The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

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'Art thou--answer me, Cleotos--art thou one of the sect of Christians?'
she inquired.

'How can I tell?' he responded. 'I have so often asked that question of
my heart, and yet have not been able to understand what it has said to
me. There are times when I think that I must pray only to the gods of
Olympus, and that all I have heard or read about other gods must be
untrue. And again, when I read this little parchment of mine, and
remember other like things that have been told to me, and see how they
all speak of death as a relief to the sorrowing, and of another life in
which the down trodden and the captive shall be recompensed for what
they have suffered here, and know that I am one of those who need such
recompense--then I think that perhaps the only true God is the God of
the Christians. But I can learn so little about it all, that I cannot,
from my own judgment, determine which must be right.'

'Perhaps,' thoughtfully responded AEnone, 'it may be that if you tell me
all you know about it, I may be able to assist your conclusions. Who
knows what light I myself need, or how much of good we may borrow from
this new religion? It cannot be wrong to examine for one's self, and the
gods will not be angry if we gain good doctrine even from wrong sources,
so long as it may make us better. To-morrow, therefore, let us begin.'

Upon the morrow, therefore, and for many succeeding days, the mistress
and the slave spent stolen moments in groping after the truth of that
faith which makes the high and the low equal. It was a blind search, for
neither of them had any definite comprehension of the history and
doctrine upon which the new religion had been founded. Cleotos had
enjoyed the best opportunities of acquainting himself with it, having
naturally, in his wanderings about the East, and in his contact with the
poor and enslaved of many lands, heard much respecting the Christian
churches and their belief; but having had no instructor, a great portion
of what he had thus received came to him in but distorted and puzzling
array. And AEnone could not comprehend how, when the gods ruled Rome, and
Rome had scattered the Jews, one whom the Jews had had the power to slay
could be greater than all. But between them, for their study, lay the
leaf of parchment, closely covered with writing, beside which the
proudest and choicest philosophy of Rome seemed mockery; and though they
could not understand its full meaning, they knew that it spoke such good
words that, at the least, though it may have come from erring men, it
was no less worthy to have come from a God. Whatever the real nature of
the faith itself, here was certainly a proof that among its attributes
were mercy and peace and brotherly love toward all.

What might have been the consequences if AEnone had been free to pursue
the investigation as far as she wished--to send for other books to aid
her--to consult more learned teachers, who, though perhaps hiding in
secret shelter, were yet attainable with proper search, cannot be known.
It is not improbable that, in the end, one more might have been added to
the list of those few Roman women of high degree who even then gave up
all their rank and state in order to share the persecutions of the
Nazarenes. But it was otherwise ordered. Already indications, each
slight in itself, but altogether of important bearing, began to present
themselves before her, warning her that jealous eyes were watching her,
and that, if she would avoid the consequences of misconstruction, she
must bring her feeble investigations to a close.

Until now, Leta, in her struggle to alienate the husband from the wife,
had been actuated simply by the exigencies of her ambitious policy.
Bearing in her heart no especial hatred toward her mistress, she would
willingly have spared her, had not the circumstances of the case seemed
to require the ruin of the one preliminary to the exaltation of the
other. But now, other incentives to her efforts were added. First in her
mind came jealousy of Cleotos; for though she had cast him off, and bade
him stifle the yearnings of his heart, and, by the cool exercise of
intellect and craft alone, seek a better fortune for himself, it was
hardly natural that she should feel pleased to have him so soon appear
to take her at her word. She would have better liked to see him display
more prolonged sorrow for her loss. Then came jealousy of AEnone, who had
apparently been able to console him so early. And mingled with all this,
there began to press upon her a startling thought--one which she at
first contemned as unlikely and absurd--but which, though continually
driven away, so obstinately returned and commended itself to her
attention with newer plausibility, that at last she began to give bitter
and anxious heed to it. What if this constant communication between
AEnone and Cleotos were to result in a mutual love? It was no uncommon
thing in those days for the high-born lady to cast her eyes upon the
slave. How mortifying to herself, then, if, while she had been exerting
all her powers of fascination, taxing the utmost resources of her
intellect, and making of her whole existence one labored study for the
purpose of gaining an undue influence over the lord, Cleotos, without
art or disguise or apparent effort, or any advantage other than that
afforded by his simple-hearted, trusting nature, should have quietly won
from the other side of the house a victory of almost equal importance?
And further than this--what if the lord were to perish in some brawl or
by the hired assassin of a rival house; and AEnone, released from her
thraldom, and despising conventional scruples--as again was not uncommon
among the Roman ladies of that day--were to exalt her favorite with
legal honors, and thus make herself, Leta, his slave? This, to be sure,
was an improbable chance; but a mind as active as her own did not
disdain to foresee and provide against all contingencies.

