The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (9 page)

One would like to hear more about the
tricennalia
celebrations in Jerusalem. Eusebius writes with wonderment of the numbers of the assembled bishops, and of the distant lands from which they had come: they even included, he tells us, 'a holy prelate from Persia, deeply versed in the sacred oracles'. All, he goes on, were received by the Imperial Notary and entertained with feasts and banquets, while there were also lavish distributions of food, clothing and money to the poor of the city. Most of his account, however, is devoted to the endless series of sermons and dissertations that were pronounced, and in particular to an interminable one of his own which he was to repeat, in the presence of the Emperor, on his return to Constantinople. Of the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself he tells us nothing at all.

Still less do we know how the
tricennalia
were marked in Rome. The Christians, we read, celebrated them by transferring the presumed remains of St Peter and St Paul from the catacombs of St Sebastian to the two splendid new basilicas that Constantine had built near the sites of their respective martyrdoms. But those who had remained faithful to the old religion, who despised the Emperor as an apostate and his new city as an upstart, who believed Rome to be the eternal capital of the Empire and the world, unchallengeable and unchangeable - in what way did they observe Constantine's anniversary? Did they invite him to par-

1 Socrates Scholasticus, for example, records that Arius was taken short while 'parading proudly through the midst of the city, attracting the notice of all the people', just as he was passing through the Forum of Constantine. Socrates is admittedly writing in the first half of the following century, but he inspires confidence when he writes that 'the scene of the catastrophe is still shown at Constantinople ... behind the shambles in the colonnade: and, in the way that people still point to it as they pass by, the memory of this extraordinary way of death is perpetually preserved.'

ticipate, as they had ten years before? Were they offended, or relieved, by his non-appearance? We cannot tell. As for the Emperor himself, it is doubtful whether he spared the matter a moment's thought.

His place at such a time was his new capital, where the celebrations -in contrast to those that had marked the city's consecration and dedication - were exclusively Christian. (Between
331
and
334
he had issued a series of decrees effectively closing down all pagan temples in the Empire.) In the course of these festivities, however, he took the opportunity of announcing the promotion of his two nephews - the sons of his half-brother Delmatius - to key positions in the State. The elder of the boys, named after his father, was proclaimed Caesar; the younger, Hannibalianus, was appointed King of Pontus and given the hand of his first cousin, the Emperor's daughter Constantina, in marriage. With the additional title of King of Kings - shamelessly appropriated from the Persians - he was then sent off with his bride to rule in Pontus, that wild, mountainous region that extends back from the rainswept southern shore of the Black Sea.

The elevation of these two youths brought the number of reigning Caesars effectively to five, Constantine's three sons by Fausta having already been raised to similar rank - the youngest, Constans, only two years previously, at the age of ten. It has been suggested that by multiplying their number the Emperor was deliberately attempting to reduce the Caesars' prestige: with advancing age he was becoming ever more convinced of a special divine dispensation that singled him out from his fellow-men, even those of his own family. The Caesars enjoyed viceregal powers in the various provinces of the Empire to which he had appointed them, but such glory as might attach to their station must be seen, he was determined, only as a reflection of his own. Never at any time in his life did he consider appointing a second Augustus, as Diocletian had intended.

But his very reluctance to delegate authority in the capital imposed on Constantine a workload of almost Herculean proportions; and early in
337
he seems to have suspected that he was ill. He had spent the winter in Asia Minor mobilizing his army - for the young King Shapur II of Persia was making no secret of his territorial ambitions and it was now plain to everyone that war could not be long in coming - during which he had shown all the energy, stamina and endurance that had long made him a legend among his men. Then, shortly before Easter, he returned to Constantinople - there to put the finishing touches to the great Church of the Holy Apostles which he had begun a few years before on the high spur of land which forms the city's fourth hill.1 Perhaps he already suspected that he had been stricken, for it was at this time that he gave orders for his tomb to be prepared in the church; but only after Easter was past did his health begin seriously - and obviously - to fail. The baths of the capital having proved useless, he moved on to those at Helenopolis, the city that he had rebuilt in honour of his mother; and it was there, so Eusebius tells us, that, 'kneeling on the pavement of the church itself, he for the first time received the imposition of hands in prayer'2 - becoming, in short, a catechumen. Then he started back to the capital, but when he reached the suburbs of Nicomedia found that he could go no further; nor could the momentous step that he had so long considered be any further delayed. Summoning the local bishops, he addressed them:

