Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (55 page)

7Eusebius Life 1.28.

BLactantius Death 44.

'See below, chapter 5. For a discussion of Zosimus and his influence on later writers, see Francois Paschoud, "Zosime 2,29 et la version paienne de la conversion de Constantin," Historia 20, nos. 2/3 (1971): 334-53.

"Jacob Burckhardt, The Age of Constantine the Great, trans. Moses Hadas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 296.

"James Carroll, Constantine's Sword.- The Church and the Jews (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), p. 181.

12Ramsay MacMullen, Constantine (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 74-77.

13John Howard Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution, ed. Theodore J. Koontz and Andy Alexis-Baker (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009), p. 58, says no.

14Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 188, calls him a "very vision-prone emperor." Weiss, "Vision," n. 68, argues that the vision of Apollo was the same as the cross vision.

"Panegyric 6.21.4-6, in In Praise ofLater Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini, ed. and trans. C. E. V. Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rodgers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 248-50.

16John Helgeland has emphasized that the Roman army was a religious institution as well as an instrument of power politics. See his "Roman Army Religion," ANRW 2.16.1 (1978); and "Christians in the Roman Army from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine," ANRW 2.23.1 (1979).

17A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 25.

"Again, the alternative is to suppose cynicism on a colossal scale and is historically incredible because it supposes that Constantine thought about war in a way that no other fourth-century Roman would think about war. The Philistines were acting in perfect accord with ancient custom when they seized Yahweh's ark and placed it in the temple of Dagon following the battle of Aphek (1 Samuel 4-6).

190n this, see Charles Matson Odahl, "God and Constantine: Divine Sanction for Imperial Rule in the First Christian Emperor's Early Letters and Art," Catholic Historical Review 81 (1995): 3. Elliott, Christianity of Constantine, argues that we have no need for the story of Constantine's conversion because he was raised as a Christian. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, pp. 73, 75, points out that Constantine already had Hosius (Ossius) in his court before 312.

20Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 109; David H. Wright, "The True Face of Constantine the Great," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 493-507; and Christer Bruun, "The Thick Neck of the Emperor Constantine: Slimy Snails and `Quellenforschung,' " Historia 44 (1995). Patrick Bruun, "Portrait of a Conspirator: Constantine's Break with the Tetrarchy," Arctos, n.s., 10 (1976), argues that Constantine's coins show a break with the ideology of the Tetrachy as early as 310, with his adoption of Sol invictus as patron deity and with his emphasis on his Claudian descent.

21Bruun, "Thick Neck," pp. 459-80.

22Raymond Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 96.

23Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, pp. 82-83, notes that the arch was constructed by the Senate and dedicated some years after 312, by which time Constantine's Christian inclinations would have been clear. He argues that the ambiguity of the inscription is evidence that the Senate acknowledged the emperor was a Christian.

24This paragraph summarizes Linda Jones Hall, "Cicero's insinctu divino and Constantine's instinctu divinitatis: The Evidence of the Arch of Constantine for the Senatorial View of the `Vision' of Constantine," Journal ofEarly Christian Studies 6, no. 4 (1998).

2'Odahl, "God and Constantine," p. 3. By contrast, Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, pp. 83-84, 87, concludes that Constantine remained a syncretist of sorts for some time, devoted to both Sol and the Christian God. He had attributed his conquests in the Rhine in 310 to Sol (MacMullen, Constantine, p. 70). Patrick Bruun, "The Christians Signs on the Coins of Constantine," Arctos, n.s. 3 (1962), examines the Christian symbolism of the coins.

27Later in his reign, Constantine employed pagan deities in much the same way as medieval Renaissance artists. See Jean Seznec, The Survival ofthe Pagan Gods (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1995).

2'Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 195-97, highlights the importance of the ambiguity. Drake argues that this indicates Constantine's effort to form "the most broadly based coalition possible" (p. 196), but in making this point he mistakenly minimizes the preferential treatment Constantine gave to Christianity and the force of the legal impediments he placed on paganism. See chapter 9, below.

26Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 168.

29Andreas Alfoldi, The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome, trans. Harold Mattingly. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1948), p. 40.