Then, in addition to everything else, she became absorbed in the one
overwhelming and bitter reflection, that after all her sacrifice and
labor, the anticipated success might be escaping her. It is true that,
thanks to her efforts, the distance between Sergius and AEnone had
widened, until it seemed that there could never be a perfect reunion;
but all this, if the state of partial neglect which had existed in the
beginning could be relied upon as an indication, was a consequence which
might easily, in time, have come of itself. It is true that Sergius had
yielded himself a willing victim to the unlawful fascinations thrown
around him; but yet Leta could not avoid seeing that he regarded her not
with the deep, earnest love which she had hoped to inspire, but rather
with the trifling carelessness of one giving himself up to the plaything
of the hour. Not having, from the very first, been chary of the sidelong
glance and the winning smile, and whatever grace of style or manner
could tempt him to pursuit, as an illusive appearance of success seemed
to beckon her onward, her heart at times grew desperate with the
apprehension that all had been in vain. For Sergius, content that the
wife whom he neglected did not disturb his repose with idle complaints,
had no thought of inflicting any deeper injury upon her, being well
satisfied to have her remain and confer honor upon him by the grace with
which she maintained the dignity of his house. And though well pleased
to sun himself in Leta's smile, there never came to him the thought that
the slave could be worthy of any exaltation, or that her highest
ambition could prompt her to desire more than a continuance of the
companionship with which he honored her. All this Leta began to dimly
see; and there were times when, strive to hide it from her heart as she
would, it seemed as though he might be even growing weary of her.

Thus tormented with doubt and jealousy and the constantly increasing
suspicion of baffled ambition, how was she to act? To accept her
situation as a decree of fate, to fawn upon the mistress like a patient
slave, and, if the lord were to tire of her in the end and give himself
up to other captivations, to submit unmurmuringly to the unavoidable
necessity? All this some might consent to do; but surely not one like
herself, gifted with indomitable will, and stung to desperation with the
sense of great and irreparable sacrifices. To her there could be but one
course. She must abandon her slow and cautious policy, and seek the
earliest opportunity to urge the matter to its crisis. If, by sparing no
watchfulness or ingenuity, or by the exercise of bold and vigorous
manoeuvring, she could produce a quarrel and final separation between
Sergius and his wife, it might not be impossible for her to impress upon
him how much she was necessary to his happiness, and thereby elevate
herself into the vacant place. And if unsuccessful, at the least she
would be but sharing a ruin which would fall like an avalanche upon all
alike.

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR.

The last great imperial persecution of the Christians under Diocletian
and Galerius, which was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new
religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical
ruin of the persecutors. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting and
terrible disease (_morbus pedicularis_), described with great minuteness
by Eusebius and Lactantius. 'His body,' says Gibbon, 'swelled by an
intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with
ulcers and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which have
given their name to a most loathsome disease.' Diocletian had withdrawn
from the throne in 305, and in 313 put an end to his imbittered life by
suicide. In his retirement he found more pleasure in raising cabbage
than he had found in ruling the empire; a confession we may readily
believe. (President Lincoln, of the United States, during the dark days
of the civil war, in December, 1862, declared that he would gladly
exchange his position with any common soldier in the tented field.)
Maximin, who kept up the persecution in the East, even after the
toleration edict, as long as he could, died likewise a violent death by
poison, in 313. In this tragical end of their last three imperial
persecutors the Christians saw a palpable judgment of God. The edict of
toleration was an involuntary and irresistible concession of the
incurable impotence of heathenism and the indestructible power of
Christianity. It left but a step to the downfall of the one and the
supremacy of the other in the empire of the Caesars.

