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   Title: History of the Christian Church, Volume III: Nicene and
   Post-Nicene Christianity. A.D. 311-600.
   Creator(s): Schaff, Philip (1819-1893)
   Print Basis: Fifth edition, revised
   CCEL Subjects: All; History;
   LC Call no: BR145.S3
   LC Subjects:

   Christianity

   History
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    HISTORY

                                     of the

                              CHRISTIAN CHURCH [1]

by

PHILIP SCHAFF

    Christianus sum.        Christiani nihil a me alienum puto

VOLUME III

NICENE AND POST-NICENE CHRISTIANITY

  From Constantine the Great to Gregory the Great

  a.d. 311-600.

    This is a reproduction of the Fifth Edition, Revised
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA:
   Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997. The material has been carefully
   compared and corrected according to the Eerdmans reproduction of the
   1910 edition by Charles Scribner's sons, with emendations by The
   Electronic Bible Society, Dallas, TX, 1998.
     __________________________________________________________________

   PREFACE TO THE THIRD REVISION

   This third volume covers the eventful period of Christian emperors,
   patriarchs, and ecumenical Councils, from Constantine the Great to
   Gregory the Great. It completes the History of Ancient Christianity,
   which is the common inheritance of Greek, Latin, and Evangelical
   Christendom.

   The first edition was published in 1867, and has not undergone any
   important changes. But in the revision of 1884 the more recent
   literature was added in an Appendix.

   In this edition the Appendix has been revised and enriched with the
   latest literature. A few changes have also been made in the text to
   conform it to the present state of research (e.g., pp. 29, 353, 688,
   689).

   The Author.

   New York, July, 1889.
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   PREFACE

   With sincere thanks to God for continued health and strength, I offer
   to the public a history of the eventful period of the Church from the
   beginning of the fourth century to the close of the sixth. This
   concludes my history of Ancient Christianity.

   It was intended at first to condense the third period into one volume,
   but regard to symmetry made it necessary to divide it into two volumes
   of equal size with the first which appeared several years ago. This
   accounts for the continuous paging of the second and third volumes.

   In preparing this part of my Church History for the press, I have been
   deprived of the stimulus of an active professorship, and been much
   interrupted in consequence of other labors, a visit to Europe, and the
   loss of a part of the manuscript, which had to be rewritten. But, on
   the other hand, I have had the great advantage of constant and free
   access to several of the best libraries of the country. Especially am I
   indebted to the Astor Library, and the Union Theological Seminary
   Library of New York, which are provided with complete sets of the Greek
   and Latin fathers, and nearly all other important sources of the
   history of the first six centuries.

   I have used different editions of the fathers (generally the
   Benedictine), but these I have carefully indicated when they vary in
   the division of chapters and sections, or in the numbering of orations
   and epistles, as in the works of Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Jerome,
   Augustine, and Leo. In addition to the primary sources, I have
   constantly consulted the later historians, German, French, and English.

   In the progress of the work I have been filled with growing admiration
   for the great scholars of the seventeenth and early part of the
   eighteenth century, who have with amazing industry and patience
   collected the raw material from the quarries, and investigated every
   nook and corner of Christian Antiquity. I need only refer to the
   Benedictine editors of the fathers; to the Bollandists, in the
   department of hagiography; to Mansi and Hardouin, in the collection of
   the Acts of Councils; to Gallandi, Dupin, Ceillier, Oudin, Cave,
   Fabricius, in patristics and literary history; to Petau's Theologica
   dogmata, Tillemont's Memoires, Bull's Defensio Fidei Nicaenae,
   Bingham's Antiquities, Walch's Ketzerhistorie. In learning, acumen,
   judgment, and reverent spirit, these and similar works are fully equal,
   if not superior, to the best productions of the modern Teutonic press;
   while we cheerfully concede to the latter the superiority in critical
   sifting, philosophical grasp, artistic reproduction of the material,
   and in impartiality and freedom of spirit, without which there can be
   no true history. Thus times and talents supplement each other.

   With all due regard for the labors of distinguished predecessors and
   contemporaries, I have endeavored, to the best of my ability, to
   combine fulness of matter with condensation in form and clearness of
   style, and to present a truthful and lively picture of the age of
   Christian emperors, patriarchs, and ecumenical Councils. Whether, and
   how far, I have succeeded in this, competent judges will decide.

   I must again express my profound obligation to my friend, the Rev. Dr.
   Yeomans, of Rochester, for his invaluable assistance in bringing these
   volumes before the public in a far better English dress than I could
   have given them myself. I have prepared the work in German, and have
   sent the copy to Leipsic, where a German edition will appear
   simultaneously with the American. Some portions I have myself
   reproduced in English, and have made considerable additions throughout
   in the final revision of the copy for the press. But the body of the
   work has been translated from manuscript by Dr. Yeomans. He has
   performed his task with that consummate union of faithfulness and
   freedom which does full justice both to the thought of the author and
   the language of the reader, and which has elicited the unqualified
   praise of the best judges for his translation of my History of the
   Apostolic Church, and that of the first three centuries.

   The work has been, for the translator as well as for the author, truly
   a labor of love, which carries in it its own exceeding great reward.
   For what can be more delightful and profitable than to revive for the
   benefit of the living generation, the memory of those great and good
   men who were God's own chosen instruments in expounding the mysteries
   of divine truth, and in spreading the blessings of Christianity over
   the face of the earth?

   It is my wish and purpose to resume this work as soon as other
   engagements will permit, and to complete it according to the original
   plan. In the mean time I have the satisfaction of having finished the
   first great division of the history of Christianity, which, in many
   respects, is the most important, as the common inheritance of the
   Greek, Latin, and Evangelical churches. May God bless it as a means to
   promote the cause of truth, and to kindle that devotion to his service
   which is perfect freedom.

   Philip Schaff.

   5 Bible House, New York, Nov. 8, 1866.
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   THIRD PERIOD

   FROM CONSTANTINE THE GREAT TO GREGORY THE GREAT.

   a. d. 311-590.

   SOURCES.

   I. Christian Sources: (a) The Acts Of Councils; in the Collectiones
   conciliorum of Hardouin, Par. 1715 sqq. 12 vols. fol.; Mansi, Flor. et
   Ven. 1759 sqq. 31 vols. fol.; Fuchs: Bibliothek der
   Kirchenversammlungen des 4ten und 5ten Jahrh. Leipz. 1780 sqq.; and
   Bruns: Biblioth. eccl. vol. i. Canones Apost. et Conc. saec. iv.-vii.
   Berol. 1839.

   (b) The Imperial Laws and Decrees referring to the church, in the Codex
   Theodosianus, collected a.d. 438, the Codex Justinianeus, collected in
   529, and the Cod. repetitae praelectionis of 534.

   (c) The Official Letters of popes (in the Bullarium Romanum),
   patriarchs, and bishops.

   (d) The writings of all the Church Fathers from the beginning of the
   4th century to the end of the 6th. Especially of Eusebius, Athanasius,
   Basil, the two Gregories, the two Cyrils, Chrysostom, and Theodoret, of
   the Greek church; and Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Leo the Great, of
   the Latin. Comp. the Benedictine Editions of the several Fathers; the
   Maxima Bibliotheca veterum Patrum, Lugd. 1677 sqq. (in all 27 vols.
   fol.), vols. iii.-xi.; Gallandi: Biblioth. vet. Patrum, etc. Ven. 1765
   sqq. (14 vols. fol.), vols. iv.-xii.

   (e) Contemporary Church Historians, (1) of the Greek church: Eusebius
   of Caesarea (/- about 340): the ninth and tenth books of his H. E. down
   to 324, and his biography of Constantine the Great, see S: 2 infra;
   Socrates Scholasticus of Constantinople: Histor. ecclesiast. libri vii,
   a.d. 306-439; Hermias Sozomen of Constantinople: H. eccl. l. ix, a.d.
   323-423; Theodoret, bishop of Cyros in Mesopotamia: H. eccl. l. v, a.d.
   325-429; the Arian Philostorgius: H. eccl. l. xii, a.d. 318-425, extant
   only in extracts in Photius Cod. 40; Theodorus Lector, of
   Constantinople, epitomizer of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret,
   continuing the latter down to 518, preserved in fragments by Nicephorus
   Callistus; Evagrius of Antioch: H. eccl. l. vi, a.d. 431-594;
   Nicephorus Callistus (or Niceph. Callisti), about 1330, author of a
   church history in 23 books, to a.d. 911 (ed. Fronto Ducaeus, Par.
   1630). The historical works of these Greek writers, excepting the last,
   are also published together under the title: Historiae ecclesiasticae
   Scriptores, etc., Graec. et Lat., with notes by H. Valesius (and G.
   Reading), Par. 1659-1673; and Cantabr. 1720, 3 vols. fol. (2) Of the
   Latin church historians few are important: Rufinus, presb. of Aquileia
   (/-410), translated Eusebius and continued him in two more books to
   395; Sulpicius Severus, presb. in Gaul: Hist. Sacra, l. ii, from the
   creation to a.d. 400; Paulus Orosius, presbyter in Spain: Historiarum
   libri vii. written about 416, extending from the creation to his own
   time; Cassiodorus, about 550: Hist. tripartite, l. xii. a mere extract
   from the works of the Greek church historians, but, with the work of
   Rufinus, the chief source of historical knowledge through the whole
   middle age; and Jerome (/- 419): De viris illustrious, or Catalogus
   scriptorum eccles., written about 392, continued under the same title
   by Gennadius, about 495, and by Isidor of Seville, about 630.

   (f) For chronology, the Greek Paschalion, or Chronicon Paschale
   (wrongly called Alexandrinum), primarily a table of the passovers from
   the beginning of the world to a.d. 354 under Constantius, with later
   additions down to 628. (Ed. Car. du Fresne Dom. du Cange. Par. 1688,
   and L. Dindorf, Bonn. 1832, 2 vols.) The Chronicle of Eusebius and
   Jerome (Chronika sungrammata, pantodape historia), containing an
   outline of universal history down to 325, mainly after the chronography
   of Julius Africanus, and an extract from the universal chronicle in
   tabular form down to 379, long extant only in the free Latin
   translation and continuation of Jerome (ed. Jos. Scaliger. Lugd. Batav.
   1606 and later), since 1792 known also in an Armenian translation (ed.
   J. Bapt. Aucher. Ven. 1818, and Aug. Mai, Script. vet. nov. coll. 1833.
   Tom. viii). In continuation of the Latin chronicle of Jerome, the
   chronicle of Prosper of Aquitania down to 455; that of the spanish
   bishop Idatius, to 469; and that of Marcellinus Comes, to 534. Comp.
   Chronica medii aevi post Euseb. atque Hieron., etc. ed. Roesler, Tueb.
   1798.

   II. Heathen Sources: Ammianus Marcellinus (officer under Julian, honest
   and impartial): Rerum gestarum libri xiv-xxxi, a.d. 353-378 (the first
   13 books are lost), ed. Jac. Gronov. Lugd. Batav. 1693 fol., and J. A.
   Ernesti, Lips. 1778 and 1835. Eunapius (philosopher and historian;
   bitter against the Christian emperors): Chronike historia, a.d.
   268-405, extant only in fragments, ed. Bekker and Niebuhr, Bonn. 1829.
   Zosimus (court officer under Theodosius II., likewise biassed):
   Historia nea, l. vi, a.d. 284-410, ed. Cellarius 1679, Reitemeier 1784,
   and Imm. Bekker, Bonn. 1837. Also the writings of Julian the Apostate
   (against Christianity), Libanius and Symmachus (philosophically
   tolerant), &c. Comp. the literature at S: 2 and 4.
     __________________________________________________________________

   LATER LITERATURE.

   Besides the contemporary histories named above under 1 (e) among the
   sources, we should mention particularly Baronius (R.C. of the
   a.d.Ultramontane school, /- 1607): Annales Eccles. vol. iii.-viii. (a
   heavy and unreadable chronicle, but valuable for reference to original
   documents). Tillemont (R.C. leaning to Jansenism, /- 1698): Memoires,
   etc., vol. vi.-xvi. (mostly biographical, minute, and conscientious).
   Gibbon (/- 1794): Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, from ch. xvii.
   onward (unsurpassed in the skilful use of sources and artistic
   composition, but skeptical and destitute of sympathy with the genius of
   Christianity). Schroeckh (moderate Lutheran, /- 1808): Christl.
   Kirchengesch. Theil v.-xviii. (A simple and diffuse, but thorough and
   trustworthy narrative). Neander (Evangel. /- 1850): Allg. Gesch. der
   Chr. Rel. und Kirche. Hamb. vol. iv.-vi., 2d ed. 1846 sqq. Engl.
   transl. by Torrey, vol. ii. (Profound and genial in the genetic
   development of Christian doctrine and life, but defective in the
   political and aesthetic sections, and prolix and careless in style and
   arrangement). Gieseler (Protest. /- 1854): Kirchengesch. Bonn. i. 2. 2d
   ed. 1845. Engl. transl. by Davidson, and revised by H. B. Smith, N.
   York, vol. i. and ii. (Critical and reliable in the notes, but meagre,
   dry, and cold in the text).

