Constantine –
Pagan Thug Makes Christian Emperor
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Constantine – Pagan Thug Makes Christian Emperor |
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Remember Trajan! Diocletian and that famous 'persecution'
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Diocletian – Son of a Slave Makes Good Diocletian was the product of merit and of the social mobility which was possible in the late third century. Diocletian ruled the Roman world for over twenty years. Neither mad nor debauched, he (uniquely) retired from power and famously boasted of growing cabbages "with his own hand" in retirement. Diocletian had recognised that the empire was too vast for one man's autocratic rule and had sensibly divided absolute power between four monarchs. At the same time he put in place a mechanism for orderly succession, with the junior Caesars stepping up to the rank of Augustus and appointing deputy Caesars in turn. Moreover, Diocletian had had the wisdom to chose colleagues and successors on the basis of ability and loyalty, not blood-ties. The tetrarchy provided orderly succession for a generation. The provinces themselves were grouped into a dozen Dioceses, each ruled by a Vicar.
Constantine – Pampered Prince Enters the Ring As caesar of Britain and Gaul, Constantine's father – Constantius – had been chosen for the most junior post in the tetrarchy. Constantine himself had been obliged to spend his youth at Nicomedia – as 'hostage' in the court of Diocletian. When the ailing Diocletian stepped down as Augustus after twenty years in 305, Constantine was dismayed that he had been passed over for the position of caesar. Galerius became senior Augustus in the east. Frustrated, and fearful for his life, Constantine fled to Gaul to join his father, and together they campaigned in northern Britain. Constantius – nicknamed 'Chlorus' because of his pale and sickly complexion – died at Eburacum (York) the following year and Constantine was 'proclaimed' Augustus by his troops in what was the most marginal of frontier provinces. Constantine immediately moved to establish a court in the northern capital of Trier, but this ambitious prince had his sights on a far bigger prize. An unhappy Galerius reluctantly acknowledged Constantine as a caesar but appointed his own nominee – Severus – as supreme ruler for the west. In the meantime the usurper Maxentius (son of Diocletian's original colleague Maximian) had been proclaimed Augustus in Rome by the praetorian guard. Severus lost his life in an unsuccessful attempt to remove the usurper.
Conversion? My Enemy's Enemy is My Friend In Constantine's day, the eastern provinces were by far the richest and most populous of the Roman world. Some of its cities – Pergamon, Symrna, Antioch and so on – had existed for almost a millennium and had accumulated vast wealth from international trade and venerated cult centres. Through its numerous cities passed Roman gold going east in exchange for imports from Persia, India and Arabia. Flowing west with those exotic imports came exotic 'mystery religions' to titillate and enthrall Roman appetites. In contrast, the western provinces now ruled by Constantine were more recently colonized and less developed. Its cities were small 'new towns', its hinterland still barbarian. During the crisis decades of the 3rd century many provincial Romans in the west had been carried off into slavery by Germanic raiders and their cities burned. The province of Britain and part of northern Gaul had actually seceded from the empire in the late third century – and had been ruled by its own 'emperors' (Carausius, Allectus) with the help of Frankish mercenaries (286-297). Constantine had no power-base in the east from which to mount a bid for the throne – but he had been at Nicomedia in 303 when Diocletian had decided to purge the Roman state of the disloyal Christian element. He had also served under Galerius on the Danube and witnessed at first-hand how the favoured Galerius – designated heir and rival – in particular despised the cult of Christ. The ambitious and ruthless prince, from his base in Trier, immediately proclaimed himself 'protector of the Christians.' But it was not the handful of Jesus worshippers in the west that Constantine had in mind – there had not, after all, been any persecution in the west – but the far more numerous congregation in the east. They constituted a tiny minority within the total population (perhaps as few as 2%) but the eastern Christians were an organised force of fanatics, in many cities holding important positions in state administration. Some held posts even within the imperial entourage.
