Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Number of quotes: 100
Book ID: 64 Page: 35
Section: 3C
The death of Maximian ultimately strengthened Constantine’s real authorityover his court and administration. But part of his army had proved disloyal, and there were other sons of Constantius available for the purple, should anyone emulate Maximian and challenge Constantine’s position. In the summer of 310, therefore, Constantine felt insecure and resorted to a dynastic fiction which shows a real flair for propaganda. A speech delivered before Constantine shortly after 25 July not only narrates the story of the rebellion of Maximian, but mirrors very accurately what the Constantine of 310 wished his subjects to believe about their monarch and his right to rule. {60}
The orator beings by revealing a closely guarded secret: there flows in the veins of Constantine the blood of Claudius, who defeated the Goths when they poured over the Danube and through the Hellespont, and thus first restored order to the Roman Empire. {61} (Significantly, Constantine’s precise relationship to Claudius is not vouchsafed: the inventors of the pedigree vacillated between grandfather and great-uncle.) {62}
Pastor John’s note: equals a lie? (in reference to the “pedigree”)
Constantine, the orator continues, accompanied his father on his last expedition, when Constantius sought nor merely a triumph in Britain but a closer approach to the gods who were summoning him to their midst. When the heavenly temples opened to receive the dying emperor, Jupiter welcomed him and asked whom he desired to name as his successor. The gods ratified Constantius’ choice of Constantine by unanimous verdict. The terrestrial proclamation followed. As soon as Constantius departed this earth, all his army and all his subjects fixed on Constantine as their new emperor, despite an obvious and emphatic reluctance which led him (so the disingenuous orator avers) to mount a horse and attempt to flee.
Quote ID: 1566
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 36
Section: 3C
The speech also contains another disconcerting element - a vision attributed to Constantine. On his way to Massilia, the emperor made a brief diversion to “the fairest temple in the world” - presumably, since it was a temple of Apollo, the shrine of Apollo Grannus at Grand. {70} There (so the orator asserts, in words which betray the fiction) Constantine saw Apollo, accompanied by Victory, offering him four laurel crowns which each signified thirty years of success, and which together promised him as long a life as a man could enjoy. {71} Better still, Constantine recognized himself in Apollo: young, handsome, joyful, a bringer of salvation, the world ruler whose advent Virgil foretold. {72}Pastor John’s note: Another one? (in reference to the vision attributed to Constantine)
Quote ID: 1567
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 36
Section: 3C
The orator, who came from Autun, was alert to the possibility that his native city, with its grove, temple, and spring of Apollo, might benefit from Constantine’s recent adoption of Sol or Apollo as his patron deity. {76}
Quote ID: 1568
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 36/37
Section: 2B2,3C
In the ideology of the Tetrarchy, Constantius was both Herculius and, at least while Caesar, under the special protection of Sol Invictus, conventionally identified with Apollo. {77} In the early years of his reign, the coinage of Constantine advertised his especial patron as Mars, the god of war. {78} In 310, however, the coinage of Constantine replaces Mars, with Sol–a change clearly connected with the usurpation of Maximian. {79} In the new political situation, the change had clear advantages. Since Sol was the god who protected Constantius, emphasis on Sol stressed Constantine’s status as his father’s heir; {80} devotion to Apollo, the patron of culture and of the emperor Augustus, would appeal to the civilized parts of Gaul–and solar monotheism was far less objectionable than the normal pagan pantheon to the Christians, who formed an influential section of Constantine’s subjects.
Quote ID: 1569
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 82
Section: 3B
While Jerusalem lost its role as the center of Jewish political and religious life, and Jews were forbidden upon pain of death to set foot in Jerusalem or its surrounding territory.{5}[Footnote: 5] Aristo of Pella, quoted by Eusebius, HE 4.6.3; Justin, Apol. 1.47.5; Dial. 40.2, 92.2; Tertullian, Apol. 21.5; Jerome, Chronicle 201e ; cf. E. Schurer, History, rev. G. Vermes and F. Millar, 1.521 ff., 553.
Quote ID: 1570
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 64 Page: 84
Section: 3B
Shortly after 230, …….
After his ordination, Origen proceeded to Athens, where he may have spent a year or more. {30} He returned to the East by way of Asia Minor, visiting Ephesus and Antioch. {31} It was probably at this juncture that Julia Mamaea, the mother of the emperor Severus Alexander, who was conducting war against Persia, summoned Origen to her presence with a military escort and listened to him explain Christian teaching. {32} The amicable interview symbolizes the respectability which a Christian teacher now enjoyed in the eyes of the Roman ruling classes.
Quote ID: 1571
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 64 Page: 85
Section: 3B
Gregory, who appears to have been called Theodorus until his baptism, was born into a pagan family in Cappadocia.….
Origen greeted the young man warmly and employed every effort to convert him from his chosen career and worldly ambitions to philosophy and true religion. Gregory was won over. He stayed in Caesarea willingly and studied with Origen for several years. {43} Origen gave him a course of instruction which represented a gradual ascent to biblical truth.
Quote ID: 1572
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 64 Page: 85
Section: 4A
Origen treated philosophy as a preparation for theology: with his pupil he read widely in the Greek philosophers, pointing out what was useful and true, and finally he read with him the Bible, which he interpreted as the repository of all truth and wisdom.
Quote ID: 1573
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 64 Page: 86
Section: 3B
About 248, when he saw persecution approaching again, he composed a long refutation of Celsus’ True Reason, a polemical work against Christianity written some seventy years earlier. The imperial order to sacrifice to the gods came, and Origen stood firm. He was arrested and imprisoned, tortured on the rack, and urged repeatedly by the governor to sacrifice. Despite his persistent contumacy, Origen was not in fact executed but set free when imperial policy changed. Prison and torture, however, had broken his health: in the reign of Gallus, sometime before his seventieth birthday, Origen died and was buried at Tyre.{53}[Footnote 53] Eusebius, HE 6.46.2, 7.1; Jerome, De Viris Illustribus 54; Epp 84.7. Epiphanius, Pan 64.3.3 (GCS 31.406); De Mensuris et Ponderius 18 (PG 43.268), makes Origen reside in Tyre for twenty-eight years after leaving Alexandria.
