History of the Christian Church — Topic 3

Constantine’s Rise to Power

The future St. Constantine the Great, Equal-to-the-Apostles, and first Christian Emperor, was born on February 27, probably around 285 (though some say as early as 274). Born in Naissus, he was the son of an army officer named Constantius and his wife, the future St. Helena.

In 293 his father was made Caesar in the new governmental system being established by Emperor Diocletian, and was sent to rule Britain and France, under the authority of the co-Emperor (Augustus) Maximian, ruling Italy, Spain, and western North Africa. At the same time, as part of this whole arrangement, Constantius had to separate from Helena and marry a stepdaughter of Maximian, to help strengthen the new political system. And young Constantine was sent to the imperial court of the Eastern Emperor, Diocletian, which he had established in the new Eastern capital, Nicomedia.

During Constantine’s years there he imbibed the growing acceptance of Oriental ideas of absolute sovereignty, at the expense of Augustus Caesar’s idea of the principate. He accompanied Diocletian on a military campaign in Egypt; on his way there he was seen by his future panegyrist, Eusebius, the great Church historian. As a young officer, he took part in a successful campaign on the lower Danube.

He also grew in his awareness of Christianity during this time spent in the East. Meanwhile, his father, most likely a worshiper of Sol Invictus, the Sun- god – “the most popular form of contemporary paganism” (Chadwick, 126) – may have been coming under Christian influence. One of Constantine’s half-sisters was named Anastasia.

Henry Chadwick tells how it may not have been too difficult for Constantine to identify Christ with the Sun-god he may have already been worshiping. For instance, the Prophet Malachi spoke of the Messiah as “the Sun of righteousness arising with healing in His wings” (Mal. 4.2); the Christians met for worship every week on the day of the Sun; and they prayed towards the East. “Moreover, early in the fourth century there begins in the West (where first and by whom is not known) the celebration of 25 December, the birthday of the Sun-god at the winter solstice, as the date for the nativity of Christ”¹ (The Early Church, p. 126).

In 305, when Emperor Diocletian retires, his co-Emperor Maximian is made to retire also. This raises Constantius to be the new emperor in the West, still ruling Britain and France. Eusebius says that he was the kindest and mildest of emperors. He was the only one in my time who spent the whole of his reign in a manner worthy of his exalted position. In all ways he showed himself most considerate and benevolent towards everyone; above all he took no part in the campaign against us [the persecution against the Christians begun by Emperor Diocletian in 303] – indeed, he saved God’s servants from injury and ill- usage, and he neither pulled down church buildings nor caused us any other mischief (EH 8.13; Louth, 273).

Emperor Constantius ruled for only about one year as emperor before he died, in July of 306, in York, England. Eusebius says that “he achieved a conclusion to his life that was happy and supremely blest; for he alone while still emperor died in an atmosphere of goodwill and glory, to be succeeded by a lawful son in every way most prudent and most religious” (ibid.).

Eusebius goes on to say, “His son Constantine [whom Galerius, the new emperor in the East, had allowed to join his father at Constantius’s request] was immediately proclaimed Absolute Ruler and Augustus by the legions – and long before then by the Supreme Ruler, God Himself; and he determined to emulate his father’s reverent attitude to our teaching”.

Concerning the extent to which Constantine attributed his remarkable success to the help of Christ, Britannica states, Throughout his life, Constantine ascribed his success to his conversion to Christianity and the support of the Christian God. The triumphal arch erected in his honor at Rome after the defeat of Maxentius ascribed the victory to the ‘inspiration of the Divinity’ as well as to Constantine’s own genius. A statue set up at the same time showed Constantine himself, holding aloft a cross and the legend, ‘by this saving sign I have delivered your city from the tyrant and restored liberty to the Senate and the people of Rome’ (op. cit., p. 72; see Eusebius, EH 9.9 [Louth, p. 294]).

