The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade Read Free Page A

the divinity of Christ, shut the door firmly on Arianism.
    And it had the imperial stamp on it. In laying hold of Christianity as his tool, Constantine had altered it. Constantine’s ineffable experience of the divine at the Milvian Bridge had proved useful in the moment. But ineffable experiences are notoriously bad at binding together any group of people in common purpose for a long time, and the empire, now tenuously held together by a spider-web linkage, needed the Christian church to be more organized, more orderly, and more rational.
    Christians, in return, would have had to be more than human to resist what Constantine was offering: the imprint of imperial power. Constantine gave the church all sorts of advantages. He recognized Christian priests as equal to priests of the Roman religion, and exempted them from taxes and state responsibilities that might interfere with their religious duties. He also decreed that any man could leave his property to the church; this, as Vasiliev points out, in one stroke turned “Christian communities” into “legal juridical entities.” 16
    Further tying his own power to the future of the church, he had also begun construction of a new capital city, one that from its beginning would be filled with churches, not Roman temples. Constantine had decided to move the capital of his empire, officially, from Rome and its gods to the old city of Byzantium, rebuilt as a Christian city on the shores of the pass to the Black Sea. 17
    All at once Christianity was more than an identity. It was a legal and political constituency—exactly what it had not been when Constantine first decided to march under the banner of the cross. The church, like Constantine’s empire, was going to be around for a little while; and like Constantine, it had to take care for its future.
    After his condemnation at the Council of Nicaea, Arius took to his heels and hid in Palestine, in the far east of the empire. Arianism did not disappear; it remained a strong and discontented underground current. In fact, Constantine’s own sister became a champion of Arian doctrines, rejecting her brother’s command to accept the Nicene Creed as the only Christian orthodoxy. 18
    She may have been motivated by bitterness. In 325, within months of the Council of Nicaea, Constantine broke his promise of clemency to her husband Licinius and had him hanged. Unwilling to leave any challengers to his throne alive, Constantine also sent her ten-year-old son, his own nephew, to the gallows.
    Four years later, he officially dedicated the city of Byzantium as his new capital, the New Rome of his empire. Disregarding the protests of the Romans, he had brought old monuments from the great cities of the old empire—Rome, Athens, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus—and installed them among the new churches and streets. He ordered Roman “men of rank” to move to his new city, complete with their households, possessions, and titles. 19 He was re-creating Rome as he thought it should be, under the shadow of the cross. The emblem of Daniel in the lion’s den, the brave man standing for his God in the face of a heathen threat, decorated the fountains in the public squares; a picture of Christ’s Passion, in gold and jewels, was embossed on the very center of the palace roof. 20
    By 330 Constantine had succeeded in establishing one empire, one royal family, one church. But while the New Rome celebrated, the old Rome seethed with resentment over its loss of status; the unified church Constantine had created at Nicaea was held together only by the thin veneer of imperial sanction; and Constantine’s three sons eyed their father’s empire and waited for his death.
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    TIMELINE 1
     
    ROMAN EMPIRE
     
Diocletian (284–305)
 
Maxentius (306–312)
 
Licinius (308–324)
Maximinus Daia (308–313)
Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312)
 
Constantine (312–337)
 
Battle of Campus Serenus (313)
Edict of Milan (313)
Council of Nicaea