   Isaac Taylor (Independent): Ancient Christianity, and the Doctrines of
   the Oxf. Tracts for the Times. Lond. 4th ed. 1844. 2 vols.
   (Anti-Puseyite). Boehringer (G. Ref.): Kirchengeschichte in
   Biographieen, vol. i. parts 3 and 4. Zuer. 1845 sq. (from Ambrose to
   Gregory the Great). Carwithen And Lyall: History of the Christian
   Church from the 4th to the 12th Cent. in the Encycl. Metrop. 1849;
   published separately in Lond. and Glasg. 1856. J. C. Robertson (Angl.):
   Hist. of the Christ. Church to the Pontificate of Gregory the Great.
   Lond. 1854 (pp. 166-516). H. H. Milman (Angl.): History of Christianity
   from the Birth of Christ to the abolition of Paganism in the Roman
   Empire. Lond. 1840 (New York, 1844), Book III. and IV. Milman: Hist. of
   Latin Christianity; including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of
   Nicholas V. Lond. 1854 sqq. 6 vols., republished in New York, 1860, in
   8 vols. (vol. i. a resume of the first six centuries to Gregory I., the
   remaining vols. devoted to the middle ages). K. R. Hagenbach (G.
   Ref.):Die Christl. Kirche vom 4ten his 6ten Jahrh. Leipz. 1855 (2d vol.
   of his popular "Vorlesungen ueber die aeltere Kirchengesch."). Albert
   de Broglie (R.C.): L'eglise et l'empire romain au IVme siecle. Par.
   1855-'66. 6 vols. Ferd. Christ. Baur: Die Christl. Kirche vom Anfang
   des vierten bis zum Ende des sechsten Jahrhunderts in den Hauptmomenten
   ihrer Entwicklung. Tueb. 1859 (critical and philosophical). Wm. Bright:
   A History of the Church from the Edict of Milan, a.d. 313, to the
   Council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451. Oxf. and Lond. 1860. Arthur P. Stanley:
   Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church. Lond. 1861 (pp. 512),
   republished in New York from the 2d Lond. ed. 1862 (a series of graphic
   pictures of prominent characters and events in the history of the Greek
   and Russian church, but no complete history).
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 1. Introduction and General View.

   From the Christianity of the Apostles and Martyrs we proceed to the
   Christianity of the Patriarchs and Emperors.

   The third period of the history of the Church, which forms the subject
   of this volume, extends from the emperor Constantine to the pope
   Gregory I.; from the beginning of the fourth century to the close of
   the sixth. During this period Christianity still moves, as in the first
   three centuries, upon the geographical scene of the Graeco-Roman empire
   and the ancient classical culture, the countries around the
   Mediterranean Sea. But its field and its operation are materially
   enlarged, and even touch the barbarians on the limit of the empire.
   Above all, its relation to the temporal power, and its social and
   political position and import, undergo an entire and permanent change.
   We have here to do with the church of the Graeco-Roman empire, and with
   the beginning of Christianity among the Germanic barbarians. Let us
   glance first at the general character and leading events of this
   important period.

   The reign of Constantine the Great marks the transition of the
   Christian religion from under persecution by the secular government to
   union with the same; the beginning of the state-church system. The
   Graeco-Roman heathenism, the most cultivated and powerful form of
   idolatry, which history knows, surrenders, after three hundred years'
   struggle, to Christianity, and dies of incurable consumption, with the
   confession: Galilean, thou hast conquered! The ruler of the civilized
   world lays his crown at the feet of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth.
   The successor of Nero, Domitian, and Diocletian appears in the imperial
   purple at the council of Nice as protector of the church, and takes his
   golden throne at the nod of bishops, who still bear the scars of
   persecution. The despised sect, which, like its Founder in the days of
   His humiliation, had not where to lay its head, is raised to sovereign
   authority in the state, enters into the prerogatives of the pagan
   priesthood, grows rich and powerful, builds countless churches out of
   the stones of idol temples to the honor of Christ and his martyrs,
   employs the wisdom of Greece and Rome to vindicate the foolishness of
   the cross, exerts a molding power upon civil legislation, rules the
   national life, and leads off the history of the world. But at the same
   time the church, embracing the mass of the population of the empire,
   from the Caesar to the meanest slave, and living amidst all its
   institutions, received into her bosom vast deposits of foreign material
   from the world and from heathenism, exposing herself to new dangers and
   imposing upon herself new and heavy labors.

   The union of church and state extends its influence, now healthful, now
   baneful, into every department of our history.

   The Christian life of the Nicene and post-Nicene age reveals a mass of
   worldliness within the church; an entire abatement of chiliasm with its
   longing after the return of Christ and his glorious reign, and in its
   stead an easy repose in the present order of things; with a sublime
   enthusiasm, on the other hand, for the renunciation of self and the
   world, particularly in the hermitage and the cloister, and with some of
   the noblest heroes of Christian holiness.

   Monasticism, in pursuance of the ascetic tendencies of the previous
   period, and in opposition to the prevailing secularization of
   Christianity, sought to save the virgin purity of the church and the
   glory of martyrdom by retreat from the world into the wilderness; and
   it carried the ascetic principle to the summit of moral heroism, though
   not rarely to the borders of fanaticism and brutish stupefaction. It
   spread with incredible rapidity and irresistible fascination from Egypt
   over the whole church, east and west, and received the sanction of the
   greatest church teachers, of an Athanasius, a Basil, a Chrysostom, an
   Augustine, a Jerome, as the surest and shortest way to heaven.

   It soon became a powerful rival of the priesthood, and formed a third
   order, between the priesthood and the laity. The more extraordinary and
   eccentric the religion of the anchorets and monks, the more they were
   venerated among the people. The whole conception of the Christian life
   from the fourth to the sixteenth century is pervaded with the ascetic
   and monastic spirit, and pays the highest admiration to the voluntary
   celibacy, poverty, absolute obedience, and excessive self-punishments
   of the pillar-saints and the martyrs of the desert; while in the same
   degree the modest virtues of every-day household and social life are
   looked upon as an inferior degree of morality.

   In this point the old Catholic ethical ideas essentially differ from
   those of evangelical Protestantism and modern civilization. But, to
   understand and appreciate them, we must consider them in connection
   with the corrupt social condition of the rapidly decaying empire of
   Rome. The Christian spirit in that age, in just its most earnest and
   vigorous forms, felt compelled to assume in some measure an
   anti-social, seclusive character, and to prepare itself in the school
   of privation and solitude for the work of transforming the world and
   founding a new Christian order of society upon the ruins of the ancient
   heathenism.

   In the development of doctrine the Nicene and post-Nicene age is second
   in productiveness and importance only to those of the apostles and of
   the reformation. It is the classical period for the objective
   fundamental dogmas, which constitute the ecumenical or old Catholic
   confession of faith. The Greek church produced the symbolical
   definition of the orthodox view of the holy Trinity and the person of
   Christ, while the Latin church made considerable advance with the
   anthropological and soteriological doctrines of sin and grace. The
   fourth and fifth centuries produced the greatest church fathers,
   Athanasius and Chrysostom in the East, Jerome and Augustine in the
   West. All learning and science now came into the service of the church,
   and all classes of society, from the emperor to the artisan, took the
   liveliest, even a passionate interest, in the theological
   controversies. Now, too, for the first time, could ecumenical councils
   be held, in which the church of the whole Roman empire was represented,
   and fixed its articles of faith in an authoritative way.

   Now also, however, the lines of orthodoxy were more and more strictly
   drawn; freedom of inquiry was restricted; and all as departure from the
   state-church system was met not only, as formerly, with spiritual
   weapons, but also with civil punishments. So early as the fourth
   century the dominant party, the orthodox as well as the heterodox, with
   help of the imperial authority practised deposition, confiscation, and
   banishment upon its opponents. It was but one step thence to the
   penalties of torture and death, which were ordained in the middle age,
   and even so lately as the middle of the seventeenth century, by
   state-church authority, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, and
   continue in many countries to this day, against religious dissenters of
   every kind as enemies to the prevailing order of things. Absolute
   freedom of religion and of worship is in fact logically impossible on
   the state-church system. It requires the separation of the spiritual
   and temporal powers. Yet, from the very beginning of political
   persecution, loud voices rise against it and in behalf of
   ecclesiastico-religious toleration; though the plea always comes from
   the oppressed party, which, as soon as it gains the power, is generally
   found, in lamentable inconsistency, imitating the violence of its
   former oppressors. The protest springs rather from the sense of
   personal injury, than from horror of the principle of persecution, or
   from any clear apprehension of the nature of the gospel and its
   significant words: "Put up thy sword into the sheath;" "My kingdom is
   not of this world."

   The organization of the church adapts itself to the political and
   geographical divisions of the empire. The powers of the hierarchy are
   enlarged, the bishops become leading officers of the state and acquire
   a controlling influence in civil and political affairs, though more or
   less at the expense of their spiritual dignity and independence,
   especially at the Byzantine court. The episcopal system passes on into
   the metropolitan and patriarchal. In the fifth century the patriarchs
   of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem stand at
   the head of Christendom. Among these Rome and Constantinople are the
   most powerful rivals, and the Roman patriarch already puts forth a
   claim to universal spiritual supremacy, which subsequently culminates
   in the mediaeval papacy, though limited to the West and resisted by the
   constant protest of the Greek church and of all non-Catholic sects. In
   addition to provincial synods we have now also general synods, but
   called by the emperors and more or less affected, though not
   controlled, by political influence.

   From the time of Constantine church discipline declines; the whole
   Roman world having become nominally Christian, and the host of
   hypocritical professors multiplying beyond all control. Yet the
   firmness of Ambrose with the emperor Theodosius shows, that noble
   instances of discipline are not altogether wanting.

   Worship appears greatly enriched and adorned; for art now comes into
   the service of the church. A Christian architecture, a Christian
   sculpture, a Christian painting, music, and poetry arise, favoring at
   once devotion and solemnity, and all sorts of superstition and empty
   display. The introduction of religious images succeeds only after long
   and violent opposition. The element of priesthood and of mystery is
   developed, but in connection with a superstitious reliance upon a
   certain magical operation of outward rites. Church festivals are
   multiplied and celebrated with great pomp; and not exclusively in honor
   of Christ, but in connection with an extravagant veneration of martyrs
   and saints, which borders on idolatry, and often reminds us of the
   heathen hero-worship not yet uprooted from the general mind. The
   multiplication and accumulation of religious ceremonies impressed the
   senses and the imagination, but prejudiced simplicity, spirituality,
   and fervor in the worship of God. Hence also the beginnings of reaction
   against ceremonialism and formalism.

   Notwithstanding the complete and sudden change of the social and
   political circumstances of the church, which meets us on the threshold
   of this period, we have still before us the natural, necessary
   continuation of the pre-Constantine church in its light and shade, and
   the gradual transition of the old Graeco-Roman Catholicism into the
   Germano-Roman Catholicism of the middle age.

   Our attention will now for the first time be turned in earnest, not
   only to Christianity in the Roman empire, but also to Christianity
   among the Germanic barbarians, who from East and North threaten the
   empire and the entire civilization of classic antiquity. The church
   prolonged, indeed, the existence of the Roman empire, gave it a new
   splendor and elevation, new strength and unity, as well as comfort in
   misfortune; but could not prevent its final dissolution, first in the
   West (a.d. 476), afterwards (1453) in the East. But she herself
   survived the storms of the great migration, brought the pagan invaders
   under the influence of Christianity, taught the barbarians the arts of
   peace, planted a higher civilization upon the ruins of the ancient
   world, and thus gave new proof of the indestructible, all-subduing
   energy of her life.

   In a minute history of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries we should
   mark the following subdivisions:

   1. The Constantinian and Athanasian, or the Nicene and Trinitarian age,
   from 311 to the second general council in 381, distinguished by the
   conversion of Constantine, the alliance of the empire with the church,
   and the great Arian and semi-Arian controversy concerning the Divinity
   of Christ and the Holy Spirit.

   2. The post-Nicene, or Christological and Augustinian age, extending to
   the fourth general council in 451, and including the Nestorian and
   Eutychian disputes on the person of Christ, and the Pelagian
   controversy on sin and grace.

   3. The age of Leo the Great (440-461), or the rise of the papal
   supremacy in the West, amidst the barbarian devastations which made an
   end to the western Roman empire in 476.

   4. The Justinian age (527-565), which exhibits the Byzantine
   state-church despotism at the height of its power, and at the beginning
   of its decline.

   5. The Gregorian age (590-604) forms the transition from the ancient
   Graeco-Roman to the mediaeval Romano-Germanic Christianity, and will be
   more properly included in the church history of the middle ages.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

   DOWNFALL OF HEATHENISM AND VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

   GENERAL LITERATURE.

   J. G. Hoffmann: Ruina Superstitionis Paganae. Vitemb. 1738. Tzschirner:
   Der Fall des Heidenthums. Leipz. 1829. A. Beugnot: Histoire de la
   destruction du paganisme en occident. Par. 1835. 2 vols. Et. Chastel
   (of Geneva): Histoire de la destruction du paganisme dans l'empire
   d'orient. Par. 1850. E. v. Lasaulx: Der Untergang des Hellenismus u.
   die Einziehung seiner Tempelgueter durch die christl. Kaiser. Muench.
   1854. F. Luebker: Der Fall des Heidenthums. Schwerin, 1856. Ch.
   Merivale: Conversion of The Roman Empire. New York, 1865.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 2. Constantine The Great. a.d. 306-337.

   1. Contemporary Sources: Lactantius (/- 330): De mortibus persecutorum,
   cap. 18 sqq. Eusebius: Hist. Eccl. l. Ix. et x.; also his panegyric and
   very partial Vita Constantini, in 4 books (Eis ton bion tou makariou
   Konstantinou tou basileos) and his Panegyricus or De laudibus
   Constantini; in the editions of the hist. works of Euseb. by Valesius,
   Par. 1659-1673, Amstel. 1695, Cantabr. 1720; Zimmermann, Frcf. 1822;
   Heinichen, Lips. 1827-30; Burton, Oxon. 1838. Comp. the imperial
   documents in the Codex Theodos.l. xvi. also the Letters and Treatises
   of Athanasius (/- 373), and on the heathen side the Panegyric of
   Nazarius at Rome (321) and the Caesars of Julian (/- 363).

   2. Later sources: Socrates: Hist. Eccl. l. i. Sozomenus: H. E. l. i et
   ii. Zosimus (a heathen historian and court-officer, comes et advocatus
   fisci, under Theodosius II.): istoria nea, l. ii. ed. Bekker, Bonn.
   1837. Eusebius and Zosimus present the extremes of partiality for and
   against Constantine. A just estimate of his character must be formed
   from the facts admitted by both, and from the effect of his secular and
   ecclesiastical policy.

