Among the rulers of the Roman world between A. D. 305 and A. D. 312, the years which immediately followed the abdication of Diocletian, one figure occupies a peculiar place. Maximian, Galerius, Maximin Daia, Severus, Maxentius, were all stained more or less with crimes, with offenses of the gravest complexion against morality, with greed, selfishness, heartless ambition, remorseless cruelty; nor were they in any way specially distinguished as wise or capable Sovereigns. Only the son of Constantius Chlorus, Constantine—in after days generally known as "the Great"—has been characterized alike by Pagan as by Christian writers as a wise and good ruler of men; not only a brave and skilful general, but also a capable and far-seeing prince in times of quietness and peace.
Constantine was scarcely twenty years of age when in 392 his father, Constantius Chlorus, was promoted to the high dignity of Caesar, and was invested with the government of Greater Gaul, including distant Britain. This great promotion of Constantine's father was, however, coupled with the understanding that the new Caesar should put away or divorce Helena, the mother of his son, and espouse the daughter of the Augustus Maximian. We presently hear of the apparently disinherited Constantine as attached to the service of Diocletian, in whose armies he quickly rose to the conspicuous station of a tribune. When Diocletian resigned the purple, it was the general expectation that the brilliant young soldier, who was then a little more than thirty years of age, would be appointed Caesar; but, as we have seen, Galerius, who was all-powerful in the State, had other views, and Constantino was left for the present in a private station. Shortly after, the dying Constantius Chlorus recalled to his side the long-absent son of Helena, and procured his nomination by the army of Britain and Gaul to sovereign rank, leaving in his charge his children by his second marriage. In spite of the ill-will of Galerius, Constantino succeeded to the great dominions ruled over by his father, to which Spain had probably been recently added. He thus became Sovereign Ruler over the Western provinces of the Empire in A. D. 306. For the next five or six years his government was characterized by moderation and firmness. The frontiers were protected from the raids of the barbarians, and his dominion generally enjoyed quiet and prosperity. Although all through this period of his life he carefully carried out the Pagan observances required by the Constitution of the Empire, officiating at the dedication of Pagan temples and publicly taking part in the sacrificial ceremonies, yet his Christian subjects generally enjoyed quietness, if not something of official recognition. His great reputation as a wise Sovereign and a skilful military commander was well known throughout the Roman world, and gave him vast and widespread influence.
We have already alluded to the circumstances which led to the war between Constantino and his brother-in-law, Maxentius, the Sovereign of Italy and Africa. During this period, the early autumn of A. D. 312, took place the event which had so far-reaching an influence on the story of the world—his conversion to Christianity.
The Pagan writer Zosimus has a strange story referring the date to A. D. 326, and attributing it to remorse for the death of his wife and of his eldest son, Crispus. The Pagan pontiffs, on being asked what expiation he would make for that judicial murder, replied that they were aware of none which would atone for such evil deeds. Hence, on being informed that there was no sin, however grave, which could not be washed away by the Christian sacraments, the Emperor joyfully embraced a religion in which he could, on easy terms, obtain peace. But this is all imaginary; for we have abundant proof that the Imperial conversion belongs to a much earlier period than A. D. 326. The famous Edict of Milan was promulgated in A. D. 313, and a number of historical incidents between A. D. 312-13 and A. D. 325 indisputably show that all through this period the Emperor was an earnest Christian.
