Constantine the
Great and the Birth
of Christendom
At the dawn of the fourth century AD, the Christians of the Roman world
still practised a faith that was officially proscribed, but they were sufficiently
numerous and well established to consider themselves safe from legal molestation.
There were still sporadic outbreaks of violence, but no systematic imperial effort had
been made to eradicate the faith since the Decian persecution of 250 and its sequel,
the persecution instituted by the emperor Valerian (d.260) in 257, both of which had
claimed the lives of some prominent bishops; and both of these purges had proved
futile and had ended fairly quickly. By the year 303, Christians had every reason
to feel secure in their position.
In that year, however, the last and most terrible imperial persecution of the Church
began, when the emperor Diocletian (245–316), the Augustus (or chief emperor)
of the eastern half of the empire, issued an edict requiring all Christians to make
sacrifices to the old gods. Supposedly, Diocletian was inspired to renew the antiChristian measures of an earlier generation because, on a visit to the prophet of
Apollo in Didyma to obtain a divine oracle, he was told that the presence of
Christians in the empire had rendered the god silent. He therefore resolved to
wipe out this foreign impiety once and for all and win back the favour of heaven.
The campaign against the Christians was prosecuted with a special enthusiasm by
Diocletian’s ferocious lieutenant, Galerius (d.311), whose loathing of the Christians
was boundless (his mother allegedly was a priestess in one of the old cults).
Constantine’s foundation
of a new capital of the
empire in the East on
the Bosphorus saw the
settlement of Nova Roma
(Constantinople) develop
rapidly into a magnificent
city of grand architecture
and opulent art.This
mosaic of Christ
Pantokrator is from the
church of Hagia Sophia
(Holy Wisdom) in Istanbul.
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This ‘Great Persecution’ was truly a time of terror. Believers were imprisoned,
tortured and killed; martyrs’ tombs were desecrated, churches destroyed and
Christian texts burned.When Diocletian abdicated for reasons of health in 305,
Galerius became Augustus of the East and appointed his equally brutal nephew
Maximinus (d.313) as Caesar (deputy emperor).Together they waged war on the
Church for another six years. In 311, however, Galerius contracted an agonizing
disease (possibly bowel cancer), which he suspected was retribution sent by the
Christian God.And so, before his death, he issued an edict absolving Christians
of the obligation to worship Roman gods. In the winter of 312, the persecution
largely ceased.
Nevertheless, the Christians of the empire had been savagely reminded that they
were a minority with no legal rights.They could scarcely have imagined that, just
two years after Galerius’ death, a Christian would be emperor.
constantine the great
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Christians complete toleration for their faith and full legal rights.After 324,
with his defeat of Licinius, Constantine was emperor of both East and West,
and during his long reign he demonstrated his loyalty to his new faith by
shifting state patronage and property away from the old cults to the Church,
by making somewhat sporadic attempts to discourage pagan idolatry, and by
building a great many churches. In 325, he convened the first ‘ecumenical’ (or
‘universal’) council of the Church to resolve differences of doctrine within the
Church. In 330, he moved the seat of government to Asia Minor, to the ancient
city of Byzantium. Now renamed Constantinople, this ‘New Rome’ was
dedicated – unlike the old Rome – exclusively to Christ.
Even during his lifetime, Constantine was celebrated as a kind of Apostle, and
his struggles to consolidate the empire as a kind of global evangelism. He was,
if nothing else, an observant practitioner of his faith.That said, he was hardly a
model of Christian charity and clemency.There was a touch of officious military
brutality in the way in which he enforced several of his decrees.What is more,
he may have been responsible for the murders of his wife Fausta and son Crispus
in 326. On the other hand, he did attempt in significant ways to bring imperial
policy into closer conformity with Christian teachings. He endowed the Church
with the power and resources to provide for the poor and the sick, and to care
for widows and orphans, on a massive scale. He abolished certain of the more
barbaric criminal penalties, including crucifixion.And he made it easier for
householders to free their slaves, in part by giving the Church legal authority
to certify emancipation.
The Emblem of
Christ Appearing to
Constantine by Peter
Paul Rubens (1622).
