Part 5

In this course of lectures it is my design to discuss the fall of Paganism and the triumph of Christianity in the Roman empire; but obviously this subject is too large for adequate treatment within the space of three short lectures. I am obliged, therefore, to limit it in some way or other; and it seemed to me that I could not do better than take the reign of Julian the Apostate as the central feature in the picture, and group around it such other facts as may be required to explain its significance. There are many advantages in this mode of treatment. This Paganism was never exhibited to more advantage than in the person of this, its greatest and most energetic champion. High personal character, no common intellectual gift, great military renown, supreme political power, perfect knowledge of his adversary, absolute and unflinching devotion to his own cause--all these united to make Julian the most formidable antagonist which the Church ever had, or might be expected to have. His career showed what Paganism could do, and what it could not do. The ability of the champion only exposed the helplessness of the cause. And again, a full blaze of light is poured upon this one man and this one reign such as rarely falls to any period of ancient history. Julian himself, devoted friends, impartial critics, sworn foes, heathen and Christian, orthodox and Arian--all have contributed to the completeness of the portraiture. This strange character, half philosopher, half fanatic, the most wary of dissemblers, and the most Quixotic of adventurers, stands before us with a distinctness of feature which leaves nothing to be desired.

In order to understand the man and the epoch it is necessary to take up the course of history more than half a century before he ascended the throne. The starting-point in our review of events is the most remote province of the empire--the island of Britain. On the 25th of July, 306, Constantine was proclaimed Emperor by the Roman Legionaries at York. "Oh, happy Britain," says a heathen panegyrist, not then foreseeing the stupendous results, "Oh, happy Britain! that it has first seen Constantine as Cæsar." This was the commencement of a long reign, extending over more than thirty years--the longest in the annals of Imperial Rome since Augustus. In the interval of three centuries which separated these two remarkable men, no emperor had reigned who deserved to be considered great as they were. And their lives are linked together in another way. The one reign saw Christianity cradled in the manger; the other witnessed it seated on the throne. On October 27th, 312, some two miles from the walls of Rome, where the Great North Road crosses the Tiber, was fought the decisive battle of the Milvian Bridge. The routed army with its captain and rival Emperor, the heathen champion Maxentius, perished in the waters of the Tiber, and Constantine entered the Imperial city--the stronghold of Paganism--in triumph. On June 15th, 313, was signed the great charter of religious toleration--the Edict of Milan, issued in the joint names of the Emperors Constantine and Licinius. By this edict Christianity was recognised as a lawful religion. The sacred places, and the property which had been taken from the Christians during the great persecution were restored to them once more. Every man was allowed henceforth to adopt any form of worship which he might choose. On the 25th of July, 325, the anniversary of his accession and the inauguration of the twentieth year of his reign, Constantine, then sole Emperor, brought the Council of Nicæa to a close. He had been present at several of its sittings, and throughout had exerted himself to the utmost to secure unanimity. By a higher inspiration, yet not without his instrumentality, the deliberations of the assembled Bishops resulted in the Creed which was to be henceforth and for ever the basis of unity in the Church.

