Constantine by Ramsay Macmullen
Ramsay MacMullen
Number of quotes: 20
Book ID: 69 Page: 72/73/74
Section: 2E1,3C,3C2
Constantine one night was told in a vision to paint on his soldiers’ shields the sign of God, which would bring victory. It is described as the letter CHI, turned (not X but +), and the top in a loop (symbol). He followed instructions, equipping a few score of his guard with the sign, we may suppose-hardly all forty thousand!Lactantius is the source followed here.
….
He was a devout Christian; yet he disposes of the whole miracle in thirty-one words. Pagan orators of 313 and 321, to whom we will return, speak only vaguely and briefly of divine aid to Constantine; a triumphal arch erected in 315 at the senate’s orders connects the victory not with Christ but with the Sun-God.
Among Christian sources, Eusebius has nothing to say about the vision in a work otherwise receptive to the miraculous (the Ecclesiastical History of 325), and in 336, in a long oration, he lays stress on the sign of the cross as bringer of victory, and in Constantine’s presence refers to “the divine vision of the Savior which has often shone on you”; but he never puts cross and visions together in any reference to the events of 312. The emperor himself ignores them in contexts where they might naturally find a place, and an intimate of his son’s (Cyril of Jerusalem) in mid-century assures Constantius II that the sight of a cross marked in the sky by a recent meteor is a greater grace than even the true cross that his father found in the Holy Land. The passage, of course, fairly cries out for mention of Constantine’s vision. Farther removed, Ambrose knew nothing of it; Rufinus puts it in the setting of a dream. With Rufinus, we reach the fifth century. The miracle has simply had no impact. It has passed unnoticed among real men. But it was otherwise in the world of books, in which by this time much fuller versions circulated.
They originated in Eusebius’ effusive Life of Constantine, composed after the subject’s death.
…
In 312, at some unspecified spot seemingly in Gaul, and in answer to prayer, he saw the sign of the cross blazing in the afternoon sky, and around it the words, “In this, conquer.” His entire army saw it, too.
…
if the skywriting was witnessed by forty thousand men, the true miracle lies in their unbroken silence about it. We may compare another instance of intervention from on high. A violent rainstorm descended once on Marcus Aurelius’ enemies out of the blue and drove them off the battlefield. This was really seen by thousands. Marcus Aurelius, on coins and relief sculpture, advertised this proof that Jupiter fought on his side. Why did Constantine not do likewise?
Quote ID: 1878
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 74
Section: 3C
Discussion of Constantine’s conversion may be deferred for a little; but there was a time before 312 when he was not, and after when he was, a Christian.
Quote ID: 1879
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 75
Section: 3C
No test of Christianity versus paganism was involved, no crusade. Not religious systems but the strength of gods to determine victory was tested.
Quote ID: 1880
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 109
Section: 3C
At the outset of his conversion-indeed, for a long time after 312-the central question to show itself was, Conversion to what?
Quote ID: 1881
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 110/111
Section: 2B
As he could have learned from Constantius, or for that matter from Diocletian, certain of his subjects worshipped a God higher than all others, and took their name from One who taught and revealed this God; but pagans knew very little about relations between Father and Son, still less about relations between Son and man,….
At the forefront of his mind stood only the bare conviction that the supreme power was that which Christians proclaimed, “the Supreme Divinity,” “divine favor,” “greatest holy God,” “the divine piety,” “the holiest heavenly power,” “the divinity of the great God,” and so on, in a dozen periphrases, all quoted at various points in the preceding pages, where we would expect the one word, “God.”
Quote ID: 1882
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 69 Page: 111/112
Section: 3C
Writing about the Donatists in 314, Constantine mentions Christ; but several considerations, and several modern scholars, suggest that the letter was drafted or edited by churchmen in the court, not wholly by Constantine himself; otherwise he makes no reference to Christ until 321. That peculiarity deserves emphasis.….
As late as 321, again, Nazarius the rhetor invokes the impulse of the divinity (divino instinctu) to explain the marvelous deeds of the conqueror; again, he detects the operation of “heavenly favor,” without source or name; and, to bring Maxentius out from the safety of the city, again Nazarius tells of the intervention of some faceless god befriending Constantine,
Quote ID: 1883
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 112
Section: 2B
Over the middle ground between pagan and Christian, Sol presided.
Quote ID: 1884
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 69 Page: 112
Section: 2B,3C
Constantine remained loyal to Sol for more than a decade after his conversion; or at least his coins, with all the authority and perhaps the distortion of headlines in a government-controlled newspaper, continued to celebrate that god, though with diminishing honor, frequency, and emphasis, after all others had disappeared for good.
