The Triumph of Christianity

by Bart D. Ehrman

  Knowing well that he would need more powerful aid than an army could supply because of the mischievous magical devices practiced by the tyrant, he sought a god to aid him. He regarded the resources of soldiers and military numbers as secondary, for he thought that without the aid of a god these could achieve nothing, and he said that what comes from a god’s assistance is irresistible and invincible. He therefore considered what kind of god he should adopt to aid him (Life 1.27).

  Clearly Constantine was still at this stage operating within a pagan context, trying to decide where to appeal for divine help. As he reflected he came to regard a polytheistic position as politically and militarily untenable, for a remarkably empirical reason. All of his predecessors on the throne had “attached their personal hopes to many gods” and so worshiped them in expectation of success. But all failed miserably and “met an unwelcome end.” (This of course was not true, but it is how Eusebius quotes the process of Constantine’s thought.) The one exception was his father, Constantius, who died peaceably after having turned to the worship of only one god: “Only his own father had taken the opposite course to theirs by condemning their error, while he himself had throughout his life honored the God who transcends the universe, and found him a Savior and guardian of his Empire and a provider of everything good” (Life 1.27).

  Constantine—or more likely Eusebius himself—was now claiming that Constantius was not just a henotheist but a worshiper of the Christian god. The historical record suggests otherwise, but at this stage we are more interested in Constantine’s thought process, at least as it is laid out in Eusebius’s account. Constantine went on to realize that the two previous rulers who had attacked Maxentius—Severus and Galerius—“had assembled their forces with a multitude of gods and had come to a dismal end.” Clearly the polytheistic option was not working in the battle for Rome. And so Constantine came to a decision, concluding “that it was folly to go on with the vanity of the gods which do not exist, and to persist in error in the face of so much evidence, and he decided he should venerate his father’s God alone” (Life, 1.27).

  Constantine turned to this one god in prayer, and he was rewarded with a vision. And not just he alone: he and his entire army.

  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 that said, “By this conquer.” He and the whole company of soldiers that was then accompanying him witnessed the miracle and were gripped by amazement (Life 1.28).

  Constantine could not understand the meaning of the vision, and he pondered the matter until nightfall. Then, in a dream, Christ appeared to him with the same sign Constantine had seen in the sky, directing him to make a copy of it as protection from the attacks of his enemies.

  Constantine apparently did not fathom what it was he had seen in either experience. In his confusion he summoned several religion experts for an explanation. This is the clearest evidence that Constantine was not, at this point, desiring to become a Christian. He evidently did not fully realize who the Christian god was or what he stood for. He needed instruction. His advisors explained who Christ was as the “only begotten Son of the one and only God,” who could bring “victory over death.” They told him that the sign of the cross was a “token of immortality.” They proceeded to explain why Christ had come to earth and to unfold for him the meaning of the incarnation. Constantine marveled as he listened—indicating, yet again, that it was news to him—and decided to explore “the divinely inspired writings” for himself. He did so, and with the help of his advisors “deemed it right to honor the God who had appeared to him” by worshiping him alone. Constantine then summoned his goldsmiths and jewelers and explained that he wanted a physical representation of the sign he had seen in his vision and dream, and they made it for him.

  At this point in his account, Eusebius injects a personal note, claiming that after the emperor had described to him the object, he brought it out to show him.15 It was a tall pole plated with gold, with a crossbeam that gave it the shape of a cross. At the very top was a jeweled and gilded wreath on which were superimposed the two Greek letters chi and rho—which are the first two letters of the Greek word for “Christ.” Below the crossbeam was a suspended cloth. Eusebius indicates that “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” (Life 1. 31). In other words, Constantine took this object—known as the labarum—into battle with him, and it ensured victory. It apparently worked every time.

  We also have a third account of Constantine’s conversion, which is, to say the least, difficult to reconcile with the previous two. This other version comes to us in the writings of a Christian historian and theologian named Lactantius. Lactantius is a particularly important source of information. For one thing, he was personally acquainted with Constantine: in fact, he was appointed by the emperor to be the personal tutor of his eldest son Crispus. For another thing, his account was written not decades later (as was the case with Eusebius) but just a few years after the event. Is it the same event? Most historians have thought so, even though the differences are striking.

  The account appears in a small book—a pamphlet, really—that is particularly notable for its unabashed Schadenfreude, called Deaths of the Persecutors. In this work Lactantius recounts with barely disguised glee the horrible and excruciating deaths experienced by the Roman officials responsible for the persecutions of the Christians. The book comprises not merely grisly deathbed scenes, however, but also a good deal of other historical information. Chapter 44 gives an account of Constantine’s conversion that is terse and direct. According to this version, the epiphany came to Constantine the night before the decisive battle with Maxentius for the control of Rome. In a dream Constantine was instructed—we are not told by whom—to place the “heavenly sign of God” on the shields of his soldiers before going into battle. The next day he did so, instructing the soldiers to have their shields decorated with a letter X crossed through the middle by the letter I, the top of which was to be rounded. This (here is a parallel with Eusebius) would have looked then like a Chi-Rho (the letter chi looks like an X and the rho looks like a capital P—i.e., a straight I with the top rounded). Armed with these shields, Constantine’s troops went into battle and, as it turns out, routed the opposition.

