Christian Emperor Research Articles

Gibbon et Constantin

The purpose of this study is not to define the way Gibbon considers Constantine, but to examine how he proceeds as an historian and writer when conceiving and writing his chapters on the first Christian emperor in Decline and Fall. The study analyses the structure of those pages, which strangely remind us of the pagan historian, Zosimus, whose arguments Gibbon nevertheless rejects, considering them as excessively par tial. Among the more specific details dealt with there are the way Gibbon exploits the Histoire des Empereurs by Le Nain de Tillemont; how he resorts to Lactantius' De mor tibus persecutorum; how he presents the foundation of Contantinople, Constantine's in stitutional reforms, the battle at the Milvian Bridge, and the questions of Constantine's conversion.

Kaiser Konstantin der Große und der Apostel Paulus

AbstractThe article tries to demonstrate the leading theological ideas underlying several statements of the first Christian emperor. Sources were drawn from the Constantinian legislation and the direct quotations of Constantine from the texts of Eusebius, omitting the often strange interpretations of this churchfather. There are seven parallels between Constantine's laws and the letters of the apostle Paul, three of them evident: 1. Sunday as a day of rest corresponds to Constantine's title “fundator quietis” and coins with the inscription “beata tranquillitas” (cf. 1 Tim 2,2). 2. The laws on slavery, especially the release of slaves “in ecclesiae gremio” (cf. letter to Philemon, 1 Cor 7,21 etc.) 3. The episcopal court “audientia episcopalis” (cf. 1Cor 6, 1-8). Four other parallels between the apostle's life and the life of Constantine are discussed. Finally, all the western theologians and bishops behind Constantine in the years after 310 will be introduced.

A Savage Mirror. Power, Identity and Knowledge in Early Modern France

This text explores the history of a staged performance, and in theatrical style a dramatic prologue reveals the King of France plunged into the Brazilian jungle, at once lush, loud and vivid: it erupts into violence, forming a dramatic opening act in the entry of Henri II into Rouen in October 1550. Wintroub's A Savage Mirror provides in masterful manner the context inspiring this remarkably eye-catching setting, followed by otherwise conventionally classical pageantry which emphasized Henri II's potential to convert and rule Brazil's inhabitants as a Christian Emperor. Wintroub's main concern is to unpick and analyse the entry's meticulously constructed, didactic tableaux. He argues that significantly more lay behind the initial dichotomy embodied by the French King and Brazil's savages, representatives of the Old and the New Worlds. What was apparently strange – foreign, savage and uncivilized – also existed in this entry as a demonstration of virtue. By focusing on Rouen's élites, Wintroub shows how the entry was more than a speculum principis, but rather a text that guided its viewers through Rouen's political and social concerns.

Christian emperor, vestal virgins and priestly colleges: reconsidering the end of roman paganism

Les mesures prises par Gratien contre le paganisme en 382 nous sont connues essentiellement par la Relatio III de Q. Aurelius Symmachus et par les Epistulae 72 et 73 d’Ambroise de Milan, que la tradition historiographique a versees au dossier de l’affaire de l’autel de la Victoire. La presente contribution examine ces textes en discutant la nature des decisions qui s’y trouvent decrites. Celles-ci ne furent pas dirigees – comme on le pense generalement – contre tous les sacerdoces paiens de Rome, pas plus qu’ils ne provoquerent la requisition de tous les fundi templorum, mais bien plutot renouvelerent l’ordre d’enlever l’autel de la Victoire de la curie senatoriale et concernerent certains des privileges propres aux Vestales, tels que le stipendium, l’exemption des munera, les annonae et le droit de ce college a heriter, a l’avenir, d’agri.

