The Miracle of Freedom

by Ted Stewart

  For three hundred years, Christians had accepted the persecution with stoic faith. They had not risen in rebellion. They never demanded retribution or revenge. What they did do was preserve “their conscience pure and innocent of the guilt of secret conspiracy or open rebellion. While they experienced the rigor of persecution, they were never provoked either to meet their tyrants in the field or indignantly to withdraw themselves into some remote and sequestered corner of the globe.”36

  This forbearance had served them well. Despite the efforts of the pagan emperors to destroy them, their willingness to serve the empire, as well as their reputation for virtue, law-abiding behavior, and strength of character had brought them considerable goodwill.

  Now they were about to be rewarded.

  The morning of the Christian empire was about to break.

  Outside the Walls of Rome North of the Tiber River AD 312

  Roman Emperor Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus, soon to be known as Constantine the Great, felt his age in his bones. At forty, he was not a young man any longer. Riding horses hurt his knees. The balls of his feet would ache for the first hour after he got out of bed. The sides of his curly brown hair were turning gray now. Worst of all, he swung his sword with less power than he had twenty years before.

  But the figurative sword of power that he wielded was more swift and powerful than it had ever been, a fact that, he discovered, gave him more vigor than he had ever felt before.

  He was on the cusp of uniting the empire once again, being crowned not merely Caesar but Caesar Augustus, supreme emperor of all Rome.

  He turned to Basilius, his military adviser, who had just dismounted from his horse. It was early evening but it had grown dark, the low clouds sucking all the light out of the sky.

  Basilius slapped his black horse on the rump and the animal snorted as a military aide pulled its reins to lead it away. A cold wind blew up from across the plains, smelling of moss and river. The two men stared at each other. Both of them smiled. They had been on the warpath for months now. Heat. Cold. Death. Pain. Exhilaration. Weariness. Triumph. Was there any physical feeling or emotion they had not felt since they had taken up arms and started their warring march toward Rome? Yet all that was going to end now. Victory was within their grasp. One final battle, and it would be over. But it wouldn’t be easy, and the outcome was certainly not assured. Their opponent (it was difficult to think of a fellow Roman as the enemy) was very strong. They were in his homeland. He was fortified and ready.

  No, the outcome was anything but assured.

  Basilius’s face was smudged with smoke and dust, for he had been among the troops, an always dirty duty. He moved toward the emperor, then bent a knee and bowed. Constantine touched his shoulder to lift him up. The two men looked around, finding themselves alone, all of the other aides and solders staying out of their way. Behind them, the walls of Rome fell into the shadows of the coming night and there were torches along the Milvian Bridge, carried by the enemy soldiers who were still marching out to meet them. Unbelievably, Caesar Maxentius had chosen to engage them on the open battlefield—this despite the fact that they had defeated every army he had sent to meet them on their march to Rome.

  Constantine nodded toward the massive army that was gathering outside the city walls. “He comes out of the city to fight me,” he said. It puzzled him. It seemed to him that, given the other Roman emperor’s penchant for defeat in open battle, he should have kept his army behind the protection of the city walls.

  Basilius frowned, his eyes moving to the gathered army. “It seems our rival had seen a vision,” he explained.

  The emperor, dressed in battle gear so shiny it still reflected the dying light, chewed on a piece of leathered meat while he waited for his counselor to continue.

  “Maxentius has been given an omen . . .”

  Constantine stopped chewing. As a longtime disciple of Apollo, he was used to signs and wonders, omens from the gods being integral to his worship. If his opponent had received an omen, he had to take it seriously.

  Basilius cocked his head. “Maxentius has been told that an enemy of Rome will perish here tomorrow,” he said.

  Constantine glanced toward the army that had gathered to fight him on the plains north of the river. “I’m assuming he has concluded that I am the enemy that is to die?”

  The aide smiled just a little. “That would seem to be, my Caesar.”

  “That is why he leaves the safety of his city? Because of an omen he received?”

  Basilius shrugged.

  “He has yet to send out an army that could defeat me,” Emperor Constantine went on, his voice growing indignant now. “Yet he believes he can defeat me when I am but a few miles, a few feet from my objective! He thinks I’ve fought my way from the far reaches of Britannia, through the mountains of the north, and across the plains of Tuscany, only to be defeated at the very doorstep of my goal!”

  “The omen says it is to be, my king.”

  Constantine nodded toward the bridge. “He must be very confident, for he has put himself in a perilous situation. The river there behind him. My army at his front. No escape besides the Milvian Bridge, all of the others having already been destroyed by his own hand. If his god has counseled him to take this action, I would advise he take up with another god.”

  Basilius smiled grimly. It was true. It was an untenable military situation, a mistake his leader never would have made.

  Constantine seemed to grow more serious. “The empire has been in total disarray for more than eighty years. Twenty-six emperors have ruled in that time, most of them weak and foolish men. When Diocletian split the empire into four, he guaranteed that we would live in chaos, diminished in the eyes of those who seek to bring us harm.

