Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (52 page)

'Norman H. Baynes, Constantine the Great andthe Christian Church, Raleigh Lecture on History (London: Humphrey Milford, 1929).

'The Mennonite theologian and ethicist John Howard Yoder (1927-1997) was for many years the world's most prominent theological proponent of pacifism and was probably the most influential Mennonite theologian who ever lived. He studied at the University of Basel, Switzerland, under Karl Barth, Oscar Cullman, and other prominent theologians and philosophers, then taught at the Goshen Biblical Seminary (now called Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary) and later at the University of Notre Dame. He influenced theologians from many different traditions (most prominently Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University) and is responsible, more than any other American theologian, for the antirealist direction of contemporary Christian thought about politics. His most important book, The Politics ofJesus (1972), included an assault on the theological and ethical inconsistencies in the work of realist Reinhold Niebuhr.

'The notion of theology as a social science comes from John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). In contrast to many modern theologians who consider social science to be foundational for theology, Milbank argues that classical orthodoxy contains its own account of social and political life.

1Historia Augusta, selections available at . The Historia Augusta is unreliable, often fictional, but it does reflect a prevailing view of Diocletian's character. The Latin reads, "Virum insignem, callidum, amantem rei publicae, amantem suorum et ad omnia quae tempus quaesiverat tern- peratum, consilii semper alti, nonnumquam tarnen effrontis sed prudentia et nimia pervicacia motus inquieti pectoris comprimentis."

'Abridgement of Roman History, trans. John Selby Watson, available at . The Latin reads, "Diocletianus moratus callide fuit, sagax praeterea et admodum subtilis ingenii, et qui severitatem suam aliena invidia vellet explere."

'The information in the foregoing paragraph is from Jacob Burckhardt, TheAge of Constantine the Great, trans. Moses Hadas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

'For this stance, see David S. Potter, "Roman Religion," in Life, Death and Entertainment, ed. David S. Potter and D. J. Mattingly (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 148-49.

'Paula Fredricksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008), p. 89: "Cult, the ancients assumed, made gods happy; and when gods were happy, humans flourished. Conversely, not receiving cult made gods unhappy; and when gods were unhappy, they made people unhappy." Sacrifice was the central religious act in all ancient religions, and that includes the religions of the Greco-Roman classical world. On sacrifice in the Greek world, see Maria-Zoe Petroupoulou, Animal Sacrifice inAncient Greek Religion, Judaism and Christianity, 100 BC to AD 200 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) and Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); on Roman sacrifice, see George Heyman, The Power of Sacrifice: Roman and Christian Discourses in Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), and John Scheid, Quand faire, c'est croire: Les rites sacrificiels des Romains (Paris: Aubier, 2005).

6Lactantius Death 10; Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). Timothy D. Barnes ("Sossianus Hierocles and the Antecedents of the `Great Persecution,' " Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 80 [1976]: 245) says that this likely occurred in Antioch. A. H. M. Jones (Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978], p. 49) dates this incident to the previous year, 298.

7The date 297 is sometimes given, but Barnes ("Sossianus," pp. 247-50) argues in detail for the later date.

'Simon Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government, AD 284-324, rev. ed., Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 135-36.

'Quoted in Charles Matson Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire (London: Routledge 2004), p. 66.

10Quoted in Ramsay MacMullen, Constantine (London: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 22.

"Barnes, "Sossianus," p. 247.

12The notion that Christianity was unpatriotic is found in pagan apologists like Celsus and Porphyry. See Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 33.

I7Lactantius's description of Galerius's character is found in Death 9, and in 11 he attributes Galerius's anti-Christian bias to the influence of his mother.

I5Ibid., p. 21.

16Eusebius Life 2.51.

"Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, pp. 20-21.

14Ibid., p. 19.

18The most thorough study is P. S. Davies, "The Origin and Purpose of the Persecution of AD 303, journal ofTheological Studies 40, no. 1 (1989), which systematically eliminates all possible sources of Lactantius's information. H. A. Drake (Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000], pp. 142-44) suggests that Lactantius is employing a technique of ancient history writing by which writers "convey their own analyses through fictional speeches." Drake concludes that Diocletian was manipulated into beginning the persecution and that the failed sacrifice was "rigged." That may be, but first, Lactantius may have had access to court gossip, and second, even if he made up the specifics of the conference, he presumably had some grounds for describing the interplay of Augustus and Caesar in the way he did. David S. Potter (The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395, Routledge History of the Ancient World [London: Routledge, 2004], p. 338) wisely notes, however, that "conversations between important men, even in camera, have a way of becoming public knowledge."

"Raymond Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 244.

201bid., p. 243; Potter, Roman Empire, pp. 292-93.

21Ibid., 338.

22Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 19; Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire; Van Dam, Roman Revolution, 164.

25Details in Dioysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 2.74.

23 Van Dam, Roman Revolution, 146.

24Heyman, Power of Sacrifice, pp. 13, 47.

26G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). This is a crucial point, since it demonstrates the continuity between the church of the martyrs and the church under Constantine. Neither was an isolated ghetto community; if Christians had been isolated, they would have been left alone.

"Johannes Roldanus, The Church in the Age of Constantine: The Theological Challenges (London: Ashgate, 2006), p. 30; Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, p. 21.

28G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, "Aspects of the `Great' Persecution," in Harvard Theological Review 47, no. 2 (1954): 75-76, and Potter, Roman Empire, p. 337, both summarize the contents of the first decree.

29Corcoran, Empire of the Tetrarchs, 179-82; Simon Corcoran, "Before Constantine," in The Cambridge Companion to theAge of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 52; Roldanus, Church in the Age of Constantine, p. 30; Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 69; Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope, pp. 50-51; Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 164. Eusebius (Church History, 8.14.9) mentions a fifth edict of 309, issued by Maxinimus in the East, to revitalize paganism by rebuilding temples, appointing priests, and requiring sacrifice (cf. Corcoran, Empire ofthe Tetrarchs, pp. 185-86).

32Drake (Constantine and the Bishops, p. 114) links Valerian's defeat and the cessation of persecution, as does Barnes ("Sossianus," p. 241).

33Eusebius, Church History, 8.6.4.

30The phrase is from de Ste. Croix, "Aspects," p. 105.

31Corcoran, "Before Constantine," p. 36.

36Quoted in MacMullen, Constantine, p. 27.

34Ibid.

35Ibid., 8.12.9.

"Assuming that Eusebius records every martyr in Syria Palaestina, de Ste. Croix concludes that ninety were executed in that province ("Aspects," p. 101) and generally estimates that "dozens or scores rather than hundreds" were put to death (p. 102).