Constantine I turn against Paganism

The Religious policies of Constantine the Great have been called "ambiguous and elusive." Born in 273 during the Crisis of the Third Century (AD 235–284), Constantine the Great was thirty at the time of the Great Persecution. He saw his father become Augustus of the West and then shortly die. Constantine spent his life in the military warring with much of his extended family, and converted to Christianity sometime around 40 years of age. His religious policies, formed from these experiences, comprised increasing toleration of Christianity, limited regulations against Roman polytheism with toleration, participation in resolving religious disputes such as schism with the Donatists, and the calling of councils including the Council of Nicaea concerning Arianism.Peter Brown, ''The Rise of Christendom'' 2nd edition (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2003) John Kaye characterizes the conversion of Constantine, and the Council of Nicea that Constantine called, as two of the most important things to ever happen to the Christian church.KAYE, John. Some account of the Council of Nicæa in connexion with the life of Athanasius. United Kingdom, n.p, 1853.

Historical background

Politics and persecution in Constantine's early years

Politics

The Crisis of the Third Century (AD 235–284), was a period of heavy barbarian invasions and migrations into Roman territory. According to Peter Brown, imperial Rome's system of government was an easy–going system which governed indirectly through the regional, local elites, and was not built to survive the strain of continuous invasions and civil wars. During this period of crisis, life in a "beleaguered superpower" included bankruptcies, political fragmentation and military losses. Constantine was born during this period in AD 273 and was raised a polytheist by his polytheist parents.Jonathan Bardill, Research Fellow in Byzantine Archaeology; Bardill, Jonathan. "Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age". United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

The third century crisis had begun with the assassination of Emperor Severus Alexander by his own troops in 235 which led to a 50-year long leadership crisis with at least 26 claimants to the title of emperor. By 268, the empire had split into three competing states. The crisis didn't end until Diocletian took the reins and implemented reforms in 284. He restructured the Roman government by establishing the Tetrarchy, a system with four men ruling jointly over an empire divided into two parts, East and West. Each part was headed by an Augustus who had a subordinate Caesar. Diocletian ruled as head Augustus in the East, from AD 284–305, with Maximian as Augustus in the West, AD 286–305. Diocletian established administrative capitals located closer to the empire's borders for each of the four Tetrarchs. These changes helped restore imperial power by the end of the third century.

While the Tetrarchy itself didn't last long, Jonathan Bardill says that it made some permanent changes to the empire. Government became more centralized around the imperial court as the only certain source of power and influence, and elites lost some of their wealth and status. Capital cities emerged in each region while other cities shrank. The cities were no longer as unique and different as they had been. The empire could no longer be seen as "a commonwealth of cities." Instead, what all cities had in common was ideology: a shared loyalty to the emperor and his followers.

Brown says that the empire became more intrusive into the personal lives of its subjects as it also became more committed to an ideological stance.

Persecution

This led to a suppression of Christianity that was more severe than any seen before and which took place on an empire-wide scale. On 24 February, AD 303, Diocletian issued the first of a series of edicts that rescinded Christians' legal rights and demanded compliance with traditional polytheistic religious practices. Christianity had existed for over 250 years; both the Church and the empire had changed in that time. The Church was no longer composed of tiny scattered groups. According to Peter Brown, it had become a 'universal church' that functioned as a "city within a city." There was a "Christian gentry" established in Asia Minor, and a developed hierarchy within the church, of leaders who were prominent in the Roman world of their day.

Persecution began with this leadership, forcing Christian bishops to participate in sacrifice to the traditional Roman gods or die. According to Norman H. Baynes, in the second year of the persecution, after the arrival of Urbanus as governor of Palestine, the imperial edict extending the order for sacrifice to the general public was then also published.

Known to Christians as the Great Persecution, Baynes says it had two phases. The first phase began with the issue of the First Edict in 303; the second phase began with the issue of the Fourth Edict, whose date and authorship are debated. David M. Potter says these edicts were enforced more in the East than in the West.