  “We cannot stand it any longer. We have to win this battle and settle this matter now. The empire depends upon this. Upon us. My father and his fathers. All are depending on what we do here.”

  The two men fell silent, Constantine staring into the distance, completely lost in thought. He glanced up, taking in the now dark sky, then turned back to his friend. “Maxentius may have received an omen,” he said softly, “but I have seen one too.”

  Basilius took a deep breath. Something in the emperor’s eyes sent a jolt deep into his bones. The silence seemed to deepen. Even the wind stood still.

  Constantine seemed to glance toward the sky. “In this sign, you will conquer,” he whispered to himself.

  A Cross in the Sky

  In AD 284, less than thirty years before Constantine found himself outside the walls of Rome, Emperor Diocletian seized control and set about to restore stability to the far-flung reaches of the empire. At the time, its domain was spread from Britain in the west to Syria and Palestine in the east.

  After an endless series of struggles, defeats, and disappointments, Diocletian concluded that no one man possessed the ability to rule such a massive kingdom. So he divided the empire, first into two, then later into four, appointing four men to rule over their different parts. This strategy, though it may have seemed good in theory, failed to take into account several harsh realities, including the fact that prideful and powerful men always lust for more power. Indeed, it guaranteed instability and war. Within a few years, six men claimed title to the various divisions. These men, and later their successors, were constantly at war, each trying to establish himself as the Augustus, supreme emperor of it all.

  Constantine was the son of Constantius, the man Emperor Diocletian had first appointed to rule over Gaul and Britain. When Constantius died, his army insisted on Constantine’s ascension. One of the other men seeking supreme authority over the empire was Maxentius, ruler in Rome. Fearing Constantine, he concluded that he had to defeat him and he began to prepare for war.

  When Constantine learned of Maxentius’s intentions, he decided to strike f
irst. In the spring of 312, he marched his army from Gaul into northern Italy.

  Son of a lowly barmaid named Helena (who eventually became a legal concubine), Constantine’s unfavorable birth status left him at a disadvantage when it came to the benefits that would usually have flowed to the son of such a great man. He was, however, a natural soldier and leader. His father’s army loved him as they had loved his father. The soldiers’ support for him as Caesar was a factor that could not be ignored. So it was that the son of a barmaid had been named emperor of Gaul.

  By the time Constantine crossed the Alps to confront Maxentius, he had an army of about forty thousand men. They moved quickly south. Three times, Maxentius sent his armies out to meet him. Three times, his armies were defeated. At Verona, an enormous army was defeated, the last remaining barrier between Constantine and Rome.

  As Constantine’s army approached, Maxentius made a critical error. Despite the fact that they had prepared for a long-term siege, he ordered his army outside of the protection of the city walls.

  History records that Maxentius had received an omen, making him overconfident. But Constantine had received an omen as well—actually, two of them.

  The day before the battle, he reportedly had seen a vision of a flaming cross in the sky with the words “in this sign, you will conquer.” The next morning, he heard a voice that instructed him to place that symbol of Christ on the shields of his solders. He ordered this to be done. (While the Christian soldiers among his army must have received this order with great joy, the pagan soldiers were surely much less enthused.)

  Constantine then made a sacred vow—if his army was victorious, he would convert to Christianity.

  The two armies faced each other, one under the banner of Christianity, the other under a banner representing the Unconquerable Sun. Though Maxentius’s army was twice the size of his, Constantine ordered his men to fan out along the entire line. When he commanded his cavalry to charge, they quickly broke through the opposing line of mounted soldiers. Chaos began to spread through the opposing army.

  Constantine ordered his infantry forward. They quickly pushed the enemy back against the river. The battle was beginning to shape up as a slaughter. With no room to retreat, and unable to fight their way forward, the army of Maxentius was trapped. Many of them were drowned; those who remained faced a butcher shop of spears and swords. Realizing that the battle had clearly turned against him, Maxentius attempted to retreat over the narrow Milvian Bridge. Panic ensnared the crumbling army as they turned to follow. Maxentius was pushed into the river, where he drowned, along with a large number of his men.

  Constantine had won. The city of Rome was his. His dream of becoming Caesar Augustus was within his grasp.

  True to his vow, he became a Christian.

  Constantine’s Conversion: Political or Sincere?

  There is no question that this battle was a “turning point in the history of religion.”37 Constantine was now the undisputed emperor of the West. Twelve years later, his army defeated a (once again) larger army of pagans under Licinius, Caesar of the East. With that, Constantine became sole ruler of the entire Roman Empire.

  Constantine declared religious liberty for all, inviting his subjects to join him in Christianity.

  Soon after, he moved the capital of the empire from the ancient metropolis of Rome to Constantinople, a city he had established and named after himself. Not only was Constantinople the political capital, it also rose to rival Rome for preeminence as the center of Christianity.

  The sincerity of Constantine’s conversion has long been debated. He certainly didn’t live a perfect life after it. His reign was full of the failings of a mortal man bent on retaining power. He also wasn’t known for being overly zealous when it came to following Christian ritual, not even being baptized until he was nearing death.

