A CLEAR EXAMPLE OF GODLINESS

… Constantine, alone among all those who have ruled the Roman Empire, became a friend of the all-sovereign God, and was established as a clear example to all mankind of the life of godliness.

This is also what God himself, whom Constantine honoured, by standing at Constantine’s side at the beginning, the middle and the end of his reign, confirmed by his manifest judgement, putting forward this man as a lesson in the pattern of godliness to the human race. As the only one of the widely renowned emperors of all time whom God set up as a huge luminary and loud-voiced herald of unerring godliness …

Eusebius of Caesarea Life of Constantine I, 3–4
(written 337x339)

In 293 Diocletian had inaugurated a system of government known as ‘the tetrarchy’ (rule by four). Diocletian ruled in the East of the Roman Empire, whilst Maximian ruled in the West. These two had the rank of Augustus, though Diocletian was the senior – he had adopted the title Jovius (after Jupiter); Maximian was Herculius (after Hercules). Each of the Augusti shared their rule with a junior colleague, whose rank was Caesar. Diocletian’s Caesar was Galerius; Maximian’s was Constantius (known as Constantius Chlorus). Generally speaking, Diocletian was based in Asia Minor, Galerius in the Balkans, Maximian in Italy, and Constantius in Gaul.[*]

Diocletian was of a crafty disposition, with much sagacity, and keen penetration. He was willing to gratify his own disposition to cruelty in such a way as to throw the odium upon others; he was however a very active and able prince. He was the first that introduced into the Roman empire a ceremony suited rather to royal usages than to Roman liberty, giving orders that he should be adored [i.e. greeted with prostration], whereas all emperors before him were only saluted. He put ornaments of precious stones on his dress and shoes, when the imperial distinction had previously been only in the purple robe, the rest of the habit being the same as that of other men.

But Herculius was indisguisedly cruel, and of a violent temper, and showed his severity of disposition in the sternness of his looks. Gratifying his own inclination, he joined with Diocletian in even the most cruel of his proceedings.

Eutropius Breviarium Ab Urbe Condita IX, 26–27

… Diocletian in the East and Maximian Herculius in the West ordered churches to be laid waste and the Christians to be persecuted and put to death, the tenth persecution after Nero. This persecution [which began in 303] was almost of longer duration and more cruel than all that had gone before, for it was carried on without cessation for ten years with the burning of churches, the proscription of the innocent, and the slaughter of martyrs.

Orosius Historiarum Adversus Paganos Libri Septem VII, 25

In his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation), the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede quotes the above passage from Orosius, and adds:

Finally, Britain also attained to the great glory of bearing faithful witness to God.

Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum I, 6

Bede then tells the story of St Alban, Britain’s first Christian martyr. There are, though, doubts that Bede’s assignment of Alban’s martyrdom to the ‘Great Persecution’ of Diocletian is correct. According to, Christian apologist, Lactantius, a contemporary of the events, it was the eastern Caesar, Galerius, who was the prime mover behind the anti-Christian policies, and he spurred Diocletian into action.

Mandates also had gone to Maximian Herculius and Constantius, requiring their concurrence in the execution of the edicts; for in matters even of such mighty importance their opinion was never once asked. Herculius, a person of no merciful temper, yielded ready obedience, and enforced the edicts throughout his dominions of Italy. Constantius, on the other hand, lest he should have seemed to dissent from the injunctions of his superiors, permitted the demolition of churches – mere walls, and capable of being built up again – but he preserved entire that true temple of God, which is the human body.

Thus was all the earth afflicted; and from east to west, except in the territories of Gaul, three ravenous wild beasts continued to rage.

