notwithstanding the prominent part taken by this Emperor in the
establishment and consolidation of the Church, historians have been
found to doubt the genuineness of his conversion, I do not think that
the facts justify any such hesitation. For the sincerity of his
Christian profession we have two guarantees, which, combined, must, I
think, be regarded as conclusive. It was gradual, and it was
disinterested. It was gradual. I shall say nothing here of his
miraculous conversion, of the fiery cross in the heavens, with the
inscribed words, "Hereby conquer," which is said to have appeared to
him shortly before the battle of the Milvian Bridge. What truth
underlies this story we shall never know; but, judging by his public
actions, we trace a gradual advance towards a more distinct reception
of Christianity. His father Constantine had been a believer in one
God. He had extended his protection to the Christians when they were
persecuted by his Imperial colleagues. This Monotheism and this
toleration descended to Constantine, as it were, by inheritance. For
some years after his accession he appears not to have advanced much
beyond this point. On the triumphal arch erected in Rome to
commemorate his victory over Maxentius, and which still spans one of
the approaches of the Forum, his success is ascribed to the
suggestions of "the Divinity." Such language is exactly what his
father, who was not a Christian, might have used, what heathen
philosophers did use again and again. This vague expression, "The
Divinity," is repeated several times afterwards in Imperial edicts.
There is as yet no personal profession of Christianity. The Edict of
Milan puts the Christians on the same political level as the Pagan. It
gives them no advantage; but, by degrees, his language becomes more
explicit, and his legislation more directly favours the Christians.
The Council of Nicaea is the climax of aggressive ascent. Again it was
disinterested. As a mere question of worldly policy, I think it can
hardly be doubted that Constantine acted very unwisely in embracing
Christianity. His Christian subjects were still a comparatively small
minority--an aggressive minority it is true, but not a dangerous
minority if properly handled. They would have been won over to a man
by frank toleration as they had been won over to his predecessor,
Alexander Severus, and to his father, Constantius Chlorus. They asked
nothing more than this. But by the further step of declaring himself a
Christian he had nothing to gain and very much to lose. He alienated
the heathen subjects, while his Christian subjects were devoted to him
already. Indeed, as a matter of fact, it is quite plain that his
conversion did lead to much disaffection, and that he was greatly
hampered by it. Take an instance of this. The secular games, the great
festival of thanksgiving for the prosperity of Rome, recurred,
according to Roman usage, at long intervals of about one hundred and
ten years. They were celebrated with great pomp and magnificence, and
accompanied by elaborate propitiatory sacrifices to the tutelary
deities of Rome. They had been kept last under Severus, and the time
had come for another celebration. But year after year of the long
reign of Constantine passed, and no notice was taken of them. No
omission would have wounded more deeply the sensibilities of the
Romans than this. The heathen historian Zosimus, writing a whole
century after, ascribed all the woes that had befallen the empire to
this one fatal neglect. Again, during his second and last visit to
Rome, the Capitoline games were celebrated. A main feature in the
ceremonial was a procession along the sacred way to the Temple of
Jupiter on the Capitol, in which the Emperor himself was expected to
take a part. He flatly refused. Looking down from his residence on the
Palatine Hill as the magnificent train wound round its foot, he broke
out into expressions of ridicule and contempt. The senate and people
were mortally offended. On one occasion, probably during this very
visit, his statues were pelted with stones. This insult was reported
to Constantine by some indignant courtier. The Emperor passed his hand
across his brow. He had a strong sense of humour. "Strange," said he,
"that I did not feel hurt." But he did feel hurt, nevertheless; hurt
in dignity by this insolence of the Romans, and a new capital arose on
the shores of the Bosphorus in protest against the outrage. Christian
Constantinople was his revenge on heathen Rome. "He made himself a
Greek," said Dante, "to leave Rome to the Pope." Doubtless the Papal
power grew more freely when the shadow of the Imperial presence was
removed; but the Pope was not in Constantine's mind, and the immediate
effect was a deadly side-thrust at heathendom. Rome, the stronghold of
heathen sentiment and worship, languished rapidly from this time.
Paganism had been stabbed in the heart.
But while the sincerity of Constantine cannot reasonably be doubted,
his inconsistency is quite beyond question. The fact is that he was
half a Pagan to the end, and, as Niebuhr has truly said, we do him a
grievous wrong if we judge his actions by a purely Christian standard.