This saying engraved in this statue can be explained by the fact that Constantine had understood his invasion of Italy and his defeat of Emperor Maxentius as the fulfillment of a divine mission to drive out a man who had been tyrannizing the Roman people in a literal reign of terror and debauchery. According to Eusebius, Maxentius had plunged into every kind of depravity, and there was not one filthy, dissolute act of which he was innocent, given up as he was to adultery and sexual corruption in all its forms. He would take respectable married women away from their husbands, insult and grossly dishonor them, and send them back to their husbands; and he took care not to victimize unknown or obscure persons, but to make the most outstanding senior members of the Roman Senate the chief recipients of his besotted intentions. The whole city cowered before him, common people and magistrates, well known and unknown, worn down by his cruel tyranny: not even when they stayed quiet and made doormats of themselves was there any escape from the tyrant’s bloodthirsty cruelty.

With a trivial excuse he once handed the people over to be massacred by his bodyguard, and thousands of Roman citizens were killed in the heart of the city, not by Scythians or other foreigners, but by their fellow-citizens in full military array. How many senators were massacred because of designs on their property cannot possibly be determined: for one fabricated reason or other, hundreds were put to death.

The culmination of the tyrant’s crimes was his resort to witchcraft: full of magical notions, he sometimes ripped up pregnant women, sometimes scrutinized the entrails of new-born babies, slaughtered lions, and invented unspeakable rites to call up demons and avert the threat of war; for in these practices lay all his hope of emerging victorious (EH 8.14; Louth, p. 274).

But then, according to Eusebius,

The senior in imperial rank and position, Constantine, was the first to feel pity for the victims of tyranny at Rome. Calling in prayer on God in heaven and on His Word, Jesus Christ Himself, the Savior of all, to come to his aid, he advanced at the head of all his forces, intent on recovering for the Romans the liberty of their ancestors (EH 9.9 [Louth, 292]).

The “saving sign” can also refer to the chi-rho symbol (the first two letters of ‘Christos’), which helped lead Constantine to victory. As Britannica reports, Constantine’s adherence to Christianity was closely associated with his rise to power. He fought the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the name of the Christian God, having received instructions in a dream to paint the Christian monogram (the chi-rho) on his troops’ shields. This is the account given by the Christian apologist Lactantius; a somewhat different version, offered by Eusebius [in his Life of Constantine, based partly on the recollections of the Emperor himself], tells of a vision seen by Constantine during the campaign against Maxentius, in which the Christian sign appeared in the sky with the legend, ‘In this sign, conquer’ (op. cit., p. 72).

According to Eusebius, Constantine is received with inexpressible joy by the people of Rome:

Then he rode into Rome with songs of victory, and together with women and tiny children, all the members of the Senate and citizens of the highest distinction in other spheres, and the whole populace of Rome, turned out in force and with shining eyes and all their heart welcomed him as deliverer, savior, and benefactor, singing his praises with insatiate joy (EH 9.9; Louth, 293-294).

In February of 313, Emperor Constantine, the new sole ruler in the West, reaches agreement with Emperor Licinius, the new sole ruler in the East (having recently defeated Maximin, Galerius’s successor) regarding religious toleration in the empire. This is the famous Edict of Milan,² by which Christianity – along with all forms of religious expression – is granted legal protection, and the terrible ten years of persecution begun by Diocletian and Galerius come to an official end. This edict also provided for the restoration of all property confiscated during the years of persecution from the Church as an institution, or from individual Christians (for a summary by Constantine himself of the Edict of Milan, see Eusebius, EH 10.5; Louth, pp. 322-324).

Even though technically there is now full religious freedom in the Roman Empire, it quickly becomes clear that Constantine very much favors Christianity, not only due to his personal faith, but also because he sees the potential of Christianity for unifying the Empire and for enriching it culturally. Besides the restoration of property to the Church and to individual Christians, as stipulated in the Edict of Milan, Constantine supported the Christian Church in many other ways:

