Chapter 54. Constantine: Vision, Edict and the Imperial Church

Between the battle at the Milvian Bridge on 28 October 312 and his death in May 337, Constantine moved Christianity from a persecuted minority cult to the patronised religion of the emperor. The sources for this change are uneven. The fullest is Eusebius of Caesarea’s Life of Constantine, a work of praise written after the emperor’s death; the library holds a Romanian translation of it (Viața lui Constantin cel Mare), and its key passages are quoted below as the reference shelf and Jones give them [Eusebiu de Cezareea, Viața lui Constantin cel Mare, #47354; Wikipedia: Constantine the Great and Christianity]. Against Eusebius stand pagan historians such as Zosimus, modern critical historians such as Karlheinz Deschner, Protestant restorationist critics such as Viola and Barna, Sabbatarian authors such as Bacchiocchi and Koster, and the esoteric and conspiracy shelf, including Mehran Keshe. This chapter sets out what each group says. Throughout, the question is how imperial power and the new religion shaped each other.

The sources and the vision of 312

Christopher P. Jones begins with a warning about the evidence: “The early career of Constantine is known only from sources written after his conversion in 312. Whether written by pagans or Christians, they are inevitably colored by the author’s own beliefs and situation” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 2 “Constantine”]. Jones summarises the military background. Galerius’ deathbed edict of 311 ended the Diocletianic persecution. War broke out with Maxentius in summer 312. Constantine pushed the enemy back to the Tiber at the Milvian Bridge, where “the battle then became a rout, Maxentius was drowned, and Constantine entered the city as sole ruler of the West” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 2].

Two contemporaries report the conversion, and their accounts differ. Lactantius, writing in 313-315, says only that Constantine was told in a dream to mark the heavenly sign of God on his soldiers’ shields, “by means of a letter X turned sideways, with the top of its head bent around,” and so “he marked Christ on their shields” (De Mortibus Persecutorum 44.5-6) [Wikipedia: Constantine the Great and Christianity]. Eusebius’ later Life adds a daytime vision seen by the whole army: “he saw with his own eyes up in the sky and resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed from light, and a text attached to it which said, ‘By this conquer'” (Vita Constantini 1.28.2), followed by a dream in which Christ told him to copy the sign (1.29). Eusebius also describes the labarum he was later shown: a gilded pole with a crossbar, topped by the chi-rho monogram and carrying portraits of the emperor and his sons (1.31) [Eusebiu de Cezareea, Viața lui Constantin cel Mare, #47354; Wikipedia: Constantine the Great and Christianity]. The reference article points out that Eusebius does not mention the vision in his Church History of c. 313, and that he heard the story from Constantine “long after it had happened” [Wikipedia: Constantine the Great and Christianity]. Jones judges that Eusebius’ version, “written much later than the event, sounds like defensive panegyric” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 2].

Jones adds an earlier event that complicates the story. In 310 a Gallic panegyrist described a vision of Apollo, accompanied by Victory, at the shrine of Grannus, probably at Grand. In the same year Constantine began to show Sol on his coins. “Since Apollo was often identified with the sun-god, the emperor may have begun to see himself as Apollo’s representative or reincarnation upon earth.” Jones also notes that the assimilation of the sun to the Christian God later made it “a convenient vehicle for bridging the gap between pagan and Christian” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 2]. He offers a political reading of the 312 conversion as well. Sassanian Persia had a unifying state cult of Ahura Mazda, while Rome had none. “Part of the impulse for the emperor’s conversion to Christianity may have come from the supreme God of the Persians” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 2].

The “Edict of Milan” and the patronage of the clergy

According to Jones, the so-called Edict of Milan was in fact a document issued by Licinius in 313 after the two emperors met. It “went beyond the edict of the dying Galerius and granted full freedom of religion to all, with special privileges extended to the Christians” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 2]. The reference shelf quotes its central formula: “that it was proper that the Christians and all others should have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each of them appeared best.” It notes that the edict restored confiscated church property, unlike Galerius’ edict of 311, and that it did not make Christianity the state religion, which came only in 380 [Wikipedia: Constantine the Great and Christianity]. Hergenhahn’s textbook summary is shorter: in 313 Constantine “signed the edict of Milan making Christianity a tolerated religion”; the edict “did reduce much social turmoil and significantly increased Constantine’s power”; and “Constantine was only baptized a Christian on his deathbed in 337” [Hergenhahn, Introduction to the History of Psychology, #30733, “Constantine and the Rise of Christianity”].

