Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (31 page)

Postapostolic Christians pressed ahead with the apostolic transformation of slavery. Slavery as a social status was relativized to the "spiritual slavery" to sin, and the stigma of slavery was weakened by the fact that God himself in the person of the Son had taken on the "form of a servant" and came "not to be served but to serve." Slaves were welcomed into the
church, and some rose to positions of leadership. The church thus offered opportunities for upward mobility. "Among us," Lactantius wrote, "there is no slave and we call them all brothers in the spirit and, as to religion, fellow slaves
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Much of Constantine's legislation on slavery reinforced the social system, and slavery, rather than undermining it. He retained restrictions on cohabitation between decurions and slave girls, and in a law of 319 hardened the penalties:

Although it appears unworthy for men, even though not endowed with any high rank, to descend to sordid marriages [ad sordida descendere conubia] with slave women, nevertheless this practice is not prohibited by law; but a legal marriage cannot exist with servile persons, and from a slave union of this kind, slaves are born. We command, therefore, that decurions shall not be led by their lust to take refuge in the bosom of the most powerful houses. For if a decurion should be secretly united with any slave woman belonging to another man and if the overseers and procurators should not be aware of this, We order that the woman shall be cast into the mines through sentence of the judge, and the decurion himself shall be deported to an island. (CTh 12.1.6)

Children of such unions were illegitimate, and any inheritance they received would be confiscated and turned over to legitimate offspring. Persons of higher rank were also discouraged from slave marriages.

We order that senators or persons of the rank of prefect [perfectissimus] or who occupy the office of duumvir or who are decorated with the ornaments of the chief priesthood of Syria or Phoenicia shall be branded with infamy and lose the privileges of the Roman laws if they treat children born to them of a slave, daughter of a slave, freedwoman, daughter of a freedwoman, actress, daughter of an actress, mistress of a tavern, daughter of a tavern keeper, or a low and degraded woman, or the daughter of a panderer or gladiator or a woman who offered herself to public trade, as their legitimate children, either pursuant to their own declaration to that effect or pursuant to the privilege extended by our rescript; and whatever a father shall have given to such children, whether he calls them legitimate or natural, shall be taken from them and shall be turned over to the legitimate offspring, or to his brother, sister, father or mother. (CJ 5.27.1)

Elsewhere, he prohibited slaves from informing against their domini, required that damages be paid by anyone who received a fleeing slave without informing the master, and granted, as we saw above, fathers the right to sell their children into slavery.31

Yet he also issued laws that enabled slaves to be liberated. Manumission was not at all new, but Constantine opened new avenues for it. Given the long-standing Roman endorsement of freedom, he wrote, the law must provide avenues of freedom for slaves. If, for instance, a man was claimed by another as a slave, the supposed slave was given an opportunity to find a sponsor who would vouch for his free status. Even if he found none, he could renew his claim to freedom at any time later, should he find a sponsor (CTh 4.8.5-6). Constantine passed laws to ameliorate slave conditions. He tried to keep slave families together. Because slaves had a right to a stable home, slave families were not to be split up when a slave was sold, and urban slaves were not to be sold if they were tutors, so that their young pupils would not lose the benefits of their protection.32
Ancient law, he observed, removes the birthright from women who have children with slaves, without any exceptions made for youth or ignorance. While Constantine "shunned" cohabitation between free women and slaves, he declared that the children of such unions were free, though medial: "free children of slaves and illegitimate children of free persons." They were "freed from the constraints of slavery" while they were "liable to the privileges due to patrons." This law applied whether the woman slept with the slave "ignorantly" or "willingly" (CTh 4.12.3). In a law strikingly reminiscent of Exodus 21:20-21, he ruled that an owner who beat his slave to death with clubs or stones, or killed the slave by hanging, poisoning or throwing him from a height, would be prosecuted as a murderer. If, however, the slave died from normal discipline, the owner was free.33

