The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01

by John Julius Norwich

  *

  i The site is now known as Grotta Rossa. De Vita Constantini, 1, 28.

  Ii Originally built in 109 BC, the Pontc Milvio still stands, though it has been many times rebuilt and restored - most recently by Pius IX in 1850 after Garibaldi had blown it up.

  The Battle of the Milvian Bridge made Constantine absolute master of all Europe from the Atlantic to the Adriatic, from Hadrian's Wall to the Atlas. It also marked, if not his actual conversion to Christianity, at least the moment when he set himself up as a protector and active patron of his Christian subjects. Not only, during his two and a half months in Rome, did he generously subsidize from his private purse twenty-five already existing titular churches and establish several new ones; he also instructed his provincial governors to do likewise throughout his dominions. On his departure from the city he presented the newly elected Pope Melchiades with the old palace of the Laterani family on the Coelian Hill which the Empress Fausta - who had joined him soon after his arrival - had occupied during her stay. It was to remain a papal palace for another thousand years. Next to it he ordered the building, at his own expense, of the first of Rome's Constantinian basilicas, St John Lateran, still today the Cathedral Church of the city. Significantly, it was given an immense free-standing circular baptistery: there was to be a formidable increase in the rate of conversions during the years to come.1 To what extent, therefore, did the vision of the Cross that the Emperor is said to have experienced near the Milvian Bridge constitute not only one of the decisive turning-points of his life - comparable to that experienced by St Paul on the Road to Damascus - but also, in view of its consequences, a watershed of world history? The question is not an easy one to answer, and before we can even attempt to do so we must ask ourselves another: what actually happened? The earliest version of the story is that of our second principal source for the period, the Christian scholar and rhetorician Lactantius who, having somehow survived the persecutions, was at about this time appointed by Constantine to be tutor to his son Crispus. Whether or not he was already a member of the imperial entourage, Lactantius would have had plenty of opportunities shortly afterwards to question the Emperor directly about what took place. Writing probably within a year or two of the event, he records:

  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. He did as he had been commanded, and he marked on their shields the letter X, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round at the top, being the cypher of Christ.2

  i Constantino's baptistery no longer stands. Its present octagonal successor dates from the time of

  Pope Sixtus III (4}»-4o).

  i Dt Mortibus Ptrseculorum, Chap. xliv.

  He says no more. We have no mention of a vision, only of a dream. There is not even any suggestion by this devout Christian apologist that the Saviour or the Cross ever appeared to the Emperor at all. As for 'the heavenly sign it was simply a monogram of chi (X) and rho (P), the first two Greek letters in the name of Christ, that had long been a familiar symbol in Christian inscriptions.

  Perhaps more significant still is the fact that Eusebius himself makes no reference to either a dream or a vision in the account of the battle which he gives in his Ecclesiastical History of about 325. It is only in his Life of Constantine, written many years later after the latter's death, that he produces the passage quoted above, following it up with a rather fuller version of Lactantius's story in which he tells how, on the night after the vision, Christ appeared to the Emperor in a dream and ordered him to have a standard made in the likeness of the sign that he had seen in the heavens, 'and to use it as a safeguard in all engagements with his enemies'. This, Eusebius tells us, Constantine did on the very next day. The result, which was known as the labarum, consisted of a cross fashioned from a gold-encrusted spear, surmounted by a wreath encircling the sacred monogram. When Eusebius saw it some years later a golden portrait of the Emperor and his children had been suspended, somewhat surprisingly, from the cross-bar.

  What conclusions, then, are we to draw from all this? First, surely, that the vision of the Cross above the battlefield - that vision that we see endlessly depicted, on canvas and in fresco, in the churches and art galleries of the west - never occurred. Had it done so, it is unthinkable that there should not be a single reference to it in any of the contemporary histories until the Life of Constantine. The Emperor himself never seems to have spoken of it - except, apparently, to Eusebius - even on those occasions when he might have been expected to do so. Soon after his death, too, we find his son, Constantius II, being assured by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem that the sight of a cross, recently traced in the sky by meteors, was a greater grace even than the True Cross found by his grandmother Helena in the Holy Land; could the Bishop possibly have omitted to mention Constantine's vision had he known of it? Finally there is Eusebius's specific statement that 'the whole army . . . witnessed the miracle'. If that were true, 98,000 men kept the secret remarkably well.

  There can be little doubt, on the other hand, that at a certain moment shortly before the fateful battle the Emperor underwent some profound spiritual experience. Lactantius's bald account may well be substantially true; but experiences of this kind are not necessarily attended by such easily describable manifestations as dreams. There are indications that Constantine had been in a state of grave religious uncertainty since his execution of his father-in-law Maximian two years before, and was increasingly tending towards monotheism: after 310 his coins depict, in place of the old Roman deities, one god only - Helios or, as he was more generally known, Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun - of whom Constantine also claimed to have had a vision some years before, while fighting in Gaul. Yet this faith too - by now the most popular and widespread in the entire Empire - seems to have left him unsatisfied; Eusebius tells how, on his journey into Italy, knowing that he was shortly to fight the most important battle of his life - that on which his whole future career would depend - he prayed fervently for some form of divine revelation. No man, in short, was readier for conversion during that late summer of 312 than was Constantine; and it is hardly surprising that, up to a point at least, his prayers were answered.