Deschner reads the same text against the later record. He quotes the edict’s promise that everyone should be free “to choose a deity according to his will and to worship it, … so that it should not appear that any cult or religion has been slighted by us.” He then argues that “two decades of Christian hierarchs infected Constantine,” until pagans became for him “impious men” and their religion “a pernicious error” [Deschner, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, #38038, Bd. 1, “Konstantins Kampf gegen Juden, ‘Ketzer’, Heiden”].

The first test of the new partnership came from Africa. Jones describes the Donatist schism as a quarrel between rigorists led by Donatus and clergy accused of having been too compliant under Diocletian [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 2]. Deschner gives the details. The Donatists appealed to the emperor and lost at Rome in 313 and at Arles in 314. Constantine then confiscated their churches, exiled their leaders and sent troops “who killed men and women,” so that “even before the pagans were massacred, there came the first persecution of Christians conducted in the name of the Church.” In 321 he gave up, released the exiles and admitted his failure. Deschner stresses that the Donatists rejected “the Constantinian alliance of throne and altar” and called the Roman church the civitas diaboli [Deschner, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, #38038, Bd. 1, “Konstantins Kampf gegen Juden, ‘Ketzer’, Heiden”]. Deschner also quotes Constantine’s letter to Arius and Alexander: “I knew that if I could establish unity among all the servants of God according to my wish, the interest of the state too could enjoy its fruits” [Deschner, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, #38038, Bd. 1].

Sunday, Sol Invictus and the borrowed liturgy

In 321 Constantine made Sunday a legal day of rest. Koster, a Sabbatarian, insists that the law honoured the sun and not Christ: “His edict in the year 321 legislated the ‘venerable day of the Sun’ to be a rest-day. This rest was commanded in honor of the Sun, and not in honor of Messiah.” He adds that Constantine called the sun-deity “Unconquered Sun, my companion” [Koster, Come Out of Her My People, #86909]. Viola and Barna agree: “It appears that Constantine’s intention in doing this was to honor the god Mithras, the Unconquered Sun” [Viola & Barna, Pagan Christianity?, #66661, ch. 2 “The Church Building”]. Bacchiocchi, writing as a historian of the change from Saturday to Sunday, takes a longer view. He argues that the “day of the Sun,” together with certain Christian theological motives, led most Christians to abandon the Sabbath for Sunday, and he traces sun-worship and the planetary week back before AD 150, well before Constantine’s law [Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath To Sunday, #63620, ch. “Sun-Worship and the Origin of Sunday”].

Viola and Barna call Constantine the “Father of the Church Building.” They argue that he “never abandoned sun worship” and kept the sun on his coins. They say he set up a statue of the sun god bearing his own image in Constantinople, kept the title Pontifex Maximus, and “almost to his dying day … ‘still functioned as the high priest of paganism.'” They describe his churches as copies of the Roman basilica, with a raised platform for the clergy, a screen separating clergy from laity, and the bishop’s cathedra in place of the magistrate’s seat. In their account he also brought imperial court ceremony into worship: candles and incense carried before the clergy as before the emperor, Roman official dress as clerical vestments, and processional music. “Under Constantine, tax exempt status was granted for all church property” [Viola & Barna, Pagan Christianity?, #66661, ch. 2]. Jones confirms the Pontifex Maximus point. Constantine held the office, “as did all his successors down to Gratian in the 380s.” In the 330s he also allowed Hispellum to build a temple to his own Flavian house, provided it was not “polluted with the deceits of any infectious superstition” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 2].