That Fabulous Fable At first, Constantine honoured the tetrarchy which had stabilized the empire for a generation but Galerius himself died in 311 and Constantine saw his opportunity. In the spring of 312, in the first of his civil wars, Constantine moved against the ill-fated Maxentius to seize control of Italy and Africa, in the process almost annihilating a Roman army near Turin, and another outside of Rome. A nonsense repeated ad nauseam is the fable of the ‘writing above the sun’ which advised Constantine of his divine destiny. In its worst form, the legend has it that the words ‘In this sign, you shall conquer’ and the sign of the cross were visible to Constantine and his entire army. The words would have been, perhaps, Latin ‘In Hoc Signo Victor Seris’, a bizarre cloud formation unique in the annuls of meteorological observation. On the other hand, more than one author (e.g. S. Angus, The Mystery Religions, p236) says that the words were in Greek ('En Touto Nika'), which would have left them unintelligible to the bulk of the army. Then, again, perhaps they were in both Latin and Greek, a complete occluded front of cumulus cloud! Digging below the legend however we discover that the vision was in fact a dream reported some years later by Constantine to his secretary Lactantius (On the Death of the Persecutors, chapter xliv; ANF. vii, 318.) The fable was later embellished by the emperor's ‘minister of propaganda’, Bishop Eusebius, in his Life of Constantine (1.xxvi-xxxi). The ‘sign of the cross’ was an even later interpolation (the cross was not a Christian symbol at the time of the battle – nor would be until the 6th century!). Any ‘good luck emblem’ at this date would have been the chi-rho – ambiguously the first two letters of the word Christos, the Greek word for ‘auspicious’ and also Chronos, god of time and a popular embodiment of Mithras! What is perhaps most significant about this ‘origins’ fantasy is that ‘lucky charms’ had entered the parlance of Christianity. Constantine did not need to be a Christian; invoking its symbols was sufficient to win divine patronage. But did he invoke its symbols? Coins issued at the time celebrating his victory showed only Sol Invictus: his triumphant arch, still standing, refers only to ‘the gods’. In truth, Constantine was not a particularly pious man. Famously, he delayed his baptism until he was close to death for fear of further sinning – with good reason: among his many murders was that of his first wife Fausta (boiled alive) and eldest son Crispus (strangled).
End of Praetorians: New Germanic cavalry In the real world, one consequence of Constantine's victories in 312 was the disbandment of the praetorian guard. The praetorians had had the misfortune to have backed Maxentius and those who had not fallen in the battle (and many had drowned near the Milvian bridge) were demoted and posted to garrisons on distant frontiers. Replacing the praetorians was a special imperial guard – Scholae Palatinae – an elite cavalry regiment of 500, mainly Germans. Diocletian had pioneered a new force of imperial guards (Ioviani and Herculiani) but these had been crack infantry regiments.
Constantine's spite left the city of Rome defenseless – and when the Visigoths arrived a century later – the 'mistress of the world' fell to the invader. Constantine's Ambition Decimates
the Legions
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2nd century trooper |
5th century trooper |
Yet the expensive mobile force was never mobile enough.
"The result was that Rome's effective combatant manpower was drastically reduced, even though the overall army was larger than in the earlier Empire."
(Farrill, p44)
This larger army required a vastly enlarged bureaucracy of tax-collectors and it had to levy the cities annually for manpower. The military draft and rapacious tax collectors sent many cities into a downward spiral as the citizenry seeped away.
Constantine responded to the crisis – plainly evident in his own day – by a law requiring sons of veterans to serve in the army. Military service (like tax collecting) became hereditary. Not only did this precipitate a collapse of espirit de corps: Constantine laid one of the foundation stones of that insidious form of slavery called serfdom.
With the demise of the old structure of the army, the 'democratic' escalator, whereby a common soldier, moving through the ranks, could enter the imperial entourage and reach for the throne itself, passed away. The stage was now set for 'Lords' on horseback and shoddily equipped conscripts.
Divine, Dynastic Monarch!
The wily Diocletian had begun a process (adapted from the Oriental theocracies) which the vainglorious Constantine refined and set as a model for all future monarchs: he surrounded the imperial dignity with a 'halo' of sacredness and ceremonial.
A large court-retinue, elaborate court-ceremonials, and ostentatious court-costume made access to the emperor almost impossible. When he eventually reached 'God's agent on Earth', a 'suppliant' prostrated himself before the emperor as if before a divinity (Augustus had always stood to greet a senator!)
Henceforth, emperors allowed themselves to be venerated as divines, and everything connected with them was called 'sacred'. Instead of imperial, the word 'sacred' had now always to be used.
The egotistical Constantine, not content with concentrating absolute (and 'divine') power into his own hands, went on to reduce the authority of provincial governors and generals ('duces', 'comes'). Some of this authority fell into the hands of the nouveau riche bishops, at whose head stood Constantine himself. Constantine hoped thus to prevent any rebellion arising in the provinces – but he did so at the cost of weakening the ability of provincials to resist invasion.
State Church: Christianity Goes Royal
Constantine's desire to impose upon the Empire a religion that would identify obsequiousness to the deity with loyalty to the emperor found its perfect partner in Christianity – or at least in the Christianity he was to patronize.