In addition to martyrdom, the First Edict also saw churches destroyed and demanded that the written scriptures and other Christian books be surrendered. At a time when the Emperor's law was seen as the divine source of order and peace, the Church claimed to possess its own universal divine law in the Christian scriptures, so the soldiers were sent out to confiscate and burn them. This is what scholars such as Maureen A. Tilley see as the cause of the Donatist schism. Donatists believed that every book of scripture was not just pen and ink, but was the physical manifestation of the Word of God, and that handing over the scriptures to be burnt, and handing over a martyr to die, were two sides of the same coin. Those who cooperated with the soldiers were, in the Latin, ''traditores'', which originally referred to "handing over", but came to mean: traitors. Thereafter, Donatists refused to allow ''traditores'' back into church leadership positions. The Donatists would later become a thorn in Constantine's side which lasted throughout his reign.

In 305, Diocletian decided to resign and he compelled Maximian to retire as well.Little, Charles Eugene. Cyclopedia of Classified Dates, with an Exhaustive Index ...: For the Use of Students of History .... United Kingdom, Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1899. Galerius was Diocletian's son-in-law; both he and Constantius I, who was Constantine's father, had previously both been adopted by Diocletian. They were accordingly appointed Augustii of the East and West, respectively, on 1 May AD 305.Hoeber, Karl. "Valerius Maximianus Galerius." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. 22 Jul. 2020 . Very soon after Diocletian stepped down, his successors began to struggle for control of the Roman Empire.

Family that divides together

Constantine and his father left Gaul and crossed into Britain to win a great battle over the Picts, but on 25 July 306, Constantine's father Constantius died in Eboracum (York). Afterwards, Constantine's father's troops proclaimed Constantine as Augustus in the West, and he agreed. However, Galerius didn't. Even though Constantine was the son of the Western Augustus Constantius, Diocletian had made a "rule" in 305 that sons should not follow their fathers in power. David Potter says stories circulating at the time said this was all part of the machinations of Galerius to prevent Constantine from becoming the senior emperor. The West at this time was still largely undeveloped. The military's support of Constantine forced Galerius as Augustus of the more developed and wealthier East, to recognize Constantine's claim, but only partially. Galerius appointed his own supporter Valerius Severus to the position of Augustus of the West, and proclaimed Constantine as Severus' subordinate Caesar.

Then, on 28 October 306, Maxentius, son of Maximian, declared himself Augustus of the West, holding Italy and living in Rome from AD 306–312. Maxentius summoned his father, Maximian, out of retirement for support. Maxentius was then declared a usurper, and Galerius ordered his co-Augustus, Severus, to dislodge Maxentius from Italy in early 307. Once Severus arrived in Italy, however, his army defected to Maxentius.Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981) Severus was captured and taken to the camp ''Tres Tabernae'' outside of Rome, where he either committed suicide, or was executed, in 307.

Galerius himself marched on Maxentius in Rome in the autumn of that year, but also failed to take the city. Constantine watched from Gaul and avoided conflict with both Maxentius and the Eastern emperors for most of this period. Constantine's holdings at this time were not much: mostly Britain, Gaul and Spain. Leithart says that, Constantine realized Galerius was an insecure foundation to build his future on, so Constantine made alliance with Maximian and Maxentius, sealing that alliance by marrying Maximian's daughter Fausta in the summer of AD 307.

In the spring of 308, Maximian attempted to depose his son, Maxentius, asking his former army to choose between father and son. They chose the son, and Maximian fled to his son-in-law Constantine.Coinage and History of the Roman Empire. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2016.Chapter 10

Galerius nephew and Caesar was Maximinus II, also known as, Maximinus Daia. After Severus' death, Maximinus expected to be raised to Augustus in his place and was bitterly disappointed in 308 AD, when at the Conference of Carnuntum, Licinius was declared Augustus of the West instead. In 310 AD, a bitter and disappointed Maximinus II allowed his troops to proclaim him Augustus. That makes five men with serious claims to the same position of Augustus in the West. The empire was in full out civil war.

