CHAPTER I

RELIGIOUS POLICY OF CONSTANTINE AND CONSTANTIUS.

With the triumph of Constantine over Maxentius Christianity entered on a new stage. The Edict of Milan was the formal rehabilitation of Christians in their rights as citizens. The favor extended to them was in the first instance political rather than religious: but little by little, partly of policy, partly of superstition, partly of sincere conviction, Constantine, while adhering to a policy of religious toleration, rendered more and more unequivocal adhesion to Christianity. The vague Deism with which he commenced proved untenable in the heat of the strife between the old faith and the new. A colorless tolerance was ipso facto impossible as a permanence, however wise and natural a step­pingstone to the era to come. Each accession of power made it more imperative upon him to make up his mind on the choice of a God. A hundred years previously it had appeared to a Tertullian inconceivable, either that an emperor should be a Christian, or a Christian be made emperor. Now with no very obvious wrench either to the state or the individual the momentous change was effected, the incredible achieved. Changed religion indeed, as Constantine himself declared, could not but produce changed government. But the general policy of toleration, the sole policy possible for a statesman of Constantine's political tact, was not abandoned. In much of the empire, eminently at Rome itself, Pagan society was too strong, too aristocratic, too influential to be defied with impunity, and a policy of open per­secution would have been plain suicide. But the effect of the open patronage of Christianity by the Court and the active discouragement of Paganism was enormous.

In externals Christianity went forward with rapid strides. Proselytes poured in on all sides. In town and country alike might be seen nothing but new converts breaking their idols of their own accord. Churches sprang up in all directions with architecture of a new magnificence. Vying with palaces in splendor, they were fitly called basilicas. The clergy increased yet faster than the laity. Of bishops there were nigh 2000. The Churches of Carthage and Constantinople each counted its 500 priests: it became necessary actu­ally to limit by law the numbers of the clergy: of the lower orders, deacons and readers, acolytes and exorcists, singers and doorkeepers, there was proportionate abundance; while armies of paid agents, parabolani and copiatae, visited the sick or buried the dead. Hermits and anchorites, celibates and virgins, monks and sisterhoods, swarmed by thousands in the land. Nor is this surprising when we read of the rich endowments in territory or cash given to special churches; of official promotion of Christians; of privileges and exemptions accorded to clergy; immunities from taxation reserved for Christian citizens; presents of clothes or money awarded to converts; subsidies granted to poor churches from the fiscal revenue; relief funds distributed among the poor. Besides these substantial aids the whole weight and prestige of Court favor was freely thrown into the scale of Christianity. The Emperor entertained bishops, discoursed doctrine, confuted heresy, presided at councils. Fashion and advance­ment both followed in the wake of the new religion.

The internal effects on Christianity produced by the new relations in which it stood to the State, present less bright internal an aspect. It was unqualified gain that Christianity should be able to temper the savage traditions of Roman law, abolishing the barbarous practices of branding and crucifixion, facilitating the manumission of slaves, and imposing penalties upon infanticide, rape, and fornication. But the Church did not Stop here: Constantine's reign furnishes the earliest precedent for the infliction of spiritual punishments on civil offences, and conversely spiritual offences are now first chastised as such by the arm of law. The dragon's teeth are sown which sprang up armed, whether as the Inquisition or as Ultramontanism. And this was but the least part of the general demoralization of spiritual life, which invaded the Church at large, and which found a very partial and in some respects injurious remedy in the great ascetic and monastic reaction which it largely contributed to excite.

A sudden outburst of heresy is another symptom which increase of followed the advent of the Church to power. Schisms gained all at once a new vitality, and began to flourish with tropical rankness and luxuriance. Donatists and Circumcellions in the South, Arians in the East, made havoc of the peace of the Church. The history of Arianism attests how ineffectual a salve for the sore councils proved. This new prominence of heresy is directly due to the changed relations of Church and State. Partly the Church assimilated foreign and impure elements: partly the civil power was placed from the outset in a false position. The Emperor should never have been permitted, far less invited to preside at councils, to administer church discipline, to decide on questions of doctrine, to deal out chas­tisement or leniency to heretics. The Donatist troubles which so vexed Africa flowed directly from Constantine's hesitation and embarrassment. Arianism but for imperial vacillation might have died with its author. Nursed by Constantine's unwisdom, it became the war-cry of an ambitious talented faction, who crippled Christianity, stifled true religion, well-nigh extirpated orthodoxy, and who have been the means of ousting the faith of Christ for more than a thousand years from the greatest of the old-world continents. Probably no keener disappointment ever befell Constantine than that of which he was thus the immediate source. He had hoped and, as it would seem, expected to find in Christianity that principle of unity which might reintegrate the divisions of the Empire. It was this hope perhaps which chiefly led him in the first instance to adopt the Christian faith: he was persuaded—it is his own confession—that could he be fortunate enough to bring all men to the worship of the same God, this change would produce another such in the government of State. To his intense chagrin, he found that far from resolving all discords and reuniting jarring interests of State, the Church proved incapable of keeping peace within its own borders. The most troublesome of seditions was that kindled and fanned by a Church feud.

