Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

by Peter J. Leithart

  Almost immediately, his hopes were answered. When Constantine "called on him with earnest prayer and supplications that he would reveal to him who he was, and stretch forth his right hand to help him in his present difficulties ... a most marvelous sign appeared to him from heaven, the account of which it might have been hard to believe had it been related by any other person." According to the emperor's story, "about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, Conquer by this."6 His entire army saw it, and all were "struck with amazement" at "the miracle." Eusebius vouched for the truth of this account by claiming that he received it straight from Constantine: "But since the victorious emperor himself long afterwards declared it to the writer of this history, when he was honored with his acquaintance and society, and confirmed his statement by an oath, who could hesitate to accredit the relation, especially since the testimony of after-time has established its truth?" 7

  In the public reception area of the Vatican palace are four Stanze di Raffaello, each of which is decorated with paintings from the school of the Renaissance master Raphael. The largest is the Sala di Constantino or Hall of Constantine, and its frescoes depict episodes from the life (and legends) of Constantine-the battle of Milvian Bridge, the donation of the Vatican Hill to Pope Sylvester (who looks suspiciously like Raphael's patron, Pope Julius II), and of course the Vision of the Cross. Flanked by paintings of two popes, the Vision (painted in 1520-1524) shows a startled Constantine in Roman armor standing on a pedestal in front of his commander's tent. He is beginning to address the mustered troops, but something has interrupted him. His hands rise in surprise as he stares with wide eyes toward the sky. In the light that breaks through the turbulent dark clouds, three angels hold a cross, and the beams of light shining toward distant Rome double as a banner bearing the inscription EN TOYTO Nixes. A dragon twists through the sky, writhing in anger but also in abject defeat. In the seventeenth century, Peter Paul Rubens's painting of Constantine's conversion used the same imagery-light from heaven beaming onto an armored Constantine and his troops.

  This seems to be what Eusebius had in mind, and this is the picture that most people have of the emperor's conversion. Earlier than Eusebius, though, Lactantius, who as the tutor to Constantine's sons was closer to the emperor than was Eusebius, recorded a simpler story. According to his account, "Constantine was directed in a dream to cause the heavenly sign to be delineated on the shields of his soldiers, and so to proceed to battle." Following the directive, he had their shields marked with the Greek letter chi (an "X" shape), through which a perpendicular line was drawn and then curved around at the top. The result was a chi-rho combination (which looks like the English letters XP), the first letters of the name of Christ. Lactantius says that "having this sign.... his troops stood to arms."8

  The differences of the two accounts are obvious. Eusebius records no dream, and though Lactantius says that Constantine marked his soldiers' shields with the "heavenly sign," he does not inform us where Constantine got the idea for the sign. By Lactantius's account, Constantine's vision could well have taken place in private, while Eusebius claims that Constantine's entire army witnessed the sign.

  Pagan writers offered their own account of Constantine's conversion experience. Writing in the late fifth century, Zosimus gives a detailed account of Constantine's Italian campaign-citing troops' strength, strategy, positioning, geography, and other details-but never mentions Constantine's vision or his conversion. He admits that Constantine became a Christian but dates the event a decade and a half later and claims it was Constantine's guilty response to a horrific family and political episode, the execution of his son Crispus and his wife Fausta.9 Zosimus's account is chronologically impossible, since it dates Constantine's conversion more than a decade after the emperor had begun to identify himself publicly with Christianity. Zosimus's history was published in a Latin translation in the late sixteenth century and was reprinted in its original Greek in the following century. It has had some influence on the image of Constantine. Without following Zosimus, many modern scholars have dismissed the Eusebian story. Jakob Burckhardt insisted that we have to give it up along with all the other legends of Constantine,10 and James Carroll describes it as a "boy's adventure story."" MacMullen found in the different versions evidence that the story was blossoming over time into legend.12

  CHRISTIAN EMPEROR?

