Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (26 page)

After Constantine's death, Athanasius had to confront a Roman gover
nor in Libya whose life, by Basil of Caesarea's account, was "marked by cruelty and crime." He had been persecuting Christians, and Basil wrote in a letter to Athanasius that the heavenly judge would repay the persecuting governor with similar scourges. Basil promised Athanasius that he would publicize the man's crimes so that "he shall be held by all as abominable, cut off from fire, water and shelter."72
Given Athanasius's previous dealings with Meletians and Arians, this leaves one with disquieted suspicions, but it also makes it evident that the church had lost none of its capacity for criticism.

Athanasius did not write any treatises of political theology, but his Life ofAnthony was arguably an early counter to Constantinianism. Not only did he record Anthony's insistence that Constantine was no more than a man and that "Christ is the only true and eternal Emperor," but he also laid out an alternative way of life for Christians in a Constantinian system. Rather than conform to the standards of the political world, Athanasius implicitly urged, Christians were called to follow the ascetic example of humility found in Anthony. Athanasius's argument was not missed by later emperors, who, without leaving the palace, conformed their personal lives to Anthony's example.73
Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy claimed that St. Francis won political vindication when Lincoln walked unarmed into defeated Richmond. Anthony too had his political victory.

At his death, Constantine was buried in the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople, the thirteenth apostle, or even Jesus himself among the Twelve. Within a few generations, the church was redesigned and Constantine's remains were reinterred in an imperial mausoleum, some distance from the apostles. John Chrysostom got the point: emperors should be buried in a place that shows their real position in the church, not apostles but "doorkeepers."74
Constantine's elevation to sainthood may seem the most blatant of capitulations, but it meant that Constantine was in a unique position among the emperors. His special personal charisma, deriving from his visions and dreams, was not expected to be repeated in later emperors. To say he was a saint was to say that he was
not a typical emperor.75
Later emperors took that hint too. Theodosius did not sit in on the deliberations of the Council of Ephesus, and he and Valentinian sent their representative, Candidianus, with the concession that he would "take no part whatsoever in the enquiries and proposals which would be made there on the subject of dogmas," since it would be "contrary to religion for someone not belonging to the list of holy bishops to meddle in the discussion of ecclesiastical matters." Constantine IV in the seventh century asked the pope to bring an end to the Monothelite controversy, declaring by the way that he had no desire to influence the bishops.76

During the reign of his son, Constantius, one of Constantine's primary advisers, Ossius, formulated a version of the two-swords theory that dominated church-state relations throughout the medieval period. Writing to Constantius, the nonagenarian bishop ordered him to

stop [compulsion], and remember that you are a mortal man: fear the day of judgment and keep yourself pure for it. Do not intrude into the affairs of the Church, and do not give us advice about these matters, but rather receive instruction on them from us. God has given you kinship, but has entrusted us with what belongs to the Church. Just as the man who tries to steal your position contradicts God who has placed you there, so you should be aware of becoming guilty of a great offense by putting the affairs of the Church under your control. It is written: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God those that are God's." ... Hence neither do we [bishops] have the right to rule over the world nor do you, emperor, have the right to officiate in the church.71

Ossius was mild by comparison with Hilary of Poitiers, who wrote a series of letters to correct the wayward son of Constantine. When around 360 the Arian Constantius changed from harsh persecution of the orthodox to seductive flattery and favor, Hilary was incensed. Bring on the fires and axes, he said, but do not seduce the faithful:

Now we are contending against a deceitful persecutor, against a flattering enemy, against an Antichrist Constantius, who does not scourge the back, but pampers the appetite; who does not issue proscriptions that lead us to immortal life, but rich gifts that betray to endless death; does not send us from prison to liberty, but loads us inside the palace with honours that bribe to slavery; does not torture the body, but makes himself master of the heart; does not strike off heads with the sword, but slays the soul with gold; does not in public threaten with fire, but in secret is kindling for us a hell.

Christian though he may be, Constantius was worse than the pagan emperors:

To Thee, 0 Constantius, do I proclaim what I would have uttered before Nero, what Decius and Maximin would have heard from me. Thou art warring against God, raging against the Church, persecuting the Saints. Thou hatest those that preach Christ, thou art overthrowing religion, tyrant as thou art, no longer merely in things human but in things divine
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These are not the words of a "Constantinian," nor of a pliant court chaplain. They are prophetic words. The harder you look for chaplains in the fourth-century church, the fewer there seem to be. That is because chaplains rarely make much difference in history. But it is also because bishops were not seduced or co-opted.