   3. Modern authorities. Mosheim: De reb. Christ. ante Const. M. etc.,
   last section (p. 958 sqq. In Murdock's Engl. transl., vol. ii. p.
   454-481). Nath. Lardner, in the second part of his great work on the
   Credibility of the Gospel History, see Works ed. by Kippis, Lond. 1838,
   vol. iv. p. 3-55. Abbe de Voisin: Dissertation critique sur la vision
   de Constantin. Par. 1774. Gibbon: l.c. chs. xiv. and xvii.-xxi. Fr.
   Gusta: Vita di Constantino il Grande. Foligno, 1786. Manso: Das Leben
   Constantins des Gr. Bresl. 1817. Hug (R.C.): Denkschrift zur
   Ehrenrettung Constant. Frieb. 1829. Heinichen: Excurs. in Eus. Vitam
   Const. 1830. Arendt (R.C.): Const. u. sein Verb. zum Christenthum.
   Tueb. (Quartalschrift) 1834. Milman: Hist. of Christianity, etc., 1840,
   book iii. ch. 1-4. Jacob Burckhardt: Die Zeit Const. des Gr. Bas. 1853.
   Albert de Broglie: L'eglise et l'empire romain au IVme siecle. Par.
   1856 (vols. i. and ii.). A. P. Stanley: Lectures on the Hist. of the
   Eastern Church, 1862, Lect. vi. p. 281 sqq. (Am. Ed.). Theod. Keim: Der
   Uebertritt Constantins des Gr. zum Christenthum. Zuerich, 1862 (an
   apology for Constantine's character against Burckhardt's view).

   The last great imperial persecution of the Christians under Diocletian
   and Galerius, which was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new
   religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical
   ruin of the persecutors. [2] The edict of toleration was an involuntary
   and irresistible concession of the incurable impotence of heathenism
   and the indestructible power of Christianity. It left but a step to the
   downfall of the one and the supremacy of the other in the empire of the
   Caesars.

   This great epoch is marked by the reign of Constantine I. [3] He
   understood the signs of the times and acted accordingly. He was the man
   for the times, as the times were prepared for him by that Providence
   which controls both and fits them for each other. He placed himself at
   the head of true progress, while his nephew, Julian the Apostate,
   opposed it and was left behind. He was the chief instrument for raising
   the church from the low estate of oppression and persecution to well
   deserved honor and power. For this service a thankful posterity has
   given him the surname of the Great, to which he was entitled, though
   not by his moral character, yet doubtless by his military and
   administrative ability, his judicious policy, his appreciation and
   protection of Christianity, and the far-reaching consequences of his
   reign. His greatness was not indeed of the first, but of the second
   order, and is to be measured more by what he did than by what he was.
   To the Greek church, which honors him even as a canonized saint, he has
   the same significance as Charlemagne to the Latin.

   Constantine, the first Christian Caesar, the founder of Constantinople
   and the Byzantine empire, and one of the most gifted, energetic, and
   successful of the Roman emperors, was the first representative of the
   imposing idea of a Christian theocracy, or of that system of policy
   which assumes all subjects to be Christians, connects civil and
   religious rights, and regards church and state as the two arms of one
   and the same divine government on earth. This idea was more fully
   developed by his successors, it animated the whole middle age, and is
   yet working under various forms in these latest times; though it has
   never been fully realized, whether in the Byzantine, the German, or the
   Russian empire, the Roman church-state, the Calvinistic republic of
   Geneva, or the early Puritanic colonies of New England. At the same
   time, however, Constantine stands also as the type of an
   undiscriminating and harmful conjunction of Christianity with politics,
   of the holy symbol of peace with the horrors of war, of the spiritual
   interests of the kingdom of heaven with the earthly interests of the
   state.

   In judging of this remarkable man and his reign, we must by all means
   keep to the great historical principle, that all representative
   characters act, consciously or unconsciously, as the free and
   responsible organs of the spirit of their age, which moulds them first
   before they can mould it in turn, and that the spirit of the age
   itself, whether good or bad or mixed, is but an instrument in the hands
   of divine Providence, which rules and overrules all the actions and
   motives of men.

   Through a history of three centuries Christianity had already inwardly
   overcome the world, and thus rendered such an outward revolution, as
   has attached itself to the name of this prince, both possible and
   unavoidable. It were extremely superficial to refer so thorough and
   momentous a change to the personal motives of an individual, be they
   motives of policy, of piety, or of superstition. But unquestionably
   every age produces and shapes its own organs, as its own purposes
   require. So in the case of Constantine. He was distinguished by that
   genuine political wisdom, which, putting itself at the head of the age,
   clearly saw that idolatry had outlived itself in the Roman empire, and
   that Christianity alone could breathe new vigor into it and furnish its
   moral support. Especially on the point of the external Catholic unity
   his monarchical politics accorded with the hierarchical episcopacy of
   the church. Hence from the year 313 he placed himself in close
   connection with the bishops, made peace and harmony his first object in
   the Donatist and Arian controversies and applied the predicate
   "catholic" to the church in all official documents. And as his
   predecessors were supreme pontiffs of the heathen religion of the
   empire, so he desired to be looked upon as a sort of bishop, as
   universal bishop of the external affairs of the church. [4] All this by
   no means from mere self-interest, but for the good of the empire,
   which, now shaken to its foundations and threatened by barbarians on
   every side, could only by some new bond of unity be consolidated and
   upheld until at least the seeds of Christianity and civilization should
   be planted among the barbarians themselves, the representatives of the
   future. His personal policy thus coincided with the interests of the
   state. Christianity appeared to him, as it proved in fact, the only
   efficient power for a political reformation of the empire, from which
   the ancient spirit of Rome was fast departing, while internal, civil,
   and religious dissensions and the outward pressure of the barbarians
   threatened a gradual dissolution of society.

   But with the political he united also a religious motive, not clear and
   deep, indeed, yet honest, and strongly infused with the superstitious
   disposition to judge of a religion by its outward success and to
   ascribe a magical virtue to signs and ceremonies. His whole family was
   swayed by religious sentiment, which manifested itself in very
   different forms, in the devout pilgrimages of Helena, the fanatical
   Arianism of Constantia, and Constantius, and the fanatical paganism of
   Julian. Constantine adopted Christianity first as a superstition, and
   put it by the side of his heathen superstition, till finally in his
   conviction the Christian vanquished the pagan, though without itself
   developing into a pure and enlightened faith. [5]

   At first Constantine, like his father, in the spirit of the
   Neo-Platonic syncretism of dying heathendom, reverenced all the gods as
   mysterious powers; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in
   the year 308 he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year
   321 he enjoined regular consultation of the soothsayers [6] in public
   misfortunes, according to ancient heathen usage; even later, he placed
   his new residence, Byzantium, under the protection of the God of the
   Martyrs and the heathen goddess of Fortune; [7] and down to the end of
   his life he retained the title and the dignity of a Pontifex Maximus,
   or high-priest of the heathen hierarchy. [8] His coins bore on the one
   side the letters of the name of Christ, on the other the figure of the
   Sun-god, and the inscription "Sol invictus." Of course there
   inconsistencies may be referred also to policy and accommodation to the
   toleration edict of 313. Nor is it difficult to adduce parallels of
   persons who, in passing from Judaism to Christianity, or from Romanism
   to Protestantism, have so wavered between their old and their new
   position that they might be claimed by both. With his every victory,
   over his pagan rivals, Galerius, Maxentius, and Licinius, his personal
   leaning to Christianity and his confidence in the magic power of the
   sign of the cross increased; yet he did not formally renounce
   heathenism, and did not receive baptism until, in 337, he was laid upon
   the bed of death.

   He had an imposing and winning person, and was compared by flatterers
   with Apollo. He was tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, and of a
   remarkably vigorous and healthy constitution, but given to excessive
   vanity in his dress and outward demeanor, always wearing an oriental
   diadem, a helmet studded with jewels, and a purple mantle of silk
   richly embroidered with pearls and flowers worked in gold, [9] His mind
   was not highly cultivated, but naturally clear, strong, and shrewd, and
   seldom thrown off its guard. He is said to have combined a cynical
   contempt of mankind with an inordinate love of praise. He possessed a
   good knowledge of human nature and administrative energy and tact.

   His moral character was not without noble traits, among which a
   chastity rare for the time, [10] and a liberality and beneficence
   bordering on wastefulness were prominent. Many of his laws and
   regulations breathed the spirit of Christian justice and humanity,
   promoted the elevation of the female sex, improved the condition of
   slaves and of unfortunates, and gave free play to the efficiency of the
   church throughout the whole empire. Altogether he was one of the best,
   the most fortunate, and the most influential of the Roman emperors,
   Christian and pagan.

   Yet he had great faults. He was far from being so pure and so venerable
   as Eusebius, blinded by his favor to the church, depicts him, in his
   bombastic and almost dishonestly eulogistic biography, with the evident
   intention of setting him up as a model for all future Christian
   princes. It must, with all regret, be conceded, that his progress in
   the knowledge of Christianity was not a progress in the practice of its
   virtues. His love of display and his prodigality, his suspiciousness
   and his despotism, increased with his power.

   The very brightest period of his reign is stained with gross crimes,
   which even the spirit of the age and the policy of an absolute monarch
   cannot excuse. After having reached, upon the bloody path of war, the
   goal of his ambition, the sole possession of the empire, yea, in the
   very year in which he summoned the great council of Nicaea, he ordered
   the execution of his conquered rival and brother-in-law, Licinius, in
   breach of a solemn promise of mercy (324). [11] Not satisfied with
   this, he caused soon afterwards, from political suspicion, the death of
   the young Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the
   worst of all is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had
   incurred suspicion of political conspiracy, and of adulterous and
   incestuous purposes towards his step-mother Fausta, but is generally
   regarded as innocent. This domestic and political tragedy emerged from
   a vortex of mutual suspicion and rivalry, and calls to mind the conduct
   of Philip II. towards Don Carlos, of Peter the Great towards his son
   Alexis, and of Soliman the Great towards his son Mustapha. Later
   authors assert, though gratuitously, that the emperor, like David,
   bitterly repented of this sin. He has been frequently charged besides,
   though it would seem altogether unjustly, with the death of his second
   wife Fausta (326?), who, after twenty years, of happy wedlock, is said
   to have been convicted of slandering her stepson Crispus, and of
   adultery with a slave or one of the imperial guards, and then to have
   been suffocated in the vapor of an over-heated bath. But the accounts
   of the cause and manner of her death are so late and discordant as to
   make Constantine's part in it at least very doubtful. [12]

   At all events Christianity did not produce in Constantine a thorough
   moral transformation. He was concerned more to advance the outward
   social position of the Christian religion, than to further its inward
   mission. He was praised and censured in turn by the Christians and
   Pagans, the Orthodox and the Arians, as they successively experienced
   his favor or dislike. He bears some resemblance to Peter the Great both
   in his public acts and his private character, by combining great
   virtues and merits with monstrous crimes, and he probably died with the
   same consolation as Peter, whose last words were: "I trust that in
   respect of the good I have striven to do my people (the church), God
   will pardon my sins." It is quite characteristic of his piety that he
   turned the sacred nails of the Saviour's cross which Helena brought
   from Jerusalem, the one into the bit of his war-horse, the other into
   an ornament of his helmet. Not a decided, pure, and consistent
   character, he stands on the line of transition between two ages and two
   religions; and his life bears plain marks of both. When at last on his
   death bed he submitted to baptism, with the remark, "Now let us cast
   away all duplicity," he honestly admitted the conflict of two
   antagonistic principles which swayed his private character and public
   life. [13]

   From these general remarks we turn to the leading features of
   Constantine's life and reign, so far as they bear upon the history of
   the church. We shall consider in order his youth and training, the
   vision of the Cross, the edict of toleration, his legislation in favor
   of Christianity, his baptism and death.

   Constantine, son of the co-emperor Constantius Chlorus, who reigned
   over Gaul, Spain, and Britain till his death in 306, was born probably
   in the year 272, either in Britain or at Naissus (now called Nissa), a
   town of Dardania, in Illyricum. [14] His mother was Helena, daughter of
   an innkeeper, [15] the first wife of Constantius, afterwards divorced,
   when Constantius, for political reasons, married a daughter of
   Maximian. [16] She is described by Christian writers as a discreet and
   devout woman, and has been honored with a place in the catalogue of
   saints. Her name is identified with the discovery of the cross and the
   pious superstitions of the holy places. She lived to a very advanced
   age and died in the year 326 or 327, in or near the city of Rome.
   Rising by her beauty and good fortune from obscurity to the splendor of
   the court, then meeting the fate of Josephine, but restored to imperial
   dignity by her son, and ending as a saint of the Catholic church:
   Helena would form an interesting subject for a historical novel
   illustrating the leading events of the Nicene age and the triumph of
   Christianity in the Roman empire.

   Constantine first distinguished himself in the service of Diocletian in
   the Egyptian and Persian wars; went afterwards to Gaul and Britain, and
   in the Praetorium at York was proclaimed emperor by his dying father
   and by the Roman troops. His father before him held a favorable opinion
   of the Christians as peaceable and honorable citizens, and protected
   them in the West during the Diocletian persecution in the East. This
   respectful tolerant regard descended to Constantine, and the good
   effects of it, compared with the evil results of the opposite course of
   his antagonist Galerius, could but encourage him to pursue it. He
   reasoned, as Eusebius reports from his own mouth, in the following
   manner: "My father revered the Christian God and uniformly prospered,
   while the emperors who worshipped the heathen gods, died a miserable
   death; therefore, that I may enjoy a happy life and reign, I will
   imitate the example of my father and join myself to the cause of the
   Christians, who are growing daily, while the heathen are diminishing."
   This low utilitarian consideration weighed heavily in the mind of an
   ambitious captain, who looked forward to the highest seat of power
   within the gift of his age. Whether his mother, whom he always revered,
   and who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in her eightieth year (a.d.
   325), planted the germ of the Christian faith in her son, as Theodoret
   supposes, or herself became a Christian through his influence, as
   Eusebius asserts, must remain undecided. According to the heathen
   Zosimus, whose statement is unquestionably false and malicious, an
   Egyptian, who came out of Spain (probably the bishop Hosius of Cordova,
   a native of Egypt, is intended), persuaded him, after the murder of
   Crispus (which did not occur before 326), that by converting to
   Christianity he might obtain forgiveness of his sins.

