Defending Constantine

The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

Peter J. Leithart

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780830868162
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

We know that Constantine- issued the Edict of Milan in 313- outlawed paganism and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire- manipulated the Council of Nicea in 325- exercised absolute authority over the church, co-opting it for the aims of empireAnd if Constantine the emperor were not problem enough, we all know that Constantinianism has been very bad for the church.Or do we know these things?Peter Leithart weighs these claims and finds them wanting. And what's more, in focusing on these historical mirages we have failed to notice the true significance of Constantine and Rome baptized. For beneath the surface of this contested story there emerges a deeper narrative of the end of Roman sacrifice--a tectonic shift in the political theology of an empire--and with far-reaching implications.In this probing and informative book Peter Leithart examines the real Constantine, weighs the charges against Constantinianism, and sets the terms for a new conversation about this pivotal emperor and the Christendom that emerged.

1

Sanguinary Edicts

Amongst our other regulations for the permanent advantage of the common weal, we have hitherto studied to reduce all things to a conformity with the ancient laws and public discipline of the Romans.

EDICT OF GALERIUS, 311

Hardened by a lifetime of military and civil service, the emperor Diocletian (285-305) was no coward. According to the Historia Augusta, he was “an outstanding man and wise, devoted to the commonwealth, devoted to his kindred, duly prepared to face whatever the occasion demanded, forming plans that were always deep though sometimes overbold, and one who could by prudence and exceeding firmness hold in check the impulses of a restless spirit.”¹ Eutropius casts him as a man of “crafty disposition, with much sagacity, and keen penetration” who “was willing to gratify his own disposition to cruelty in such a way as to throw the odium upon others” — in all, “a very active and able prince.”²

Contemporaries described him as an “investigator of things to come,” a man “devoted to holy usages.” Surrounded by priests and soothsayers, he examined entrails for clues to the future and started at lightning bolts. Diocletian believed his rise to the imperial purple had been foretold by a Druid priestess. He elevated Maximian to the position of second Augustus because the two shared a birthday, and when Galerius was later given the position of Caesar he took the name Maximianus “in order to effect a magic bond with the proven loyalty of the elder Maximian.”³

Diocletian was no coward, but the incident in 299 was alarming. Visiting Antioch, he had participated in a sacrifice that failed. Priests slaughtered the animal, and the haruspex, a soothsayer who foretold the future by reading entrails, stepped forward to take the liver from the hands of the servant. Planting his left foot on the ground, he raised his right foot on a stone and bent low to examine the liver.⁴ He found none of the usual indicators. They slaughtered another animal, and another. Nothing. Plutarch had written centuries before about the silencing of the oracles, and the same was happening to Diocletian. His recovery of the Pax Romana was, Diocletian firmly believed, the product of a pax deorum, the peace of the gods. Roman sacrifice was at the center of that peace. It was the chief religious act, the act by which Romans communicated and communed with the gods, keeping the gods happy so Romans could be happy.⁵ If the gods stopped talking with the emperor, what would happen to Rome? Did the failed sacrifice in Antioch foretell the end of sacrifice? Did it foretell the end of Rome?

What had gone wrong? The presiding diviner investigated and concluded that “profane persons” had interrupted the rites, and attention focused on Christians in Diocletian’s court who had made the sign of the cross to ward off demons during the proceedings. Diocletian was outraged and demanded that all members of his court offer sacrifice, a test designed to weed out Christians. Soldiers were required to sacrifice or leave the sacred Roman army.⁶ At least at the heart of the empire, in the court and in the army, sacrifices would continue without being polluted by Christians. At the heart of the empire, where it really mattered, gods and men would remain in communion. With the purge of Christians, the problem seemed solved. The miasma was expelled and the gods were satisfied. Diocletian was secure.

The problem, however, had not been solved. An imperial letter probably issued in March 302⁷ to the proconsul of Africa confronted another threat to the empire, the dualistic religion of Manichaeanism. Mani was a Persian teacher whose religion, along with other Eastern religions, had been seeping into the Roman Empire and undermining traditional Roman pieties. Diocletian’s letter was filled with encouragement of “Roman virtue” and condemnation of “Persian vice,” and ended with an exhortation to preserve the tranquillitas of the empire by suppressing dangerous Oriental innovations.⁸ Diocletian insisted that “it is wrong to . . . desert the ancient religion for some new one, for it is the height of criminality to try and revive doctrines that were settled once for all by the ancients.”⁹ This “superstitious doctrine of a most worthless and depraved kind” must be stopped.¹⁰ Manichaean leaders were to be burned along with their books, their disciples decapitated or sent to the mines.¹¹

The parallels with Christianity were not lost on Diocletian. Like Manichaeanism, Christianity had come from the East and was non- and perhaps anti-Roman; its unpatriotic teachings undermined civic virtue. As the protector of the empire, Diocletian felt as bound to fight off an invasion of Christians and Manichaeans as he did to turn back attacks from Persians and Goths.¹²

