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Classical Association of Canada
Constantine's Conversion: Do We Really Need It?
Author(s): T. G. Elliott
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Phoenix, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Winter, 1987), pp. 420-438
Published by:
Classical Association of Canada
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CONSTANTINE'S CONVERSION:
DO WE REALLY NEED
IT?
T. G. ELLIOTT
HE
RECENT ADVANCES
that have been made in the
study
of Constantine
havenot
helped
to
produceagreement
on the criticalmatterof the conver-
sion. Thosewho
thought
thatT. D. Barneshad
improved
matters
by
stress-
ing
Constantine's
early
contact with
Christianity
have now seen R. Lane
Fox minimizethat contact and resumethe effort to reconcilethe famous
passages
of Eusebiusand Lactantius.1
Early
in 1985
I
thought
that I had
found the
solution
to the
problem
of
these
passages
when I
recognized
the
possibility
that the miracledescribed
by
Constantinehadresultedin the
labarum,
butnot in a conversion.2How-
ever,
it became
apparentimmediately
that the removalof the conversionas
an historicalevent eliminatedsome difficultieswith the evidence
only
to
create
others,
and it seems to me even now that these
may
be of sufficient
importance
to rule out the
possibility
of a conclusive
proof.
Whatfollows
hereis thereforean
attempt
to
present
a more
probable
interpretation
of the
evidence.Examinationfrom a new
point
of view is bound to
appear
more
argumentative,
and less
judicious,
than examinationfrom
points
of view
with which we are familiar.
I have
tried
not to cause
unnecessary
dis-
comfort.
In
support
of
my proposal,
then,
I offerfour
arguments,
whichI have
put
in a
chronological
order.The firstof theseis the least
conclusive,
butit does
not haveto
accomplish
morethana modestre-distributionof the burdenof
The
following
arecited
by
author'snamealone:N. H.
Baynes,
Constantine
the Greatandthe
ChristianChurch2
(Oxford
1972);
H.
Dorries,
Das
Selbstzeugnis
KaiserKonstantins
(G6ttingen
1954);
H.
Kraft,
KaiserKonstantins
religioseEntwicklung(Tibingen
1955);
R. Lane
Fox,
Pagans
and Christians
(Harmondsworth1986).
The
following
are also referredto in abbreviatedform: T. D.
Barnes,
Constantineand
Eusebius
(Cambridge,
Mass.
1981)
=
Barnes,
CE;TheNew
Empireof
Diocletian
andConstan-
tine
(Cambridge,
Mass.
1982)
=
Barnes,
NE;
"TheConversionof
Constantine,"
EMC29 NS
4
(1985)
371-391
=
Barnes,
"Conversion;"
F.
Winkelmann,
"Untersuchungen
zur
Kirchenge-
schichtedesGelasios
von
Kaisareia,"SBBerl,
KlfSprach
1965.3
=
Winkelmann,
"Untersuchun-
gen;"
"Charakterund
Bedeutung
der
Kirchengeschichte
des Gelasiosvon
Kaisareia,"
Byzan-
tinische
Forschungen
1
(1966)
346-385
=
Winkelmann,
"Charakter."
1Cf.
Barnes,
CE
43; Barnes,"Conversion;"
LaneFox 609-635. Thelatter
supplies
an
up-to-
date
bibliography.
The
passages
in
question
areEusebiusVC 1.28 andLactantius
De
mortibus
persecutorum
44.
2The
argument
of this
paper
was
presented
at
a seminar
of the Classics
Department
at the
University
of Toronto
in
January 1986,
and at the annual
meeting
of the American
Philological
Association
in December 1986. I am indebted to
Timothy
Barnes,
John
Rist,
Barbara
Rodgers,
Paul
Fedwick,
and Malcolm Wallace for their
help
on those and other occasions.
420
PHOENIX,
VOL.41
(1987)
4.
421
CONSTANTINE'SCONVERSION
proof.
The
arguments
are:
(1)
that the evidence that Constantius "Chlorus"
was a Christian is
strong enough
to have a serious effect on the
theory
that
Constantine was
converted;
(2)
that Constantine himself dated the
begin-
ning
of his
christianizing
mission to his time
in
(or near)
Britain;
(3)
that
Constantine's
misrepresentations
about his
age during
the
years
303-305
indicate that he was a Christian at that
time; (4)
that the
"Kreuzerscheinung"
described in Eusebius' Life resulted in the
labarum,
but not in a conversion
of Constantine.
The view that Constantius was not a Christian
depends
on the belief that
Constantine was converted from
paganism
to
Christianity.
That belief has
fostered
arguments
from the Sol Invictus
coinage
of
Constantius,
from the
pagan panegyrics,
and from his failure to
legislate
an end to the Great
Persecution when he became
senior
Augustus
in
305.3 Each
of
these
argu-
ments is a non
sequitur.
