The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01

by John Julius Norwich

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  fortunately it was brought to light before any harm was done. Soon afterwards, in the early summer of 314, he ordered the removal of all his colleague's statues and portraits from the town of Aemona - now Ljubljana - on the border of the Italian Province.

  It was, in effect, a declaration of war. Constantine, who had returned to Gaul, immediately marched south-east with some 30,000 men into the Pannonian plain, to meet his adversary near Cibalae - the present Vinkovci - in the Sava Valley. The battle was joined before dawn on the morning of 8 October: Licinius fought with determination and courage but was finally obliged to yield, his retreating army being pursued by Constantine right across the Balkan peninsula to Byzantium. There at last the two Emperors came to an understanding: Licinius agreed to give up all his dominions in eastern Europe - they included Pannonia and the whole of what we now know as the Balkans - with the single exception of Thrace; in return, Constantine undertook to recognize his authority throughout Asia, Libya and Egypt.

  The two Emperors were friends again; but they did not remain so for long. Indeed, the story of the next decade is one of a steady deterioration in the relations between them. In 317 Constantine named his two young sons - Crispus, the fourteen-year-old child of his marriage to his first wife Minervina, and another Constantine, the infant son of the Empress Fausta, who was hardly out of his cradle - as joint Caesars of the West; simultaneously, Licinius at Nicomedia conferred the same rank on his own natural son, Licinianus; but these moves were doubtless concerted in advance and do not necessarily reflect any particular rivalry. By the following year, however, Constantine had moved his court from Sirmium to Serdica, the modern Sofia - a curious choice of capital for a ruler whose domains extended to the Straits of Gibraltar and beyond, and one which was logically justifiable only on the assumption that it was from the Eastern Empire, rather than from the Gauls or the Franks or the Donatists in North Africa, that trouble was to be expected.

  In fact, that trouble was to be largely of Constantine's making. His apologists do their best to lay the blame on Licinius for his duplicity and faithlessness as well as for his undeniably growing hostility to the Christian religion: from 320 or thereabouts he imposed a ban on all episcopal synods, expelled a large number of bishops and priests (though by no means all of them) and dismissed from his household staff all who would not sacrifice to the pagan gods. By now, however, it was becoming clear that Constantine was determined to put an end to Diocletian's disastrous division of the Empire and to rule it alone. From 320, in defiance of recent tradition, he did not even include an easterner as one of the two annually elected Consuls, naming instead himself and his younger son; in 321 both his sons were named.1 That same year he began to gather together a huge war fleet, and to enlarge and deepen the harbour at Thessalonica in readiness for its reception.

  Licinius also began to prepare for war, and for some time the two Augusti watched each other, waiting. In the autumn of 322, however, while repelling an attack by the Sarmatians - a nomadic barbarian tribe normally inhabiting the regions north of the lower Danube - Constantine, inadvertently or otherwise, led his army into Thrace. Licinius made a violent protest, claiming that this was a deliberate infringement of his territory for purposes of reconnaissance, and an obvious prelude to a full-scale invasion; he then advanced, with a force estimated at some 170,000, up to Adrianople - the modern Edirne. When Constantine marched, he would be ready to receive him.

  It was in the last week of June 323 that the army of the West crossed the Thracian border; and on 3 July, on a broad, sloping plain just outside Adrianople, it found itself confronted by that of the East. Constantine's force was slightly the smaller of the two; but it was largely composed of hardened veterans, who had little difficulty in wearing down their comparatively inexperienced opponents. Once again Licinius fought with conspicuous courage, ordering a retreat only when some 34,000 of his men lay dead on the field. Then he withdrew to Byzantium, just as he had done nine years before. This time, however, he sought no terms; instead, he declared Constantine deposed, named his chief minister, one Marcus Martianus, as Augustus in his place, and settled down to withstand a siege.

