Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/108

 72 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE the center of his Empire. Thus Italy and western Europe were relegated to a secondary place in the later Roman Empire. In the second place, Constantine first raised the Christians to equal privileges with other religions in the Empire, then favored them, and finally on his deathbed was himself baptized. Just what his motives were and how sincere was his conversion has been disputed by historians, but his act was in a sense a confession of weakness. The emperors had tried various expedients — such as Aurelian's association of himself with the Unconquered Sun — to make the worship of the emperor more of a living force which would sustain their government and insure them popular support. Now the emperor adopted an unworldly religion which his predecessors had striven to extirpate, and thereby recognized that Christianity had or was to become a power superior to the Roman State or to classical civiliza- tion. Constantine's successors in the imperial office were almost all Christians, and Christianity became the state religion. Presently no other form of worship was allowed. A collection of the laws issued by Constantine and his successors has come to us, named the Theodosian Code after Decline of its compiler, the Christian emperor, Theodosius the Empire 1 1 i n the fifth century. This mass of imperial as revealed. «. r i in the Theo- legislation reveals the efforts of the government dosianCode tQ check t h e. decline of the Empire, and at the same time the adoption of policies which probably had the unfortunate result of hastening that decline. Some of the laws conflict with others; the policy of the emperors evi- dently fluctuated and perhaps the conditions with which they had to deal changed too. For instance, at one time private individuals are allowed to quarry marble; at an- other time the right is reserved to the State. Some sweeping commands probably were never executed thoroughly; other laws are merely the sanctioning of already existing condi- tions. But on the whole the reader of the laws gets the impression that things are going very badly in the Roman world, and that all the scolding and threats of the emperors cannot prevent it. In 364 they have to order that no new