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Common
Questions about Constantine
I have heard that Constantine
was responsible for introducing paganism to Christianity.
Is this true?
No. He was certainly a corrupter of Christianity
- but there can be no doubt that he was no great
fan of paganism. Moreover, he did not add any uniquely
"pagan" concepts to Christianity himself. The simple
fact of the matter is that Constantine played both
sides, for as long as it was politically expedient
to do so. But later, he instituted a massive list
of anti-pagan reforms - and so, for the very first
time, it became politically advantageous to become
a Christian.
Observe the following results of Constantine's
conversion, and the changes which accompanied his
reign:
- Pagan
religions brought into ridicule; temples and
idols stripped of precious materials which were
used in the construction of Christian monuments.
- Steady
repression of pagan worship.
- Heretical
sects banned; all Christian worship slowly brought
under the umbrella of a single Church system.
- Social
laws changed to reflect Christian ideals; divorces
more difficult to obtain, and concubines forbidden.
- Prohibition
of gladiatorial games and abolition of crucifixion.
- Notion
of equality of all citizens before the law abolished.
- Restitution
to Christians for past injustices; includes
the return of property, goods and money.
- Appointment
of bureaucracy loaded with Christians.
- Constantine
creates a Christian capital; embarks on a building
campaign to ensure that the Christian order
is an integral part of the Empire.
- Constantine
rejects the pagan sacrifice as an express act
of homage towards a god – presents himself as
a privileged Christian Emperor, but not a deity.
- Christianity
first placed on an event footing with other
religions; later it gains ascendancy, with alternative
beliefs and practices either banned or repressed.
- Role
of the Roman senate greatly reduced as Constantine’s
new bureaucracy assumes responsibility for administration.
- Establishment
of a truly Christian society, with the duality
between Church and State merely nominal.
- Ecclesiastical
factions or interest groups of the 4th century
seek to gain the favour of the ruler of the
moment; they turn spontaneously to the State
for aid in order to impose their view, even
in theological questions.
- Christianity
becomes the enemy of paganism; post-Constantinian
emperors favour first one then the other, with
new legislation.
- Christianity
made “acceptable” to classical scholars under
Constantine. (Later, under Julian, it is seen
as the religion of the uneducated.)
- Roman
concept of the Emperor and his role, was Christianised;
Constantine shifts the emphasis from the notion
of man-made-God, to a man chosen and especially
guided by God. At the same time, the identity
of Jesus Christ is also changing; from a man
chosen and especially guided by God, to an incarnate
"God-man." (The irony of this new development
is impossible to ignore...)
- Constantine’s
presentation of himself is deliberately ambiguous;
coinage represents him in a role that is acceptable
to both pagans and Christians; replaces the
halo around his head with a more neutral nimbus.
- New
Imperial city (Constantinople) built with the
aim of forming a new, Christian capital containing
none of the pagan remnants which still exist
in Rome.
- Constantinople
a re-creation of Rome in many ways, containing
its own Senate and administration, but founded
on Christian ideology, with no concession to
pagan practices.
- Construction
of pagan buildings not considered in Constantinople’s
building plans.
- Christianity
no longer seen as a cult, but a religion in
its own right, possessing its own traditions
and philosophies.
- Constantine
prepares the foundation for a Christian State.
- Rome
becomes increasingly isolated from government.
- Christianity
begins to borrow from classical art as it establishes
its own iconography.
- By
the 5th century AD, Roman aristocracy is drifting
into Christianity, bringing a wealth of pagan
interests and habits. The works of the Christian
fathers are being shelved alongside those of
the Latin classics. Christianity has found a
niche as classical literature.
- Christianity
under Constantine and later Emperors succeeds
in establishing its own schools of intellectual
thought.
- Augustine
sketches a syllabus for Christian education;
the aim is to make the student subordinate to
the true wisdom of Scripture rather than secular
philosophy.
- The
extent to which Christianity has insinuated
itself into the classical world is apparent
when, after the death of Julian the Apostate,
Christianity and the classics simply reunite.
- Primary
confrontations between pagans and Christians
during the post-Constantinian era arose over
the fact that both were concerned by the religious
foundations of the Roman State; paganism being
the older, established religion which is already
written into the constitution and legal system.