Quote ID: 1574
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 64 Page: 86/87
Section: 4A
The strength and attractiveness of Origen’s theology lay in his knowledge and use of contemporary philosophy: he read the recent philosophers on whom Plotinus lectured at Rome, he entered into the philosophical debates of his own day, and he achieved a far more detailed synthesis of Platonism and Christianity than any earlier Christian thinker.{56}
Quote ID: 1575
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 64 Page: 87
Section: 4A
And again, like his contemporaries, Origen blends his Platonism with what he considered best in other systems; in particular he takes much of his logic, ethics, and psychological vocabulary from Stoicism. Thus Origen could argue with pagan philosophers on equal terms and speak with authority, and thus, too, the fundamentals of his thought remained attractive for philosophical theologians of the fourth century, who, like Origen, set their Christianity in a Middle Plantonic mental framework. {58}[Footnote 58] J. M. Rist, Basil of Caesarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic, ed. P. J. Fredwick (Toronto, 1981), 137 ff.
Quote ID: 1576
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 64 Page: 120
Section: 3C
As a matter of fact banning books had already begun before the Council of Nicaea, just after the founding of Constantinopole, when Constantine initiated an Index of banned books. The first book he put on it was the hated writing of Porphyry, Against the Christians. The writings of Arius were added not much later.
Quote ID: 8162
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 64 Page: 126
Section: 3C2
Christianity, for Eusebius, was not a new religion but the primeval religion from which the traditional religions of mankind were mere offshoots or declensions.
Quote ID: 1577
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 64 Page: 127
Section: 3C2
Christianity is identical with the religion of the patriarchs, and the worshipers of God from Adam to Abraham were Christians in all but name. Eusebius draws a rigid distinction between the Hebrews (the original Christians) and the Jews, whose way of life derives from the laws of Moses.
Quote ID: 1578
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 64 Page: 127
Section: 3C2
Thus Christianity is the most ancient and most venerable of all religions:accepted of old by Abraham and the patriarchs, now proclaimed to all
mankind through the teaching of Christ, Christianity is the original, the
only, the true way to worship God. {3}
Quote ID: 1579
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 129/130
Section: 3C2
Moreover, in its present form Book One concludes by quoting the correspondence between Jesus and King Abgar, translated from a Syriac document preserved in the public archives in Edessa - though the quotation of this recently produced document may not have occurred in the original edition.{15} Books Two to Seven, however, weave together the disparate strands of the History into a narrative which proceeds chronologically.[Footnote 15] HE 1.13, drawing on an earlier version of the Syriac Doctrine of Addai, the extant form of which seems to date from c. 400; see I. Ortiz de Urbina, Patrologia Syriaca2 (Rome, 1965), 44. Eusebius describes how Thaddaeus went to Edessa after the Ascension (13.11 ff.):
the preface to Book Two states “let us now consider the events after his ascension” (2, praef. 2).
Quote ID: 1580
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 130
Section: 3C2
Eusebius adopts a broad definition of Christianity which allows him to claim Philo and Josephus, both Jews by race and religion, as virtual Christians and to use them as valuable evidence for the first century.
Quote ID: 1581
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 131
Section: 3C2
Eusebius repeats Tertullian’s story that the emperor Tiberius, on receiving a report from Pontius Pilate, proposed to enroll Jesus among the gods of the Roman pantheon, and that when the Senate demurred, the emperor gave Christians legal protection.
Quote ID: 1582
Time Periods: 1234
Book ID: 64 Page: 134
Section: 3C2,4A
From the middle of the second century onward, Eusebius asserts, Christianity was universally recognized as a sober and respectable philosophy against which no one dared to revive the ancient calumnies. {44}[Footnote 44] HE 4.7.
Quote ID: 1583
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 136
Section: 3C2
For Eusebius success was a mark of truth, and his treatment of persecution reflects this belief - which was to receive emphatic validation from the persecution in his own day.{75} Eusebius does not present the early Church as a hated and persecuted minority gradually attaining security and respectability. For him the Christian church normally enjoyed respect and toleration, even in its earliest days. {76}[Footnote 75] Chapter IX
Quote ID: 1584
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 140/141
Section: 3C2
A close inspection of the text and a comparison of the History with the documents and writers employed as sources immediately discloses several grave deficiencies. When Eusebius paraphrases, he feels free to rewrite, to omit or to expand passages, to alter the emphases of the original, and he often misreports, just as if he had composed his paraphrase from memory.
Quote ID: 1585
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 141
Section: 3C2
In any event, it is unwise to rely on Eusebius’ reports as reproducing exactly the precise tenor, or even main purport, of lost evidence.
Quote ID: 1586
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 142
Section: 3C2,4B
He thus could not perceive or document one of the crucial transitions in early Christianity. In 180 the Christians were an obscure sect, widely believed to enjoy “Oedipodean incests and Thyestean banquets.” {143} within a generation, however, there were Christians or Christian sympathizers at the imperial court and in the Roman Senate: an apologist could soberly inform a proconsul of Africa that if the proconsul wished to rid his province of Christians, he would need to decimate his own staff and social circle, and a governor of Arabia could ask the prefect of Egypt to send him a Christian teacher for an interview. {144}It is by no means easy to discover when a majority of the population of the Roman Empire (or any area within it) became Christian. The more significant stage in the transformation of Roman society occurred when figures like Tertullian in Africa, Clement and Origen in Alexandria, and, a little later, Cyprian in Carthage demonstrated the moral, social and intellectual respectability of their religion. {145} Eusebius’ picture of the Church before 200 is fundamentally anachronistic.