But, meanwhile, what was Constantine himself? It is strange that, notwithstanding the prominent part taken by this Emperor in the establishment and consolidation of the Church, historians have been found to doubt the genuineness of his conversion, I do not think that the facts justify any such hesitation. For the sincerity of his Christian profession we have two guarantees, which, combined, must, I think, be regarded as conclusive. It was gradual, and it was disinterested. It was gradual. I shall say nothing here of his miraculous conversion, of the fiery cross in the heavens, with the inscribed words, "Hereby conquer," which is said to have appeared to him shortly before the battle of the Milvian Bridge. What truth underlies this story we shall never know; but, judging by his public actions, we trace a gradual advance towards a more distinct reception of Christianity. His father Constantine had been a believer in one God. He had extended his protection to the Christians when they were persecuted by his Imperial colleagues. This Monotheism and this toleration descended to Constantine, as it were, by inheritance. For some years after his accession he appears not to have advanced much beyond this point. On the triumphal arch erected in Rome to commemorate his victory over Maxentius, and which still spans one of the approaches of the Forum, his success is ascribed to the suggestions of "the Divinity." Such language is exactly what his father, who was not a Christian, might have used, what heathen philosophers did use again and again. This vague expression, "The Divinity," is repeated several times afterwards in Imperial edicts. There is as yet no personal profession of Christianity. The Edict of Milan puts the Christians on the same political level as the Pagan. It gives them no advantage; but, by degrees, his language becomes more explicit, and his legislation more directly favours the Christians. The Council of Nicæa is the climax of aggressive ascent. Again it was disinterested. As a mere question of worldly policy, I think it can hardly be doubted that Constantine acted very unwisely in embracing Christianity. His Christian subjects were still a comparatively small minority--an aggressive minority it is true, but not a dangerous minority if properly handled. They would have been won over to a man by frank toleration as they had been won over to his predecessor, Alexander Severus, and to his father, Constantius Chlorus. They asked nothing more than this. But by the further step of declaring himself a Christian he had nothing to gain and very much to lose. He alienated the heathen subjects, while his Christian subjects were devoted to him already. Indeed, as a matter of fact, it is quite plain that his conversion did lead to much disaffection, and that he was greatly hampered by it. Take an instance of this. The secular games, the great festival of thanksgiving for the prosperity of Rome, recurred, according to Roman usage, at long intervals of about one hundred and ten years. They were celebrated with great pomp and magnificence, and accompanied by elaborate propitiatory sacrifices to the tutelary deities of Rome. They had been kept last under Severus, and the time had come for another celebration. But year after year of the long reign of Constantine passed, and no notice was taken of them. No omission would have wounded more deeply the sensibilities of the Romans than this. The heathen historian Zosimus, writing a whole century after, ascribed all the woes that had befallen the empire to this one fatal neglect. Again, during his second and last visit to Rome, the Capitoline games were celebrated. A main feature in the ceremonial was a procession along the sacred way to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, in which the Emperor himself was expected to take a part. He flatly refused. Looking down from his residence on the Palatine Hill as the magnificent train wound round its foot, he broke out into expressions of ridicule and contempt. The senate and people were mortally offended. On one occasion, probably during this very visit, his statues were pelted with stones. This insult was reported to Constantine by some indignant courtier. The Emperor passed his hand across his brow. He had a strong sense of humour. "Strange," said he, "that I did not feel hurt." But he did feel hurt, nevertheless; hurt in dignity by this insolence of the Romans, and a new capital arose on the shores of the Bosphorus in protest against the outrage. Christian Constantinople was his revenge on heathen Rome. "He made himself a Greek," said Dante, "to leave Rome to the Pope." Doubtless the Papal power grew more freely when the shadow of the Imperial presence was removed; but the Pope was not in Constantine's mind, and the immediate effect was a deadly side-thrust at heathendom. Rome, the stronghold of heathen sentiment and worship, languished rapidly from this time. Paganism had been stabbed in the heart.

But while the sincerity of Constantine cannot reasonably be doubted, his inconsistency is quite beyond question. The fact is that he was half a Pagan to the end, and, as Niebuhr has truly said, we do him a grievous wrong if we judge his actions by a purely Christian standard. In this respect he was only like many of his contemporaries. In that age of transition the best heathens were half Christians, and not the best Christians were half heathens. The semi-Paganism of Constantine is matched by the semi-Christianity of Julian. I am not concerned with the moral inconsistencies of this Emperor. The sins of Constantine will not condemn the truth of Christianity, any more than the virtues of Julian will re-instate the errors of Paganism. Constantine is allowed on all hands to have been temperate in his habits and chaste in his life; but the domestic history of this great Sovereign was darkened by one horrible tragedy. About twelve months after the Council of Nicæa, in which he had borne so conspicuous a part, the Roman world was horrified by the report of three murders in the Imperial household. The Emperor's eldest and favourite son, Crispus--a young man of highest promise--an idol of the public; his little nephew--a bright, engaging boy of twelve; his own wife, Fausta, the mother of his three younger sons, were ruthlessly put to death. What was the secret of this tragedy we shall never know. It seems most probable that the son was implicated in some dangerous conspiracy, that the nephew was an unconscious tool of the conspirators, and that the wife, having goaded the husband in the first flush of his anger to extreme measures against her stepson, herself fell a victim to the violence of his remorse when the revulsion came. There were, we may safely say, circumstances which might extenuate these horrible crimes; there could be none which could justify them. A dark, indelible stain rests on the memory of Constantine.