he sent generous grants to the Christian communities which had suffered during the persecution (for the text of a letter from Constantine to Bp. Caecilian of Carthage making such grants, see Eusebius, EH 10.5; Louth, pp. 326-327 – “If later you find that you still lack means to carry out my intentions in this matter in respect of them all, you must not hesitate to ask Heraclides our procurator for whatever you find necessary. I have given him orders that if Your Steadfastness should ask him for any sum, he is to arrange for its transfer to you without question”)
he sponsored new copies of the Scriptures to be produced, as many copies had been destroyed during the persecution
he built numerous churches, especially in Rome and in the Holy Land – in conjunction with his mother Helen’s visit there in 326, and her discovery of the True Cross³
he gave the palace of his second wife, Fausta, of the Lateran family,⁴ to the bishops of Rome as an episcopal residence (they maintained their residence there until 1308, when the ‘Avignon Captivity’ began)
a large proportion of provincial tax revenues he allotted to the churches to be used for charity
the chi-rho symbol begins to appear on coins beginning in the year 315 (though some coins for a long time after had the symbolic representation of the sun)
in 316 a law is passed prohibiting branding criminals on the face “because man is made in God’s image”
he made grants to support poor children, thus discouraging the exposure of unwanted babies
he freed celibates and unmarried persons from special taxation (which had been instituted by Augustus Caesar to reverse a downward trend in the population of Italy in his day)
he exempted Christian clergy from military service, and indeed from every form of civic duties (see Eusebius EH 10.5 [Louth, p. 327] for the text of an imperial letter mandating this exemption for the clergy of the Church of Carthage – “This will ensure that by no error or sacrilegious fall from grace will they be drawn away from the worship owed to the Godhead; rather will they be completely free to serve their own law at all times. In thus rendering wholehearted service to the Deity, it is evident that they will be making an immense contribution to the welfare of the community”)
In 321, he ordered Sunday to be a public holiday, honoring the traditional day for Christian worship, “the Lord’s Day” (as seen in Rev. 1:10 and St. Justin Martyr, First Apology.67); this was most definitely not an arbitrary moving of the main day of the Church’s worship from the Sabbath to Sunday, as Seventh Day Adventists and other such Judaizing sects will try to assert

In light of all these ways Emperor Constantine supported Christianity, Michael Grant concludes, in his biography entitled Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times (N. Y.: Scribner’s Sons, 1994),

There is no doubt that Constantine became whole-heartedly converted to Christianity … [perhaps even] a good deal earlier than the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, which only confirmed his decision; after all, he had Christian bishops in his entourage as he marched on Rome (p. 146).

Grant quotes Constantine as saying, near the end of his days, “‘I am absolutely persuaded that I owe my whole life, my every breath, and in a word, my secret thoughts, to the supreme God’”; and as he declared at the Council of Arles (314), “Almighty God, Who watches from the high tower of Heaven, has vouchsafed to me what I have not deserved. Verily past number are the blessings that He, in His heavenly goodness, has bestowed on me, His servant” (p. 145; see also Robin Fox Lane, Pagans and Christians [N. Y.: Knopf, 1987], pp. 16-17, concerning Christian emphases in the military as Constantine went to war – “Christian priests are said to have been assigned to the army units, the first mention of military chaplains in history”).

Hence, the fact that he delayed receiving Baptism until near the very end of his life, in 337, cannot be taken to indicate that Constantine never really fully converted to the Christian Faith. It was common at that time for Christian believers to delay getting baptized; even at the end of the fourth century St. John Chrysostom preached against this practice. Constantine most probably delayed his baptism in recognition of the momentous seriousness of Baptism, and in the realization that as emperor he would be involved in warfare, executions, etc.

Donatism

A further way Emperor Constantine tried to assist the Christian Church was in helping to prevent the rise of schismatic/heretical movements that threatened to disrupt the peace and unity of the Church. Hence, he worked hard to help forestall the rise of Donatism in western North Africa in the years immediately following the Diocletian Persecution.

This virulent rigorist sect, which would permanently wound the Church of western North Africa, arose over the same issue that spawned the rise of Novatianism after the Decian Persecution of 250-251. Just as at the end of that period of general persecution, so after the Diocletian Persecution, many believers who had denied Christ under the threat of torture and death now repented of their apostasy and appealed to the Church for mercy, forgiveness, and eventual restoration to Eucharistic fellowship. Just as the Novatianists had said apostasy was an unforgiveable sin, so also there arose in Carthage and neighboring areas certain Christians who also felt the Church could not offer the possibility of repentance for this sin.

The schism begins when a rigorist group in Carthage refuses to accept Caecilian as the new bishop of that city. Caecilian was consecrated as Bishop of Carthage in 311 upon the death of Bishop Mensurius, but his consecration was rejected by the rigorists on the grounds (steadily denied by the Catholics) that one of his three consecrators, Bp. Felix of Aptunga, had been a traditor during the Diocletian Persecution (traditor = one who turned over the Scriptures to the authorities when Diocletian made it illegal to possess them).

