RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Constantine
tual counselors ancLthrough them became more intimately instructed in regard to Christianity; the influential Hosius of Cordova (q.v.) appears among those about him, and maintained a high position of trust with him for a good while. With wonderful victories the little army, its shields adorned with the monogram of Christ, pushed on toward Rome; in a bold assault Constantine overpowered his adversary, who together with the battle lost his life, at the Pons Milvius (Oct. 28, 312); and amid the rejoicing shouts of the populace Constantine marched into Rome, where the senate reared him an arch of triumph. Constantine had his statue erected in a public square, a cross in his hand, with an inscription in praise of the victory achieved by the aid of " this salutary token." In the labarum (Gk. labaron, lahoron, labouron ; the derivation is quite uncertain), the sumptuous banner of the cross, whose shaft was crowned by the monogram of Christ encircled with a golden chaplet, the new symbol became an object of brilliant public exhibition. After Constantine had regulated matters in Rome, he betook himself, in Jan., 313, to Milan, where he met Licinius, and gave him in marriage his sister Constantia. At the same time they agreed upon a religious and political decree whose main outlines appeared in a rescript of Licinius from Nicomedia — the (falsely) so-called edict of Milan — and culminated in granting to Christians the free exercise of their religion.
Maximinus Daza was soon defeated by Licinius upon the Campus Serenus in Thrace (Apr. 30, 313);
and a new edict of tolerance was pro- 5. Constan- claimed, with particular application tine's Later to the ecclesiastical and political sit- Life and nation created by Maximinus — the Reign. decree of Nicomedia, June 13, 313.
The vanquished Maximinus committed suicide. The empire now had only two rulers; but the great increase of his power heightened to such a degree the insolence and the emulation of Licinius, who reckoned with Christianity only for external reasons and on the religious side had always persisted in the pagan religion and superstition, that he provoked his imperial colleague to war. After two strenuous campaigns, separated by a delusive interval of peace, Licinius was vanquished in a decisive battle at Chrysopolis, Sept. 18, 323. Thanks to the intercession of Constantia, the victor guaranteed him his life under oath and granted him Thessalonica as residence. The deposed emperor, however, sought to foment a new insurrection by secret alliances with the Danubian barbarians, consequently he was condemned to death by the senate as a public enemy and rebel, and was executed as such (326).
The great Arian controversy (see Arianism) had broken out during these decisive events, and when other measures had proven ineffectual Constantine convened the first general church council, at Nicaea, and opened the same in person, May 20, 325 (see Nic^A, Councils or). Yet even this led to no lastmg peace. Neither was the emperor destined to see the suppression of the Danubian troubles which beset him in 313. A dark shadow upon his reign is the execution of Crispus, his eldest son.
Under the tuition of Lactantius he had grown up as a youth of much promise, and in the battles with Licinius had proved himself a vaHant army leader. The catastrophe wherein he and the empress perished at the beginning of 326 is not fully explained; but there was either a proved or admitted case of adultery between Fausta and her stepson. The erection of Byzantium to the dignity of imperial metropolis, under the name of Consbantinople — " City of Constantine " — was a significant and more pleasing event of the time.
After the subjection of Licinius, Constantine was occupied in a military way only with insignificant border wars, particularly with the Goths. Toward the end of his life, however, the Persian force under Sapor II. advanced threateningly upon Roman jurisdiction. The emperor made hasty preparations and resolved to conduct the campaign in person. About Easter, 337, an indisposition overtook him, which soon developed into a dangerous illness. The warm baths of Helenopolis proved ineffectual; so in the certainty that his end was near he betook himself to Achyrona, a suburb of Nicomedia, and before an assembly of bishops he read aloud his resolution to receive baptism, which he would have preferred to receive in the waters of the Jordan. He was baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia, received the Eucharist, humbled the purple in white baptismal attire, composedly and cheerfully took leave of the weeping officers, and ordered his last affairs.
The name of Constantine the Great is rightly connected with the conquest of Greek and Roman paganism by Christianity, for the bearer of the name played the leading part in this decisive crisis.
Thanks to the profound political in- 6. His Cau- sight that was his by nature and to his tious and sensible course of action, he directed Wise Pol- his religious policy to the end of conicy, summating the transition from the old
to the new era without shattering the empire. The results of persecuting the Christians, the ultimate 'effects of which he had witnessed, must have left no manner of doubt as to the evil character of brute force directed against religion, and so forbade every application of the like policy against heathenism; the more, too, because this still comprised the vast majority of the empire. In the army, in the government service, among the educated, in the rural population, there were merely evanescent minorities of Christians. The entire fabric of antique worship in its innumerable points of contact with Ufe, and the powerful priesthoods, whose ramifications extended into the uppermost social circles, richly endowed with property and legal rights, were still standing intact. Even such an impassioned Christian as Constantine must have acknowledged a barrier against compulsory procedure. Though the goal of his reUgious policy was to free the world from heathenism and transfer it to Christianity by the utmost that the State could do, nevertheless both prudence and conscientiousness dictated the one method of procedure — to go slowly in attacking religious sensibilities and to be content with small things and details, tedious to be sure, but less dangerous, and more certain in results.
Constantine