But if the moral inconsistency of Constantine is the more shocking, his religious inconsistency is the more bewildering. In his recently built capital he erected a statue of himself, which exhibited a strange medley of the old and the new, and which may well serve for a type of his career as a sovereign. The Emperor was represented as a follower of the Deity, whom he himself had adopted as his patron in the old days of his Paganism--the Deity whom his apostate nephew ever regarded with special reverence; but in the aureole which encircled the head the rays took the form of the nails, the instruments of Christ's passion. It was believed that at the base of this statue Constantine had placed a fragment of the true cross. It is also stated that in this same place was deposited the palladium--the cherished relic of Pagan Rome, which Æneas was said to have rescued from the flames of Troy, and which Constantine himself stealthily removed to his new capital. It is just the same with his legislation. Thus we find almost side by side, promulgated within two months of each other, two Imperial decrees--the one enjoining that Sunday shall be set apart as a day of rest; the other providing that when the palace or any public building is struck by lightning, the soothsayers shall be consulted as to the meaning of the prodigy, according to ancient custom, and the answer reported to the Emperor himself. When, indeed, we see this juxtaposition of Christianity and Paganism, we are forcibly reminded that Constantine was one and at the same time the summoner of the Nicene Council and the chief Pontiff of heathenism. Thus, at one moment, he was preaching sermons to his courtiers and discussing dogmas with his bishops; and, at the next, he was issuing orders for the regulation of some Pagan ritual. The same fountain _did_ send forth sweet waters and bitter. And this incongruity held him captive to the last, even beyond the gates of death. In his newly built eastern capital--Christian Constantinople--he was buried by his own directions in a church amidst the memorials of the apostles, and "the equal of the apostles" was the title accorded to him by common consent. In his forsaken western capital--heathen Rome--he was, as a matter of course, deified, as his Imperial predecessors had been deified, as he himself had deified his own father Constantius; and by virtue of this apotheosis he took his rank, not only with an Augustus or a Trajan, but with a Commodus and a Caracalla among the gods of Olympus. A strange blending of incongruous elements. And yet, whatever may have been felt of Constantine's life, however much of Paganism may have alloyed his Christianity hitherto, when the end came there was no more halting between two opinions. Failing health to one who was endowed with a singularly robust constitution came as an unmistakable sign of the approaching change. The warning was not lost upon him. The increased fervour of his devotions was noticed by all. On one occasion he spent a whole night in the church praying. Strange to say, this zealous theological disputant, this foremost champion of the truth, had not hitherto been baptised. He was not even a catechumen. But now, when he felt himself sinking, he eagerly pressed that baptism might not be delayed. This wish was granted, and the rite was administered. This done, he devoutly expressed his thanksgivings for the mercy vouchsafed to him, and his readiness to go at once on his last heavenward journey. He refused again to assume the Imperial purple, and, so arrayed still in the white robe of his baptism, he was laid on his couch to await the end.

On the 22nd of May, 337--it was Whit Sunday, the appropriate festival of the newly baptised--about noon, the great Emperor breathed his last. He was succeeded by his three sons--Constantine, Constantius, and Constans. The three princes were scarcely seated on the throne, when the Imperial family became again the scene of a horrible tragedy as shocking as that which had left so dark a stain on their father's life. The soldiers rose up and massacred not less than nine princes of the blood--the brothers and nephews of the deceased Emperor. Nearly a century later an untrustworthy historian gives currency to a story that Constantine himself had directed these massacres, having discovered that he had been poisoned by his brothers. For this shameful libel on them and on him there is absolutely no foundation. All the circumstances are against it, and it may safely be dismissed as a foul calumny. More specious is the view that the new Emperor Constantius, then a young man of twenty-one, was implicated in the massacre; but it was done, if not by his direct orders, at least with his tacit connivance. But, however this may be, the incident has a very direct bearing on the subject of these lectures. In this carnage, besides the three Emperors themselves, two children alone escaped. The other members of the Imperial family perished to a man. The survivors were the two sons of one of Constantine's brothers, Julius Constantius; Gallus, a boy of twelve or thirteen; and Julian, a child of six or seven, of whom we shall hear much hereafter. Their father and their eldest brother were amongst the slain.