Lactantius mentions as taking place in A. D. 311 the dream of Constantino, directing him to mark the shields of his legionnaires with the sacred sign of the cross before the decisive battle of the Milvian Bridge, in which Maxentius was defeated and slain. Eusebius, writing before the death of Crispus, relates how Constantino invoked the aid of the God of Heaven and of His Son Jesus Christ, and then by the Divine assistance defeated the tyrant (Maxentius); and the same writer later, in his "Life of Constantino," gives us careful details of the event in question; details which he says he heard from the Emperor himself. The story is a remarkable one. The scene of the wonderful appearance and of the dream was somewhere on the march from Gaul to Italy, apparently before! Italy was entered, and probably in the wild and inhospitable defiles of the Mont Cenis pass. Constantino was on horseback, and was meditating upon the difficulties and dangers of his daring adventure. He thought of the small number of his legionnaires, and recalled with a superstitious fear what he had heard of his adversary Maxentius' great devotion to the Pagan gods. It must be remembered that as yet Constantine was a professed Pagan. Alone could he hope to be victorious if some divinity was on his side. Then it came into his mind how many of the rulers of Rome, who had trusted in the gods of Rome, had perished, and their children, and their very memory too, had passed away. Only one could he remember who had prospered—his own father Constantius, who was a Monotheist. Who was this One God who had helped Constantius Chlorus? So he prayed earnestly in his sore need that the God who had helped his father would manifest Himself to him and give him protection. Then as he prayed came the wonderful sign—the luminous cross in heaven with the writing, "Conquer with this." "The heavenly vision was seen, so runs the story given in Eusebius, not only by Constantine but by his soldiers. That night the Emperor had a remarkable dream,t in which Christ appeared to him and bade him make at once an ensign under which his legions would be victorious in the ensuing campaign. Around the story of the conversion of Constantine, as related by Eusebius and generally followed by ecclesiastical writers, has arisen a war of diverse opinions; one school of writers deriding it as belonging to the improbable if not to the impossible; the other school accepting it as a piece of true history. The consequences of the conversion of the great Western Emperor have been so momentous and far-reaching that it will be worth our while quietly and dispassionately to see how the matter stands.
It is perfectly clear that before the campaign which resulted in the defeat and death of Maxentius, and the consequent annexation of his broad dominions of Italy and North Africa to the realm of the Gallic Emperor, Constantine was to all intents and purposes a Pagan ruler; one who, it is true, viewed the Christian sect benevolently, possibly even favorably, but emphatically not a Christian and apparently with no idea of becoming one.
It is equally clear that during the campaign in question he changed his mind on the question of Christianity, and fought the several battles with Maxentius and his lieutenants avowedly under the protection of Him on whom the Christian called, with a sacred banner floating above his legions inscribed with the holy symbol and awful monogram of Jesus Christ. Equally certain is it that after the crowning victory of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine made a public profession of his Christianity, asserting it not only in a formal State edict but showing it by his personal interest in the inner life and government of the Christian Church. He was evidently intensely in earnest.
Something, then, must have happened early in the campaign against Maxentius, which brought about so great a change in the opinions and subsequent conduct of the Emperor Constantine. This "something" Lactantius tells us was a dream in which he received a command to stamp upon the shields of his legionnaires the sign of the cross. Eusebius, in his "History," is still vaguer, simply stating that he prayed to God and to His Son and Word, Jesus Christ, and was divinely assisted in the battle. Only in Eusebius' later work, in his "Life of Constantine," appears the story of the sign of the cross in Heaven, told at some length as it had been related to him by the Emperor himself: the sign being the response vouchsafed as an answer to earnest, anxious prayer, and followed by the dream which we have related above.
The bona fide of Eusebius here is evident. He makes no effort to represent his hero in a specially favorable light. He describes him as anxious about the success of his perilous adventure, and casting about for an Immortal who should help his arms and crown his expedition with victory. In this perplexity he bethinks him of the unknown God who had blessed his father, and to him he turns with earnest prayer—answered, as he thought, by a miraculous sign, followed by a dream. Victory followed, and, thus convinced, he became a devout follower of the Immortal Being who had blessed him in his hour of danger and of urgent need. The very earthiness of the whole transaction is a witness of its veracity. Had Eusebius invented it, he had surely made it more beautiful and his hero less earthly and more spiritual.
The wonderful success of Constantino, with his comparatively small force, when the numerous legions of which Maxentius was able to dispose are taken into account, appeared to Pagans as well as to Christians as miraculous. The legions of Maxentius seemed unaccountably to melt before his rapid advance. Everything at first seemed to promise a successful resistance. The armies of Italy far exceeded in numbers the invading force; they were admirably equipped. There were several strong fortresses in the invaders' track, and, above all, the Imperial City, with its great garrison and its immemorial prestige, was Maxentius' stronghold. Pagan, as well as Christian, saw in the unexpected and rapid victory of Constantino the hand of some supernatural power. This opinion seems to have gathered strength as time went on. One of the panegyrists even wrote as follows: "All Gaul speaks of the heavenly armies which were seen in the skies in the last decisive battle, with their glittering armor and flashing weapons, led by the divine Constantius Chlorus helping his son in the supreme conflict."