Helena, the holy places and the family murders

Viola and Barna describe Helena’s pilgrimage to Palestine in 326. In 327 she is said to have found the cross and nails of the crucifixion, and they say Constantine promoted the idea that fragments of the cross had spiritual powers. After this the imperial building programme followed: St Peter’s on the Vatican, St Paul’s Outside the Walls, the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Nativity, “nine churches in Rome and many others in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Constantinople” [Viola & Barna, Pagan Christianity?, #66661, ch. 2]. The Spencers’ encyclopedia repeats the legend in a harder form. Helena, after converting, searched for the True Cross, “torturing a Jew named Judas” to learn where it was, on a site where a temple of Venus had been built over the tomb [Spencer & Spencer, The Encyclopedia of the World’s Mystical and Sacred Sites, #87500, Middle East: Jerusalem]. Jones notes that Eusebius presents the destruction of the Aphrodite temple over the Holy Sepulchre as a matter of location, not a general campaign [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 2].

Deschner’s chapter “A Christian family life” sets these works beside the dynastic killings, and quotes Catholic historians who praised the emperor’s “Christian family life” (Franzen). In Deschner’s list, the “son of St. Helena” had his father-in-law Maximian hanged at Marseille in 310. He had his brothers-in-law Licinius and Bassianus strangled, and Licinius’ son Licinianus flogged and killed at Carthage in 336. In 326, “a few months after the Council of Nicaea,” he had his own son Crispus killed, “probably poisoned,” along with “numerous friends” (Eutropius). Last of all, his wife Fausta, suspected of adultery with Crispus “but hardly convicted,” was suffocated in the bath [Deschner, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, #38038, Bd. 1, “Ein christliches Familienleben und die Verschärfung des Strafrechts”]. Deschner adds Zosimus’ report that Rome rejected Constantine so widely after these deaths that he decided to build another residence. He also lists the harsher penalties of Constantinian law: molten lead poured into the mouths of complicit nurses in abduction cases, and the revived “sack” penalty for parricides [Deschner, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, #38038, Bd. 1]. Viola and Barna mention the executions of the eldest son, a nephew and a brother-in-law more briefly, remarking that they “do not strengthen the case for his conversion” [Viola & Barna, Pagan Christianity?, #66661, ch. 2].

Constantinople, the temples and the deathbed baptism

Constantinople was dedicated on 11 May 330. Viola and Barna say it was adorned with “treasures taken from heathen temples” [Viola & Barna, Pagan Christianity?, #66661, ch. 2]. Deschner names the treasures: the Samian Hera, the Athena Lindia, the Aphrodite of Knidos and the Delphic tripods. He quotes Jerome’s complaint that the city was built “with the plunder of almost all other cities,” and reports that a statue of Apollo was given a cross-bearing orb and recast as Constantine. In his account, after 324 sacrifice, oracles and new cult statues were banned in the East. The temples at Aegeae, Aphaca, Heliopolis and Mamre were demolished or closed, and the gold went “into the empty coffers of the Church” [Deschner, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, #38038, Bd. 1, “Konstantins Kampf gegen Juden, ‘Ketzer’, Heiden”].

Jones answers this directly in his chapter “After Constantine: Indifference and Intolerance.” The legal codes “contain no law of Constantine directed against paganism, though several that reinforce Christianity.” Eusebius’ list of destroyed shrines is short, and each case had a particular reason. Asclepius, as a healing god, “might seem a rival to the true Savior”. Heliopolis “remained a center of pagan cult until the late sixth century.” Constantine continued to favour educated pagans: the Eleusinian torchbearer Nicagoras thanked “the most pious emperor Constantine” in a graffito in the royal tombs at Thebes in 326 [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, chs. 2-3]. Jones concludes that Constantine’s policy was “a mixture of toleration and intolerance, severity and indifference.” It is “a distortion of perspective,” he writes, “to imagine that the persistence of paganism was high among” the emperor’s concerns [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 3]. Eusebius records Constantine’s own description of himself as “perhaps a bishop appointed by God over those outside” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 1].