Il battesimo di Costantino il Grande. Storia di una scomoda eredità (review)

Il battesimo di Costantino il Grande. Storia di una scomoda eredita. By Marilena Amerise. [Hermes Zeitschrift fur klassische Philologie, Einzelscbrifien, Heft 95.] (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 1995/2005. Pp. 180. euro34.00 paperback.) story which Amerise has to tell is an extremely interesting one, even if some of its details will probably always remain obscure. emperor was baptized in May, 337, when he was very close to death, and the bishop who baptized him was Eusebius of Nicomedia. Eusebius was constantly and consistently reviled by the adherents of the creed drawn up at Nicaea in 325 as an arrant heretic, not merely after his own death in 342, but even while he and were both still alive, as his political ally Eusebius of Caesarea complained (Contra Marcellum 1.4.9). Hence it is not surprising that the orthodox of later ages found it hard to stomach the fact that the first Christian emperor had been baptized by an Arian. truth about Constantine's baptism was, therefore, concealed, adapted, and modified, then eventually completely replaced by deliberate invention. first part of Amerise's study analyzes the account of the baptism of the emperor in the Life of by Eusebius of Caesarea (pp. 13-64); the second part describes how writers of the fourth century after Eusebius presented Constantine's baptism in a new way because they depicted the emperor, who had in reality been sympathetic to Arius and had recaEed him twice from exile, as an unwavering supporter of doctrinal orthodoxy against Arius, Arians, and Arianism (pp. 65-92); the third part examines the emergence of the completely fictitious account which subsequently established itself as canonical and was accepted throughout the Middle Ages-the legend that had at first persecuted the Christians and had been stricken with leprosy, but converted to Christianity, was miraculously healed and then baptized by Pope Silvester in Rome (pp. 93-120). Unfortunately, it is not clear to the present reviewer that Amerise's monograph marks any significant advance on previous scholarship, and her bibliography raises serious doubts about her scholarly expertise and judgment. A bibliography of secondary literature, which runs to fully twenty-seven pages in what is a rather short book (pp. 145-172), includes several unscholarly and perverse books such as Alastair Kee's notorious versus Christ. Triumph of Ideology (London, 1982), yet finds no space for (1) W. Levison, Kirchenrechtliches in den Actus Silvestri, Zeitschrifl der Savigny Stiftung, Kanonistische Abteilung, 15 (1926), 230-240, reprinted in the posthumous volume Aus Rheinischer und Frankischer Frilhzeit. Ausgewahlte Aufsatze (Dusseldorf, 1948), pp. 466-473; (2) Jean Gaudemet,La legislation religieuse de Constantin, Revue d'histoire de l'eglise de France, 33 (1947), 25-61; or (3) Peter Weiss, Die Vision Constantins, Colloquium aus Anlass des 80. Geburtstages von Alfred Heuss. Frankfurter Althistorische Studien, 13 (Kallmunz, 1993), pp. 146-169, now translated into English by A. R. Birley and revised by the author as The Vision of Constantine Journal of Roman Archaeology, 16 (2003), 237-259. These omissions are regrettable because they are so relevant to Amerise's book. …

Belgrade as new Jerusalem: Reflections on the reception of a topos in the age of despot Stefan Lazarevic

Belgrade as new Jerusalem: Reflections on the reception of a topos in the age of despot Stefan Lazarevic

Constantine and the Christian Empire (review)