[Footnote 143] R. Freudenberger, Theologische Zeitschrift 23 (1967), 97 ff.
Quote ID: 1587
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 64 Page: 145
Section: 3B
Paul, a native of Samosata, became bishop of Antioch, succeeding Demetrianus about 260 (from pg. 144) though deposed and denounced by a council of bishops, retained the loyalty of his supporters in Antioch. He refused to surrender the church to Domnus, whom the council named as his successor, and his enemies were unable to dispossess him. The issue was resolved by appeal to the Roman emperor. Aurelian, who assumed the purple in September 270, ordered that the church building be restored to “those with whom the bishops of the doctrine in Italy and Rome should communicate in writing”; the form of the emperor’s rescript perhaps reflects a petition presented to him in Italy by a deputation of Italian bishops. Paul was then expelled with indignity. {162}[Footnote 162] HE 7.30.6 ff.; F. Millar, JRS 61 (1971), 14 ff.
Quote ID: 1588
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 64 Page: 145
Section: 3A,3B,4B
Once the Church enjoyed toleration, it was natural that it should copy allother organizations in the Roman Empire in regarding the emperor, simply because he was emperor, as patron, protector, and arbiter. {164} For the Christians of the third century there was no incongruity in inviting a pagan emperor to intervene in ecclesiastical affairs.
[Footnote 164] F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977), 551 ff.
Quote ID: 1589
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 64 Page: 159
Section: 3B
Various steps designed to strengthen pagan cults and discredit Christianity accompanied the repression. Maximinus tried to organize paganism as a cohesive religion. He had already, in late 309, decreed that disused temples and shrines be repaired;{82} now he established a pagan ecclesiastical hierarchy. The high-priests of the provincial councils received a general supervision of religious affairs, their new powers being marked by the constant attendance of a military escort as if they were government officials. Maximinus also appointed municipal priests from the leading citizens of each city to perform daily sacrifice to the gods and to aid in restoring ancient cults and priesthoods.[Footnote 82] Mart. Pal. 9.2 (both recensions).
Quote ID: 1590
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 64 Page: 162
Section: 3C2
In 311 Eusebius stressed the continuing role of the martyrs, who walk with God and can assist their brethren on earth with their prayers; persecution created a link with the first apostles, who themselves suffered martyrdom. {106}
Quote ID: 1591
Time Periods: 1234
Book ID: 64 Page: 173/174
Section: 3C2
God the Father was “the first cause”, the creator or demiurge of the universe, uncreated and the father of all things, the “first and uncreated God.” {62} God the Son, the divine Word, or Logos, so Eusebius repeatedly states, is different from and inferior to God the Father. {63} Although the Son is Lord and God, and the only Lord and God apart from the Father, he occupies second place after the Father, he is a minister of his Father’s will, and his power was given him by the Father. {64} He may be the “angel of mighty counsel” (Isaiah 9:6) who performs and announces the will of the Father to every created thing, but he is essentially different from the Father; he has a substance (hypostasis) of his own which differs from that of the Father, he is a separate being from the Father who sent him, and though he is called God, he is “the first of all created things after the uncreated beginning.”{65}[Footnote 63] The Father is a “greater Lord,” the Word “in second place after the Father” (Ibid., 1.12).
Quote ID: 1592
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 174
Section: 3C2
Admirers of Eusebius’ theology assert fervently that he was no Arian. {69} That was not the opinion of Eusebius’s contemporaries, and the General Elementary Introduction repeatedly affirms two propositions which the Council of Nicaea condemned as heretical: that God the Son differs in substance from God the Father, and that the Son belongs to the created order.[Footnote 69] H. Berkhof, Die Theologie des Eusebius (Amsterdam, 1939), 65 ff. The imperfect antithesis “nicht Arianer, sondern Origenist” was developed by M. Weis, Die Stellung des Eusebius von Caesarea im arianischen Streit (diss., Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1919), 62 ff.
Quote ID: 1593
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 176
Section: 3C1
Between writing On Philosophy from Oracles and Against the Christians, Porphyry abandoned this optimistic integration of Christianity into Greco-Roman culture. He began to fear that the Greeks and their gods were seriously endangered; he abandoned any desire for synthesis, claimed that Christianity and Greek culture were fundamentally incompatible, and transformed his favorable evaluation of Jesus into systematic denigration.
Quote ID: 1594
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 64 Page: 178
Section: 1B,4A
Like Celsus in the second century, Porphyry presented Christians as apostates, both from Greco-Roman religion and culture and from Jewish religion and culture, who forsook the established cults of city and country, patronized by kings, lawgivers, and philosophers, for atheism and impiety. {108} Christians had first made common cause with the impious Jews, the enemies of all mankind, and then abandoned even the Jews for something newfangled and irrational. Such men deserved brutal punishment - and between 303 and 313 many of them received brutal punishment. {109}
Quote ID: 1595
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 64 Page: 179
Section: 2B2,3C2
Throughout, Eusebius has one main polemical aim: to demonstrate, against Porphyry, an essential harmony or identity between Christianity and all that is best in Greco-Roman civilization. The quotations of Greek writers thus form an integral part of the overall argument, which Eusebius has ordered into a carefully designed structure.
