Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (21 page)

There was much to anticipate, including an appearance of the emperor himself. First three members of his family entered, then a few others, Constantine's friends in the faith. There was no show of force, no soldiers or bodyguard. A signal was given, and the bishops stood as the emperor entered, tall, dignified, vigorous, serenely confident, clothed in a purple robe so glittering with jewels and gold that he looked to the giddy Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, like an angel of God. His downcast eyes, the faint blush on his cheek, and his carriage, however, all expressed to Eusebius his humility and faith. Constantine moved to the end of the row of seats and stood waiting. A low chair of gold was brought, but he sat only
after being invited by the bishops.3
Later accounts embellish this as well, claiming that Constantine waited to sit until all the bishops had sat down first.

Augustus had shown a similar deference to the Senate, and every other successful emperor knew the arts of humility.4
Constantine was a master of imperial protocol, and his unwillingness to sit before being invited was the first of many consummate political acts performed at the council, several of them calculated to demonstrate that he, the emperor, had changed sides, no longer a persecutor but a friend of martyrs. He kissed the empty eye-sockets of an aged victim of the Great Persecution. When the bishops entered the banquet hall for the vicennalia, they walked through a gauntlet of bodyguards and troops with drawn swords, but knew they could pass without fear to the emperor's own table, where they could recline to feast as if they were in Christ's kingdom itself.'
Had the word been current, they would have described the experience as "surreal."

The opening ceremonies of the council of Nicaea focus a central aspect of the Constantinian question: "What chair should the Emperor occupy at the Council?"6
He was, after all, no bishop. He was not even baptized. Councils had previously been reserved for clergy: by what right did Constantine appear here at all, much less in a golden chair? And that question immediately raises others. From what we can tell from the sources, there were no protests. Why not? Did no one see the anomaly of an unbaptized emperor sitting in on a church council? And what exactly did Constantine do from that golden chair? Did he force decisions on the bishops? Did he threaten to renew persecutions? Did the bishops spend their time reading his reactions? Did he frown, and if so, how did the bishops respond when they saw a passing glower of imperial displeasure?

Though not officially a member of the church, Constantine played a
large role in theological disputes and church politics from the time he converted around 312 through the Arian crisis of the 320s and the aftermath of Nicaea (325) to the end of his life (337). For some writers, though, "large role" is a massive understatement; a more appropriate phrase would be "absolute authority over the entire church."7
He "supported, administered, and finally joined the church."'
In submitting to the control of the emperor, who regarded himself as something akin to a "common bishop,"9
the church and especially the bishops surrendered their independent status as shepherds and overseers of God's city and flock and became instead the religious arm of the empire, a Constantinian party at prayer.

For Craig Carter, this was Constantine's conscious intention. Constantine's main interest was in unifying the empire to achieve his political ambitions. To that end, he decreed religious freedom in the "Edict of Milan," but without any acknowledgment of the truth of Christianity or the reality of Jesus. He wanted to formulate a monotheistic civil religion to which both Christians and pagans could subscribe, a "vague monotheism" that downplayed Jesus and emphasized politically useful doctrines like "providence." It was to be a "respectable, rational religion"-a fourth-century version of gentry Deism.10
Along the way, he had to mute and muzzle the inherent exclusivism of Christianity so that it could be "coopted as the religious arm of the empire" and "absorbed" by the state. Church councils were part of Constantine's strategy. He "presided over" the Council of Nicaea and permitted discussion of the theological issues for a time, before "lowering the boom on the minority." Throughout, his "long-term plan" was to imitate Diocletian in his persecution of heretics. The only thing that had changed was the identity of the heretics. Carter faults the bishops for letting themselves be taken in by the plan as much as Constantine himself for forming it. They could have prohibited Constantine from attending the council, since he was unbaptized, but they feared that might lead to confrontation and persecution. They could have allowed him to
attend but not "dominate" the proceedings. They could have urged Constantine not to impose civil penalties on heretics. No one got the point, which is "that the emperor does not have the right to define Christian orthodoxy.""

