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

by Peter J. Leithart

  Not only is Constantine's God the Savior, but he is a God who saved through the cross and passion of the incarnate Son. In 325, during Constantine's mother Helena's pilgrimage to Palestine, excavators uncovered a tomb believed to be the empty tomb of Jesus. Later accounts add that they also found three crosses, one of which, reportedly after controlled testing, was found to be the cross of Jesus.68 Constantine breathlessly wrote to Macarius about the "Savior's grace" in giving this "monument of his most holy Passion."69 Constantine personally accepted the christological deci sions of Nicaea. He claimed that the voice of assembled bishops was equivalent to the voice of God, and though he probably did not, as some have alleged, suggest the use of homoousios as the appropriate creedal word, he grasped and defended the Nicene findings.

  Constantine believed that one of God's central acts in Christ was to restore human beings to "soundness of mind,"70 and as a result he emphasized the teaching of Jesus and the need for Scripture. In a letter of 332 urging the people of Antioch to desist from their efforts to call Eusebius as their bishop, he referred to "our Savior's words and precepts as a model, as it were, of what our life should be."71 He rebuked the Arians for "declaring and confessing that they believe things contrary to the divinely inspired Scriptures."72 He was acting on this faith when he provided fifty copies of the Bible to the churches under Eusebius's care.73

  By Eusebius's account, Constantine was regular in prayer and even erected a Mosaic tabernacle outside his army camp, to which he retreated for prayers before battle.74 He was generous to the poor and to widows and treated prisoners with humane kindness.75 He recognized his complete dependence on God76 and had a strong personal sense of destiny. He had been chosen, he believed, not only to deliver the church from persecution but to spread the truth of God throughout the world.77 Constantine believed that his calling was to proclaim the Son of God to the Romans.71

  ORATION TO THE SAINTS

  Eusebius recorded that Constantine preached so often in his palace that he virtually turned it into a temple, though he added that the members of the court found the emperor's preaching wearisome. Eusebius promised to provide examples of Constantine's sermons but unfortunately appended only one to his Vita Constantini. One wishes there were more, but it is enough. The authenticity of his "Oration to an Assembly of Saints," also known as Constantine's "Good Friday Sermon," has been doubted;79 the date is still controversial, and the existing manuscript of the sermon is complicated by the fact that it is a Greek translation of a Latin original. Yet most scholars today accept that the sermon is genuine and that it was written by Constantine, no doubt with assistance from Christian scholars in his court."

  Scholars have combed through the "Oration" for signs of Arian sympathies and for clues to Constantine's theology of empire. There is material in the sermon for such pursuits, but my interest is more traditional and more basic. My question is, is the "Oration" the work of a Christian? More modestly: is it, at least, the work of someone who wants to be thought a Christian?

  Though the sermon was delivered to a Christian audience, much of it is an extended antipagan polemic and apologetic that employs Plato and Plotinus, includes an intricate analysis of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue and a discussion of an acrostic prophecy from the Erythraean Sibyl, offers a precis of Lactantius's arguments concerning the death of persecutors (sec. 24) and shows an interest in the natural world as well as in history and ethics.

  The opening sections of the sermon provide a generic defense of monotheism. Creation is diverse because God created it from different elements (sec. 13), but it is harmonized by the one Creator. Only monotheism can guarantee the "harmonious concord of the whole" (sec. 3). Polytheistic paganism is not just philosophically indefensible; it produces "unrighteousness and incontinence, raging against righteous works and ways." So evil did paganism become that pagans sacrificed not only "irrational creatures" but also human beings: "according to Egyptian and Assyrian laws, people sacrificed righteous souls to idols of bronze and clay." Memphis and Babylon paid the price: "I myself have been present to behold it, and have been an eyewitness of the miserable fortune of the cities." As Constantine remembers it, "Memphis is waste," destroyed from the time of Moses not by "shooting arrows or launching javelins, but just by holy prayer and meek adoration" (sec. 16). Because of its "ontological violence,"" polytheism is incompatible with peace; it inevitably brings violence, envy, greed, as gods seek to "dominat[e] according to their power," just as we find in ancient myths. Only a single divine ruler can ensure harmony and moral uprightness (sec. 3).