  If we accept this hypothesis Eusebius's story becomes a good deal easier to understand, revealing itself less as a deliberate falsehood than as a possibly unconscious exaggeration, and less the fault of the writer than that of the Emperor himself. Throughout his life, and particularly after the Milvian Bridge, Constantine cherished a strongly developed sense of divine mission. In later years this sense grew ever more pervading; what then could be more natural than that, looking back on the great events of his life as it neared its end, he should have allowed his memory to add a gentle gloss here and there? In his day the existence of miracles and heavenly portents was universally accepted; from the reflection that he could have had a vision and that, in the circumstances, he should have had a vision, it was but a short step to the persuasion that the vision had actually occurred. And Eusebius would have been the last person to cross-examine him.

  One question, however, remains to be answered: how complete was Constantine's conversion? There is no doubt that from 312 onwards the Emperor saw himself as supreme guardian of the Christian Church, responsible for its prosperity and welfare; on the other hand his coins continued, at least until 324, to depict him as a companion of the Unconquered Sun and - more significant even than this - he still jibbed at the prospect of his own baptism, which he was to continue to postpone until he lay on his deathbed a quarter of a century later. This reluctance may to some extent have been due to political considerations; he was anxious not to alarm those of his subjects who still clung to the old gods. But he certainly did not hesitate to give mortal offence, during his stay in Rome, by refusing to take part in the traditional procession to the Capitol for the sacrifice to Jupiter.

  The truth is probably rather more complicated: that while Constantine felt a genuine sym
pathy towards Christianity and genuinely believed the God of the Christians to have been responsible for his mystical experience (whatever that may have been) on the way to the Milvian Bridge, he was not yet ready to embrace the Christian religion in toto. While by now almost certainly accepting the concept of the Summus Dens, the Supreme God, he was perfectly ready to believe that this God might manifest himself in several different forms: as Apollo, or Sol Invictus, or Mithras (whose cult was still popular, especially in the army), or indeed the God of the Christians. Of all these manifestations he may have preferred the last, but as a universal ruler, feeling himself to be above all sects and hierarchies, he saw no reason not to keep his options open.

  And the Roman Senate agreed with him. To celebrate his victory over Maxentius and his re-establishment of law, order and the imperial administration in the city, they erected in his honour the great triumphal arch that still stands a little to the south-west of the Colosseum. Much of its relief decoration is in fact reused, having previously served as part of various earlier monuments dedicated to Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius; Gibbon describes the whole structure as 'a melancholy proof of the decline of the arts, and a singular testimony of the meanest vanity'. The inscription, however, dates explicitly from the time of Constantine. In translation, it reads:

  TO THE EMPEROR CAESAR FLAVIUS CONSTANTINE WHO BEING INSTINCT WITH DIVINITY AND BY THE GREATNESS OF HIS SPIRIT AVENGED THE STATE IN A JUST WAR ON THE TYRANT AND ALL HIS PARTY.

  Instinctu divinitatis: the phrase is a curious one, and must have been deliberately chosen for its ambiguity. There is no mention of Christ, nor of the Cross; no indication, even, of the precise divinity referred to. Yet Constantine must certainly have approved the text before it was passed to the stone-carvers. It is only natural that he should have been treading warily, as doubtless were the senators who drafted the inscription in the first place; one suspects, none the less, that his approval was not unwillingly given, since he himself had as yet made no final commitment to any one god. Instinctu divinitatis: he could not have put it better himself.

  Apart from the triumphal arch - and the colossal statue of the seated Emperor, seven times life-size, which was placed in the remodelled (and hastily renamed) Basilica of Maxentius and of which the terrifying, staring, nine-ton head survives in the Capitoline Museum - the Roman Senate showed to Constantine, during the last two months of 312, one further mark of favour. They proclaimed him Supreme Augustus. It was in this capacity that he left the city in early January 313 for Milan, where he had arranged to meet Licinius.

  The Augusti had three principal issues to discuss. The first was the future of Italy. Theoretically it formed part of that area of the Empire which was subject to Licinius, but the latter had not raised a finger to assist Constantine in its recapture and cannot seriously have expected that his colleague would now freely hand it back to him. Next was the question of religious toleration and, in particular, the future status of the Christians. It was obvious that a single policy should prevail throughout the Empire; at the same time the elderly Licinius was unlikely to feel as well disposed towards Christianity as his fellow-Emperor, and some sort of understanding would have to be reached between them. Finally there came the problem created by the third living Augustus, Maximin Daia.