   The first public evidence of a positive leaning towards the Christian
   religion he gave in his contest with the pagan Maxentius, who had
   usurped the government of Italy and Africa, and is universally
   represented as a cruel, dissolute tyrant, hated by heathens and
   Christians alike, [17] called by the Roman people to their aid,
   Constantine marched from Gaul across the Alps with an army of
   ninety-eight thousand soldiers of every nationality, and defeated
   Maxentius in three battles; the last in October, 312, at the Milvian
   bridge, near Rome, where Maxentius found a disgraceful death in the
   waters of the Tiber.

   Here belongs the familiar story of the miraculous cross. The precise
   day and place cannot be fixed, but the event must have occurred shortly
   before the final victory over Maxentius in the neighborhood of Rome. As
   this vision is one of the most noted miracles in church history, and
   has a representative significance, it deserves a closer examination. It
   marks for us on the one hand the victory of Christianity over paganism
   in the Roman empire, and on the other the ominous admixture of foreign,
   political, and military interests with it. [18] We need not be
   surprised that in the Nicene age so great a revolution and transition
   should have been clothed with a supernatural character.

   The occurrence is variously described and is not without serious
   difficulties. Lactantius, the earliest witness, some three years after
   the battle, speaks only of a dream by night, in which the emperor was
   directed (it is not stated by whom, whether by Christ, or by an angel)
   to stamp on the shields of his soldiers "the heavenly sign of God,"
   that is, the cross with the name of Christ, and thus to go forth
   against his enemy. [19] Eusebius, on the contrary, gives a more minute
   account on the authority of a subsequent private communication of the
   aged Constantine himself under oath--not, however, till the year 338, a
   year after the death of the emperor, his only witness, and twenty-six
   years after the event. [20] On his march from Gaul to Italy (the spot
   and date are not specified), the emperor, whilst earnestly praying to
   the true God for light and help at this critical time, saw, together
   with his army, [21] in clear daylight towards evening, a shining cross
   in the heavens above the sun) with the inscription: "By this conquer,"
   [22] and in the following night Christ himself appeared to him while he
   slept, and directed him to have a standard prepared in the form of this
   sign of the cross, and with that to proceed against Maxentius and all
   other enemies. This account of Eusebius, or rather of Constantine
   himself, adds to the night dream of Lactantius the preceding vision of
   the day, and the direction concerning the standard, while Lactantius
   speaks of the inscription of the initial letters of Christ's name on
   the shields of the soldiers. According to Rufinus, [23] a later
   historian, who elsewhere depends entirely on Eusebius and can therefore
   not be regarded as a proper witness in the case, the sign of the cross
   appeared to Constantine in a dream (which agrees with the account of
   Lactantius), and upon his awaking in terror, an angel (not Christ)
   exclaimed to him: "Hoc vince." Lactantius, Eusebius, and Rufinus are
   the only Christian writers of the fourth century, who mention the
   apparition. But we have besides one or two heathen testimonies, which,
   though vague and obscure, still serve to strengthen the evidence in
   favor of some actual occurrence. The contemporaneous orator Nazarius,
   in a panegyric upon the emperor, pronounced March 1, 321, apparently at
   Rome, speaks of an army of divine warriors and a divine assistance
   which Constantine received in the engagement with Maxentius, but he
   converts it to the service of heathenism by recurring to old prodigies,
   such as the appearance of Castor and Pollux. [24]

   This famous tradition may be explained either as a real miracle
   implying a personal appearance of Christ, [25] or as a pious fraud,
   [26] or as a natural phenomenon in the clouds and an optical illusion,
   [27] or finally as a prophetic dream.

   The propriety of a miracle, parallel to the signs in heaven which
   preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, might be justified by the
   significance of the victory as marking a great epoch in history,
   namely, the downfall of paganism and the establishment of Christianity
   in the empire. But even if we waive the purely critical objections to
   the Eusebian narrative, the assumed connection, in this case, of the
   gentle Prince of peace with the god of battle, and the subserviency of
   the sacred symbol of redemption to military ambition, is repugnant to
   the genius of the gospel and to sound Christian feeling, unless we
   stretch the theory of divine accommodation to the spirit of the age and
   the passions and interests of individuals beyond the ordinary limits.
   We should suppose, moreover, that Christ, if he had really appeared to
   Constantine either in person (according to Eusebius) or through angels
   (as Rufinus and Sozomen modify it), would have exhorted him to repent
   and be baptized rather than to construct a military ensign for a bloody
   battle. [28] In no case can we ascribe to this occurrence, with
   Eusebius, Theodoret, and older writers, the character of a sudden and
   genuine conversion, as to Paul's vision of Christ on the way to
   Damascus; [29] for, on the one hand, Constantine was never hostile to
   Christianity, but most probably friendly to it from his early youth,
   according to the example of his father; and, on the other, he put off
   his baptism quite five and twenty years, almost to the hour of his
   death.

   The opposite hypothesis of a mere military stratagem or intentional
   fraud is still more objectionable, and would compel us either to impute
   to the first Christian emperor at a venerable age the double crime of
   falsehood and perjury, or, if Eusebius invented the story, to deny to
   the "father of church history" all claim to credibility and common
   respectability. Besides it should be remembered that the older
   testimony of Lactantius, or whoever was the author of the work on the
   Deaths of Persecutors, is quite independent of that of Eusebius, and
   derives additional force from the vague heathen rumors of the time.
   Finally the Hoc vince which has passed into proverbial significance as
   a most appropriate motto of the invincible religion of the cross, is
   too good to be traced to sheer falsehood. Some actual fact, therefore,
   must be supposed to underlie the tradition, and the question only is
   this, whether it was an external visible phenomenon or an internal
   experience.

   The hypothesis of a natural formation of the clouds, which Constantine
   by an optical illusion mistook for a supernatural sign of the cross,
   besides smacking of the exploded rationalistic explanation of the New
   Testament miracles, and deriving an important event from a mere
   accident, leaves the figure of Christ and the Greek or Latin
   inscription: By this sign thou shalt conquer! altogether unexplained.

   We are shut up therefore to the theory of a dream or vision, and an
   experience within the mind of Constantine. This is supported by the
   oldest testimony of Lactantius, as well as by the report of Rufinus and
   Sozomen, and we do not hesitate to regard the Eusebian cross in the
   skies as originally a part of the dream, [30] which only subsequently
   assumed the character of an outward objective apparition either in the
   imagination of Constantine, or by a mistake of the memory of the
   historian, but in either case without intentional fraud. That the
   vision was traced to supernatural origin, especially after the happy
   success, is quite natural and in perfect keeping with the prevailing
   ideas of the age. [31] Tertullian and other ante-Nicene and Nicene
   fathers attributed many conversions to nocturnal dreams and visions.
   Constantine and his friends referred the most important facts of his
   life, as the knowledge of the approach of hostile armies, the discovery
   of the holy sepulchre, the founding of Constantinople, to divine
   revelation through visions and dreams. Nor are we disposed in the least
   to deny the connection of the vision of the cross with the agency of
   divine Providence, which controlled this remarkable turning point of
   history. We may go farther and admit a special providence, or what the
   old divines call a providentia specialissima; but this does not
   necessarily imply a violation of the order of nature or an actual
   miracle in the shape of an objective personal appearance of the
   Saviour. We may refer to a somewhat similar, though far less important,
   vision in the life of the pious English Colonel James Gardiner. [32]
   The Bible itself sanctions the general theory of providential or
   prophetic dreams and nocturnal visions through which divine revelations
   and admonitions are communicated to men. [33]

   The facts, therefore, may have been these. Before the battle
   Constantine, leaning already towards Christianity as probably the best
   and most hopeful of the various religions, seriously sought in prayer,
   as he related to Eusebius, the assistance of the God of the Christians,
   while his heathen antagonist Maxentius, according to Zosimus, [34] was
   consulting the sibylline books and offering sacrifice to the idols.
   Filled with mingled fears and hopes about the issue of the conflict, he
   fell asleep and saw in a dream the sign of the cross of Christ with a
   significant inscription and promise of victory. Being already familiar
   with the general use of this sign among the numerous Christians of the
   empire, many of whom no doubt were in his own army, he constructed the
   labarum, [35] or rather he changed the heathen labarum into a standard
   of the Christian cross with the Greek monogram of Christ, [36] which he
   had also put upon the shields of the soldiers. To this cross-standard,
   which now took the place of the Roman eagles, he attributed the
   decisive victory over the heathen Maxentius.

   Accordingly, after his triumphal entrance into Rome, he had his statue
   erected upon the forum with the labarum in his right hand, and the
   inscription beneath: "By this saving sign, the true token of bravery, I
   have delivered your city from the yoke of the tyrant." [37] Three years
   afterwards the senate erected to him a triumphal arch of marble, which
   to this day, within sight of the sublime ruins of the pagan Colosseum,
   indicates at once the decay of ancient art, and the downfall of
   heathenism; as the neighboring arch of Titus commemorates the downfall
   of Judaism and the destruction of the temple. The inscription on this
   arch of Constantine, however, ascribes his victory over the hated
   tyrant, not only to his master mind, but indefinitely also to the
   impulse of Deity; [38] by which a Christian would naturally understand
   the true God, while a heathen, like the orator Nazarius, in his eulogy
   on Constantine, might take it for the celestial guardian power of the
   "urbs aeterna."

   At all events the victory of Constantine over Maxentius was a military
   and political victory of Christianity over heathenism; the intellectual
   and moral victory having been already accomplished by the literature
   and life of the church in the preceding period. The emblem of ignominy
   and oppression [39] became thenceforward the badge of honor and
   dominion, and was invested in the emperor's view, according to the
   spirit of the church of his day, with a magic virtue. [40] It now took
   the place of the eagle and other field-badges, under which the heathen
   Romans had conquered the world. It was stamped on the imperial coin,
   and on the standards, helmets, and shields of the soldiers. Above all
   military representations of the cross the original imperial labarum
   shone in the richest decorations of gold and gems; was intrusted to the
   truest and bravest fifty of the body guard; filled the Christians with
   the spirit of victory, and spread fear and terror among their enemies;
   until, under the weak successors of Theodosius II., it fell out of use,
   and was lodged as a venerable relic in the imperial palace at
   Constantinople.

   After this victory at Rome (which occurred October 27, 312),
   Constantine, in conjunction with his eastern colleague, Licinius,
   published in January, 313, from Milan, an edict of religious
   toleration, which goes a step beyond the edict of the still
   anti-Christian Galerius in 311, and grants, in the spirit of religious
   eclecticism, full freedom to all existing forms of worship, with
   special reference to the Christian. [41] The edict of 313 not only
   recognized Christianity within existing limits, but allowed every
   subject of the Roman empire to choose whatever religion he preferred.
   [42] At the same time the church buildings and property confiscated in
   the Diocletian persecution were ordered to be restored, and private
   property-owners to be indemnified from the imperial treasury.

   In this notable edict, however, we should look in vain for the modern
   Protestant and Anglo-American theory of religious liberty as one of the
   universal and inalienable rights of man. Sundry voices, it is true, in
   the Christian church itself, at that time, as before and after,
   declared against all compulsion in religion. [43] But the spirit of the
   Roman empire was too absolutistic to abandon the prerogative of a
   supervision of public worship. The Constantinian toleration was a
   temporary measure of state policy, which, as indeed the edict expressly
   states the motive, promised the greatest security to the public peace
   and the protection of all divine and heavenly powers, for emperor and
   empire. It was, as the result teaches, but the necessary transition
   step to a new order of things. It opened the door to the elevation of
   Christianity, and specifically of Catholic hierarchical Christianity,
   with its exclusiveness towards heretical and schismatic sects, to be
   the religion of the state. For, once put on equal footing with
   heathenism, it must soon, in spite of numerical minority, bear away the
   victory from a religion which had already inwardly outlived itself.

   From this time Constantine decidedly favored the church, though without
   persecuting or forbidding the pagan religions. He always mentions the
   Christian church with reverence in his imperial edicts, and uniformly
   applies to it, as we have already observed, the predicate of catholic.
   For only as a catholic, thoroughly organized, firmly compacted, and
   conservative institution did it meet his rigid monarchical interest,
   and afford the splendid state and court dress he wished for his empire.
   So early as the year 313 we find the bishop Hosius of Cordova among his
   counsellors, and heathen writers ascribe to the bishop even a magical
   influence over the emperor. Lactantius, also, and Eusebius of Caesarea
   belonged to his confidential circle. He exempted the Christian clergy
   from military and municipal duty (March, 313); abolished various
   customs and ordinances offensive to the Christians (315); facilitated
   the emancipation of Christian slaves (before 316); legalized bequests
   to catholic churches (321); enjoined the civil observance of Sunday,
   though not as dies Domini, but as dies Solis, in conformity to his
   worship of Apollo, and in company with an ordinance for the regular
   consulting of the haruspex (321); contributed liberally to the building
   of churches and the support of the clergy; erased the heathen symbols
   of Jupiter and Apollo, Mars and Hercules from the imperial coins (323);
   and gave his sons a Christian education.

   This mighty example was followed, as might be expected, by a general
   transition of those subjects, who were more influenced in their conduct
   by outward circumstances, than by inward conviction and principle. The
   story, that in one year (324) twelve thousand men, with women and
   children in proportion, were baptized in Rome, and that the emperor had
   promised to each convert a white garment and twenty pieces of gold, is
   at least in accordance with the spirit of that reign, though the fact
   itself, in all probability, is greatly exaggerated. [44]

   Constantine came out with still greater decision, when, by his victory
   over his Eastern colleague and brother-in-law, Licinius, he became sole
   head of the whole Roman empire. To strengthen his position, Licinius
   had gradually placed himself at the head of the heathen party, still
   very numerous, and had vexed the Christians first with wanton ridicule
   [45] then with exclusion from civil and military office, with
   banishment, and in some instances perhaps even with bloody persecution.
   This gave the political strife for the monarchy between himself and
   Constantine the character also of a war of religions; and the defeat of
   Licinius in the battle of Adrianople in July, 324, and at Chalcedon in
   September, was a new triumph of the standard of the cross over the
   sacrifices of the gods; save that Constantine dishonored himself and
   his cause by the execution of Licinius and his son.