Still the problem was not solved. Several years after the failed sacrifice, Diocletian was back in Antioch when a Christian deacon, Romanus, burst in on another imperial sacrifice loudly denouncing the worship of demons. Diocletian ordered that his tongue be cut out and sentenced him to prison, where he was executed,¹³ but the emperor knew something more needed to be done. Wintering in Nicomedia the following year, Diocletian consulted with his Caesar Galerius about the problem. “Arrogant and ambitious” and a “fanatical pagan,”¹⁴ Galerius urged Diocletian to issue a general order against the Christians. Diocletian hesitated. He needed divine guidance, but when he consulted Apollo’s oracle at Didyma it informed him that “just ones” had silenced the prophecy.¹⁵ Years later Constantine recalled the incident, which he witnessed while serving in Diocletian’s court. Calling on God as a witness, Constantine remembered how the “unhappy, truly unhappy” Diocletian, “laboring under mental delusion, made earnest enquiry of his attendants as to who these righteous ones were” and learned that “they were doubtless the Christians.” Diocletian lost no time in issuing “those sanguinary edicts,” which Constantine said were “traced, if I may so express myself, with a sword’s point dipped in blood.”¹⁶

For the Latin Christian rhetorician Lactantius and Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, the Caesar Galerius — who was, to refined Romans like Lactantius, a brutal, pagan, barely Romanized barbarian¹⁷ — was the evil genius behind the edict. Many modern historians discount the tale,¹⁸ but there is evidence that the more tolerantly pagan Diocletian was persuaded by his junior colleague to initiate the general persecution. Galerius had never quite sung in harmony with the other rulers of the empire, as Julian the Apostate was later to say. His triumphal arch that still stands in Thessaloniki highlights his personal exploits in his war with the Persians. One panel shows him “defeating the Persian king in direct hand-to-hand combat.”¹⁹

In 303, Galerius was at the height of his power. It had been a long recovery. Seven years earlier, in 296, he had lost a battle to the Sassinid Persian king Narseh, and Diocletian had added to his humiliation by forcing him to walk for a mile in front of Diocletian’s carriage, vested in his imperial robes.²⁰ Two years later, Galerius recovered his honor by defeating the Persians in another campaign. His victory gave him considerable weight, and Diocletian, though senior emperor, had come to fear his junior colleague. The gods must be with Galerius, Diocletian thought. Galerius decided to capitalize on his recovery of ethos by jockeying for advantage. When the persecution began, Galerius held the second position in the Eastern empire. In the West, Maximian was the chief, with Constantius, Constantine’s father, his imperial lieutenant. If Diocletian died before Maximian, Galerius reasoned, Galerius would be marginalized; it would be the two Western emperors against him. He needed to protect his power, and he discerned that the Christian problem could be turned to his advantage. He hated Christians, while Constantius was sympathetic to them. If he could persuade Diocletian to attack the church, Galerius would be on the majority side of imperial religious policy and his rival Constantius would be marginalized.²¹ So at that private conference in 302, the vigorous Galerius had firmly nudged the vacillating Diocletian toward persecution.²²

Diocletian himself believed he had plenty of reason to mount his offensive. Not only did Christians silence the oracles, but they, along with eunuch sympathizers in court, seemed to have been behind the fire that roared through Diocletian’s palace in Nicomedia several days after the first edict was issued. More deeply, Diocletian shared with many Romans the deepening suspicion that Christians were not quite Roman; their refusal to sacrifice could mean nothing else.²³

He began on February 23, 303. Dates meant everything to Diocletian. February 23 was the festival of Terminalia (Limits). Established by Numa in the distant Roman past, Terminalia was a festival of boundaries. Neighbors would gather at border stones consecrated to Jupiter, offer sacrifice, and share a meal to maintain friendly relations across property boundaries. Good fences make good neighbors, and good fences, to the Romans, were best secured by sacrifice. Rome had been founded when Romulus traced the pomerium and killed his brother to protect the sacred space of the city from violation. Roman homes were sacred, and as the pater patriae, the emperor was the guarantor of the sanctity of the great house that was the city and empire.²⁴ Terminalia was also part of the public cult, an annual reconsecration of the boundaries that separated the sacred Roman from the profane non-Roman world.²⁵ As Jupiter’s incarnation on earth, Diocletian was especially charged with guarding the frontiers, maintaining the sacredness of Rome and its empire, and expelling any pollution that might infect it and bring down the wrath of the gods. As the high priest of the empire, he had purged the Manichaean contagion. Now he needed to deal with the Christians, who posed an even more serious threat. The sect of Christianity had grown out of Judaism, but Diocletian was perfectly tolerant of Jewish citizens. They had their own traditions and had the emperor’s permission to check out of the imperial cult. But at least they had the sense to keep to themselves. These Christians were everywhere. They mixed with other Romans in the markets and even at the court and in the army. Jews could be kept in place, but it would take some fine-grained surgery to remove the cancer of Christianity.²⁶ Rome would be saved by a baptism in blood, a sacrifice of Christian blood.

On Terminalia in A.D. 303, Diocletian issued the first of what would become four decrees of persecution.²⁷ The first edict prohibited Christian assemblies and required that churches be razed, Scriptures seized and burned, and Christians expelled from high positions in government and the army. Christians had no recourse. Christians with legal rights lost them, and Christians who were imperial freedpersons reverted to enslavement.²⁸ Over the next year, three further edicts expanded the scope of the persecution. During the summer of 303, Diocletian ordered the arrest of Christian clergymen, and in November of that year, with prisons bursting with arrested Christians, he issued a constitution at the celebration of his vicennal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Sanguinary Edicts
• 2 Jupiter on the Throne
• 3 Instinctu Divinitatis
• 4 By This Sign
• 5 Liberator Ecclesiae
• 6 End of Sacrifice
• 7 Common Bishop
• 8 Nicaea and After
• 9 Seeds of Evangelical Law
• 10 Justice for All
• 11 One God, One Emperor
• 12 Pacifist Church?
• 13 Christian Empire, Christian Mission
• 14 Rome Baptized
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index