It may well be conceived that Constantino himself believed that he was the chosen minister of God, and that out of gratitude for the divine help he devoted himself to the service of the Deity who had taken him under His almighty protection.
The Emperor Constantino, who put an end to the long-drawn out war between Christianity and Paganism, who gave the blessings of peace to the Church and laid the foundation stories of its supremacy in the world of Rome, was no ordinary man. Trained in the hard school of adversity and disappointment, he became, during his period of exile from his father's Court, a great and daring soldier and a skilled tactician, eventually taking rank with the most famous military Emperors as a consummate general; as a ruler, too, in times of peace, he occupies a distinguished position His government of Gaul, after his accession to power, on his father Constantius Chlorus' death, was wise and temperate, and his praise was in all the countries of the Roman world. None of the vices which stained the lives of so many of the mighty Emperors have ever been attributed to him. Some critics have endeavored to paint him as a shrewd opportunist and to represent his Christianity, which clearly dates from the epoch upon which we have been dwelling, A. D. 312, as simply a matter of selfish State policy. Others sketch him as a saint of God. Both these estimates are probably erroneous. His devotion to Christianity was no mere selfish adoption of a cult that would secure his interests and further his ambitious schemes. According to his lights he was from the first a devout and earnest believer. His whole subsequent career, his acts, his sayings, his whole policy, plainly show us this. But, on the other hand, the first great Christian Emperor was no ideal saint of God; no holy and humble man of heart. He was, in the first instance, as we have seen, drawn to Christianity not by any of the deeper feelings of the heart towards the great Sacrifice, not by the exceeding beauty of its moral teaching, not by any profound sympathy with a sect which had endured persecution and unheard-of trials for the faith with a splendid constancy and an almost superhuman endurance; a sympathy which in that age moved so many to enthusiasm for Christians and Christianity; but simply by a persuasion that the God adored by Christians was more powerful, more able and ready to help his worshippers than any of the old deities worshipped in the temples of the Empire. It was a sorry motive for the great conversion which had such momentous consequences; there is little trace in it of any of those nobler and more generous aspirations which run like a golden thread through the life story of great Christian heroes. But, such as it was, it was intensely real, absolutely genuine, and from the hour of his fervent prayer in the wild, savage defiles of the Alps, when he received what at least he took for an answer to his prayer, Constantine was a fervent believer in the doctrines of the religion of Jesus, a devoted and all-powerful friend to the long persecuted and harassed sect.
The end was come at last. There is not much more to be told in our account of the laying of the foundation stories of our faith. The long war between Christian and Pagan which for more than two centuries and a half had been waged so fiercely by the Pagan, so quietly but with such surpassing bravery by the Christian, was virtually over when Constantine, the Christian Emperor, at the head of his conquering legions, rode through the streets of Rome, past the immemorial Forum, still glittering with its hushed and almost deserted temples, to the proud palace of the mighty Caesars which looked over that matchless group of silent historic shrines. Christian in good earnest was the great Gallic Emperor, though the charm which had drawn him to the strange cross emblem floating over his war-worn legionnaires, and graven on their glistening armor, was one which the divine founder of Christianity no doubt watched with a tender, regretful sorrow. Yet, earth-stained though the motives had been which had made him a follower of Jesus, he was a follower in intense earnest; and the late splendid victory of the Milvian Bridge, which had given him the mighty dominions of Italy and Africa, ruled over by the dead Maxentius, had set as it were the seal on his fervid belief; ''In hoc signo" (Crucis) had he not triumphed!