Two claimants to the position of Augustus died in 310: The first was Alexander of Carthage who had proclaimed himself emperor in AD 308. Maxentius sent his praetorian prefect Rufius Volusianus to deal with Alexander who was subsequently taken prisoner and executed by strangulation. The next to die was Maximian, Constantine's father-in-law. In 310, Constantine deployed his father-in-law on a mission to Arles where Maximian proceeded to announce that Constantine was dead; then he declared himself emperor. Response wasn't what he hoped, and he fled to Marseilles, but Constantine force-marched his army there, and Maximian was caught and allowed, or ordered, to commit suicide. Constantine then broke off his alliance with his brother-in-law Maxentius and joined with Licinius who was to marry Constantine's sister, Constantia.

Peter Leithart points out that Constantine spent his life in the military, often fighting other Romans, who also happened to be members of his extended family. By the time Constantine's life ended, "he was responsible for the death of his father-in-law Maximian, his brother-in-law Maxentius, his sister's husband Licinius and their son, Constantine's nephew, his wife Fausta and her and Constantine's son Crispus, and a few other relatives."

Civil War

By 310, Galerius' health was failing and his power eroding. After his death in 311, the Balkan territories were quickly occupied by Licinius, while Maxentius obtained the populous and prosperous Asia Minor for himself to add to his holdings in Italy.

In the spring of 312, Constantine determined he needed to deal with Maxentius himself. Potter says scholars don't know who approached who, but Licinius and Constantine came to an agreement that appears to have involved mutual military support against Maxentius. While Licinius kept some of Maxentius' troops occupied in northern Italy, Constantine gathered an army of 40,000 soldiers and crossed the Alps heading toward Rome. According to Peter Leithart, Constantine met Maxentius' forces at Susa, Turin and Verona where he was victorious each time. According to T.Barnes, the praetorian prefect Ruricius Pompeianus, Maxentius' most senior general, was killed at Verona.Barnes, Timothy D. Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. "By October, Constantine was camped within sight of Rome, on the Tiber, near the Milvian Bridge."

Averil Cameron says Lactantius records that Constantine had a dream the night before battle where he was told to place the chi-rho (a symbol of Christ) on his soldiers' shields. Eusebius, however, makes no mention of such a vision. Eusebius compares the battle to the triumph of Moses over Pharaoh at the Rea Sea since Maxentius and his soldiers "sank as lead into the mighty waters" as the Book of Exodus says of Pharaoh. Bardill says the two armies met at the Saxa Rubra as Constantine approached the capitol from his camp. Maxentius' troops were forced back to the Tiber river where Maxentius had destroyed the bridge in hopes of trapping Constantine's troops. They would have been forced to cross the Tiber on the remaining pontoons, but it was Maxentius who was trapped instead. Maxentius drowned when the pontoons came apart.

According to Troels Myrup Kristensen, the day after the battle, Maxentius body was found and decapitated, and his head was paraded through the streets of Rome before being taken to Africa.

Conversion to Christianity

Nine years after Diocletian celebrated twenty years of stable rule with a smoking altar in the Roman Forum and the most severe persecution of Christians in the empire's history, the victorious Constantine I entered Rome and bypassed the altar on the capitol without offering sacrifice. According to Church historians writing after his death, Constantine had by then converted to Christianity, making him the first Christian Roman emperor. In his ''Oration to the Assembly of the Saints'' Constantine says he was not a child or a youth when he converted. Bardill says this is likely, as Constantine's parents were both polytheists; his mother was only persuaded to convert after Constantine had already done so. Bardill considers it likely Constantine converted some time between 310 and 315.

Brown calls Constantine's conversion a "very Roman conversion." "He had risen to power in a series of deathly civil wars, destroyed the system of divided empire, believed the Christian God had brought him victory, and therefore regarded that god as the proper recipient of ''religio.'' He did all of this without according ''religio'' to the traditional gods," and Brown says "this is how his subjects came to realize he was a Christian."

