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Constantine and Consensus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

H. A. Drake
H. A. Drake
Affiliation:
Mr. Drake is professor of history at the University of California in Santa Barbara, California.
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Extract

The church historian Socrates Scholasticus tells a story about an encounter during the Council of Nicaea between the emperor Constantine and the schismatic bishop Acesius. On learning that Acesius's dispute had nothing to do with the Creed or the date of Easter—the two major issues under debate at that Council—Constantine asked, “For what reason then do you separate yourself from communion with the rest of the Church?” Acesius replied that his sect objected to the relative leniency with which other Christians had treated those who had cracked under the empire-wide persecutions of the third century. He then “referred to the rigidness of that austere canon which declares, that it is not right that persons who after baptism have committed a sin, which the sacred Scriptures denominate ‘a sin unto death’ be considered worthy of participation in the sacraments.” Whereupon, Socrates continues, the emperor said to him, “Place a ladder, Acesius, and climb alone into heaven.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1995

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References

The author wishes to thank Naphtali Lewis and Jeffrey Burton Russell for their many helpful suggestions.

1. Historia Ecclesiastica [HE] 10, tr. Zenos, A. in Schaff, P. and Wace, H., eds., A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser. (New York, 1890) 2:17, with slight emendation. Acesius's scriptural reference is to John 5:15.Google Scholar

2. Tr. Hadas, Moses (New York, 1949; repr. Berkeley, 1983), p. 292. The first German edition appeared in 1853 as Die Zeit Constantin's des Grossen. The second edition (from which the English translation was made) was published in 1880.Google Scholar

3. This was the position taken by Baynes, Norman in his monumental Raleigh Lecture of 1929, Constantine the Great and the Christian Church, ed. Chadwick, Henry (London, 1972), p. 19:Google Scholar“As the years passed, toleration of paganism gave place to active repression; the emperor felt that he was strong enough to advance to a frontal attack upon paganism. The important fact to realize, however, is that this alteration in policy entailed no change of spirit, only a change of method. What Constantine would have recommended in 323 he later felt free to proclaim as the imperial will.”Google ScholarIn The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome, tr. Mattingly, H. (Oxford, 1948),Google ScholarAlföldi, A. built on this position by dividing Constantine's policy into three stages to correspond roughly with his political situation.Google Scholar

4. Momigliano, A., “Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century a.d.,” in The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1963), p. 79.Google Scholar

5. On the variety of Christian attitudes toward Rome see Wardman, Alan, Religion and Statecraft Among the Romans (London, 1982), p. 136.Google ScholarAs the “Father of Church History,” Eusebius of Caesarea decisively influenced the subsequent study of early Christianity by distinguishing a single orthodox tradition from heretical variations.Google ScholarSee Markus, R. A., “Church History and Early Church Historians,” in Baker, D., ed., The Materials, Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History, Studies in Church History 11 (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 1–17.Google ScholarOn the importance of local traditions in early Christianity, see Bauer, W., Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum, 2nd ed. (Tübingen, 1964);Google ScholarEng. tr. Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia, 1971).Google Scholar On the Christian tradition that true belief could not be coerced, see Garnsey, P., “Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity,” in Shiels, W. J., ed., Persecution and Toleration, Studies in Church History 21 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 1–27.Google ScholarDigeser, E., “Lactantius and Constantine's Letter to Aries: Dating the Divine Institutes,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 33–52, offers a fresh appreciation of this tradition on Constantine.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Donatus's question, asked in reply to an offer of subsidies from Constantine's son Constans, see Optatus, ed. Ziwsa, C., CSEL 26 (Vienna, 1893), 3.3:Google Scholar“qui cum ad Donatum, patrem tuum [frater Parmeniane], venirent [Paulus et Macarius] et, quare venerant, indicarent. ille solito furore succensus in haec uerba prorupit: 'quid est imperatori cum ecclesia?' et de fonte leuitatis suae multa maledicta effudit….”Google Scholar

6. The phrase is Norman Baynes's: “the emperor's consistent aim was the triumph of Christianity and the union of the Roman state with the Christian Church.” See Constantine the Great, n. 57.Google Scholar

7. De Vita constantini [VC] 2.61,Google Scholarrev. tr. by Richardson, E. C. in Schaff, and Wace, , eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd. ser. 1:517–518.Google Scholar