The Christian historian
Eusebius (c.275–339)
wrote of this incident:‘The
Christ of God appeared to
Constantine with the sign
which had appeared to him
in the sky, and urged him to
make himself a copy of the
sign … and to use this as
protection against the
attacks of the enemy.’
A Sign in the Heavens
Constantine the Great (c.280–337) was the son of Constantius Chlorus, who
became Caesar of the West in 293 and Augustus in 305.When Constantius died in
306, while on campaign in Britain with his son, the latter was acclaimed emperor
by his troops. Six years of civil war ensued, culminating in Constantine’s defeat
of his brother-in-law Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge near Rome
in 312.
Before this decisive engagement, however, Constantine experienced a religious
conversion that prompted him to go into battle with a Christian symbol –
probably a combination of the Greek letters X (chi) and P (rho), the first two
letters in ‘Christos’ – painted on the shields of his soldiers.According to one
version of the story, he had been instructed in a dream to adopt the symbol;
according to another (and, apparently, to Constantine himself) he and his troops
had seen a great cross in the heavens at some point before the battle.
In any event, as the new Augustus of the West, Constantine – along with Licinius
(d.325), the Eastern Augustus – promulgated the Edict of Milan, which granted
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Constantine delayed his own baptism until the end of his life, since the
responsibilities of his office obliged him to do things incompatible with full
membership in the body of Christ.When, therefore, he fell fatally ill in
337, and was forced to retire to his deathbed, he exchanged his robes
of imperial purple for the white baptismal garments of a catechumen
and was baptized. Shortly thereafter he died.
The Last Pagan Emperor
The new course upon which Constantine had set the empire during
his long reign was irreversible. His son, Constantius II (317–61),
retained his father’s creed, not so much out of conviction as out of
political prudence.
The ‘labarum’ or ‘chi-rho’
symbol: it was either this
or a simple cross that
Constantine claimed he had
seen in the sky and had
been instructed in a dream
to paint upon his soldiers’
shields before the Battle of
the Milvian Bridge.
‘The bishop of Constantinople shall
have the primacy of honour after
the bishop of Rome, because
Constantinople is the new Rome.’
Council of Constantinople
(Canon 3), 381
There was, however, one last great attempt to revive the fading pagan
order. Constantine’s nephew Julian (332–63), whose father and brother had been
murdered under Constantius II as possible rivals for the imperial throne, secretly
converted to paganism in 351 (hence he was known to posterity as ‘Julian the
Apostate’). Quite by chance, Constantius II found it expedient to make Julian his
Caesar in 355, and then to send him into Gaul to make war on the barbarian
Franks and Alamanni. Julian proved to be an unexpectedly brilliant, courageous
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MAGIC A N D R E LIGION
Though Julian the Apostate decried
the ‘irrationality’ of Christianity, the
‘higher’ paganism to which he
himself subscribed abounded in
what the Church regarded as
the grossest kinds of
superstition.These included
secret rites of initiation, blood
sacrifice, astrology, divination,
‘theurgy’ (that is, magical
invocations of the gods,
sometimes into children, or into
statuary), and a childlike faith in
the ‘divine revelations’ contained
in mystical texts such as the
Chaldean Oracles (a fascinating
farrago of Hellenistic and Asiatic
hermeticism).
especially from the time of Iamblichus
(c.250–c.330) to that of Proclus (c.410–
85), used magical rituals to communicate
with gods and benign daemons, to
secure divine assistance, and to thwart
the malevolent daemons on high who
might seek to impede the soul in its
ascent to God.