  Over the centuries, this has been the "Constantinian question," and it is still one aspect of the riddle of the fourth century: What, if anything, happened to Constantine on the night before the battle of Milvian Bridge? Did he become a half-committed polytheist? Was he a syncretistic monotheist, trying to split his loyalties between the Christian God and Sol the god of the sun? Was he a cynical politician ready to jump on whatever horse would carry him forward? Did he have any "subjective religious experience"?"

  Eusebius claimed to have heard the story directly from Constantine, who confirmed the story with an oath. One might dismiss the oath, but this assumes a high level of cynicism on Constantine's part that is hard to believe. Credulous Eusebius may have been, but he was not the only one to hear the story. Coins issued in the middle of the fourth century by Constantine's sons depict the scene, and besides, Constantine told Eusebius of a public event, witnessed by soldiers-a story, in short, that could be confirmed or denied by men in Constantine's retinue. Constantine may have lied and taken a false oath; Eusebius may have lied or distorted what he heard. Neither option is plausible. The far more likely conclusion is that Constantine saw something that he took as a divine sign.

  Constantine had a history of mystical experience.14 An anonymous panegyric delivered probably in 310 refers to an earlier vision of Apollo. The orator reminded Caesar Constantine that he did "see your patron Apollo, and Victory accompanying him, offering you a crown of laurel, each of which represents a foretelling of thirty years." Referring either to the god or perhaps to the "deified" emperor Augustus, he added, "You did see him, and you recognized yourself in the image of the one to whom the sacred poems of bards prophesied that the kingdoms of the whole world were due by right. That has now come to pass, seeing that you are, Emperor, like him, young, blessed, our saviour and a very handsome one!"" By other accounts, after 310 Constantine changed his loyalty from the war god Mars to the sun god Sol, who also doubled as Apollo. Though practical as any successful ruler and military man, Constantine was also so deeply religious in the fourth-century way that his religion often looks to us like superstition.

  A superstitious/religious Constantine would be disinclined to insult the gods by changing the standards of his army on the eve of a major battle. Roman army standards were religious objects, venerated by the troops and often credited with talismanic powers, as indeed the labarum eventually was.16 Changing standards announced a change of loyalty from one divine patron to another. Constantine would not have changed the standards without powerful justification, such as a direct communication that he believed came from a different god, perhaps even from God. For the ancients generally, war was no exercise of sheer power, no secular Realpolitik. War involved bloodshed, and bloodshed was always hedged about with ritualized taboos. Diocletian's forces constituted a "sacred retinue,"17 and Constantine would have thought of his army in the same way. Armies won by divine intervention, and the victory of an army was the victory of the army's god. If military victory depended on the patronage of a powerful god, it would be extreme folly to abandon the gods at the very moment of engagement.18

  It was not only the standard that changed. After 312 Constantine himself turned, increasingly firmly, from paganism toward Christianity. We will trace this shift in his policies toward the church, in law, and in his conduct of the empire in the following chapters, but for now we can note the significance of the changes in his visual propaganda.'9 Propaganda maybe the wrong term at the outset. As I have already emphasized repeatedly, fourth-century
Romans were religious to the point of superstition. It is anachronistic to attribute to the political leaders of the time the kind of ironic stance toward religious legitimation that is often implied by the word propaganda. Diocletian, Galerius, Maxentius and Constantine-all of them believed their propaganda.

  To be sure, Constantine's iconography sent multiple messages. Portraits associated him with the "good emperors" of the past. In contrast to the grizzled soldier-emperors of the Tetrarchy, Constantine had himself depicted clean-shaven and youthful, a conquering Alexander or a new Augustus restoring the glories of the early empire.20 He was Constantine Tra- chala, Constantine of the Thick Neck, a physiognomic sign of his strength and firmness.21 Constantine's father had taken on the name Marcus Flavius Valerius Constantius. By taking this name, Constantius associated himself with the short-lived Flavian dynasty, and Constantine maintained the connection. His full name was Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus. The Flavian title was calculated to endear him to the capital, which was dotted with monuments left by the earlier Flavians- the Temple of Peace, the Arch and Baths of Titus, and, most famously, the Colosseum itself. Constantine's own arch was later placed in the same area of the city, aligned with the Arch of Titus.22