8. A standard study remains that of Truman, David B., The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, 2nd ed. (New York, 1971);Google Scholarsee esp. ch. 6: “Internal Politics: The Problem of Cohesion.”Google Scholar

9. “However many he saw responsive to a superior sentiment and endowed with a sound and like-minded character he received eagerly, showing that he himself rejoiced in the mutual agreement of all. But those who stayed unyielding he turned away from.” VC 1.44. Eusebius may be speaking specifically of the Council of Aries in this passage, but the statement holds true for every period of Constantine's career. For instance, Eusebius's summary of Constantine's remarks to the bishops following the Council of Nicaea at VC 3.21, has the emperor exhorting them “above all else to honor mutual harmony” (pantōn peri pollou limōmenōn tēn symphōnon hafmonian). A decade later, Eusebius says at VC 4.41, Constantine urged the bishops at the Council of Tyre “to conduct themselves with concord and harmony” (sun homonoia kai sumphōnia tō pasē ekhesthai).Google Scholar

10. The chapter heading for VC 3.54 proclaims “The destruction of idol temples and images everywhere” (Eidōleiōn kai xoanōn pantakhou katalusis), but the text of the chapter only describes the collection of temple treasures. Immediately subsequent chapters name three temples that were destroyed—two of Aphrodite (at Aphaca, 3.55, and Heliopolis, 3.58) and the Asclepius temple at Aegai (3.56), to which may be added a third Aphrodite temple on the site of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (3.26) and pagan idols at the oak of Mambre (3.52).Google ScholarDorries, H., Constantine and Religious Liberty, tr. Bainton, Roland (New Haven, 1960), p. 45, found only the Asclepius temple could not be explained by non-religious reasons.Google ScholarMore recently, Fox, Robin Lane, Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to the Fourth Century a.d. (New York, 1986), p. 671, suggests it was due to association with the pagan holy man Apollonius of Tyana, who had been held up as a rival to Christ during the Great Persecution.Google Scholar

11. Codex Theodosianus 16.10.2.Google ScholarIn “The Constantinian Reformation,” The Crake Lectures, 1984 (Sackville, Can., 1986), p. 50,Google ScholarBarnes, T. D. has made a general ban on sacrifice “the lynch-pin of the thesis that Constantine carried through a religious Reformation.”Google ScholarHe finds support for such a ban in Constantine's failure specifically to refer to sacrifices in an edict “To the Provincials” permitting continued use of the temples (VC 2.23–42):Google Scholar“Constantine's Prohibition of Pagan Sacrifice,” American Journal of Philology 105 (1984):Google Scholar70. More recently, Bradbury, S. has cited the orator Libanius's reference in his Autobiography (Or. 1.27) to a man who continued to perform sacrifice “despite the law which banned it” as evidence that such a ban existed (to be so, the remark must be read as a specific reference to the year in question—339 or 340—rather than as a general assessment of the man's character, in which case it refers to a year when the ban, if it existed, is generally conceded to have become a dead letter):Google Scholar“Constantine and the Problem of Anti-Pagan Legislation in the Fourth Century,” Classical Philology 89 (1994): 129.Google Scholar

12. See VC 2.48–60 for the letter, and for this passage VC 2.56.1: “mēdeis ton heteron parenokhleitō; hekastos hoper hē psukhē bouletai katekhetō, toutō katakekhresthō.”Google Scholar

13. H. Dorries, Constantine and Religious Liberty. The argument for syncretism is made most persuasively by Salvatorelli, L., “La politica religiosa e la religiositá di Costantino,” Richerche Religiose 4 (1928): 289–328.Google Scholar

14. Barnes, T. D., Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), p. 210.Google Scholar

15. Bradbury, , “Anti-Pagan Legislation,” pp. 137–138.Google Scholar

16. VC 2.65 (ed. Winkelmann, ): “Prōton men gar tēn hapanton ton ethnon peri to theion prothesin eis mian hexeōs sustasin henōsai, deuteron de to tēs koinēs oikoumenēs sōma kathaper khalepō tini traumati peponēkos anaktēsasthai kai synarmosai prouthumethen. ha dē proskopōn heteron men aporrētō tēs dianoias ophthalmō sunelogizomen, heteron de tē tēs stratiōtikēs kheiros exousia katorthoun epeirōmēn, eidōs hōs ei koinēn hapasi tois tou theou therapousin ep' eukhais tais emais homonoian katastēsaimi, kai hē tōn dēmosiōn pragmatōn khreia sundromon tais hapantōn eusebesi gnōmais tēn metabolēn karpōsetai.”Google Scholar