All this legislation can cause us to miss several crucial innovations in Constantine's slavery law. The first, and the lesser of these, was his permission of manumission in the church. This was important in that the church became a place of liberation for slaves, but in essence Constantine was doing no more than extending a privilege of pagan temples to the Christian church. Far more important was Constantine's endorsement of manumission as an act pleasing to God. In the 321 decree allowing for manumission in the church, he referred to persons who with "pious intention" (religiosa mente) want to give freedom to slaves. Manumission before the eyes of a bishop, he stated, had the same legal force as the granting of Roman citizenship, and he added that clerics were allowed to free their own slaves (CTh 4.7.1). Doing something pleasing to God on Sunday was particularly appropriate, and manumission was one of those pleasing acts.

Manumission was endorsed as an act of "piety," and Constantine encouraged anyone who wished to perform this act to turn to the church to do it. "This is the first time in history that emancipation is praised as godly work and encouraged by an emperor." In fact, Constantine's endorsement of manumission went further than that of most Christian writers of the time. Though not requiring manumission, Constantine did encourage it, and for that there was no "model" in the early church.34

WHO RULED AND How?

Government is by law, the Romans said, but laws have to be interpreted, enforced and administered by men. This was especially so in the Roman world. Publication of laws was not instant or thorough, and governors were often left to their own resources to determine what was best for their territory. Patronage and clientage, moreover, were not only the bonds of social life but the sinews of the body politic. A benefactor would grant favors and benefices to clients and thereby win loyalty and support. Politics meant gift-giving, and responding to gifts in a way that would win further benefits in the future. Honor was sought by proximity to the emperor, and was conferred by the emperor. Constantine knew how to play this game so well, in fact, that both his friends (Eusebius) and critics (Zosimus) claim that he was overly generous. When he took over the Eastern empire, he came as a Western Augustus to an unknown territory. He needed to make friends, establish connections and secure loyalty if he wanted to stabilize his rule. This he did by funneling a great deal of money and social privilege into the East. Constantinople was, among many other things, a mas
sive gift to the Eastern empire, a gift enhanced by the creation of a senate in the new city.35
Throughout the empire, the emperor expanded the number of senators, so much so that the traditional "gentry" class of equestrians virtually disappeared, and he formalized the earlier system of imperial "companions," the comites.36
In Palestine, his mother Helena acted as his agent in funding several church buildings.

When Constantine reunited the empire under a single Augustus, he had to re-create or create a new administrative structure.37
Diocletian had already begun subdividing provinces into smaller units, and Constantine built on his work. The empire was divided into fourteen dioceses, each overseen by a vicarius, and the dioceses were bundled together into four larger units-Gaul, Italy, Illyrium and the Oriens-each of which was governed by a praetorian prefect. One of Constantine's innovations was to remove military responsibilities permanently from the prefects, dividing between the bureaucracy and the army in a way that both neutralized potential for coup attempts and gave realistic recognition to the fact that few men are endowed with the abilities of both an accountant and a general
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What kind of men filled these positions? Did Constantine give preference to Christians? Or did he entrust his empire to the most competent Turks he could find? Historians differ on this point,39
but we have the
testimony of Eusebius that he promoted Christians. Many of the men he promoted were from lower classes: "a considerable number of [Constantine's] new senators, including many who rose to the highest rank, came from lower in the social scale." At least "two peasants ... rose from the ranks [of the army] to high commands, both of whom assumed high positions in the court." In Rome the senatorial class still included many older families, but the Eastern honestiores had been elevated from low origins. Given that these were the classes with the greatest concentration of Christians, it is likely that Constantine was raising Christians to positions of high rank and great responsibility for the empire.4o

Constantine's appointments to the position of city prefect (praefectus urbi) in Rome are a barometer of his strategy in appointments. When he first entered Rome after defeating Maxentius, he retained his rival's praefectus, Annius Anullinus, for a month and then replaced him with another member of the old guard, Aradius Rufinus, who had served earlier as praefectus and was of an old senatorial family. Constantine's takeover of Rome led to no reprisals against Maxentius's officials, and Constantine's appointments were, to this extent, a pledge of continuity and clemency. Later, though, Constantine's appointments moved in a different, more innovative direction. In 325-26 the praefectus was Acilius Severus, a Spanish Christian, and three of the members of the aristocracy who later filled the position were also Christians. At a time when many pagans resided in Rome and occupied positions in the Senate, Constantine appointed Christians to be chief magistrates of the capital.41
If comparatively few Christians held this position, the fact that any did was remarkable.

