20 THIRD PERIOD, A.D. 311-590,
Cliristian God and uniformly prospered, while tlie emperori who worshipped the lieathen gods, died a miserable dcatli ; 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, wliile the heathen aro diminishing." This low utilitarian consideration weiglie<^ 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, wliom 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 Afi'ica, and is universally represented as a cruel, dissolute tyrant, hated by heathens and Christians alike.' 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 ; tlie 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 histoiy, and has a representative significance, it deserves a closer examination. It marks for ua
■ Even Zosimus gives the most unfavorable account of him.
§ 2. CONSTANTINE THE GEEAT. 21
on the one hand the victory of Christianity over paganism in tlie Roman empire, and on the other the ominous admixture of foreign, political, and military interests with it.' We need not be surprised that in the Nicene age so great a revolution and transition should have been clothed vp^ith a supernatural character.
TJ;e 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." 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.' On his march from Gaul to
' " 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 anvl 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."
^ 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 transversa 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 Constantine was 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.
^ 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 (1. ix. c. 8, 9), Eusebius says nothing of the occurrence, whether through oversight or ignorance, oi of ptirpose, 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, buJ also by Lardner and others.