Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (56 page)

'Barnes, "Constantine After Seventeen Hundred Years."

9Lactantius Death 48. Eusebius's version is in Church History 10.5.

10Hermann Dorries, Constantine and Religious Liberty, trans. Roland Bainton (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1960), p. 23. On the "edict" of Milan, Craig A. Carter, Rethinking Christ and Culture: APost-Christendom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), is a bundle of contradictions. He faults Constantine for establishing religious freedom without any explicit acknowledgment of the truth of Christianity (p. 80) but then complains that Constantine set the trajectory for the persecution of non-Christians and heretics (p. 96). He suggests that Constantine might have used his power "to promote religious liberty and increase respect for human life and dignity" (p. 96), but he has already told us that the edict accomplished the first. It is not at all clear what Carter wants: if Constantine's laws are explicitly Christian, he's a theocratic tyrant; if not, then he's promoting vanilla monotheism.

"For the prayer, see Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, p. 366.

"Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 63.

13potter, Roman Empire at Bay, p. 366.

14The history of this period is complicated and controversial, and what follows is a sketch of events. For a more thorough treatment, see Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, pp. 62-77; Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, pp. 364-66, 377-80. For Daia's role, see Nicholson, "Pagan Churches," pp. 1-10; Mitchell, "Maximinus," pp. 105-24.

"Charles Matson Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 162-64; A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 109. The Origo (5.14) claims that Constantine's aim was to set up a buffer (medius) between the two Augusti (Samuel N. C. Lieu and Dominic Montserrat, eds., From Constantine to fulian: Pagan and Byzantine Views -A Source History [London: Routledge, 1996], p. 45). Barnes (Constantine and Eusebius, pp. 66-67) claims that "chronology suggests a cynical view of Constantine's conduct." Constantine's initial aim in offering Bassianus as a Caesar was to head off Licinius's attempts to put his own infant son in that position. Once Constantine had his own child, Bassianus was a rival rather than an ally, both "expendable, and vulnerable." Whatever Bassianus's follies, Barnes suggests, the charges against him bear too much resemblance to the charges against Maximian to be taken seriously. Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, p. 377, tells a similar story.

161 am dependent primarily on Barnes, Constantine andEusebius, p. 67. See also Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, pp. 164-65; Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, pp. 377-78.

"Ramsay MacMullen, Constantine (London: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 132.

"Jacob Burckhardt, TheAge of Constantine the Great, trans. Moses Hadas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 279-80.

19This information is taken from Eusebius's Proofofthe Gospel and summarized by Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, pp. 71-72. Accounts of martyrs under Licinius are almost universally regarded as fictions. Potter (Roman Empire at Bay, p. 378) goes so far as to say that there is no evidence that Licinius was hostile to Christians at all. Barnes (Constantine andEusebius, p. 70) argues instead that Licinius "drifted from toleration of Christianity to implicit disapproval, and finally toward active intolerance."

20Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 174. Odahl also credits the claims that there were some martyrs in eastern Anatolia during 323-324 and says that it was on this basis that Christians came to regard Licinius as a tyrant and "savage beast" who plunged his territories into "the darkness of a gloomy night."

21Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, p. 163.

22Many historians see Constantine as the instigator of this conflict, but Odahl (Constantine and the Christian Empire, pp. 174-75) argues that Licinius, not Constantine, provoked the final showdown by initiating the persecution of Christians in the Eastern Empire.

23Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, p. 379.

24Both sources quoted in T. G. Elliott, The Christianity of Constantine the Great (Scranton, Penn.: University of Scranton Press, 1996), pp. 127-28, 131.

25Eusebius Life 2.3.

26MacMullen, Constantine, pp. 134-35.

27Ibid., 2.4-19.

2$MacMullen, Constantine, p. 135; Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, p. 112. Odahl (Constantine and the Christian Empire, pp. 176-77) describes it as a religious war.

