Was his conversion sincere—was it an act of religious belief, or a consummate stroke of political wisdom? Probably the latter.33 His mother Helena had turned to Christianity when Constantius divorced her; presumably she had acquainted her son with the excellences of the Christian way; and doubtless he had been impressed by the invariable victory that had crowned his arms under the banner and cross of Christ. But only a skeptic would have made so subtle a use of the religious feelings of humanity. The Historia Augusta quotes him as saying, “it is Fortuna that makes a man emperor”34—though this was a bow to modesty rather than to chance. In his Gallic court he had surrounded himself with pagan scholars and philosophers.35 After his conversion he seldom conformed to the ceremonial requirements of Christian worship. His letters to Christian bishops make it clear that he cared little for the theological differences that agitated Christendom—though he was willing to suppress dissent in the interests of imperial unity. Throughout his reign he treated the bishops as his political aides; he summoned them, presided over their councils, and agreed to enforce whatever opinion their majority should formulate. A real believer would have been a Christian first and a statesman afterward; with Constantine it was the reverse. Christianity was to him a means, not an end.
He had seen in his lifetime the failure of three persecutions; and it was not lost upon him that Christianity had grown despite them. Its adherents were still very much in the minority; but they were relatively united, brave, and strong, while the pagan majority was divided among many creeds, and included a dead weight of simple souls without conviction or influence. Christians were especially numerous in Rome under Maxentius, and in the East under Licinius; Constantine’s support of Christianity was worth a dozen legions to him in his wars against these men. He was impressed by the comparative order and morality of Christian conduct, the bloodless beauty of Christian ritual, the obedience of Christians to their clergy, their humble acceptance of life’s inequalities in the hope of happiness beyond the grave; perhaps this new religion would purify Roman morals, regenerate marriage and the family, and allay the fever of class war. The Christians, despite bitter oppression, had rarely revolted against the state; their teachers had inculcated submission to the civil powers, and had taught the divine right of kings. Constantine aspired to an absolute monarchy; such a government would profit from religious support; the hierarchical discipline and ecumenical authority of the Church seemed to offer a spiritual correlate for monarchy. Perhaps that marvelous organization of bishops and priests could become an instrument of pacification, unification, and rule?
Nevertheless, in a world still preponderantly pagan, Constantine had to feel his way by cautious steps. He continued to use vague monotheistic language that any pagan could accept. During the earlier years of his supremacy he carried out patiently the ceremonial required of him as pontifex maximus of the traditional cult; he restored pagan temples, and ordered the taking of the auspices. He used pagan as well as Christian rites in dedicating Constantinople. He used pagan magic formulas to protect crops and heal disease.36
Gradually, as his power grew more secure, he favored Christianity more openly. After 317 his coins dropped one by one their pagan effigies, until by 323 they bore only neutral inscriptions. A legal text of his reign, questioned but not disproved, gave Christian bishops the authority of judges in their dioceses;37 other laws exempted Church realty from taxation,38 made Christian associations juridical persons, allowed them to own land and receive bequests, and assigned the property of intestate martyrs to the Church.39 Constantine gave money to needy congregations, built several churches in Constantinople and elsewhere, and forbade the worship of images in the new capital. Forgetting the Edict of Milan, he prohibited the meetings of heretical sects, and finally ordered the destruction of their conventicles.40 He gave his sons an orthodox Christian education, and financed his mother’s Christian philanthropies. The Church rejoiced in blessings beyond any expectation. Eusebius broke out into orations that were songs of gratitude and praise; and all over the Empire Christians gathered in festal thanksgiving for the triumph of their God.