Reviewed by: Constantine and the Christian Empire Elizabeth Digeser Charles Matson Odahl Constantine and the Christian Empire New York/London: Routledge, 2004 Pp. xviii + 400. $104.95. In Constantine and the Christian Empire, Charles Odahl sets out to integrate material evidence for Constantine's reign (primarily public works and coinage together with details about his military campaigns and his itinerary) into a biographical account of the first Christian emperor. With so much recent interest in the social and cultural implications of public works and warfare, the author's goal is a worthy one with the potential to deepen our understanding of this perennially fascinating figure. He has chosen to do this in a "reader friendly" style (ix), clearly perceiving that the inauguration of a Christian Empire may have a certain appeal to contemporary readers. After an initial chapter on the ancient sources, Odahl proceeds chronologically, first addressing the third-century "crisis" and the rise of the Illyrian emperors and then discussing the first tetrarchy and Constantine's role in it. His effort to settle Constantine's accomplishments within the context of the third and fourth centuries is commendable. Older scholarship so often viewed this emperor as causing such a rupture in the fabric of Roman life that the many ways in which he built on the innovations of his forebears, the tetrarchy in particular, were often neglected. The next three chapters address Constantine's accession as a member of the second tetrarchy, his campaign against the usurper Maxentius in Italy, and the relationship between his conversion experience and support of the church in Rome. The second half of the book moves east with the emperor, describing his achievement of sole rule by conquest in 324, the scandal surrounding Constantine's execution of his son and wife, the establishment of Constantinople, the last campaigns, and Constantine's legacy. The book is replete with detailed descriptions of Constantine's public works. However, had Odahl drawn on the work of Paul Zanker and Jas; Elsner, his analysis of Constantine's building program in Rome, Constantinople, and Jerusalem might have pushed beyond recounting the number of churches built and the styles deployed to discussing the relationship between these structures and the citizens' perceptions of their emperor. A more serious problem, however, is Odahl's use of his sources. Any historian who wants to understand Constantine must directly confront both the paradoxes in his religious policy and the ambiguities in all of the ancient sources. Different portraits of Constantine result from different approaches to these problems, and [End Page 527] one can easily see this by comparing two of the more recent studies of Constantine, T. D. Barnes's Constantine and Eusebius (1981) and H. A. Drake's Constantine and the Bishops (2000). In the first Constantine is a religious reformer; in the second he is a pragmatic politician who unleashed religious forces he was subsequently hard pressed to control. Along this spectrum, Odahl's study is closer to Barnes's in perspective and in its deep reliance on Eusebius as a source. Barnes, however, saw that coming to grips with Eusebius' motivations, both in the Ecclesiastical History and the Life of Constantine, was a necessary prerequisite to his analysis of Constantine. Odahl almost always takes Eusebius at his word, never exploring the hagiographic elements of the Life nor addressing the possibility that the bishop intended his biography, published after Constantine died, more to craft a portrait of the ideal Christian emperor for Constantius II than to present an objective, factual narrative. The author has also overlooked recent developments that bear directly on how Constantine could reign as a Christian sovereign so shortly after the tetrachy's attempt to repress the faith through the Great Persecution. For the most part, Odahl treats paganism as synonymous with polytheism (even when discussing Iamblichus' potential influence on Licinius' court [170]) and thus naturally antithetical and abhorrent to Christianity. Yet a number of recent works, such as Pagan Monotheism, edited by P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (1999), confirm the growing influence of a philosophically oriented monotheism among pagans, a perspective with strong and important similarities to Christianity. This evidence substantially alters the religious landscape of the late third and...

Colchester’s Legend on Stage:The Emperor Constantine by Dorothy L. Sayers

When Dorothy L. Sayers was asked to write a play for the Colchester Cathedral Festival (part of the Festival of Britain) of 1951, she took the opportunity of using Colchester’s favourite legend concerning the town’s patron, St Helena. This legend was an obvious choice for Sayers: not only was Helena important for her legendary discovery of the True Cross, she was also claimed by Colchester as a local girl. Most importantly for Sayers’ purpose, this legendary Helena, as the daughter of Old King Cole, conferred British ancestry on her son, Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome.2 The festival play, which Sayers called The Emperor Constantine,3 exploits the local legend specifically to tie Constantine to Colchester and thereby to justify situating the origins of her story on home soil. But once the play is underway, the familiar legend is relegated to the background so that Sayers’ real interests – fourthcentury ecclesiastical history and Christian theology – can take the spotlight. Now that the fourth volume of Sayers’ letters has been published, the dramatist’s passionate attitude towards her subject matter and personal involvement in staging this ambitious and complicated play have come to light and can be examined in the context of her strategic use of the legendary tradition by which Colchester lays claim to Helena.

Constantine and the Bishop: The Roman Church in the Early Fourth Century

When Constantine first entered Rome after his defeat of Maxentius in October 312, he encountered a rich and complex Christian community and a bishop whose position was precarious. Centuries of growth and a long religious peace had resulted in the development of a large number of locally based communities in Rome with their own centres of worship ‐ the tituli. Constantine needed to convince these communities of his bona fides as a Christian emperor. The bishop of Rome, Miltiades, was the ruler of a relatively newly unified see, recently fractured by persecution and controversy. Miltiades’ relative weakness was to Constantine’s political advantage, especially since it made him eager to receive the vast ocean of generosity which Constantine began to pour into the Roman Church. The particular and immediate beneficiary of this generosity was the bishop, who gained a vast and lavishly appointed cathedral, and a palace to go with it.