Brown says Constantine was over 40, had most likely been a traditional polytheist, and was a savvy and ruthless politician when he declared himself a Christian. His first step after conquering was to eclipse the memory of Maxentius, which he did by filling the center of Rome with monuments such as the Triumphal Arch and the Arch of Constantine. These monuments contain no reference to Christianity. However, in 312, Constantine ordered a statue of himself and Bardill quotes Eusebius as saying Constantine determined his statue should have "a trophy of the Savior's Passion to be set up beneath the hand of his own statue—indeed, he ordered them to place him in the most frequented spot in Rome, holding the saving sign in his right hand." Some time after 324, he wrote to the king of Persia, Shapur II: "Him I call upon with bended knee, shunning all abominable blood and hateful odors f pagan sacrifice"

Noel Lenski observes that the myth of Constantine being baptized by Pope Sylvester developed toward the end of the fifth century in a romantic depiction of Sylvester's life which has survived as the ''Actus beati Sylvestri papai'' (CPL 2235). Lenski says this story absolved the medieval church of a major embarrassment: Constantine's baptism by an Arian bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia, which occurred while on campaign to Persia. According to Hans Pohlsander and Noel Lenski, Constantine swung through the Holy Land with the intent of being baptized in the Jordan river, but he became deathly ill at Nicomedia where he was swiftly baptized. He died shortly thereafter on 22 May 337 at a suburban villa named Achyron.

Francis Opoku writes that, "Whilst some are of the opinion that Constantine‟s conversion was genuine, others think that his policies to support Christians were for political expediency." As a converted Christian, why did he still have the unconquered sun —''Sol Invictus''— on his coins? Why was he never a properly instructed catechumen? Why was he not baptized until he was on his death bed? Constantine's initial grasp of Christianity was shallow, but as time went on Opoku says, it does seem as though he came to see himself as God's appointed sovereign, rewarded with divine favor. According to Opoku, "It thus appeared that Constantine gained, rather than lost, his willingness to exchange the style and title of a god for that of God's vice-regent."

Constantine's religious beliefs and policies

In Peter J. Leithart's view, Constantine was "a sincere if a somewhat simple believer." He ended the persecution of Christians, restored confiscated property to the churches, and adopted a policy toward non-Christians of toleration with limits. "He did not punish pagans for being pagans, or Jews for being Jews, and did not adopt a policy of forced conversion." Pagans remained in important positions at his court. He outlawed the gladiatorial shows, destroyed temples and plundered more, and used forceful rhetoric against non-Christians. But he never engaged in a purge. Maxentius' supporters were not slaughtered when Constantine took the capital; Licinius' family and court were not killed. There were no pagan martyrs. Leithart says Constantine attributed his military success to God, and during his reign, the empire was relatively peaceful.

Paganism

Following the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine and his co-Augustus Licinius issued the Edict of Milan which granted religious toleration. The Edict protected all faiths from religious persecution, and allowed anyone to worship whichever deity they chose. According to H. A. Drake, much has been written from differing views on Constantine's religious policies, but "Constantine's commitment to unity in the church sone policy on which virtually all parties agree." Conflicting views only arise when the topic shifts to whether or not this unity included pagans. Drake says that Jacob Burckhardt characterized Constantine as being "essentially unreligious", using the Church solely to support his power and ambition. However, Drake goes on to say that "critical reaction against Burckhardt's anachronistic reading has been decisive." Burckhardt used a method rooted in the Reformation by choosing politics to question Constantine's religious conviction. According to Drake, this doesn't give an accurate view because politics is in everything and religion isn't determined by it.