This great epoch is marked by the reign of Constantine I. He understood
the signs of the time, and acted accordingly. He was the man for the
times, as the times were prepared for him by that Providence which
controls both and fits them for each other. He placed himself at the
head of true progress, while his nephew, Julian the Apostate, opposed
it, and was left behind. He was the chief instrument for raising the
church from the low estate of oppression and persecution to
well-deserved honor and power. For this service a thankful posterity has
given him the surname of the Great, to which he was entitled, though not
by his moral character, yet doubtless by his military and administrative
ability, his judicious policy, his appreciation and protection of
Christianity, and the far-reaching consequences of his reign. His
greatness was not indeed of the first, but of the second order, and is
to be measured more by what he _did_ than by what he _was_. To the Greek
Church, which honors him even as a canonized saint, he has the same
significance as Charlemagne to the Latin.

Constantine, the first Christian Caesar, the founder of Constantinople
and the Byzantine empire, and one of the most gifted, energetic, and
successful of the Roman emperors, was the first representative of the
imposing idea of a Christian theocracy, or of that system of policy
which assumes all subjects to be Christians, connects civil and
religious rights, and regards church and state as the two arms of one
and the same divine government on earth. This was more fully developed
by his successors, it animated the whole Middle Age, and is yet working
under various forms in these latest times; though it has never been
fully realized, whether in the Byzantine, the German, or the Russian
empire, the Roman church-state, the Calvinistic republic of Geneva, or
the early Puritanic colonies of New England. At the same time, however,
Constantine stands also as the type of an undiscriminating and harmful
conjunction of Christianity with politics, of the holy symbol of peace
with the horrors of war, of the spiritual interests of the kingdom of
heaven with the earthly interests of the state.

In judging of this remarkable man and his reign, we must by all means
keep to the great historical principle, that all representative
characters act consciously or unconsciously as the free and responsible
organs of the spirit of their age, which moulds them first before they
can mould it in turn, and that the spirit of the age itself, whether
good or bad or mixed, is but an instrument in the hands of Divine
Providence, which rules and overrules all the actions and motives of
men.

Through a history of three centuries Christianity had already overcome
the world, and thus rendered such an outward revolution, as has attached
itself to the name of this prince, both possible and unavoidable. It
were extremely superficial to refer so thorough and momentous a change
to the personal motives of an individual, be they motives of policy, of
piety, or of superstition. But unquestionably every age produces and
shapes its own organs, as its own purposes require. So in the case of
Constantine. He was distinguished by that genuine political wisdom,
which, putting itself at the head of the age, clearly saw that idolatry
had outlived itself in the Roman empire, and that Christianity alone
could breathe new vigor into it and furnish its moral support.
Especially on the point of the external catholic unity, his monarchical
politics accorded with the hierarchical episcopacy of the church. Hence
from the year 313 he placed himself in close connection with the
bishops, made peace and harmony his first object in the Donatist and
Arian controversies, and gave the predicate 'catholic' to the church in
all official documents. And as his predecessors were supreme pontiffs of
the heathen religion of the empire, so he desired to be looked upon as a
sort of bishop, as universal bishop of the eternal affairs of the
church. All this by no means from mere self-interest, but for the good
of the empire, which, now shaken to its foundations and threatened by
barbarians on every side, could only by some new bond of unity be
consolidated and upheld until at least the seeds of Christianity and
civilization should be planted among the barbarians themselves, the
representatives of the future. His personal policy thus coincided with
the interests of the state. Christianity appeared to him, as it proved
in fact, the only efficient power for a political reformation of the
empire, from which the ancient spirit of Rome was fast departing, while
internal civil and religious dissensions and the outward pressure of the
barbarians threatened a gradual dissolution of society.