Though often overlooked, there is direct and obvious evidence of Constantine's preference for Christians in the government of the empire: his favor to the bishops. Bishops formed courts of appeal, distributed relief to the poor and to widows, oversaw large pastoral and administrative staffs in urban parishes, and led public rites of worship in the growing number of great cathedrals throughout the empire. Over the following decades, they used their money to open hospitals, orphanages and hostels.42
And, of course, they were all Christians. By supporting the church and empowering bishops, Constantine created a Christian governing class. Again, it is impossible to know his intentions. Possibly he simply responded to immediate needs: he saw abuses and gaps that needed remedy and sought the remedy nearest to hand. Whatever his intentions, Constantine's largesse to the church prepared the empire for its eventual collapse. Even before the imperial government ended, bishops like Athanasius and Ambrose had become the dominant figures in their cities-not just the dominant religious figures but the dominant figures, full stop, just as abbots soon would become the benevolent patresfamilias in many rural areas. Rome's baptism meant the baptism of the aristocracy, as baptized church members took on imperial authority.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Murmuring against government is common in every age. That subjects murmur means little, but what they murmur about can be revealing. According to Eusebius, the murmuring in Constantine's time was murmuring about Constantine's laxity. There was "no fear of capital punishment" because of the emperor's uniform inclination to clemency, and as a result no one was deterred from crime. "None of the provincial governors visited offenses with their proper penalties," and as a result the public placed "no small degree of blame on the general administration of the empire."43
The bishop of Caesarea found in Constantine a political expression of Jesus' exhortation to love enemies. His mind was so full of anxiety to avoid "wanton sacrifice of human life" that he preserved lives of his enemies. He ordered his troops to spare prisoners, reminding them that they shared a "common nature" with opposing soldiers, and he reinforced this rule by promising gold to every Roman soldier who spared a life. "Great numbers even of the barbarians were thus saved, and owed their lives to the emperor's gold."44

Eusebius's enthusiasm inevitably leaves us slightly suspicious, and it would be nice to have some outside confirmation of his claims. We have little, and what we do have leaves us unsettled. Far and away the most scandalous exercise of power by Constantine was the execution of his wife Fausta and his son Crispus, which occurred shortly after the council of Nicaea and after Constantine's visit to Rome for his vicennalia celebration in 326. Eusebius says nothing of this incident, but he must have known about it, since he erased references to Crispus and Fausta from an earlier edition of the Church History. Zosimus is the earliest witness, and after him the story became part of the standard account of Constantine. According to Zosimus, Constantine's conversion was tied directly to what the chronicler calls the murder of his wife and son:

But when he came to Rome, he was filled with pride and arrogance. He resolved to begin his impious actions at home. For he put to death his son Crispus, stiled (as I mentioned) Caesar, on suspicion of debauching his mother-in-law45
Fausta, without any regard to the ties of nature. And when his own mother Helena expressed much sorrow for this atrocity, lamenting the young man's death with great bitterness, Constantine under pretence of comforting her, applied a remedy worse than the disease. For causing a bath to be heated to an extraordinary degree, he shut up Fausta in it, and a short time after took her out dead.

In the eighth century, the Passion ofArtemius records a similar story, embellishing it with classical references:

Constantine did kill his wife Fausta-and rightly so, since she had imitated Phaedra of old, and accused his son Crispus of being in love with her and assaulting her by force, just as Phaedra had accused Theseus' son Hippolytus. And so according to the laws of nature, as a father he punished his son. But later he learnt the truth and killed her as well, exacting the most righteous penalty against her.46