  Constantine fox his part dug himself in - reflecting yet again, one is tempted to think, on the strategic position and superb natural defences of the little town - and waited patiently for his fleet. He had entrusted its command to his son Crispus, now a man of twenty, married and a father, with five years' campaigning experience already behind him; it consisted of some 200 thirty-oared war galleys backed up, we are told, by 2,000 transports. To defend the Hellespont, Licinius could boast a yet more

  1 This dual consulate was one of the oldest and most venerable institutions of the Roman Republic, in which the Consuls were, during their year of office, the supreme civil and military magistrates of the State. By late imperial days the title had become purely honorary, with the two chosen Consuls at liberty, in Gibbon's memorable phrase, 'to enjoy the undisturbed contemplation of their own greatness'; each year, however, was known by the names of the Consuls appointed for it, and the office itself remained so elevated as to be held by only the very highest dignitaries not infrequently the Emperors themselves: Constantine's own consulate in 320 was in fact his sixth.

  323

  numerous armada of some 350 vessels under his admiral, Abantus; inexplicably, however, this man had decided to take his stand, not at the Aegean end of the strait where his superior numbers could be put to proper advantage, but at its north-eastern extremity where it widens into the Sea of Marmara. When the invasion fleet arrived, it attacked at once. The ensuing engagement lasted two full days, but at last Crispus's lighter, faster and more manoeuvrable ships, having sunk 150 of the defenders, smashed their way through and sailed on to Byzantium.

  The moment he heard of their advance, Licinius slipped out of the town and crossed the Bosphorus into Asia; but Constantine was ready. Swiftly embarking his army in the newly arrived transports, he set off immediately in pursuit, and on 18 September scored another major victory at Chrysopolis (now Uskudar or, more familiarly, Scutari). Licinius hastened back to his capital at Nicomedia; great as his losses had been, his spirit was not yet broken and he had every intention of making a last stand. It was his wife who dissuaded him. If he surrendered now, she pointed out, he might yet escape with his life. The next day she herself went off to see her half-brother in his camp to plead with him on her husband's behalf.

  And Constantine granted her request. He summoned Licinius, greeted him with every sign of cordiality and even invited him to dinner. Then he sent him into exile at Thessalonica, under close surveillance but in a degree of comfort appropriate to his rank. He showed similar magnanimity to his own self-styled successor Martianus, whom he simply banished to Cappadocia. Particularly in view of Licinius's conduct when he himself had taken over the Eastern Empire, such clemency was remarkable indeed; alas, it did not last. A few months later, both men were summarily put to death.

  The reasons for the Emperor's sudden change of heart are unknown. It is possible, as the Christian historian Socrates asserts - though he was writing a century later - that Licinius had been up to his old tricks again and was conspiring with the barbarian tribes (presumably the Sarmatians) for Constantine's murder and his own return to power; possible, but hardly likely. A far more probable solution to the problem can be found in the words of a prayer which Constantine wrote himself at about this time and circulated throughout the Empire in the form of an encyclical letter. After a long opening section in which he describes and deplores the previous Persecutions, 'my own desire is,' he continues, 'for the general advantage of the world and all mankind, that Thy people should enjoy a life of peace and undisturbed concord.'

  It was true; after the war against Licinius and for the rest of his life we find him repeating these sentiments again and again and striving continually, at whatever cost, to avoid war or anything that might lead to it. By now, however, he can have had no doubts left in his mind th
at, if the Roman Empire were to remain at peace, it must continue to be united under a single head; and he must strongly have suspected that Licinius would never be content to remain for long in obscurity. The Empire, in short, was not - for all its vastness - big enough for both of them; and if the promise of peace required the elimination of the only two other claimants to the title of Augustus, it was surely cheap at the price.

  The Adoption of the Faith

  [323-6]

  For my own part, I hold any sedition within the Church of God as formidable as any war or battle, and more difficult still to bring to an end. I am consequently more opposed to it than to anything else.

