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

by Peter J. Leithart

  Yoder's distinction does not hold. It is true, as Ramsay MacMullen once wittily put it, that many Roman soldiers spent a lifetime in the military without striking out in anger, except in the tavern. Yet this limit on opportunities for violence had little to do with a distinction between military and police. Rome had no "police" force distinct from the military,30 and, more important, this distinction does what Yoder wants it to do only if he is right in assuming that "police duties were peaceful" and "military duties were violent." In reality, "the opposite may have been more true," since "life within the empire could hold a candle to the violence on its borders." Frumentarii were "police" soldiers charged with collecting tariffs on grain imports, but they "arrested Christians, beat up the bakers of Antioch and extorted money during famine," in addition to being "detested political spies." Vigiles were the police and firemen of the city of Rome, "but in the year 270 they broke the siege of Autun and plundered the city."3' No church father, at least, ever made the distinction between police work and warfare as a way of justifying Christian military service: "there is no recorded statement of any Christian theologian, or anyone else for that matter, permitting Christians to become policemen but not soldiers."32

  Focusing exclusively on Christian participation in the Roman military, further, misses an important dimension of early Christian attitudes toward violence. Neither in the ancient world nor in the modern was vio lence confined to the authorized violence of the police or military. Christians resorted to violence against one another, and against pagans, with surprising regularity. Athanasius was acquitted of the charge of murder, but he never quite denied charges of using lower-level forms of intimidation and roughing-up. Militant Donatists attacked Catholics in North Africa, and Catholics returned the favor. Bishops and other clergy often egged on the mobs. In the East, militant monks tore down pagan altars and put an end to sacrifice. "The monks commit many crimes," Theodosius lamented.33

  To be sure, these incidents all occur after Constantine, and Yoder could perhaps cite them as more evidence of the evil effects of Constantinianism. But none of these acts of violence were encouraged by the empire, and none of them depended on the presence of a Christian emperor. My point is certainly not to endorse monastic vigilantism, which was often appalling. Nor is the point simply that ancient Christians-like medieval and modern ones-often failed to exhibit the peaceableness of Jesus. The point is this: without any help from Constantine or other emperors, Christians, including "pious" monks and bishops, acted violently and justified violence, and this suggests that the image of an early church universally and uncompromisingly committed to peace is an illusion.

  REASONS FOR RENUNCIATION

  Above I noted Yoder's effort to detach the question of Christian military service from the question of why. "No historians deny" that the primitive church "rejected Caesar's wars," he argues, though they differ in their account of the reasons for that rejection. But I have shown that the evidence is more ambiguous than Yoder claims, and I have also suggested that the why question cannot be detached from the factual question. If Christians renounced military service because of Jesus' command to love enemies, then presumably they, like Yoder, would have renounced military service no matter who the commander-in-chief happened to be. If, however, Christians renounced military service because it involved idolatry or because particular military actions were unjust, then they might reconsider if a Josiah were to come along to pull down the images and altars. As we might expect, the arguments against military service varied.

  Some appealed directly to the example and teaching of Jesus. Tertullian tried to rebut Christian uses of the Old Testament in defense of war by pointing to the normative character of the Gospels. Yes, he admitted, "Moses carried a rod, and Aaron wore a buckle, and John [the Baptist] is girt with leather and Joshua the son of Nun leads a line of march; and the People warred." This, however, gives no support to Christian involvement in war: "How will a Christian man war nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed; still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, ungirded the sword-belt of 34 every soldier. No dress is lawful among us, if assigned to any unlawful action."35 Cyprian similarly acknowledged that iron might be used to make implements of war, but the fact that it can be used for such purposes no more proves that this is its purpose than the existence of a voice and music proves that they should be used for lewd songs.36

  Origen's arguments, however, were often linked with conceptions of pollution. He appealed to the pagan practice of exempting priests from military service, arguing that Christians are priests and thus fight in prayer and worship rather than with the sword. "Do not those who are priests at certain shrines, and those who attend on certain gods, as you account them," he asked Celsus, "keep their hands free from blood, that they may with hands unstained and free from human blood offer the appointed sacrifices to your gods; and even when war is upon you, you never enlist the priests in the army?" Given this, "how much more so, that while others are engaged in battle, these too should engage as the priests and ministers of God, keeping their hands pure." Christians wrestle "in prayers to God on behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous cause, and for the king who reigns righteously, that whatever is opposed to those who act righteously may be destroyed!" But more important, "we by our prayers vanquish all demons who stir up war, and lead to the violation of oaths, and disturb the peace." Thus, Christians "are much more helpful to the kings than those who go into the field to fight for them.... None fight better for the king than we do. We do not indeed fight under him, although he require it; but we fight on his behalf, forming a special army-an army of piety-by offering our prayers to God."37

  This passage damages Yoder's thesis in several ways. Origen, often cited as a key proponent of early Christian pacifism, here supports rather than "rejects" Caesar's wars. To be sure, he limits the assistance that Christians provide to prayer, and even then to prayers on behalf of "those who are fighting in a righteous cause." Yet this implies that some of Caesar's wars are "righteous" and that some "Caesars" might be classified among kings "who reign righteously." And this, further, implies the larger conviction that there is such a thing as a righteous cause for war. The force of the passage is pacifist, of course, and that should not be missed. But Origen's promise that Christians provide prayerful support for just wars ought not be missed either.