The bishops of nearby Numidia, agreeing with the objectors, consecrate Majorinus as a rival to Caecilian. In Numidia, it was considered apostasy to surrender any books to the authorities, even non-Scriptural works, under the pretext that they were Scriptures, or with the indulgence of friendly local government officials. They felt that to think otherwise would minimize the sacrifice of the confessors and martyrs who had been courageous enough to have refused to capitulate in any way. Certain “Confessors” in prison in Carthage had objected to the moderate approach on this issue taken by Bishop Mensurius – who “gave up no sacred books, [but] was able to satisfy the friendly police with heretical volumes” (Chadwick, p. 123). Apparently as an archdeacon, Caecilian had actually picketed the prison to prevent food being taken to these confessors (ibid., 123). As Bishop, Caecilian continues the moderate policy of his predecessor, offering forgiveness to those traditors who grieved their apostasy and were willing to undergo a long period of repentance.

Bp. Caecilian was also especially opposed by a certain difficult, domineering woman in the Church of Carthage, named Lucilla, who had a long-standing grudge against him. The bishop consecrated in opposition to and defiance of Caecilian, Majorinus, happened to be of the household of this Lucilla. Actually, though, he dies soon after his “consecration,” and is followed by Donatus, a forceful and long-lived leader by whom the movement comes to be named.

Bishop Caecilian is able to stay in control probably only due to the support of Constantine and the Church of Rome, which supports him when he agrees to abandon St. Cyprian’s practice of refusing to accept in any way the sacraments performed by schismatic and heretical groups. He adopts, then, the practice of the Church of Rome, as espoused by Pope Stephen back in the 250s, of receiving by laying on of hands those coming to the Church who had been baptized by schismatic/heretical groups. With this, Emperor Constantine, bestows the monetary grant of restoration to Bp. Caecilian and his Church – and not to Bp. Donatus and his group.

This unjust favoritism, in the eyes of the Donatists, only increases their bitterness against Caecilian. Feeling themselves to comprise the true Church in Carthage, they resolve to take their case to the highest possible authority – to the Emperor himself.

Emperor Constantine is deeply troubled by the news of division in the Church of Carthage, and feels he has a responsibility to do what he can to avert schism in that Church. So when the Donatists appeal to him, requesting that their case be reviewed, he arranges for a commission of bishops from Gaul – who presumably would be completely neutral – to meet in Rome under the leadership of Pope Miltiades.⁵ This commission of Gallic bishops decides against the Donatists. The Church had acted in accordance with all proper procedures, as the Donatists had wished. This should have ended the affair.

But the Donatists refuse to accept the decision, and again appeal to the Emperor. Instead of simply accepting the commission’s decision, Constantine orders a new investigation – thus, in the words of Fr. Schmemann, “inaugurating the tragic misunderstanding between the theocratic empire and the Church which was to last for centuries … This was the first blow to the independence of the Church, and the distinction between it and the state became obscured” (Historical Road, p. 68).

To handle the new investigation, Emperor Constantine calls the Synod of Arles, in Gaul, in 314. Eusebius includes the text of a letter from the Emperor to Bp. Chrestus of Syracuse, explaining that the Donatists have complained that the commission had only included a small number of bishops, and that it had not investigated the matter thoroughly enough. So he is now respectfully summoning Bp. Chrestus to a larger synod to reconsider the matter. Constantine says he will provide the bishop with expenses for the trip, and not only for himself, but also for two priests of his choosing, and three servants (EH 10.5 [Louth, 325-326]). As had the previous commission of Gallic bishops in Rome, so this synod also determines that Bp. Caecilian is the legitimate bishop of Carthage.

After the Synod of Arles, the Donatists in 316 again appeal to the Emperor, and again he yields to the Donatists’ demand for another investigation. When he is finally convinced that they are in the wrong, he adds one final mistake – responding with force, thus fueling the schism by creating martyrs. In 321, Constantine calls off the use of force, realizing that this is counterproductive.