  In the years after his ostensible conversion, he continued occasional use of pagan rites and symbols in his ruling. Having worshipped Apollo for forty years, he was slow—perhaps understandably—to abandon a lifetime of ingrained practices. However, as his position of emperor became secure, he became more and more orthodox in his Christianity, dropping almost all of the vestiges of his pagan past.

  Regardless of his failings, there is no doubt that Constantine’s acceptance of Christianity, and his forbidding of its persecution, opened the door for the new religion’s acceptance throughout the Western world. In 325, he united the Christian world by calling for the Council of Nicea, its purpose being to bring unanimity among Christian faithful as to the nature of the Christian Godhead. He was responsible for the construction of many churches, exempted Christian property from taxation (a practice that has continued to this day), and vested much authority in local church leaders. His mother was a devout Christian, and, with his support, she spent considerable time and energy trying to ascertain the locations of holy sites in Palestine.

  Summing up the impact of his conversion, it has been said:

  His Christianity, beginning as policy, appears to have graduated into sincere conviction. He became the most persistent preacher in his realm, persecuted heretics faithfully, and took God into partnership at every step. . . . By his aid Christianity became a state as well as a church, and the mold, for fourteen centuries, of European life and thought.38

  As to whether Constantine was sincerely converted or simply used Christianity as a tool to unite his empire, it is impossible for us to know. But this much is sure: “the fact that Christianity is the dominant faith in Europe today is directly traceable to Constantine.”39

  Rome, Italy AD 320

  Ruth and her father stood by the doorway of their small home. The girl was much taller now, and even more beautiful. Her dark hair hung behind her back and her eyes were bright and shining. She looked like a princess—a Roman princess—her features thin and elegant. Her father looked at her with great pride, and for a moment his mind flashed back to that day, twenty years before, when his nephew had brought her home, a starving infant taken from the garbage pile.

  Staring at her now, he thought in wonder, And they threw this away!

  She turned to him and smiled, then lifted the small container of white paint. Using a rusted piece of metal, she had already sketched an outline on the wooden post outside the door. She dipped the brush and started painting, each stroke careful and deliberate. Twenty minutes later, a beautiful white cross had been painted on the right side of their door.

  Finishing her work, she looked over at her father, who hadn’t moved from where he stood. For a long time, they didn’t speak. There was too much to say. Too many emotions. Words simply didn’t seem sufficient, and so they held their peace.

  They didn’t have to hide it any longer. They were finally free.

  Ruth felt a trickle run down her cheeks. And for the first time in her life she understood that there was such a thing as tears of joy.

  What It Meant

  Constantine died in AD 337. His fellow Christians may have missed him, but they weren’t dependent on him anymore. He had forged the path before him, and others had followed in his way.

  After Constantine’s conversion, Christianity was adopted as the state religion of the Roman Empire. Within a decade, Christianity had become the majority religion. And though it had yet to face one last episode of persecution under Julian the Apostate, he would be the last of the Roman emperors not to rule under the Christian cross.40

  One of the crucial results of the spread of Christianity was that the religion developed the strength and depth it needed to survive the brutal future that lay ahead.

  The Roman Empire was soon to slide into decline, and then to fall. Following the rise of the barbarian tribes, many of whose names are familiar to us today—the Vandals, Huns, Goths, and Franks—civilization began to crumble. Despite the fact that political stability was being crushed under the weight of civilizat
ion’s collapse, Christianity survived. Indeed, not only were the barbarians unable to destroy Christianity, most were eventually converted.

  Against later invasions of Vikings, Magyars, Mongols, and Muslims, Christianity continued to serve as the light that turned the minds of men toward the higher aspirations that were essential for a civilized culture to develop.

  Looking back, this seems clear: Constantine’s vision of the cross in the sky was not only a call for a military victory but a plea for all men to fight against irrationality, injustice, and tyranny.

  Had it not been for the son of a Roman Caesar and an innkeeper’s daughter, the history of Europe—and the world—would have unfolded very differently.41

  Notes

  ^1. Quoted in Stark, Rise of Christianity, 97–98.

  ^2. Jenkins, “Any Faith Can Become Violent.”

  ^3. Woods, Catholic Church, 1–2. Dr. Woods is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the author of nine books. For another voice supporting the essential role of the Christian church in the saving and growth of Western civilization, see Durant, Reformation, 3–6, in which this most eminent of scholars gives credit to the Catholic church for being the chief source of order and peace in the Dark Ages; for resurrecting civilization after the barbarian invasions of Europe; for saving classic culture; for keeping alive the Greek and Latin languages; for training Europe’s teachers, scholars, judges, diplomats, and ministers of state; for building universities and providing a home for the intellect; and for providing a moral code and national government.

  ^4. Rodney Stark is a Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences, Baylor University, as well as the author of numerous excellent books on the history and influence of Christianity.

  ^5. Stark, Victory of Reason, x; emphasis in original.

  ^6. Brog, In Defense of Faith, 2.

  ^7. See ibid., 53–85.