Lactantius De Mortibus Persecutorum (On the Deaths of the Persecutors) §§15–16
(written c.313–15)

Constantius was the father of Constantine the Great (who is a figure of enormous importance in the history of the Christian Church), so it is reasonable to suppose that Christian sources will have been keen to shine as favourable a light as possible on him. Nevertheless, it does seem that in Constantius’ sphere of influence, which included Britain[*], there was little persecution. It could be that the story of Alban belongs to an earlier time.[*]

But when Diocletian, as age bore heavily upon him, felt himself unable to sustain the government of the empire, he suggested to Herculius that they should both retire into private life, and commit the duty of upholding the state to more vigorous and youthful hands. With this suggestion his colleague reluctantly complied. Both of them, in the same day [1st May 305], exchanged the robe of the empire for an ordinary dress, Diocletian at Nicomedia [which is now İzmit, in Turkey], Herculius at Milan …

Eutropius Breviarium Ab Urbe Condita IX, 27

In accordance with the principles of the tetrarchy, Galerius replaced Diocletian as Augustus in the East, and Constantius replaced Maximian as Augustus in the West. Lactantius, again, paints Galerius as the villain of the piece: Galerius pressured the decrepit Diocletian (he had been so ill he had almost died in 304) to retire, and he also dictated the choice of the new Caesars – passing over Maximian’s son, Maxentius, and Constantius’ son, Constantine, in favour of Maximinus Daia (a kinsman of Galerius) and Severus (a crony of Galerius).[*] Maximinus Daia was Caesar in the East, Severus in the West.

Affairs being all regulated and the barbarians quiet, since the Romans had been so successful against them, Constantine, who was the son of Constantius by a concubine, and had previously an ambition of being emperor (but was more inflamed with that desire, since Severus and Maximinus had acquired the name and honour of Caesars), was now resolved to leave the place where he had resided, and to go to his father Constantius, who was beyond the Alps, and generally in Britain. But being apprehensive of seizure by the way, many persons being well acquainted of his anxiety for dominion, he maimed all the horses that were kept for public service, whenever he came to any stable where they were kept, except what he took for his own use. He continued to do this throughout his journey, by which means he prevented those that pursued him from going further, while he himself proceeded toward the country where his father was.[*]

Zosimus New History II, 8

… and he came up with his father Constantius at Bononia, which the Gauls formerly called Gesoriacum [now Boulogne]. But his father Constantius, after winning a victory over the Picts, died at Eboracum [York] …

Anon. Origo Constantini Imperatoris §2

With him dead, as all who were present – but especially Crocus, king of the Alamanni, who had accompanied Constantius for the sake of support – were urging him on, he [Constantine] took imperium.

Anon. Epitome de Caesaribus §41

… after the death of Constantius, Constantine, his son by a wife of obscure birth, was made emperor in Britain, and succeeded his father as a most desirable ruler.

Eutropius Breviarium Ab Urbe Condita X, 2

Constantine’s unplanned elevation to the purple, on 25th July 306, was the cue for a power struggle which took eighteen years to fully resolve. By 312, Galerius had died of a painful illness,[*] and Severus and Maximian had met violent ends. Diocletian had refused to be drawn into the conflict and had remained in retirement.[*]

The empire was then held by the four new emperors, Constantine and Maxentius, sons of emperors, Licinius and Maximinus [Daia], sons of undistinguished men.

Eutropius Breviarium Ab Urbe Condita X, 4

Maxentius was in control of Rome. Constantine prepared to oust him.

Having therefore raised an army from the barbarians whom he had conquered, and Germans, and the other Celtic [i.e. Gallic] peoples, and likewise drawn a force out of Britain, amounting in the whole to ninety thousand foot and eight thousand horse, he marched from the Alps into Italy, passing those towns that surrendered without doing them any damage, but taking by storm those which resisted. While he was making this progress, Maxentius had collected a much stronger army; consisting of eighty thousand Romans and Italians, all the Tuscans on the sea coast, forty thousand men from Carthage, besides what the Sicilians sent him; his whole force amounting to a hundred and seventy thousand foot and eighteen thousand horse.

