Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

by Peter J. Leithart

  Now we are contending against a deceitful persecutor, against a flattering enemy, against an Antichrist Constantius, who does not scourge the back, but pampers the appetite; who does not issue proscriptions that lead us to immortal life, but rich gifts that betray to endless death; does not send us from prison to liberty, but loads us inside the palace with honours that bribe to slavery; does not torture the body, but makes himself master of the heart; does not strike off heads with the sword, but slays the soul with gold; does not in public threaten with fire, but in secret is kindling for us a hell.

  Christian though he may be, Constantius was worse than the pagan emperors:

  To Thee, 0 Constantius, do I proclaim what I would have uttered before Nero, what Decius and Maximin would have heard from me. Thou art warring against God, raging against the Church, persecuting the Saints. Thou hatest those that preach Christ, thou art overthrowing religion, tyrant as thou art, no longer merely in things human but in things divine 78

  These are not the words of a "Constantinian," nor of a pliant court chaplain. They are prophetic words. The harder you look for chaplains in the fourth-century church, the fewer there seem to be. That is because chaplains rarely make much difference in history. But it is also because bishops were not seduced or co-opted.

  Far from demonstrating or securing the emperor's dominance of the church, Nicaea had the opposite effect:

  What the Church discovered in the painful years after Nicaea was that its own inner tensions could not after all be resolved by a dens ex machina on the imperial throne; and that its relationship with the empire intensified rather than solved the question of its own distinctive identity and mission. It was unable to avoid reflection on its defining conditions, unable to avoid a conscious and critical reworking of its heritage, unable, in short, to avoid theology.79

  Yoder's statements are generalizations, and intended as such. If they had no truth, they would not have any persuasive power. The problem is not that they are generalizations but that they are often misleading generalizations, particularly when they are applied to Constantine, generalizations that ignore counterevidence and counternarratives that would balance the picture. It is simply not the case, as Yoder in his more unguarded moments implies, that the church was turned into a chaplaincy and lost its capacity to criticize. The church since Constantine has not seen an almost uninterrupted run of obsequious bishops, one neo-Constantinian followed by another. In regard to the church's stance over against power, the "Constantinian" moment of the fourth century was comparatively brief. Before the end of the fourth century, indeed by the middle of the century, onceawestruck bishops had recovered their voices if they ever lost them. They spoke truth to power, in words that Yoder and Hauerwas would be proud of. There was no Ambrose in Constantine's court, but the movement was already beginning that would produce one. Bishops had not so fully identified with the imperial palace that they lost the ability to call emperors to "modesty." 80

  THE EMPEROR AND THE QUEEN

  "Kiss the Son," Psalm 2 exhorts, addressing itself to kings of the earth. Constantine kissed the Son, publicly acknowledging the Christian God as the true God and confessing Jesus as "our Savior."

  For Constantine and the emperors who followed him, after kissing the Son and Lord, it made sense to do homage to Jesus by supporting his Queen, the church-building and adorning cathedrals, distributing funds for poor relief and hospitals, assisting the bishops to resolve their differences by calling and providing for councils. Constantine did not always show restraint. Sometimes he took over business that belonged to the King and Queen alone. But if we want to judge Constantine fairly, we have to recognize that the Queen often had issues. A queen's bodyguard ought to keep his hands off the queen, but what does he do when she turns harpy and starts scratching the face of her lady-in-waiting?

  Once they noticed there was a Queen in their midst, some emperors and kings were often not satisfied with kissing the Son. Some could not keep their hands off her. Some wanted to steal a kiss or two from the Bride and seduce her. Plenty did, but it is important to notice the difference: adorning and protecting someone else's queen, even protecting her from herself, is not the same as raping her.

  And the Queen had some responsibility to be true to her King. She was not supposed to be flattered by the blandishments of a Constantine or a Justinian or a Charlemagne. She was not to look wistfully at the emperor's court, as she too often did, and remodel her own courtiers into the image of the emperor's." If the emperor tried to steal a kiss, he should be greeted with a good hard slap. That happened, as we have seen, but it did not always happen, and at times the Queen was only too happy to take a tumble with the emperor, provided he paid her handsomely for the pleasurethere's a good biblical word for that (see Revelation 17-18), and neither Wycliffe nor Dante nor Luther was afraid to use it.