   The emperor now issued a general exhortation to his subjects to embrace
   the Christian religion, still leaving them, however, to their own free
   conviction. In the year 325, as patron of the church, he summoned the
   council of Nice, and himself attended it; banished the Arians, though
   he afterwards recalled them; and, in his monarchical spirit of
   uniformity, showed great zeal for the settlement of all theological
   disputes, while he was blind to their deep significance. He first
   introduced the practice of subscription to the articles of a written
   creed and of the infliction of civil punishments for non-conformity. In
   the years 325-329, in connection with his mother, Helena, he erected
   magnificent churches on the sacred spots in Jerusalem.

   As heathenism had still the preponderance in Rome, where it was
   hallowed by its great traditions, Constantine, by divine command as he
   supposed, [46] in the year 330, transferred the seat of his government
   to Byzantium, and thus fixed the policy, already initiated by Domitian,
   of orientalizing and dividing the empire. In the selection of the
   unrivalled locality he showed more taste and genius than the founders
   of Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or Washington. With
   incredible rapidity, and by all the means within reach of an absolute
   monarch, he turned this nobly situated town, connecting two seas and
   two continents, into a splendid residence and a new Christian Rome,
   "for which now," as Gregory of Nazianzen expresses it, "sea and land
   emulate each other, to load it with their treasures, and crown it queen
   of cities." [47] Here, instead of idol temples and altars, churches and
   crucifixes rose; though among them the statues of patron deities from
   all over Greece, mutilated by all sorts of tasteless adaptations, were
   also gathered in the new metropolis. [48] The main hall in the palace
   was adorned with representations of the crucifixion and other biblical
   scenes. The gladiatorial shows, so popular in Rome, were forbidden
   here, though theatres, amphitheatres, and hippodromes kept their place.
   It could nowhere be mistaken, that the new imperial residence was as to
   all outward appearance a Christian city. The smoke of heathen
   sacrifices never rose from the seven hills of New Rome except during
   the short reign of Julian the Apostate. It became the residence of a
   bishop who not only claimed the authority of the apostolic see of
   neighboring Ephesus, but soon outshone the patriarchate of Alexandria
   and rivalled for centuries the papal power in ancient Rome.

   The emperor diligently attended divine worship, and is portrayed upon
   medals in the posture of prayer. He kept the Easter vigils with great
   devotion. He would stand during the longest sermons of his bishops, who
   always surrounded him, and unfortunately flattered him only too much.
   And he even himself composed and delivered discourses to his court, in
   the Latin language, from which they were translated into Greek by
   interpreters appointed for the purpose. [49] General invitations were
   issued, and the citizens flocked in great crowds to the palace to hear
   the imperial preacher, who would in vain try to prevent their loud
   applause by pointing to heaven as the source of his wisdom. He dwelt
   mainly on the truth of Christianity, the folly of idolatry, the unity
   and providence of God, the coming of Christ, and the judgment. At times
   he would severely rebuke the avarice and rapacity of his courtiers, who
   would loudly applaud him with their mouths, and belie his exhortation
   by their works. [50] One of these productions is still extant, [51] in
   which he recommends Christianity in a characteristic strain, and in
   proof of its divine origin cites especially the fulfilment of prophecy,
   including the Sibylline books and the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, with
   the contrast between his own happy and brilliant reign and the tragical
   fate of his persecuting predecessors and colleagues.

   Nevertheless he continued in his later years true upon the whole to the
   toleration principles of the edict of 313, protected the pagan priests
   and temples in their privileges, and wisely abstained from all violent
   measures against heathenism, in the persuasion that it would in time
   die out. He retained many heathens at court and in public office,
   although he loved to promote Christians to honorable positions. In
   several cases, however, he prohibited idolatry, where it sanctioned
   scandalous immorality, as in the obscene worship of Venus in Phenicia;
   or in places which were specially sacred to the Christians, as the
   sepulchre of Christ and the grove of Mamre; and he caused a number of
   deserted temples and images to be destroyed or turned into Christian
   churches. Eusebius relates several such instances with evident
   approbation, and praises also his later edicts against various heretics
   and schismatics, but without mentioning the Arians. In his later years
   he seems, indeed, to have issued a general prohibition of idolatrous
   sacrifice; Eusebius speaks of it, and his sons in 341 refer to an edict
   to that effect; but the repetition of it by his successors proves,
   that, if issued, it was not carried into general execution under his
   reign.

   With this shrewd, cautious, and moderate policy of Constantine, which
   contrasts well with the violent fanaticism of his sons, accords the
   postponement of his own baptism to his last sickness. [52] For this he
   had the further motives of a superstitious desire, which he himself
   expresses, to be baptized in the Jordan, whose waters had been
   sanctified by the Saviour's baptism, and no doubt also a fear, that he
   might by relapse forfeit the sacramental remission of sins. He wished
   to secure all the benefit of baptism as a complete expiation of past
   sins, with as little risk as possible, and thus to make the best of
   both worlds. Deathbed baptisms then were to half Christians of that age
   what deathbed conversions and deathbed communions are now. Yet he
   presumed to preach the gospel, he called himself the bishop of bishops,
   he convened the first general council, and made Christianity the
   religion of the empire, long before his baptism! Strange as this
   inconsistency appears to us, what shall we think of the court bishops
   who, from false prudence, relaxed in his favor the otherwise strict
   discipline of the church, and admitted him, at least tacitly, to the
   enjoyment of nearly all the privileges of believers, before he had
   taken upon himself even a single obligation of a catechumen!

   When, after a life of almost uninterrupted health, he felt the approach
   of death, he was received into the number of catechumens by laying on
   of hands, and then formally admitted by baptism into the full communion
   of the church in the year 337, the sixty-fifth year of his age, by the
   Arian (or properly Semi-Arian) bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, whom he
   had shortly before recalled from exile together with Arius. [53] His
   dying testimony then was, as to form, in favor of heretical rather than
   orthodox Christianity, but merely from accident, not from intention. He
   meant the Christian as against the heathen religion, and whatever of
   Arianism may have polluted his baptism, was for the Greek church fully
   wiped out by the orthodox canonization. After the solemn ceremony he
   promised to live thenceforth worthily of a disciple of Jesus; refused
   to wear again the imperial mantle of cunningly woven silk richly
   ornamented with gold; retained the white baptismal robe; and died a few
   days after, on Pentecost, May 22, 337, trusting in the mercy of God,
   and leaving a long, a fortunate, and a brilliant reign, such as none
   but Augustus, of all his predecessors, had enjoyed. "So passed away the
   first Christian Emperor, the first Defender of the Faith, the first
   Imperial patron of the Papal see, and of the whole Eastern Church, the
   first founder of the Holy Places, Pagan and Christian, orthodox and
   heretical, liberal and fanatical, not to be imitated or admired, but
   much to be remembered, and deeply to be studied." [54]

   His remains were removed in a golden coffin by a procession of
   distinguished civilians and the whole army, from Nicomedia to
   Constantinople, and deposited, with the highest Christian honors, in
   the church of the Apostles, [55] while the Roman senate, after its
   ancient custom, proudly ignoring the great religious revolution of the
   age, enrolled him among the gods of the heathen Olympus. Soon after his
   death, Eusebius set him above the greatest princes of all times; from
   the fifth century he began to be recognized in the East as a saint; and
   the Greek and Russian church to this day celebrates his memory under
   the extravagant title of "Isapostolos," the "Equal of the apostles."
   [56] The Latin church, on the contrary, with truer tact, has never
   placed him among the saints, but has been content with naming him "the
   Great," in just and grateful remembrance of his services to the cause
   of Christianity and civilization.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [2] Comp. vol. i. S: 57. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting and
   terrible disease (morbus pedicularis), described with great minuteness
   by Eusebius, H. E. viii. 16, and Lactantius, De mort. persec. c.
   33."His body," says Gibbon, ch. xiv. "swelled by an intemperate course
   of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured
   by innumerable swarms of those insects which have given their name to a
   most loathsome disease." Diocletian had withdrawn from the throne in
   305, and in 313 put an end to his embittered life by suicide. In his
   retirement he found more pleasure in raising cabbage than he had found
   in ruling the empire; a confession we may readily believe. (President
   Lincoln of the United States, during the dark days of the civil war in
   Dec. 1862, declared that he would gladly exchange his position with any
   common soldier in the tented field.) Maximin, who kept up the
   persecution in the East, even after the toleration edict, as long as he
   could, died likewise a violent death by poison, in 313. In this
   tragical end of their last three imperial persecutors the Christians
   saw a palpable judgment of God.

   [3] His full name in Latin is Caius Flavius Valerius Aurelius Claudius
   Constantinus Magnus.

   [4] Episkopos ton ektos [pragmaton], viz.: tes ekklesias, in
   distinction from the proper bishops, the episkopoi ton eiso tes
   ekklesias. Vid. Eus.: Vit Const. iv. 24. Comp. S: 24.

   [5] A similar view is substantially expressed by the great historian
   Niebuhr, Vortraege ueber Roem. Geschichte, 1848. iii. 302. Mosheim, in
   his work on the First Three Centuries, p. 965 sqq. (Murdock's Transl.
   ii. 460 sqq.) labors to prove at length that Constantinewas no
   hypocrite, but sincerely believed, during the greater part of his life,
   that the Christian religion was the only true religion. Burckhardt, the
   most recent biographer of Constantine, represents him as a great
   politician of decided genius, but destitute of moral principle and
   religious interest. So also Dr. Baur.

   [6] The haruspices, or interpreters of sacrifices, who foretold future
   events from the entrails of victims.

   [7] According to Eusebius (Vit. Const. l. iii. c. 48) he dedicated
   Constantinople to "the God of the martyrs," but, according to Zosimus
   (Hist. ii. c. 31), to two female deities, probably Mary and Fortuna.
   Subsequently the city stood under the special protection of the Virgin
   Mary.

   [8] His successors also did the same, down to Gratian, 375, who
   renounced the title, then become quite empty.

   [9] Euseb. Laud. Const. c. 5.

   [10] All Christian accounts speak of his continence, but
   Julianinsinuates the contrary, and charges him with the old Roman vice
   of voracious gluttony (Caes. 329, 335).

   [11] Eusebius justifies this procedure towards an enemy of the
   Christians by the laws of war. But what becomes of the breach of a
   solemn pledge? The murder of Crispus and Fausta he passes over in
   prudent silence, in violation of the highest duty of the historian to
   relate the truth and the whole truth.

   [12] Zosimus, certainly in heathen prejudice and slanderous
   extravagance, ascribes to Constantineunder the instigation of his
   mother Helena, who was furious at the loss of her favorite grandson,
   the death of two women, the innocent Fausta and an adulteress, the
   supposed mother of his three successors; Philostorgius, on the
   contrary, declares Fausta guilty (H. E. ii. 4; only fragmentary). Then
   again, older witnesses indirectly contradict this whole view; two
   orations, namely, of the next following reign, which imply, that Fausta
   survived the death of her son, the younger Constantine, who outlived
   his father by three years. Comp. Julian. Orat. i., and Monod. in Const.
   Jun. c. 4, ad Calcem Eutrop., cited by Gibbon, ch. xviii., notes 25 and
   26. Evagrius denies both the murder of Crispus and of Fausta, though
   only on account of the silence of Eusebius, whose extreme partiality
   for his imperial friend seriously impairs the value of his narrative.
   Gibbon and still more decidedly Niebuhr (Vortraege ueber Roem.
   Geschichte, iii. 302) are inclined to acquit Constantineof all guilt in
   the death of Fausta. The latest biographer, Burckhardt (l.c. p. 375)
   charges him with it rather hastily, without even mentioning the
   critical difficulties in the way. So also Stanley (l.c. p. 300).

   [13] The heathen historians extol the earlier part of his reign, and
   depreciate the later. Thus Eutropius, x. 6: "In primo imperii tempore
   optimis principibus, ultimo mediis comparandus." With this judgment
   Gibbon agrees (ch. xviii.), presenting in Constantinean inverted
   Augustus: "In the life of Augustus we behold the tyrant of the
   republic, converted, almost by imperceptible degrees, into the father
   of his country and of human kind. In that of Constantine, we may
   contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his subjects with love,
   and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a cruel and dissolute
   monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the
   necessity of dissimulation." But this theory of progressive degeneracy,
   adopted also by F. C. Schlosser in his Weltgeschichte, by Stanley, l.c.
   p. 297, and many others, is as untenable as the opposite view of a
   progressive improvement, held by Eusebius, Mosheim, and other
   ecclesiastical historians. For, on the one hand, the earlier life of
   Constantinehas such features of cruelty as the surrender of the
   conquered barbarian kings to the wild beasts in the ampitheatre at
   Treves in 310 or 311, for which he was lauded by a heathen orator; the
   ungenerous conduct toward Herculius, his father-in-law; the murder of
   the infant son of Maxentius; and the triumphal exhibition of the head
   of Maxentius on his entrance into Rome in 312. On the other hand his
   most humane laws, such as the abolition of the gladiatorial shows and
   of licentious and cruel rites, date from his later reign.

   [14] According to Baronius (Ann. 306, n. 16) and others he was born in
   Britain, because an ancient panegyric of 307 says that
   Constantineennobled Britain by his birth (tu Britannias nobiles oriendo
   fecisti); but this may be understood of his royal as well as of his
   natural birth, since he was there proclaimed Caesar by the soldiers.
   The other opinion rests also on ancient testimonies, and is held by
   Pagi, Tillemont, and most of the recent historians.

   [15] Ambrose(De obitu Theodos.) calls her stabulariam, when Constantius
   made her acquaintance.