  As the sermon progresses, it is clear that Constantine was also interested in specifically Christian questions. He showed his awareness of the issue of divine generation that was central to the Arian disputes and Nicene orthodoxy.82 Why is Jesus called the Son? he asked. "Whence this generation of which we speak, if God be indeed only One, and incapable of union with another?" He answered by distinguishing two types of generation: "one in the way of natural birth, which is known to all; the other, that which is the effect of an eternal cause, the mode of which is seen by the prescience of God, and by those among men whom he loves. For he who is wise will recognize the cause which regulates the harmony of creation" (section 11).

  God's begotten Son has come to deliver human beings from the evils of the past and restore the race to soundness of mind. Along the way, Constantine summarized the incarnation, life, ministry, and death of Jesus at some length and explained some Old Testament prophecies of his coming. He mentioned Jesus' selection of apostles, his miracles, and his teaching. At the climax of his life Jesus went to the cross not, as pagans said, for his own crimes but to gain victory over sin, a victory that inspires confidence amid the hardships of life. No doubt thinking back to the martyrs, Constantine said that the support of faith does not falter even in "the trial of evils." When God has taken hold of a soul and "takes his seat in the intellect," a "person is invincible, and thus the soul that possesses this invincibility in its own intellect will not be overcome by the evils that surround it." God himself is the great example: "this we have learned from the vic tory of God, who, exercising his providence over all things, suffered the besotted iniquity of the impious, yet reaped no harm from his affliction, but donned the greatest victory tokens and an eternal crown in defiance of wickedness" (sec. 15).

  In place of violence, greed, brutality, God in Christ brings peace and justice. It is a sign of the sea-change in sensibility that a Roman emperor could say, toward the close of his "Oration," "This indeed is heavenly wisdom, to choose to be injured rather than to injure, and when it is necessary, to suffer evil rather than to do it" (sec. 15); or when the same emperor, writing to Sapor king of Persia, insists that the only sacrifice the true God desires is "purity of mind and an undefiled spirit," "moderation and gentleness," humility and gentleness.S3 He refused the sacrifice at the Capitoline in 312, and in the "Oration" he gives part of his rationale. He had entered a world without sacrifice and embraced a faith that proclaimed the end of sacrifice.

  ISOAPOSTOLOS

  When Constantine died in 337, shortly after his baptism, he was buried in the Church of the Apostles in his eponymous city of Constantinople, "the New Rome." Surrounding his tomb were twelve other tombs, indicative of Constantine's conviction that he was the "thirteenth apostle," charged, like Peter and Paul, with extending the gospel to a new region of the globe, with converting the Roman Empire.

  There is another way to read the arrangement of Constantine's tomb: not that he was the thirteenth apostle but that he viewed himself as an alter Christus. Other evidence points in the same direction. Some Christians wondered whether the heavenly sign of the cross that Constantine witnessed fulfilled Jesus' prophecy of the "sign of the Son of Man in heaven" that preceded his second coming. Constantine may have thought the same. If he did not identify his empire with Christ's reign itself, he may have viewed it as the prelude to the second advent.S4 Constantine's interest in locations in Palestine associated with Jesus increased o
ver the years, and both he and his mother Helena sponsored the building of churches there.85 By donating "ornaments and embroideries" to churches in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Constantine "essentially incorporated Jesus' entire life on earth into his own family's traditions."86 When the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was dedicated, one bishop's fervor overwhelmed his sense, and he declared that Constantine would rule beside Jesus in the future kingdom. 17

  Throughout his New Rome, Constantine left hints of the same identification. "Although named after the emperor," Raymond Van Dam writes, "Constantinople was also known as `Christoupolis,"Christ's city.' In a new forum the emperor erected a giant statue of himself on top of a tall porphyry column." The story was that Constantine had put "a relic of the True Cross in his statue, and some even offered prayers to it `as if to a god."' Further, "over the entrance to the palace Constantine hung a portrait depicting himself and his sons with a cross over their heads and a serpent beneath their feet. This portrait commemorated the emperor's military success over Licinius, an imperial rival whom he had himself once characterized as a 'serpent.' " The picture "presented the emperor as another savior who had defeated evil with the assistance of the cross.""