The long-awaited time has finally come, when I have hoped and prayed to obtain the salvation of God ... Now I too may have the blessing of that seal which confers immortality, the seal of salvation itself. I had thought to receive it in the waters of the Jordan . . . but it pleases God, who knows what is best for us, that I should receive it here. So be it, then, and without delay; and should it be the will of Him who is Lord of life and death that my existence here should be prolonged ...
I shall prescribe for myself henceforth a way of life that befits his service.

And so at last Constantine the Great, for years a self-styled bishop of the Christian Church, was baptised by Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia; and when it was done, 'he arrayed himself in imperial vestments white and radiant as light, and lay himself down on a couch of the purest white, refusing ever to clothe himself in purple again'.

Why - the question has been asked all through history - why did Constantine delay his baptism until he was on his deathbed? The most obvious answer - and the most likely - is Gibbon's:

The sacrament of baptism was supposed to contain a full and absolute expiation of sin; and the soul was instantly restored to its original purity, and entitled to the promise of eternal salvation. Among the proselytes of Christianity, there were many who judged it imprudent to precipitate a salutary rite, which could not be repeated; to throw away an inestimable privilege, which could never be recovered.

There was indeed nothing unusual, in those early days of Christianity, in deferring baptism until the last possible moment; forty-three years later, we shall find the devout Theodosius the Great doing much the same. And Constantine himself seems to corroborate this explanation in the last sentence of his speech - though whether Eusebius has reported the words which his hero actually spoke, rather than those which the good bishop felt he ought to have spoken, is another open question. A more recent historian1 has suggested that the Emperor's first sentence may be the more revealing: if he had had to wait so long for something he wanted so much, it could only be because that thing had heretofore been denied him. This interpretation is certainly possible, but seems somehow less likely. Constantine had been guilty of many sins - the murder of his wife and son for a start - but these would have been washed away by his baptism; and although his appearance, especially at formal functions, might have provoked an occasional shudder among the more traditionally minded of his subjects,
2
there is no contemporary evidence to suggest that his private life in his seventh decade was such as to debar him from the Church. (Later stories of a growing
penchant
for homosexuality are almost certainly without foundation.) In any case, few churchmen would have jeopardized their careers by refusing their Emperor an earlier request for baptism had he made one.

After a reign of thirty-one years - the longest of any Roman Emperor since Augustus - Constantine died at noon on Whit Sunday, 22 May
337.
His body was placed in a golden coffin draped in purple and brought to Constantinople, where it lay in state on a high platform in the main hall of the Palace, surrounded by candles set in tall golden candlesticks and presenting, so Eusebius assures us, 'a marvellous spectacle such as no mortal had exhibited on earth since the world itself began'. And there it seems to have remained, not for a few days only but for some three and a half months, during which time the court ceremonial was carried on in Constantine's name precisely as if his death had never occurred. No one was yet sure which of the five young Caesars was to

2
'The Asiatic pomp which had been adopted by the pride of Diocletian assumed an air of softness and effeminacy in the person of Constantine. He is represented with false hair of various colours, laboriously arranged by the skilful artists of the times; a diadem of new and more expensive fashion; a profusion of gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets; and a variegated flowing robe of silk, most curiously embroidered with flowers of gold. In such apparel,' sniffs Gibbon, 'scarcely to be excused by the youth and folly of Elagabalus, we are at a loss to discover the wisdom of an aged monarch and the simplicity of a Roman veteran."

assume the vacant throne, and the uncertainties of an openly acknowledged interregnum were not to be risked unnecessarily.

Where the succession was concerned, the army was the first to make its wishes known. Although the title of Augustus continued, in theory at least, to be elective, the soldiers everywhere proclaimed that they would accept no one but Constantine's sons, reigning jointly. With Crispus dead, that left the three sons born to Fausta: the Caesar in Gaul Constantine II, the Caesar in the East Constantius, and the Caesar in Italy Constans;1 and of these it was naturally Constantius, now a young man of twenty, who hastened to the capital after his father's death and presided over his funeral.