  The religious message of Constantine's propaganda was ambiguous. In 315 the Senate acknowledged Constantine's victory over Maxentius with an honorific arch, which declared Constantine the liberator urbis and attributed his victory to "divine instinct" (the Latin phrase is instinctu divinitatis). The senators' language was general enough to appeal to a Christian or a pagan, but it is significant that they did not name Jupiter, Apollo or Mars as the inspiring deity.23 Besides, the phrase had a well-known significance in Roman religious thought. Florus's standard account of the crimes and expulsion of Tarquin the Proud claimed that the Roman people were stirred to resist tyranny by "divine instinct" (instinctu deorum), and now Constantine had been inspired to overthrow another tyrant by the same instinct. Cicero used the similar phrase instinctu divino in a discussion of divination, describing an impulse that enables the soul to see the future because of kinship with the gods (deorum cognatione). After Constantine's victory in 312, a panegyrist gave a twist to the Ciceronian phrase by complimenting the emperor on his ability to share secrets with "that divine mind" (illa mente divina), while his enemy was haunted by the Furies (pulsus Ultricibus). In other words, the Senate's inscription acknowledged that Constantine was in intimate contact with some divine power that gave him knowledge of future events. Even the predominantly pagan Senate of 315 recognized that its new emperor was divinely inspired.24

  Pagan signs continued to appear on Constantine's coins and other depictions, but he added explicitly Christian symbols like the Chi-Rho and the cross, and these symbols gradually replaced the pagan signs.25 When he did employ pagan religious symbolism, it was typically monotheistic symbolism associated with Sol/Apollo, but even these were removed from Constantine's coins between 318 and 321, before he conquered the Eastern empire.26 Pagan symbolism never completely disappeared from Constantine's propaganda, and the monotheistic symbol of Sol continued to play double duty, but pagan significations receded. Far from being central to the imagery of his empire, they were reduced to symbols, still potent, but metaphors rather than realities.27 Like the inscription on the arch, the inscriptions, panegyrics, and iconography adopted after 312 were ambiguous enough to be acceptable to both pagans and Christians. God was described as "the highest divinity" (summa divinitas) and "whatever divinity in the seat of heaven" (quicquid divinitatis in sede caelesti).28

  Ambiguity was more than fence-sitting. In a world where Diocletian had recently identified himself unambiguously with Jupiter, and where the Western Emperors were known as Heracleans, Constantine's refusal to use those titles and that imagery marks a new course. The Senate and panegyrists were not sure what divinity Constantine had contact with, but they avoided calling him Jupiter.

  To those who consider such evidence trivial, Andreas Alfoldi wisely remarks:

  The tiniest detail of the imperial dress was the subject of a symbolism that defined rank that was hallowed by tradition and regulated by precise rules. Anybody who irresponsibly tampered with it would have incurred the severest penalties. Especially would this have been the case if anyone, without imperial authority, had provided the head-gear of the Emperor with a sign of such serious political importance as that attached to the monogram of Christ. Or can one imagine, for example, that the cap of the King of England could be adorned by a chamberlain or a court-painter with a swastika or a sickle and hammer-without the consent of the King?29

  CROSS IN THE SKY

  The objective, visual and tangible evidence is this: Prior to 312, Constantine's coinage and military standard honored pagan gods, particularly Sol or Apollo. After 312, he adopted a Christian standard and military insignia and put Christian symbols on his coins, which gradually replaced pagan signs. Something happened in between. Constantine said he changed because he received a sign from the Christian God. Was that true?

  I believe the answer is yes. Peter Weiss has offered a convincing account of Constantine's conversion and its aftermath that merges the two contemporary versions of the story and illuminates a great deal about Constantine's entire career.30 The two versions refer, Weiss says, to two differ ent incidents. Eusebius's was a public vision, witnessed by both Constantine and his men while the army was marching "somewhere." This probably occurred in Gaul in 310, two years prior to the battle of Milvian Bridge, at the time when other evidence indicates that Constantine began to devote himself to the invincible sun god, Sol invictus.31 Constantine kept the vision in the back of his mind for some time, pondering what it could mean. On the eve of the crucial battle with Maxentius, he had a dream. When he discussed the dream with some Christians in his entourage, they told him that Christ had appeared, and they gave him a Christian interpretation of the sign he had witnessed two years before.