  All these were real, and often horrific, acts of unfaithfulness. But they do not imply a structural flaw. Once the emperor has kissed the Son, should he not honor the Son's Bride?

  Bloody Spectacles are not suitable for civil ease and domestic quiet.

  CONSTANTINE, THEODOSIAN CODE 15.12.1

  In the middle of the ancient Roman Forum was a small pond that the Romans knew as the Curtian Lake. Ancient historians disagreed about the origin of its name. In one version of the story, Curtius was a Sabine who abandoned his horse in what was then a swamp. Another version is more dramatic, and more revealing. Around 362 B.c., a growing chasm had opened in the middle of the Forum, threatening buildings and citizens. For moderns, this would be an engineering project; for ancient Romans, it was an omen. Priests consulted the Sibylline books and concluded that the earth would close if the Romans filled it with their most precious treasure, and added the promise that the earth would return the favor by giving the Romans an abundance of whatever they deposited. Citizens dutifully filled the gap with sacred cakes, silver and other treasures. Nothing worked.

  Finally Marcus Curtius, already renowned as a warrior despite his youth, addressed the Senate. What is more precious, he asked, than the virtue of its armed soldiers (an ullum magis Romanum bonum quam arma uirtusque esset)? He promised that Rome would have a continuous supply of courage if one man would throw himself into the pit. Donning his armor, he raised his hands to the sky and lowered them to the gods of the earth, then mounted his horse and charged into the gap, devoting himself to the infernal gods (se deuouisse), horse and all. People threw animals, silver, cloth into the hole over him, and the earth immediately closed.' Everyone knows the rest of the story: the soil of Rome produced a consistent crop of military heroes.

  Curtius was not the only Roman famed for devoting himself to the gods and Rome. Several decades after Curtius, the consul Decius was leading the Romans in battle against the Latins at Campania. The Romans were beginning to lose, and auspices were ambiguous. Decius consulted the pontiff Valerius, who told him to dress in a toga, cover his head and stand with one hand touching his chin. Standing on a sword, Decius invoked Janus, Jupiter and Mars, as well as new gods, gods of nation, the infernal gods and even the gods who ruled the enemy (Diui, quorum estpotestas nostrorum hostiumque), and then declared that he was devoting himself with the legions to the chthonic deities (legiones auxiliaque hostium mecum Deis Manibus Tellurique deuoueo). Throwing back his toga, he charged alone against the opposing army. Surprised at the attack, the Latins fell back and fled. Decius died, but earned the laus, the eternal praise of the Romans, because in a sort of substitutionary propitiation he had "averted onto himself alone all the menace and danger from the gods above and below" (ab deis superis inferisque in se unum uertit).2 In offering himself to the gods, he was taking the Latin legions to death with him, so that Rome might live.

  Suicide was an honorable escape from illness, tyranny, slavery or shame in the Roman world,' but Curtius and Decius were doing something more overtly religious than Cato the Younger when he messily killed himself to escape the prospect of life under King Caesar. Their deaths were not apo
litical. On the contrary, both devoted themselves in service to Rome as much as to the gods. Whatever the general truth of Emile Durkheim's dictum "Society is god," it holds true for Rome: Rome is god. Shakespeare knew his Romans. Volumnia, the mother of Coriolanus, representing mother Rome, is a devouring mother with a taste for her children's blood.

  ROMAN MICROCOSM

  This complex of interlocking ideas-devotio, patriotism, self-sacrifice to chthonic deities-supported a military and political practice closely resembling human sacrifice.4 And this is the set of ideas that Tertullian found at the basis of the Roman munera, the gladiatorial shows. Explaining that munera (duties, obligations) were so called because in combats "they rendered offices to the dead," he argued that they were simply a commuted form of human sacrifice. Earlier, it was believed that "the souls of the departed were appeased by human blood," and like Achilles at the funeral of Patroclus, Romans bought "captives or slaves of wicked disposition, and immolat[ed] them in their funeral obsequies." Over time, this seemed too barbaric, and someone decided to "throw the veil of pleasure over their iniquity." Thus they trained and armed men so that "they might learn to die," and at a funeral they killed them before the dead: "they alleviated death by murders." This is the way of all idolatry, Tertullian declared, since idolatry is "a sort of homage to the departed," humans deified by death, and thus spectacles are as idolatrous as the worship of the pagan temples.5 Tertullian would not have been surprised to learn that the arena in Lugdunum was immediately adjoined by a temple complex.6