   [16] This is the more probable view, and rests on good authority.
   Zosimus and even the Paschal Chronicle call Helena the concubine of
   Constantius, and Constantineillegitimate. But in this case it would be
   difficult to understand that he was so well treated at the court of
   Diocletian and elected Caesar without opposition, since Constantius had
   three sons and three daughters by a legal wife, Theodora. It is
   possible, however, that Helena was first a concubine and afterwards
   legally married. Constantine, when emperor, took good care of her
   position and bestowed upon her the title of Augusta and empress with
   appropriate honors.

   [17] Even Zosimus gives the most unfavorable account of him.

   [18] "It was," says Milman (Hist. of Christianity, p. 288, N. York
   ed.), "the first advance to the military Christianity of the Middle
   Ages; a modification of the pure religion of the Gospel, if directly
   opposed to its genuine principles, still apparently indispensable to
   the social progress of man; through which the Roman empire and the
   barbarous nations, which were blended together in the vast European and
   Christian system, must necessarily have passed before they could arrive
   at a higher civilization and a purer Christianity."

   [19] De mortibus persecutorum, c. 44 (ed. Lips. II. 278 sq.):
   "Commonitus est in quiete Constantinus, ut coeleste signum Dei notaret
   in scutis, atque ita proelium committeret. Fecit ut jussus est, et
   transverse X litera, summo capite circumflexo Christum in scutis notat
   [i.e., he ordered the name of Christ or the two first letters X and P
   to be put on the shields of his soldiers]. Quo signo armatus exercitus
   capit ferrum."--This work is indeed by Burckhardt and others denied to
   Lactantius, but was at all events composed soon after the event, about
   314 or 315, while Constantinewas as yet on good terms with Licinius, to
   whom the author, c. 46, ascribes a similar vision of an angel, who is
   said to have taught him a form of prayer on his expedition against the
   heathen tyrant Maximin.

   [20] In his Vita Constant. i. 27-30, composed about 338, a work more
   panegyrical than historical, and abounding in vague declamation and
   circumlocution. But in his Church History, written before 326, though
   he has good occasion (l. ix. c. 8, 9), Eusebius says nothing of the
   occurrence, whether through oversight or ignorance, or of purpose, it
   is hard to decide. In any case the silence casts suspicion on the
   details of his subsequent story, and has been urged against it not only
   by Gibbon, but also by Lardner and others.

   [21] This is probably a mistake or an exaggeration. For if a whole army
   consisting of many thousand soldiers of every nation had seen the
   vision of the cross, Eusebius might have cited a number of living
   witnesses, and Constantinemight have dispensed with a solemn oath. But
   on the other hand the two heathen witnesses (see below) extend the
   vision likewise to the soldiers.

   [22] touto [to semeio]nika?Hac, or Hoc [sc. signo] vince, or vinces.
   Eusebius leaves the impression that the inscription was in Greek. But
   Nicephorus and Zonaras say that it was in Latin.

   [23] Hist. Eccl. ix, 9. Comp. the similar account of Sozomenus, H. E.
   i. 3.

   [24] Nazar. Paneg. in Const. c. 14: "In ore denique est omnium
   Galliarum [this would seem to indicate a pretty general rumor of some
   supernatural assistance], exercitus visos, qui se divinitus missos prae
   se ferebant," etc. Comp. Baronius, Annal. ad ann. 312, n. 11. This
   historian adduces also (n. 14) another and still older pagan testimony
   from an anonymous panegyrical orator, who, in 313, speaks of a certain
   undefined omen which filled the soldiers of Constantinewith misgivings
   and fears, while it emboldened him to the combat. Baronius and J. H.
   Newman (in his "Essay on Miracles") plausibly suppose this omen to have
   been the cross.

   [25] This is the view of the older historians, Protestant as well as
   Catholic. Among more modern writers on the subject it has hardly any
   advocates of note, except Doellinger (R.C.), J. H.Newman (in his "Essay
   on Miracles," published in 1842, before his transition to Romanism, and
   prefixed to the first volume of his translation of Fleury), and
   Guericke (Lutheran). Comp. also De Broglie, i. 219 and 442.

   [26] So more or less distinctly Hoornebeck (of Leyden), Thomasius,
   Arnold, Lardner, Gibbon, and Waddington. The last writer (Hist. of the
   Church, vol. i. 171) disposes of it too summarily by the remark that
   "this flattering fable may very safely be consigned to contempt and
   oblivion." Burckhardt, the most recent biographer of Constantine, is of
   the same opinion. He considers the story as a joint fabrication of
   Eusebius and the emperor, and of no historical value whatever (Die Zeit
   Constantins des Gr. 1853, pp. 394 and 395). Lardner saddles the lie
   exclusively upon the emperor (although he admits him otherwise to have
   been a sincere Christian), and tries to prove that Eusebius himself
   hardly believed it.

   [27] This is substantially the theory of J. A. Fabricius (in a special
   dissertation), Schroeckh (vol. v. 83), Manso, Heinichen (in the first
   Excursus to his ed. of Euseb), Gieseler, Neander, Milman, Robertson,
   and Stanley. Gieseler (vol. i. S: 56, note 29) mentions similar
   cross-like clouds which appeared in Germany, Dec. 1517 and 1552, and
   were mistaken by contemporary Lutherans for supernatural signs. Stanley
   (Lectures on the Eastern Church, p. 288) refers to the natural
   phenomenon known by the name of "parhelion," which in an afternoon sky
   not unfrequently assumes almost the form of the cross. He also brings
   in, as a new illustration, the Aurora Borealis which appeared in
   November, 1848, and was variously interpreted, in France as forming the
   letters L. N., in view of the approaching election of Louis Napoleon,
   in Rome as the blood of the murdered Rossi crying for vengeance from
   heaven against his assassins. Mosheim, after a lengthy discussion of
   the subject in his large work on the ante-Nicene age, comes to no
   definite conclusion, but favors the hypothesis of a mere dream or a
   psychological illusion. Neander and Robertson connect with the
   supposition of a natural phenomenon in the skies a dream of
   Constantinewhich reflected the optical vision of the day. Keim, the
   latest writer on the subject, l.c. p. 89, admits the dream, but denies
   the cross in the clouds. So Mosheim.

   [28] Dr. Murdock (notes to his translation of Mosheim) raises the
   additional objection, which has some force from his Puritan standpoint:
   "If the miracle of the luminous cross was a reality, has not God
   himself sanctioned the use of the cross as the appointed symbol of our
   religion? so that there is no superstition in the use of it, but the
   Catholics are correct and the Protestants in an error on this subject?"

   [29] Theodoret says that Constantinewas called not of men or by men
   (ouk ap anthropou, oude di anthropou,Gal. i. 1), but from heaven, as
   the divine apostle Paul was (ouranothen kata ton theion apostolon).
   Hist. Eccl. l. i. c. 2.

   [30] So Sozomenus, H. E. lib. i. cap. 3, expressly represents it: honar
   eide to tou staurou semeion selagizonetc. Afterwards he gives, it is
   true, the fuller report of Eusebius in his own words. Comp. Rufin. ix.
   9; Euseb. Vit. Const. i. 29; Lact. De mort. persec. 44, and the
   allusions of the heathen panegyrists.

   [31] Licinius before the battle with Maximin had a vision of an angel
   who taught him a prayer for victory (Lactant. De mort. persec. c. 46).
   Julianthe Apostate was even more superstitious in this respect than his
   Christian uncle, and fully addicted to the whole train of omens,
   presages, prodigies, spectres, dreams, visions, auguries, and oracles
   (Comp. below, S: 4). On his expedition against the Persians he was
   supposed by Libanius to have been surrounded by a whole army of gods,
   which, however, in the view of Gregory of Nazianzen, was a host of
   demons. See Ullmann, Gregory of Naz., p. 100.

   [32] According to the account of his friend, Dr. Philip Doddridge, who
   learned the facts from Gardiner, as Eusebius from Constantine. When
   engaged in serious meditation on a Sabbath night in July, 1719,
   Gardiner "suddenly thought he saw an unusual blaze of light fall on the
   book while he was reading, which he at first imagined might have
   happened by some accident in the candle. But lifting up his eyes, he
   apprehended, to his extreme amazement, that there was before him, as it
   were suspended in the air, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus
   Christ upon the cross, surrounded with a glory; and was impressed as if
   a voice, or something equivalent to a voice, had come to him, to this
   effect: 'O sinner, did I suffer this for thee, and are these the
   returns?' " After this event he changed from a dissolute worldling to
   an earnest and godly man. But the whole apparition was probably, after
   all, merely an inward one. For the report adds as to the voice:
   "Whether this were an audible voice, or only a strong impression on his
   mind, equally striking, he did not seem confident, though he judged it
   to be the former. He thought he was awake. But everybody knows how easy
   it is towards midnight to fall into a doze over a dull or even a good
   book. It is very probable then that this apparition resolves itself
   into a significant dream which marked an epoch in his life. No
   reflecting person will on that account doubt the seriousness of
   Gardiner's conversion, which was amply proved by his whole subsequent
   life, even far more than Constantine's was.

   [33] Numbers xii. 6: "I the Lord will make myself known in a vision,
   and will speak in a dream." Job xxxiii. 15, 16: "In a dream, in a
   vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings
   upon the bed, then he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their
   instruction." For actual facts see Gen. xxxi. 10, 24; xxxvii. 5; 1
   Kings iii. 5; Dan. ii. 4, 36; vii. 1; Matt. i. 20; ii. 12, 13, 19, 22;
   Acts x. 17; xxii. 17, 18.

   [34] Histor. ii. 16.

   [35] Laboron, also labouron; derived not from labor, nor from laphuron,
   i.e. praeda, nor from labein, but probably from a barbarian root,
   otherwise unknown, and introduced into the Roman terminology, long
   before Constantine, by the Celtic or Germanic recruits. Comp. Du Cange,
   Glossar., and Suicer, Thesaur. s. h. v. The labarum, as described by
   Eusebius, who saw it himself (Vita Const. i. 30), consisted of a long
   spear overlaid with gold, and a crosspiece of wood, from which hung a
   square flag of purple cloth embroidered and covered with precious
   stones. On the of top of the shaft was a crown composed of gold and
   precious stones, and containing the monogram of Christ (see next note),
   and just under this crown was a likeness the emperor and his sons in
   gold. The emperor told Eusebius (I. ii. c. 7) some incredible things
   about this labarum, e.g. that none of its bearers was ever hurt by the
   darts of the enemy.

   [36] X and P, the first two letters of the name of Christ, so written
   upon one another as to make the form of the cross: P with x (Rho with
   Chi on the lower part) or Pwith--(Rho with a dash on the lower part to
   make a cross), or aPo(i.e. Christos--Alpha and Omega, the beginning and
   the end with a chi on the stem to make the cross), and similar forms,
   of which Muenter (Sinnbilder der alten Christen, p. 36 sqq.) has
   collected from ancient coins, vessels, and tombstones more than twenty.
   The monogram, as well as the sign of the cross, was in use among the
   Christians Iong before Constantine, probably as early as the Antonines
   and Hadrian. Yea, the standards and trophies of victory generally had
   the appearance of a cross, as Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Justin, and
   other apologists of the second century told the heathens. According to
   Killen (Ancient Church, p. 317, note), who quotes Aringhus, Roma
   subterranea, ii. p. 567, as his authority, the famous monogram (of
   course in a different sense) is found even before Christ on coins of
   the Ptolemies. The only thing new, therefore, was the union of this
   symbol, in its Christian sense and application, with the Roman military
   standard.

   [37] Eus., H. E. ix. 9: Touto to soteriodei(salutari, not singulari, as
   Rufinus has it)semeio, to alethino elencho tos andrias , ten polin
   humon apo zugou tou turannou diasotheisan eleutherosa, k. t. l.Gibbon,
   however thinks it more probable, that at least the labarum and the
   inscription date only from the second or third visit of Constantineto
   Rome.

   [38] "Instinctu Divinitatis et mentis magnitudine." Divinitas may be
   taken as an ambiguous word like Providence, "which veils Constantine's
   passage from Paganism to Christianity."

   [39] Cicero says, pro Raberio, c. 5: "Nomen ipsum crucis absit non modo
   a corpore civium Romanorum, sed etiam a cogitatione, oculis, auribus."
   With other ancient heathens, however, the Egyptians, the Buddhists, and
   even the aborigines of Mexico, the cross seems to have been in use as a
   religious symbol. Socrates relates (H. E. v. 17) that at the
   destruction of the temple of Serapis, among the hieroglyphic
   inscriptions forms of crosses were found, which pagans and Christians
   alike referred to their respective religions. Some of the heathen
   converts conversant with hieroglyphic characters interpreted the form
   of the cross to mean the Life to come. According to Prescott (Conquest
   of Mexico, iii. 338-340) the Spaniards found the cross among the
   objects of worship in the idol temples of Anahnac.

   [40] Even church teachers long before Constantine, Justin, Tertullian,
   Minucius Felix, in downright opposition to this pagan antipathy, had
   found the sign of the cross everywhere on the face of nature and of
   human life; in the military banners and trophies of victory, in the
   ship with swelling sails and extended oars, in the plow in the flying
   bird, in man swimming or praying, in the features of the face and the
   form of the body with outstretched arms. Hence the daily use of the of
   the cross by the early Christians. Comp. vol. ii. S: 77 (p. 269 sqq.).

   [41] This in the second edict of toleration, not the third, as was
   formerly supposed. An edict of 312 does not exist and rests on a
   mistake. See vol. ii. S: 25, p. 72.

   [42] "Haec ordinanda esse credidimus ... ut daremus et Christianis et
   omnibus liberam potestatem sequendi religionem, quamquisque voluisset
   ... ut nulli omnino facultatem obnegandam putaremus, qui vel
   observationi Christianorum, vel ei religioni mentem suam dederet, quam
   ipse sibi aptissimam esse sentiret ... ut, amotis omnibus ominino
   conditionibus [by which are meant, no doubt, the restrictions of
   toleration in the edict of 311], nunc libere ac simpliciter unusquisque
   eorum qui eandem observandae religioni Christianorum gerunt voluntatem,
   citra ullam inquietudinem et molestiam sui id ipsum observare
   contendant." Lact., De mort, persec. c. 48 (ii. p. 282, ed. Fritzsche).
   Eusebius gives the edict in a stiff andobscure Greek translation, with
   some variations, H. E. x. 5. Comp. Niceph. H. E. vii. 41. Also a
   special essay on the edicts of toleration, by Theod. Keim in the
   Tuebinger Theolog. Jahrbuecher for 1852, and Mason, persecution of
   Diocletian, pp. 299 and 326.

