A number of Christians in the initial centuries of Christian existence wrestled with whether Christianity had any relationship to Athens (pagan philosophy) or Rome (worldly power). What many of them could not even imagine is what would it mean for Christianity if the emperor himself became a Christian. So Constantine’s embrace of Christianity caught many Christian leaders – who were far more used to thinking of Rome as that beast which persecuted them – by surprise. No one apparently had made provision for this, they obviously did not think it inevitable since they were proclaiming a Kingdom not of this world, and Rome was the worldly power most oppressing them.
There was no precedence for the Christians to shape what it means for the emperor to tolerate let alone embrace Christianity. What unfolded was the unplanned for and rocky marriage between the Church and the emperor/empire. Neither side knew exactly how to work it out, and yet the event was upon them. Some aspects of this marriage worked, and some experiments failed, and what emerged in Constantine’s lifetime was a marriage in progress, not a finished product.
We see evidence of Constantine fully embracing some of the teachings and concerns of Christianity.
Constantine “saw it as his duty as emperor, in Lactantius’s words, ‘to protect and defend orphans and widows who are destitute and stand in need of assistance.’” (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p 217)
There was a new attitude even toward things at the heart of what it meant to be Roman – military might and triumphing in the mortal combat of gladiatorial games or in war. In the early Second Century St. Justin the Martyr (who professed that truth was truth, even pagan truth is truth) wrote that as a result of accepting the Gospel, “we who formerly used to murder one another do not only now refrain from making war upon our enemies, but also, that we may not lie nor deceive our examiners, willing die confessing Christ” (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p 256). In Constantine’s day we find similar sentiments expressed in the poets of the empire. Prudentius (d. 413AD) wrote a poem:
Liberty & Peace
“Whoever would worship God
Properly with the whole burnt offerings, let him above all offer peace.
No sacrifice is sweeter to Christ; this gift alone please him with a pure Aroma when he turns his face toward the holy altar.” (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p 251)
No longer was animal sacrifice, let alone human sacrifice in the gladiatorial games valued more than peace. Peace became the official offering and sacrifice to God. (Which many believe is reflected in the now awkward and uncertain phrase in the Orthodox Liturgy: “A mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise.”)
Constantine’s original tolerance of Christianity came in the form of a general tolerance for all religion in the empire. But as Constantine became more committed to the values and teachings of Christianity, he also became confronted by the diversity and divisions (schismatics and heretics) within Christianity. Prior to Constantine, these divisions were dealt with by excommunications, after Constantine the competing factions asked the empire to intervene in their disputes. This too was an unexpected and unplanned for affect on how Christians dealt with each other. Constantine believed it his duty to ensure peace and tranquility in the empire and so naturally assumed he had this god-given role in the church as well. He tried to use church methods to solve these problems – appealed to the bishops to rule on the disputes, and called forchurch councils to permanently settle the problems. Constantine also had no precedent to learn from about how to be the Emperor and also be a member of the Church. So his dealings with church problems show some inconsistencies, fits and starts and changing direction, failure to resolve conflicts, and mistakes. The record doesn’t show him taking over the church, but being actively engaged in the religion whose God he believed had brought him to power. He asked for church leaders to solve problems, and then offered to solve problems with the authority only he as emperor had. It is also obvious in his thinking, that Christian belief had influenced him and he did desire to continue to receive the favor of the God who had brought him to power.
“Once the empire was a creedal empire, heresy could not be seen as a tolerable difference of opinion; it was subversive, an attack on the vitals of the imperial body, and had to be expelled. Inevitably, then, the empire founded on a monotheistic creed fractured and eventually yielded to a commonwealth of Christian peoples, the Byzantine ‘empire.’
It was not long after Constantine, as Alasdair MacIntyre points out, that people of goodwill decided that maintaining justice, peace and civilized life did not require the maintenance of the Roman empire. Some left for monasteries, while others continued in the empire but not of it. Whatever Constantinian moment there had been was over, ironically assisted by Constantine himself, who not only failed to prevent the empire’s inevitable collapse but probably helped to hasten it.” (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p 293)
Leitharts’ conclusion is that the very merging of the state with the church in the Roman Empire did bring about great changes in ecclesiology and authority. Simultaneously however, the issues that were of greatest concern to the church became the problems of the state, and this in Leithart’s opinion weakened the empire’s might and power, and eventually fractured the empire itself. Constantine’s effort to embrace the church directly contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. This in Leithart’s final evaluation is the real legacy of Constantinianism.
