Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/331

Rh good deal that cannot be so explained. Paganism mus; still have been an operative belief with the man who, down almost to the close of his life, retained so many pagan superstitions. He was at best only half heathen, half Christian, who could seek to combine the worship of Christ with the worship of Apollo, having the name of the one and the figure of the other impressed upon his coins, and ordaining the observance of Sunday under the name Dies Soils in his celebrated decree of March 321, though such a combination was far from uncommon in the first Christian centuries. Perhaps the most significant illustration of the ambiguity of his religious position is furnished by the fact that in the same year in which he issued the Sun day decree he gave orders that, if lightning struck the imperial palace or any other public building, " the haru- spices, according to ancient usage, should be consulted as to what it might signify, and a careful report of the answer should be drawn up for his use." From the time of the Council of Nicsea there are fewer signs of halting between two opinions, but the interest of the emperor in Christianity was still primarily political and official rather than personal. He summoned the council, presided over its first meeting, and took a prominent part in its proceed ings both before and behind the scenes. The year before it met he had, in a noteworthy letter to the Alexandrian bishops, urged such a scheme of comprehension as might include Arians and orthodox in the one church ; and on this ground he has been claimed as the earliest of broad churchmen. When the result of its deliberations was the adoption, for the first time in the history of the church, of a written creed, he cordially approved of the pro posal, and was thus the earliest to enforce xiniformity by means of subscription. The two plans were incom patible, but the conduct of Constantino in supporting first the one and then the other was perfectly consistent. Throughout he acted in the interest of the state. The splitting up of the church into a number of bitterly contending factions would be a constant source of danger to the unity of the empire, while on the other Iiand the empire might gain fresh strength from the growing power of Christianity if that power were embodied in a compact and united organization. It was by this con sideration, probably, that Constantino was guided in deal ing with the Arian controversy ; there are no traces of any engrossing personal interest on his part in the cardinal question of the homoousion. There are not wanting, indeed, several facts that show a real concern in the truths of Christianity as distinct from its social and political influence. Eusebius has recorded one of his sermons, and he seems to have preached frequently in refutation of the errors of paganism and in illustration and defence of the doctrines of the new faith. The same historian speaks of his taking part in the ceremonies of worship, and of his long vigils at the season of Easter. His delaying to receive baptism until he was on his deathbed does not imply that he delayed till then the full acceptance of Christianity, though it has frequently been so interpreted by those who were unaware that the doctrine that all sin committed before baptism was washed away by the simple observance of the rite not unnaturally made such procrastination very common. There is no historical foundation for the assertion of Baronius and other Catholic writers that the emperor received baptism from Pope Sylvester at Rome in 326. Equally baseless is the story of the so-called donation of Constantine, according to which the emperor after his baptism endowed the Pope with temporal dominion. It is to this that Dante alludes in his Inferno:—

It has been remarked by Stanley that Constantine was entitled to be called Great in virtue rather of what he did than of what he was. Tested by character, indeed, ho stands among the lowest of all those to whom the epithet has in ancient or modern times been applied. Fearlessness, decision, political sagacity, and religious tolerance he possessed from first to last ; but the generous clemency cf which there are traces in his earlier years cannot have any longer worked effectually in him when he sanctioned the treacherous treatment of Licinius and the atrocities that connected themselves with the murder of Crispus. Tried by achievement, however, he stands among the very first of those who have ever won the title. In fact, there aro two grounds at least on which as important a place may be claimed for him as for any sovereign who has reigned during the Christian era. What he did as the founder of the complex political system which exists among all civilized nations down to the present day, and what he did as the first Christian emperor, had results of the most enduring and far reaching kind. It belongs to the historian of the empire to give a detailed account of the elaborate scheme he devised by which tl:o civil functions of the state were separated from the military, and both from the spiritual, the very idea of such distinctions having been previously unknown. The empire he by such means revived, though in the East it lasted a thousand years, was never again so strong as it was in his own hands ; but the importance of his scheme consisted in this that it gave to empire itself, regarded as a system of government, a new structure and a new power which still survive in the political constitu tions of the various nations of Europe. As to Christianity the historically significant fact is not his personal acceptance of it. It is rather that by his policy as a statesman he endowed the new religion for the first time with that instrument of worldly power which has made it—whether for good or for evil or for both is a subject of much discussion—the strongest social and political agent that affects the destinies of the human race.

1em  CONSTANTINE, a Roman soldier who, in the time of Honorius, in the 5th century A.D., rose to the dignity of emperor of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, but was finally conquered and put to death by Honorius. See.  CONSTANTINE VII. (905–959), emperor of the East, author, and patron of literature, born in 905undefined, was the only son of Leo VI. The Eastern Church sanctioned no marriage beyond tho second, and when Leo, being childless by three wives, had a son by his concubine Zoe, his attempt to legitimize his wife and his son was inflexibly resisted by the Patriarch Nicholas, and his will was only carried out at the expense of excommunication. These circumstances were probably the reason why the name Porphyrogenitus, " born in the purple," i.e., in the purple chamber in which the empresses were confined, was, while applicable to all the emperors, emphatically applied to Constantine VII. When Constantine was only six years old Leo died, leaving him under the guardianship of his uncle Alexander ; but Alexander also died in the next year ; and Romanus Lecapenus, the chief admiral, supported by Zoe, was appointed colleague to Constantine, and held all real power till 944, when he was forced by his sons to enter a monastery. 