Hardly what we would expect of a man who was busy
"introducing paganism to Christianity", is it?
I have heard that Constantine
was not a Christian. Was he?
Scholars and academics have debated this topic fiercely
for centuries, but the jury is still out, and nobody
expects a definitive answer anytime soon. He certainly
appeared to be so, and it is difficult to
understand why he would have bothered to favour
and promote a tiny little religious sect which could
not bring him any financial or political returns
unless he was a Christian.
There was certainly no pragmatic reason for
abandoning paganism in support of Christianity.
Constantine definitely wasn't going to get anything
out of it - especially since the Christians (still
bloodied and bruised after the recent persecutions)
were clearly in the minority. But to what extent
he was a true, dyed-in-the-wool Christian at heart,
who can know? It is very difficult to read the mind
of a man who died almost 2,000 years ago.
On the circumstances surrounding Constantine's
conversion, Rubenstein has this to say:
Constantine was one of those "advanced" pagans
who believed in a Supreme God: Sol Invictus, the
Unconquered Sun. But he was also interested in
Christianity and had acquired a Christian counselor,
Bishop Hosius of Cordova, who seems also to have
been a close friend. One day, it is told, while
on the march to Rome, Constantine and his soldiers
saw a flaming cross in the sky, accompanied by
the words Touto nika: By this, conquer.
The following night, Constantine had a dream,
in which Jesus Christ appeared, showed him the
sign of the Cross, and told him to inscribe it
on his soldiers' standards. After Hosius of
Cordova had advised him that the dream was valid,
Constantine commanded his soldiers to replace
their old pagan standards with the labarum: the
Christian sign. Then he arrived at Rome and encamped
outside the city.
Constantine expected a long seige, since the bridges
across the Tiber river had been cut and the walls
of Rome had never before been breached. Inside
the city, however, mobs rioted against the unpopular
Maxentius, who had a reputation as a brute and
a sexual predator. Clearly, he could not control
the city during a long seige. On October 28, Maxentius
consulted an oracle who declared that "the enemy
of the Romans" would die this very day.
He then marched out of Rome with his forces, crossed
the Tiber at the site of the Milvian Bridge over
a temporary bridge built of boats, and attacked
Constantine's army. The strategy proved suicidal.
One counterattack scattered Maxentius's army,
and the would-be emperor was last seen riding
into the Tiber on horseback in a full suit of
armour.
Constantine was now ruler of the West - and a
convinced Christian. His principal ally in the
East was Licinius, an experienced politician and
general whom Constantine allowed to marry his
sister, Constantia. Licinius was not a Christian,
but his principal rival was a famous hater
of Christians who renewed the persecution of Christians
in the East, executing Bishop Peter of Alexandria
and the famous scholar, Lucian of Antioch, among
others. Together, Licinius and Constantine decided
to play the Christian card.
In 313 the two met in Milan and issued a joint
document, since known as the Edict of Milan, in
which they terminated the persecution of Christians,
guaranteed their subjects freedom of worship,
and decreed that all properties taken from the
Christians should be returned, or else that the
victims of persecution should be infemnified for
their losses.
[...]
In little more than a decade, Christianity had
been transformed from a persecuted sect into the
religion of the imperial family. Constantine was
far too canny to attempt to outlaw his religious
opponents [the pagans], who still constituted
a majority of Roman citizens. But there was nothing
to prevent him from favoring the Church as his
predecessors had favored the old religion.
Among his first acts were decrees aimed at compensating
Christians for the sufferings and depredations
of prior years and granting Christian clergymen
the special privileges formerly accorded only
to pagan priests. His true goal, beyond favoring
his co-religionists, was to unite the empire's
diverse, quarreling peoples in one huge spiritual
fellowship. Paganism was now clearly decadent,
but once upon a time it had served this purpose.
Why shouldn't the new religion play an equally
vital and creative role?
Rubenstein, Richard (1999), When Jesus Became
God.
See also the effect of Constantine's reforms
(above.)
Whatever else might be said about Constantine, he
was a brilliant politician.
I have heard that Constantine
converted at the end of his life, but my personal
opinion is that this story was probably made up
by the church who depended on the authority of
the Emporer to justify their power.