This was an extraordinary occasion, as Constantine had intended that it should be. The burial itself he had personally planned down to the last detail, and in view of his known love of ceremonial and parade it seems more than likely that the preliminaries were also carried out according to his instructions. The funeral procession was led by Constantius, with detachments of soldiers in full battle array; then came the body itself in its golden coffin, surrounded by companies of spearmen and heavy-armed infantry. Vast crowds followed behind. From the Great Palace it wound its way round the north-eastern end of the Hippodrome to the Milion, and thence along the Mese to a point some quarter of a mile short of the Constantinian walls, where it turned off to the right to the newly-completed church of the Holy Apostles. 'This building,' Eusebius tells us,

[Constantine] had carried to a vast height and brilliantly decorated by encasing it from the foundations to the roof with marble slabs of various colours. The inner roof he had formed of finely fretted work, overlaying it throughout with gold. The external covering .. . was of brass rather than tiles; and this too was splendidly and profusely adorned with gold, reflecting the rays of the sun with a brilliancy that dazzled those that beheld it, even from a distance. And the dome was entirely surrounded with delicately carved tracery, wrought in brass and gold.

But that was only the beginning:

He had in fact chosen this spot in the prospect of his own death, anticipating with extraordinary fervour of faith that his body would share their title with the

i The distressing lack of
imagination shown by Constantine
in the naming of his children has caused much confusion among past historians, to say nothing of their readers. The latter can take comfort in the knowledge that it lasts for a single generation only - which, in a history such as this, is soon over.

Apostles themselves and that he should then become, even after death, the object with them of the devotions which should be here performed in their honour. He accordingly caused twelve sarcophagi to be set up in this church, like sacred pillars, in honour and memory of the number of the Apostles, in the centre of which was placed his own, having six of theirs on either side of it.

For the last few years of his life Constantine had regularly used the title
Isapostolos,
'Equal of the Apostles'; now at his death he gave, as it were, physical substance to that claim. From the moment that the idea first took shape in his mind, his agents had been scouring the Eastern Mediterranean for alleged relics of the Twelve to place in their respective sarcophagi; and his choice of his own position in the midst of his peers, with six of them on each hand, strongly suggests that he saw himself as yet greater than they - a symbol, perhaps of the Saviour in person: God's Vice-Gerent on earth.

It was, indeed, a fine resting-place; but Constantine was not to occupy it for long. In his capital, as in so many cities of the Empire, he had tried to build too much, too quickly. There was in consequence a chronic shortage of skilled workmen, and a general tendency to skimp on such things as foundations, wall thicknesses and buttressing. The Church of the Holy Apostles, for all its outward magnificence, was at bottom jerry-built. Within a quarter of a century of its completion, the state of the fabric began giving cause for alarm. Before long the great golden dome was in imminent danger of collapse, and the unpopular Patriarch Macedonius gave orders for the Emperor's body to be removed to safety in the nearby Church of St Acacius the Martyr. Unfortunately, there were many in the city to whom such a step was nothing short of sacrilege, and many others who gratefully seized any weapon with which to attack the Patriarch; serious rioting broke out, in the course of which -according to Socrates — several people were killed, and 'the courtyard [of the church] was covered with gore, and the well also which was in it overflowed with, blood, which ran into the adjacent portico and thence even into the very street'.

The Church of the Holy Apostles did not, in the event, collapse as the Patriarch had feared it would; it stood - if somewhat unsteadily - for two centuries until, in
550,
it was completely rebuilt by Justinian. Of those twelve apostolic sarcophagi, and the great tomb of the Emperor among them, not a trace remains.

Julian the Apostate

[337-63]

O thou mother of Gods and of men, who sharest the throne of the great Zeus .. . O life-giving Goddess, who art the wisdom and the providence and the creator of our very souls . . . Grant to all men happiness, and that highest happiness of all which is the knowledge of the Gods; and grant to the Roman people that they may cleanse themselves of the stain of impiety . . .