  All this seems damning, more an expression of Roman superbia than of Christian bumilitas. These icons expressed Constantine's sense of mission, which sometimes exceeded its bounds. The emperor had a high opinion of himself, a sense of destiny, a deep conviction about his own importance in the history of Christ's kingdom. Yet in one sense, all of this is perfectly orthodox. As Christ, Jesus is the head of a body, a body that shares in his resurrection and victory as much as in his cross. Though it is certainly Jesus the Seed of the Woman who crushes the serpent's head, Paul also assured the Romans that the Lord would crush Satan under their feet (Rom 16). Constantine thought too highly of himself, but in thinking he could join Christ in crushing Satan, he was simply thinking like a Christian.

  CONCLUSION

  There are various ways to escape the force of this evidence. The most plau sible is to raise doubts about the reliability of the sources. Burckhardt considered Eusebius the most dishonest historian of antiquity. That was not the case, but Eusebius did idealize his subject, and some of his claims about Constantine's personal piety strike jaded modern readers as overdrawn. Constantine was rough and blunt and could be violent. Even if we dismiss Eusebius entirely, however, we still have the evidence of Constantine's letters and the "Oration," in which he expresses a soldierly faith in the powerful God of Christians, in the cross of Jesus as a victory over evil, and in the church as the unifier of the human race.89

  Still, there are other ways to escape the evidence. Burckhardt does not deny that Constantine delivered sermons to his court, but he concludes that they served a political purpose, proffering warnings to members of the court with whom Constantine was displeased. He assumes that Constantine was a purely political animal who merely used the Christian religion for his own ends. Such a theory supposes an extraordinary degree of cynicism on the part of the emperor. It would mean he referred regularly to "our Savior," the truth of the "Catholic religion," the divine inspiration of Scripture, the demand for unity among Christian brothers, the veneration of the "Supreme God" all without believing a word of it. If the "Oration" is genuine, then the cynicism increases exponentially, for then Constantine defended monotheism against polytheism, summarized the life of Jesus "our Savior," argued that Jesus was prophesied by seers Jewish and pagan, and worked out ingenious christological puzzles from non-Christian texts-again without believing a word of it. If Constantine was motivated only by policy, he was one of the most monstrous political cynics of all time. Monstrously cynical, and politically inept cynicism to boot: his expressions of revulsion at paganism might be calculated political maneuvers to win over the bishops, but in winning the support of Christians he would risk offending some 90 percent of the population of the empire. The "evil genius" explanation does not work. He might have been evil, but if so he was dumb, a "useful idiot" whose strings were pulled by the bishops.

  Far more likely, Constantine was what the letters and Oration indicate he was, and once we discount the sepia hues of the Vita Constantini, Euse bius's portrait is genuine. Timothy Barnes, in my judgment, gets the "Constantine question" right:

  From the days of his youth Constantine probably had been sympathetic to Christianity, and in 312 he experienced a religious conversion which profoundly affected his conception of himself. After 312 Constantine considered that his main duty as emperor was to inculcate virtue in his subjects and to persuade them to worship God. Constantine's character is not wholly enigmatic; with all his faults and despite an intense ambition for personal power, he nevertheless sincerely believed that God had given him a special mission to convert the Roman Empire to Christianity.90

  That gets us a bit ahead of our story, since we still have to examine Constantine's conquest of the Eastern empire and his policies and practices, religious and otherwise, during his years as emperor. But it gives us a starting point: I assume throughout the remainder of this book that the Constantine we are examining was a Christian. Flawed, no doubt; sometimes inconsistent with his stated ethic, certainly; an infant in faith.

  Yet a Christian.

  Open and free exercise of their respective religions is granted to all others, as well as to the Christians.

  EDICT OF MILAN

  Jupiter did not come through. Again.