The Bird, the Cross, and the Emperor: Investigations into the Antiquity of the Cross in Cygnus

When was it that someone first gazed up at the Summer Milky Way and recognized the Cross among the stars of Cygnus? After the Big Dipper and the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, the Northern Cross is among the most familiar of asterisms, for Westerners at least. Turn to almost any modern handbook on the constellations and we find under Cygnus that the Swan often goes by this well known alias. Little explanation is required; the Cross being simply a matter of common knowledge. But when did it become so? One such popular guide, by the late veteran interpreter of the stars, Julius Staal, ventures only that it was 'early Christians' who recognized the cruciform shape of Cygnus.1 It is certainly a reasonable guess; but, which early Christians recognized the Cross where others in their day would have imagined a great swan flying along the river of milk flowing from Hera's breast? Although it seems little more than an odd bit of trivia, attempting to answer the question of the asterism's antiquity touches on some interesting aspects of our cultural history. I hope to show how light from this admittedly peculiar angle may illuminate ways that astral imagery played upon the early Christian imagination, particularly as related to aspects of the history of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of Rome.

The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran (review)

The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran. By Elizabeth Key Fowden. [The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, XXVIII. ] (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999. Pp. xxii, 227. $55.00.) At last, long last, the book on St. Sergius, the military saint martyred around A.D. 300 in the Orient, has appeared, authored by the one most qualified to write on him. The authoress, Elizabeth Key Fowden, is a classicist who had written her Princeton doctoral dissertation on the Saint in 1995 and continued for a quinquennium researching this theme. The result of this patient and conscientious effort is this book under review, which will remain for a long time to come the standard work on St. Sergius. The book is remarkable for the completeness of its coverage of the Sergius saga, as the chapters begin with the passio, followed by those on the rise of the cult of the martyr on the frontier with Persia; the emergence of a city, actually named after him, Sergiopolis/Rusafa, not far from the Euphrates in Syria; the spread of his cult in Byzantine Oriens and Persian Mesopotamia; the involvement of the two world powers in it, Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia; and finally the attraction of the Saint to a third religion, Islam. In addition to her command of the two important relevant languages for the study of the Saint, namely, Greek and Syriac, and of the various disciplines involved, which go beyond hagiography and ecclesiastical history, the authoress has not remained an armchair historian but has lived in the Near East and visited the main center of the cult, Sergiopolis/Rusafa. She even pere-- grinated to distant South Arabia, to Tarim, where the Saint's memory is still green to the present day, and what is more, among Muslims who revere him as a nab!, a prophet in whose honor a mosque still stands. The analytic portions of the work are also matched by the synthetic in which the authoress treats large historical problems related to the Saint and his cult. It is impossible to go through all these important contributions in a short review such as this one, but one large problem she has handled very well is the involvement of rulers, so far removed from one another in almost everything, in this Saint, namely, the Byzantine Christian Emperor, Justinian, and the Persian Zoroastrian Shah, Chosroes Parvis, and the Muslim Arab Caliph, Hisham,which makes the Saint truly unique in the annals of ecclesiastical history. Of all ethnic groups, the Arabs were the ones most involved with St. Sergius. His city Sergiopolis, was located in the eastern limitrophe of Oriens, predominantly inhabited by the Arabs, and one group among them, the Ghassanids, the foederati of Byzantium in the sixth century, were guardians of the Saint-his shrine and the city. …

Ammianus Marcellinus on the Empress Eusebia: a Split Personality?

The Roman empress Eusebia, wife of the Christian emperor Constantius II (A.D. 337–361), owes what fame she enjoys amongst historians to her role in the life of Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor (361–363); in the years 354–355 the empress emerged as the saviour and advocate of her (still in the closet) pagan in-law. However in this article I wish to focus exclusively on the treatment of the empress Eusebia in the history of Ammianus Marcellinus, the great historian of Late Antiquity and himself a devotee of Julian. This treatment merits attention not just for the undoubtedly interesting fact that Eusebia is one of the few female characters to surface in the history, but also because in the history the empress is cast in seemingly different personae. She is the kind and beautiful empress, akin to the image Julian himself created of her in hisSpeech of Thanksto Eusebia, written in commemoration of his salvation at her hands; but she is also a devious player, as we find too in Zosimus' treatment of the empress, though in Ammianus her deviousness is malevolent. It is this contradictory characterization aspect of the treatment that I wish to explore here. For whilst general attempts have been made to reconcile these images in the context of political history, the repercussions for our understanding of Ammianus have been little explored. How can the historian let these contrasting images co-exist? Has he merely assembled his history clumsily, or is there a more rewarding explanation for the impression of the empress's split personality?