3oWeiss, "Vision of Constantine," pp. 247-50. Weiss's reconstruction is endorsed in Timothy D. Barnes, "Constantine After Seventeen Hundred Years: The Cambridge Companion, the New York Exhibition and a Recent Biography," International Journal of the Classical Tradition 14 (2008; but I am relying on an unpublished 2007 version of this review essay generously provided by the author). Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, p. 85, also suggests a sun halo.

31Patrick Bruun, "The Disappearance of Sol from the Coins of Constantine," Arctos, n.s. 2 (1958). Weiss makes this connection by claiming that the appearance of Apollo mentioned by the panegyric of 310, when Constantine was marching between Massilia to the Rhine frontier, is the same as the cross-vision.

32Eusebius reports that the phrase "in this conquer" was "written," but the verb can mean "signify" or "mean."

33Google "sun halo" for some striking images.

34Weiss, "Vision of Constantine," p. 250.

35lbid., pp. 250-56.

36See the very sharp discussion of models of conversion in Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 187-89.

37 Ibid., p. 187.

38Ibid., p. 191.

39Zosimus New History 2.

40See Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 282, for a publishing history of Zosimus; Voltaire, "Arianism," in PhilosophicalDictionary, Volume 1, available online at Google Books.

41Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, pp. 245, 261, 292-93. Burckhardt's analysis of Constantine needs to be historicized. It was a response to the state-building thugs of his own time as much as historical analysis of Constantine and his era, and imposes what Drake calls the "conceptual anachronism" of secular politics onto a fourth-century emperor for whom religion and politics are inseparable (see Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 13-18; Timothy D. Barnes, "Constantine, Athanasius and the Christian Church," in Constantine: History, Historiography and Legend, ed. Samuel Lieu and Dominic Montserrat (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 8-9.

43Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003), pp. 231-34.

42Carroll, Constantine's Sword, p. 182.

44Craig A. Carter, Rethinking Christ and Culture: A PostChristendom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), pp. 81-82, 86. In a later chapter I will explore the irony that Constantine is condemned both for imposing religion on an unwilling populace and for failing to be explicitly Christian.

"Norman H. Baynes (Constantine the Great and the Christian Church, Raleigh Lecture on History [London: Humphrey Milford, 1929]) bases his similar conclusion on a survey of Constantine's own writings.

46Eusebius Life 1.19.

47Ibid., 1.32; 4.17.

48Depending on your angle of vision, you can call this "betting on the winning horse," or you can call it a healthy fear of God. Given the religious instincts that Constantine showed even before becoming a Christian, it is as likely the latter as the former. And the simple faith is a biblical one: my summary above-God destroys those who destroy his temple-comes from Paul (1 Cor. 3:17), no simpleton.

49Repoliticizing Constantine is one of the central themes of Drake, Constantine and the Bishops. Unfortunately, Drake regularly falls back into a religious-political dichotomy that he recognizes was not available in the fourth century. He claims, for instance, that Constantine's efforts to reform the judicial system were part of a social program rather than an effort to secure the triumph of the church, but in this he fails to recognize that the social program was itself religiously motivated. As Drake himself knows, there was little support within Roman social or religious life for the kind attention that Constantine showed toward to humiliores.

"Johannes Roldanus, The Church in the Age of Constantine: The Theological Challenges (London: Ashgate, 2006), p. 37. He notes (p. 41) that after Constantine the traditional religions no longer guaranteed the Empire's salus, since "this vital function was from now on assigned to the Christian religion."

"Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, p. 73, notes that Christians were such a minority that favoring them brought little immediate political advantage.

52Optatus Against the Donatists.

"Ibid., 4.42.

"Ibid. MacMullen (Constantine, p. 111) doubts that the letter is wholly from Constantine.

54Eusebius Life 2.64-72.

56Augustine City of God 19.21. See Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

17This is one of Yoder's central charges against the "Constantinian church," and it was true of some Christians in Constantine's time. But it was most true for a brief moment in the early fourth century. As I argue throughout this book, what happened in the early fourth century, insofar as it fits Yoder's paradigm at all, was more a "Constantinian moment" than a "Constantinian shift."

"Quoted in Baynes, Constantine the Great, pp. 27-28.

59Eusebius Life 3.12.