When Christianity became the avowed religion of the State, naturally enough Paganism, if not forcibly suppressed, was openly discountenanced. Constantine, in the first flush of triumph, seems to have expressly prohibited the old religion, and made the exercise of pagan rites a penal offence. He hoped perhaps by a bold stroke to give the finishing blow to tottering Paganism. Meeting with unexpected resistance, and saved by Christian advisers or by his own political tact from proceeding to open persecution, he yet discouraged the old religions in the most unmistakable way. The subsidies and exemptions accorded to Christians were practically fines and disabilities imposed on Pagans. And more direct discouragements were not wanting. The Emperor would not suffer his portrait to appear in Pagan temples: Pagan festivals were neglected, or adapted to Christian cults: Pagan shrines were by special writ left incomplete: many were dismantled of their most precious ornaments, more were suffered to fall into disrepair: not a few, where licentious rites were practiced, were openly suppressed.

The sign of the Cross supplanted the emblems of the gods. Sunday by Sunday, while Christian soldiers attended divine service, their comrades paraded in camp to recite with military precision a prayer to the one true God. So far as Paganism possessed inward devotional life and spirit, its disaster was even more complete. Not only did Constantine, while retaining the title of Pontifex Maximus and submitting probably to the ceremony of a formal installation, systematically neglect the religious functions of the office, but beyond this the blow was more directly fatal. The Emperor, it must be remembered, was the chief deity of Paganism; his worship almost the sole common link which bound together its endless denominations. For the Emperor to avow himself a Christian was for God to descend from his own altar and proclaim his apostasy. The small practical effect produced by so stupendous a catastrophe, proves merely how inconceivably little of sincere faith in its own creed remained to Paganism.

Such was the general tenor of Constantine’s endeavors after religious unity. But local conditions stepped in to modify the execution of this general policy. In the East, where Christianity had widest hold, Paganism succumbed, to the verge in many places of complete disappearance. In Constantinople, par excellence the Christian city of the empire, no heathen rite, nor altar, nor temple, was to be seen. In the West, on the other hand, preeminently at Rome, the central asylum or shrine of Polytheism, the old ceremonial remained untouched. There temples were restored: the Emperor was still sovereign Pontifex; augurs and flamens and vestal virgins retained their old privileges; the haruspices officially reported the significance of thunderbolts; “Dii te nobis servent” was the recognized military salute; coins still wore their pagan emblems; the Emperor himself remained divine, the consort of Jupiter or Mars, of the unconquerable Sun or the Genius of Rome. The Divine Institutions of Lactantius survive to show with how living a spell Paganism still held in bondage the minds of men.

The death of Constantine overlaps by six years the birth or Julian. The first great political event which the future Apostate could remember was doubtless the death of his grandfather and the accession of Constantius. The new emperor's (Constantius) policy towards Paganism hovered between reluctant tolerance and legalized persecution. He inaugurated his reign with a decree of persecution, suggested or approved by his Christian councilors. All superstitious worship was suppressed, and Pagan sacrifices expressly interdicted: though in favored localities at any rate temples were suffered to stand as interesting monuments of antiquity, or as useful for the celebration of public games or ceremonies. That during the earlier part of his reign the edict was not literally carried out, may be considered certain. During the troubles with Magnentius, it was practically a dead letter, to judge by the edict issued almost immediately after the pretender's fall, prohibiting heathen nocturnal rites at Rome; but no sooner did Constantius find himself in 353 AD securely seated on the throne of empire, than he reinforced his earlier enactments by a decree commanding under heavy penalties the summary closing of all Pagan temples. A yet more stringent edict in 356 made participation in idol-worship or sacrifice a capital offence; increasing crimes and tyranny produced a corresponding increase of suspicious fears, and the next eighteen months produced three decrees for the legal infliction of the most horrible tortures, the rack and the hot iron, on all persons in connection with the court who dared to take part in magic rites. But here again Constantius did not consistently carry out the policy prescribed on paper. At Rome he himself respected the privileges of the vestal virgins, as Pontifex Maximus distributed coveted sacerdotal offices among the patricians, and investigated with interest the origin and story of the more famous temples. And this on the full tide of ascendant fortune!

At Rome society remained Pagan, and the aristocracy sturdily declined to sue royal favor at the expense of religious apostasy. The loss of caste involved would have been but poorly counter­balanced by court smiles and official patronage bestowed in compensation on the renegade. Without dissimulation or check, patricians, prefects, consuls and municipal magistrates of Rome wore the garb, retained the titles, and did the honors of the old cult with unabated zeal. Nor was Rome a solitary exception: at Alexandria too heathen worship was maintained in almost its ancient splendor. From this conflicting evidence, this stringency of letter combined with laxity of practice, the fair inference is that the law was never dangerously pressed, but only politically employed, where circumstances permitted. It was the sheathed sword that could be drawn at pleasure; and it was in the East that it found most scope for action. In the West, whatever may have been the theory, in practice the Imperial policy amounted to almost complete religious toleration.