In this respect he was only like many of his contemporaries. In that
age of transition the best heathens were half Christians, and not the
best Christians were half heathens. The semi-Paganism of Constantine
is matched by the semi-Christianity of Julian. I am not concerned with
the moral inconsistencies of this Emperor. The sins of Constantine
will not condemn the truth of Christianity, any more than the virtues
of Julian will re-instate the errors of Paganism. Constantine is
allowed on all hands to have been temperate in his habits and chaste
in his life; but the domestic history of this great Sovereign was
darkened by one horrible tragedy. About twelve months after the
Council of Nicaea, in which he had borne so conspicuous a part, the
Roman world was horrified by the report of three murders in the
Imperial household. The Emperor's eldest and favourite son, Crispus--a
young man of highest promise--an idol of the public; his little
nephew--a bright, engaging boy of twelve; his own wife, Fausta, the
mother of his three younger sons, were ruthlessly put to death. What
was the secret of this tragedy we shall never know. It seems most
probable that the son was implicated in some dangerous conspiracy,
that the nephew was an unconscious tool of the conspirators, and that
the wife, having goaded the husband in the first flush of his anger to
extreme measures against her stepson, herself fell a victim to the
violence of his remorse when the revulsion came. There were, we may
safely say, circumstances which might extenuate these horrible crimes;
there could be none which could justify them. A dark, indelible stain
rests on the memory of Constantine.
But if the moral inconsistency of Constantine is the more shocking,
his religious inconsistency is the more bewildering. In his recently
built capital he erected a statue of himself, which exhibited a
strange medley of the old and the new, and which may well serve for a
type of his career as a sovereign. The Emperor was represented as a
follower of the Deity, whom he himself had adopted as his patron in
the old days of his Paganism--the Deity whom his apostate nephew ever
regarded with special reverence; but in the aureole which encircled
the head the rays took the form of the nails, the instruments of
Christ's passion. It was believed that at the base of this statue
Constantine had placed a fragment of the true cross. It is also stated
that in this same place was deposited the palladium--the cherished
relic of Pagan Rome, which AEneas was said to have rescued from the
flames of Troy, and which Constantine himself stealthily removed to
his new capital. It is just the same with his legislation. Thus we
find almost side by side, promulgated within two months of each other,
two Imperial decrees--the one enjoining that Sunday shall be set apart
as a day of rest; the other providing that when the palace or any
public building is struck by lightning, the soothsayers shall be
consulted as to the meaning of the prodigy, according to ancient
custom, and the answer reported to the Emperor himself. When, indeed,
we see this juxtaposition of Christianity and Paganism, we are
forcibly reminded that Constantine was one and at the same time the
summoner of the Nicene Council and the chief Pontiff of heathenism.
Thus, at one moment, he was preaching sermons to his courtiers and
discussing dogmas with his bishops; and, at the next, he was issuing
orders for the regulation of some Pagan ritual. The same fountain
_did_ send forth sweet waters and bitter. And this incongruity
held him captive to the last, even beyond the gates of death. In his
newly built eastern capital--Christian Constantinople--he was buried
by his own directions in a church amidst the memorials of the
apostles, and "the equal of the apostles" was the title accorded to
him by common consent. In his forsaken western capital--heathen
Rome--he was, as a matter of course, deified, as his Imperial
predecessors had been deified, as he himself had deified his own
father Constantius; and by virtue of this apotheosis he took his rank,
not only with an Augustus or a Trajan, but with a Commodus and a
Caracalla among the gods of Olympus. A strange blending of incongruous
elements. And yet, whatever may have been felt of Constantine's life,
however much of Paganism may have alloyed his Christianity hitherto,
when the end came there was no more halting between two opinions.
Failing health to one who was endowed with a singularly robust
constitution came as an unmistakable sign of the approaching change.
The warning was not lost upon him. The increased fervour of his
devotions was noticed by all. On one occasion he spent a whole night
in the church praying. Strange to say, this zealous theological
disputant, this foremost champion of the truth, had not hitherto been
baptised. He was not even a catechumen. But now, when he felt himself
sinking, he eagerly pressed that baptism might not be delayed. This
wish was granted, and the rite was administered. This done, he
devoutly expressed his thanksgivings for the mercy vouchsafed to him,
and his readiness to go at once on his last heavenward journey. He
refused again to assume the Imperial purple, and, so arrayed still in
the white robe of his baptism, he was laid on his couch to await the
end.
