The emperor also elevated the status of bishops. Like all Christian clergy, they were freed from having to perform expensive and time-consuming duties that other prosperous Romans owed to local government. Bishops had certain other privileges, most notably the right of trial by their peers, something no other Romans enjoyed. They served as agents for distributing imperial funds to their churches and to the poor. They were even able to preside in church over the freeing of slaves by their owners. All in all, bishops became very important people.
Several other changes in Roman law affecting Christians came into effect under Constantine. The punishment of celibacy, which became law centuries ago under Augustus, was now abolished, since Christians, unlike pagans, considered celibacy a virtue. Crucifixion, the death penalty imposed on Jesus (and many others), was abolished as a form of capital punishment. Divorce was made more difficult, although not abolished, probably under the influence of the New Testament and its opposition to divorce.
Like Jews, Christians recognized a day of rest, or Sabbath. Jews celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday (actually, roughly from sundown Friday to nightfall Saturday). Early Christians followed one of two paths: some celebrated the Jewish Sabbath, while others celebrated the Sabbath on Sunday, the day when Jesus rose from the dead. Meanwhile, pagans recognized Sunday as a day holy to the sun, although not as a day of rest. Constantine decreed that Sunday, “the venerable day of the sun,” be a day of rest for all city activities. (Farmers were allowed to take care of the crops on Sunday.) It took another generation or two for Constantine’s rule to become universal among Christians.
Constantine’s patronage elevated the church but also changed it. The ultimate outsider movement was now the establishment. Jesus said to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s. Constantine was a man of God but was also Caesar, and he insisted on the final say about how and what to owe to God. He might have acted from the best of motives, out of the belief that a godly king has the responsibility to promote true religion. But act he did, and Christians had to decide how to respond.
Constantine became the ruler of the Christian Church, or, to be more accurate, of the Christian Churches. Christianity as Constantine knew it was a diverse religion, an umbrella sheltering a great deal of regional variation and doctrinal choice. After nearly twenty years of hard-fought war and politics, Constantine had finally unified all Romans under the rule of one man. He equally insisted on unifying all Christians, but it was no easy task.
While still ruler of only the West, Constantine intervened in a split in the church of North Africa, which was divided on the question of how much forgiveness to show Christians who had made deals to survive the Great Persecution. Having put his career on the line for the church, Constantine insisted that Christians display a united front against their opponents. He wrote in 314 to the Roman official in charge of North Africa, describing him as “a fellow worshipper of the most high God,” and declared his goal of achieving Christian unity. But years of negotiation, bribery, exile, and even execution failed to bring together the two factions of the African church.
In 325 Constantine waded into an even bigger controversy raging through the eastern church. The fundamental question was just how Jesus was God. Most Christians believed that Jesus was both man and God at the same time, a mystery that could be reconciled only by faith. The Arians, named after their leader, an Egyptian Christian named Arius, believed that God the Father created his son Jesus, who was greater than other humans but not equal to God Himself. Constantine tried to get both sides to agree by holding a great meeting of bishops in the city of Nicaea. It was the church’s first ecumenical—in Greek, “world”—council. Two hundred fifty bishops attended, and the emperor himself presided. One of those bishops, Eusebius of Caesarea, in Syria Palestina, was a major Christian writer and thinker. He is our most important contemporary source for Constantine.
The stakes were high at Nicaea, and the disagreement reached the highest levels of the court. Constantia advised the pro-Arian faction at the council. Later, even on her deathbed, she still lobbied her brother on behalf of the Arians. But she didn’t get her way.
The council agreed on a statement reaffirming the traditional belief that Jesus was both man and God. With some later changes, that statement is still recited by Christians today as the Nicene Creed. Although this put the state-sponsored church on record against the Arians, Arian Christianity survived for centuries.