Vom dreizehnten Gott zum dreizehnten Apostel?

The Christianization of the imperial funeral in late Antiquity did not change its political function. The public honours bestowed upon the dead emperor were meant to display dynastic continuity and political legitimacy. Furthermore, the Christian concept of consecratio, like its pagan counterpart, legitimized the imperial succession and manipulated the emperor's dead body for the propagandistic presentation of the triumphant domus divina. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, was buried in the centre of the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, flanked by the tombs of the twelve apostles on either side. From the literary, iconographical and numismatic evidence one cannot deduce, as has sometimes been suggested, that there Constantine wanted to be venerated as the thirteenth apostle, but that he proclaimed himself to be lσoXplστos, i.e. the equal of Christ. Thus he radically christianized the pagan idea of identifying the emperor with his patron god. Although Constantine's ceremonial instructions - which replaced the traditional funeral ceremony with a Christian mass - were imitated by later Christian emperors, his uncompromising demand for identity was not. It appears that his son, Constantius II, had already removed his coven from the church of the Holy Apostles. In addition, Christian writers openly opposed Constantine's idea of a 'Christian' apotheosis and propagated instead the concept of the emperor's accession to the Heavenly Jerusalem, where he would enjoy communion with God. At the same time, the usurpers were mercilessly banned to hell. The dead emperor now was a subordinate part of the celestial hierarchy. The solemn rites for the deceased imperator Christianus were an amalgam of pagan and Christian rituals. The new Christian imperial cult argued from a theological perspective for the emperor's superhuman elevation and widened the gulf between the ruler and his subjects. The majority of Christians apparently did not see any contradiction bet

Imitatio-reparatio - continuatio.Die Judengesetzgebung im Ostgotenreich Theoderichs des Großen alsreparatio imperii?

Theoderic saw himself as a Christian emperor in the tradition of the principes since Augustus and Constantine. He understood his reign as reparatio imperii. His legislation for the Jews has to be interpreted entirely in this context. Different from the contemporary byzantine development, where the legal situation of the Jews continuously worsens, Theoderic's legislation aims at a restoration of the old privileges of the Jews. In his legislation for the Jews, Theoderic asserts his claim of being the legitimate successor of the Roman emperors.

King James I and the Religious Culture of England (review)