The schism continues through the fourth century, seriously dividing the Christians in that area. Donatism is also fueled by anti-Roman nationalistic feelings on the part of the native Berber population, Numidian rivalry with Carthage, and economic unrest. They do not disagree with the Catholic Church doctrinally, but they follow a rigoristic line very similar to that of the Novatianists. Like them, they believe the Church is essentially a holy society, rather than a sanctuary for sinners, and all those in association with those who had lapsed during the persecution are also stained; hence, converts to their group are rebaptized. They actually went further than the Novatianists on one point, saying that the efficacy of the sacraments depends upon the personal holiness of the minister. Very tellingly, Henry Chadwick adds, “Donatist churches could only be distinguished from Catholic ones by the Donatist custom of whitewashing the walls (for which their motive may have been puritan disapproval of the incipient practice of painting figures in churches)” (The Early Church, p. 220).

In the 340s, the Donatists, whose ecclesiastical organization by then is rivalling that of the Catholics, begin to associate themselves with fierce Berber marauders called circumcelliones. The State again tries to use force against them, again not to much avail. Emperor Julian the Apostate puts an end to this persecution of the Donatists.

At the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, they are greatly weakened through the powerful debating and political maneuvering of St. Augustine, who becomes Bishop of Hippo, near Carthage, in 395. He sees the healing of this schism, which is continuing to tear the heart of the Church in western North Africa, as his primary responsibility. As we mentioned earlier, when the Donatists declare that they are only following their champion, St. Cyprian of Carthage, in refusing to accept in any way the baptism of schismatics and heretics, Augustine forcefully reminds them that St. Cyprian had not broken communion with those who followed a different practice, as the Donatists have done.

In 405 the State, with Augustine’s reluctant support, again intervenes with force against the Donatists, and in 411 at a large synod in Carthage, the final imperial pronouncement is given against them. The schism lingers on, however, until the entire Church of western North Africa is destroyed by the Muslim Arabs in the 7th and 8th centuries. In the words of Fr. Schmemann, “The Donatist schism, even more than the invasion of the Vandals, was the beginning of the end for the great and glorious African Church” (Historical Road, p. 68).

Constantine’s Rise to Power
- Donatism
- The Rise of Arianism

ST. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT, THE STRUGGLES WITH DONATISM AND ARIANISM, AND

THE FIRST ECUMENICAL COUNCIL

The Rise of Arianism

Similarly, Emperor Constantine makes major efforts to try to avert the rise of a powerful heretical movement known as Arianism, which begins with the innovative teaching of a priest named Arius (c. 250 – 336), in Alexandria, Egypt, around the year 318. Arius had attended the school begun in Antioch by the Biblical scholar, St. Lucian (originally from Samosata, of noble parentage, and classically educated; becomes a priest in Antioch; dies in 312 as a martyr under Emperor Maximin). In this school, the typically Antiochian approach to Christology takes shape, in which the historical Jesus of the Gospel accounts is taken as the starting point for Christology. Eusebius of Nicomedia (died c. 342), who would later become the highly influential Bishop of Nicomedia, apparently became quite a close friend of Arius while they were classmates in this school.

Arius had been ordained as a deacon under St. Peter, Bp. of Alexandria (r. 299-311), but had been excommunicated upon joining the rigorist sect begun by Bp. Melitius of Lycopolis, who rejected the possibility of repentance for the lapsed. Under Bp. Achilles (r. 311-312), the successor to Bp. Peter of Alexandria (who was martyred in the Diocletian Persecution), Arius rejoins the Alexandrian Church, is ordained to the priesthood, and is put in charge of one of the principal churches in this very major early Christian center. In 313, in a close contest for the bishopric of Alexandria, Arius loses out to Alexander – which apparently rankles him, and a long-standing resentment of Alexander rises in Arius’s heart. Nevertheless, in the church of Baucalis, he finds great success for his preaching and asceticism – as Chadwick notes, “with an immense following both among the young women and among the dockworkers, for whom he wrote theological sea-shanties” (The Early Church, p. 124).

