137- The Christian Emperor

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Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome, episode 137, the Christian Emperor.

In the autumn of 324 AD, the Roman Empire awoke to discover that for the first time in 40 years, the Empire was ruled by a single man.

Only the oldest members of the citizen body even had a memory of what that was like.

The rest of the population had grown up in the shadow of Diocletian's tetrarchy, with its multiple emperors, multiple capitals, and multiple, sometimes conflicting, policies.

Now everything, every issue, every decision, every order, was going to be funneled through a single man.

Far from shying away from what was, for this generation at least, an unprecedented load of responsibilities, Constantine relished the opportunity he now had to reshape the empire in his own image.

Like the greatest of the great Roman leaders who had preceded him, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Hadrian, Diocletian, Constantine came to power full of ideas, full of confidence, and full of energy.

But more important than all of that, Constantine came to power with the fervent belief that he was the instrument of the Christian God, and it was now his duty to convert Rome to the one true religion.

Though the Empire would not officially become Christian until the reign of Theodosius, it was right here, in the months after the fall of Licinius, that Constantine made that later switch just a matter of filing some paperwork.

The now sole emperor's first order of business following his victory over Licinius was to parse through his defeated rivals innumerable laws, edicts, and commands to decide which ones would stand and which ones would be tossed out.

Constantine and his ministers plowed through everything Licinius had done since taking over the East in 313 and did their best to cancel laws they considered unjust and let stand rulings they thought wise.

This was mostly done on a case-by-case basis, but there was one big area where Constantine uniformly rejected Licinius's policy, the status of Christianity.

Just so he would not be misunderstood, Constantine wrote an open letter to the people of the eastern provinces, announcing what his policy towards the Christians was going to be.

With no one around to challenge him, Constantine could finally stop mincing words, and he announced that not only was Christianity the one true religion, but that, as an institution, the church was going to have the full backing of the imperial government.

Right away it became clear that the emperor was not kidding around.

When Constantine and Licinius were first enforcing the Edict of Milan and making sure that church property was returned to its rightful owners, it became standard procedure to compensate families who had come into possession of the seized land or goods.

This was a practical measure designed to keep everyone happy.

The Christians got their stuff back, and men who had bought the property got a refund, a decent deal all around.

But in his letter to the East, Constantine simply announced that, as he was a benevolent man, he would generously pardon any man who he found to be in possession of church property.

Pardon, not compensate, pardon, as if purchasing some bit of land legally at auction could now be considered a crime.

He's kidding about this, right?

The revolution only went on from there.

In a stark rejection of nearly three centuries of imperial policy, Constantine gave the Christians pride of place, and it was suddenly the pagans who found themselves merely tolerated, pagans who found themselves barred from holding public office, and pagans who found their religious practices banned outright.

That last bit was the most radical shift of all.

Constantine, at the stroke of a pen, turned his back on God knows how many millennia of tradition, and henceforth forbade divination and sacrifice to the gods.

I don't think I have to tell you how big of a deal that was.

It is worth noting here, however, that Constantine, despite this radical shift in religious policy, was still a practical man.

For the moment, all of this only applied to the East.

Though I have no doubt that if he thought he could have done it, he would have buried the old Roman pantheon right then and there.

But I think the Emperor knew that there were only so many fronts upon which he could fight a war, and stirring up a hornet's nest in the very conservative Senate of Rome right at that moment probably would have done more harm than good.

So rather than banning the old Roman cults, the emperor simply quit funding them, choosing instead to underwrite an empire-wide campaign of church building.

As the temples of the eternal city fell into disrepair, magnificent churches sprang up all over the place.

Eventually, this building program produced the original St.

Peter's, constructed on the supposed site where Peter was crucified in Rome.

When the letter to the eastern provinces was published, the negative reaction was immediate, but Constantine refused to back down.

He wrote a scathing rebuke of the false and demonic practices of his pagan subjects, and how Christianity, being the only true religion, must become the universal religion of the empire.

In attempting to convert a majority pagan population to the minority Christian position, it may seem as if Constantine was fighting an impossible battle.

But more than anything else in the Roman world, victory in battle was still the great legitimizer.

Were his victories not proof enough that the old gods were a lie and that the Christian god was the only true God?

Constantine's unbroken run of battlefield success was a major argument in his favor, and now that he defined the rules of the game, the citizens of the empire slowly began to fall into line.

Ambitious men who wanted to climb the ladder began converting to Christianity.

Soldiers who wanted special privileges began converting to Christianity.

And average citizens who just didn't want to run afoul of imperial agents began converting to Christianity.

Through sheer force of will, Constantine was converting the Roman Empire to Christianity.

But of course, right at this moment, just as Constantine was preparing to supplant the traditional cults with the one true religion, the adherents of that one true religion were locked in a mortal death struggle with themselves that threatened to undermine everything Constantine was trying to accomplish.

Two weeks ago, we introduced the Donatist heresy, which, much to Constantine's chagrin, was still fracturing the church in North Africa.