Quote ID: 1596
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 181
Section: 3C2
Christianity (he holds) is identical with the religion of the Hebrew patriarchs, who saw the truth while the first pagans wallowed in error. Hence it is of greater antiquity than Judaism, which is a way of life founded by Moses, the last of the ancient Hebrews, as a temporary dispensation to allow knowledge of the Old Testament to circulate so that all mankind can embrace the religion of the Hebrew patriarchs revealed fully and to all in Christianity. {132}Book Ten stands alone, occupying a pivotal position in the argument, for it provides the crucial proof that the Greeks derived their learning, as well as their philosophy, from the Hebrews.
Quote ID: 1597
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 186
Section: 3C2
The Preparation for the Gospel and the Proof of the Gospel also reflect basic theological ideas which Eusebius had long held. As in the General Elementary Introduction, he virtually ignores the Holy Spirit when speaking of God and thinks of God the Father and God the Son in terms of the First and Second Gods of Middle Platonism. {169}
Quote ID: 1598
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 191
Section: 3A3
powerful and respectable long before it acquired an imperial champion. By the end of the third century there were completely Christian villages in Palestine and Phrygia, {2} and in most eastern cities and provinces Christians constituted either a majority of the population or at least an influential minority. { 3} Throughout the East, the Christian bishop had become a respected figure of the urban establishment whom provincial governors treated with respect or deference, and bishops acted as judges in legal disputes within the local Christian community. {4}
Quote ID: 1599
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 64 Page: 191
Section: 3C,4B
When Constantine turned the impending war against Licinius into a Christian crusade, he happily united personal conviction with political advantage. A pagan emperor could no longer govern without the acquiescence and good will of his Christian subjects. {5}
Quote ID: 1600
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 194
Section: 2E2
The nature of Christian devotion inevitably changed when the constant threat of persecution diminished and then disappeared. Asceticism replaced martyrdom as the highest ideal to which Christians could normally aspire. At the beginning of the third century, Clement of Alexandria was the first Christian writer to place the ascetic on the same level as the martyr {42} During the two generations between 260 and 324 ascetism became a widespread way of expressing Christian piety, and religious communities were organized in which groups of Christians could withdraw from the world. . .[Footnote 42] E. E. Malone, The Monk and the Martyr (Studies in Christian Antiquity 12, 1950), 5 ff.
Quote ID: 1601
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 64 Page: 195
Section: 2E2
By 324, the monk was an established figure in Egyptian village society. {49} The principal avatars of medieval monasticism were two Copts, Pachomius and Antony.
Quote ID: 1602
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 196/197
Section: 4A,4B
A Platonic philosopher writing in Alexandria about 300 prefaced a critique of Manichean doctrines with some observations on the state of Christianity which presumably reflect conditions in that city. He characterized Christianity as a simple philosophy, chiefly devoted to ethical instruction, which tells ordinary people how to behave and thus inculcates genuine virtue, piety, and desire for the good. He complained, however, that Christianity lacked a proper theoretical basis, either for theology or in ethics. Since they had no agreed basis for deciding theological issues, the leaders of sects sought novelty for its own sake, thereby converting a simple philosophy into something hopelessly complicated and ineffectual. {58}
Quote ID: 1603
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 64 Page: 202
Section: 3C2
The Libyan Arius was a popular preacher at the church of Baucalis. {115}
Quote ID: 1604
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 203/204
Section: 3C1
Nor was the Son part of the Father, of one substance with the Father; that was an error of Mani-whom Arius, significantly, regards as a Christian heretic.
Quote ID: 1605
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 204
Section: 3C1
This council drew up a creed which repudiated Arius’ novel views. When Arius and others refused to accept this document, the council excommunicated them and banished them from Alexandria. {135}
Quote ID: 1606
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 204
Section: 3C1
Arius claimed that he had been unjustly banished from Alexandria because of his refusal to assert publicly that the Son is coeternal with the Father; he further claimed to have the support of almost all eastern bishops . . .
Quote ID: 1607
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 206
Section: 3C1
Eusebius of Caesarea perhaps reacted to the circular letter by convening a council of bishops in Palestine to intervene again in Arius’ behalf. {152}
Quote ID: 1608
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 209
Section: 3C
The detailed provisions following this general statement remedy the effects of Licinius’ policy toward the Christians. Constantine recalls to their homeland Christians who had been exiled, discharges those, presumably priests, who had been enrolled in city councils as a punishment, and restores those deprived of their property to their homes, to their families, and to their former wealth. Christians deported to deserted islands shall return from penury and degradation to freedom and security, those condemned to forced labor shall return to a normal, leisurely existence, and any who have forfeited liberty and privileges shall at once resume their lost status in society. Those who were expelled from the army because of their faith may choose either their former rank or an honorable discharge. Christians of high birth who were degraded and then condemned to toil in imperial woolen mills or linen factories or to be slaves of the treasury, shall recover their freedom, honors, and status, and all those of whatever station who have been enslaved shall again be free.
Quote ID: 1609
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 210
Section: 3C
Constantine soon followed his initial letters to his new subjects with actions establishing Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.Christians received preference in official appointments, and pagan magistrates, whether provincial governors, vicarii of dioceses, or praetorian prefects, were forbidden to sacrifice before commencing official business. { 8} Moreover, Constantine instructed provincial governors and bishops to cooperate in providing churches in which the numerous converts he expected as a result of his victory might worship. He wrote to each bishop (or at least to each metropolitan), urging him to restore churches damaged in the persecution, to enlarge existing buildings, and to construct new ones where needed. Constantine subsidized the cost from imperial funds, directing governors to supply money to the bishops on demand. {9}
The political circumstances of 324 enabled Constantine to take a still more momentous step. Throughout the cities of the East, many prominent supporters of Licinius were killed, either with or without the formality of a trial, when the persecuted took revenge, as they had after the fall of Maximinus. {10} Paganism was now a discredited cause. Constantine forbade the erection of cult statutes, the consultation of pagan oracles, divination of any sort, and sacrifice to the gods under any circumstances. {11} A change so sudden, so fundamental, so total shocked pagans. There were probably complaints and protests to the emperor, perhaps even formal petitions.