The
coinage
indicates what he wanted to
appear
on
his
coins,
not his
religious
convictions.
Baynes (Appendix) argued very
effectively against drawing extravagant
conclusions from the
coinage
of
Constantine down to
324,
but overlooked the fact that the same
argument
could be
applied
to the
coinage
of Constantius.4 The fact that it is not until
313 that mention of the
gods
ceases in the
pagan panegyrics
to Constantius
and Constantine has been
thought
to
prove
a
change
in the
imperial thinking
between 311 and 313. Such
reasoning ignores
both the official nature of the
panegyrics
and the drastic
change
in Constantine's circumstances. In 313 he
was in a far
stronger position
than his father
(or
he
himself)
had ever en-
joyed,
so that what
appears
as a
change may
have been
simply
a further
revelation. Even in the case of
Constantine,
the
gods
who
disappear
from
the
panegyrics
in 313 remain on the coins until 323. The fact that the coins
are unreliable as an indicator of
religious
belief diminishes the value of
arguments
from the
panegyrics,
which share the
propaganda purposes
of the
coins.5
As for Constantius' failure to
legislate against
the
persecution,
he
knew that
Galerius would have
ignored
such an edict. Constantius had
compelling
reasons for not
acting openly
as a Christian. He would not have
wished to
produce
a
combination of his
colleagues against
himself,
nor to
get
Constantine killed. Because his reasons for concealment
are so
good,
the
arguments
against
the view that he was a Christian are
inconclusive.
It is now convenient to set out other evidence
regarding
his
religion.
He
had a
daughter
whose
name, Anastasia,
indicates that he was a Christian
(cf.
3Cf.
Baynes
7-9; 56-58,
nn.
23-25;
Appendix
at 95-103. The most careful discussion of the
subject, however,
is that of Kraft
(1-6).
Kraft would not commit himself to the view that
Constantius was a
pagan.
4For the
argument regarding
Constantine cf. Kraft
14; Barnes,
CE
48;
Lane Fox 658.
5Forthe
language
of the
panegyrists concerning
divine attributes of
emperors
and
divinity
of
emperors
cf. B.
Saylor Rodgers,
"Divine Insinuation in the
Panegyrici
Latini,"
Historia 25
(1986)
69-99. See also
below,
n. 31.
422
PHOENIX
Kraft
5-6). Concerning
his first
wife, Helen,
there was a
tradition,
reflected
in
Theodoret,6
that she had raised Constantine as a
Christian,
and she re-
appears,
as a Christian
in
Rome,
by
316
(cf.
Barnes,
CE
49).
In On
the
Deaths
of
the Persecutors
15
Lactantius
praises
Constantius
as follows: nam
Constantius,
ne dissentire
a maiorum
praeceptis
videretur, conventicula,
id est
parietes,
dirui
passus
est: verum autem Dei
templum, quod
est in
hominibus,
incolume servavit. This statement
clearly
implies
that Constan-
tius
disagreed
with the
policy
of
persecution.
Furthermore,
the word ser-
vavit
suggests
that Constantius was a fellow
Christian;
for an outsider's
action
reliquit
was a more natural word. In the Divine Institutes 1.1 Lactan-
tius addresses Constantine as
Imperator
Maxime,
qui primus
Romanorum
principum, repudiatis
erroribus,
maiestatem Dei
singularis
ac
veri et
cogno-
visti et honorasti.7
Although
the
phrase repudiatis
erroribus
might
be taken
to
imply
that Constantine
had
once
lived in those
errors,
and the
primus might
be taken to
imply
that Constantius
was a
pagan,
neither inference is neces-
sary.
As
emperor,
Constantine
could be
envisaged
as
repudiating
on behalf
of the
empire
the
errors of
others,
and Constantius could not be the first
emperor
so described
because he had not
formally repudiated
the errors and
had not
published
an
allegiance
to
Christianity.
It is
possible
that Lactantius'
emphasis
on the fact that Constantine did two
things
(et
cognovisti
et
honorasti)
results from a view that Constantius had done one of
them, i.e.,
that he had been a Christian
man,
but not
a
Christian
emperor.
Constantine
himself,
as
quoted
in Eusebius VC
2.49,
said that
Constantius,
with won-
derful
piety,
asked for the
blessing
of the Saviour God
upon
all his actions.
If the
quotation
is
correct,
Constantine
claimed in 324 that his father was a
Christian.
Next there is the abundant
testimony
of
Eusebius
in VC 1.12-27. Ac-
cording
to
Eusebius,
Constantius
was a Christian
throughout
his
reign (17).
During
the Great Persecution
he showed himself the friend of the Church
(13, 15)
and
cleverly got
rid of those Christians at his court who were
willing
to offer
pagan
sacrifice
(16).