  Tertullian's most vigorous and extensive arguments concerned idolatry. That was not a tangential issue for Roman soldiers. Religion was central to the military life:

  The army was a religious world in its own right, but one integrated with the state cult of Rome.... The army religion was highly liturgical, and it was prescribed for all army installations of at least cohort strength; certainly every legion observed all the specified rites. Probably the creation of this religious system went all the way back to the religious policies of Augustus who took old military festivals and incorporated them into this new framework.... The worship of Mithra, Christ, and many various local deities did not interfere with the discipline of the army ... and as long as they were conducted outside the walls of the camp, military authorities paid little attention to them; probably most officers personally were involved in at least one of them.38

  That tolerance began to weaken in the early second century, during the rule of Caracalla. As I discussed in chapter two, Caracalla promulgated the "Antonine Constitution" (212), which granted citizenship to all the residents of the empire and had the effect of turning the empire into a single civic order, replacing the earlier crazy-quilt of local laws and customs. As we saw, that constitution was the basis for Decius's demand that all Roman citizens offer sacrifice to demonstrate their loyalty to the empire. That too is the context for the earliest empire-wide persecutions, the brutal imperial response to the Christian refusal to carry out the required sacrifice. Not only the empire but al
so the military was consolidated. Soldiers were still allowed to believe whatever they liked and even privately celebrate their personal cults, but they would continue in the army only if they were willing to offer sacrifice to the virtue of the emperor. Otherwise the empire itself would be endangered, as hungry and unhappy gods would take their unhappy vengeance on Rome.39

  This is the setting for the military martyrdoms, and also the setting for Tertullian's treatises against military idolatry. His main argument against Christians in military service-not, to be sure, his only one-was that they would be required to participate in pagan rites. He argued that the military oath, the sacramentum, was incompatible with the Christian's commitment to Jesus, and he insisted that military standards, considered sacred by the Roman troops, were demonic instruments.40 His later treatise De corona militis is the sole surviving treatise on Christian participation in the military, and its focus was overwhelmingly on the idolatry involved in wearing the military crown, rather than on the issue of bloodshed.4' His antithetical "You cannot serve God and the Emperor" occurs in a discussion of military service.42

  For Tertullian, this danger was not confined to military service. He attacked Christian participation in art, literature, and nonviolent civil service and even argued that signing contracts involved idolatry.43 What other Christians were viewing as an opportunity-the domestication of the military and the expansion of citizenship-Tertullian recognized as a dangerous temptation to compromise, and he recommended a fairly wholesale Christian withdrawal from a civilization infused with idolatry.44

  This sort of argument is not absolute. What happens when civil magistracy no longer demands sacrifice to false gods, or contracts may be signed without commitment to idolatry, or artisans start sculpting scenes from the Gospels instead of from pagan mythology? What happens when the emperor expunges sacrifice from the army and changes the standard to a Christian cross? May Christians then rejoin the world, assume political responsibilities, even fight in just wars?

  Many Christians said yes, and none illustrates this point so well as Lactantius. In the Divine Institutes he condemned all coercion, violence and bloodshed, more absolutely and thoroughly than any other early Christian writer.41 "With regard to this precept of God," he wrote, "there ought to be no exception at all; but that it is always unlawful to put to death a man, whom God willed to be a sacred animal." Lactantius condemned the indiscriminate killing of the arena: "I ask now whether they can be just and pious men, who, when they see men placed under the stroke of death, and entreating mercy, not only suffer them to be put to death, but also demand it, and give cruel and inhuman votes for their death, not being satiated with wounds nor contented with bloodshed." Once they are "wounded and prostrate," they are "attacked again" so that "no one may delude them by a pretended death." Crowds become "angry with the combatants, unless one of the two is quickly slain; and as though they thirsted for human blood, they hate delays." "It is not therefore befitting that those who strive to keep to the path of justice should be companions and sharers in this public homicide," since "when God forbids us to kill, He not only prohibits us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but He warns us against the commission of those things which are esteemed lawful among men." He made a broader demand as well: "it will be neither lawful for a just man to engage in warfare, since his warfare is justice itself, nor to accuse any one of a capital charge, because it makes no difference whether you put a man to death by word, or rather by the sword, since it is the act of putting to death itself which is prohibited."46 If there is a patristic poster boy of pacifism, Lactantius is it.

