emperor, Galerius Maximianus, who was son-in-law to Diocletian, in order
to effect their purpose. This Emperor, who was of a ferocious character
and ill-informed in everything except the military art, continued to
work upon his father-in-law, being urged on partly by his own
inclination, partly by the instigation of his mother, a most
superstitious woman, and partly by that of the pagan priests, till at
last, when Diocletian was at Nicomedia, in the year 303, he obtained
from him an edict by which the temples of the Christians were to be
demolished, their sacred books committed to the flames, and themselves
deprived of all their civil rights and honors. This first edict spared
the lives of the Christians; for Diocletian was averse from slaughter
and bloodshed. Yet it caused many Christians to be put to death,
particularly those who refused to deliver up their sacred books to the
magistrates. Seeing this operation of the law, many Christians, and
several even of the bishops and clergy, in order to save their lives,
voluntarily surrendered the sacred books in their possession. But they
were regarded by their more resolute brethren as guilty of sacrilege.
Not long after the publication of this first edict, there were two
conflagrations in the palace of Nicomedia; and the enemies of the
Christians persuaded Diocletian to believe that Christian hands had
kindled them. He therefore ordered many Christians of Nicomedia to be
put to the torture and to undergo the penalties due to incendiaries.
Nearly at the same time there were insurrections in Armenia and in
Syria; and as their enemies charged the blame of these also upon the
Christians, the Emperor by a new edict ordered all bishops and ministers
of Christ to be thrown into prison; and by a third edict, soon after, he
ordered that all these prisoners should be compelled by tortures and
punishments to offer sacrifice to the gods; for he hoped, if the bishops
and teachers were once brought to submission, the Christian churches
would follow their example. A great multitude, therefore, of excellent
men, in every part of the Roman Empire, Gaul only excepted, which was
subject to Constantius Chlorus, were either punished capitally or
condemned to the mines.
In the second year of the persecution, A.D. 304, Diocletian published a
fourth edict, at the instigation of his son-in-law and other enemies of
the Christians. By this edict the magistrates were directed to compel
all Christians to offer sacrifices to the gods, and to use tortures for
that purpose. And as the governors yielded strict obedience to these
orders, the Christian Church was reduced to the last extremity. Galerius
Maximianus therefore no longer hesitated to disclose the secret designs
he had long entertained. He required his father-in-law, Diocletian,
together with his colleague, Maximianus Herculius, to divest themselves
of their power, and constituted himself emperor of the East; leaving the
West to Constantius Chlorus, whose health he knew to be very infirm. He
also associated with him in the government two assistants of his own
choosing, namely, Caius Galerius Maximinus, his sister's son, and
Flavius Severus; excluding altogether Constantine, the son of
Constantius Chlorus. This revolution in the Roman Government restored
peace to Christians in the Western provinces, which were under
Constantius; but in the Eastern provinces the persecution raged with
greater severity than before.
But divine Providence frustrated the whole plan of Galerius Maximianus.
For, Constantius Chlorus dying in Britain, in the year 306, the soldiery
by acclamation made his son Constantine, who afterward by his
achievements obtained the title of "the Great," Augustus or Emperor; and
the tyrant Galerius was obliged to submit, and even to approve this
adverse event. Soon after a civil war broke out. For Maxentius, the
son-in-law of Galerius Maximianus, being indignant that Galerius should
prefer Severus before him, and invest him with imperial power, himself
assumed the purple, and took his father, Maximianus Herculius, for his
colleague in the empire. In the midst of these commotions Constantine,
beyond all expectation, made his way to the imperial throne. The western
Christians, those of Italy and Africa excepted, enjoyed a good degree of
tranquillity and liberty during these civil wars. But the oriental
churches experienced various fortune, adverse or tolerable, according to
the political changes from year to year. At length Galerius Maximianus,
who had been the author of the heaviest calamities, being brought low by
a terrific and protracted disease, and finding himself ready to die, in
the year 311, issued a decree which restored peace to them, after they
had endured almost unbounded sufferings.
After the death of Galerius Maximianus, Caius Galerius Maximianus and
Caius Valerius Licinius divided between themselves the provinces which
had been governed by Galerius. At the same time Maxentius, who held
Africa and Italy, determined to make war upon Constantine, who governed
in Spain and Gaul, in order to bring all the West under his authority.
Constantine anticipated his designs, marched his army into Italy in the
year 312, and in a battle fought at the Milvian bridge, near Rome,
routed the army of Maxentius. In the flight the bridge broke down, and
Maxentius fell into the Tiber and was drowned. After this victory
Constantine, with his colleague Licinius, immediately gave full liberty
to the Christians of living according to their own institutions and
laws; and this liberty was more clearly defined the following year, A.D.