Naturally, this was an opportune
time for conjurers, charlatans and
confidence tricksters. Many
temples were specially designed
to ‘assist’ the faithful in seeing or
hearing the god in whom they
had placed their trust. Mechanical
devices, optical tricks and
combustible chemicals were used
to simulate miracles and divine
Much third- and fourth-century
visitations.To give the impression
paganism was marked by a
that an idol had been inhabited
special fascination with
by a divine spirit and brought
everything exotic and
to life, a clockwork automaton
Julian the Apostate
outlandish: Eastern devotions
would be used; a hidden
attempted to revive the
and philosophies, alchemy,
speaking trumpet would
traditional Roman pagan
Egyptian and Chaldean magic,
produce the voice of an unseen
cults, but failed to match
occultism, necromancy and
god; light reflected from a
Christianity’s appeal.
demonology. Nor was this
hidden pan of water onto a
true only of vulgar popular
temple ceiling suggested a
religion. At every level of society, among the
numinous presence; a skull cunningly
educated and uneducated alike, there was a
fashioned from wax would deliver an oracle
longing for salvation from the conditions of
and then ‘miraculously’ melt away; a
earthly life, and for any spiritual techniques
darkened temple vault could suddenly be
or recondite wisdoms that might aid the
transformed into the starry firmament by
soul in its flight. A great many mystery
light reflected from fish scales embedded in
religions promised to free their adherents
the masonry; and so on. Needless to say,
from the material world’s endless cycles of
the effect of such devices was considerably
birth and death, but so did many schools of
enhanced by the votary’s ardent desire to
philosophy.The later Platonists, for example,
be convinced in the first place.
and successful general, and in 360, in reaction to an imperial attempt to
remove him from command, his troops proclaimed him Augustus. Civil
war would inevitably have followed, but Constantius conveniently died
before it became necessary. On ascending to the purple, Julian publicly
declared his reversion to the ancient faith, and then spent much of his
extremely brief reign (November, 361 to June, 363) attempting to wrest
control of Roman society away from the ‘Galilaeans’.
Julian was an intelligent and formidable man, energetic, often
remarkably generous, and blessed with a considerable literary gift
and an enthusiasm (though not much capacity) for philosophy; he was
also mildly vindictive and deeply superstitious, and suffered from an
insatiable appetite for magic, esoterica and animal sacrifice. He was,
simply stated, a religious fanatic. Unofficially, he countenanced any
degree of violence against the Christians; officially, he enacted various
discriminatory policies against them, such as a law forbidding them
to teach classical texts. He did not, however, attempt to suppress the
Church; rather, he granted equal toleration to all Christian sects, in
order to foment greater discord among them.
In the end, Julian’s great cause was
a failure, in part because he died
after only 20 months in power,
‘Julian knew that toleration of the
but ultimately because there was
Christians would intensify their
no real popular passion for his
divisions…experience had taught
pagan revivalism; even many
him that no wild beasts are such
pagans regarded him as a
dangerous enemies to man as
credulous extremist. He had
Christians are to one another.’
hoped to make the old faith
Ammianus Marcellinus, The
attractive to those who had
Roman History,
forsaken it, not only by giving
390–91
it a doctrinal and institutional
coherence like that of the
Church, but by imbuing it with
a moral dimension comparable
to Christianity’s.This was an impossible project.As he was forced to
lament in a letter that he wrote to a pagan priest,‘It is a disgrace that
these impious Galilaeans care not only for their own poor, but for
ours as well.’
Julian died from a spear wound sustained as he retreated up the River
Tigris, during a catastrophic campaign against the Persians. Legend
says that, in his final moments, he cried out,‘You have conquered,
O Galilaean!’ He never actually uttered those words, in all likelihood;
but they were true nonetheless.
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303
Beginning of the last great
persecution of Christians in the
Roman empire
306
Constantine installed as emperor of
the West; issues edict of toleration
for Christians in his part of the
empire
311
Persecution of Christians ends in
the Roman empire
313
The Edict of Milan, granting
Christians freedom of worship, is
promulgated in both the eastern
and the western empires
321
Constantine declares Sunday as the
day of rest in the Christian calendar
325
The first Council of Nicaea defines
the nature of orthodox Christian
belief
330
Founding of Constantinople (‘Nova
Roma’) as the new imperial capital
337
Constantine dies after being baptized
on his deathbed
359
At the Synod of Rimini, Constantius
II makes a final attempt to impose a
variant of the Nicene Creed as the
common statement of faith for the
eastern and western churches
361
Death of Constantius II; Julian the
Apostate, the last pagan emperor,
comes to power
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