КОНСТАНТИН И КОНСТАНТИНОВСКИ ИДЕАЛ

  • Андреј Лаут Британска академија

Abstract

I intentd to approach the topic ‘Constantine and the Constantinian Ideal’ under three headings: first, what was meant by the ‘conversion of Constantine’? secondly, how did this affect his behaviour towards Christians and the Church, and the Empire over which he reigned? and thirdly, what effect did this have on the Church’s understanding of itself and its place in the world? First, then, Constantine’s conversion. My position would be that there is no reason to doubt Constantine’s conversion, but we should not try to judge him by the doctrinal standards appropriate to a bishop, or by the moral standards appropriate to an ascetic. His faith was the faith of a successful army commander, who accepted that the outcome of military campaigns owed much to powers, higher than even a general’s, and who had found success in embracing the Christian faith. The Christian God, for him, was a God who brought him victory; the cross that he adopted as his symbol, in the form of the labarum, had lost much of its associations with a means of execution, and instead had become a symbol of victory. Christ’s victory over death, that the Cross symbolized for Christians, and had done for centuries, easily embraced the more mundane significance of victory over the death of military defeat. Secondly, how did Constantine’s conversion affect his behaviour to Christians and the Church, and, moreover, what were his expectations of the Church whose faith he had embraced? So far as Constantine’s expectations of the Church were concerned, one thing is very clear: he expected unity, he expected the Church to offer united prayers to God for himself and the Empire. It was the fear that a disunited Church would be hindered in offering such prayer that made Constantine so concerned about the unity of the Church. In order to promote this, Constantine very quickly became a patron of the Church, providing funds for the building of churches, especially those that had been damaged in the Great Persecution; an early letter sets out the terms in which actions taken against Christians are to be reversed, including the restitution of property taken from Christians and from the Church. Whether we are to see this as an attempt to Christianize the Empire, to bring about a union of Church and State, to use later language, may be doubted. This sense of political action as required by the personal duty of the ruler as a Christian applies to a good deal of what we might regard as the promotion of a political programme, not only in late antiquity, but well into the Middle Ages: it is a matter of the personal responsibility, and opportunities, of a Christian ruler, rather than any vision of the union of Church and State. Moreover, the progress of any policy—whether persecution in the early centuries or a fight against paganism under Christian emperors—would have been uneven and localized. Furthermore, Constantine was aware that belief cannot be compelled; he might forbid sacrifice, but had no power of the hearts of his subjects. So he proclaims tolerance, while making clear his own view of the falsity of pagan religion. Our third question is about what effect Constantine’s conversion and his attitude to the Church changed the Church’s understanding of itself and its place in the world. The Church was now favoured by the Emperor, and began to form part of the Emperor’s plans for his empire, even, one could say, the spearhead of those plans. We have already noted how prayer for the Emperor (or Emperors) was a long-established practice within the Church. The way the Christian religion had spread throughout the Empire, mainly, that is, through the cities, meant that the structures of the Church already conformed to a large degree to the administrative structures of the Empire. The Roman Empire claimed to govern the whole inhabited world, called in Greek the oikoumene and the universal claim of the Roman Empire fitted well with the universal claim of the Church, or the Gospel. All too easily, the Church found itself fitting into the universal claims of the Emperor, which had begun to make even more sense with an ideology of monotheism. Eusebios, towards the end of Constantine’s life, envisages a henadic structure reaching from the One God, through the One Logos or Word of God, via the One Emperor, who is inspired by the Logos, and mirrors his relation to the one cosmos in his own rule of the one oikoumene, in which there is one Church, manifest in the united communities in each city, ruled by one bishop.

References

Clemens Romanus, Epistula I ad Corinthios, in: A. Jaubert, Clément de Rome. Épître aux Corinthiens, (Sources chrétiennes 167), Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1971.
Eusebius Caesariensis, Vita Constantini (=VC), in: F. Winkelmann (ed.), Eusebius Werke, Band 1.1: Über das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller), Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975. Eнглески превод у: Eusebius: Life of Constantine, (trans. with commentary by Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
--, Historia ecclesiastica (=HE), in: G. Bardy (ed.), Eusèbe de Césarée. Histoire ecclésiastique, 3 vols. (Sources chrétiennes 31, 41, 55), Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1952-1958.
--, De laudibus Constantini, in: I.A. Heikel (ed.), Eusebius Werke, vol. 1 (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 7), Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1902.
Justinianus Flavius, Novellae, in: W. Kroll and R. Schöll (eds.), Corpus iuris civilis, vol. 3. Berlin: Weidmann, 1895.
Libanius, Oratio 30 (=Pro templis), in: R. Foerster (ed.), Libanii opera, Hildesheim: Olms, 1997.
Tertullianus, Apologeticus Adversos Gentes Pro Christianis, in: F. Oehler (ed.), Tertullian. Apologeticum et ad nationes libri duo, Halle: E. Anton, 1849.
Published
2013-05-05