Burckhardt likewise viewed Constantine as a meddler in ecclesiastical disputes. He indirectly influenced episcopal elections, and his prominence in councils affected the outcome because "many sought to discover his desires so that they might vote accordingly." He went so far as to reserve "for himself the right of approval, without which no conciliar decree was valid," and once the decree was approved, it "was raised to imperial law." At Nicaea, Constantine ended the debate by insisting "upon the questionable expression homoousios against the will of the majority," but when they saw where Constantine's wind was blowing, "the majority patiently submitted." Constantine went away from Nicaea with contempt for the bishops, who had "cringed before him." His utter indifference to theology turned out to be a political advantage. He could play now one side, now the other; his very "energetic interventions" were a frightful reminder of his power.12

I agree completely with critics to this extent: emperors have no right to define orthodoxy. The question is, did Constantine do that? Emperors have no business "dominating" church councils; but did he? Carter is right that it would be exceedingly odd for an unbaptized man, albeit an emperor, to "preside over" a church council; but did he?

Is Carroll right to say that he exercised "absolute authority" over the church? On the face of it, Carroll's is a remarkable claim. Does "absolute authority" mean that Constantine selected the bishop for every see, that he decreed the sermon texts for every preacher in the empire, that he was responsible for every act of discipline, that he signed every paycheck? If Constantine was exercising "absolute authority," why did he call those councils in the first place? Charitably, we can chalk Carroll's language up to sloppiness and possession by the demon of polemic (the very spirit I am currently indulging). The softer claim would be that Constantine exer cised final authority in the church. But we still must ask, did he?

Burckhardt's assessment of Constantine's role at Nicaea-" insisting" on homoousios and cowing the majority into submission-is as unfounded as Carroll's claims. Both rest on the same evidence, which is to say, on nothing. Eusebius left us an account of the council, which he attended, but he provided very little information about the course of debates and motivations of the participants, and certainly no transcript. Burckhardt's suggestion that Constantine grew to despise the obsequiousness of the bishops sits uneasily with the emperor's stated belief that "whatever is determined in the holy assemblies of the bishops is to be regarded as indicative of the Divine will."13
We may call Constantine cynical, but as I argued in chapter four, such towering cynicism is highly implausible.

Equally implausible is Carter's hint that Constantine or the bishops would have been better off to pursue a separation of church and state. As we saw in the last chapter, Constantine did in fact follow a policy of tolerant concord. Beyond that, no one in the fourth century would have thought that a political regime could function without religious sanction, and it is naive to think that Constantine's conversion would have instantly turned him into James Madison. The conclusions of chapter one are especially relevant here: The question is, what were Constantine's historical options in the fourth century? What were the constraints on his action? What, perhaps more important, were the limits of his imagination? Only when we have considered those questions are we capable of doing justice to Constantine's interventions in church politics.

Constantine was a very skilled politician'14
and he had definite preferences, strategies, goals. As we saw in chapter four, his understanding of Christianity was inherently political, structurally similar to Diocletian's Tetrarchic political theology: right worship of the Christian God would ensure the prosperity and peace of Rome, and right worship demanded the unity of the church. Much of what he attempted and did was experimental, pursued in fits and starts and not in a single grand strategy. If he had a grand aim, it was to unify the church, and he employed myriad tactics to achieve that end. He had to experiment, because neither he nor any other emperor had ever encountered anything like the church:

The Church could never be simply the religious department of the respub- lica, as the old religion had been. The Church had its own officers, the clergy, who were absolutely distinct from the officers of the state. It accepted the authority of sacred writings and of traditions which were not part of Graeco-Roman civilization.... The weekly services, sermons, the discipline of penance, and religious instruction offered the clergy means of indoctrination which had no precedent. . . . The incorporation of the Church involved a fundamental transformation of Roman institutions, with consequences that were bound to be very great indeed
is

Constantine was not, besides, the only one with an agenda.16
He was not capable of simply imposing his will on the bishops, even if he had wanted to, and there are clear signs that he did not want to. Bishops had wills too.