Constantine never directly outlawed paganism. In the words of an early edict, he decreed that polytheists could "celebrate the rites of an outmoded illusion," so long as they did not force Christians to join them. In addition, there are accounts that indicate Constantine remained somewhat tolerant of the pagans. His provisions in the earlier Edict of Milan were restated in the Edict of the Provincials. Drake points out that this edict called for peace and tolerance: "Let no one disturb another, let each man hold fast to that which his soil wishes…" Constantine never reversed this edict. Drake contemplates whether Constantine may have been trying to create a society where the two religions were syncretized. However, Constantine also "assails pagan temples as 'temples of falsehood'," and denounces paganism as idolatry and superstition in the same document. Constantine and his contemporary Christians did not treat paganism as a living religion; it was defined as a ''superstitio''— an 'outmoded illusion.'

According to Burckhardt and his followers, being Christian automatically meant being intolerant; however, as Drake points out, that assumes a uniformity of belief within Christianity that does not exist in the historical record. Brown says that the church was never monolithic. In Drake's view, there are indications that Constantine did not convert to a belief in a church of a few pristine elect, but to a belief in Christianity as a "big tent" capable of containing different wings. Drake says the evidence indicates Constantine favored those who favored consensus, chose pragmatists over ideologues of any persuasion, and wanted peace and harmony "but also inclusiveness and flexibility." In his article ''Constantine and Consensus'', Drake concludes that Constantine's religious ''policy'' was aimed at including the Church in a broader policy of civic unity, even though his personal views undoubtedly favored one religion over the other.

Some of Constantine's choices have not left historians with a simple reading of his beliefs. Johann Peter Kirsch says the consensus of the sources is that Constantine had both his son and wife executed at his instigation. He also ordered the execution of eunuch priests in Egypt because they transgressed his moral norms.J. Kirsch, "God Against the Gods", Viking Compass, 2004. According to MacMullen, Constantine made many derogatory and contemptuous comments relating to the old religion; writing of the "true obstinacy" of the pagans, of their "misguided rites and ceremonial", and of their "temples of lying" contrasted with "the splendours of the home of truth".R. MacMullen, "Christianizing The Roman Empire A.D.100-400, Yale University Press, 1984,

Although Constantine is regarded as the first Christian emperor, this does not mean that there are no longer any pagans in the empire. Christians most likely formed between sixteen and seventeen percent of empire at the time of Constantine's conversion. They did not have the numerical advantage to form a sufficient power–base to begin a systematic persecution of pagans. However, Brown reminds us "We should not underestimate the fierce mood of the Christians of the fourth century:" repression, persecution and martyrdom do not generally breed tolerance of those same persecutors. Brown says Roman authorities had shown no hesitation in "taking out" the Christian church that they saw as a threat to empire, and that Constantine and his successors did the same for the same reasons. Constantine would sporadically prohibit public sacrifice and close pagan temples; very little pressure, however, was put on individual pagans. Just as persecution of Christians had been sporadic, actions against pagans were also sporadic.

Lives were lost around the imperial court for various reasons and intrigues, but there is no evidence of judicial killings for illegal sacrifices before Tiberius Constantine (574-582). Drake and Hans-Ulrich Wiemer are two among many who agree that Constantine was generally not in favor of suppression of paganism by force.Wiemer, Hans-Ulrich. "Libanius on Constantine". The Classical Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 2, 1994, pp. 511–524. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/639654. Accessed 23 June 2020. Instead, Constantine took steps to legally limit the public practice of pagan worship. Constantine's main approach was to use enticement by making the adoption of Christianity beneficial.

=Ban on new temples and pillaging the old

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On Sunday 8 November 324, Constantine consecrated Byzantium as his new residence, Constantinoupolis — "city of Constantine" — with the local pagan priests, astrologers, and augurs. However, the emperor still went back to Rome to celebrate his Vicennalia: his twenty-year jubilee. Two years after the consecration of Constantinople, Constantine left Rome behind, returning to Constantinople permanently. On Monday 4 November 328, new rituals to dedicate the city as the new ''capital'' of the Roman empire were performed. Among the attendants were the Neoplatonist philosopher Sopater

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