In the century before the ignoble alliance of one particular faction with the imperium many christianities had contended. Before Constantine, Christ had, for most Christians, been the ‘good shepherd’, just like Mithras and Apollo, not a celestial monarch or an imperial judge. Nor did the Christian sects dwell on the crucifixion scene:
‘They shrink from the recollection of the servile and degrading death inflicted on their lord, and conceive salvation in the gentle terms of the friendship of Christ, not in the panoply of imperial triumphs.’ (Oxford History, p14)
But with Constantine's absolute monarchy, Christianity acquired its 'panoply of imperial triumphs.' The leading Churchman and propagandist Eusebius hailed the autocrat as a new Moses, a new Abraham. Constantine saw himself, more modestly, as the thirteenth apostle, a saint-in-waiting. At the time, perhaps five per cent of the empire’s population was nominally ‘Christian.’ With imperial encouragement, support, funds and force the Universal Church set about the task of gathering in its flock.
In a number of provinces a serious breach had opened within the Christian churches between those who had 'apostatised' during Diocletian's brief persecution and those who had suffered penalties for their fanaticism. Some churches already had a 'nationalistic' bent, serving as a focus for opposition to the emperor.
Constantine, vexed by all such discord, called for an inclusive 'universal' or catholic faith. Of course all factions regarded themselves as that universal 'orthodox' faith and manoeuvred for preferment. It was inevitable that an autocrat like Constantine would identify with and adopt a church which modelled its organisation not merely upon the Roman State but upon its most authoritarian aspect: the imperial army.
In the Constantinian Church, bishops would rule districts corresponding with military dioceses, would control appointments and impose discipline. Lesser clerics would report through a chain of command up to the local pontiff. ‘Staff officers’, in the guise of deacons and presbyters, would control funds and allocations.
Just as well that in Christian morality there was no place for democracy, only for absolute monarchs, chosen by God. In Christianity there were no human rights (for example, of a slave to his freedom), only obligations (thus a slave should be honest and faithful to his master, because, of course, all would be judged on the day of reckoning).
Spoils of Victory: Pillaging the Pagans
The alliance of Roman autocracy and Christian intolerance was a marriage made in hell. The Universal Church eyed with envy the pagan temples and shrines which, through centuries, had amassed their own riches. As propagandists for Constantine, the Christians had the ear of the emperor and successfully urged him to confiscate temple treasures throughout the Empire, much of it redirected to the ‘One True Faith.’
The assault upon the values that had sustained the Empire for a thousand years was merciless and relentless. It began with Constantine's denial of state funds to the ancient pagan shrines which had always depended on state sponsorship. Never having had full-time fund raisers like the Christian churches the pagan cults immediately went into decline.
But having given the Christians the world, what Constantine could not anticipate was the ferocity of Christian discord, which was to dog his reign and the reign of all who were to follow him.
The Christian 'community' itself had changed as a consequence of the Constantinian revolution. Official recognition of Christianity, the tax exemptions it gave devotees and state patronage made the Christian faith considerably more appealing to opportunistic pagans. Episcopal posts became highly sought after when, in 319, the clergy were exempted from public obligations and, in 321, priests were exempted from imperial and local taxation. Clerics were even placed outside the jurisdiction of normal courts ('Privilegia Ecclesiastica': Decline of Law).
A flood of new converts, many with little or no religious motivation, swamped the church. Fierce rivalries within the Church multiplied, weakened its power and exposed vulnerabilities in both its doctrine and organisation.
Constantine
successfully established the dynastic principle, but it had bitter
fruit. His feeble sons, 'born to rule', murdered each other (the
survivor died falling from his horse). Worse yet, Constantine’s
nephew, Julian, though raised as a Christian, detested the doctrine
and, on assuming the throne, reversed many of Constantine’s
policies.
To the alarm of the new Christian 'establishment', the pagan
world was not yet ready to die quietly.
Post-Constantine: Lurch into Religious Tyranny
Within three years, Emperor Julian had been assassinated on the Persian front (probably by a disaffected Christian soldier) – but it left the Christians fearful of losing the prize that had fallen so unexpectedly into their laps.
Thereafter, the Christians embraced a ruthlessness hitherto unknown in the world, an intolerance which, in the centuries ahead, would wreak unimaginable horror.
In the closing years of the fourth century, draconian laws prohibiting non-Christian beliefs were enacted by the new hero of the Christians, Emperor Theodosius. Heresy was now equated with treason and thus became a capital offence.
Theodosius 'the Great' presided over the destruction of temples and icons, the burning of books and libraries, and a rampage of murder of pagan priests, scholars and philosophers. The wisdom and finesse of an entire civilization was sacrificed on the altar of the Christian godman and delivered Europe into a dark age of barbarism and crass superstition.
Only the very brave, the very foolish or the very hidden would now deny their Christianity. The prologue to the Dark Age had been written.
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