But with the political he united also a religious motive, not clear and
deep, indeed, yet honest, and strongly infused with the superstitious
disposition to judge of a religion by its outward success, and to
ascribe a magical virtue to signs and ceremonies. His whole family was
swayed by religious sentiment, which manifested itself in very different
forms, in the devout pilgrimages of his Helena, the fanatical Arianism
of Constantia and Constantius, and the fanatical paganism of Julian.
Constantine adopted Christianity first as a superstition, and put it by
the side of his heathen superstition, till finally in his conviction the
Christian vanquished the pagan, though without itself developing into a
pure and enlightened faith.

At first Constantine, like his father, in the spirit of the Neo-Platonic
syncretism of dying heathendom, reverenced all the gods as mysterious
powers; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in the year 308
he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year 321 he enjoined
regular consultation of the soothsayers in public misfortunes, according
to ancient heathen usage; even later, he placed his new residence,
Byzantium, under the protection of the God of the Martyrs and the
heathen goddess of Fortune; and down to the end of his life he retained
the title and the dignity of a _Pontifex Maximus_, or high priest of the
heathen hierarchy. His coins bore on the one side the letters of the
name of Christ, on the other the figure of the sun-god, and the
inscription _Sol invictus_. Of course these inconsistencies may be
referred also to policy and accommodation to the toleration edict of
313. Nor is it difficult to adduce parallels of persons who in passing
from Judaism to Christianity, or from Romanism to Protestantism, have
honestly so wavered between their old and their new position, that they
might be claimed by both. With his every victory over his pagan rivals,
Galerius, Maxentius, and Licinius, his personal leaning to Christianity
and his confidence in the magic power of the sign of the cross
increased; yet he did not formally renounce heathenism, and did not
receive baptism until, in 337, he was laid upon the bed of death.

He had an imposing and winning person, and was compared by flatterers
with Apollo. He was tall, broad shouldered, handsome, and of a
remarkably vigorous and healthy constitution, but given to excessive
vanity in his dress and outward demeanor, always wearing an oriental
diadem, a helmet studded with jewels, and a purple mantle of silk richly
embroidered with pearls and flowers worked in gold. His mind was not
highly cultivated, but naturally clear, strong, and shrewd, and seldom
thrown off its guard. He is said to have combined a cynical contempt of
mankind with an inordinate love of praise. He possessed a good knowledge
of human nature and administrative energy and tact.

His moral character was not without noble traits, among which a chastity
rare for the time, and a liberality and beneficence bordering on
wastefulness were prominent. Many of his laws and regulations breathed
the spirit of Christian justice and humanity, promoted the elevation of
the female sex, improved the condition of slaves and of unfortunates,
and gave free play to the efficiency of the church throughout the whole
empire. Altogether he was one of the best, the most fortunate, and the
most influential of the Roman emperors, Christian and pagan.

Yet he had great faults. He was far from being so pure and so venerable
as Eusebius, blinded by his favor to the church, depicts him, in his
bombastic and almost dishonestly eulogistic biography, with the evident
intention of setting him up as a model for all future Christian princes.
It must, with all regret, be conceded, that his progress in the
knowledge of Christianity was not a progress in the practice of its
virtues. His love of display and his prodigality, his suspiciousness and
his despotism, increased with his power.

The very brightest period of his reign is stained with gross crimes,
which even the spirit of the age and the policy of an absolute monarch
cannot excuse. After having reached, upon the bloody path of war, the
goal of his ambition, the sole possession of the empire, yea, in the
very year in which he summoned the great council of Nicaea, he ordered
the execution of his conquered rival and brother-in-law, Licinius, in
breach of a solemn promise of mercy (324). Not satisfied with this, he
caused soon afterward, from political suspicion, the death of the young
Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the worst of all
is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had incurred
suspicion of political conspiracy, and of adulterous and incestuous
purposes toward his stepmother Fausta, but is generally regarded as
innocent. This domestic and political tragedy emerged from a vortex of
mutual suspicion and rivalry, and calls to mind the conduct of Philip
II. toward Don Carlos, of Peter the Great toward his son Alexis, and of
Soliman the Great toward his son Mustapha. Later authors assert, though
gratuitously, that the emperor, like David, bitterly repented of this
sin. He has been frequently charged besides, though it would seem
altogether unjustly, with the death of his second wife Fausta (326?),
who, after twenty years of happy wedlock, is said to have been convicted
of slandering her stepson Crispus, and of adultery with a slave or one
of the imperial guards, and then to have been suffocated in the vapor of
an overheated bath. But the accounts of the cause and manner of her
death are so late and discordant as to make Constantine's part in it at
least very doubtful.