This week, we will introduce a heresy that will make the fight over Donatism look like some gentle ribbing between friends.

A heresy that will divide the church not just for a generation, but for hundreds of years to come.

The Aryan Heresy

The Aryan heresy takes its name from an influential Egyptian priest named Arius, who was born sometime in the two hundred fifties AD.

At some point, though no one is really sure when, Arius began preaching a very particular interpretation of how God the Father and Christ the Son were related, an interpretation that some of his brothers in the clergy took serious offense to.

As with the Donatist heresy, I'm not going to delve too deeply into the issue because it pretty quickly gets pretty esoteric, but the gist of the controversy was this.

Arius taught that since Christ was the begotten Son of God, that there must have been a time when Christ was not.

Therefore, though both were divine, the Son was inferior to to the Father.

This line of reasoning contrasted sharply with the beliefs of many in the Church, who believed that Father and Son were actually two aspects of the same divine whole, that they were co-substantial, literally of the same substance, with neither one preceding or exceeding the other.

Alexander, the conveniently named bishop of Alexandria, was initially hesitant to make a big deal out of Arius' beliefs, but it soon became clear that this seemingly minor point of philosophic disagreement was dividing the church in two.

Bishop Alexander was himself a co-substantialist, so when he finally waded into the controversy, it was to condemn Arianism as heretical.

But the bud was too far grown to simply be nipped that easily.

Arius's teachings had already spread across the East, and wherever it took root, local Christian communities became divided, as the two sides fought for control of regional bishoprics, local churches, and individual parishioners.

This rupture in the unity of the church, just as Constantine was looking to make it the de facto state religion of the empire, really, really annoyed the emperor.

But as with the Donatus, he was hesitant to get too involved in the dispute himself.

It was an argument over a trivial point of philosophy.

Surely the matter could be settled without the emperor needing to get involved.

Instead, Constantine dispatched the bishop Osius to Egypt to end the controversy once and for all.

Osius was an influential clergyman who had been at Constantine's court since before the Milvian Bridge.

To help give him an extra bit of authority, the bishop carried with him a letter from Constantine that did not take a particular stance, but did admonish both sides for making such a big deal out of such a little issue.

At least the Donatist controversy dealt with real issues like betrayal and forgiveness, but this Aryan controversy, it was all abstract theology.

Plus, even in terms of abstract theology, the two sides agreed on like 99 points out of 100.

It was just this one little tiny insignificant matter that they disagreed.

How in the world could the clergy possibly have allowed it to explode into such a divisive issue?

But when Osius got to Alexandria, he failed to broker a deal.

He failed in part because the two sides were dug in too deep, but he also failed in part because he did not really want to do what Constantine had sent him to do.

The emperor wanted everyone to kiss and make up, and in Constantine's eyes, that meant that any compromise was on the table so long as everyone agreed to it.

But it appears that Osius was himself a staunch co-substantialist who was not looking to compromise with the Aryans so much as stamp them out for good.

But Osius failed in his own mission as well, and after riots broke out in Antioch over the election of a new bishop, Osseus decided to convene a council of eastern bishops in the Anatolian city of Anchira to help bring an end to the argument.

His idea was that if the Christian establishment condemned the Aryans with one voice, that they would finally give up the fight.

The council would be billed as an open dialogue that would help the bishop forge a compromise that all could agree to, but Osius had no intention of letting them not forge the correct compromise, if you know what I mean.

When he reported back to Constantine, though, the emperor decided that if a wider council was going to be called to settle the matter, that it may as well be a wider council.

In fact, let's make it the widest council of all.

Let's make it a global council, an an ecumenical council, the very first of its kind.

Constantine ordered the site of the council be moved to the port city of Nicaea, and then invited all the western bishops to attend as well.

The new location would not only make it easier for the bishops of the west to attend, but it would also be close enough to Nicomedia that Constantine himself could pop down and maybe see what he could do to establish the unity that he so craved.

Plus, it went without saying that the weather in Nica would be much, much better.

Though all 1,800 or so bishops in the Empire were invited to the council, only around 300 were able to attend the opening of what would in time be called the Council of Nicaea in May of 325.

Though it doesn't seem like a great turnout, with each bishop being allowed to bring along a few priests and deacons to act as aides, the final list of attendees numbered in the thousands.

And those aides were not just there to go fetch coffee and take notes for a sleepy bishop.

Aside from the emperor, probably the two most important attendees at the council were Arius himself, who was a priest, not a bishop, and a young deacon named Anathasius, who was in the entourage of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria.

A hard line anti-Aryan, Anathasius made sure the powerful Alexander didn't go all wishy-washy on him.

Shortly after the council, the charismatic theologian would succeed Alexander to the bishopric of Alexandria, and become a hugely polarizing force within the church.

Constantine, as you can imagine, was not the president of Anathasius' fan club.