Quote ID: 1885
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 69 Page: 112
Section: 2B2,3C
Vague, evasive phrases bridging the gap between paganism and Christianity and thus facilitating spiritual movement from one to the other still served to link even such men as Anullinus to their master long after Constantine’s change of faith had become perfectly clear to everybody.Monotheism under the presidency of the Sun; a family background somewhat sympathetic to Christianity; a current religion vocabulary of circumlocutions and ambiguities;
Quote ID: 1886
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 119
Section: 2E1
If Constantine seemed to be using up too much of the empire’s strength too fast, in the remarkable patronage that he extended to the Church in Rome and to many farther areas of the West as well, yet in the process he laid the foundations for something of the first importance. The basilical church came into being in his reign.
Quote ID: 1888
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 120
Section: 2B2,3C
Inevitably the officers of the Church adopted certain distinctive features of secular officialdom for their costumes, for processions, and for address. Inevitably they presided over worship in surroundings reminiscent of a palace; increasingly in Christian art Christ borrows the ceremonial of imperial reception, oration, and adventus scenes. The Church, thanks to Constantine, had attained a new wealth and public prominence. To express it, there was only one obvious language of magnificence, the language of the imperial cult and court. But in that fact was implicit the danger of a friend becoming a master.
Quote ID: 1889
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 69 Page: 159/160
Section: 3C
It never occurred to him, nor, of course, to a great many ecclesiastical leaders, to wonder whether wealth, grandeur, honorific titles, endowments, silver candelabras, marble and mosaics grew naturally out of the inwardness and previous history of Christianity. Inwardness was something on which he never wasted much time.
Quote ID: 1890
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 160
Section: 3A4B,3C
In dealing with the Church of Africa, his favor was characteristically directed to the official structure. Orthodox priests were to enjoy certain valuable immunities.….
Certain monks and nuns received individual grants of food from public storehouses. Clerical exemption from municipal munera was extended into Italy; and in 316, in a law addressed to Ossius (perhaps because inspired by him), slave-owners received permission to free their slaves not only before secular officials but through a far less complicated attestation in the presence of a bishop. Episcopal courts were soon authorized to hear any civil case, by change of venue from other courts and without right of further appeal. They became, that is, courts of last instance.
Quote ID: 1891
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 164
Section: 2B2,3C
He encouraged Christianity in the army, without any sudden success. Sunday was marked off for rest and worship, and for the recitation of a prayer in Latin personally composed by the emperor.….
- very much a soldier’s prayer, and one that a pagan could recite without heartburning, especially on the appointed Sun-day, dies Solis.
Quote ID: 1892
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 192
Section: 3C
When thwarted, his rage burst forth in shouts and imprecations. “Let the greedy hands of the civil secretaries forbear, let them forbear, I say,” begins a law of 331 directed at administrative venality. And it goes on, “If after due warning they do not cease, they shall be cut off by the sword.” He means it literally. Or again, for parents accessory to the seduction of their daughter, “the penalty shall be that the mouth and throat of those who offered inducement to evil shall be closed by pouring in molten lead.”
Quote ID: 1893
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 192
Section: 3C
The emperor’s ideas of Christianity make sense only when they are considered in a much wider context than the religious:
Quote ID: 1894
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 193
Section: 3A4,3C
Constantine invoked the death penalty quite freely, but so had his predecessors and so did his sons after him.
Quote ID: 1895
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 224
Section: 2A3,2B2,3C
The Church had had no occasion to establish ceremonies in honor of a deceased Christian emperor, and pagan traditions rose to the surface. A comet was duly said to have foretold Constantine’s death. In a henceforward Christianized motif derived from paganism, coins depicted him drawn upwards by a hand extended from heaven. On his birthday, and on the birthday of the city that he had founded, his image received special veneration; to the statue on a porphyry column in the forum of Constantinople, Christians offered sacrifices, prayers, and incense. It was simply impossible to think of him as in any respect less than the deified emperors of paganism-his own father, or Marcus Aurelius, or any other.
Quote ID: 1896
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 236
Section: 3C
Sarcophagus reliefs of Tetrarchic and Constantinian times show the influence that might be exerted. Christ sits on a throne, his feet on a footstool, exactly like the emperor. A petitioner approaches on his knees, head veiled, exactly as to the emperor. Sometimes he offers to Christ some gift in a hand humbly covered in a fold of his robe, exactly according to palace usages.2A1
Quote ID: 1897
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 69 Page: 238/239
Section: 3C
An idea of God’s gifts is reflected in the evils that Constantine laid at the Devil’s door; rioting, strife in the streets, bitter dispute, bad harvests, pretenders, and all the works of witchcraft. One must adjust one’s expectations of the effects of conversion to the man and the age.Few of the essential elements of Christian belief interested Constantine very much - neither God’s mercy nor man’s sinfulness, neither damnation nor salvation, neither brotherly love nor, needless to say, humility.
Quote ID: 1898
Time Periods: 4
End of quotes