In around the year 318, Arius starts preaching that Jesus Christ was not the pre-eternal, ever-existent Word of God, but was rather a celestial being created by God the Father long before the world began, who learned how to be like God through His eons-long, intense devotion to and imitation of the Father. Arius’s theological system can be seen as a curious blend of the tendencies in both Alexandria and Antioch concerning Christology:

in Alexandria (Origen, St. Dionysios the Great), the tendency is to over-emphasize the differences among the Three Persons of the Godhead, with “three hypostases” tending to mean “three essences”; the Son is seen as having a different nature, or essence, from that of the Father. For in Origen there is a quite clear subordinationism of the Son – He is a divine being, but not as fully God as the Father; we recall Origen’s statement, “the Word of God, who was in the beginning, and who by being with God, is at all times God, not possessing that of Himself, but by His being with the Father, and not continuing to be God, if we should think of this, except by remaining always in uninterrupted contemplation of the depths of the Father” (Commentary on John.II.2 [ANF, vol. X, p. 323]; my emphasis).
in Antioch (Paul of Samosata; St. Lucian of Antioch), the tendency is to overemphasize the historical Jesus and His natural human development (Luke 2:52 – “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man”); there is also a related tendency to be overly-literalistic with certain Biblical phrases (also seen in Origen)

Arianism seems to blend these two tendencies, projecting Jesus’ gradual “growth in wisdom” back upon the Son, who existed long before the worlds were made; but being of a different essence from God the Father, He was made by Him (Prov. 8:22, LXX: “The Lord made Me [ektise me] the beginning of His ways for His works”) as His “only-begotten Son” (John 1:14 and 3:16) – with “begotten” understood in a humanistic way, as meaning “born,” which implies that “There was (a time) when He was not.” The created Son then learned through the ages how to be like God, and how to be the Creator of the universe. Through this long process of imitating the Father, and deeply contemplating Him, the Son earns the title of “God,” which justifies the Church’s worship of Him as God. So the Son is not God by nature, but by the power of His own will.

Our salvation/deification, then, is accomplished in a way similar to the process of the Son’s own “deification” – by our willingly imitating Christ as our Example, as He had willingly imitated the Father. And for Christ to be a thoroughly genuine and fully appropriate Example for us, according to Arius, He had to be like us in every way – including being created! Here Arius was making an overly-literalistic interpretation of Hebrews 2:17 – “Therefore in all things He had to be made like His brethren” (see Robert Gregg and Dennis Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation [Fortress Press, 1981] for a very persuasive description of this understanding of Arianism).

Arianism often has been understood mainly as a philosophical attempt to explain the mystery of Christ’s deity and humanity. In the words of Fr. Schmemann, Arianism was a rationalization of Christianity. Here living religious experience was no longer fertilizing thought, forcing it to see and understand what it had not previously understood. On the contrary, here faith was dried out by logical analysis and distorted into an abstract construction. Arianism was in tune with the times in its strict monotheism and desire to prune out everything irrational and incomprehensible. It was more accessible to the average mind seeking a ‘rational’ faith than were the Biblical images and expressions of Church tradition. As one historian has noted, it deprived Christianity of its living religious content and distorted it into an abstract theism of cosmology and morality (Historical Road, p. 75).

While certainly there is much rationalistic, humanistic thinking at work in Arianism, I think Gregg and Groh are quite correct in seeing Arianism as also a very sincere attempt, motivated quite probably by very sincere religious feeling, to bring man closer to Christ by making Him more like us (perhaps we see here an early expression of such popular Protestant sentiment of many centuries later, as seen in such hymns as “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”).

In response to Arius’s popular, innovative teaching about the Son of God, Bp. Alexander counsels him to desist. When he refuses, Alexander calls a synod in Alexandria which denounces his teaching and excommunicates him. Arius then appeals far and wide for support for his views, turning especially to his friends Bp. Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine, the great Church historian, and Bp. Eusebius of Nicomedia, his old classmate at the school of St. Lucian in Antioch. See Henry Bettenson, ed., Documents of the Christian Church, second ed. (Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), p. 39, for a letter written by Arius to his “true fellow-disciple of Lucian, Eusebius” of Nicomedia, explaining his views. According to Fr. Schmemann, These friends support Arius, and not only for personal reasons. In these years there arose within the Church an intellectual class eager for rational explanations of the faith, which was beginning to be somewhat embarrassed by the insufficiently philosophical nature of Church doctrine. The Arian heresy seemed to them completely suitable as a ‘modern’ interpretation of it, one which would be acceptable to broad circles of educated people. In this way the local Alexandrian dispute gradually spread throughout the East (Historical Road, pp. 75-76).