Of the three brothers who divided the empire of Constantine we are concerned only with one--the eldest, Constantine, and the youngest, Constans, perished in two successive revolutions. The middle and surviving brother, Constantius, united again all the dominions of his father under his sceptre. He alone left his mark on the history of the Church. He alone shaped the destinies and swayed the feelings of his relative, Julian. It is worth our while to form a closer acquaintance with this man, who was the evil genius of his cousin and ward. Constantius had not inherited the towering strength and commanding mien of his father. He was under the average height, with a long body and short, bowed legs. His complexion was very dark, his hair smooth and glossy. He had prominent and keen eyes, recalling the piercing glance which his father Constantine had cast around on the assembled Bishops in the Council-hall of Nicæa, and which never failed to strike awe into the beholders. The crimes of Constantine were those of a strong, impulsive, half-barbarous nature. The crimes of Constantius were due to cold calculation and to indifference to the commonest claims of humanity. He was cautious to excess, sparing of his rewards, and backward in his confidences. He was mean, selfish, suspicious almost to fanaticism, shrinking from no cruelty when his fears were alarmed. It is noticed as characteristic of the man that when borne through the streets of Rome on a triumphal chariot he was seen, notwithstanding his short stature, to bend his head as he passed under each archway. Yet he was not a man without redeeming virtues and some real ability. Like his father, he was temperate and just, so that, notwithstanding his many enemies, scandal itself was forced into silence. He could be sparing of rest and prodigal of labour when the interests of the State demanded it. He was gracious, too, in his demeanour, and with many--as even his cousin Julian is obliged to confess--bore a reputation for clemency. He sustained the honours of his Imperial rank with a dignity which never forgot itself, while he showed a contempt of mere vulgar popularity which even unfriendly critics described as magnanimous. Of his disastrous influence on the religious sentiments of Julian I shall have to speak hereafter. For the present I confine myself to the part which he took in determining the relative positions of Christianity and Paganism in the empire. Unlike his father Constantius, he had been brought up a Christian from his infancy. His doctrinal views were very distorted, his moral conduct was often a gross libel on the Gospel; but where it was a question between Paganism and Christianity the sympathies of the Emperor were exerted wholly and undisguisedly on the side of the latter. On the whole, therefore, there is less of heathenism in the public memorials and the official acts of this reign than in the preceding. The Pagan emblems diminish; the Pagan enactments in the Statute Book are fewer. But still Constantius, like Constantine, continues to hold the office of supreme pontiff, and this necessarily leads to an official complicity in the rites and institutions of Paganism. In this capacity he issues edicts for the service of heathen sepulture, for the repairing of heathen temples, for the support of heathen priests. When, a quarter of a century later, the heathen orator Symmachus pleaded the cause of expiring Paganism before the Emperor of his day, he appealed to the example of Constantius, who, though himself possessing a different faith, respected the ancient rites, and provided for their due maintenance out of the public treasury. But avarice often over-leaped the bounds which the Imperial laws prescribed. The sacred name of the Gospel was again and again profaned during this reign by spoliation and violence, just as under our own Tudor Kings the cause of reformation was sullied by the selfish rapacity of the nobles. The Court of Constantius was beset with greedy and unscrupulous adventurers; and knowing the private sympathies of the Emperor, they would not be slow to seize the opportunities where any real or reported scandal of Paganism gave a handle for interference. Such opportunities would not be rare. Thus Paganism held on, still maintained and protected by law, but exposed to occasional outrages from individual violence, when, by a sudden catastrophe, it found itself seated once more on the throne.

On the 3rd of November, 361, in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, Constantius died. The event was altogether unexpected; he was still in the prime of life, only forty-five years of age. Temperate habits and vigorous outdoor exercises had kept him in perfect and unbroken health; but he was seized with a fever, and sank rapidly. There was only time to send to Antioch for the Bishop to administer that sacrament, which is ordained as the inauguration, but which, with him, as with his father, was the consummating act of his Christian profession. Immediately after his baptism he expired. His cousin Julian, the only surviving Prince of the house of Constantine, was his unquestioned successor. Thus Christianity, having wielded the Imperial sceptre for more than half a century, was again deposed. Of the education and the apostasy, of the reign and work of the new Emperor, I hope to speak to you in my two concluding lectures.

II.[9]

In my lecture last Tuesday I passed under review the two long reigns of Constantine and Constantius, comprising altogether a period of fifty-five years. We were thus brought to the accession of Julian. What, then, was the change wrought in the relations of Christianity and Paganism during this period? Most persons, I imagine, would answer without misgiving that Christianity had been established on the ruins of heathenism. This answer, however, would be wholly inaccurate. Paganism was in no sense disestablished, and Christianity was only in a very limited sense established. Paganism was still the official religion of the empire. Whatever might be the individual faith of the sovereign, yet, as the head of the State, he was still the chief representative of heathenism, both in life and in death. In life he was the supreme pontiff, the fountain head of authority over all the priests, temples, rituals, throughout the empire; in death the representation was transformed from earth to heaven. By his apotheosis he became a patron divinity of Rome. A pagan calendar is still extant in which all the festivals of the deified Constantine are duly recorded. Now there was not and there could not be any such alliance with the State on the part of Christianity. However strong might be the Emperor's personal sympathies; however much he might mix himself up in the internal affairs of the Church; whatever privileges or immunities he might extend to the clergy,--yet officially he had no recognised position, officially he was a Pagan still. When, therefore, it is said that Paganism was disestablished and Christianity established in its stead, the position of affairs is entirely misconceived. The personal religion of the sovereign had nothing whatever to do with the official religion of the State. In modern countries, for the most part, the two coincide, and it is well that this should be so; but there are some exceptions. England under James II., and Saxony at the present moment, are cases in point.