Constantius during his closing years lapsed gradually into a sort of political dotage: he became the tool of hypocritical and designing courtiers; he grew less, not more tolerant; he multiplied the demoralizing exemptions accorded to Christians; he fostered still more effectually Church disputes; he intruded more audaciously into theological controversies; he pitched his pretensions not short of infallibility; he surrounded himself more closely with, and left himself more completely than his father at the mercy of despicable favorites. “With  his   chamberlain” (the notorious Eusebius), writes Ammian, “he possessed considerable influence”: he armed himself with spies innumerable: the “Curiosi” became a regular department of State, with fixed salaries and an official name. It is difficult to credit the numbers those who, as dependents in the palace or as officials in the provinces, sucked the blood of the exhausted State. The eunuch, that parasite of Eastern despotism, was re-imported to the West, to serve in the bedchamber, to sit at the table, to whisper in the ear, and to guide the councils of the Emperor. Constantius promoted to special honor this crew, of whom Christian and Pagan writers speak with the same contemptuous hate, these “lizards and toads, creatures may be of the spring, but all unclean”. Men of learning found no place at Court. His councilors, Christians in name, were many of them bishops, but all or almost all made religion a mere stepping-stone to self-advancement.

The Church was in the most indescribable confusion. From the time when the Council of Nicaea had delivered the final verdict of Christianity on the Arian heresy, Arians had ceased to be honest if misguided heretics, and had converted themselves into a turbulent political faction. At each episcopal election or expulsion the most exalted sees of Christendom, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, furnished scenes that would have disgraced a revolution: venerable confessors were tortured into heresy upon the rack: orthodox prelates or clergy were exiled, starved, strangled, or beheaded. The great Christian commonwealth seemed drifting into helpless anarchy. Bishops had become so many centres of confusion and ringleaders of heresy, who could publicly inaugurate their reign with ribald blasphemies. Arians in the East, or Sabellians in the West, they met in council and counter-council to frame new creeds, or fulminate anathemas. To and fro they galloped to this synod and to that, till the public posting service (at whose expense they travelled) threatened to succumb. Arians, semi-Arians, and Acacians found councils an unrivalled organization for mischief; Homoean, or even Anomoean creeds, were put forth with reckless prodigality. From the time that Constantius became sole emperor, though the number of councils keeps pace with the number of years, not one supported orthodox Christianity. Constantius lived to see the work of subversion crowned with success, and orthodoxy virtually non-extant. He lived to see Athanasius a fugitive with a price upon his head, and to witness the Council of Ariminum at which, in the words of Jerome, “the whole world groaned amazed to find itself Arian”. The fatal results of the policy adopted in Constantine's reign were making themselves manifest. In alleys and in the wilderness, out of sight of kings' palaces, the Church had thriven better than under shadow of the imperial upas-tree. The Emperor, surrounded by a greedy faction of Eusebian councilors, became semi-Arian by conviction. Thenceforth he acted sometimes as mouthpiece, sometimes as catspaw, of the Eusebians. His unreasoning arrogance suited him for either task. No hesitation or bashfulness hindered his usefulness. Ignorant, if not stupid, no problem awed him. His will, he said in open council of the Church, was as good as a canon. He began to regard himself as above all human limitations, to style himself lord of the universe, to substitute for “His Majesty” a new title “His Eternity”, and having scaled the heights of solitary preeminence to assert like dominion in Church as in State. In return for the aggrandizement and privileges he conferred upon the Church, he claimed a sole jurisdiction within it: and the more worldly of the Church's members acquiesced without compunction in the nefarious bargain. By his ipse dixit he could banish the bishop of bishops, the head of Christendom; he could starve a council into submission, or roundly declare to recalcitrant orthodox bishops that he had determined to take the law into his own hands, and establish peace in the Church without their aid. His infallibility was more infallible than the Pope's own, for his decision was valid even when pronounced anything but ex cathedra. At the Council of Milan, having summoned the conclave from their proper place of meeting to his own imperial palace, he burst in upon the assembled bishops with the words, “The doctrine you are combating is mine; if it is false, how comes it that all nations have been made subject to my power?” And once again, as the discussion waxed hot, he cried, '”Have I chosen you to be my counsellors, and shall my will be thwarted still?”

Such were the leaders who swayed the destinies of Church and State; such the court and such the Christianity beneath whose aegis Julian was nursed.

II

JULIAN'S BOYHOOD, YOUTH, EDUCATION, AND CAESARSHIP.