  This connection between the munera and patriotic self-sacrifice reveals only one of the cultural and political values reinforced by the shows. Combats in the arena reenacted the founding sacrifice of Remus by Romulus. According to Rome's founding myth, Romulus "killed his brother for jumping over the walls which would define Rome and separate it from the non-Roman." For republican Romans like Cicero and Seneca, "the gladiator plays Remus to the normative aristocrat's Romulus: he is the brother who must be slain that an empire may be founded." Just as "the murder of Remus permanently establishes the validity of this boundary and secures the name of Rome for the city," so the death of the gladiator helps "to found the nobility of the nobilis." 7

  Further, the games provided an opportunity for Romans, at Rome and at the many amphitheaters throughout the empire, to see Rome on parade. The maeniana or levels of seating offered a public view of the hierarchy of Roman society and of the centers of power. Social classes were distinguished by their proximity to the games, with the senators occupying the "box seats" and members of other orders further back. Some priesthoods and other associations had their own sections of seating, but commoners had to settle in the back rows, with only the women behind them. At the games, the variegated social order of men was represented and distinguished visually and spatially from the homogenous collection of women.' Ovid noted the double spectacle: Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae-"they come to a spectacle, they come to make a spectacle of themselves."9

  Games were also political events. Prominently seated so his reactions to the show could be viewed, the emperor served as editor, or master of games, and decided the fate of the fighters. His presence at the games was an exercise of power just as surely as was his place at the head of a triumphal procession.10 Crowds carefully monitored the emperor's behavior. If he answered correspondence (as Julius Caesar did) or heard appeals during the combats, he was criticized, but if, like Augustus, he enjoyed the games, he won the admiration of the crowd." For perceptive emperors, the games provided an opportunity to display the levitas popularis, the "common touch" so important in a principate that still claimed to be rooted in republican values.12 At the same time, the games provided one of the few opportunities the people still had to voice their grievances in the hearing of the emperor. Chants about oppressive taxation or the high price of bread mingled with cheers for favorite fighters.13

  The arena was also an instrument of imperial policy in the provinces. The spread of Roman power was marked architecturally by the spread of amphitheaters. Not only were the arenas-built in a distinctively Roman style-visual reminders of the sometimes distant power of the emperor, but the bloody combats that took place on the sands reminded viewers of Rome's willingness to use violence and gave restless provincials pause. Arenas embodied the empire; the gladiatorial shows and their amphitheaters were the "imperial process in microcosm.""

  Gladiatorial shows captured the very "essence of Romanitas."15 Gladiators were often slaves, and socially despised, yet at the same time aristocrats recognized a common bond between the gladiators' pursuit of glory and their own. War was one of the main arenas for aristocratic advance, so that the bloody sand of the literal arena mirrored the bloody sands where aristocratic soldiers fought for the empire. Despite legal bans, some aristocrats even went so far as to join the gladiators in the colise- um.lb Romanitas was a masculine ideal, and Pliny the Younger commended Trajan's games because there was "nothing spineless or flabby, nothing that would soften or break the manly spirit of the audience," but rather "a spectacle that inspired the audience to noble wounds and to despise death, since even in the bodies of slaves and criminals the love of praise and desire for victory could be seen."" For Cicero, the games played on the dynamics of dignitas and ignominia to exhort Romans to devotio: "If the state [res publicae] ... has come to its moment of truth, let us do as worthy gladiators do to die with honour, let us, the leaders of all peoples, fall with dignity rather than submit with shame.""