His
palace
was like a church
(17).
God rewarded
6The
contrary
tradition is that
represented by
the
plain
statement
of
Eusebius (in
VC
3.47)
that Constantine converted her to
Christianity.
Since
Eusebius
represents
Constantius as a
Christian he should not have
represented
Helen
as
having
been converted
by
her son unless he
believed that it was true.
Theodoret,
in his HE
1.18,
describes Helena as "she who
brought
forth this
great luminary
for the
world and nurtured him in
piety
from his childhood." While
copying
several
chapters
of Theodoret into his own HE Gelasius of
Cyzicus
added at this
point
(3.6.1)
a
single parenthetical
sentence: "For she no less than the child's
father,
her husband
Constantius, brought
him
up by
God's laws to
worship
Christ." This
sentence,
like that of
Theodoret,
may go
back to Gelasius of
Caesarea,
for whom see below
(423).
If Eusebius'
statement had been made
early
in his account of Helen's work in
Jerusalem,
it would
be more
persuasiveagainst
the other tradition. In fact it is made in
passing,
in his account of her
funeral,
and I am doubtful about it.
7Cf. T. D.
Barnes,
"Lactantius
and
Constantine," JRS
63
(1973)
29-46,
at 43. See
below,
n.
22.
423
CONSTANTINE'SCONVERSION
him for his devotion with a
happy
life
(18)
and a
happy
death as he was
rejoicing
in
being
able to
bequeath
his
empire
to his son
(19, 21).
Constan-
tine had
spent
his
youth
at the court of the
oppressors
of the
Church,
but
God
had inclined him to
piety,
and he wished
to
imitate the more virtuous
conduct
of his
father
(12). Having pacified
his own realm he
decided to
liberateRome from
tyranny (26)
with the
help
of his father's
god (27).
Finally,
we
may
consider the statements of Gelasius of Caesarea
who,
fairly
late in the fourth
century,
wrote an Ecclesiastical
History,
now
lost,
starting
with Constantius Chlorus and
continuing
to the
period
after the
Council of Nicaea.8 This author had both Eusebius' Ecclesiastical
History
and his
Life of
Constantine.9 He was a
nephew
of
Cyril
of
Jerusalem,
who
was
bishop
there from about 350 until his death in 386.10
Through Cyril's
infuence he was made
bishop
of Caesarea in
366,
and he seems to have been
dead in 400
(Winkelmann, "Untersuchungen" 71). Quotations
from Gela-
sius' work survive in the
Ecclesiastical
History
of Gelasius
of
Cyzicus,
which
was written
by
about
475,
and in
Byzantine
Lives.
Gelasius of
Caesarea
described Constantius as a Christian
and
a
protector
of Christians
during
the
Great
Persecution,
and said that he
bequeathed
his
empire
to Constantine
because he was convinced that Constantine would end the
persecution
of
Christians
(op.
cit.
18-22).
If there were no
story
of Constantine's conver-
sion to
Christianity,
this evidence would
surely
be
accepted
as
showing
that
his father
had been a Christian.
Indeed,
to the
present
writer it
appears
far
more
likely
that
Constantius was
a
Christian
of
a
special sort-probably
unbaptized, certainly concealing
the fact much of the
time,
and
perhaps
offering pagan
sacrifice sometimes-than that he was not a Christian
at
all,
or that he was
merely sympathetic
to
Christianity.
1
For the
purposes
of the
present argument,
however,
it is sufficient to note two
things.
First,
Con-
stantine's claim about his father's
religion
has some
support.
Second,
that
claim works
against any theory
that Constantine himself was a convert to
Christianity.
My
second
argument
arises from Constantine's statements about his
christianizing
mission. In VC 2.24-42 Eusebius
quotes
Constantine's letter
8Cf. Gelasius of
Cyzicus
HE
1.1-4,
edited
by
G. Loeschke
(and
M.
Heinemann)
in
GCS
(Leipzig 1918).
The
subject
of Gelasius of Caesarea was controversial until the
publication
of
Winkelmann,
"Untersuchungen,"
"Charakter,"
and "Die
Quellen
der Historia Ecclesiastica
des Gelasios von
Cyzicus
....
,"
Byzantinoslavica
27
(1966)
104-130.
9For
Gelasius' use of the VC cf.
Winkelmann,
"Untersuchungen"
38-43;
"Charakter"
375,
378-380.
'?For
Cyril
cf. W.
Smith and H.
Wace,
A
Dictionary
of
Christian
Biography
1
(London 1887)
760-763.
"Some
mightsimplyregard
himasan
apostate.
I thinkthata
chronicallyrepeatingapostate
is
not
very
well described as an
apostate,
and that his beliefs are not to be discovered
by simple
tests. In the case of Constantius
"apostate,"
without
qualification,
would be a
very misleading
description.
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