Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 1 1911.djvu/37

311-315] saw in the labarum the cross of Christ, the heathens in the army would only be receiving an old standard back again. Such was the origin of the Byzantine Labarum.

One enduring monument of the victory is the triumphal arch still standing at Rome, dedicated to him by the Senate and People in 315. Its inscription recites how instinctu divinitatis he inflicted just punishment on the tyrant and all his party. The expression has been set down as a later correction of some such heathen form as : but it is certainly original, and must express Constantine’s declared belief—for we may trust the Senate and the other panegyrists for knowing what was likely to please him.

Constantine remained two months in Rome, leaving in the first days of 313 for Milan, where he gave his sister Constantia in marriage to Licinius, and conferred with him on policy generally, and on the hostile attitude of Maximin in particular. That ruler had not published the edict of Galerius, but merely sent a circular to the officials that actual persecution was to be stopped for the present. A few months later (about Nov. 311) he resumed it, with less bloodshed and more statesmanship. It was far more skilfully planned than any that had gone before. Maximin’s endeavour was to stir up the municipalities against the Christians, to organise a rival church of heathenism, and to give a definitely antichristian bias to education. Even the fall of JVlaxentius had drawn from him only a rescript so full of inconsistendes that neither heathens nor Christians could make head or tail of it, except that Maximin was a prodigious liar. He even denied that there had been any persecution during his reign. At all events, this was not the complete change of policy needed to save him. Constantine and Lidnius saw their advantage, and issued from Milan a new edict of toleration. Its text is lost, but it went far beyond the edict of Galerius. For the first time in history, the principle of universal toleration was officially laid down—that every man has a right to choose his religion and to practise it in his own way without any discouragement from the State. No doubt it was laid down as a political move, for neither Constantine nor Licinius kept to it. Constantine tried to crush Donatists and Arians, and Licinius fell back even from toleration of Christians. Still the old heathen principle, that no man may worship gods who are not on the official list, was rejected for the present, and toleration became the general law of the Empire, till the time of Theodosius.

The wedding festivities were rudely interrupted by the news that Maximin had made a sudden attack without waiting for the end of the