James Doelman, King James I and the Religious Culture ofEngland. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000. 240 pp. $75. by Kate Narveson James Doelman takes as his starting point the assumption that a monarch exercises defining cultural influence on his reign; his book is "an attempt to assess the role of James in that aspect of English culture, religion, which most attracted his interest" (p. 1). Doelman takes issue with Malcolm Smuts's suggestion that James was not a major trendsetter, countering that Jacobean religious culture took its bearing from James. By religious culture, Doelman means areas of thought and activity beyond the church proper, matters on the periphery of church activity that are nonetheless expressions of religious preoccupations, such as efforts to gain patronage for religious verse, gain converts, and use biblical figures to shape James's public image. Doelman proceeds in roughly chronological order through areas to which James paid attention. He begins by presenting the ways in which James's Scottish upbringing led him to chafe against churchmen who set their power over that of the king. James was eager to assume the English throne, which would allow him to be not a "sillie vassal" but a bishop of bishops. At the same time, he devoted significant effort to his poetic endeavors, thereby establishing the expectation that he would be the "chief reader and patron of any religious work" (p. 19). Doelman examines the consequent "outpouring of religious verse" at James's accession that demonstrates the "interaction between royal taste and national culture" (p. 20). Basilikon Down advocated a poetry "not full of vanitie, but of vertue" (p. 23) and a striking number of poets turned to religious verse in a bid for royal patronage, which, however, proved disappointing as James's interests shifted by 1610 toward "straight theology without poetic embellishment" (p. 38). James's interest in religion also prompted writers to adopt the prophetic mode as another way to address a godly king. Doelman examines the range of ways that writers used biblical models of prophecy, and also the difficulty they found in using prophecy to criticize a David who recognized no Nathan. Doelman attends chiefly to George Wither, contending that Wither's early career is wrongly labelled oppositional, since he pursued royal patronage based on the belief that James was still potentially a godly king. However, Doelman argues, Wither disdained aristocratic patronage networks and wished to speak directly to the king. If under Charles the 118Book Reviews prophetic mode was oppositional, under James, who saw himself in terms of biblical kings, it was a more flexible stance. Doelman next traces the career of Scottish theologian Alexander Melville, who initially, in Scotland, balanced the roles of neo-Latin court poet and opponent of episcopacy, but whose increasingly outspoken criticism of James's views of church authority led to a break when Melville sided with the Millenary Petitioners. Silenced from preaching, Melville used satiric Latin epigrams to criticize James, which led to his imprisonment until 1610, whereupon he spent the rest of his life abroad. Melville's epigrams had an ongoing life in religious controversies (being answered by George Herbert, among many), and were revived in battles over the imposition of English worship in Scotland. Doelman argues for their importance both because they had an international audience and because their brevity and ease of circulation meant that, unlike books or sermons, they could evade censorship. Doelman also looks at James's public image, showing how consciously and centrally it was shaped around religious figures — Constantine as Christian emperor and, more often, Solomon as wise ruler and peacemaker, a role that, Doelman argues, reflected a coherent pacifism. Doelman traces the fortunes of James's image in written texts and not visual imagery, despite the misleading use of the term "iconography" throughout the chapter. The next chapter, on conversions to and from Rome, analyzes case studies to show the interrelated influence of political, economic, and religious causes behind most conversions, touching only incidently on James's role. James's presence is more directly felt in the next chapter, on psalm translations. Doelman demonstrates the way that James's own intention to produce a verse translation of the Psalms that...

The itinerary of Alexander: Constantius to Julian

Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, bequeathed war against Persia to his son Constantius, a legacy which haunted the next two decades, culminating in Julian′s debacle in 363. Much has been written on the timing, motives, and strategy of these campaigns but the same role model appears at their beginning and end: Alexander the Great. Here, I wish to re-examine the evidence for his presence: recent scholarship has minimized it at one end and maximized at the other.

Image and ritual: reflections on the religious appreciation of classical art

It is a cliché that most Greek art (indeed most ancient art) was religious in function. Yet our histories of Classical art, having acknowledged this truism, systematically ignore the religious nuances and associations of images while focusing on diverse arthistorical issues from style and form, or patronage and production, to mimesis and aesthetics. In general, the emphasis on naturalism in classical art and its reception has tended to present it as divorced from what is perceived as the overwhelmingly religious nature of post-Constantinian Christian art. The insulation of Greek and Roman art from theological and ritual concerns has been colluded in by most historians of medieval images. Take for instance Ernst Kitzinger's monographic article entitled ‘The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm’. Despite its title and despite Kitzinger's willingness to situate Christian emperor worship in an antique context, this classic paper contains nothing on the Classical ancestry of magical images, palladia and miracle-working icons in Christian art. There has been the odd valiant exception (especially in recent years), but in general it is fair to say that the religiousness of antiquity's religious art is skirted by the art historians and left to the experts on religion.

La Théologie de la victoire de Constantin à Théodose (review)