Zosimus New History II, 15

The decisive engagement, at the Milvian Bridge (which crosses the Tiber to the north of Rome) on 28th October 312, ended in a victory for Constantine, and the death of Maxentius. Constantine is said to have triumphed under the banner of Christ.

con03

Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, wrote (in Greek, in four books) his, eulogistic and distorted, Life of Constantine between Constantine’s death, in 337, and his own, in 339. In Eusebius’ story (I, 27), Constantine believes that he needs the assistance of a god to overcome Maxentius, “because of the mischievous magical devices practised by the tyrant”.  He comes to the conclusion that the only god that had delivered results was “his father’s God” – Eusebius says that Constantine’s father, Constantius “had throughout his life honoured the God who transcends the universe, and had found him a saviour and guardian of his empire and a provider of everything good”.  So, Constantine prays to “his father’s God alone” for assistance:

As he made these prayers and earnest supplications there appeared to the emperor a most remarkable divine sign. If someone else had reported it, it would perhaps not be easy to accept; but since the victorious emperor himself told the story to the present writer a long while after, when I was privileged with his acquaintance and company, and confirmed it with oaths, who could hesitate to believe the account, especially when the time which followed provided evidence for the truth of what he said?  About the time of the midday sun, when day was just turning, he said he saw with his own eyes, up in the sky and resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed from light, and a text attached to it which said, ‘By this conquer’. Amazement at the spectacle seized both him and the whole company of soldiers which was then accompanying him on a campaign he was conducting somewhere, and witnessed the miracle.

Life of Constantine I, 28

That night, Christ appeared to Constantine in his sleep:

… and urged him to make himself a copy of the sign which had appeared in the sky, and to use this as protection against the attacks of the enemy.

Life of Constantine I, 29

The next day, Constantine obeyed the command.

It was constructed to the following design. A tall pole plated with gold had a transverse bar forming the shape of a cross. Up at the extreme top a wreath woven of precious stones and gold had been fastened.

On it two letters, intimating by its first characters the name ‘Christ’, formed the monogram of the Saviour’s title, rho [P] being intersected in the middle by chi [X]. These letters the emperor also used to wear upon his helmet in later times.

From the transverse bar, which was bisected by the pole, hung suspended a cloth, an imperial tapestry covered with a pattern of precious stones fastened together, which glittered with shafts of light, and interwoven with much gold, producing an impression of indescribable beauty on those who saw it. This banner then, attached to the bar, was given equal dimensions of length and breadth. But the upright pole, which extended upwards a long way from its lower end,

(•)

below the trophy of the cross and near the top of the tapestry delineated, carried the golden head-and-shoulders portrait of the Godbeloved emperor, and likewise of his sons. This saving sign was always used by the emperor for protection against every opposing and hostile force, and he commanded replicas of it to lead all his armies.

(•)

… Taking the priests of God as his advisers, he also deemed it right to honour the God who had appeared to him with all due rites. Thereafter, fortified by good hopes in him, he finally set about extinguishing the menacing flames of tyranny.

Life of Constantine I, 31–32

Eusebius places Constantine’s vision at some early stage of his campaign against Maxentius. Lactantius, who wrote De Mortibus Persecutorum just a couple of years after the battle of the Milvian Bridge (possibly, this was also during the period that he was tutor to Constantine’s son, Crispus), tells a different, much simpler, story. He says that Constantine, in response to a dream he had on the eve of the battle itself, marked his soldiers’ shields with the sign of Christ.[*] Although Eusebius makes no mention of shields in connection with the Milvian Bridge, he later notes that Constantine:

… caused the sign of the saving trophy to be marked on their shields, and had the army led on parade, not by any of the golden images, as had been their past practice, but by the saving trophy alone.

Life of Constantine IV, 21

Constantine commemorated his victory with a triumphal arch in Rome. It is decorated with scenes from the campaign, but there are no Christian symbols to be seen. Whatever the truth of the matter, there is no doubting Constantine’s commitment to the Christian Church after 312.