Very gently did the conqueror use his victory; little blood was shed, the only victims seem to have been the son of the fallen Maxentius, and just a few of the chief instruments of the tyranny and evil rule of the late Emperor. Rome rejoiced at the wise and beneficent measures of Constantino, which at once relieved the victims and sufferers of the late shameful tyranny; not only were the poor and oppressed Christians the object of the largesse of the grateful Emperor, but the many Pagans who had been banished, impoverished, and imprisoned under the late wicked and profligate Government had cause to bless the day which witnessed his triumph. There was no ostentatious favor shown to the long-despised and often sorely-harassed Church of Christ, but the exclusive patricians and haughty senators were amazed at meeting at the table of the mighty Emperor poorly dressed, unknown men who were freely admitted to the august circle of the Palatine—ministers of the Gospel distinguished, probably, for their piety and learning.
For the first time in the history of the Empire a subsidy was granted from the Imperial treasury towards the building of churches, and the historic palace of the Laterani, which had been the Roman residence of the Empress Fausta, was given by Constantino to Miltiades, the bishop of the Christian community in Rome, as his residence; the permanent home for the administration of the see, and the site of the first Christian cathedral of the ancient metropolis of the Roman world. Among the statues and temples which an admiring and grateful people proceeded to erect to the great Emperor, who, although an earnest Christian, still maintained with the title of Pontifex Maximus the old Imperial prerogative which constituted him the supreme head of the Pagan religion professed by the great majority of the inhabitants of the Empire, was that superb arch of triumph under which passed the old Via Triumphalis leading to the Via Appia. On that magnificent arch the inscription can still be read, though somewhat mutilated; bearing the memorable words which tell of the universal belief of the Pagan world in the supernatural assistance vouchsafed to Constantino in the late war with Maxentius. The inscription runs thus: "The Senate and the Roman people have dedicated this Arch of Triumph to the Emperor Caesar Flavins Constantino because, thanks to the divine inspiration (Instinctu divinitatis) and to the greatness of his genius, he with his army has, in a just war, avenged the Republic."
This was the origin of the famous Lateran church and papal palace. The Laterani were a wealthy patrician family whose houses and estates were originally confiscated by Nero. The old family palace of the Laterani became an Imperial residence, and it was given by the Emperor Maximian to his daughter Fausta, who became, as we have seen, the wife of Constantino. The first basilica was built under Pope Silvester and consecrated A. D. 324. It was rebuilt after an earthquake by Pope Sergius II. in A. D. 904-11, and then dedicated to John the Baptist. Sergius II's basilica was destroyed by fire in A. D. 1308. It was again burnt in a.d, 1360, was rebuilt by Urban V. A. D. 1362-70, and has since been sadly mutilated by subsequent additions and alterations. Along the west front still runs the proud inscription: "Sacrosancta Lateranensis ecclesia. Omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum IMater et Caput." The Chapter of the Lateran still takes precedence even over that of Peter's.
The completeness of the victory of Constantine and the consequent incorporation of the territories of Maxentius (Italy and North Africa) with the vast Western Empire of the conqueror, gave Constantine such an overwhelming preponderance in the Roman world, that the persecutor, Maximin Daia, on receipt of a peremptory letter from the Court of Constantine, deemed it expedient to stay the persecution which for so many weary years had harassed the Eastern Provinces. We have in Eusebius a copy of the decree which Maximin Daia issued. It was an untruthful and hypocritical document, but it directed that if any should wish to follow their own worship (alluding to his Christian subjects) these should be suffered to do so. This concession was, however, only granted through fear of Constantine. The real sentiments of Maximin Daia were manifested shortly, as we shall presently notice.
Early in A. D. 313 Constantine came to Milan, where he had arranged to meet the Emperor Licinius, whose dominions extended over the Eastern Provinces of Europe. The marriage of his sister, Constantia, with Licinius, which had been previously arranged, was to be celebrated there with much ceremony. During the late war Licinius had maintained a position of friendly neutrality towards Constantine, and the relations between the two Emperors now became closer.