60Quoted in Baynes, Constantine the Great, p. 27.

61Drake, in Constantine and the Bishops, goes too far in claiming that Constantine aimed to articulate an "inclusive" Christianity with a low bar to the entry of pagan monotheists.

67Eusebius Church History 1.9.

68The testing comes from later tradition: a piece of each cross was touched to a corpse, which sprang to life when touched by the true cross's wood. Two versions of the story are available in Mark Edwards, trans., Constantine and Christendom (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003).

64Ibid., 2.46.

65Ibid., 2.64-72.

66Ibid., 3.17-20.

62Optatus Against the Donatists.

63Eusebius Life 4.35.

69The cross is so central to Constantine's piety that Carroll, Constantine's Sword, suggests that he virtually invented a cross-centered, and therefore anti-Semitic, Christianity.

77Ibid., 2.28; 4.9.

78Ibid., 1.41.

73Eusebius Life 4.36.

741bid., 2.4, 12, 14; 4.22.

751bid., 1.42-43; 2.13.

76Ibid., 2.29.

70Eusebius Oration 11.

71Eusebius Life 3.60.

72Eusebius Church History 1.9.

79Cf. Baynes, Constantine the Great, pp. 50-56. Baynes's doubts about the authenticity of the sermon were sufficient to keep him from using the text as evidence of Constantine's religious beliefs.

80H. A. Drake, "Suggestions of Date in Constantine's `Oration to the Saints,'" AmericanJournal of Philology 106, no. 3 (1985): 335; Timothy Barnes "The Emperor Constantine's Good Friday Sermon," Journal of Theological Studies 27 (1976): 414-23; M. J. Edwards, "The Arian Heresy and the Oration to the Saints," Vigiliae Christianae 49, no. 4 (1995); Edwards, Constantine and Christendom, pp. xvii-xxix; Bruno Bleckmann, "Ein Kaiser als Prediger: Zur Datierung der Konstantinischen `Rede an die Versammlung der Heiligen,' " Hermes 125 (1997). Barnes, "Constantine After Seventeen Hundred Years," claims that the "Oration" is today "universally accepted." Edwards, Constantine and Christendom, provides a lucid, heavily footnoted translation.

81The phrase is John Milbank's, but it expresses, I think, Constantine's point.

"Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to FourthCentury Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), argues that the fourth-century debates were debates about different notions of divine generation.

83Eusebius Life 4.10.

84The evidence is explored in Oliver Nicholson, "Constantine's Vision of the Cross," Vigiliae Christianae 54, no. 3 (2000).

85Van Dam, Roman Revolution, p. 285, links the interest in Palestine with Constantine's selfimage and his inclination toward Arianism.

881bid., p. 308.

"Ibid., p. 307.

"Ibid., pp. 307-8.

"Baynes, Constantine the Great, attends to Constantine's own writings and draws a similar conclusion, though he sets aside the "Oration to the Saints" because he doubts its authenticity.

90Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 275.

'Lactantius Death 34.

'Stephen Mitchell, "Maximinus and the Christians in A.D. 312: A New Latin Inscription," The JournalofRoman Studies 78 (1988): 113-14.

3David S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395, Routledge History of the Ancient World (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 365.

'Oliver Nicholson, "The `Pagan Churches' of Maximinus Daia andJulian the Apostate,"Journal ofEcclesiasticalHistory 45, no. 1 (1945): 4. Daia's reforms of the priesthood and his efforts to revive paganism are often compared to the later pagan revival of Julian, who drew his plans for reform from the church. Nicholson makes a compelling case against this interpretation, arguing that Daia's priests, though sincere in their paganism and their desire to eliminate Christianity, were political appointees who had little in common with Christian or Julianic priesthood.

6Mitchell, "Maximinus," p. 117; he cites Eusebius Church History 9.9.4.

5Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, pp. 364-65.

'In what follows I am particularly indebted to Timothy D. Barnes, "Constantine After Seventeen Hundred Years: The Cambridge Companion, the New York Exhibition and a Recent Biography," International, journal ofthe Classical Tradition 14 (2008). Simon Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government, AD 284-324, rev. ed., Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 189, also notes that the "edict" is not in fact an edict.