29Drake, Constantine and the Bishops. Drake is correct that Constantine did not impose Christianity or completely suppress paganism and that he established a form of religious toleration. As I argue below, however, Drake overstates his case, and besides that, elements of Drake's analysis are self-contradictory. On the one hand, he argues that Constantine's religious beliefs should not be confused with his policy decisions (p. 200), yet a few pages later he argues, on the basis of Constantine's religious policy, that the emperor tried to secure "a definition of Christianity which would include a broader array of Roman beliefs" (p. 205), and later argues that Constantine saw "Christianity in broadly inclusive terms" (p. 242) and that he "favored an umbrella faith of compromise and inclusion" (p. 306). But these are policy decisions, and Drake has warned us against attempting to read the emperor's religious beliefs from policy. Constantine did not offer a definition of Christianity at all; that was something he rightly left to the bishops. Rather, he sought a policy that both expressed his support for the church and the God of Christianity and also honored the humanity of pagans. Drake's formulation on p. 315 is more accurate: Constantine adopted as "conscious policy to achieve Christian objectives by concentrating on the broad areas on which Christians and at least educated, monotheistic pagans could agree."

3oLactantius Divine Institutes 49, quoted in Andreas Alfoldi, The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome, trans. Harold Mattingly (Oxford: Clarendon, 1948), p. 53; cf. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 211.

"Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 108.

32Lactantius Divine Institutes 5.20; see Digeser, Making ofa Christian Empire, pp. 57-60.

34A1fo1di, Conversion of Constantine, p. 64.

3"A11 the details are in ibid.

"Chaim Wirszubski, "Libertas" as a Political Idea at Rome During the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950).

36Alfoldi (ibid.) makes the case for this policy very effectively and concisely. The inscription is in ibid., p. 83. He reconstructs the Latin as "Hoc salutari signo ... senatui populoque Romano et urbi Romae iugo tyrannicae dominationis ereptae pristinam libertatem splendoremque reddidi."

37Eusebius Life 2.56.

38The whole edict comes from Eusebius Life 2.48-60. See also Corcoran, Empire ofthe Tetrarchs, p. 189, for Constantine's treatment of public and private divination.

"Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, pp. 247-49. Drake quotes the phrase "bearable evil" from Friedhelm Winkelmann. See also Raymond Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 31: "Both Christians and pagans seemed to recognize that Constantine was quite tolerant in religious matters."

40Dorries, Constantine and Religious Liberty, pp. 37-39.

41John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiologicaland Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 254.

42H. A. Drake, "Constantine and Consensus," Church History 64 (1995): 7.

43Theodoret Ecclesiastical History 1.14.

44Paul Veyne, Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism, trans. Brian Pearce (New York: Penguin, 1990), p. 362. Veyne is the chief source on imperial euergetism.

45Mark J. Johnson, "Architecture of Empire," in The Cambridge Companion to theAge of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 278-97.

46Charles Freeman, The Closing ofthe Western Mind: The Rise ofFaith and the Fall ofReason (New York: Vintage, 2002).

47Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed., A Documentary History ofArt, vol. 1, The Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 294.

48 Quoted in R. Ross Holloway, Constantine and Rome (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 37, 48.

49Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, chap. 7.

"Jas' Elsner, "Perspectives in Art," in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 255-77, esp. 272.

51This entire paragraph is dependent on Tonio Holscher, The Language ofImages in Roman Art, trans. Anthony Snodgrass and Annemarie Kunzl-Snodgrass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). The quotation comes from p. 58, and photos of different depictions of Bacchus are found on pp. 66-68.

"Holloway, Constantine and Rome, p. 49.

"See chapter 1.

"Nancy H. Ramage and Andrew Ramage, Roman Art, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ.: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2009), pp. 334-40, 355-57.

"See Holloway, Constantine and Rome, pp. 19-53; Mark Wilson Jones, "Genesis and Mimesis: The Design of the Arch of Constantine in Rome," Journal ofthe Society ofArchitecturalHistorians 59 (2000): 50-77; Jas Elsner, "From the Culture of Spolia to the Cult of Relics: The Arch of Constantine and the Genesis of Late Antique Forms," Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000). Dale Kinney (" `SPOLIA. DAMNATio' and `RENOVATIO MEMORIAE,' " Memoirs ofthe American Academy in Rome 42 [1997]: 117) attributes this conclusion to Hans Peter L'Orange.