Quote ID: 1610
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 211
Section: 3C
In this document, a justification of Constantine’s policy guaranteeing that pagans may continue to perform traditional cults and rituals (from pg. 210) {12} Constantine defines a policy which he was to maintain until his death. Christianity is the emperor’s religion, and Christians can expect him to give them preferential treatment. {13}[Footnote 12] For the standard interpretation, H. Dorries, Das Selbstzeugnis Kaiser Konstantins (Abh. Gottingen, Phil. -hist. Kl.3 34, 1954), 51 ff. It depends on dating the document to October 324 (following O. Seeck, Regesten der Kaiser und Papste fur die Jahre 311 bis 476 n. Chr. [Stuttgart, 1919], 174) and forgetting or disbelieving the ban on sacrifice (VC 2.45.1). Eusebius indicates a clear temporal order: first the letter quoted in 24-42, then the measures described in 44-46, and later still (47.1) the letter quoted in 48-60. Moreover, Constantine’s reference to the deaths of the persecuting emperors and their eternal punishment in hell appears to presuppose the execution of Licinius c. April 325 (2.54).
Quote ID: 1611
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 211
Section: 3C
Also prohibited were certain sorts of attack on Christianity; Porphyry hadoverstepped the permissible bounds, and Constantine ordered all copies of Against the Christians to be burned, prescribing the death penalty for any who furtively retained the work. {14}
In many matters, Constantine showed a caution which has often seemed to imply a policy of religious toleration. He would not risk rebellion or civil disobedience, and in Italy and the West, where he had been emperor long before 324, he made no serious attempt to enforce the prohibition of sacrifice which Eusebius attests for the East. {15}
Constantine subsidized the travels of a priest of the Eleusinian mysteries who visited the tombs of the kings in Egyptian Thebes, welcomed a pagan philosopher at court, and honored a priest of Apollo at Delphi for conspicuous devotion to the imperial house. {16}
Quote ID: 1612
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 212
Section: 3C
But he allowed them to worship their traditional gods only in the Christian sense of that word, not according to the traditional forms hallowed by antiquity. The emperor made the distinction underlying his policy explicit when he answered a petition from the Umbrian town of Hispellum requesting permission to build a temple of the Gens Flavia. Constantine granted the request but specified that the shrine dedicated to the imperial family must never be “polluted by the deceits of any contagious superstition.” {17} From 324 onward Constantine consistently evinced official disapproval of the sacrifices and other cultic acts which constituted the essence of Greco-Roman paganism: Christianity was now the established religion of the Roman Empire and its ruler, and paganism should now conform to Christian patterns of religious observance.Constantine marked his victory over Licinius by founding a new city to be his capital. His action, though obviously also symbolic in other ways, had a religious dimension. The new capital was to be a Christian city in which Christian emperors could hold court in an ambience untainted by the buildings, rites, and practices of other religions.
….
The emperor named it “New Rome”, but most of his subjects preferred to call it Constantinople after its founder. {20}
Quote ID: 1613
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 212
Section: 3C1
The Arian controversy forced itself on his attention just at the periodwhen he most wished to concentrate on converting pagans to Christianity. By 324 not only were bishops denouncing one another, but congregations were divided into two parties, and in the theater pagans taunted Christians about their dissensions. {27}
Quote ID: 1614
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 213
Section: 3C1
Moreover, as Ossius letter to Emperor Constantine was returning to court, he discovered that the church of Antioch was in total disorder. {36} The bishop, Philogonius, had died on 20 December 324, and rioting ensued over the election of his successor.The bishops acted decisively to support Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, and they adopted an intricately phrased creed which defined orthodox belief. All the bishops present except three declared that this formulary represented the true apostolic teaching necessary for salvation. The recusants were Theodotus of Laodicea, Narcissus of Neronias, and Eusebius of Caesarea. Ossius interrogated them one by one; the council pronounced their views heretical and excommunicated all three.
Quote ID: 1615
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 214
Section: 3C1
The council never met at Ancyra. Constantine transferred it to Nicaea and perhaps enlarged its scope so that it became the first “ecumenical council” of the Christian church. {39}
Quote ID: 1616
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 214
Section: 3C
In September 324 Licinius was sent to Thessalonica, with a promise of safety. {41} Some time later he was strangled, in circumstances which remain unclear. {42} The official version represented his death as merited punishment: Licinius was plotting insurrection, and Constantine’s timely action prevented a resumption of civil war. {43}
Quote ID: 1617
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 214
Section: 3C
Since Licinius posed a threat as long as he lived, Constantine had him killed - probably together with his son, the former Caesar, a boy of nine. {48}
Quote ID: 1618
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 214
Section: 3C1
They basked in the light of a new glory. Bishops converged on Nicaea,nearly three hundred in all; the emperor allowed them free use of the cursus publicus, and he paid their living expenses during the council. {49}
Quote ID: 1619
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 214/215
Section: 3C1
Prestige did not depend mainly on a bishop’s see nor on his subtlety in debate. Confessors, especially those whose missing eyes and maimed ankles manifested proof of their steadfastness during the persecution, enjoyed enormous authority. {52} Important contributions also came from some who were not technically members of the council. The bishop of Alexandria received advice throughout the proceedings from his deacon Athanasius, {53} and Constantine, though not even a baptized Christian, participated in the debates. {54}
Quote ID: 1620
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 215
Section: 3C1
On the other side, the bishops who had been provisionally excommunicated at Antioch set out to rehabilitate themselves. Eusebius of Caesarea drew up a formal creed to prove his orthodoxy, which he tendered to the council. {57} In it he affirmed that “the Father is truly Father, the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit truly Holy Spirit,”
Quote ID: 1621
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 215
Section: 3C1