Far from demonstrating or securing the emperor's dominance of the church, Nicaea had the opposite effect:

What the Church discovered in the painful years after Nicaea was that its own inner tensions could not after all be resolved by a dens ex machina on the imperial throne; and that its relationship with the empire intensified rather than solved the question of its own distinctive identity and mission. It was unable to avoid reflection on its defining conditions, unable to avoid a conscious and critical reworking of its heritage, unable, in short, to avoid theology.79

Yoder's statements are generalizations, and intended as such. If they had no truth, they would not have any persuasive power. The problem is not that they are generalizations but that they are often misleading generalizations, particularly when they are applied to Constantine, generalizations that ignore counterevidence and counternarratives that would balance the
picture. It is simply not the case, as Yoder in his more unguarded moments implies, that the church was turned into a chaplaincy and lost its capacity to criticize. The church since Constantine has not seen an almost uninterrupted run of obsequious bishops, one neo-Constantinian followed by another. In regard to the church's stance over against power, the "Constantinian" moment of the fourth century was comparatively brief. Before the end of the fourth century, indeed by the middle of the century, onceawestruck bishops had recovered their voices if they ever lost them. They spoke truth to power, in words that Yoder and Hauerwas would be proud of. There was no Ambrose in Constantine's court, but the movement was already beginning that would produce one. Bishops had not so fully identified with the imperial palace that they lost the ability to call emperors to "modesty."
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THE EMPEROR AND THE QUEEN

"Kiss the Son," Psalm 2 exhorts, addressing itself to kings of the earth. Constantine kissed the Son, publicly acknowledging the Christian God as the true God and confessing Jesus as "our Savior."

For Constantine and the emperors who followed him, after kissing the Son and Lord, it made sense to do homage to Jesus by supporting his Queen, the church-building and adorning cathedrals, distributing funds for poor relief and hospitals, assisting the bishops to resolve their differences by calling and providing for councils. Constantine did not always show restraint. Sometimes he took over business that belonged to the King and Queen alone. But if we want to judge Constantine fairly, we have to recognize that the Queen often had issues. A queen's bodyguard ought to keep his hands off the queen, but what does he do when she turns harpy and starts scratching the face of her lady-in-waiting?

Once they noticed there was a Queen in their midst, some emperors and kings were often not satisfied with kissing the Son. Some could not keep their hands off her. Some wanted to steal a kiss or two from the Bride and seduce her. Plenty did, but it is important to notice the difference: adorning and protecting someone else's queen, even protecting her from herself, is not the same as raping her.

And the Queen had some responsibility to be true to her King. She was not supposed to be flattered by the blandishments of a Constantine or a Justinian or a Charlemagne. She was not to look wistfully at the emperor's court, as she too often did, and remodel her own courtiers into the image of the emperor's."
If the emperor tried to steal a kiss, he should be greeted with a good hard slap. That happened, as we have seen, but it did not always happen, and at times the Queen was only too happy to take a tumble with the emperor, provided he paid her handsomely for the pleasurethere's a good biblical word for that (see Revelation 17-18), and neither Wycliffe nor Dante nor Luther was afraid to use it.

All these were real, and often horrific, acts of unfaithfulness. But they do not imply a structural flaw. Once the emperor has kissed the Son, should he not honor the Son's Bride?

Bloody Spectacles are not suitable for civil ease and domestic quiet.

CONSTANTINE, THEODOSIAN CODE 15.12.1

In the middle of the ancient Roman Forum was a small pond that the Romans knew as the Curtian Lake. Ancient historians disagreed about the origin of its name. In one version of the story, Curtius was a Sabine who abandoned his horse in what was then a swamp. Another version is more dramatic, and more revealing. Around 362 B.c., a growing chasm had opened in the middle of the Forum, threatening buildings and citizens. For moderns, this would be an engineering project; for ancient Romans, it was an omen. Priests consulted the Sibylline books and concluded that the earth would close if the Romans filled it with their most precious treasure, and added the promise that the earth would return the favor by giving the Romans an abundance of whatever they deposited. Citizens dutifully filled the gap with sacred cakes, silver and other treasures. Nothing worked.

Finally Marcus Curtius, already renowned as a warrior despite his youth, addressed the Senate. What is more precious, he asked, than the virtue of its armed soldiers (an ullum magis Romanum bonum quam arma uirtusque esset)? He promised that Rome would have a continuous supply of courage if one man would throw himself into the pit. Donning his armor, he raised his hands to the sky and lowered them to the gods of the earth, then mounted his horse and charged into the gap, devoting himself to the
infernal gods (se deuouisse), horse and all. People threw animals, silver, cloth into the hole over him, and the earth immediately closed.'
Everyone knows the rest of the story: the soil of Rome produced a consistent crop of military heroes.

Curtius was not the only Roman famed for devoting himself to the gods and Rome. Several decades after Curtius, the consul Decius was leading the Romans in battle against the Latins at Campania. The Romans were beginning to lose, and auspices were ambiguous. Decius consulted the pontiff Valerius, who told him to dress in a toga, cover his head and stand with one hand touching his chin. Standing on a sword, Decius invoked Janus, Jupiter and Mars, as well as new gods, gods of nation, the infernal gods and even the gods who ruled the enemy (Diui, quorum estpotestas nostrorum hostiumque), and then declared that he was devoting himself with the legions to the chthonic deities (legiones auxiliaque hostium mecum Deis Manibus Tellurique deuoueo). Throwing back his toga, he charged alone against the opposing army. Surprised at the attack, the Latins fell back and fled. Decius died, but earned the laus, the eternal praise of the Romans, because in a sort of substitutionary propitiation he had "averted onto himself alone all the menace and danger from the gods above and below" (ab deis superis inferisque in se unum uertit).2
In offering himself to the gods, he was taking the Latin legions to death with him, so that Rome might live.