The Greek Christians tried to live up to the ideals of the Christian empire that Constantine envisioned and embraced, but found Christianity fragmented by those who rejected centralized imperial power running the Church: monastics, Monophysites, Nestorians, Latins and a host of others (all the non-Greeks of the empire). Constantinianism thus failed to take over the church. Eventually the Roman then Byzantine empire disappeared into the dustbin of history, while the Church continued to carry out its mission to go into all the world, even when and where Constantinianism did not and could not exist.
Leithart and Stephenson do evaluate the reasons for Constantine’s rise to power slightly differently and also the degree to which Constantine embraced the Christian faith in shaping his policies and life. Leithart sees Constantine becoming more consciously Christian and believes if we look at him from the eyes of Christians in the 4th Century, his embrace of Christianity is obvious and extensive. Stephenson tends to see Constantine as incorporating Christian ideals into his already existing ideas of imperial power – crediting the God of the Christians with his rise to power, but interpreting these events from the point of view that many previous pagan emperors would have done.
These historians evaluation of Constantine’s legacy is most diverse and even irreconcilable in the comments that are made about Constantinople, the new capital city of the Roman Empire which Constantine creates. Here we see how history is not simply facts but largely interpretation of what is known, surmised, and believed to be true.
Stephenson does not see Constantine as creating a Christian city and thus denies that Christianity was at the heart of Constantine’s rise to power (he sees this as being more military than anything else) nor part of the legacy Constantine wanted to create.
“The prevalence of antique statuary is a strong clue that Constantine did not conceive of his new city, as has so often been said, as a new Christian capital for the Roman empire. Temples were constructed for pagan citizens … The first known chapel in the palace complex, dedicated to St. Stephen, was erected no earlier than AD 421 … a document called the Notitia, written in AD 425, which mentions fourteen churches. If the population at the time were in the region of 350,000 each would have needed to house a congregation of 25,000… Of the fourteen churches that are known to have stood in 425, only three or four can be attributed with any conviction to Constantine. These do not include the first version of the cathedral church of Hagia Sophia, dedicated only in 360.” (Stephenson, CONSTANTINE: ROMAN EMPEROR, CHRISTIAN VICTOR, pp 201-202 )
Leithart reluctantly admits that Constantinople does not represent a complete break with Rome’s pagan past. However, in direct contradiction to Stephenson, Leithhart sees the signs of the emerging Christianization of the Roman Empire.
“From what we can tell at this distance, Constantinople’s break with the pagan past was not so self-evident. … Notable churches dotted the city including the first form of the Church of Holy Wisdom and the Church of the Apostles, where for a time the emperor was buried. Christian imagery was evident throughout. Yet he also treated the city as a project continuous with the Roman past. … he erected a statue to Tyche, the goddess of good fortune, and at the top of the porphyry column that still stands in the center of the old square of Constantinople, he placed a golden statue of Apollo looking toward the rising sun, whose face was remade into the face of Constantine with an inscription that ‘intended to signify that instead of being a sungod Constantine gave his allegiance to the God who made the sun.” (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p 119)
However, Leithart accepts the evaluation of the ancient Christian historian Eusebius that in fact Constantine intended for his new capital city to be Christian. Whereas many modern historians discount Eusebius’ history, Leithart is willing to give him credence as a much closer observer of events than we are.