  Cicero, and Seneca even more, found not only politico-religious but philosophical meaning in the combats.19 Though often cited as a philosophical critic of the shows, Seneca, his fantasies filled with tragedies of erotic violence, never mounted a criticism of the shows as such. In a famous letter, he warned Lucilius to "stay away" because he would "either be corrupted by the multitude, or, if you show disgust, be hated by them." He admitted to being "bitterly disappointed" when he attended the games "hoping for a little wit and humor." He found "mere butchery." The morning show was good enough. Men were thrown to lions and bears, but in the afternoon the crowd became bestial. Though "the slayer was kept fighting until he could be slain," still the crowed cried out, "Kill him! flog him! burn him alive.... Why is he such a coward? Why won't he rush on the steel? Why does he fall so meekly? Why won't he die willingly?"20

  Seneca was a critic not of violent spectacles but only of useless violence. Violent spectacles could, he believed, be socially and even philosophically beneficial. Identifying more with the defeated than with the winner, he found the gladiator a model of courage in adversity, of dignified death. "The gladiator considers it a disgrace to be matched with an inferior and knows that he who has conquered without danger has conquered without glory." Philosophers face similar dangers: "Fortune does the same; she seeks out the bravest for her opponents, and passes over some with contempt. She attacks the most unyielding and upright against whom she may exert her strength. She tried Mucius by fire, Fabricious by poverty, Rutil- ius by exile, Regulus by tortures, Socrates by poison, Cato by death. Misfortune alone reveals great examples."" Like the gladiator, human beings are thrown sine missione into an arena of combat from which there is no escape, save death. Philosophers aim, like gladiators, to make their death a brave one.

  Gladiators were "both a version of the Stoic sapiens, offering a metaphor of apathy, independence, and contempt for the opinions of society, and an expression of intense interaction with, and acceptance of, others, a longing for esteem and appreciation, in other words, glory."22 Spectacles lent the powerless a sense of power, gave the curious something to watch, provided a cathartic outlet for violence, and encouraged the fundamental virtues of Roman citizenship-courage, patriotism, self-sacrifice. They gave emperors opportunities to display their godlike munificence and magnificence, as well as their potential for violence, while at the same time sharing the enthusiasm of commoners for high-stakes competition. Gladiators had something for everyone. The shows were as basic to Rome as
sacrifice .23 Rome was the arena, and the arena was Rome. What would the empire be without it?

  CONSTANTINE AND THE SPECTACLES

  With Constantine, Rome had a chance to find out. In 325, he issued an edict concerning spectacles. "Bloody spectacles are not suitable for civil ease and domestic quiet," he declared, and therefore "since we have proscribed gladiators, those who have been accustomed to be sentenced to such work as punishment for their crimes, you should cause them to serve in the mines, so that they may be punished without shedding their blood" (CTh 15.12.1). The emperor's hedging in the first sentence is intriguing. The prohibition is not absolute but is fitting for a time of domestic ease (in otio civili et domestica quiete non placent), which leaves open the possibility that Constantine thought the games might be fitting in another time and condition. The final clauses prohibit condemnation to the arena as a criminal punishment, replacing it with bloodless exile to the mines, and the law has been interpreted as if Constantine's only intent were to outlaw confinement to the arena as a punishment, not to outlaw the games themselves.24 Eusebius took this law as an absolute prohibition, and that is what the law actually says. If so, Constantine's views on the shows had shifted over time. In 315 he had issued a rescript (CTh 9.18.1) condemning kidnappers to the beasts or to gladiatorial schools, but a decade later he had become disgusted by the whole business and prohibited gladiators as a part of a reorganization of public entertainments.25 It is notable that there was no arena in Constantinople; instead, a hippodrome was to be the place of public entertainments. This was a major departure from imperial custom.

  CONSTATINE AS LEGISLATOR

  Constantine's legislation on gladiatorial shows illustrates some important dimensions of the impact of his reign on Roman government, law and society. Constantine was an active legislator, responsible for about three hundred extant laws as well as others that we have lost.26 Like the laws of other Roman emperors, these take various forms. Some are decreta, oral decisions made by the emperor in a court case, some of which became widely known but, so far as we know, were not published. Others were edicts initiated by the emperor to address a particular problem in the empire, or some part of the empire, and published in the affected provinces and cities. Others were "rescripts" composed in answer to questions com ing from provincial governors and were published in the place of origin.27 Most of the Constantine's legislation comes from the period after 323-324 when he assumed sole imperial power in the empire.