Constantine wanted to impose an official or orthodox Christianity and to oppose other beliefs, which were labeled as heresy. But heresy comes from hairesis, a Greek word for “choice,” and Christianity had a long tradition of freedom and decentralization. It proved resistant to central control.
Still, with Christianity now the imperial religion, the image of Jesus in Christian art began to change. Earlier, artists depicted Jesus as an ordinary person engaged, for instance, in healing the sick. They also commonly showed him as a simple shepherd, recalling Jesus’s description of himself as the good shepherd. Now Jesus began to sit on a throne in a very fine toga, like the emperor himself, surrounded by male disciples who look like senators and by females who look like Roman nobles. It was an imperial Christ for an imperial religion. To be sure, Christianity was not yet the official state religion and wouldn’t be until 395. Paganism was still practiced. Yet with his lavish funding and imperial patronage, Constantine put the Church on the road to success.
THE SORROW AND THE GLORY
Having killed one brother-in-law to conquer Rome, Constantine killed another to add the Roman East to his portfolio. After promising Constantia to spare Licinius and their son, he changed his mind. He accused the two men of plotting against him and had them both executed. Licinius was killed first, in 325, and his son a year later.
That, however, was only the beginning of woes for Constantine’s family. In 326 the emperor put his oldest son, Crispus, on trial. The young man was found guilty and the punishment was execution by poisoning. This was a shocking development considering Crispus’s status as well as his success as a commander against German tribes in the West and against Licinius in the East. Elevated to the rank of Caesar, Crispus, it seemed, was being groomed to be emperor someday. But suddenly, around the age of twenty-six, he was gone. His name was expunged from all public records and documents.
The reasons for Crispus’s execution are much debated, but the most likely explanation is that Fausta accused him of having sexual relations with her. Fausta was closer in age to her stepson than to Constantine. Did the two really sleep together, or did Fausta, like a character in Greek myth, proposition Crispus and then turn on him with a false accusation after he rejected her advance? Was there another factor: Did Fausta resent her husband for killing her father and brother? We can only guess.
Later, Constantine came to the conclusion that Crispus was innocent and Fausta had lied. His mother, Helena, convinced him of this and persuaded him that her grandson had been killed unjustly. Fearing vengeance, Fausta committed suicide in an overheated bath.
A woman who was daughter of one emperor (Maximian), sister of another (Maxentius), and wife of a third (Constantine), a woman with the exalted rank of Augusta, Fausta had spent most of her life in palaces. She could never have expected such a sordid end. She left behind five young children and a ruined reputation. Like Crispus, Fausta was banned from official records. Meanwhile, the imperial family suffered disgrace.
THE HOLY LAND
The following year, Constantine sent Helena on a pilgrimage to Syria Palestina. It was part piety and part public relations in order to repair the damage done to the imperial house by the events of the previous year.
During her time there, Helena located the key sites where Jesus had lived, particularly in Jerusalem. She was on an official mission with access to unlimited government funds, which she used to build new churches and beautify existing ones and to help the poor. She founded beautiful churches in Bethlehem and on the
Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
Also in Jerusalem, Constantine sponsored the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on the site of the Resurrection. Part of that church, much renovated, still exists. Originally, there stood next to it a magnificent basilica, now gone.
After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem as punishment for the Jewish revolt, they rebuilt it under Hadrian but as a pagan city rather than a Jewish city; Aelia Capitolina instead of Jerusalem. Now they rebuilt it as Jerusalem but, again, not as a Jewish city; Jerusalem was now a Christian city.
Constantine rebranded Syria Palestina as the Christian Holy Land. A backwater province became the center of Christian pilgrimage. This had long-lasting historical consequences. On the one hand, it led, centuries later, to the Christian clash with Muslims known as the Crusades. On the other hand, it tended to undercut the right of Jews to live in their historic homeland. Just who the land belongs to is still fought over today.