“Inspired by a dream, Constantine founded the city shortly after his victory over Licinius and dedicated it on May 11, 330. Eusebius found no hint of ambiguity. In celebration of his victory over the ‘tyrant’ Licinius, Constantine established the city as an explicitly and thoroughly Christian civic space, having first cleansed it of idols. Thereafter ‘he embellished it with numerous sacred edifices, both memorials of martyrs on the largest scale, and other buildings of the most splendid kind, not only within the city itself, but in its vicinity.’ By honoring the martyrs, the emperor was simultaneously consecrating the city ‘to the martyrs’ God.’ The emperor insisted that the city be free of idolatry, ‘that henceforth no statues might be worshipped there in the temples of those falsely reputed to be gods, nor any altars defiled by the pollution of blood.’ Above all, he prohibited ‘sacrifices consumed by fire,’ as well as ‘demon festivals’ and all ‘other ceremonies usually observed by the superstitious.’” (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p 119)
As a final comparision, I offer the evaluation of Constantinople as Constantine’s Christian legacy by modern historian Judith Herrin who wrote:
“Constantine brought sculptures from all parts of the empire to embellish his new capital, including the Serpent Column … an Egyptian Obelisk … Statues of pagan gods (Zeus, Heracles)… on imperial coins, Constantine adapted this type using the Tyche (Good Luck, Fortuna) of Constantinople .. Gradually Christian symbols replaced the ancient ones: the Cross is used for the first time in the sixth century and a portrait of Christ in the late seventh. The nature and degree of Constantine’s commitment to Christianity is disputed: his biographer Eusebius (Bishop of Caesarea, 313-c. 340) emphasizes it above all else, while secular historians record his devotion to the unconquerable sun, Sol Invictus … The sacrificial element of pagan cult was gradually restricted; the killing of animals was to be replaced by the bloodless sacrifice offered to the Christian God. … So whether he was converted by the vision of 312, or only when he knew that he was dying in 337, Constantine spent most of his adult life as a patron of Christianity, supporting the previously persecuted communities; he endowed their grand new churches with liturgical objects … It is not clear how many new religious buildings within Constantinople were built by Constantine. He probably planned the church of the Holy Apostles, to which the imperial mausoleum was attached … In a decisive shift from the Roman tradition of imperial cremation, however, Constantine was buried according to Christian rites in the mausoleum…” (Judith Herrin, BYZANTIUM: THE SURPRISING LIFE OF A MEDIEVAL EMPIRE, pp 8-10)
It is amazing that these three modern historians do not agree on a basic fact: how many churches or Christian edifices were erected by Constantine or in his life time in his new capital. Obviously history is not simply fact, which apparently can’t always be established, but history relies a lot on interpretation. This is important to remember when we read ancient historians and modern ones. When reading history, ancient or modern, we learn as much about the historians as about the history they present. Many modern historians distrust Eusebius as a historian, but we see in the modern historians a similar problem: their beliefs form both the basis of the facts they report and the way in which they interpret those facts.
Two ways in which Constantine demonstrated the influence of Christianity on his thinking and piety are associated with animal sacrifice and the gladiatorial games of Rome. Constantine first refused to participate in animal sacrifice and then began forbidding it in areas of the empire which were under his direct control – in the military and in civic ceremony. As both historians Leithart and Stephenson note, animal sacrifice was a normative part of Roman civil society, and in some ways marked the very nature of religion in Rome. Constantine’s personal choice to refuse to participate in such sacrifice and then his forbidding it in civic and military ceremonies in which he took part do reflect the growing influence of Christianity on his religious understanding. Christians did believe that Christ’s sacrifice once and for all replaced the need for animal sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem, and now Constantine recognized that same truth for the empire: animal sacrifice was not needed to please the great God.
Constantine also came to see the gladiatorial games as dehumanizing and not a good part of the Roman Empire. This thinking is a radical change for the gladiatorial games were recognized as almost synonymous with Roman self understanding and self glorification. For example in an early time, Pliny the Younger praised Emperor Trajan for his gladiatorial games as
“a spectacle that inspired the audience to noble wounds and to despise death, since even in the bodies of slaves and criminals the love of praise and desire for victory could be seen.” (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, p 194)
40 Martrys of Sebaste
What happened in the Empire after Constantine’s conversion is that the games were given an entirely new understanding through Christian eyes. The Christians, who were sometimes the murdered victims in events associated with the games, turned their deaths into witness (martyria) to the Kingdom of Jesus and His power over death. The glories of Rome, namely the gladitorial games, were defeated by the blood of the martyrs who turned their deaths into a triumph over Roman power. The pagan Gladiators despised death to show their bravery and love of praise, but Christianity triumphed over this worldly understanding saying the martyr’s death too despised death because Christ had triumphed over death and now they too shared in this triumph and eternal life. The Christians embraced martyrdom that came to them in the arena and in embracing it as a means to triumph over death and even over the ultimate power of Rome, converted the entire understanding of the gladiatorial games. Dying for glory in this world became despised, just as death had been despised, because the power of this world had been conquered by Christ, and the power of this world – namely the Roman empire and its emperor – had also been conquered by Christ’s death and resurrection at the hands of Rome. As the martyrs imitated Christ in accepting death and proclaiming the resurrection, so Rome’s power was exposed as having no eternal value. Rome under Christian Constantine now gave its claim to glory to Christ Himself, the unconquerable God. Rome had not conquered Christ through crucifying Him, rather the Crucified one had conquered the Roman empire not by slaying anyone but by giving life to all.