At a sign, all stood. Constantine entered, clad in the imperial purple, with a diadem and insignia of gold and diamonds. He advanced as far as the first seats in each row. A small stool of wood encrusted with gold was produced. After requesting permission from the bishops, Constantine sat down; the rest followed suit. {60} The bishop immediately to his left, Eusebius of Nicomedia, rose and delivered a panegyrical address of welcome. {61} After Eusebius resumed his seat, Constantine replied briefly and formally in Latin.He expressed gratitude to God for allowing him to see the bishops assembled together in concord, and he deprecated violent dissension within the Church as more lamentable than even civil war. Could the Devil sully the Church even after all the persecutors had been destroyed? His own victories in war could be fully complete only when the consecrated servants of God united in peace and harmony. They should, therefore, state their disagreements openly in order to achieve a peaceful resolution of their differences, for only thus could they please God and show adequate gratitude to their liberator. {62} An interpreter translated the speech into Greek. {63}When Constantine finished (it appears), he received petitions from the bishops, many of whom had already approached him privately with accusations against one another. He sat with the petitions (which were later burned) in his lap and reproved the bishops for letting private animosities interfere with God’s business. {64}
Quote ID: 1622
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 216
Section: 3C1
The council considered the Arian controversy first. Eusebius of Caesarea and two other bishops had arrived in Nicaea under a provisional ban of excommunication. Eusebius presented the previously prepared document as proof of his orthodoxy. His enemies could find no obvious blunder in this creed and its glosses. Constantine spoke first; he commended Eusebius’ beliefs as orthodox, almost identical, in fact, with his own, and surely acceptable to all–if Eusebius would only add that the Son was one substance with the Father. {72} Eusebius accepted the condition, unpalatable though he found it. {73} He thereby created a dilemma for his enemies. They were compelled either to receive Eusebius, whom they still considered heretical, back into communion or to brand Constantine as a heretic for sharing the unorthodox beliefs of the bishop of Caesarea. Eusebius, Theodotus, and Narcissus were admitted to membership of the council.
Quote ID: 1623
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 217
Section: 3C1
Only the two Libyan bishops associated with Arius from the outset (Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonas of Marmarica) refused to sign; they departed into immediate exile, together with Arius and some priests who also refused to repudiate his views. {82}
Quote ID: 1624
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 217
Section: 3C,2E4
The Council of Nicaea had much other business and remained in session for another month. It was perhaps Constantine himself who had asked the council to determine the proper date of Easter. He took a prominent part in the discussion, {83} and afterward wrote a circular letter communicating the decision to the churches of each province in Syria and Palestine.
Quote ID: 1625
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 217
Section: 3C,2E4
The council shared the emperor’s view that to allow different Easters in different places was absurd and sinful, and it legislated for uniformity, ordering all churches everywhere to adopt the calculation which prevailed throughout the West, Asia Minor, and Egypt.
Quote ID: 1626
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 219
Section: 3C1
The decisions of the Council of Nicaea were communicated not only through synodal letters (as was the normal custom) but also by Constantine.….
In adding, his letters to those of the bishops, Constantine deliberately emphasized his role as a Christian emperor bringing unity and concord to a divided Church.
Quote ID: 1627
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 219
Section: 3C
Before the bishops departed from Nicaea, Constantine conferred on them a signal honor. On 25 July 325 the celebration of the emperor’s vicennalia began in nearby Nicomedia. {102} To mark the anniversary, Constantine invited all the bishops to a banquet; they came to the palace, swept past the soldiers standing guard with drawn swords, and feasted with the emperor - like the apostles surrounding Christ in paradise. {103}Constantine believed that sexual misdemeanors merited the harshest treatment, and his legislation removing legal disabilities from celibates sometimes seems to regard even marriage as sinful. {108} In 322, when a grandchild was born, he pardoned all criminals except murderers, practitioners of magic, and adulterers. {109}
[Footnote 108] CTh 8.16.1.
Quote ID: 1628
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 220
Section: 3C
The truth behind the accusations against Crispus and Albinus seems forever lost. It is clear, nevertheless, that Fausta or her agents must have played a large role in securing Crispus’ condemnation: by the death of Crispus, Fausta’s own sons lost a rival, and Constantine can only have executed his son on evidence which appeared irrefragable. {122}The sequel ineluctably implies that Crispus was falsely accused.
Quote ID: 1629
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 221
Section: 3C
The emperor then (it must be assumed) confronted Fausta and accused her of deceiving him, but it is not clear that he formally tried her. Fausta went into the caldarium of baths in the imperial palace. The room was heated far beyond the normal temperature; she suffocated in the steam and was carried out a corpse. Her death appears to have been suicide under compulsion. {124}
Quote ID: 1630
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 221
Section: 2A3
Constantine renamed Drepanum in Bithynia, where his mother was born, Helenopolis; on 7 January 328, he refounded the city and transferred there the relics of Lucian of Antioch, whom his mother had venerated. {133}
Quote ID: 1631
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 224
Section: 2D3A,3C
The Christianity which now constituted the established religion of the Roman Empire was of an exclusive type. From 312, Constantine confined his largess and fiscal privileges to Christians belonging to the Catholic church. {1} Further, when the Donatists finally refused to acknowledge a Catholic bishop of Carthage vindicated by councils of bishops and by the emperor himself, Constantine treated their schism as a crime and confiscated their property. {2} The victory of 324 permitted Constantine to make the principle underlying this decision explicit and universal. He legislated an end to all heretical sects. A letter explicitly addressed “to heretics” was publicly displayed. In it Constantine insulted Novatianists, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulianists, Montanists, and all other heretics and declared their conduct intolerable. He ordained that they no longer meet, even in private houses, that their houses of prayer be surrendered to the Catholic church, and that any other real property they owned be confiscated. {3}
Quote ID: 1632
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 64 Page: 225
Section: 3C1
When Constantine died in 337, though the heresiarch was dead, Arius’ supporters enjoyed a supremacy in the eastern Church which appeared almost complete.