Constantine Builds Constantinople

After gaining sole control of the Empire in 324, Emperor Constantine decides to move the capital from Nicomedia to the small town of Byzantium, magnificently and strategically located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, at the Bosporus Straits. Chadwick (p. 127) says this is in response to a dream which he believed to be divinely inspired. It becomes the New Rome, both politically and ecclesiastically, and he adorns it with two beautiful churches – to the Apostles, and to Peace (Irene, still standing). He also erected statues to the Sun-god (looking like himself) and to Cybele, in accord with the official policy of full religious toleration. After a building program lasting six years, the new city is officially dedicated in 330.

In 337, Constantine dies peacefully, after being baptized on his deathbed, most likely by Bp. Eusebius of Nicomedia – although the hymns of the Church say this was done by Bp. Sylvester of Rome (r. 314-335).

Assessment of the reign of Constantine

In the words of Fr. Schmemann, “The conversion of the Emperor Constantine resulted in the greatest change that the Church had ever undergone” (Historical Road, p. 62). With his conversion to the Christian Faith and his victory in Rome – and then over the East as well – not only does the brutal Diocletian Persecution come to an end, but the way is now open for Christianity to actually convert the entire society. The Church will no longer need to fight to survive in spite of the world. Rather, She now has the opportunity to transform the world to its core.

Very interestingly, there are quite different evaluations of Constantine in the East and the West:

“For Eastern Christianity, Constantine still remains the holy initiator of the Christian world, the instrument for the victory of light over darkness that crowned the heroic feats of the martyrs” (Schmemann, p. 62). In the East, Constantine is remembered and venerated as St. Constantine the Great, Equal- to-the-Apostles. He is commemorated, along with his illustrious mother, St. Helen, on May 21. She is especially beloved for her discovery of the True Cross in Jerusalem; she virtually single-handedly established Jerusalem as the most important pilgrimage site for the whole Christian world.

As just two examples of the joy and esteem with which St. Constantine is remembered by the Eastern Church, here are two hymns from the Vespers service for his feastday:

O Constantine, the dear and magnified king, thou receivedst from God the richness of good gifts, whereby thou didst radiate in goodness; for having been illuminated through Baptism with the rays of the Most Holy Spirit, at the hands of Sylvester the Priest, thou didst appear unvanquished among kings, offering the inhabited world to thy Creator as a dower, as well as the God- loving reigning city. Wherefore, since thou hast attained favor, thou dost still beseech Christ God to grant to all those who celebrate thy memorial the forgiveness of sins and the Great Mercy.

Like a brilliant ray, like the evening star, thou wast drawn away from faithlessness to faith in the Godhead, and wast privileged to sanctify a people and a city. And, having beheld the sign of the Cross in heaven, thou didst hear thence that with it thou shouldest conquer thine enemies. Wherefore, thou didst receive the knowledge of the Spirit and wast anointed a priest and king, establishing with mercy the Church of God, O father of Orthodox kings, whose font doth well forth with healing. Intercede thou, O Constantine, the equal of the Apostles for the sake of our souls.

“The West, on the other hand, often regards the era of Constantine as the beginning of an enslavement of the Church by the State, or even as the first falling away on the part of the Church from the height of primitive Christian freedom” (Schmemann, pp. 62-63). The typical Protestant view of history sees the era of Constantine as the beginning of the corruption of the purity of the primitive Church through the opening of the floodgates to masses of only nominal Christians. And the Church of Rome also has very mixed feelings, since Constantine permanently moved the capital of the Empire from Rome to the East – a great blow to the prestige of the ancient, “Eternal City” – and his successors were unable to prevent the fall of Rome to the barbarians in the fifth century.