  Various scholars have suggested different ways of reconciling the different versions of Constantine’s vision or visions. Some think he had just one vision, two years before the Battle at the Milvian Bridge (just before the panegyric of 310 CE), which at the time he took to be of Sol Invictus but later came to interpret as being instead a vision of Christ. In this view, at a still later date Constantine came to think he had always understood it to be Christ and that, since the vision was so closely connected with his ultimate victory, he came to “remember” that it occurred the night before the battle. At the other extreme of interpretation, some have argued that Constantine was simply a visionary who had lots of visions and dreams, sometimes muddling them all up. It is striking that Eusebius himself, in a speech praising Constantine near the end of his life, indicates that Constantine was a famous visionary and that he had “thousands” of visions along with “thousands” of dreams in which Christ appeared to him.16

  The accounts do share some striking features. For one thing, in each case the vision involved a solitary god whom Constantine decided was the only one to be worshiped: he chose no longer to engage in polytheistic practices. Moreover, the account from the panegyrist in 310 and, more striking still, the account of Eusebius many years later both agree that Constantine did not become a Christian immediately after the dream. The panegyrist says nothing about him becoming a Christian at all, which may suggest the conversion had not happened yet, or that Constantine had not yet made it public, or that the pagan orator decided not to delve into that little detail. Eusebius
admits that the emperor needed to do considerable consultation, reading, and reflecting before working out the implications of what he saw. Who knows how long that would have taken?

  One reason we have difficulty working out what the vision or dream was and when exactly it occurred is that modern research on conversion has demonstrated that, long after such an experience, a convert tends to confuse what actually happened in light of everything that occurs in its aftermath.17 That is to say, years later, the accounts people tell, to both themselves and others, have been slanted by all they have learned, thought, and experienced in the interim. Surely that was true of Constantine as well.

  No one will ever solve the problem of what actually happened, or when, to the satisfaction of all interested parties.18 But here is one plausible reconstruction. Whether actual or imagined, the vision experience contributed to Constantine’s religious meditations as he was reflecting on the problem of the gods and how to find much-needed divine support for his assault on Maxentius. He became convinced that his vision was a sign from the one true and ultimate god, and he decided to worship him.

  My best guess is that the vision occurred just before it was first reported, in 310 CE, and at that point Constantine became a henotheist, one who revered the sun god, Sol Invictus, above and in lieu of all others. This would be two years before he launched his assault on Maxentius, and in that time he had plenty of opportunities to reflect on his new religious commitments. Among other things, he became increasingly cognizant of the growing Christian movement. (In chapter 6 we will be discussing just how rapidly it was growing at the time.) Soon before the battle for Rome, he had another vision, or a dream, or both, and came to a decision. This decision was not that he would switch loyalties from Sol Invictus to the god of the Christians. Instead, he decided that Sol Invictus was the god of the Christians.19

  Constantine became a Christian convert. Possibly the most important point to make about the conversion is that Constantine—as is true of all converts—did not and could not understand everything there was to know about the Christian faith at the time. His faith and his knowledge may have been very rudimentary indeed. He may not have known that he needed to be baptized at some point. He may not have known that Christians not only refused to worship other gods but believed the pagan gods were demons and not gods at all. He may not have known that there were ethical requirements that went along with being Christian. He may not have known that there were refined theological views and serious debates among the Christians about the nature of God, the identity of Christ, and the relationship of Christ and God. He may not have known lots of things.

  What he apparently did know was that he wanted to worship the Christian god and that god only. He went into battle with that conviction. And he emerged victorious.

  THE BATTLE AT THE MILVIAN BRIDGE

  The battle itself reads almost as an anticlimax to the story and is quickly told. In the wake of the failed attempts by both Severus and Galerius, one can see why Constantine would be anxious about the campaign. But he had several advantages his predecessors lacked, and Maxentius, in this instance, made a disastrous decision. Constantine was aided by the fact that Maxentius’s father, Maximian, a brilliant military commander, was no longer part of the equation: he had committed suicide under duress (from Constantine) two years earlier. Even more, Maxentius’s situation in Rome had grown dire. When he had started his reign, the city had welcomed him with open arms. But the problems mentioned above had taken their toll.

  In anticipation of the assault from the north, Maxentius made one rather sensible move. He destroyed all the bridges that crossed the Tiber River. That would make engagement more difficult for an attacking army. But then, almost as an afterthought, he made a second decision that was disastrous. He chose not to steel the city against a coming siege but to come out in force and face the opposition in the field.