313, in a new edict drawn up at Milan. Caius Galerius Maximinus, indeed,
who reigned in the East, was projecting new calamities for the
Christians, and menacing the emperors of the West with war; but being
vanquished by Licinius, he put an end to his own life, in the year 313,
by swallowing poison, at Tarsus.
About this time Constantine the Great, who was previously a man of no
religion, is said to have embraced Christianity, being induced thereto
principally by the miracle of a cross appearing to him in the heavens.
But this story is liable to much doubt. His first edict in favor of the
Christians, and many other things, sufficiently evince that he was
indeed at that time well disposed toward the Christians and their
worship, but that he by no means regarded Christianity as the only true
and saving religion; on the contrary, it appears that he regarded other
religions, and among them the old Roman religion, as likewise true and
useful to mankind; and he therefore wished all religions to be freely
practised throughout the Roman Empire. But as he advanced in life,
Constantine made progress in religious knowledge, and gradually came to
regard Christianity as the only true and saving religion, and to
consider all others as false and impious. Having learned this, he now
began to exhort his subjects to embrace Christianity; and at length he
proclaimed war against the ancient superstitions. At what time this
change in the views of the Emperor took place, and he began to look upon
all religions but the Christian as false, cannot be determined. This,
however, is certain, that the change in his views was first made
manifest by his laws and edicts in the year 324, after the death of
Licinius, when Constantine became sole emperor. His purpose, however, of
abolishing the ancient religion of the Romans, and of tolerating only
the Christian religion, he did not disclose till a little before his
death, when he published his edicts for pulling down the pagan temples
and abolishing the sacrifices.
That the Emperor was sincere, and not a dissembler, in regard to his
conversion to Christianity, no person can doubt who believes that men's
actions are an index of their real feelings. It is indeed true that
Constantine's life was not such as the precepts of Christianity
required; and it is also true that he remained a catechumen all his
life, and was received to full membership in the Church, by baptism,
only a few days before his death, at Nicomedia. But neither of these is
adequate proof that the Emperor had not a general conviction of the
truth of the Christian religion, or that he only feigned himself a
Christian. For in that age many persons deferred baptism till near the
close of life, that they might pass into the other world altogether pure
and undefiled with sin; and it is but too notorious that many persons
who look upon the Christian religion as indubitably true and of divine
origin, yet do not conform their lives to all its holy precepts. It is
another question whether worldly motives might not have contributed in
some degree to induce Constantine to prefer the Christian religion to
the ancient Roman, and to all other religions, and to recommend the
observance of it to his subjects. Indeed, it is no improbable conjecture
that the Emperor had discernment to see that Christianity possessed
great efficacy, and idolatry none at all, to strengthen public
authority, and to bind citizens to their duty.
The sign of the cross, which Constantine most solemnly affirmed he saw
in the heavens, near midday, is a subject involved in the greatest
obscurities and difficulties. It is, however, an easy thing to refute
those who regard this prodigy as a cunning fiction of the Emperor, or
who rank it among fables; and also those who refer the phenomenon to
natural causes, ingeniously conjecturing that the form of a cross
appeared in a solar halo, or in the moon; and likewise those who ascribe
the transaction to the power of God, who intended by a miracle to
confirm the wavering faith of the Emperor. Now these suppositions being
rejected, the only conclusion that remains is that Constantine saw, in a
dream while asleep, the appearance of a cross, with the inscription, _In
hoc signo vinces_ ("By this sign thou shalt conquer"). Nor is this
opinion unsupported by competent authorities of good credit.
The happiness anticipated by the Christians from the edicts of
Constantine and Licinius was a little afterward interrupted by Licinius,
who waged war against his kinsman Constantine. Being vanquished in the
year 314, he was quiet for about nine years. But in the year 324 this
restless man again attacked Constantine, being urged on both by his own
inclination and by the instigation of the pagan priests. That he might
secure himself a victory, he attached the pagans to his cause by
severely oppressing the Christians, and putting not a few of their
bishops to death. But all his plans failed; for, after several
unsuccessful battles, he was obliged to throw himself upon the mercy of
the victor, who, nevertheless, ordered him to be strangled, in the year
325. After his victory over Licinius, Constantine reigned sole emperor
till his death; and by his plans, his enactments, his regulations, and
his munificence he endeavored as much as possible to obliterate
gradually the ancient superstitions and to establish Christian worship
throughout the Roman Empire. He had undoubtedly learned from the wars
and the machinations of Licinius that neither himself nor the Roman
Empire could remain secure while the ancient superstition continued
prevalent; and therefore, from this time onward, he openly opposed the
pagan deities and their worship, as being prejudicial to the interests
of the State.