Though the catalyst for the council was the Aryan controversy, with so many bishops convening in one place, the church leadership, at the prodding of Constantine, took the opportunity to rule on a whole host of internal disagreements, including when Easter ought to be properly celebrated, what the final status of those who had lapsed during the persecutions ought to be, and what to do about the Malatians, a sect in the East who were seconding the rigorous stance of the Donatus.

What Constantine wanted was for the Council of Nicaea to settle all schisms within the Church.

As I have noted previously, the Emperor was not so much interested in which side was right or which interpretation was best, so long as, in the end, everyone agreed.

What record we have of Constantine's role in the deliberations of the Council show him repeatedly acting the part of peacemaker, reminding the bishops over and over again that their agreements far outnumbered their disagreements, and that the continued unity of Christianity was of paramount importance.

I don't really want to get bogged down in everything the council dealt with, but I do want to settle the Aryan question, as it was the main reason everyone was there to begin with.

The majority of the bishops in attendance, like the emperor himself, had no strong position on the issue, and were open to any formulation of the father and son's relationship that would resolve the crisis.

The opponents of Arianism, led by Osius and Alexander, exploited this fact to the hilt.

They had agreed beforehand to frame the debate using particular wording that that described the father and the son as being of the same substance, which they knew would be unacceptable to Arius and his followers.

The debate that unfolded over the course of the next month was a bitter one, and at one point Arius was even struck in the face by a rival clergyman.

Dismayed at the degree of vitriol on display, a group of bishops put forward a compromise creed that described the father and son as being of similar substance, but it was rejected by the hardliners in both camps.

More as a result of backroom politicking than persuasive public oratory, the anti-Aryans started to flip the delegates one by one until eventually the same substance formulation was accepted by a majority of the council.

Once the majority had turned against them, the moderate Aryans began to feel the heat, and with the threat of excommunication and exile hanging over their heads, they too signed on to the same substance creed.

In the end, only two of the staunchest Aryan bishops refused to sign.

The so-called Nicene Creed was adopted by the council as Orthodoxy in June of 325.

It stated that Jesus Christ was God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same substance as the Father, by whom all things were made.

Opposition to this formulation was now considered heretical.

Arius, just as Osius and his allies had predicted, refused to accept the Creed's language, and was exiled by Constantine to Illyria, far away from his power base in Egypt.

Though the matter appeared to be settled for good, neither Arius nor the Arians were done just yet.

The council then moved on to its remaining business, and made decisions on how to calculate the date of Easter, what to do about the Malatians, they were to be treated leniently, and what ought to be the Church's final position on Trotatorius.

They were to be accepted back without the need for rebaptism.

By the end of the meeting in June of 325, the assembled bishops ruled on at least twenty, though possibly more, points of canon law.

These included the recognition that the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch had a sort of super authority over and above normal bishops, a a prohibition on clergy engaging in usury, and a law against self-castration, which, yeah, yikes.

All in all, the Council of Nicaea did exactly what Constantine wanted, while simultaneously failing to do what Constantine wanted.

The collection of bishops had come together and successfully determined where to draw the line between orthodoxy and heresy on a host of issues.

It had given the Christians a new sense of global unity by moving the Church away from the patchwork series of beliefs that varied from time to time and from place to place.

But if he was hoping the establishment of this new orthodoxy was going to actually end the arguments between the Christians, that men declared heretical were just going to lay down their beliefs and give up the fight, then Constantine was in for a rude awakening.

Far from putting these matters to bed, the Council of Nicaea simply wound up codifying the position of one side of the argument.

Constantine just did not grasp that the religion he had adopted had never actually been unified.

It had appeared to be one monolithic force when it was set against the dominant Greco-Roman culture, but once you actually got into it, it turned out that Christian belief was almost as varied as pagan belief.

The Council of Nicaea was not going to stop Arius from preaching what he believed to be true.

It was not just a matter of life and death for him, but a matter of eternal salvation.

The Donatists, the Malatians, and all the other minor heresies would eventually be stamped out, but the proclamation of a bunch of bishops meeting on the coast of the Aegean Sea was not going to do the job on its own.

But as the council wrapped up, Constantine had a pretty good feeling about things, and believed that his vision of one emperor ruling one empire and one church serving one God was close at hand.

Next time, we will delve into more worldly matters and discuss what Constantine was up to when he wasn't promoting and defending Christianity.

There were, after all, still wars to be fought and a government to run, so it's not like Constantine could just hole up in church councils all the time and debate the finer points of theology.

Plus, there was a certain city that needed building.

From Australia to San Francisco, Colin Jewelry brings timeless craftsmanship and modern lab-grown diamond engagement rings to the US.

Explore solitaire, trilogy, halo, and bezel settings, or design a custom piece that tells your love story.

With expert guidance, a lifetime warranty, and a talented team of in-house jewels behind every piece, your perfect ring is made with meaning.

Visit our Union Street Showroom or explore the range at colournjewelry.com.

Your ring your way.