  With the bridges out, however, there was no way to cross the Tiber heading north onto favorable battlegrounds. So Maxentius had a temporary pontoon bridge built next to the recently destroyed Milvian Bridge, and he and his army crossed it. With their backs up against the river and soon outmaneuvered, they were routed. Troops desperately tried to recross the pontoons in a beeline for the city, but under the crushing weight, the bridge collapsed. Many of the soldiers, and Maxentius himself, drowned in the Tiber.20

  Constantine entered Rome the next day as its new ruler and the emperor of the entire western half of the empire. As we will see in chapter 8, it was another twelve years before he became sole ruler of the empire as a whole. But he was very good at biding his time. In the meanwhile he came to see the wisdom of his religious decision. He had committed his life and worship to the god of the Christians and then he had won his victory. The Christian god was greater than the other gods of Rome. He alone would be Constantine’s god. Constantine had become a Christian.

  Or had he?

  THE “SINCERITY” OF CONSTANTINE’S CONVERSION

  For long (and somewhat dreary) years scholars debated the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion. Many experts today regard the debate as a wasted effort, even if more casual observers continue to consider it a live question. The debate started in 1853 with a Swiss scholar named Jacob Burckhardt, who argued in his book Die Zeit Konstantins des Grossen (The Age of Constantine the Great) that Constantine was ultimately driven not by religious zeal but by a “consuming lust for power.” There is a lot that can be said for this argument in and of itself, but in addition Burckhart drew a corollary: Constantine recognized that the burgeoning Christian church could assist him in reaching his megalomaniacal goals, and so he forged an alliance with it out of personal ambition. Constantine in fact could not have cared less about the church and its truth claims.

  Over the course of the debate, historians cited numerous pieces of evidence in support of this basic thesis. To begin with, Constantine continued to embrace pagan views in the public eye. No medium in Roman antiquity better propagandized an emperor’s personal agenda than the issuance of coins. The imperial mints selected imagery and inscriptions that would embody the views, ideologies, and imaginations of the ultimate ruler. With that in mind, it is no doubt significant that, beginning in 310, Constantine’s coins began to show images of Sol Invictus, the sun god. As we have seen, one can plausibly date his professed henotheism to that time. Yet more striking for those who have wanted to argue against the sincerity of his Christian conversion: this imagery continued for years after the battle at the Milvian Bridge. If Constantine had genuinely become Christian, why did he keep issuing coins with pagan imagery?

  Moreover, it was argued, after his alleged conversion, Constantine and those closely connected to him were highly circumspect in their references to God. A case in point is the Arch of Constantine still preserved today near the Colosseum in Rome. This was the triumphal arch the senate had constructed to celebrate Constantine’s great victory over Maxentius, dedicated on Constantine’s second visit to Rome in 315 CE. On the arch is an inscription describing the great event, including the divine assistance that Constantine had invoked going into battle. Yet there is no explicit reference to the Christian god. On the contrary, the inscription refers in rather bland and noncommittal terms to guidance provided by the “inspiration of divinity.” If Constantine had been a true convert, would he be reluctant to declare outright that it was specifically the Christian god who had helped him?

  Moreover, advocates for Constantine’s insincerity pointed out that, well after the decisive battle for Rome, Constantine certainly did not act like a Christian. Soon after his victory Constantine ordered the execution of his ten-year-old nephew, son of Galerius. Would a Christian kill a ten-year-old child? Later in his career he ordered the execution of his own eldest son, Crispus, who was next in line to succeed him, and then his own wife, Fausta. These seem to be actions not of a true believer but of a despot. Finally, it was noted that Constantine refused to be baptized as a Christian until on his deathbed, some twenty-five years
after his supposed conversion. Was it then that he finally “saw the light”?

  For all these reasons, scholars of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries disputed whether Constantine was actually committed to the Christian cause. Historians today, however, tend to read the evidence differently.

  It is absolutely true that Constantine continued to use the imagery of Sol Invictus in his personal propaganda after the events of 312 CE, sometimes even having himself portrayed alongside the sun god in twin profile. That is not evidence that he worshiped divinities other than the Christian god, however. Christians before Constantine’s day had sometimes identified the Christian god as the god of the sun, and as I argued earlier, Constantine appears not to have chosen the god of the Christians over Sol Invictus but rather to have identified him with Sol Invictus.

  The fact that Constantine did not always identify his god as the god of the Christians—for example, on the triumphal arch in Rome or on his coins—could well be for other reasons. For one thing it needs to be emphasized that Constantine himself did not write the inscription that appeared on the arch. This was a monument made for him, not by him.

  Even more important, Constantine himself may have had solid reasons not to want to flaunt his new religious commitment. As one modern Constantine scholar, Harold Drake, has argued, Constantine was self-consciously a ruler not only of Christians but of all people in his empire, Christian, pagan, and Jew alike. As such he chose to affirm his monotheistic faith without offending the sensitivities of any of his constituencies. Constantine was far too politic to make a public display of his distinctive Christian beliefs. At the same time he was unwilling to compromise his monotheistic commitments. In order to balance and accommodate both competing agendas, imperial and Christian, Constantine tactfully chose public language that could embody his commitments without alienating those who held other views.21