On the 22nd of May, 337--it was Whit Sunday, the appropriate festival
of the newly baptised--about noon, the great Emperor breathed his
last. He was succeeded by his three sons--Constantine, Constantius,
and Constans. The three princes were scarcely seated on the throne,
when the Imperial family became again the scene of a horrible tragedy
as shocking as that which had left so dark a stain on their father's
life. The soldiers rose up and massacred not less than nine princes of
the blood--the brothers and nephews of the deceased Emperor. Nearly a
century later an untrustworthy historian gives currency to a story
that Constantine himself had directed these massacres, having
discovered that he had been poisoned by his brothers. For this
shameful libel on them and on him there is absolutely no foundation.
All the circumstances are against it, and it may safely be dismissed
as a foul calumny. More specious is the view that the new Emperor
Constantius, then a young man of twenty-one, was implicated in the
massacre; but it was done, if not by his direct orders, at least with
his tacit connivance. But, however this may be, the incident has a
very direct bearing on the subject of these lectures. In this carnage,
besides the three Emperors themselves, two children alone escaped. The
other members of the Imperial family perished to a man. The survivors
were the two sons of one of Constantine's brothers, Julius
Constantius; Gallus, a boy of twelve or thirteen; and Julian, a child
of six or seven, of whom we shall hear much hereafter. Their father
and their eldest brother were amongst the slain.
Of the three brothers who divided the empire of Constantine we are
concerned only with one--the eldest, Constantine, and the youngest,
Constans, perished in two successive revolutions. The middle and
surviving brother, Constantius, united again all the dominions of his
father under his sceptre. He alone left his mark on the history of the
Church. He alone shaped the destinies and swayed the feelings of his
relative, Julian. It is worth our while to form a closer acquaintance
with this man, who was the evil genius of his cousin and ward.
Constantius had not inherited the towering strength and commanding
mien of his father. He was under the average height, with a long body
and short, bowed legs. His complexion was very dark, his hair smooth
and glossy. He had prominent and keen eyes, recalling the piercing
glance which his father Constantine had cast around on the assembled
Bishops in the Council-hall of Nicaea, and which never failed to strike
awe into the beholders. The crimes of Constantine were those of a
strong, impulsive, half-barbarous nature. The crimes of Constantius
were due to cold calculation and to indifference to the commonest
claims of humanity. He was cautious to excess, sparing of his rewards,
and backward in his confidences. He was mean, selfish, suspicious
almost to fanaticism, shrinking from no cruelty when his fears were
alarmed. It is noticed as characteristic of the man that when borne
through the streets of Rome on a triumphal chariot he was seen,
notwithstanding his short stature, to bend his head as he passed under
each archway. Yet he was not a man without redeeming virtues and some
real ability. Like his father, he was temperate and just, so that,
notwithstanding his many enemies, scandal itself was forced into
silence. He could be sparing of rest and prodigal of labour when the
interests of the State demanded it. He was gracious, too, in his
demeanour, and with many--as even his cousin Julian is obliged to
confess--bore a reputation for clemency. He sustained the honours of
his Imperial rank with a dignity which never forgot itself, while he
showed a contempt of mere vulgar popularity which even unfriendly
critics described as magnanimous. Of his disastrous influence on the
religious sentiments of Julian I shall have to speak hereafter. For
the present I confine myself to the part which he took in determining
the relative positions of Christianity and Paganism in the empire.