The famous Edict of Milan, which was put out in the earlier months of this memorable year, ran in the names of the two allied Emperors. The edict was more than a simple Imperial proclamation according a general amnesty to the persecuted Christians; it was more than a mere edict of toleration; it was intended to be, and indeed was generally received as a manifesto of the Imperial clemency in favor of the long proscribed religion, which had been accepted as the true cult by the all-powerful Emperor Constantine. It certainly left to all the citizens of the Empire the free choice to follow that mode of worship which they might wish, but that was no new permission. The only form of worship forbidden during the two hundred and eighty years which preceded the putting out of the Edict of Milan was the Christian, and that was now especially, and with much detail and emphasis pronounced to be lawful.
But more than this was contained in the Milan Edict. The second part of the Imperial Law provided for the restoration to the Christians of all the property confiscated in the days of persecution. Everything was to be given back; even lands and goods which had since changed hands by purchase, were to be restored summarily to the original Christian possessor, the State reserving to itself the power, if it thought fit, of indemnifying those persons who had thus to make restitution. In addition, all the public places where Christians used to meet for worship and assembly (cemeteries were here specially alluded to), which had been taken from them by the Government, were at once to be freely restored and that without delay; thus tacitly, but emphatically, condemning the whole public procedure followed in the days of the late persecution.
Nothing could be more complete, more far-reaching, more favorable to the Christians than the provisions of the edict. And it must be borne in mind that this Imperial Law ran throughout the whole of the Empire in Europe and Africa, stretching from the Atlantic seaboard of Western Gaul to the coasts of the Euxine and the Danube frontier, and from Northern Britain to the Mediterranean-washed provinces of Spain, South Gaul and Italy, and southwards over North Africa. Of this enormous realm by far the greater part acknowledged the rule of Constantino.
The wording of certain portions of the edict is curious, and deserves a little examination. It is undoubtedly a Christian document, inspired by a Christian, and put out, as we have noticed above, mainly in the interest of Christians. They alone are named in it, and in one striking passage the general toleration to be enjoyed by different forms of religion is based upon the toleration accorded to Christianity. But one clause has a strange semi-Pagan color. After giving to all the free choice to follow that mode of worship which they may wish, it adds that this promise was given in order that "Whatsoever Divinity and celestial power may exist might be propitious to us, and to all that live under our Government." The thought that underlies these words would seem to be: If, as is possible, any power belong to the old gods, it is well, by allowing men, if they please, to worship them, that the gods in question should be propitiated by such worship. This suggests that the edict, so strongly in favor of Christianity was not avowedly drafted by a Christian; although, no doubt, in the main it was dictated, or at least inspired, by Constantino himself, who we know after his formal adhesion to Christianity as Emperor of a still Pagan Empire, continued to be the official head, as Pontifex Maximus, of the old religion."
The proceedings at Milan in the spring of A. D. 313, for ever memorable on account of the edict which established Christianity as a legal religion, and which signified to the Roman world that the great Emperor had thrown in his lot with the long despised and outlawed sect, were rudely interrupted by intelligence which summoned the allied Emperors Constantino and Licinius to take the field. A raid of Frankish tribes in the Rhineland called for Constantine's presence once more at the head of his legions on the disturbed frontier, while a most dangerous civil war impending required Licinius in Eastern Europe to defend his dominions against the sudden invasion of Maximin Daia, who, with a powerful army, threatened the very existence of his Empire.
Maximin Daia, as we have seen, was a bigoted Pagan, and it is probable that the late events had roused the Pagan party to strike this blow in the hope of destroying, or, at least, of weakening, the powerful Christian influences which bade fair to undermine the old religion. It was well-nigh the last serious effort of Paganism. At first the arms of Maximin Daia were successful, and the city of Byzantium was invested and captured; but the victorious march was interrupted by the rapid advance of Licinius, by whose military skill the forces of the invader, although superior in numbers, were completely routed in a pitched battle near Heraclea. Maximin Daia fled, and, returning to his capital, Nicomedia, a beaten and disgraced Sovereign, died a few months after by his own hand. He perished apparently unregretted; the civil war in the East was over; and without further resistance Licinius was acknowledged Emperor of the East. Thus, before the year 313 had run its course, the provisions of the Edict of Milan, which assured peace and protection to the Christians, were received as the Imperial law without further opposition throughout the whole Roman world.