  The complication is that Lactantius later added a dedication to this very treatise, offering it to Constantine, whom he knew to be a soldier. The dedication praised Constantine as the "greatest of emperors" because he had "cast aside error" and determined "to acknowledge and honor the majesty of the one true God." Constantine "brought back justice, which had been overturned and blotted out," and "expiated the horrible crimes of other rulers," and Lactantius reminded him that the Father, a "very strict judge toward the wicked," would avenge persecutors in other parts of the world.47 He commended courage when "fighting for your country," and he celebrated the victory of Constantine at Milvian Bridge in the same tone as Eusebius: "With great rejoicing, let us celebrate the triumph of God; let us extol the victory of the Lord; day and night let us pour out our prayers in rejoicing; let us pray that he establish forever the peace that has been granted to his people after ten years."4S

  Perhaps Lactantius was a power-hungry sycophant, ready to abandon pacifist convictions to trim his teaching when fresh political winds started blowing. Perhaps he was simply frightened of the strongman on the throne, whose claim to follow Jesus was less than wholly believable. If so, he was not alone in these sentiments, for there was, quite strikingly, no controversy over war and pacifism at the time of Constantine's conversion.49 The evidence we have of a controversy on these issues is from Tertullian, during Yoder's "proto-Constantinian" period. But even there the controversy did not engulf the church. We have only Tertullian on the one side and unnamed opponents, including Christians actually in the military, on the other. In any case, if the early church was uniformly pacifist, and pacifist by conviction, then the overnight adjustment to Constantine's conversion was a fall indeed, a breathtaking lapse of nerve. We might even call it a breathtaking lapse of attention. Did none of these convinced pacifists even notice what was happening? It would seem not.

  As we have seen, though, there is a more likely explanation: the church was never united in an absolute opposition to Christian participation in war; the opposition that existed was in some measure circumstantial, based on the fact that the Roman army demanded sharing in religious liturgies that Christians refused; and once military service could be pursued without participating in idolatry, many Christians found military service a legitimate life for a Christian disciple. As for Lactantius, either he did not see any contradiction between the dedication and the treatise, or he modified his views in the light of the new circumstances that Constantine inaugurated. Even if he shifted his views, we cannot trace the sources of Lactantius's apparent shift in detail, though we can be sure he was neither a coward nor a relativist.

  CHRISTIANS IN THE "CONSTANTINIAN" ARMY

  The "afters" support this account of the "befores."

  Constantine did not purge the military or his administration of pagans, and it is always important to remember the massive continuity of personnel between the Tetrarchy and Constantine. Some of the soldiers who enforced decrees against the Donatists, or who hurried Arius (and then Athanasius) off to exile, might well have participated in the persecution. Yet with a Christian on the imperial throne, promoting other Christians to high administrative positions, certain avenues of service-in the army and the civil service-opened for Christians as they had not before. Christians had been in these positions before, but they had had to ignore, sidestep or accommodate to the religious demands of imperial service. Constantine removed the requirement of sacrifice for civil service, so even Christians who were zealously antipagan could enter the service.

  Bishops acknowledged the change by giving permission to Christians to join the army and to serve in Constantine's government. But the permission came with other instructions. The council of Arles in 314 did not, as Constantine hoped, solve the Donatist problem, but it issued several canons that indicate how the bishops were addressing the new political situation. As at earlier councils, the bishops strictly forbade Christians to participate in certain entertainments:

  4. Concerning charioteers who are among the faithful, it is resolved that as long as they continue to drive in chariot races they be excluded from fellowship.

  5. Concerning actors, it is also resolved that as long as they continue to carry on that occupation they be excluded from fellowship.

  The canon on civil officials instructed them to be transferred in good order from one church to another in the case of tr
ansfer of office, so that the local bishop could give oversight:

  7. Concerning officials who are among the faithful who take up government office, thus it is resolved that, when they be transferred, they receive letters of reference from their churches, so that, therefore, in whatever places they serve, care be administered them by the bishop of that place, and when they begin to act against the church's discipline, that only then they be excluded from fellowship.

  8. Similarly also concerning those who wish to pursue a public career.

  An earlier canon (56) from the Council of Elvira had declared that "magistrates are not to enter the church during the year in which they serve as duumvir,"50 presumably because the magistrate would be forced to participate in pagan rites. Since civil officials no longer had to sacrifice, the bishops now permitted Christians to remain in the church and participate in its fellowship, with the proviso that they were to conduct their public business under the oversight of a local bishop. One might see this as accommodation to the empire, but it is explicitly an assertion of ecclesiastical authority over civil officials, even in their civil capacity.51

  The council also issued an unusual decree concerning Christians in military service: "Concerning those who lay down their weapons in peacetime it is resolved that they be excluded from fellowship." Various interpretations have been offered. Perhaps Christians had been tempted to desert during the persecutions, but now that Christianity had been legalized they were to retain their arms. But the canon seems to be splitting the difference more finely. Soldiers, the canon instructed, had to retain their arms in peacetime, but, _link_ Hermann Dorries _link_ suggests, "he is not forbidden to do so in time of war."52 We cannot "look upon the decision at Arles as mere conformity to the will of the emperor." Instead of simply repudiating its principles, the church was attempting to make room for conscientious objectors while acknowledging the new political realities: "military service was not rejected per se and yet was not unconditionally endorsed."53 The date is important here. Arles took place only two years after Constantine's victory over Maxentius, but already the church was adjusting its pastoral counsel to meet the new situation. The fact that this took place without any apparent controversy is a sign that the church was already prepared for the eventuality.