This is a complex issue, and historians (both secular
and religious) are still undecided as to
the full extent of Constantine's conversion.
It is true that he put off baptism for as long as
possible, and did not submit to it until the final
days of his life - but on the other hand, this was
by no means unusual, for many prominent Christians
of his day were in the habit of doing the same.
I like the way Rubenstein puts it:
In May, [Constantine] came back to Nicomedia,
his old capital, a desperately sick man, and asked
Bishop Eusebius to baptize him. Like many other
powerful figures, Constantine had not wanted to
become fully a Christian while faced with the
necessity (as he saw it) to sin. Now, however,
he knew that it was time to don the white robes
of a catachumen.
Constantine lay on his deathbed. His purple robe
was taken from him, signifying the end of his
reign and his death to the material world. Eusebius
came to him, heard his confession, and administered
the last rites. His generals came to pay their
last respects; when they wished him a long life,
he reminded them that God's call could not
be ignored.
He died on May 22, the Feast of Pentecost, after
reigning for thirty-one years, the last seven
as sole ruler of a united Roman Empire. A procession
headed by his son, Constantius, brought the golden
coffin containing his body to Constantinople,
and he was entombed in a place of honour in the
Church of the Holy Apostles.
Ibid.
Clearly a Christian death - if not a particularly
consistent Christian life.
Constantine
is a difficult man to understand, but we need
to understand him to some degree, if we are to
understand what happened to Christianity both
during and after his time.
Revelation 12 is definitely about Constantine.
Eusebius (an early Christian – one of the “Church
Fathers”) when speaking of the destruction of
the pagan generals by Constantine, depicted him
as the very angel of God, reminiscent of the "Michael"
of Revelation 12...
And now, as a result of this wonderful grace
and bounty, the envy that hates good, the demon
that loves evil, bursting with rage, lined up
all his lethal forces against us.
The "demon that loves evil" is Licinius - a pagan
general against whom Constantine fought and eventually
prevailed.
At first he was like a mad dog that closes
his jaws on the stones thrown at him and vents
on the inanimate missiles his fury against those
who are trying to keep him away: he directed his
ferocious madness against the stones of the places
of worship and the inanimate timbers of the buildings,
bringing, as he himself imagined, ruin on the
churches. Then he uttered terrible hissings and
his own serpent-like sounds, at one time in the
threats of godless tyrants, at another in the
blasphemous decrees of impious rulers.
Again, he vomited forth his own deadly venom,
and by his noxious , soul-destroying poisons he
paralysed the souls enslaved to him, almost annihilating
them by his death-bringing sacrifices to dead
idols, and letting loose against us every beast
in human shape and every kind of savagery. But
once again the Angel of great counsel, God's
great Commander-in-Chief [by which Eusebius
refers to Constantine] after the thoroughgoing
training of which the greatest soldiers in His
kingdom gave proof by their patience and endurance
in all trials, appeared suddenly and thereby swept
all that was hostile and inimical into oblivion
and nothingness, so that its very existence was
forgotten.
But all that was near and dear to Him, He advanced
beyond glory in the sight of all, not men only
but the heavenly powers as well - sun, moon, and
stars, and the entire heaven and earth. These
things are indeed awe-inspiring and overwhelming,
astonishing and amazing, and serve as clear proofs
that our Saviour is King.
Eusebius, 330, Ecclesiastica Historia, 4.17.
Eusebius used the title 'Saviour' in reference
to both Christ and Constantine, considering the
latter to be the earthly representative of the former.
His commentary continues:
The Emperor [Constantine] publicly displayed
a painted resemblance of the dragon beneath his
own and his children's feet, stricken through
with a dart, and cast headlong into the depths
of the sea....
Thus he expressed what the Prophets had foretold
concerning this monster, saying that 'God
would bring His great and terrible sword against
the dragon, the flying serpent, and would destroy
the dragon in the sea.' [Eusebius here
cites Isaiah 27:1, and alludes to Revelation
13:1.]
One might have thought that a picture of Christ's
Kingdom was thus shadowed forth....
It may be that this was that second and new Jerusalem
spoken of in the predictions of the Prophets.
Eusebius, 330, Life of Constantine, III:3,
15, 33.
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