The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (3 page)

The factual story of Constantine's Italian campaign and his overthrow of Maxentius can be quickly told. Crossing the Alps over the Mont-Cenis pass, he took Susa - the first town of any importance that lay on his route - by storm, refusing however to allow his soldiers their normal rights of plunder and pillage. They were, he told them, not conquerors but liberators. Outside Turin, the going was a good deal harder: Maxentius's army here included a number of units of
clibinarii,
horsemen who, together with their mounts, were heavily armed and armoured in a manner which was probably derived from the Persians and which, a thousand years later, was to be imitated and developed in medieval chivalry. But even they were obliged to yield as groups of Constantine's strongest men advanced upon them, swinging huge iron-bound clubs at shoulder height; and when they retreated in disorder to the city walls the citizens refused to open the gates to let them in. So Turin fell; then Milan; then - though only after heavy fighting - Brescia and Verona. Constantine continued his eastward drive as far as Aquileia, not far short of Trieste; only there did he turn, swinging back through Ravenna and Modena and southward towards Rome.

Throughout the long advance, Maxentius had remained in his capital - where, according to most of the Christian and even one or two of the pagan historians, he spent his time in ever more revolting occult practices: casting spells, calling up devils, even sacrificing unborn babies in his efforts to avoid his approaching fate. Such stories can be largely discounted; for all his faults, Maxentius had never lacked courage. Given his trusted Praetorian Prefect Ruricus Pompeianus and several excellent provincial generals (although, sadly for him, none of them proved as good as Constantine) his decision to stay in Rome had been, strategically, a perfectly sound one. But now, with Constantine's army approaching and Pompeianus killed in battle, he took personal command and marched out of the city with the last, and best, of his reserves.

The two armies met on
28
October
312
- the seventh anniversary of Maxentius's seizure of power - at Saxa Rubra, the 'red rocks' on the Via
Flaminia some seven or eight miles north-east of Rome, where the little river Cremera flows into the Tiber;
1
and it was here, as later legend has it, just before or perhaps even during the battle, that Constantine experienced his famous vision. As Eusebius describes it:

...
a most marvellous sign appeared to him from heaven, the account of which it might have been difficult to receive with credit, had it been related by any other person. But since the victorious Emperor himself long afterwards declared it to the writer of this history when he was honoured with his acquaintance and society, and confirmed his statement by an oath, who could hesitate to accredit the relation, especially since the testimony of after-time has established its truth? He said that at about midday, when the sun was beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription Conquer by This
(Hoc Vince).
At this sight he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also.
2

Inspired, it is said, by so unmistakable an indication of divine favour, Constantine routed the army of Maxentius, driving it southward to where the Tiber takes a sharp turn to the west and is crossed by the old Milvian Bridge.
3
Next to this bridge - which was extremely narrow - Maxentius had constructed another on pontoons, over which he could if necessary make an orderly retreat and which could then be broken in the middle to prevent pursuit. Over this his shattered army stampeded, the soldiers now fleeing for their lives, Constantine's men hard on their heels. They might still have escaped, had not the engineers in charge of the bridge lost their heads and drawn the bolts too early. Suddenly the whole structure collapsed, throwing hundreds of men into the fast-flowing water. Those who had not yet crossed made blindly for the old stone bridge, now their only chance of safety; but, as Maxentius had known, it was too narrow. Many were crushed to death, others fell and were trampled underfoot, still others were flung down by their own comrades into the river below. Among the last was the usurper himself, whose body was later found washed up on the bank. His severed head, stuck on a lance, was carried aloft before Constantine as he entered Rome in triumph the following day. Later it was sent on to North Africa as a warning. Meanwhile the name of Maxentius was erased from all public monuments, just as his conqueror's had been in the previous year.

*

i The site is now known as Grotta Rossa.
De Vita Constant
ini,
1,
28.

Ii
Originally built in 109
bc
, the Pontc Milvio still stands, though it has been many times rebuilt and restored - most recently by Pius IX in
1850
after Garibaldi had blown it up.

The Battle of the Milvian Bridge made Constantine absolute master of all Europe from the Atlantic to the Adriatic, from Hadrian's Wall to the Atlas. It also marked, if not his actual conversion to Christianity, at least the moment when he set himself up as a protector and active patron of his Christian subjects. Not only, during his two and a half months in Rome, did he generously subsidize from his private purse twenty-five already existing titular churches and establish several new ones; he also instructed his provincial governors to do likewise throughout his dominions. On his departure from the city he presented the newly elected Pope Melchiades with the old palace of the Laterani family on the Coelian Hill which the Empress Fausta - who had joined him soon after his arrival - had occupied during her stay. It was to remain a papal palace for another thousand years. Next to it he ordered the building, at his own expense, of the first of Rome's Constantinian basilicas, St John Lateran, still today the Cathedral Church of the city. Significantly, it was given an immense free-standing circular baptistery: there was to be a formidable increase in the rate of conversions during the years to come.
1
To what extent, therefore, did the vision of the Cross that the Emperor is said to have experienced near the Milvian Bridge constitute not only one of the decisive turning-points of his life - comparable to that experienced by St Paul on the Road to Damascus - but also, in view of its consequences, a watershed of world history? The question is not an easy one to answer, and before we can even attempt to do so we must ask ourselves another: what actually happened? The earliest version of the story is that of our second principal source for the period, the Christian scholar and rhetorician Lactantius who, having somehow survived the persecutions, was at about this time appointed by Constantine to be tutor to his son Crispus. Whether or not he was already a member of the imperial entourage, Lactantius would have had plenty of opportunities shortly afterwards to question the Emperor directly about what took place. Writing probably within a year or two of the event, he records:

Constantine was directed in a dream to cause
the heavenly sign
to be delineated on the shields of his soldiers, and so to proceed to battle. He did as he had been commanded, and he marked on their shields the letter X, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round at the top,
being the cypher of Christ.
2

i Constantino's baptistery no longer stands. Its present octagonal successor dates from the time of

Pope Sixtus III
(4}»-4o).

i Dt Mortibus Ptrseculorum,
Chap. xliv.

He says no more. We have no mention of a vision, only of a dream. There is not even any suggestion by this devout Christian apologist that the Saviour or the Cross ever appeared to the Emperor at
all. As for 'the heavenly sign
it was simply a monogram of
chi
(X) and
rh
o
(P), the first two Greek letters in the name of Christ, that had long been a familiar symbol in Christian inscriptions.

Perhaps more significant still is the fact that Eusebius himself makes no reference to either a dream or a vision in the account of the battle which he gives in his
Ecclesiastical History
of about
325.
It is only in his
Life
of
Constantine,
written many years later after the latter's death, that he produces the passage quoted above, following it up with a rather fuller version of Lactantius's story in which he tells how, on the night after the vision, Christ appeared to the Emperor in a dream and ordered him to have a standard made in the likeness of the sign that he had seen in the heavens, 'and to use it as a safeguard in all engagements with his enemies'. This, Eusebius tells us, Constantine did on the very next day. The result, which was known as the
labarum,
consisted of a cross fashioned from a gold-encrusted spear, surmounted by a wreath encircling the sacred monogram. When Eusebius saw it some years later a golden portrait of the Emperor and his children had been suspended, somewhat surprisingly, from the cross-bar.

What conclusions, then, are we to draw from all this? First, surely, that the vision of the Cross above the battlefield - that vision that we see endlessly depicted, on canvas and in fresco, in the churches and art galleries of the west - never occurred. Had it done so, it is unthinkable that there should not be a single reference to it in any of the contemporary histories until the
Life
of
Constantine.
The Emperor himself never seems to have spoken of it - except, apparently, to Eusebius - even on those occasions when he might have been expected to do so. Soon after his death, too, we find his son, Constantius II, being assured by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem that the sight of a cross, recently traced in the sky by meteors, was a greater grace even than the True Cross found by his grandmother Helena in the Holy Land; could the Bishop possibly have omitted to mention Constantine's vision had he known of it? Finally there is Eusebius's specific statement that 'the whole army . . . witnessed the miracle'. If that were true, 98
,000
men kept the secret remarkably well.

There can be little doubt, on the other hand, that at a certain moment shortly before the fateful battle the Emperor underwent some profound spiritual experience. Lactantius's bald account may well be substantially true; but experiences of this kind are not necessarily attended by such easily describable manifestations as dreams. There are indications that Constantine had been in a state of grave religious uncertainty since his execution of his father-in-law Maximian two years before, and was increasingly tending towards monotheism: after
310
his coins depict, in place of the old Roman deities, one god only - Helios or, as he was more generally known,
Sol Invictus,
the Unconquered Sun - of whom Constantine also claimed to have had a vision some years before, while fighting in Gaul. Yet this faith too - by now the most popular and widespread in the entire Empire - seems to have left him unsatisfied; Eusebius tells how, on his journey into Italy, knowing that he was shortly to fight the most important battle of his life - that on which his whole future career would depend - he prayed fervently for some form of divine revelation. No man, in short, was readier for conversion during that late summer of
312
than was Constantine; and it is hardly surprising that, up to a point at least, his prayers were answered.

If we accept this hypothesis Eusebius's story becomes a good deal easier to understand, revealing itself less as a deliberate falsehood than as a possibly unconscious exaggeration, and less the fault of the writer than that of the Emperor himself. Throughout his life, and particularly after the Milvian Bridge, Constantine cherished a strongly developed sense of divine mission. In later years this sense grew ever more pervading; what then could be more natural than that, looking back on the great events of his life as it neared its end, he should have allowed his memory to add a gentle gloss here and there? In his day the existence of miracles and heavenly portents was universally accepted; from the reflection that he could have had a vision and that, in the circumstances, he should have had a vision, it was but a short step to the persuasion that the vision had actually occurred. And Eusebius would have been the last person to cross-examine him.

One question, however, remains to be answered: how complete was Constantine's conversion? There is no doubt that from
312
onwards the Emperor saw himself as supreme guardian of the Christian Church, responsible for its prosperity and welfare; on the other hand his coins continued, at least until
324,
to depict him as a companion of the Unconquered Sun and - more significant even than this - he still jibbed at the prospect of his own baptism, which he was to continue to postpone until he lay on his deathbed a quarter of a century later. This reluctance may to some extent have been due to political considerations; he was anxious not to alarm those of his subjects who still clung to the old
gods. But he certainly did not hesitate to give mortal offence, during his stay in Rome, by refusing to take part in the traditional procession to the Capitol for the sacrifice to Jupiter.