Constantine was no friend to the Jews. Yet by Roman standards, he was not the worst of enemies, either. He didn’t destroy the temple like Vespasian and Titus or bathe Judea in blood like Hadrian. Nor did he destroy Jewish communal life, which continued to thrive both in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora. But Constantine did make Judaism inferior to Christianity. He was not the first emperor to insult Jews, although his branding Jews as “murderers of the Lord” proved particularly harmful. He made it illegal for Jews to accept Christian converts and illegal to prevent Jews from converting to Christianity. Yet he did Jews an unintended favor by freeing their slaves if the slaves converted to Christianity, thereby removing at least part of what we now consider a moral stain—slavery—from the Jewish community.
When a prominent rabbinical scholar converted to Christianity, Constantine gave him high rank and the funding to build the first churches in Galilee, an area of heavily Jewish cities. Decades later, one of these cities was the center of a Jewish revolt against Rome.
CONSTANTINOPLE
Like Diocletian, Constantine recognized the reality that the empire was now too big and complicated to be governed from any one city, and that it needed an eastern capital as well as a western one. Constantine did not rule from Rome. For most of his reign, he governed the empire either from Augusta Treverorum in the west or from either Sirmium or Serdica (modern Sofia, Bulgaria) in the east. After defeating Licinius, he wanted a new capital in Licinius’s former lands. Nicomedia, where Diocletian and Galerius ruled in the East, no longer seemed suitable because it had been the center of the Great Persecution. Constantine wanted a new Christian eastern capital for a Christian empire. Besides, he had his eye on a site with both strategic and propaganda advantages.
Few cities have a better location than Constantinople, but Constantine was the first to exploit its full potential. It’s no exaggeration to say that by refounding Byzantium, as it was then known, as Constantinople, Constantine created one of the most important cities in history, not to mention one of the liveliest.
The site came to his attention during his battle for the East, when Licinius used Byzantium as a fortified base. Byzantium was a Greek city founded in the six hundreds BC. It had its ups and downs over the years, most recently when it was destroyed by Septimius Severus as punishment for supporting his rival and then rebuilt probably by Licinius. Constantine rebuilt Byzantium again. He called the city Constantinople, that is, “Constantine’s City,” after himself. It is possible that he also called it New Rome, but that name might not have come until fifty years after Constantine. We don’t know.
Constantinople is located on a peninsula on the southern end of the Bosporus, a narrow strait that runs between the Euxine Sea and the Propontis, and from there to the Hellespont, the Aegean Sea, and the Mediterranean. On one side of the Bosporus lies Europe; on the other, Asia. The Bosporus was and still is one of the most strategic bodies of water on earth.
Constantinople lies on the European side of the Bosporus. A peninsula surrounded by water on three sides, it is accessible by land only on one side and so is easily defended. Constantine gave the city new walls, extending its area nearly two miles to the west. The result was a large and well-protected fortress located where two continents meet. The city is close to the Danube River and equidistant from two other Roman frontiers, the Rhine River in the West and the Euphrates River in the East.
Constantinople was also a victory monument. It lies across the Bosporus Strait from the site of Constantine’s final battle against Licinius, on the Asian shore. By building a city near his victory over a fellow Roman, Constantine followed in the footsteps of Augustus. That emperor, too, built a city across the water from his victory over a rival: Antony at Actium. Augustus called his new city Nicopolis, Greek for “Victory City.” Yet there the analogy ends. Neither Augustus nor any other emperor ever built a city as great as Constantinople.
The new city was dedicated on May 11, 330. The emperor built on a grand scale. Constantinople had a new palace, a circus (that is, horse-racing venue), a forum surrounded by porticoes, a senate, and a series of churches. In the center of the forum stood a tall porphyry column, part of which still stands. On the top was a large, nude statue of Constantine himself wearing a crown with rays coming out of it. It could be interpreted as a Christian symbol, a symbol of the sun god, or both. Christian though he was, a politician such as Constantine was capable of calculated ambiguity in order to widen his appeal.