16 See Kinney, "sPOLIA," pp. 117-48; see also Kinney, "Roman Architectural Spolia," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 145, no. 2 (2001): 138-61. Kinney ("sroLIA," pp. 118-20) argues that the term itself is an anachronistic projection of modern standards of artistry, and provides evidence of pre-Constantinian spolia at pp. 124-26, 134.

57Elsner, "From the Culture of Spolia," p. 154.

"Jones, "Genesis and Mimesis," p. 70.

59Elsner, "From the Culture of Spolia," makes this connection and links it to literary habits of the time, as well as to the cult of the saints. My student Lisa Beyeler offered the same analogy of spolia and typology.

60Holloway, Constantine and Rome, pp. 21-25; Jones, "Genesis and Mimesis," pp. 69-70.

61Jones, "Genesis and Mimesis," pp. 70-71.

62Ibid., p. 70, quotes Jose Ruysschaert's "masterful remark" that "the arch is pagan for that which it says, Christian for that which it doesn't."

63Ibid., pp. 50, 69.

64Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, p. 383.

65Eusebius Life 3.48.

661bid., 3.49.

67Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, Pelican History of Art, 3rd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1979), p. 72, notes that the city today has few remains of the original Constantinian constructions.

68A general discussion of the founding and adornment of Constantinople is found in Gilbert Dagron, Naissance dune capitale: Constantinople et ses institutions de 330 a 451, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1984), pp. 13-47.

71Ibid., pp. 43-47.

72R. P. C. Hanson, "The Christian Attitude to Pagan Religions up to the Time of Constantine the Great," ANRW 23 (1980): 968.

'Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, p. 384.

69Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, pp. 72-73.

70Dagron, Naissance dune capitale, p. 26.

'Holloway, Constantine and Rome, chap. 3.

75Gregory T. Armstrong, "Imperial Church Building and Church-State Relations, A.D. 313363," Church History 36, no. 1 (1967): 7. Thanks too to my student Lisa Beyeler for a helpful conversation on this point.

'Ibid., p. 8, points out that Constantine's buildings were selective, often erected in order to embody a Christian conquest of a pagan site.

77Sozomen Ecclesiastical History 2.4. On Constantine's building at Mature, see Van Dam, Roman Revolution, pp. 301-2.

78Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, pp. 41-42. There is evidence that the few pre-Constantinian church buildings were also basilicas.

79Richard Krautheimer, "The Constantinian Basilica," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 21 (1967): 122.

801bid., p. 125.

81lbid., pp. 123-24.

84For detailed discussion of particular churches, see Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, pp. 39-70; for churches in Rome, Holloway, Constantine and Rome.

82Ramage and Ramage, Roman Art, p. 354.

83Krautheimer, "Constantinian Basilica," p. 118.

"Gregory T. Armstrong, "Constantine's Churches: Symbol and Structure," Journal ofthe Society ofArchitecturalHistorians 33, no. 1 (1974): 6.

88Krautheimer, "Constantinian Basilica," p. 128.

86Quoted in Elsner, "Perspectives on Art," pp. 255-77, 266.

87Armstrong, "Constantine's Churches," pp. 13-14.

89Ibid., p. 121.

90Ibid., p. 129.

1R. P. C. Hanson, "The Christian Attitude to Pagan Religions up to the Time of Constantine the Great," ANRW 23 (1980): 969, notes that temples were closed that "encourage immoral practices" or "occupied ground specially holy to Christians." Yet "there was no general policy of closing temples." Pagan shrines, in fact, continued to be built during Constantine's reign (p. 970).

2We could follow a similar line of argument by examining Constantine's legislation regarding haruspication.

'Andreas Alfoldi, The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome, trans. Harold Mattingly (Oxford: Clarendon, 1948), arranges the evidence chronologically and concludes that Constantine's policies toward paganism became increasing repressive over time, especially in the final period of his reign (A.D. 330-37).

4Eusebius Life 2.45.

5The constitution of 341 appears in the Codex Theodosianus 16.10.2: "Contra legem divi prin- cipis parentis nostri et hanc nostrae mansuetudinis iussionem ausus fuerit sacrificia celebrare." Quoted in Timothy D. Barnes, "Constantine's Prohibition of Pagan Sacrifice," American Jour- nalofPhilology 105 (1984): 71.