  Constantine the Great, opening the Council of Nicaea, AD 325

  During the years of civil war, throughout which the holy labarum was invariably carried before him into battle and never failed - as he saw it - to bring him victory, Constantine turned more and more exclusively towards the God of the Christians. For some years, as we have seen, he had been legislating in their favour. Confiscated property was restored; the clergy were exempted from municipal obligations; episcopal courts were given the right to act as courts of appeal for civil cases. Other laws, too, suggest a degree of Christian inspiration, such as that of 319 prohibiting the murder of slaves, regardless of their offence; that of 320 forbidding prison authorities to maltreat those in their charge; or - most celebrated of all - the law of 7 March 321 proclaiming Sunday, 'the venerable day of the Sun', as a day of rest. (This might be thought to be a throwback to the worship of Sol Invictus; in fact, Sunday had been gradually replacing Saturday as the Christian sabbath since the days of St Paul, and had been already enjoined on the faithful by a church council held at Elvira in Spain fifteen years before.) But in none of this legislation even then, is the name of Christ himself mentioned or the Christian faith in any way professed.

  Now at last, with the Empire safely reunited under his sole authority, Constantine could afford to come into the open. In the long prayer quoted at the end of the previous chapter he makes his persuasion clear:

  Although mankind has fallen deeply, and has been seduced by manifold errors, yet hast Thou revealed a pure light in the person of Thy Son (lest the power of evil should utterly prevail) and hast thus given testimony to all men concerning Thyself.

  On the other hand, there must be no coercion: pagans must be allowed to continue in the old faith if they choose to do so. The prayer goes on:

  Let those, therefore, who are still blinded by error be made welcome to the same degree of peace and tranquillity which they have who believe . .. Let no man molest another in this matter, but let everyone be free to follow the bias of his own mind . . . For it is one thing voluntarily to undertake the struggle for immortality, another to compel others to do likewise from fear of punishment.

  But, though paganism might be tolerated, there must be no heresy. If the Church were to stand henceforth as the spiritual arm of an indivisible Empire, how could it itself be divided? Unfortunately it was. For years Constantine had battled in vain against two schismatic groups, the Donatists in North Africa and the Meletians in Egypt. These fiercely intractable Christians refused to accept the authority of any bishop or priest who had defected from the Church during the Persecutions and returned to it later, thus denying the orthodox view that the moral worthiness of the minister-who, as St Augustine had pointed out, was only a surrogate for Christ - had no effect on the validity of the sacrament. (The Donatists indeed went even further, maintaining that all who communicated with the traditores were themselves infected, and that consequently, since there was but a single holy Church, it consisted of Donatists alone.) Now there had emerged a third faction - which, to judge by the number of adherents that it was collecting inside and outside the Church and the vociferousness with which it was upheld or denounced, threatened to sow more discord than the other two put together.

  This group had formed itself around a certain Arius, presbyter of Alexandria, a man of immense learning and splendid physical presence who had been a disciple of the famous St Lucian of Antioch, martyred during the Persecutions. His message was simple enough: that Jesus Christ was not co-eternal and of one substance with God the Father, but had been created by Him at a specific time as his Instrument for the salvation of the world. Thus, although a perfect man, the Son must always be subordinate to the Father, his nature being human rather than divine. Here, in the eyes of Arius's archbishop, Alexander, was a dangerous doctrine indeed; and he took immediate measures to stamp it out. In 320 its propagator was arraigned before nearly a hundred bishops from Egypt, Libya and Tripolitania and excommunicated as a heretic.

  The damage, however, was done: the teaching spread like wildfire.

  324

  Those were the days, it must be remembered, in which theological arguments were of passionate interest, not just to churchmen and scholars but to the whole Greek world. Broadsheets were distributed; rabble-rousing speeches were made in the market place; slogans were chalked on walls. Everyone had an opinion: you were either for Arius or against him. He himself, unlike most theologians, was a brilliant publicist; the better to disseminate his views, he had actually written several popular songs and jingles - for sailors, travellers, carpenters and other trades - which were sung and whistled in the streets.1

  After his excommunication, however, he could not stay in Alexandria. Departing in haste, he made first for Caesarea where Eusebius, now Bishop, espoused his cause with enthusiasm; he then travelled on to Nicomedia itself, where he was warmly welcomed by Licinius and Constantia and where the Bishop - confusingly, another Eusebius -called a local synod which declared overwhelmingly in his favour. Another synod, this time of Syrian prelates drummed up by Eusebius of Caesarea, did likewise; whereupon Arius, his position immeasurably strengthened, returned to Egypt and demanded to be reinstated. Alexander refused, and serious rioting broke out.