17. At VC 4.19, Eusebius records that Constantine ordered a Sunday prayer for non-Christians in the army in which they were to seek God with “their mind's eyes” (lous tēs dianoias…ophthalmous), and in his speech “On the Holy Sepulchre,” 16.8, Eusebius calls on his hearers to “open the eyes of your mind” (dianoixon tēs sautou dianoias tous ophthalmous) to consider God's power.Google Scholar

18. “Allo gar esti ton huper athanasias athlon hekousiōs epanaireisthai, allo to meta timōrias epanagkazein” (VC 2.60.1–2). See also at n. 13 above.Google Scholar

19. Eusebius promises at KC4.32 to append a speech Constantine gave “To the Assembly of the Saints” to his account of the emperor's life. In the manuscripts, a speech entitled Oratio Constantini ad Coetum Sanctorum (Basileōs Kōnstantinou logos hon egrapse tō tōn hagiōn sullogō) follows Book 4, preceding Eusebius's own Tricennial Oration to Constantine, which he also promises to append (at VC 4.46).Google ScholarIn some manuscripts, Constantine's Oration is labelled as Book 5 of the VC. I cite it in the following notes as OC (Oratio Constantini), using the text of Ivar Heikel, A., ed., Eusebius Werke (Leipzig, 1902) 1:154–192.Google ScholarOn the troubled history of this oration, see Ison, David, “The Constantinian Oration to the Saints—Authorship and Background,” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1985).Google Scholar

20. OC 13.1 (Heikel, 1:171–172).Google Scholar

21. OC 13.1 (Heikel, 1:173.5–11):Google Scholar“asebes de kai toenthumēma tōn pros tēn diaphoran tōn ontōn apekhthanomenōn, mian te kai tēn autēn axian pantōn khrēmatōn einai thelontōn.…kai tēs theias agathotētos ouk amoiron to tōn anthrōpōon genos…” I am grateful to Robert Renehan for his advice on this passage.Google Scholar

22. In a review of a collection of essays on the relationship of Neoplatonism to Christianity, Felice Lifshitz points out “how very much we have been oversimplifying by looking only through neat little spectacles, spectacles with one lens called ‘Hellenistic Philosophies' and another called ‘Christianity.” Bryn Mawr Classics Review 4 (09 1993): 22.Google ScholarSmith, Mark D., “Eusebius of Caesarea: Scholar and Apologist. A Study of His Religious Terminology and Its Application to the Emperor Constantine” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Santa Barbara, 1989), p. 121,Google Scholarreaches a similar conclusion through analysis of Eusebius's religious terminology. On common sentiments regarding monotheism in late antiquity, see Fowden, G., Empire to Commonwealth. Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, (Princeton, 1993).Google ScholarA case in point is that of Synesius of Cyrene—a Christian bishop whose philosophical leanings still lead scholars to describe him as a late and incomplete convert to Christianity. As Frances Young has observed, “To state whether one thinks Synesius was really a Christian or not, says more about one's own understanding of Christianity than about Synesius himself.”Google ScholarSee Young, , From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background (Philadelphia, 1983), p. 177.Google ScholarSee also Cameron, A. and Long, J., Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius (Berkeley, 1992);Google ScholarSalzman, M., On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1990);Google Scholarand Hunt, D., “Christianising the Roman Empire: The Evidence of the Code,” in Harries, J. and Wood, I., eds., The Theodosian Code: Studies in the Imperial Law of Late Antiquity (London, 1993), pp. 143–158.Google Scholar

23. On the general lack of enthusiasm for the persecution, see Jones, A. H. M., The Later Roman Empire: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman, Okla., 1964), 1:73.Google ScholarEusebius wrote that with the apparent end to persecution after Galerius's edict in 311, “even they who had formerly thirsted for our blood, when they saw the unexpected wonder, congratulated us on what had taken place.” HE 9.1.11. In the Divine Institutes (5.13.11), Lactantius claimed that many pagans abandoned worship of their gods in revulsion of the cruelties of the persecution, and elsewhere (5.11.13) conceded in a backhanded way that some officials did not enforce the death penalty so as to keep their “virtue” intact. Athanasius, History of the Arians 64, reported that pagans sheltered Christians even though they “frequently suffered the loss of their own substance, and had trial of imprisonment, solely that they might not betray the fugitives. They protected those who fled to them for refuge, as they would have done their own persons, and were determined to run all risks on their behalf.”Google ScholarTr. Newman, , rev. and ed. Robertson, A. in Schaff, and Wace, , Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d ser., 4:293–294.Google Scholar