It was a gesture, but Constantine knew it would be a meaningful one: Constantine refused to take a place in the council until invited. So we must ask not only what Constantine intended and did but what the bishops thought he, and they, were doing. Polemics about "Constantinianism" focus, rightly, less on Constantine himself than on the question of the church's accommodation to power. Just as we must ask whether Constantine did the things he is charged with doing, we must also ask whether the bishops did in fact bend to Constantine. How craven were they? Though the issues in these disputes were not directly to do with the relation of the church and empire, that was among the underlying concerns in both cases. Through disputes about traditores, Christology and Easter, and through less known but historically important disputes about murders, offended widows and broken chalices, the church was hashing through the Constantinian question: Should he sit at the council? If so, where?

CONSTANTINE AND THE DONATISTS

The Arian controversy is the most famous theological contest in which Constantine intervened, but it was not the first.17
He had no sooner con
quered Maxentius (312) and become the sole Western Augustus than the Donatist schism was placed before him for adjudication. He might have known something of the controversy before this, but it came sharply to his attention as word spread that the Western emperor had started painting the Chi-Rho on his helmet and shields.
18

The origins of the controversy were disputed. At one extreme is the account of the anti-Donatist Optatus of Milevus. According to his reconstruction, written in Numidia during the 360s and 370s, it all started with ambition, avarice and, of course, a humiliated woman. During the Diocletian persecution, Bishop Mensurius of Carthage was arrested and taken to Rome for harboring a fugitive deacon, Felix, who was wanted by the Roman authorities. Before leaving, Mensurius left some church property in the hands of certain "seniors," Botrus and Celestius, for safekeeping, but he died before returning to his see. Borus and Celestius wanted to keep the treasure-hence the avarice. Meanwhile, Botrus and Celestius wanted to be leaders in the church and hoped that one or the other would succeed Mensurius-hence the ambition. Avarice and ambition make a heady mixture: when the archdeacon Caecilian was chosen instead, their hopes were dashed, and when Caecilian asked for the return of the valuables, Botrus and Celestius refused and broke communion with the church at Carthage, allying in the meantime with a widow, Lucilla. She had her own reasons for hating Caecilian, since as archdeacon he had severely rebuked her for kissing a bone during the Eucharist, charging that she preferred bones to the life-giving bread and wine-hence the humiliated and vindictive woman. Botrus and Celestius, of course, had to invent some pretext for opposing Caecilian, and their rationale was that he had been ordained by Felix of Abthungi, a traditor, one who was guilty of handing
over (traditio) sacred books during the Diocletian persecution.'9
Felix had been defiled by his unfaithfulness, and all his episcopal acts were nullified.

The Donatists themselves told a different story. Caecilian, they claimed, not only had been illegitimately ordained but had been disqualified by his treatment of confessors during the persecution. Instead of supporting imprisoned Christians, the Abitinian martyrs, he had interfered with family members who attempted to bring them food and drink. He was virtually a persecutor himself.20

Whatever the precise origins of the conflict, it reflected sharp differences in Christian responses to the persecution. Some were so eager to join the martyred saints that they provoked persecution, while others, such as Mensurius, urged caution and warned the faithful not to break the laws or be unnecessarily disruptive. He not only considered some martyrs unwise but charged, in a letter to Secundus, that some sought martyrdom to escape debts, to absolve themselves of sin or to gain a reputation for Christian heroism. Mensurius admitted that he handed some books over to the authorities, but he said they were heretical writings and not copies of the Bible. That, he thought, was shrewd. Others disagreed-Secundus of Tigisis, the leading bishop of Numidia, for one. He had refused to give the Romans anything and had suffered in prison as a result.2'
How could Mensurius look him in the eye? When the persecution ended, these differences showed up in disputes about traditores. All sides agreed that traditores should be dismissed from office. The question had to do with the status of their actions between the time they were unfaithful and the time they were dismissed.22
Did their ordinations and baptisms "work"? Did baptisms and ordinations they had performed need to be redone? Did they need rebaptism?