There has also been hesitation expressed about Constantine’s personal sanctity, especially in light of the execution of his son Crispus and his second wife, Fausta, most probably at his orders, in 326.⁶ Presbytera Freda S. Upson, in her excellent historical novel called Constantine (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1986), vividly describes Fausta’s slanderous and treacherous insinuations that Crispus, Constantine’s son by his first wife, had tried to seduce her; she had fabricated this story in an effort to try to promote the interests of the sons she had had by Constantine. Tragically, Constantine, implicitly trusting his wife, believed the accusation and acted upon it drastically before realizing that Fausta had lied. Once the truth became known, Constantine had her executed also. She apparently never had loved Constantine; we recall that she was Maxentius’s sister, and that theirs had been a politically arranged marriage.

Hence, Constantine is not recognized as a saint in the Western Church. The differing evaluations of this monumental figure are an early indication of some of the forces already working to widen the fracture line that has already appeared between the Greek East and the Latin West.

Editorial Footnotes

Flashcards

Download Anki flashcards for this topic’s quiz — import via Anki’s File > Import (note type “Basic”, fields separated by Tab, “Allow HTML in fields” checked).

The once-standard view that Christmas (25 December) was fixed to coincide with the pagan festival of the dies natalis Solis Invicti is now contested. Many historians favor the “calculation hypothesis,” which derives 25 December independently from an early reckoning of Christ’s conception/death at the spring equinox (25 March); some scholars also question whether a public festival of Sol on 25 December predates Christmas at all, since the firm evidence (the Chronograph of 354) is roughly contemporary with the earliest Christmas datings. ↩
Modern scholarship regards “Edict of Milan” as something of a misnomer. What happened at Milan in February 313 was a meeting and agreement between Constantine and Licinius; the surviving document (preserved by Lactantius and, in Greek, by Eusebius) is a rescript/letter issued by Licinius at Nicomedia in June 313. Moreover, toleration had already been legally granted empire-wide by Galerius’s Edict of Serdica (the “Edict of Toleration”) in April 311, so 313 confirmed and extended, rather than first established, legal protection for Christians. ↩
The tradition that Helena discovered the True Cross is not attested by any contemporary source. Eusebius, writing within about a decade of her c. 326–328 pilgrimage (Life of Constantine), describes her founding churches at Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives but says nothing of a discovery of the Cross. The earliest surviving account linking Helena to the finding of the Cross dates only to the 390s (e.g., Ambrose, De obitu Theodosii, 395), and mainstream historians therefore treat the Helena–Cross connection as a later legendary development. ↩
This conflates two different things. Fausta was the daughter of the emperor Maximian (and sister of Maxentius), not a member of a “Lateran family.” The palace (the Lateran) took its name from the earlier Roman gens of the Laterani (the Plautii Laterani), whose confiscated estate on the Caelian Hill later became imperial property; the portion associated with Fausta was known as the domus Faustae. Constantine granted this complex to the bishop of Rome. ↩
The 313 gathering in Rome was not simply a “commission of bishops from Gaul.” Constantine referred three Gallic bishops to the case, but Pope (Bishop) Miltiades expanded it into a synod of roughly nineteen bishops, the large majority of them Italian. Calling it a body of Gallic bishops “who presumably would be completely neutral” overstates both its composition and its neutrality. ↩
The real reasons for the deaths of Crispus and Fausta in 326 are unknown; ancient sources are fragmentary and mostly later or hostile (e.g., Zosimus), and no contemporary account explains them. The detailed narrative given here — Fausta falsely accusing Crispus to advance her own sons, then being executed once Constantine discovered the lie — derives from the cited historical novel and later elaborations, not from the primary evidence, which does not establish this sequence of events. ↩

Encourse Wiki

Explorer

History of the Christian Church — Topic 3

History of the Christian Church — Topic 3

Constantine’s Rise to Power

Donatism

ST. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT, THE STRUGGLES WITH DONATISM AND ARIANISM, AND

The Rise of Arianism

Editorial Footnotes

Flashcards

Graph View

Table of Contents

Backlinks

Encourse Wiki

Explorer

History of the Christian Church — Topic 3

History of the Christian Church — Topic 3

Constantine’s Rise to Power

Donatism

ST. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT, THE STRUGGLES WITH DONATISM AND ARIANISM, AND

The Rise of Arianism

Editorial Footnotes

Flashcards

Related Concepts

Footnotes

Graph View

Table of Contents

Backlinks