24. VC 4.18–20.Google Scholar

25. Constantine ends his edict with a clear distinction between persuasion and coercion: “For it is one thing to undertake the contest for immortality voluntarily, another to compel it with punishment.” Immediately following this sentiment, he writes, “I have said these things and gone through them at greater length than my customary concern requires, since I did not wish my belief in the truth to be hidden, and especially because I hear some people are saying the customs of the temples and the power of darkness have been taken away.” These final words, which I have emphasized, suggest that Constantine was writing either in response to, or to preempt, attacks against pagan temples, and for such an offense Christian zealots are the most reasonable suspects.Google Scholar

26. Eusebius puts it somewhat differently. At VC 4.4, he says that Constantine never let a litigant leave his presence empty-handed, awarding him something even if he lost his suit. But the skill is recognizable enough.Google Scholar

27. On the “contradictory element” in ideological movements see Rudé, G., Ideology and Popular Protest (New York, 1980), p. 23.Google ScholarRegarding the ambiguities in Christian core texts, see Stroumsa, G., “Early Christianity as Radical Religion,” in Israel Oriental Studies 14 (1994): 173–193. I am grateful to the author for an opportunity to read an advance copy of this article.Google Scholar

28. VC 4.29, 32. Fox, Robin Lane observes of the Oration: “if genuine, it is our longest surviving statement from an Emperor between Marcus's Meditations and Julian's letters.” Pagans and Christians (New York, 1986), p. 627.Google Scholar

29. OC 11.7, 13.1 (pros to bebaiousthai tēn hath'hekastou pistin, 171.32–33).Google Scholar

30. OC 15.4. The scriptural quotation is from Matt. 26:52.Google Scholar

31. OC 11.7.Google Scholar

32. OC 12.3,20.2.Google Scholar

33. OC 12.4: “eiper ho te bios sophron tou marturos kai ton panaggelmatōn mnēmōn, hē te teleutē plērēs heurisketai megalopsukhas te kai eugeneias.”Google Scholar

34. “…maxime cum debeat fides nostra confidere quicquid ab huiusmodi hominum furore patietur martyrii gratia apud deutn esse valiturum.Google ScholarQuid est enim aliud in hoc saeculo in nomine dei uincere quam inconditos hominum impetus quietae legis populum lacessentes constanti pectore sustinere?” Le dossier du Donatisme, vol. 1: Des origenes á la mort de Constance II (303–361), ed. Maier, J.-L. (Berlin, 1987), p. 242, 2.37–45.Google Scholar

35. Truman, , Governmental Process, pp. 195–196.Google Scholar

36. On Constantine and the Jews, two recent works reach diametrically opposite conclusions. In “Eusebius as a Polemical Interpreter of Scripture,” in Attridge, H. and Hata, G., eds., Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism (Detroit, 1992), p. 594,Google ScholarHollerich[, Michael chides scholars for underestimating “the hostile language with which his [Constantine's] legislation refers to the Jews, who are styled as ‘a deadly, nefarious sect.’”Google ScholarConversely, Fowden, Garth, looking at Constantine's actions, concludes that he was “relatively tolerant” of Jews: Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), p. 87.Google ScholarA similar observation might be made about Constantine's oft-cited complaint against the Donatists in his letter to the bishops at Aries in 314: “They demand my judgment, but I myself await Christ's judgment!” (Meum iudiciumpostulant, qui ipse iudicium Christi exspecto!) Maier, ed., Dossier, Le, p. 169, 2:69–70.Google ScholarDespite this outburst, Constantine in fact proceeded to hear their appeal. Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G., Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford, 1979), p. 298, refers to such conditions as “a paradox” and “evidence of internal conflict.”Google Scholar

37. In his classic study of modern revolutions, Crane Brinton observed that moderates dominate in early stages of a revolution, extremists in the crisis stage. The Anatomy of Revolution, rev. ed. (New York, 1965), p. 95. In this sense, the Age of Constantine might still be said to conform to a revolutionary pattern.Google Scholar