  This odious young man - the exact date of his birth is unknown, but he seems still to have been in his early thirties - had started making trouble in 310 when, after five years as a Caesar, he had demanded the rank of Augustus. His uncle Galerius, sadly aware that with Constantine, Maximian and Maxentius all having claimed the title in the recent past it was in danger of becoming seriously devalued, had refused point-blank, offering him instead that of Filius Augusti; but Maximin Daia had angrily rejected this belittling alternative and had assumed the Augustan attributes of his own accord. On Galerius's death he had seized the Eastern Empire as far as the Hellespont, from which point of vantage he had made continual trouble for Licinius in Thrace until, in the winter of 311—12 on a barge in the middle of the Bosphorus, the two had patched up an uneasy truce. Moreover, he loathed Christianity. He had blatandy ignored his uncle's Edict of Toleration in 311 and was still wallowing in Christian blood - even on occasion sending his soldiers in pursuit of Christian refugees over the imperial borders into Armenia, whose King was consequently on the point of declaring war against him.

  The talks between the two Emperors passed off amicably enough. Licinius seems to have accepted with a good grace that Constantine should keep the territories that he had conquered, and was duly married - according to what rite is unfortunately not recorded - to Constantia.

  313

  Where the Christians were concerned, the new brothers-in-law agreed the final text of a further edict, confirming that of Galerius and granting Christianity full legal recognition throughout the Empire. Before this could be promulgated, however, news reached Milan that brought the meeting to an abrupt and premature end: Maximin Daia had broken the truce of the previous winter, crossed the straits with an army - estimated by Lactantius at 70,000 - and seized the little town of Byzantium on the European shore. Licinius moved fast. Taking the small force that he had with him at Milan, summoning reinforcements to join him in Illyria and Thrace and picking up what further units he could along his route, he left immediately for the East. By late April we find him a few miles from Heraclea Propontis, another small settlement on the Marmara to which Maximin was laying siege; and on the last day of the month the two armies met at a spot known as the Serene Fields, some eighteen miles outside the town.

  Outnumbered though he was, well past his own youth and with his men exhausted from the length and speed of their march, Licinius proved by far the more brilliant general of the two. Maximin's army was ignominiously routed, he himself fleeing from the field disguised as a slave. He finally made his way to Cilicia, where he died the following year - as disagreeably, Lactantius is happy to inform us, as his fellow-persecutors:

  He swallowed poison ... which began to burn up everything within him, so that he was driven to distraction by the intolerable pain; and during a fit of frenzy, which lasted four days, he gathered handfuls of earth, and greedily devoured it. After various excruciating torments he dashed his forehead against the wall, and his eyes started out of their sockets ... In the end he acknowledged his own guilt and implored Christ to have mercy on him. Then, amidst groans like those of one burnt alive, did he breathe out his guilty soul in the most horrible kind of death.1

  Licinius, meanwhile, had made his triumphal entry into the eastern capital, Nicomedia - where, somewhat belatedly on 13 June, he promulgated the edict on which he and Constantine had agreed at Milan:

  When I, Constantine Augustus, and I, Licinius Augustus, had come under happy auspices to Milan, and conferred together on all matters that concerned the public advantage and welfare ... we resolved to make such decrees as should secure respect and reverence for the Deity; namely to grant both to the

  1 Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, Chap. xlix.

  Christians and to all others the right freely to follow whatever form of worship might please them, to the intent that whatsoever Divinity dwells in heaven might be favourable to us and to all those living under our authority.1

  Here, once again, is a text that bears all the signs of cautious drafting. Still we find no mention of Jesus Christ, only of 'the Christians' as a sect; and - although they are the only group specifically named - it is made abundantly clear that 'all others' (the Manicheans, for example) are also included in what is, in effect, a general edict of toleration. As to the reference to 'whatsoever Divinity dwells in heaven' (quo quicquid est divinitatis), this phrase may have been insisted on by the pagan Licinius; but a comparison with the inscription on the triumphal arch suggests that it probably corresponded fairly closely with Constantine's own thinking. In one respect only does the ordinance discriminate in favour of the Christians: they alone are to have restored to them all their property - land, churches and ch
attels - confiscated during the Persecutions. But, it should be remembered, no other sect had suffered comparable losses.

  The removal of Maximin Daia had the effect of polarizing the Empire. Once again there were only two Augusti, Constantine in the West and Licinius in the East - where he immediately instituted a reign of terror. Not only were all his predecessor's chief ministers executed; so too were numerous members of Maximin's family - which, in view of the various marriage alliances concluded among past Augusti and their Caesars, included the families of Diocletian and Galerius. Even the latter's widow Valeria, even his mother-in-law Prisca, Diocletian's widow whom Galerius had entrusted on his deathbed to Licinius's care, were shown no mercy; both were arrested in their homes at Thessalonica and put to the sword.

  The reason for this blood-bath was not simply vengeance, nor yet vindictiveness; it was the conviction on the part of Licinius that there was room in the Empire for one ruling family only - the family of Constantine, of which he himself, since his marriage to Constantia, was a member. This conviction did not, however, bind him closer to his co-Augustus; indeed, the honeymoon inaugurated at Milan was to prove all too short. Within six months of the two Emperors' departure from the city, Licinius had entered into a conspiracy against Constantine - though

  i Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, Chap, xlviii.