After the death of Constantine, which happened in the year 337, his
three surviving sons, Constantine II, Constantius, and Constans, assumed
the empire, and were all proclaimed emperors by the Roman senate. There
were still living two brothers of Constantine the Great, namely,
Constantius Dalmatius and Julius Constans, and they had several sons.
But nearly all of these were slain by the soldiers at the command of
Constantine's sons, who feared lest their thirst for power might lead
them to make insurrections and disturb the Commonwealth. Only Gallus and
Julian, sons of Julius Constans, escaped the massacre; and the latter of
these afterward became emperor. Constantine II held Britain, Gaul, and
Spain, but lost his life, A.D. 340, in a war with his brother Constans,
who at first governed only Illyricum, Italy, and Africa; but after the
fall of his brother, Constantine II, he annexed his provinces to his
empire, and thus became emperor of all the West, until he lost his life,
A.D. 350, in the war with Maxentius, a usurper. After the death of
Constans, Maxentius being subdued, the third brother, Constantius, who
had before governed Asia, Syria, and Egypt, in the year 353 became sole
emperor, and governed the whole empire till the year 361, when he died.
Neither of these brothers possessed the disposition or the discernment
of their father; yet they all pursued their father's purpose of
abolishing the ancient superstitions of the Romans and other pagans, and
of propagating the Christian religion throughout the Roman Empire. The
thing itself was commendable and excellent; but in the means employed
there was much that was censurable.
Rhetoricians and philosophers, whose schools were supposed to be so
profitable to the community, exhausted all their ingenuity, both before
the days of Constantine the Great and afterward, to arrest the progress
of Christianity. In the beginning of this century Hierocles, the great
ornament of the Platonic school, composed two books against the
Christians, in which he had the audacity to compare our Saviour with
Apollonius Tyanæus, and for which he was chastised by Eusebius in a
tract written expressly against him. Lactantius speaks of another
philosopher who endeavored to convince the Christians they were in
error; but his name is not mentioned. After the reign of Constantine the
Great, Julian wrote a large volume against the Christians, and Himerius
and Libanius in their public declamations, and Eunapius in his lives of
the philosophers, zealously decried the Christian religion. Yet no one
of these persons was punished at all for the licentiousness of his
tongue or of his pen.
How much harm these sophists or philosophers, who were full of the pride
of imaginary knowledge and of hatred to the Christian name, did to the
cause of Christianity in this century appears from many examples, and
especially from the apostasy of Julian, who was seduced by men of this
stamp. Among those who wished to appear wise, and to take moderate
ground, many were induced by the arguments and explanations of these men
to devise a kind of reconciling religion, intermediate between the old
superstition and Christianity, and to imagine that Christ had enjoined
the very same thing which had long been represented by the pagan priests
under the envelope of their ceremonies and fables. Of these views were
Ammianus Marcellinus, a very prudent and discreet man; Chalcidius, a
philosopher; Themistius, a very celebrated orator, and others, who
conceived that both religions were in unison, as to all the more
important points, if they were rightly understood, and therefore held
that Christ was neither to be contemned nor to be honored to the
exclusion of the pagan deities.
As Constantine the Great and his sons and successors took much pains to
enlarge the Christian Church, it is not strange that many nations,
before barbarous and uncivilized, became subject to Christ. Many
circumstances make it probable that the light of Christianity cast some
of its rays into both Armenias, the Greater and the Less, soon after the
establishment of the Christian Church. But the Armenian Church first
received due organization and firm establishment in this century; in
the beginning of which Gregory, the son of Anax, commonly called "the
Illuminator," because he dispelled the mists of superstition which
beclouded the minds of the Athenians, first persuaded some private
individuals, and afterward Tiridates, the king of the Armenians, as well
as his nobles, to embrace and observe the Christian religion. He was
therefore ordained the first bishop of Armenia, by Leontius, bishop of
Cappadocia, and gradually diffused the principles of Christianity
throughout that country.
In the European provinces of the Roman Empire there still remained a
vast number of idolaters; and though the Christian bishops endeavored to
convert them to Christ, the business went on but slowly. In Gaul, the
great Martin, bishop of Tours, was not unsuccessful in this work; but
travelling through the provinces of Gaul, he everywhere persuaded many
to renounce their idols and embrace Christ, and he destroyed their
temples and threw down their statues. He therefore merited the title
"Apostle of the Gauls."
It is very evident that the victories of Constantine the Great, and both
the fear of punishment and the desire of pleasing the Roman emperors,
were cogent reasons, in the view of whole nations as well as of
individuals, for embracing the Christian religion. Yet no person well
informed in the history of this period will ascribe the extension of
Christianity wholly to these causes. For it is manifest that the
untiring zeal of the bishops and other holy men, the pure and devout
lives which many of the Christians exhibited, the translations of the
sacred volume, and the excellence of the Christian religion were as
efficient motives with many persons as the arguments from worldly
advantage and disadvantage were with some others.