  Weiss makes a convincing case that the sign was not the flying scroll32 envisaged by Raphael, Rubens and the popular imagination, but a sun halo, a circular rainbow formed when ice crystals in the atmosphere refract sunlight. In a sun halo, the sun is at the center of the circle and often radiates beams in a cross or asterisk shape.33 In 310, Weiss concludes, "Constantine, with his army, unexpectedly witnessed a complex halo-phenomenon. He saw a double-ring halo, each ring with three mock suns arranged in cross-formation around the sun, tangent arcs or points of intersection with the circle, presumably with a more or less distinct light-cross in the middle. He saw it in the spring and in the afternoon, which is when the phenomenon mainly occurs."34 A cross of light in the sky, encircled by a "crown"-for fourth-century Christians, how can that be anything other than a sign of conquest by the cross?

  Weiss's scenario explains a great deal about Constantine's subsequent career and faith: his recurrent use of light and sun imagery, his tendency to use solar imagery when referring to Christ and to merge Christ with Sol the sun god, his sense of divine commission and his confidence of success, his devotion to the cross as a sign of victory and kingship, and the iconog raphy of the sun that appears on Constantine's constructions and those of his heirs.3s

  If David Petraeus had recommended a surge in Iraq based on an eclipse or a sign in the heavens, he would have been forced into psychiatric treatment, followed by early retirement. Constantine, though, was a fourthcentury Roman who, like everyone else in his time, believed that the gods guided humanity with signs and portents. He saw something, something he interpreted as a sign that committing himself to the God of the Christians would give him victory.

  CONSTANTINE THE CHRISTIAN?

  Constantine's conversion is one aspect of the "question of Constantine." A bigger and more important question is whether this experience, whatever it was, had an effect on his personal and political conduct. After he defeated Maxentius, did he conduct himself like a Christian? Was his conversion a real conversion?

  Modern historians, as H. A. Dr
ake points out, often project the very modern notions of conversion found in William James and Arthur Darby Nock back into the fourth century and expect Constantine to experience what Nock, in one of his most striking phrases, called the "clean and beautiful newness" of a spiritual epiphany.36 Perhaps Constantine did, but the more important question is whether this is the right model of conversion to apply to a fourth-century Roman commander. Though later writers, and perhaps Constantine himself, saw parallels between the emperor's vision and Paul's Damascus Road experience, it is clear that the two experiences were quite different and had different effects.

  Modern conceptions of conversion often assume a dichotomy of political and religious spheres that is foreign to the fourth century. There is no reason to deny that Constantine's vision was a political as well as a spiritual epiphany. As Drake puts it, "Three and a half centuries earlier, under similar pressure to find a more stable counterweight for the heavy reliance he had heretofore placed on the army to support his claim to rule, the first Augustus had turned instinctively to the Senate. In the new climate of the late empire, Constantine turned equally instinctively to the heavens."37 Constantine knew that his position in the empire depended on his highly competent, highly successful armies. He also knew, from Diocletian not least of all, that sheer brute force was an insufficient basis for political order. He also knew that the empire faced a "Christian problem," and he had witnessed the failure of Diocletian's attempt to solve it. The Christian interpretation of the sun halo cut the political knot. From 312 on, Constantine had both a personal calling and mission and, inseparably, a political program. It is no contradiction to say both that God called Constantine and that he "emerges as one of several talented and ambitious players seeking a formula to reconcile the imperial need for religious justification with the refusal of Christians to pay divine honors to any other deity."31 Constantine had discovered a way to solve the Christian problem. Not only would he cease to persecute, but he would actively promote the church. It was not only good politics; the God of the Christians, Constantine believed, had given him a sign that this was the right thing to do.