Unlike his father Constantius, he had been brought up a Christian from
his infancy. His doctrinal views were very distorted, his moral
conduct was often a gross libel on the Gospel; but where it was a
question between Paganism and Christianity the sympathies of the
Emperor were exerted wholly and undisguisedly on the side of the
latter. On the whole, therefore, there is less of heathenism in the
public memorials and the official acts of this reign than in the
preceding. The Pagan emblems diminish; the Pagan enactments in the
Statute Book are fewer. But still Constantius, like Constantine,
continues to hold the office of supreme pontiff, and this necessarily
leads to an official complicity in the rites and institutions of
Paganism. In this capacity he issues edicts for the service of heathen
sepulture, for the repairing of heathen temples, for the support of
heathen priests. When, a quarter of a century later, the heathen
orator Symmachus pleaded the cause of expiring Paganism before the
Emperor of his day, he appealed to the example of Constantius, who,
though himself possessing a different faith, respected the ancient
rites, and provided for their due maintenance out of the public
treasury. But avarice often over-leaped the bounds which the Imperial
laws prescribed. The sacred name of the Gospel was again and again
profaned during this reign by spoliation and violence, just as under
our own Tudor Kings the cause of reformation was sullied by the
selfish rapacity of the nobles. The Court of Constantius was beset
with greedy and unscrupulous adventurers; and knowing the private
sympathies of the Emperor, they would not be slow to seize the
opportunities where any real or reported scandal of Paganism gave a
handle for interference. Such opportunities would not be rare. Thus
Paganism held on, still maintained and protected by law, but exposed
to occasional outrages from individual violence, when, by a sudden
catastrophe, it found itself seated once more on the throne.
On the 3rd of November, 361, in the twenty-fifth year of his reign,
Constantius died. The event was altogether unexpected; he was still in
the prime of life, only forty-five years of age. Temperate habits and
vigorous outdoor exercises had kept him in perfect and unbroken
health; but he was seized with a fever, and sank rapidly. There was
only time to send to Antioch for the Bishop to administer that
sacrament, which is ordained as the inauguration, but which, with him,
as with his father, was the consummating act of his Christian
profession. Immediately after his baptism he expired. His cousin
Julian, the only surviving Prince of the house of Constantine, was his
unquestioned successor. Thus Christianity, having wielded the Imperial
sceptre for more than half a century, was again deposed. Of the
education and the apostasy, of the reign and work of the new Emperor,
I hope to speak to you in my two concluding lectures.
II.[9]
In my lecture last Tuesday I passed under review the two long reigns
of Constantine and Constantius, comprising altogether a period of
fifty-five years. We were thus brought to the accession of Julian.
What, then, was the change wrought in the relations of Christianity
and Paganism during this period? Most persons, I imagine, would answer
without misgiving that Christianity had been established on the ruins
of heathenism. This answer, however, would be wholly inaccurate.
Paganism was in no sense disestablished, and Christianity was only in
a very limited sense established. Paganism was still the official
religion of the empire. Whatever might be the individual faith of the
sovereign, yet, as the head of the State, he was still the chief
representative of heathenism, both in life and in death. In life he
was the supreme pontiff, the fountain head of authority over all the
priests, temples, rituals, throughout the empire; in death the
representation was transformed from earth to heaven. By his apotheosis
he became a patron divinity of Rome. A pagan calendar is still extant
in which all the festivals of the deified Constantine are duly
recorded. Now there was not and there could not be any such alliance
with the State on the part of Christianity. However strong might be
the Emperor's personal sympathies; however much he might mix himself
up in the internal affairs of the Church; whatever privileges or
immunities he might extend to the clergy,--yet officially he had no
recognised position, officially he was a Pagan still. When, therefore,
it is said that Paganism was disestablished and Christianity
established in its stead, the position of affairs is entirely
misconceived. The personal religion of the sovereign had nothing
whatever to do with the official religion of the State. In modern
countries, for the most part, the two coincide, and it is well that
this should be so; but there are some exceptions. England under James
II., and Saxony at the present moment, are cases in point.
But while Paganism was in no sense disestablished, Christianity might
be said to a certain extent, though only to a very limited extent, to
have been established side by side with it. The principle which in our
own day has been called "levelling up," had been partially adopted.
Christianity was not only tolerated as a lawful religion, but some
political privileges had been extended to it. Thus, for instance, one
enactment of Constantine exempts the Christian clergy from certain
onerous duties, while another secures to the Pagan priests this same
privilege. In this respect the two religions are put on exactly the
same footing. Here is a case, if not of concurrent endowment, at least
of concurrent immunity, which comes to the same thing.