   [43] Compare the remarkable passages of Tertullian, cited in vol. ii.
   S: 13, p. 35. Lactantius likewise, in the beginning of the fourth
   century, says, Instit. div. l. v. c. 19 (i. p. 267 sq. ed. Lips.): "Non
   est opus vi et injuria, quia religio cogi non potest; verbis potius,
   quam verberibus res agenda est, ut sit voluntas .... Defendenda religio
   est, non occidendo, sed moriendo; non saevitia, sed patientia; non
   scelere, sed fide .... Nam si sanguine, si tormentis, si malo
   religionem defendere velis, jam non defendetur illa, sed polluetur
   atque violabitur. Nihil est enim tam voluntarium, quam religio, in qua
   si animus sacrificantis aversus est, jam sublata, jam nulla est." Comp.
   c. 20.

   [44] For the Acta St. Silvestri and the H. Eccl. of Nicephorus Callist.
   vii. 34 (in Baronius, ad ann. 324) are of course not reliable authority
   on this point.

   [45] He commanded the Christians, for example, to hold their large
   assemblies in open fields instead of in the churches, because the fresh
   air was more wholesome for them than the close atmosphere in a
   building!

   [46] "Jubente Deo," says he in one of his laws. Cod. Theodos. l. xiii.
   tit. v. leg. 7. Later writers ascribe the founding of Constantinople to
   a nocturnal vision of the emperor, and an injunction of the Virgin
   Mary, who was revered as patroness, one might almost suppose as
   goddess, of the city.

   [47] The Turks still call it emphatically the city. For Stambul is a
   corruption of Istambul, which means: eis ten polin.

   [48] The most offensive of these is the colossal bronze statue of
   Apollo, pretended to be the work of Phidias, which Constantineset up in
   the middle of the Forum on a pillar of porphyry, a hundred and twenty
   feet high, and which, at least according to later interpretations,
   served to represent the emperor himself with the attributes of Christ
   and the god of the sun! So says the author of Antiquit. Constant. in
   Banduri, and J. v. Hammer: Constantinopolis u. der Bosphorus, i. 162
   (cited in Milman's notes to Gibbon). Nothing now remains of the pillar
   but a mutilated piece.

   [49] Euseb. V. C. iv. 29-33. Burckhardt, l.c. p. 400, gives little
   credit to this whole account of Eusebius, and thus intimates the charge
   of deliberate falsehood.

   [50] Euseb. Vit. Const. iv. 29 ad finem.

   [51] Const. Oratio ad Sanctorum coetum, was preserved in Greek
   translation by Eusebius as an appendix to his biography of the emperor.

   [52] The pretended baptism of Constantineby the Roman bishop Sylvester
   in 324, and his bestowment of lands on the pope in connection with it,
   is a mediaeval fiction, still unblushingly defended indeed by Baronius
   (ad ann. 324, No. 43-49), but long since given up by other Roman
   Catholic historians, such as Noris, Tillemont, and Valesius. It is
   sufficiently refuted by the contemporary testimony of Eusebius alone
   (Vit. Const. iv. 61, 62), who places the baptism of Constantineat the
   end of his life, and minutely describes it; and Socrates, Sozomen,
   Ambrose, and Jeromecoincide with him.

   [53] Hence Jeromesays, Constantinewas baptized into Arianism. And Dr.
   Newman, the ex-Tractarian, remarks, that in conferring his benefaction
   on the church he burdened it with the bequest of an heresy, which
   outlived his age by many centuries, and still exists in its effects in
   the divisions of the East (The Arians of the 4th Century, 1854, p.
   138). But Eusebius (not the church historian) was probably the nearest
   bishop, and acted here not as a party leader. Constantine, too, in
   spite of the influence which the Arians had over him in his later
   years, considered himself constantly a true adherent of the Nicene
   faith, and he is reported by Theodoret (H. E. I. 32) to have ordered
   the recall of Athanasius from exile on his deathbed, in spite of the
   opposition of the Arian Eusebius. He was in these matters frequently
   misled by misrepresentations, and cared more for peace than for truth.
   The deeper significance of the dogmatic controversy was entirely beyond
   his sphere. Gibbon is right in this matter: "The credulous monarch,
   unskilled in the stratagems of theological warfare, might be deceived
   by the modest and specious professions of the heretics, whose
   sentiments he never perfectly understood; and while he protected Arius,
   and persecuted Athanasius, he still considered the council of Nice as
   the bulwark of the Christian faith, and the peculiar glory of his own
   reign." Ch. xxi.

   [54] Stanley, l.c. p. 320.

   [55] This church became the burial place of the Byzantine emperors,
   till in the fourth crusade the coffins were rifled and the bodies cast
   out. Mahomet II. destroyed the church and built in its place the
   magnificent mosque which bears his name. See von Hammer, i. 390.

   [56] Comp the Acta Sact. ad 21 Maii, p. 13 sq. Niebuhr justly remarks:
   "When certain oriental writers call Constantine" equal to the
   Apostles,' they do not know what they are saying; and to speak of him
   as a 'saint' is a profanation of the word."
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 3. The Sons of Constantine. a.d. 337-361.

   For the literature see S: 2 and S: 4.

   With the death of Constantine the monarchy also came, for the present,
   to an end. The empire was divided among his three sons, Constantine
   II., Constans, and Constantius. Their accession was not in Christian
   style, but after the manner of genuine Turkish, oriental despotism; it
   trod upon the corpses of the numerous kindred of their father,
   excepting two nephews, Gallus and Julian, who were saved only by
   sickness and youth from the fury of the soldiers. Three years later
   followed a war of the brothers for the sole supremacy. Constantine II.
   was slain by Constans (340), who was in turn murdered by a barbarian
   field officer and rival, Magnentius (350). After the defeat and the
   suicide of Magnentius, Constantius, who had hitherto reigned in the
   East, became sole emperor, and maintained himself through many storms
   until his natural death (353-361).

   The sons of Constantine did their Christian education little honor, and
   departed from their father's wise policy of toleration. Constantius, a
   temperate and chaste, but jealous, vain, and weak prince, entirely
   under the control of eunuchs, women, and bishops, entered upon a
   violent suppression of the heathen religion, pillaged and destroyed
   many temples, gave the booty to the church, or to his eunuch,
   flatterers, and worthless favorites, and prohibited, under penalty of
   death, all sacrifices and worship of images in Rome, Alexandria, and
   Athens, though the prohibition could not be carried out. Hosts now came
   over to Christianity, though, of course, for the most part with the
   lips only, not with the heart. But this emperor proceeded with the same
   intolerance against the adherents of the Nicene orthodoxy, and punished
   them with confiscation and banishment. His brothers supported
   Athanasius, but he himself was a fanatical Arian. In fact, he meddled
   in all the affairs of the church, which was convulsed during his reign
   with doctrinal controversy. He summoned a multitude of councils, in
   Gaul, in Italy, in Illyricum, and in Asia; aspired to the renown of a
   theologian; and was fond of being called bishop of bishops, though,
   like his father, he postponed baptism till shortly before his death.

   There were there, it is true, who justified this violent suppression of
   idolatry, by reference to the extermination of the Canaanites under
   Joshua. [57] But intelligent church teachers, like Athanasius, Hosius,
   and Hilary, gave their voice for toleration, though even they mean
   particularly toleration for orthodoxy, for the sake of which they
   themselves had been deposed and banished by the Arian power. Athanasius
   says, for example: "Satan, because there is no truth in him, breaks in
   with axe and sword. But the Saviour is gentle, and forces no one, to
   whom he comes, but knocks and speaks to the soul: Open to me, my
   sister? [58] If we open to him, he enters; but if we will not, he
   departs. For the truth is not preached by sword and dungeon, by the
   might of an army, but by persuasion and exhortation. How can there be
   persuasion where fear of the emperor is uppermost? How exhortation,
   where the contradicter has to expect banishment and death?" With equal
   truth Hilary confronts the emperor with the wrong of his course, in the
   words: "With the gold of the state thou burdenest the sanctuary of God,
   and what is torn from the temples, or gained by confiscation, or
   extorted by punishment, thou obtrudest upon God."

   By the laws of history the forced Christianity of Constantius must
   provoke a reaction of heathenism. And such reaction in fact ensued,
   though only for a brief period immediately after this emperor's death.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [57] So Julius Firmicus Maternus, author of a tract De errore
   profanarum religionum, written about 348 and dedicated to the emperors
   Constantius and Constans.

   [58] Song of Sol. v. 2.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 4. Julian the Apostate, and the Reaction of Paganism. a.d. 361-363.

   SOURCES.

   These agree in all the principal facts, even to unimportant details,
   but differ entirely in spirit and in judgment; Julian himself
   exhibiting the vanity of self-praise, Libanius and Zosimus the extreme
   of passionate admiration, Gregory and Cyril the opposite extreme of
   hatred and abhorrence, Ammianus Marcellinus a mixture of praise and
   censure.

   1. Heathen sources: Juliani imperatoris Opera, quae supersunt omnia,
   ed. by Petavius, Par. 1583; and more completely by Ezech. Spanhemius,
   Lips. 1696, 2 vols. fol. in one (Spanheim gives the Greek original with
   a good Latin version, and the Ten Books of Cyril of Alex. against
   Julian). We have from Julian: Misopogon (Misopwvgon, the Beard-hater, a
   defence of himself against the accusations of the Antiochians);
   Caesares (two satires on his predecessors); eight Orationes; sixty-five
   Epistolae (the latter separately and most completely edited, with
   shorter fragments, by Heyler, Mog. 1828); and Fragments of his three or
   seven Books kata Christianonin the Reply of Cyril. Libanius: Epitaphios
   ep Iouliano, in Lib. Opp. ed. Reiske, Altenb. 1791-97. 4 vols.
   Mamertinus: Gratiarum actio Juliano. The relevant passages in the
   heathen historians Ammianus Marcellinus (I.c. lib. xxi-xxv. 3), Zosimus
   and Eunapius.

   2. Christian Sources (all in Greek): the early church historians,
   Socrates (l. iii.), Sozomen (I. v. and vi.), Theodoret (I. iii.).
   Gregory Naz.: Orationes invectivae in Jul. duae, written some six
   months after the death of Julian (Opp. tom. i.). Cyril of Alex.: Contra
   impium Jul. libri x. (in the Opp. Cyr., ed. J. Aubert, Par. 1638, tom.
   vi., and in Spanheim's ed. of the works of Julian).

   LITERATURE.

   Tillemont: Memoires, etc., vol. vii. p. 322-423 (Venice ed.), and
   Histoire des empereurs Rom. Par. 1690 sqq., vol. iv. 483-576. Abbe De
   la Bleterie: Vie de l'empereur Julien. Amst. 1735. 2 vols. The same in
   English, Lond. 1746. W. Warburton: Julian. Lond. 3d ed. 1763. Nath.
   Lardner: Works, ed. Dr. Kippis, vol. vii. p. 581 sqq. Gibbon: l.c. ch.
   xxii.-xxiv., particularly xxiii. Neander: Julian u. sein Zeitalter.
   Leipz. 1812 (his first historical production), and Allg. K. G., iii.
   (2d ed. 1846), p. 76-148. English ed. Torrey, ii. 37-67. Jondot (R.C.):
   Histoire de l'empereur Julien. 1817, 2 vols. C. H. Van Herwerden: De
   Juliano imper. religionis Christ. hoste, eodemque vindice. Lugd. Bat.
   1827. G. F. Wiggers: Jul. der Abtruennige. Leipz. 1837 (in Illgen's
   Zeitschr. f. Hist. Theol.). H. Schulze: De philos. et moribus Jul.
   Strals. 1839. D. Fr. Strauss (author of the mythological "Leben Jesu"):
   Der Romantiker auf dem Thron der Caesaren, oder Julian der Abtr. Manh.
   1847 (containing a clear survey of the various opinions concerning
   Julian from Libanius and Gregory to Gibbon, Schlosser, Neander, and
   Ullmann, but hiding a political aim against King Frederick William IV.
   of Prussia). J. E. Auer (R.C.): Kaiser Jul. der Abtr. im Kampf mit den
   Kirchenvaetern seiner Zeit. Wien, 1855. W. Mangold: Jul. der Abtr.
   Stuttg. 1862. C. Semisch: Jul. der Abtr. Bresl. 1862. F. Luebker:
   Julians Kampf u. Ende. Hamb. 1864.

