE, the penalties are specified: Temples “in all places and in all cities” are to be “immediately closed” and “access to them forbidden.” No one may perform a sacrifice. Anyone who does “shall be struck down with the avenging sword” and his “property shall be confiscated.” Any governor who fails to avenge such crimes “shall be similarly punished” (Theodosian Code 16.10.4); and perhaps more drastically, later in Constantius’s reign, in 356: “Anyone who sacrifices or worships images shall be executed” (Theodosian Code 16.10.6).