The fact is, that both Christian and heathen writers were interested
in representing the change effected by the early Christian emperors as
more complete than it was. To the Christian writer it was a point of
honour to clear them from any stain of complicity with Paganism. To
the heathen writer, wise after the event, the memory of those princes
was naturally odious, and to exaggerate their hostility to the gods
was to deepen the stain on their characters. But we have fortunately
other witnesses quite free from suspicion. The coins, and the
inscriptions, and the decrees, tell a very different tale. They show
that in all essential respects Paganism, at least in the West, was as
free to develop itself as before. They reveal to us temples built,
priesthoods established, sacrifices offered, as hitherto; they exhibit
the name of the Emperor connected with the worship of Jupiter the
Preserver, of Mars the Champion, of Hercules the Conqueror, of Sol the
Invincible. Hercules is still the preserver of Caesar, and Sol is still
the companion of Augustus. They show that the worship of the Lydian
Cybele still flourished on the hill Vatican, and the worship of the
Persian Mithras was still maintained in the vaults of the Capitol. All
this it is necessary to bear in mind if we would understand the true
position of Julian. It is quite a mistake to suppose that he had to
begin _de novo_, and to re-establish Paganism. It still held the
political vantage ground, however much it had lost in social prestige;
and if it had had any inherent vitality at all, its work of
restoration could have been as successful as in fact it proved futile.
What, then, was the real nature of the injury which this half-century
of Christian supremacy in the person of the sovereign had inflicted on
Paganism? First of all, the Imperial legislation, while it protected
and even fostered the central institutions of Paganism, zealously
assailed some outlying works. On two points especially it was
uncompromising. It rigorously proscribed divination, and sternly
repressed certain special rites accompanied by licentious orgies. In
neither respect, however, did it go beyond what during the Republic
and under the early emperors had again and again been held necessary
to secure the safety of the city and the morals of the people. But
however justifiable, according to heathen precedents, this legislation
of the early Christian emperors had proved a fatal blow to heathendom,
for it was just here that the ardour of popular religion had
consecrated itself. The patient energy, the suggestive mysticism, even
the immoral orgies of the Oriental religions, had been found to have
an irresistible attraction, and the ancient rites of Greece and Rome,
which seemed cold and passionless by their side, were deserted for
these new favourites. They were, it was true, only the buttresses of
the old polytheism. The original structure of Roman and Hellenic
worship was untouched; but when the main building was crumbling with
age the removal of these ancient supports which had shored it up was
fatal, and it fell by its own weight.
But, secondly, the erection of a new capital was a not less deadly
blow to Paganism. Rome was the central fortress of heathendom: to
withdraw from it the Imperial Government was to deprive it of its
ammunition. After the building of Constantinople, Rome still remained
the formal official capital of the empire; but, practically, its
influence was gone. It no longer guided deliberation; it simply
recorded results. And not only was Paganism materially weakened by
this transference, but at the same time Christianity was delivered
from its fetters. Constantinople was a Christian city from the
beginning. Paganism had here no prescriptive claim and no
time-honoured prestige. So long as the Imperial Government remained at
Rome, it found itself inextricably entangled in Paganism. Constantine
had felt its merciless strength, and the foundation of a new capital
was his escape from it.
Yet, after all, such weapons as these would have been quite
ineffective, if Paganism had possessed any inherent vitality. The grip
of death was already upon it before the arm of power was raised
against it. It was as when, after long centuries, the tomb of some
ancient king is laid open, the stately form, and the majestic
features, and the royal robes are exposed to our view. For the moment
he seems to be living still as he lived in history; but we look again,
and we see only a handful of dust. Sealed in its sepulchre, the corpse
might have preserved its outward form for ages still; but the air and
the light were poured in upon it, and all at once it crumbles away.
Paganism was confronted with Christianity, and it vanished.
The infancy of Julian had been dabbled in blood. His earliest
recollections would carry him back to the time when fathers, brothers,
uncles, cousins, all had fallen in one indiscriminate massacre. From
this carnage he and his brother Gallus alone had escaped; he himself,
so he believed, because he was too young to be feared, and his brother
because he was then a sickly boy, and seemed not to have long to live.
The odium of this foul crime, whether justly or unjustly, rested on
his cousin, the Emperor Constantius. If Constantius had not directly
ordered it, he was thought to have connived at it. Certainly he had
been on the spot, and, whether for want of power or for want of will,
he had not prevented it. The courtiers and attendants attempted to
palliate his cousin's guilt to the child Julian. They represented to
him that Constantius had been deceived; that he was unable to restrain
the savage outbreak of the soldiers; that he suffered fearful pangs of
remorse; that he attributed to this crime all the misfortunes of his
after life. It seems plain from this account that the spectre of this
ghastly massacre haunted Julian's childish memory. He could not but
feel that the bare sword was hanging over his own neck.