Quote ID: 1633
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 226
Section: 3C1
While the Council of Nicaea was still in session, Eusebius of Caesarea wrote a letter which reveals deep embarrassment. He needed to explain his acceptance of the creed and its anathemas to his congregation, because many in Caesarea were likely to consider his action both unexpected and unwelcome. His letter asks its recipients to disregard any rumors which may have reached them. Eusebius promises an accurate account of what has happened. He presents the facts, however, in a highly selective and misleading fashion.
Quote ID: 1634
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 226
Section: 3C1
Throughout the letter he shelters behind the authority of Constantine, whose presence and role at the council he continually recalls.
Quote ID: 1635
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 227
Section: 3C1
Constantine also wrote to Theodotus of Laodicea to dissuade him from imitating the behavior of his former allies - a revealing letter, for it assumes that compliance with the Nicene decisions determines whether a believer shall hereafter gain rewards in heaven or punishment in hell. {16}
Quote ID: 1636
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 227
Section: 3C1
About two years after the Council of Nicaea, a council of bishops met at Antioch and conducted a purge in the Arian interest. {22}Pastor John notes: John’s note: 327 in reference to the year
Quote ID: 1637
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 227/228
Section: 3C1
By 330, therefore, the metropolitan see of Antioch was firmly in the Arian camp, and Flaccillus could ensure that any new bishop in Syria would sympathize with the Arian cause. {38}
Quote ID: 1638
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 231
Section: 3C1
Constantine, asking that they a group of Melitian bishops be permitted to hold meetings without violent disruption.….
Eusebius brought them before Constantine, explained their request, and obtained his permission for them to meet without hindrance.{ 63}
Quote ID: 1639
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 232/233
Section: 3C1
He [Arius] presented Constantine with an ultimatum: either he must be restored to communion, as the Council of Nicomedia had decreed, or he would form his large following into a separate church. {74} Accustomed to servility, not to threats or coercion, Constantine lost his temper.---------------
The circular letter declares that Arians should be called Porphyrians, since Arius has shown himself as much an enemy of Christianity as Porphyry; Arius’ writings must be burned, and anyone who secretes a copy shall be liable to summary execution. {76}
Quote ID: 1640
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 233
Section: 3C1
Why such ire? Arius (it emerges) included in his letter a statement of his beliefs which offended Constantine profoundly. For Arius affirmed that the Son had “a different substance (hypostasis)” from the Father. Constantine reaffirms his strong conviction that the Father and Son had “one essence (ousia)” and scolds Arius for surrendering the persons of the Divine Trinity. Arius has asserted a belief anathematized at Nicaea; he is again, therefore, an excommunicate, no matter how many adherents he can claim.
Quote ID: 1641
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 241
Section: 3C2
In one respect at least, Eusebius’ quotations must be deliberately misleading.
Quote ID: 1642
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 64 Page: 242
Section: 3C1
Constantine again examined Arius and questioned him about the sincerity with which he subscribed to the views he professed. When Arius swore an oath, the emperor again pronounced him orthodox. The Arian bishops then requested Alexander to communicate with Arius.
Quote ID: 1643
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 242
Section: 3C1
Before he could reach the church, Arius collapsed and died. His enemies inevitably detected the hand of God, and it was claimed that Constantine deduced that Arius must have lied to him about his true beliefs. {153}
Quote ID: 1644
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 245
Section: 2C,3C
In 307, on his promotion from Caesar to Augustus, Constantine automatically assumed the title of pontifex maximus, which he never relinquished until he symbolically resigned the imperial power on his deathbed. {2} Nor did Constantine’s immediate successors discard the title, although they too were Christians. {3}
Quote ID: 1645
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 246
Section: 3C
Constantine had made no serious attempt to enforce it a law prohibiting sacrifice in the West. Later still, (probably in 343), Firmicus Maternus addressed a pamphlet On the Error of Profane Religions to the emperors Constantius and Constans. {7}. . . . he entreats the emperors to stamp out pagan practices, which still persist, to seize the ornaments which adorn pagan temples, to melt down cult statues, to confiscate dedications in gold and silver, and to use the proceeds to mint money for the government to spend. {8}
Quote ID: 1646
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 246/247
Section: 3C
The victorious Constantine, therefore, could forbid pagan sacrifice, knowing that his Christian subjects would enforce the law wherever possible. {15} Moreover, eastern pagans soon discovered that their new master would not allow them to retain all their shrines or any of their temple treasures.Pastor John’s note: Not west!
….
The proceeds of this systematic confiscation were enormous; four decades later a writer claimed that as a result gold coins, instead of bronze, came into use for the most trivial commercial transactions. {17}
Quote ID: 1647
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 247/248
Section: 3C
When Constantine ordered the inhabitants of Heliopolis to desist from ritual prostitution, he also urged them to adopt chastity and belief in God. More important, he began to build the first church in the city, and he provided, through the new bishop and his clergy, funds to support the poor–and to encourage them to become Christians. {22} Such redirection of religious sentiment, combined with material inducements to conversion, can be documented elsewhere and should be presumed typical. {23}
Quote ID: 1648
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 248
Section: 2E1,3C
A shrine of Aphrodite occupied the site a basilica built over the site of the crucifixion and what was believed to be Christ’s tomb until Constantine ordered its demolition. Excavations were made under the ruins until a tomb was discovered, which appears to have contained not a body, but some wood, which its finders identified as the cross on which Christ was crucified. Constantine, and Christians in general, hailed the discovery as manifest proof of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.