Constantine was now sole ruler in the West. In February 313 Constantine met Licinius at Milan, where Constantine’s half-sister, Constantia, married Licinius. Jointly, the emperors formulated the, so-called, Edict of Milan, by which:

… Christians and all others should have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each of them appeared best …

Lactantius De Mortibus Persecutorum §48

Perturbed by this chain of events, Maximinus Daia mounted a campaign against Licinius. Following the defeat of his army, near Heraclea in Thrace, on 30th April, Maximinus fled, and subsequently committed suicide at Tarsus, probably in July 313.[*] And then there were two.

First attested in an inscription from North Africa, dated 315 (ILS 8942), is Constantine’s adoption of the title Britannicus Maximus, which indicates that he had a military success in Britain.

con04

Constantine possibly visited Britain twice subsequent to his accession at York. The London mint issued coins recording the ADVENTVS AVG (Arrival of Augustus) during two periods. These have been dated, by mint mark, 310–312 and 313–315. Coins of the Adventus type were at this time, as far as can be judged, issued when the emperor was in, or in the vicinity of, the mint-town. It could be, then, that the earlier coins commemorate a visit to Britain by Constantine, made to gather the troops he needed for his assault on Maxentius (mentioned above by Zosimus), in 312. The later coins could commemorate a campaign carried out by Constantine, probably in the summer of 314 and presumably in the North, as a result of which he took the title Britannicus Maximus.[*]

In his Life of Constantine, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea does not acknowledge that Constantine was raised to the purple in Britain, but he does make references to Constantine being in Britain:

With mild and sober injunctions to godliness he equipped his troops, then campaigned against the land of the Britons and the dwellers at the very Ocean where the sun sets.

I, 8

Once he was established in imperial power, he first attended to the needs of his father’s portion, supervising with loving care all the provinces which had previously been allotted to his father’s government; if any barbarian tribes living beside the River Rhine and the Western Ocean dared to rebel, he subdued them all and turned their savagery to gentleness, while others he repulsed and chased off his territory like wild beasts, when he saw that they were incurably resistant to change to a gentle life.  When these things were settled to his satisfaction, he turned his attention to the other parts of the inhabited world, and first crossed to the British nations which lie enclosed by the edge of Ocean; he brought them to terms, and then surveyed the other parts of the world, so that he might bring healing where help was needed.

I, 25

So when he began his reign the first to be subjected to him were the Britons near where the sun sets in the Ocean, and now [336] it was the Indians, whose land lies near the sunrise.

IV, 50

On the face of it, passage I, 25 (above) seems to imply that Constantine returned to Britain pretty soon after his accession (306) – conceivably, it could be a garbled reference to the campaign Constantine had fought alongside his father, against the Picts, immediately before. However, Eusebius next launches into his account of Constantine’s Italian campaign against Maxentius (312). Perhaps, therefore, he is referring to the visit to Britain it is proposed Constantine made prior to the Italian campaign.

Constantine, being a man of great energy, bent upon effecting whatever he had settled in his mind, and aspiring to the sovereignty of the whole world, proceeded to make war on Licinius … And first of all he overthrew him, by a sudden attack, at Cibalae in Pannonia Secunda [now Vinkovci in Croatia], where he [Licinius] was making vast prep­arations for war; and after becoming master of Dardania, Moesia and Macedonia, took possession also of several other provinces.

There were then various contests between them, and peace made and broken. At last Licinius, defeated in a battle at Nicomedia [İzmit, Turkey] by sea and land, surrendered himself …[*]

Eutropius Breviarium Ab Urbe Condita X, 5–6

With the surrender and abdication of Licinius, in 324, Constantine become emperor of the whole Roman Empire. In response to a plea for clemency by Constantia, Constantine allowed Licinius to live as an ordinary citizen in Thessalonica. He soon thought better of it, however, and had him put to death. Constantine had already, in 317, raised two sons to the rank of Caesar: Crispus, his only son by his first wife (or mistress), Minervina; and Constantine, at the time just a baby, by his second wife, Fausta. He now raised his third son, seven-year-old Constantius, to the same rank. In practice, Crispus – who had commanded Constantine’s navy in the final war against Licinius – ruled in the West, whilst Constantine ruled in the East. Constantine started rebuilding and enlarging the ancient Greek town of Byzantium, which he named after himself: Constantinople (modern Istanbul).