REORGANIZING THE GOVERNMENT
Constantine reorganized Rome’s governmental institutions. He made them more specialized and flexible but also, above all, more likely to bend to his will, starting with the military. He needed no reminder of Severus’s warning to pay the soldiers. Like emperors since Gallienus, Constantine separated military from civilian careers. Freed from the constraint of having to promote senators to army commands, Constantine increased the number of non-Roman officers, men the Romans considered barbarians. For example, a German king, no less, was in charge of the troops at Eboracum when Constantine’s father died. Although most soldiers were native born, a fair numbers of foreigners crossed the frontier to join the Roman army, which they considered a good way to make a living. Moors, Armenians, and Persians but especially Germans served.
Constantine increased the separation, already begun under Diocletian, between field army soldiers and border troops. The first group was fitter, better paid, and required to serve a shorter term than the second. The enhanced field army served directly under the emperor’s command. It provided mobility, allowing the emperor to move troops rapidly to wherever they were needed.
Constantine beefed up the palace bureaucracy. He created a set of powerful officials who were directly responsible to him. They were new and more specialized administrators with new bureaus to run. There was an even a new corps, staffed by legionaries, to carry confidential messages between the center and the provinces. All this consolidation and centralization made government more efficient but not more pure. All those administrators expected “tips,” to put it mildly. In fact, the bigger Roman government grew, the more corruption became a problem.
Constantine understood that exchanging gifts and favors in return for services was no small part of government. So, in order to forge ties with powerful people in the provinces, he created new titles and distinctions and even, as mentioned, a new Senate for Constantinople. He was also lavish in his generosity to individuals and cities. This was good for politics but not for the Treasury. As a result, taxes went up.
What was, in fact, good for the Treasury was the new gold coin that Constantine minted: the solidus, which replaced an older gold coin whose value had been shattered by inflation. Good quality solidi continued to be issued by Constantine’s successors. In fact, the coin was destined to become so reliable and well regarded that some call it “the dollar of the Middle Ages.” But bronze and silver coins continued to lose value.
CHURCH AND MOSQUE
Helena died in Constantinople around 328, not long after her return from the Holy Land
. Her son was with her at the end. He sent his mother’s body to Rome, where she had lived since 312. There the body was laid to rest in an elaborate porphyry sarcophagus in a mausoleum with a dome rotunda, standing beside a martyrs’ church outside the city. The sarcophagus is still seen today by millions of visitors every year in the Vatican Museums. The ruins of the mausoleum still stand in a park on the edge of Rome, but they are ill publicized and get few visitors.
Constantine’s remaining years proved relatively peaceful. With trouble brewing again on the eastern frontier, however, he planned a new military campaign against Persia. He would lead it himself. Shortly after departing from Constantinople, he fell ill and stopped near Nicomedia. With the end approaching, he was baptized. It was common at the time to postpone baptism to near death, in order to minimize the danger of sinning after baptism. He died on May 22, 337.
Constantine had three surviving sons by Fausta. In his later years, he had named each of them Caesar, along with his nephew, and gave each responsibility for governing a part of the empire. He kept the four Caesars on a tight leash but hoped they would succeed him in a cordial joint rule of the empire. It did not work out. The nephew and his father, Constantine’s half brother, were both killed immediately after Constantine’s death.
The three siblings divided up the empire, but not for long. One brother wanted more territory, so he attacked another’s land, but lost both the battle and his life. A second brother suffered a coup d’état and was murdered. That left the third brother, Constantius II, who ruled for twenty-four years after his father’s death, from 337 to 361. Yet he had to fight a very bloody civil war against the man who had usurped his brother’s power. Nor did Constantius II prosper when he appointed two of his cousins to serve as his Caesars. He had to execute one for disobedience and was about to march on the other for raising a rebellion, but that plan was not to be. Constantius II died of natural causes before he could implement it, and the rebel reigned.
Ten Caesars Page 33