   Notwithstanding this great conversion of the government and of public
   sentiment, the pagan religion still had many adherents, and retained an
   important influence through habit and superstition over the rude
   peasantry, and through literature and learned schools of philosophy and
   rhetoric at Alexandria, Athens, &c., over the educated classes. And
   now, under the lead of one of the most talented, energetic, and notable
   Roman emperors, it once more made a systematic and vigorous effort to
   recover its ascendency in the Roman empire. But in the entire failure
   of this effort heathenism itself gave the strongest proof that it had
   outlived itself forever. It now became evident during the brief, but
   interesting and instructive episode of Julian's reign, that the policy
   of Constantine was entirely judicious and consistent with the course of
   history itself, and that Christianity really carried all the moral
   vigor of the present and all the hopes of the future. At the same time
   this temporary persecution was a just punishment and wholesome
   discipline for a secularized church and clergy. [59]

   Julian, surnamed the Apostate (Apostata), a nephew of Constantine the
   Great and cousin of Constantius, was born in the year 331, and was
   therefore only six years old when his uncle died. The general slaughter
   of his kindred, not excepting his father, at the change of the throne,
   could beget neither love for Constantius nor respect for his court
   Christianity. He afterwards ascribed his escape to the special favor of
   the old gods. He was systematically spoiled by false education and made
   the enemy of that very religion which pedantic teachers attempted to
   force upon his free and independent mind, and which they so poorly
   recommended by their lives. We have a striking parallel in more recent
   history in the case of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Julian was
   jealously watched by the emperor, and kept in rural retirement almost
   like a prisoner. With his step-brother Gallus, he received a nominally
   Christian training under the direction of the Arian bishop Eusebius of
   Nicomedia and several eunuchs; he was baptized; even educated for the
   clerical order, and ordained a Lector. [60] He prayed, fasted,
   celebrated the memory of the martyrs, paid the usual reverence to the
   bishops, besought the blessing of hermits, and read the Scriptures in
   the church of Nicomedia. Even his plays must wear the hue of devotion.
   But this despotic and mechanical force-work of a repulsively austere
   and fiercely polemic type of Christianity roused the intelligent,
   wakeful, and vigorous spirit of Julian to rebellion, and drove him over
   towards the heathen side. The Arian pseudo-Christianity of Constantius
   produced the heathen anti-Christianity of Julian; and the latter was a
   well-deserved punishment of the former. With enthusiasm and with
   untiring diligence the young prince studied Homer, Plato, Aristotle,
   and the Neo-Platonists. The partial prohibition of such reading gave it
   double zest. He secretly obtained the lectures of the celebrated
   rhetorician Libanius, afterwards his eulogist, whose productions,
   however, represent the degeneracy of the heathen literature in that
   day, covering emptiness with a pompous and tawdry style, attractive
   only to a vitiated taste. He became acquainted by degrees with the most
   eminent representatives of heathenism, particularly the Neo-Platonic
   philosophers, rhetoricians, and priests, like Libanius, Aedesius,
   Maximus, and Chrysanthius. These confirmed him in his superstitions by
   sophistries and sorceries of every kind. He gradually became the secret
   head of the heathen party. Through the favor and mediation of the
   empress Eusebia he visited for some months the schools of Athens (a.d.
   355), where he was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and thus
   completed his transition to the Grecian idolatry.

   This heathenism, however, was not a simple, spontaneous growth; it was
   all an artificial and morbid production. It was the heathenism of the
   Neo-Platonic, pantheistic eclecticism, a strange mixture of philosophy,
   poesy, and superstition, and, in Julian at least, in great part an
   imitation or caricature of Christianity. It sought to spiritualize and
   revive the old mythology by uniting with it oriental theosophemes and a
   few Christian ideas; taught a higher, abstract unity above the
   multiplicity of the national gods, genii, heroes, and natural powers;
   believed in immediate communications and revelations of the gods
   through dreams, visions, oracles, entrails of sacrifices, prodigies;
   and stood in league with all kinds of magical and theurgic arts. [61]
   Julian himself, with all his philosophical intelligence, credited the
   most insipid legends of the gods, or gave them a deeper, mystic meaning
   by the most arbitrary allegorical interpretation. He was in intimate
   personal intercourse with Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo, Hercules, who paid
   their nocturnal visits to his heated fancy, and assured him of their
   special protection. And he practised the art of divination as a master.
   [62] Among the various divinities he worshipped with peculiar devotion
   the great king Helios, or the god of the sun, whose servant he called
   himself, and whose ethereal light attracted him even in tender
   childhood with magic force. He regarded him as the centre of the
   universe, from which light, life, and salvation proceed upon all
   creatures. [63] In this view of a supreme divinity he made an approach
   to the Christian monotheism, but substituted an airy myth and
   pantheistic fancy for the only true and living God and the personal
   historical Christ.

   His moral character corresponds with the preposterous nature of this
   system. With all his brilliant talents and stoical virtues, he wanted
   the genuine simplicity and naturalness, which are the foundation of all
   true greatness of mind and character. As his worship of Helios was a
   shadowy reflection of the Christian monotheism, and so far an
   involuntary tribute to the religion he opposed, so in his artificial
   and ostentatious asceticism we can only see a caricature of the
   ecclesiastical monasticism of the age which he so deeply despised for
   its humility and spirituality. He was full of affectation, vanity,
   sophistry, loquacity, and a master in the art of dissimulation.
   Everything he said or wrote was studied and calculated for effect.
   Instead of discerning the spirit of the age and putting himself at the
   head of the current of true progress, he identified himself with a
   party of no vigor nor promise, and thus fell into a false and untenable
   position, at variance with the mission of a ruler. Great minds, indeed,
   are always more or less at war with their age, as we may see in the
   reformers, in the apostles, nay, in Christ himself. But their
   antagonism proceeds from a clear knowledge of the real wants and a
   sincere devotion to the best interests of the age; it is all
   progressive and reformatory, and at last carries the deeper spirit of
   the age with itself, and raises it to a higher level. The antagonism of
   Julian, starting with a radical misconception of the tendency of
   history and animated by selfish ambition, was one of retrogression and
   reaction, and in addition, was devoted to a bad cause. He had all the
   faults, and therefore deserved the tragic fate, of a fanatical
   reactionist.

   His apostasy from Christianity, to which he was probably never at heart
   committed, Julian himself dates as early as his twentieth year, a.d.
   351. But while Constantius lived, he concealed his pagan sympathies
   with consummate hypocrisy, publicly observed Christian ceremonies,
   while secretly sacrificing to Jupiter and Helios, kept the feast of
   Epiphany in the church at Vienne so late as January, 361, and praised
   the emperor in the most extravagant style, though he thoroughly hated
   him, and after his death all the more bitterly mocked him. [64] For ten
   years he kept the mask. After December, 355, the student of books
   astonished the world with brilliant military and executive powers as
   Caesar in Gaul, which was at that time heavily threatened by the German
   barbarians; he won the enthusiastic love of the soldiers, and received
   from them the dignity of Augustus. Then he raised the standard of
   rebellion against his suspicious and envious imperial cousin and
   brother-in-law, and in 361 openly declared himself a friend of the
   gods. By the sudden death of Constantius in the same year he became
   sole head of the Roman empire, and in December, as the only remaining
   heir of the house of Constantine, [65] made his entry into
   Constantinople amidst universal applause and rejoicing over escape from
   civil war.

   He immediately gave himself, with the utmost zeal, to the duties of his
   high station, unweariedly active as prince, general, judge, orator,
   high-priest, correspondent, and author. He sought to unite the fame of
   an Alexander, a Marcus Aurelius, a Plato, and a Diogenes in himself.
   His only recreation was a change of labor. He would use at once his
   hand in writing, his ear in hearing, and his voice in speaking. He
   considered his whole time due to his empire and the culture of his own
   mind. The eighteen short months of his reign Dec. 361-June 363)
   comprehend the plans of a life-long administration and most of his
   literary works. He practised the strictest economy in the public
   affairs, banished all useless luxury from his court, and dismissed with
   one decree whole hosts of barbers, cup-bearers, cooks, masters of
   ceremonies, and other superfluous officers, with whom the palace
   swarmed, but surrounded himself instead with equally useless pagan
   mystics, sophists, jugglers, theurgists, soothsayers, babblers, and
   scoffers, who now streamed from all quarters to the court. In striking
   contrast with his predecessors, he maintained the simplicity of a
   philosopher and an ascetic in his manner of life, and gratified his
   pride and vanity with contempt of the pomp and pleasures of the
   imperial purple. He lived chiefly on vegetable diet, abstaining now
   from this food, now from that, according to the taste of the god or
   goddess to whom the day was consecrated. He wore common clothing,
   usually slept on the floor, let his beard and nails grow, and, like the
   strict anachorets of Egypt, neglected the laws of decency and
   cleanliness. [66] This cynic eccentricity and vain ostentation
   certainly spoiled his reputation for simplicity and self-denial, and
   made him ridiculous. It evinced, also, not so much the boldness and
   wisdom of a reformer, as the pedantry and folly of a reactionist. In
   military and executive talent and personal bravery he was not inferior
   to Constantine; while in mind and literary culture he far excelled him,
   as well as in energy and moral self-control; and, doubtless to his own
   credit, he closed his public career at the age at which his uncle's
   began; but he entirely lacked the clear, sound common sense of his
   great predecessor, and that practical statesmanship, which discerns the
   wants of the age, and acts according to them. He had more uncommon
   sense than common sense, and the latter is often even more important
   than the former, and indispensable to a good practical statesman. But
   his greatest fault as a ruler was his utterly false position towards
   the paramount question of his time: that of religion. This was the
   cause of that complete failure which made his reign as trackless as a
   meteor.

   The ruling passion of Julian, and the soul of his short but most
   active, remarkable, and in its negative results instructive reign, was
   fanatical love of the pagan religion and bitter hatred of the
   Christian, at a time when the former had already forever given up to
   the latter the reins of government in the world. He considered it the
   great mission of his life to restore the worship of the gods, and to
   reduce the religion of Jesus first to a contemptible sect, and at last,
   if possible, to utter extinction from the earth. To this he believed
   himself called by the gods themselves, and in this faith he was
   confirmed by theurgic arts, visions, and dreams. To this end all the
   means, which talent, zeal, and power could command, were applied; and
   the failure must be attributed solely to the intrinsic folly and
   impracticability of the end itself.

   I. To look, first, at the positive side of his plan, the restoration
   and reformation of heathenism:

   He reinstated, in its ancient splendor, the worship of the gods at the
   public expense; called forth hosts of priests from concealment;
   conferred upon them all their former privileges, and showed them every
   honor; enjoined upon the soldiers and civil officers attendance at the
   forsaken temples and altars; forgot no god or goddess, though himself
   specially devoted to the worship of Apollo, or the sun; and
   notwithstanding his parsimony in other respects, caused the rarest
   birds and whole herds of bulls and lambs to be sacrificed, until the
   continuance of the species became a subject of concern. [67] He removed
   the cross and the monogram of Christ from the coins and standards, and
   replaced the former pagan symbols. He surrounded the statues and
   portraits of the emperors with the signs of idolatry, that every one
   might be compelled to bow before the gods, who would pay the emperors
   due respect. He advocated images of the gods on the same grounds on
   which afterwards the Christian iconolaters defended the images of the
   saints. If you love the emperor, if you love your father, says he, you
   like to see his portrait; so the friend of the gods loves to look upon
   their images, by which he is pervaded with reverence for the invisible
   gods, who are looking down upon him.

   Julian led the way himself with a complete example. He discovered on
   every occasion the utmost zeal for the heathen religion, and performed,
   with the most scrupulous devotion, the offices of a pontifex maximus,
   which had been altogether neglected, although not formally abolished,
   under his two predecessors. Every morning and evening he sacrificed to
   the rising and setting sun, or the supreme light-god; every night, to
   the moon and the stars; every day, to some other divinity. Says
   Libanius, his heathen admirer: "He received the rising sun with blood,
   and attended him again with blood at his setting." As he could not go
   abroad so often as he would, he turned his palace into a temple and
   erected altars in his garden, which was kept purer than most chapels.
   "Wherever there was a temple," says the same writer, "whether in the
   city or on the hill or the mountain top, no matter how rough, or
   difficult of access, he ran to it." He prostrated himself devoutly
   before the altars and the images, not allowing the most violent storm
   to prevent him. Several times in a day, surrounded by priests and
   dancing women, he sacrificed a hundred bulls, himself furnishing the
   wood and kindling the flames. He used the knife himself, and as
   haruspex searched with his own hand the secrets of the future in the
   reeking entrails.

   But his zeal found no echo, and only made him ridiculous in the eyes of
   cultivated heathens themselves. He complains repeatedly of the
   indifference of his party, and accuses one of his priests of a secret
   league with Christian bishops. The spectators at his sacrifices came
   not from devotion, but from curiosity, and grieved the devout emperor
   by their rounds of applause, as if he were simply a theatrical actor of
   religion. Often there were no spectators at all. When he endeavored to
   restore the oracle of Apollo Daphneus in the famous cypress grove at
   Antioch, and arranged for a magnificent procession, with libation,
   dances, and incense, he found in the temple one solitary old priest,
   and this priest ominously offered in sacrifice--a goose. [68]

   At the same time, however, Julian sought to renovate and transform
   heathenism by incorporating with it the morals of Christianity; vainly
   thinking thus to bring it back to its original purity. In this he
   himself unwittingly and unwillingly bore witness to the poverty of the
   heathen religion, and paid the highest tribute to the Christian; and
   the Christians for this reason not inaptly called him an "ape of
   Christianity."

   In the first place, he proposed to improve the irreclaimable priesthood
   after the model of the Christian clergy. The priests, as true mediators
   between the gods and men, should be constantly in the temples, should
   occupy themselves with holy things, should study no immoral or
   skeptical books of the school of Epicurus and Pyrrho, but the works of
   Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Chrysippus, and Zeno; they should visit no
   taverns nor theatres, should pursue no dishonorable trade, should give
   alms, practise hospitality, live in strict chastity and temperance,
   wear simple clothing, but in their official functions always appear in
   the costliest garments and most imposing dignity. He borrowed almost
   every feature of the then prevalent idea of the Christian priesthood,
   and applied it to the polytheistic religion. [69] Then, he borrowed
   from the constitution and worship of the church a hierarchical system
   of orders, and a sort of penitential discipline, with excommunication,
   absolution, and restoration, besides a fixed ritual embracing didactic
   and musical elements. Mitred priests in purple were to edify the people
   regularly with sermons; that is, with allegorical expositions and
   practical applications of tasteless and immoral mythological stories!
   Every temple was to have a well arranged choir, and the congregation
   its responses. And finally, Julian established in different provinces
   monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals for the sick, for orphans, and
   for foreigners without distinction of religion, appropriated to them
   considerable sums from the public treasury, and at the same time,
   though fruitlessly, invited voluntary contributions. He made the
   noteworthy concession, that the heathens did not help even their own
   brethren in faith; while the Jews never begged, and "the godless
   Galileans," as he malignantly styled the Christians, supplied not only
   their own, but even the heathen poor, and thus aided the worst of
   causes by a good practice.

   But of course all these attempts to regenerate heathenism by foreign
   elements were utterly futile. They were like galvanizing a decaying
   corpse, or grafting fresh scions on a dead trunk, sowing good seed on a
   rock, or pouring new wine into old bottles, bur