At all events Christianity did not produce in Constantine a thorough
moral transformation. He was concerned more to advance the outward
social position of the Christian religion, than to further its inward
mission. He was praised and censured in turn by the Christians and
pagans, the orthodox and the Arians, as they successively experienced
his favor or dislike. He bears some resemblance to Peter the Great, both
in his public acts and his private character, by combining great virtues
and merits with monstrous crimes, and he probably died with the same
consolation as Peter, whose last words were: 'I trust that in respect of
the good I have striven to do my people (the church), God will pardon my
sins.' It is quite characteristic of his piety that he turned the sacred
nails of the Saviour's cross, which Helena brought from Jerusalem, the
one into the bit of his war horse, the other into an ornament of his
helmet. Not a decided, pure, and consistent character, he stands on the
line of transition between two ages and two religions; and his life
bears plain marks of both. When at last on his deathbed he submitted to
baptism, with the remark, 'Now let us cast away all _duplicity_,' he
honestly admitted the conflict of two antagonistic principles which
swayed his private character and public life.

From these general remarks we turn to the leading features of
Constantine's life and reign, so far as they bear upon the history of
the church. We shall consider in order his youth and training, the
vision of the cross, the edict of toleration, his legislation in favor
of Christianity, his baptism and death.

Constantine, son of the co-emperor Constantius Chlorus, who reigned over
Gaul, Spain, and Britain till his death in 306, was born probably in the
year 272, either in Britain or at Naissus (now called Nissa), a town of
Dardania, in Illyricum. His mother was Helena, daughter of an innkeeper,
the first wife of Constantius, afterward divorced, when Constantius, for
political reasons, married a daughter of Maximian. She is described by
Christian writers as a discreet and devout woman, and has been honored
with a place in the catalogue of saints. Her name is identified with the
discovery of the cross and the pious superstitions of the holy places.
She lived to a very advanced age, and died in the year 326 or 327, in or
near the city of Rome. Rising by her beauty and good fortune from
obscurity to the splendor of the court, then meeting the fate of
Josephine, but restored to imperial dignity by her son, and ending as a
saint of the Catholic church: Helena would form an interesting subject
for a historical novel illustrating the leading events of the Nicene age
and the triumph of Christianity in the Roman empire.

Constantine first distinguished himself in the service of Diocletian in
the Egyptian and Persian wars; went afterward to Gaul and Britain, and
in the Praetorium at York was proclaimed emperor by his dying father and
by the Roman troops. His father before him held a favorable opinion of
the Christians as peaceable and honorable citizens, and protected them
in the West during the Diocletian persecution in the East. This
respectful, tolerant regard descended to Constantine, and the good
effects of it, compared with the evil results of the opposite course of
his antagonist Galerius, could but encourage him to pursue it. He
reasoned, as Eusebius reports from his own mouth, in the following
manner: 'My father revered the Christian God, and uniformly prospered,
while the emperors who worshipped the heathen gods, died a miserable
death; therefore, that I may enjoy a happy life and reign, I will
imitate the example of my father and join myself to the cause of the
Christians, who are growing daily, while the heathen are diminishing.'
This low utilitarian consideration weighed heavily in the mind of an
ambitious captain, who looked forward to the highest seat of power
within the gift of his age. Whether his mother, whom he always revered,
and who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in her eightieth year (A. D.
325), planted the germ of the Christian faith in her son, as Theodoret
supposes, or herself became a Christian through his influence, as
Eusebius asserts, must remain undecided. According to the heathen
Zosimus, whose statement is unquestionably false and malicious, an
Egyptian, who came out of Spain (probably the bishop Hosius of Cordova,
a native of Egypt, is intended), persuaded him, after the murder of
Crispus (which did not occur before 326), that by converting to
Christianity he might obtain forgiveness of his sins.

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