  By the autumn of 323, when Constantine assumed complete control of his Empire, what had started as a subtle point of theology had become a dangerous cause celebre, not only in Egypt but throughout the Levant. Strong measures, it seemed, would have to be taken if the situation were not to deteriorate further, and the Emperor accordingly dispatched Bishop Hosius of Cordova - who for the past ten years had been his principal adviser on Christian affairs - to Egypt, with orders to settle the dispute in whatever way he saw fit, once and for all. Not surprisingly, the Bishop failed. The next year he tried again; this time his instructions were to deliver a letter from Constantine himself, addressed impartially to the two protagonists:

  Constantine the Victor, Supreme Augustus, to Alexander and Arius:

  Having enquired faithfully into the origin and foundation of your differences, I find their cause to be of a truly insignificant nature, and quite unworthy of such fierce contention . . . Now therefore must ye both exhibit an equal measure of forbearance, and accept the advice which your fellow-servant feels justly entitled to give.

  What is this advice? It was wrong ever to propose such questions as these, or to reply to them when propounded. For points of discussion which are enjoined

  1 'We do him too much honour when we hail him as the father of religious music in the Christian church' (Dictionnaire de Theologie Catbolique, article on 'Arianism'). VC'e certainly do.

  by the authority of no law, but rather suggested by a contentious spirit which is in turn the consequence of misused leisure, should be confined to our own thoughts, and neither hastily produced in public assemblies nor ill-advisedly entrusted to the public ear. For how very few are those who are able either accurately to comprehend or adequately to explain matters so sublime and abstruse.1

  Wise counsel indeed - which, had it only been heeded over the centuries, would have spared the world untold bitterness and bloodshed. It fell, however, on deaf ears, and resulted only in bringing both Arius and Alexander separately to Nicomedia to lay their respective cases before the Emperor.

  It was now, towards the end of 324, that Constantine dec
ided on the final solution to the problem. There would be no more synods of local bishops; instead, there would be a universal Council of the Church - a Council of such authority and distinction that both parties to the dispute would be bound to accept its rulings. The first proposal was that it should be held in Ancyra - the modern Ankara; but the venue was soon changed to Nicaea (Iznik). Not only was this city more accessible; it was also nearer to Nicomedia - a point of no little importance, for it soon became clear that the Emperor had every intention of participating himself.

  Nicaea too boasted an imperial palace; and it was here that the great Council was held, between 20 May and 19 June 325. Despite the Emperor's hopes for a large attendance from the western churches, these were poorly represented: the controversy was of little interest to them. Apart from Bishop Hosius there were only the Bishops of Calabria and Carthage, two others respectively from Gaul and Illyria, and a couple of priests, sent from Rome - more as observers than anything else - by Pope Sylvester. From the East, on the other hand, the delegates arrived in force: 270 bishops at the lowest count but in fact probably 300 or more, many of them with impressive records of persecution and imprisonment for their faith. The proceedings were opened by Constantine in person.

  When the whole assembly was seated with due dignity, a general silence prevailed pending the Emperor's arrival. First, three of his immediate family entered in order of rank, then came others heralding his own approach — not the soldiers or guards who normally attended him, but friends in the faith. And now, all rising at the signal that indicated the Emperor's entrance, at last he himself proceeded through the midst of the assembly like some heavenly Angel of God, clothed in a garment which glittered as though radiant with light, reflecting the glow of a purple robe and adorned with the brilliant splendour of gold and precious stones. When he had advanced to the upper end of the seats, he at first remained standing; and when a low chair of wrought gold had been set for him, he waited to sit down until the bishops had signalled to him to do so. After him the whole assembly did the same.1