Martyr Tarachus (304AD)
“Martyrs endured flame and sword because in that anguish they shared in the sufferings of Christ. But they also knew that the sufferings of Christ were not perpetual. Jesus suffered, died, was buried and then rose again, vindicated by his Father over against all the condemnations of the world and the devil. Martyrs went to their deaths expecting vindication, and expecting that vindication not only in heaven and at the last day but on earth and in time. That is what Lactantius’s treatise on the death of persecutors is all about. ‘Behold,’ he writes to one Donatus, ‘all the adversaries are destroyed, and tranquility having been re-established throughout the Roman empire, the late oppressed Church arises again, and the temple of God, overthrown by the hands of the wicked, is built with more glory than before.’ Just like Jesus.” (Leithart, DEFENDING CONSTANTINE, pp 308-309)
Constantine’s original tolerance of Christianity came in the form of a general tolerance for all religion in the empire. But as Constantine became more committed to the values and teachings of Christianity, he also became confronted by the diversity and divisions (schismatics and heretics) within Christianity. Prior to Constantine, these divisions were dealt with by excommunications, after Constantine the competing factions asked the empire to intervene in their disputes. This too was an unexpected and unplanned for affect on how Christians dealt with each other. Constantine believed it his duty to ensure peace and tranquility in the empire and so naturally assumed he had this god-given role in the church as well. He tried to use church methods to solve these problems – appealed to the bishops to rule on the disputes, and called forchurch councils to permanently settle the problems. Constantine also had no precedent to learn from about how to be the Emperor and also be a member of the Church. So his dealings with church problems show some inconsistencies, fits and starts and changing direction, failure to resolve conflicts, and mistakes. The record doesn’t show him taking over the church, but being actively engaged in the religion whose God he believed had brought him to power. He asked for church leaders to solve problems, and then offered to solve problems with the authority only he as emperor had. It is also obvious in his thinking, that Christian belief had influenced him and he did desire to continue to receive the favor of the God who had brought him to power.
Leitharts’ conclusion is that the very merging of the state with the church in the Roman Empire did bring about great changes in ecclesiology and authority. Simultaneously however, the issues that were of greatest concern to the church became the problems of the state, and this in Leithart’s opinion weakened the empire’s might and power, and eventually fractured the empire itself. Constantine’s effort to embrace the church directly contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. This in Leithart’s final evaluation is the real legacy of Constantinianism.
Leithart and Stephenson do evaluate the reasons for Constantine’s rise to power slightly differently and also the degree to which Constantine embraced the Christian faith in shaping his policies and life. Leithart sees Constantine becoming more consciously Christian and believes if we look at him from the eyes of Christians in the 4th Century, his embrace of Christianity is obvious and extensive. Stephenson tends to see Constantine as incorporating Christian ideals into his already existing ideas of imperial power – crediting the God of the Christians with his rise to power, but interpreting these events from the point of view that many previous pagan emperors would have done.
Two ways in which Constantine demonstrated the influence of Christianity on his thinking and piety are associated with animal sacrifice and the gladiatorial games of Rome. Constantine first refused to participate in animal sacrifice and then began forbidding it in areas of the empire which were under his direct control – in the military and in civic ceremony. As both historians Leithart and Stephenson note, animal sacrifice was a normative part of Roman civil society, and in some ways marked the very nature of religion in Rome. Constantine’s personal choice to refuse to participate in such sacrifice and then his forbidding it in civic and military ceremonies in which he took part do reflect the growing influence of Christianity on his religious understanding. Christians did believe that Christ’s sacrifice once and for all replaced the need for animal sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem, and now Constantine recognized that same truth for the empire: animal sacrifice was not needed to please the great God.
Fraternized 