Quote ID: 1649
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 249
Section: 3C2
Constantine has legislated the gods and heroes of pagan antiquity out of existence and made the whole world worship the true God together, receiving divine instruction every Sunday. Constantine has seen the Savior often, both while awake and in dreams, and the emperor directs his policies by the revelations God vouchsafes him - God, his champion and guardian. . . .
Quote ID: 1650
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 252
Section: 3C
Admittedly, Constantine allowed the Jews to set foot in Jerusalem again, but only on one day each year, in order to bewail their fate. {73} More generally, Constantine translated Christian prejudice against Jews into legal disabilities. He forbade Jews to own Christian slaves and to seek or accept converts to Judaism, and he prescribed that any Jew who attempted forcibly to prevent conversions from Judaism to Christianity should be burned alive. {74}
Quote ID: 1651
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 64 Page: 253
Section: 3C
Despite Sopater’s paganism, the emperor held him in high esteem, conversed long with him, and used him as an adviser when conducting public business. However, one autumn the grain ships were delayed by the weather, and the hungry crowd in the hippodrome evinced its displeasure with the emperor. Sopater’s enemies pounced. They accused the philosopher of fettering the winds. Constantine condemned Sopater to be beheaded (perhaps about the same time as Athanaius’ enemies secured his removal by accusing him of threatening the grain supply). {81}
Quote ID: 1652
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 253/254
Section: 3C2
This preface Panegyric to Constantine sets the tone for what follows. Eusebius deliberately eschews exclusively Christian terminology, never uttering the name of Jesus or the word of “Christ.” {88}….
On the contrary, Eusebius coolly appropriates the terminology of Greek philosophy to justify the Christian empire and the suppression of paganism.
Quote ID: 1653
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 254
Section: 3C2
The Constantine of Eusebius’s speech is no benevolent tolerator of religious pluralism: he has “cleansed all the filth of godless error from his kingdom on earth.” {94}
Quote ID: 1654
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 255
Section: 3C2
Constantine reigns under the saving and life-giving sign of the Cross, he sets one day in seven aside as a day of prayer, and his armies pray to God and fight with the labarum as their standard.
Quote ID: 1655
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 255
Section: 3C2
Although Eusebius and Eunapius both describe his government, their accounts hardly coincide at a single point. Eusebius gives an extravagant panegyric. His Constantine was generous in every way. He gave freely to all, bestowing money, land, and status on any who asked and never refusing any request. From the emperor, some received consular rank, others membership in the Senate, many a provincial governorship; some became comities of the first, second, or third rank while countless others received the rank of eminentissimus or some other title.
Quote ID: 1656
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 258
Section: 3C
. . . . and shortly after Constantine conquered the East in 324, the kingdom of Iberia in the Caucasus embraced Christianity and a Roman alliance. {142}
Quote ID: 1657
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 259
Section: 3C
He constructed the Church of the Holy Apostles to serve as both a mausoleum and a shrine.….
Inside, in two equal rows, were twelve empty sarcophagi, one for each apostle. In secret, Constantine prepared a sumptuous sarcophagus to hold his own body and to stand in the center; he would thus be associated with the apostles by any who came to pray there. {152}
Quote ID: 1658
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 259
Section: 3A4C,3C
Constantine resolved to campaign against the Persians himself, and he proposed to wage the war as a Christian crusade. He solicited bishops (who agreed with alacrity) to accompany the army, he prepared a tent in the shape of a church to accompany him everywhere, and he intended, before invading Persia, to be baptized in the waters of the River Jordan. {147} Persian ambassadors arrived at Constantinople during the winter of 336/7, seeking to avoid war. The emperor repulsed their overtures. {148}
Quote ID: 8161
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 265/266
Section: 3C2
Strangely, however, the picture of Eusebius himself which is implicit in the Life has usually been taken on trust. Eusebius suggests that he was close to the emperor; hence he becomes, in many modern accounts, a constant adviser of Constantine, a close confidant, his principal counselor on ecclesiastical matters. {66} Basic facts of geography and chronology contradict this conventional portrait. Eusebius of Caesarea did not, like his namesake of Nicomedia, reside near the imperial capital, come to court when he chose, or have ready access to the emperor’s presence. He was no courtier, still less a trusted counselor from whom Constantine sought constant advice on ecclesiastical policy.
Quote ID: 1659
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 273
Section: 3C2
Eunapius of Sardis developed Julian’s insinuations into a historical interpretation of the fourth century which blamed Constantine and his conversion to Christianity for the decline of the Roman Empire. {5}
Quote ID: 1660
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 273
Section: 3C
Born out of wedlock (and of a low-class mother), Constantine kept a mistress who bore his eldest son. This son he put to death, in defiance of the laws of nature, on suspicion of seducing his wife, and when his mother objected, he turned on his wife and ordered her to be suffocated while bathing.
Quote ID: 1661
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 64 Page: 274
Section: 3C2
He the German humanist Johann Lowenklau (Johannes Leunclavius) argued that Zosimus’ picture of Constantine should be preferred to that of Eusebius and the ecclesiastical historians of the fifth century; Zosimus held a correct and judicious balance between the emperor’s virtues and vices, where as Eusebius was not a historian but a panegyrist, constrained to utter nothing except laudation - and therefore, incapable of giving a true portrait of Constantine. {8}
Quote ID: 1662
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 64 Page: 274
Section: 3C
Edward Gibbon attempted to “delineate a just portrait” of Constantine “by the impartial union of those defects which are confessed by his warmest admirers, and of those virtues which are acknowledged by his most implacable enemies,” and he based his assessment on the contrasted narratives of Eusebius’ Life of Constantine and Zosimus. {16}
Quote ID: 1664
Time Periods: 4
End of quotes