Reviewed by: La Théologie de la victoire de Constantin à Théodose Raymond Van Dam François Heim . La Théologie de la victoire de Constantin à Théodose Théologie historique, 89. Paris: Beauchesne, 1992. Pp. xv + 347. 270 FF. Constantine's unexpected turnabout suddenly put Christian apologists on the spot. Many were prepared to modify the traditional connection between emperors' pietas for the pagan gods and their military success into a new connection between [End Page 87] emperors' victories and their support for orthodox Christianity. In this process of accommodation two problems quickly became apparent. One was the difficulty of finding a proper role for a Christian emperor, even as theologians groped to find proper roles for the members of the Trinity. A second was the increasing pressure on the frontiers that made it necessary to explain imperial defeats as often as imperial victories within a Christian perspective. In his investigation of this new theology of imperial success (and failure) Heim discusses the writings of several prominent authors from the fourth and early fifth centuries, some of them Christian bishops, some still unrepentantly defiant pagans. The first cluster of authors wrote, predictably, about Constantine and his dynasty. The emperor himself stressed both his dependence on divine assistance and the extent of his personal piety; Lactantius promoted the importance of appealing for God's assistance by describing the horrors that pagan emperors suffered; Eusebius was prepared to locate Constantine in a long biblical tradition, but without ever solving the problem of the emperor's relationship with God the Father and the Logos: "the equivocations of his trinitarian theology appear again in the equivocations of his political theology" (p. 80). Firmicus Maternus challenged Constantine's sons not to compromise with paganism; in dealing with Constantius, an Arianizing emperor who was nevertheless victorious over various usurpers, Lucifer of Cagliari tried to distinguish success in this life from the heavenly rewards of true faith. Heim is particularly acute in discussing the influence of the Old Testament in shaping Ambrose's thinking about Christian politics and his own role in providing pastoral guidance for emperors. In this perspective, Theodosius' capitulation before Ambrose was simply a confirmation of the continuation of biblical times. The remaining authors from the later fourth century seem to be added as counterpoint, or perhaps afterthoughts, to the model of Ambrose. The pagan historian Ammianus continued to stress the virtues that had once preserved the empire; not surprisingly, he found "the model of military courage" in the emperor Julian (p. 204). Julian in fact would have been an interesting addition to Heim's lineup, since he was a successful general in Gaul even though he was a pagan and had learned about soldiering from books, by reading Caesar's Gallic War. The poet Claudian emphasized the intervention of pagan gods in human affairs; the Christian poet Prudentius added a nice twist by claiming that it was the duty of the Roman Empire to assist in the spread of Christianity; and finally Paulinus of Nola added still another new factor by claiming that St. Felix had contributed to the defense of the Empire against the barbarians. These discussions of Christian theological writings in particular provide an interesting supplement to M. McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (1986), an excellent and highly recommended study of the lingering influence of Roman imperial ceremonies long into the medieval and Byzantine periods. Heim's observations are consistently acute and thoughtful, even if sometimes a bit longwinded and facile. The problem is figuring out what they add up to. Despite the chronological progression of authors this is not a historical study, since Heim discusses only in general terms both the wider social context and the specific controversies that influenced these authors. And he introduces some dubious historical characterizations: the "certitude" [End Page 88] that identified the age of Constantine (even though after his "conversion" Constantine continued to support paganism and was influenced by Arianizing bishops); the "hesitations" that marked the age of Theodosius (even though Theodosius issued a series of heavy-handed constitutions that finally banned paganism and heresies); the fourth century in general as another example of an...

God and Constantine: Divine Sanction for Imperial Rule in the First Christian Emperor's Early Letters and Art

God and Constantine: Divine Sanction for Imperial Rule in the First Christian Emperor's Early Letters and Art

The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Versions and their Influence

The earliest surviving account of Constantine's last days, April to May 337, was written by Eusebius of Caesarea as instant history, since Eusebius died in May 338 or 339. Parts of this concluding section of theVita Constantini, for example the paragraphs about the first Christian emperor's baptism and mausoleum, have attracted scholarly curiosity, others less so. Here I would like to investigate systematically, for the first time, the versions of Constantine's abortive Iranian campaign provided by Eusebius and others, and then move on to consider the origins of a famous account of Constantine's baptism. Both exercises will show how oppositional versions of Constantine's last days influenced the formation of conventionally accepted narratives—or, more specifically, how polytheist historiography helped to mould the Nicaean or ‘orthodox’ perspective, parts of which have prevailed to the present day. Discussion of the fictional accounts of Constantine's baptism by ‘Eusebius of Rome’ and Silvester of Rome will also provide an opportunity to underline the truth of Michel van Esbroeck's observation that ‘the historical aspect of propaganda literature eludes positivist history, of which it is, even so, a part’.