He was baptised only at the end of his life, in 337. The reference shelf records that the baptism was performed “by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia” [Wikipedia: Constantine the Great and Christianity]. Viola and Barna add that the Senate declared him divine after his death, as it had done for earlier emperors [Viola & Barna, Pagan Christianity?, #66661, ch. 2].

The Donation of Constantine and the alternative readings

In the eighth century a document appeared in which Constantine supposedly handed Rome and the West to Pope Sylvester. The Encyclopedia of Barbarian Europe calls it “one of the most important and well-known forgeries of the early Middle Ages.” It says its date and purpose “remain unclear,” and that it borrows the legend of Sylvester curing Constantine’s leprosy. It also notes that the Donation had “perhaps even greater influence on political and religious affairs after its composition sometime in the eighth century” than at first [Encyclopedia of Barbarian Europe, #4637, “Donation of Constantine”]. The reference shelf adds the details: it was probably composed in the 8th century; it misdates Constantine’s consulship; it was included in the Pseudo-Isidorean decretals; and Lorenzo Valla exposed it on philological grounds in 1439-1440 [Wikipedia: Donation of Constantine]. Avro Manhattan, a critic of the papacy, says that Pope Hadrian I presented Charlemagne with a copy in 774 and calls it “another papal forgery.” By its clauses, he argues, “the pope became legally the successor of Constantine” and “the absolute head of all Christendom” [Manhattan, The Vatican Billions, #64831, ch. 36]. The conspiracy compilation Alien World Order quotes the Donation’s grant of “imperial power, and dignity of glory” to the see of Peter. It calls the victory at the Milvian Bridge “the official beginning of Christianity in the West,” and claims, citing Gardner, that Constantine, as a Roman emperor traditionally “considered a god,” took that mantle for himself [Alien World Order, #67997, ch. 7].

Mehran Keshe goes further. In Knowledge Seekers Workshop 612 he says the cross “was something physical, punishment for act,” a Roman penalty set up “all the way from Rome to Palestine” so that people would not forget their allegiance. He claims that “the three days, and the ascension, and the rest of it, is what was added to, by … the rulers of Rome, to bring it to Mithraism,” and that the story was “patched together” with the emperors’ religion [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 612, #378324]. In the same workshop’s summary he calls religious tithing “tax by Man – not God” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 612, #378324]. In Workshop 386 he claims that St Peter’s was built “over the temple of Mitra, which was in the center of Rome,” and that “Peters Basilica is actually a temple of Mitra” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 386, #378098]. Vermaseren, the archaeologist, documents real Mithraea under Roman churches, the most important being at Santa Prisca, with others such as San Clemente [Vermaseren, Mithras, the Secret God, #38300]. Vermaseren’s evidence concerns those churches; the identification of the Vatican basilica itself with a Mithraeum is Keshe’s.

Key points

• Every source for Constantine’s early career dates from after 312. Jones regards Eusebius’ vision story, told decades later, as “defensive panegyric,” while Lactantius records only a dream and a sign on the shields.
• The 313 “Edict of Milan” was issued by Licinius. It granted freedom of religion to all, restored church property, and did not make Christianity the state religion.
• Constantine kept the office of Pontifex Maximus, put Sol on his coins, and in 321 decreed Sunday rest on the “venerable day of the Sun.” Koster, Viola and Barna read this as sun-worship; Bacchiocchi dates the Sunday shift earlier.
• Deschner treats Constantine as the start of the church’s alliance with state violence: troops against the Donatists, the killing of Crispus and Fausta, temple plunder, harsher penal law.
• Jones answers that no anti-pagan law of Constantine survives, that temple destructions were few and had particular reasons, and that pagan cult continued.
• The Donation of Constantine is an 8th-century forgery exposed by Valla in 1439-1440. Papal critics such as Manhattan treat it as the legal basis of papal temporal power.
• Keshe claims the crucifixion-resurrection story was reshaped by Roman rulers to fit Mithraism and that St Peter’s stands on a Mithra temple. These are his own claims, set beside Vermaseren’s documented Mithraea under Roman churches.