In 325 Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea (Nicaea is now İznik, Turkey) to resolve matters of Church doctrine and practice:

All rose at a signal, which announced the emperor’s entrance; and he finally walked along between them, like some heavenly angel of God, his bright mantle shedding lustre like beams of light, shining with the fiery radiance of a purple robe, and decorated with the dazzling brilliance of gold and precious stones. Such was his physical appearance. As for his soul, he was clearly adorned with fear and reverence for God …[*]

Eusebius of Caesarea Life of Constantine III, 10

In 326, for uncertain reasons, Constantine had Crispus executed:

But Constantine, when mastery of the entire Roman empire had been obtained through the wondrous good fortune of his wars, with his wife, Fausta, inciting him, so men think, ordered his son Crispus put to death. Then, when his [Constantine’s] mother, Helena, as a result of excessive grief for her grandson, chastised him, he killed his own wife, Fausta, who was thrown into hot baths.[*]

Anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus §41

In 330 Constantine dedicated Constantinople:

In honouring with exceptional distinction the city which bears his name, he embellished it with very many places of worship, very large martyr-shrines, and splendid houses, some standing before the city and others in it. By these he at the same time honoured the tombs of the martyrs and consecrated the city to the martyrs’ God.

Eusebius of Caesarea Life of Constantine III, 48

… as if it were his native city, he adorned it with great magnificence and wished to make it equal to Rome. Then he sought out new citizens for it from every quarter, and lavished such wealth on the city, that thereon he all but exhausted the imperial fortunes. There he also established a senate of the second rank, the members of which had the title of clari.[*]

Anonymous Origo Constantini Imperatoris §6

In 333 Constantine raised his fourth son, Constans, to the rank of Caesar. In 335 he raised Dalmatius (or Delmatius), the son of his half-brother, to the same rank. Dalmatius’ brother, Hannibalianus, was designated “King of Kings and ruler of the Pontic tribes”[*].

These individually held these areas as their realms: Constantine the Younger, everything beyond the Alps; Constantius, from the Strait of the Propontis, Asia, and Oriens; Constans, Illyricum and Italy and Africa; Delmatius, Thrace and Macedonia and Achaea; Hannibalianus, brother of Delmatius Caesar, Armenia and neighbouring, allied nations.

Anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus §41

In the spring of 337 Constantine became ill. Realizing that his end was near:

… he perceived that this was the time to purify himself from the offences which he had at any time committed, trusting that whatever sins it had been his lot as mortal to commit, he could wash them from his soul by the power of the secret words and the saving bath…

… Alone of all the emperors from the beginning of time Constantine was initiated by rebirth in the mysteries of Christ, and exulted in the Spirit on being vouchsafed the divine seal, and was renewed and filled with divine light, rejoicing in his soul because of his intense faith, awestruck at the manifestation of the divinely inspired power.  When the due ceremonies were complete, he put on bright imperial clothes which shone like light, and rested on a pure white couch, being unwilling to touch a purple robe again.

Eusebius of Caesarea Life of Constantine IV, 61–62

On 22nd May 337 Constantine died, aged about 64, in a villa on the outskirts of Nicomedia. His body was returned to Constantinople for burial.

… [Constantius] arrived at the city and brought his father’s remains, himself leading the cortège. The military offcers went in front in close order, and a throng of many thousands followed, and lancers and infantry escorted the emperor’s body.  When they reached the shrine of the Saviour’s apostles they laid the coffin to rest there. The new emperor Constantius, honouring his father in this way, by his presence and by the respects paid to him fulfilled the things which the obsequies required.

Eusebius of Caesarea Life of Constantine IV, 70

Constantius (Constantius II) promptly orchestrated the murders of Dalmatius and Hannibalianus:

… suborning the solders to cry out, that they would have no governors but the children of Constantine.

Zosimus New History II, 40