Three clouds softened the brilliance of this “cloudless day”: the monastic secession, the Donatist schism, the Arian heresy. In the interval between the Decian and the Diocletian persecution the Church had become the richest religious organization in the Empire, and had moderated its attacks upon wealth. Cyprian complained that his parishioners were mad about money, that Christian women painted their faces, that bishops held lucrative offices of state, made fortunes, lent money at usurious interest, and denied their faith at the first sign of danger.41 Eusebius mourned that priests quarreled violently in their competition for ecclesiastical preferment.42 While Christianity converted the world, the world converted Christianity, and displayed the natural paganism of mankind. Christian monasticism arose as a protest against this mutual adjustment of the spirit and the flesh. A minority wished to avoid any indulgence of human appetite, and to continue the early Christian absorption in thoughts of eternal life. Following the custom of the Cynics, some of these ascetics renounced all possessions, donned the ragged robe of the philosopher, and subsisted on alms. A few, like Paul the Hermit, went to live as solitaries in the Egyptian desert. About 275 an Egyptian monk, Anthony, began a quarter century of isolated existence first in a tomb, then in an abandoned mountain castle, then in a rock-hewn desert cell. There he struggled nightly with frightful visions and pleasant dreams, and overcame them all; until at last his reputation for sanctity filled all Christendom, and peopled the desert with emulating eremites. In 325 Pachomius, feeling that solitude was selfishness, gathered anchorites into an abbey at Tabenne in Egypt, and founded that cenobitic, or community, monasticism which was to have its most influential development in the West. The Church opposed the monastic movement for a time, and then accepted it as a necessary balance to its increasing preoccupation with government.
Within a year after Constantine’s conversion the Church was torn by a schism that might have ruined it in the very hour of victory. Donatus, Bishop of Carthage, supported by a priest of like name and temper, insisted that Christian bishops who had surrendered the Scriptures to the pagan police during the persecutions had forfeited their office and powers; that baptisms or ordinations performed by such bishops were null and void; and that the validity of sacraments depended in part upon the spiritual state of the ministrant. When the Church refused to adopt this stringent creed, the Donatists set up rival bishops wherever the existing prelate failed to meet their tests. Constantine, who had thought of Christianity as a unifying force, was dismayed by the chaos and violence that ensued, and was presumably not unmoved by the occasional alliance of Donatists with radical movements among the African peasantry. He called a council of bishops at Aries (314), confirmed its denunciation of the Donatists, ordered the schismatics to return to the Church, and decreed that recalcitrant congregations should lose their property and their civil rights (316). Five years later, in a momentary reminiscence of the Milan edict, he withdrew these measures, and gave the Donatists a scornful toleration. The schism continued till the Saracens overwhelmed orthodox and heretic alike in the conquest of Africa.
In those same years Alexandria saw the rise of the most challenging heresy in the history of the Church. About 318 a priest from the Egyptian town of Baucalis startled his bishop with strange opinions about the nature of Christ. A learned Catholic historian describes him generously:
Arius . . . was tall and thin, of melancholy look, and an aspect that showed traces of his austerities. He was known to be an ascetic, as could be seen from his costume—a short tunic without sleeves, under a scarf that served as a cloak. His manner of speaking was gentle; his addresses were persuasive. The consecrated virgins, who were numerous in Alexandria, held him in great esteem; and he counted many stanch supporters among the higher clergy.43
Christ, said Arius, was not one with the Creator, he was rather the Logos, the first and highest of all created beings. Bishop Alexander protested, Arius persisted. If, he argued, the Son had been begotten of the Father, it must have been in time; the Son therefore could not be coeternal with the Father. Furthermore, if Christ was created, it must have been from nothing, not from the Father’s substance; Christ was not “consubstantial” with the Father.44 The Holy Spirit was begotten by the Logos, and was still less God than the Logos. We see in these doctrines the continuity of ideas from Plato through the Stoics, Philo, Plotinus, and Origen to Arius; Platonism, which had so deeply influenced Christian theology, was now in conflict with the Church.
Bishop Alexander was shocked not only by these views but by their rapid spread even among the clergy. He called a council of Egyptian bishops at Alexandria, persuaded it to unfrock Arius and his followers, and sent an account of the proceedings to other bishops. Some of these objected; many priests sympathized with Arius, throughout the Asiatic provinces clergy as well as laity divided on the issue, and made the cities ring with such “tumult and disorder . . . that the Christian religion,” says Eusebius, “afforded a subject of profane merriment to the pagans, even in their theaters.”45 Constantine, coming to Nicomedia after overthrowing Licinius, heard the story from its bishop. He sent both Alexander and Arius a personal appeal to imitate the calm of philosophers, to reconcile their differences peaceably, or at least to keep their debates from the public ear. The letter, preserved by Eusebius, clearly reveals Constantine’s lack of theology, and the political purpose of his religious policy.