Although the Christian Church within the Roman Empire was involved in no
severe calamities from the times of Constantine the Great onward, except
during the commotion of Licinius and the short reign of Julian, yet
slight tempests sometimes beat upon them in certain places. Athanaric,
for instance, a king of the Goths, fiercely assailed for a time that
portion of the Gothic nation which had embraced Christianity. In the
more remote provinces, also, the adherents to idolatry often defended
their hereditary superstitions with the sword, and murdered the
Christians, who in propagating their religion were not always as gentle
or as prudent as they ought to have been. Beyond the limits of the Roman
Empire, Sapor II, the king of Persia, waged three bloody wars against
the Christians in his dominions. The first was in the eighteenth year of
his reign; the second was in the thirtieth year; and the third, which
was the most cruel and destroyed an immense number of Christians,
commenced in his thirty-first year, A.D. 330, and lasted forty years, or
till A.D. 370. Yet religion was not the ostensible cause of this
dreadful persecution, but a suspicion of treasonable practices among the
Christians; for the Magi and the Jews persuaded the King to believe that
all Christians were in the interests of the Roman Empire.
FIRST NICENE COUNCIL
RISE AND DECLINE OF ARIANISM
A.D. 325
J. L. VON MOSHEIM A. P. STANLEY
Controversies in the Christian Church concerning the mystery of the
Trinity began in the second century, prior to which the word
trinity--a term not found in the Scriptures--had scarcely been used
in Christian writings. It was prominently introduced by theologians
of the second century, who employed new metaphysical methods in
their attempts to explain the divine nature. The dispute turned
upon the questions whether Christ was God or man or an intermediate
being, whether or not he was created, and like inquiries. Arius, a
deacon of Alexandria, early in the fourth century, held that Christ
was a created being, though superior to all other created beings.
The Son, he maintained, is of a nature similar to--not the same
as--that of the Father, to whom the Son is subordinate. This heresy
obtained such currency in the Church that, in 321, a provincial
synod at Alexandria excommunicated Arius, who in his learned
writings had set them forth since 318. Once started among the
people, the controversy begun in the schools became very bitter,
and in many of the churches partisans of the heretical view
equalled in number those of the orthodox. Meanwhile Arius continued
to publish his doctrines.
The emperor Constantine, having become the patron of Christianity,
conceived that the controversy might be settled by an assembly of
the whole Church, and in the year 325 he convoked the first council
of Nicæa, which was also the first ecumenical or general council.
At this council, before which Arius defended his views, over three
hundred bishops were in attendance, and pronounced in favor of the
orthodox doctrine--that of the equality of the Son with the
Father--and condemned the Arians to exile and their books to be
burned. This council also promulgated the Nicene Creed in its early
form. The chief opponent of the Arians was Athanasius, the "Father
of Orthodoxy," whose name was given to a modified creed later
adopted into the Greek, Roman, and English services. The Arian
heresy, however, continued to spread in the East, and had the
strong support of Constantine and his son Constantius. The
controversy was renewed again and again, and for a long time
Arianism was an important factor in theological and political
affairs. Some phases of its peculiar doctrine have reappeared in
various teachings and sects of modern times. But the orthodox
doctrine affirmed at Nicæa has prevailed in the great branches of
the Christian Church, and the acceptance of its fundamental
principle--that of the Incarnation--in the post-apostolic age was
destined to have an incalculable influence upon the development of
individual and national life, civil as well as religious,
throughout the world.
JOHANN LORENZ VON MOSHEIM
In the year 317 a storm arose in Egypt which spread its ravages over the
whole Christian world. The ground of this controversy was the doctrine
of three persons in the Godhead, which during the three preceding
centuries had not been in all respects defined. The doctors explained
this subject in different ways, and gave various representations of the
difference between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, without offence
being taken.
Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria--it is uncertain on what
occasion--expressed himself very freely on this subject in a meeting of
his presbyters, and maintained, among other things, that the Son
possesses not only the same dignity as the Father, but also the same
essence. But Arius, one of the presbyters, a man of an acute mind and
fluent, at first denied the truth of Alexander's positions, on the
ground that they were allied to the Sabellian errors, which were
condemned by the Church; and then, going to the opposite extreme, he
maintained that the Son is totally and essentially distinct from the
Father; that he was only the first and noblest of those created beings
whom God the Father formed out of nothing, and the instrument which the
Father used in creating the material universe, and therefore that he was
inferior to the Father both in nature and in dignity. No one of the
ancients has left us a connected and systematic account of the religion
professed by Arius and his associates.