  A year before the battle of Milvian Bridge, the Eastern Augustus Galerius, wracked by his final illness and desperate for supernatural aid, ended the Eastern persecution, permitted Christians to worship, and asked the church to pray for him. Persecution had not worked, and Galerius concluded that it was "fit to extend our indulgence to those men, and to permit them again to be Christians, and to establish the places of their religious assemblies," so long as they "offend not against good order."' It is one of the ironies of history that it was neither the Christian Constantine nor his erstwhile ally Licinius who ended Diocletian's persecution in the east but Constantine's nemesis, Galerius.

  Galerius died shortly after, and within weeks the Caesar Daia, inspired and encouraged by Theotecnus, a city curator in Antioch, began rolling back Galerius's deathbed edict. He prevented Christians from assembling to honor martyrs at cemeteries2 and executed Bishop Peter of Alexandria. In Ancyra seven virgins were drowned, and when another Christian pro tested, he was burned.3 Sword, fire and water were back. Knowing that he could not fight Christianity with nothing, Daia attempted to reform pagan devotion. He appointed high priests throughout the cities in his realm with cult responsibilities and the power to arrest Christians, compel sacrifice and hand those who refused to the magistrates.4 The Acts of Pilate became required reading in schools.

  Daia issued no edict of persecution. For the first time in Roman history, an emperor governed by rescript, answering requests from civic and provincial officials begging him to deal with the dangerous infection.' An appeal from Antioch stopped just short of asking for permission to expel all Christians from the city. A similar letter arose from Nicomedia. Eusebius did not think the requests were accidental. Daia, he said, arranged for the requests to come to him, so he could shrug and pretend he was only responding to popular outrage.6

  At the same time, Daia saw that he was being isolated in the imperial system. Constantine and Licinius wedded east and west by virtue of Licinius's 313 marriage to Constantine's sister Constantia. But the crisis for Daia went deeper. Constantine and Licinius had adopted a common solution to the Christian problem, and it did not involve devotion to Jupiter and Heracles. After 313 Daia was alone, the only member of the imperial college still clinging to Jupiter and hoping for his aid.

  "EDICT OF MILAN"

  Every schoolchild knows that shortly after his victory over Maxentius, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, giving freedom to Christians to worship as they pleased. By the standard account, the edict was issued jointly from Milan by Constantine and Licinius in 313, when they
were together to celebrate Lincinus's marriage. But the standard account is a fiction.? Constantine and Licinius issued no edict from Milan. What was issued was not an edict, it was neither issued from Milan nor applied to that city, and it did not legalize Christianity. There was no need, after all, in either east or west, to decree toleration for Christians. As soon as Constantine was acclaimed as Augustus of the West at York in 306, he ended the persecution of Christians. Maxentius granted freedom to Christians in Rome and Italy during his six years of rule there.

  Constantine and Licinius did meet at Milan in 313, they did discuss the imperial policy toward Christianity and religion in general, and they did arrive at a common policy, which is expressed in two letters jointly signed by the two Augusti, one a Latin letter posted in Nicomedia in June 313 and the other a slightly different Greek version posted in Caesarea some time later.' Lactantius preserved the first, a letter to the governor of Bithynia. Licinius and Constantine referred to their "interview at Milan," at which they "conferred together with respect to the good and security of the commonweal" and concluded that "reverence paid to the Divinity merited our first and chief attention" and that "it was proper that the Christians and all others should have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each of them appeared best." Their intention was to ensure that "God, who is seated in heaven, might be benign and propitious to us, and to every one under our government," and that "the supreme Divinity, to whose worship we freely devote ourselves, might continue to vouchsafe His favour and beneficence to us." Considering it "highly consonant to right reason," they adopted the policy that "no man should be denied leave of attaching himself to the rites of the Christians, or to whatever other religion his might directed him." Thus all Christians "are to be permitted, freely and absolutely, to remain in it, and not to be disturbed in any ways, or molested." The letter made clear that this "indulgence which we have granted in matters of religion to the Christians is ample and unconditional" and intended to help the provincial officials to "perceive at the same time that the open and free exercise of their respective religions is granted to all others, as well as to the Christians." Given the "well-ordered state and the tranquility of our times," "each individual" should be permitted "according to his own choice, to worship the Divinity; and we mean not to derogate anything from the honor due to any religion or its votaries."