I had proposed to lead back to a single form the ideas which all people conceive of the Deity; for I feel strongly that if I could induce men to unite on that subject, the conduct of public affairs would be considerably eased. But alas! I hear that there are more disputes among you than recently in Africa. The cause seems to be quite trifling, and unworthy of such fierce contests. You, Alexander, wished to know what your priests were thinking on a point of law, even on a portion only of a question in itself entirely devoid of importance; and you, Arius, if you had such thoughts, should have kept silence. . . . There was no need to make these questions public . . . since they are problems that idleness alone raises, and whose only use is to sharpen men’s wits . . . these are silly actions worthy of inexperienced children, and not of priests or reasonable man.46
The letter had no effect. To the Church the question of the “consubstantiality” (homoousia) as against the mere similarity (homoiousia) of the Son and the Father was vital both theologically and politically. If Christ was not God, the whole structure of Christian doctrine would begin to crack; and if division were permitted on this question, chaos of belief might destroy the unity and authority of the Church, and therefore its value as an aide to the state. As the controversy spread, setting the Greek East aflame, Constantine resolved to end it by calling the first ecumenical—universal—council of the Church. He summoned all bishops to meet in 325 at Bithynian Nicaea, near his capital Nicomedia, and provided funds for all their expenses. Not less than 318 bishops came, “attended” says one of them, “by a vast concourse of the lower clergy”: 47 the statement reveals the immense growth of the Church. Most of the bishops were from the Eastern provinces; many Western dioceses ignored the controversy; and Pope Silvester I, detained by illness, was content to be represented by some priests.
The Council met in the hall of an imperial palace. Constantine presided and opened the proceedings by a brief appeal to the bishops to restore the unity of the Church. He “listened patiently to the debates,” reports Eusebius, “moderated the violence of the contending parties,”48 and himself joined in the argument. Arius reaffirmed his view that Christ was a created being, not equal to the Father, but “divine only by participation.” Clever questioners forced him to admit that if Christ was a creature, and had had a beginning, he could change; and that if he could change he might pass from virtue to vice. The answers were logical, honest, and suicidal. Athanasius, the eloquent and pugnacious archdeacon whom Alexander had brought with him as a theological sword, made it clear that if Christ and the Holy Spirit were not of one substance with the Father, polytheism would triumph. He conceded the difficulty of picturing three distinct persons in one God, but argued that reason must bow to the mystery of the Trinity. All but seventeen of the bishops agreed with him, and signed a statement expressing his view. The supporters of Arius agreed to sign if they might add one iota, changing homoousion to homoiousion. The Council refused, and issued with the Emperor’s approval the following creed:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible or invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten . . . not made, being of one essence (homoousion) with the Father . . . who for us men and our salvation came down and was made flesh, was made man, suffered, rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and comes to judge the quick and the dead. . . .III 49
Only five bishops, finally only two, refused to sign this formula. These two, with the unrepentant Arius, were anathematized by the Council and exiled by the Emperor. An imperial edict ordered that all books by Arius should be burned, and made the concealment of such a book punishable with death.IV
Constantine celebrated the conclusion of the Council with a royal dinner, to all the assembled bishops, and then dismissed them with the request that they should not tear one another to pieces.51 He was mistaken in thinking that the controversy was ended, or that he himself would not change his view of it, but he was right in believing that he had struck a great blow for the unity of the Church. The Council signalized the conviction of the ecclesiastical majority that the organization and survival of the Church required a certain fixity of doctrine; and in final effect it achieved that practical unanimity of basic belief which gave the medieval Church its Catholic name. At the same time it marked the replacement of paganism with Christianity as the religious expression and support of the Roman Empire, and committed Constantine to a more definite alliance with Christianity than ever before. A new civilization, based on a new religion, would now rise over the ruins of an exhausted culture and a dying creed. The Middle Ages had begun.