38 TniKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
alsD fut upon the shields of tbt soldiers. To this crossstandard, which now took the place of the Roman eag.es, he attributed the decisive victory over the heathen Maxentins.
Accordingl}^, 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 braver}^, I have delivered your city from the yoke of the tyrant." ' 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 Constantino, however, ascribes liis victory over the hated tyrant, not only to his master mind, but indefinitely also to the impulse of Deity ; ' 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 Christianit}^ 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 ' became thenceforward the badge of honor and dofamous monogram (of course in a different sense) is found even before Christ on coins of the Ptolemies. The only thing new, therefore, w.as the union of this symbol, in its Christia7i sense and app." -aMon, with tlie Roman mil.'dary standard.
' Eus., n. E. ix. 9 : Tiii? ? tq5 o-oiTTjptoJSei {salutari, not sinffulari, as Rufinus has it) (TTj/ifioi, rw a\->ii..yf 'Atyxv ''"')' avBplai, ttji' tt6\iv vfxwv airh fu-you Ton Tvpavvov 5ia(Tui^(7aav fXru^ef ^ca, k. t. \. Gibbon, however, thinks it more probable, that at least the labarum and the inscription date only from the second or third visit of Constantine to Rome.
' "Instinctu Divinitatis et mentis magnitudine." JDivinitas may be taken as an ambiguous word like Provi lence, " which veils Constantine's passage from Pagaa'sm to Christianity."
' Cicero says, pro Raberio, c. T : "Nomeu ipsum crucis absit non mode a corpore civium Romanorum, sed criam a cogitatione, oculis, auribus." With otlici hncient heathens, however, the Egyptians, the Buddhists, and even the aborigines of
§ 2. CONSTANTINE THE GKEAT. 29
minion, and was invested in the emperor's view, according; to tlie spirit of the chnrcli of his day, with a magic virtue.' It now took tlie ph^ce of the eagle and other fieldbadges, nnder 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 2T, 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 religions eclecticism, full freedom to all existing forms of worship, with special reference to the Christian." The edict of 313 not only recognized Christianity within ex- 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 Serapisj, among the hieroglyphic inscriptions forms of crosses were found, which pagans and Chris tians 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.
1 Even church teachers long before Constantine, Justin, Tertulliau, 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 vnth 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 sign of the cross by the early Christians. Comp. vol. ii. § 77 (p. 269 sqq.).
- This is 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. § 25, p. 72.
30 THIKD riiRlOI). A.T). 311-590.
isting limits, but allowed every subject of the Roman empire to choose whatever religion he preferred.' 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 I'ights of man. Sundry voices, it is true, in the Christian church itself, at that time, as before and after, declared against all compulsion ^.-ift religion.^ But the spirit of the Roman empire was too y absolutistic to abandon the prerogative of a supervision of public worship. The Gonstantinian 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 Oldened the door to the elevation of Christianity, and spe-
' " Haec ordinanda esse credidimus . . . . ut daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potestatem sequendi religionem, quam quisque voluisset . . . ut nuUi omnino facultatem obnegandam putaremus, qui vel observationi Christianorum, vel ei religioni mentem suam dederet, quam ipso sibi aptissimiim esse sentiret . . . ut, amotis omnibus omnino conditionibus [by which are meant, no doubt, the restrictions of toleration in the edict of 311], nunc libcre ac simpliciter unusquisque eorum qui candem observandae religioni Christianorum gerunt voluntatera. citra ullam inquietudinem et molestiam sui id ipsum observare contcndant." Lact., De mort. persec. c. 48 (ii. p. 283, ed. Fritzschc). Eusebius gives the edict in a stiff and obscure 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 Tiibinger Theolog. Jahrbiicher for 1852, and Mason, persecution of Diocletian, pp. 299 and 326.
^ Compare the remarkable passages of TertuUian, cited in vol. iL § 13, p. 35. Lactantlus likewise, in the beginning of the fourth century, says, Instit. div. 1. v. c. 19 (i. p. 267 sq. ed. Lips.) : "Non e.st opus vi et injuria, quia religio cogi non pot-jst ; verbis potius, quam verberibus res agenda est, ut sit voluntas. . . . Defendenda religio est, non occidendo, sed moriendo ; non sacvitia, sed patientia ; non scelere, sed fide. . . . Nam si sanguine, si tormcntis, si nialo religionem defendcre velis, jam non defendetur ilia, sed polluetur atque violabitur. Nihil est cnim tam voluntarium, quam religio, in qua si animus sacrificantis aversus est, jam sublata, jam nulla est." Comp. c. 30.