Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/57

Rh the emperors, and on the whole the popes were on the side of religion, culture, and progress. It was otherwise when the Renaissance and the Reformation were followed by the counter-Reformation. Then all the forces of obscurantism and despotism ranged themselves with the papacy, while the new light, life, and liberty were driven out to fresh fields.

How different was it in the East, where the Church was subservient to the State throughout all these ages! No doubt we must attribute the contrast between the histories of Eastern and Western Europe in part to racial distinctions. In some respects the former is more allied to Asia than to Europe. Thus we are able to trace the history of all the Eastern Churches in a common conspectus. But while this is the case it must be seen that Constantine's political move in finally and effectually transferring the centre of government from the banks of the Tiber to the shores of the Bosphorus immensely aggravated the tendency of the civil despotism to crush out the liberties of the Church. The Eastern Church, from the days of Constantine onwards, lived under the shadow of an imperial palace. That we may take to be an epitome of its history; and the ominous fact is directly traceable to the founding of New Rome by Constantine.

But while this is obvious to us to-day, and is the most significant phenomenon in the appearance of Constantine on the stage of history when viewed in the broad light of the ages, it was another department of the famous emperor's action that arrested the attention of contemporaries. The man who really inaugurated the Eastern Church's paralysing bondage to the State was hailed by the Christians of his day as their emancipator, friend, and patron, and panegyrists loaded his name with fulsome praises for his services to Christianity.

The story of the conversion of Constantine belongs to the romance of history; but, like many another romantic tale which has been made to pass through the fires of criticism, it has not come out scathless. The adulation of