СЛИКА КОНСТАНТИНА ВЕЛИКОГ У ПОХВАЛНОМ СЛОВУ НИЋИФОРА ГРИГОРЕ И ЖИТИЈУ КОНСТАНТИНА И ЈЕЛЕНЕ ОД ЈОВАНА ХОРТАЗМЕНА
Abstract
Constantine the Great was one of the most celebrated emperors of the Christian ΟΙΚΟΥΜΕΝΗ. Besides various stories and legends that have created the image of the Emperor all of them had their origin in well-known historical facts that have marked the reign of the emperor Constantine and for which he was celebrated: 1) the defense of the Christians and the establishment of the Christian faith, 2) the restoration of peace after the civil wars and 3) the foundation of the new capital, Constantinople. Constantine the Great, thus, became a role model for his imperial successors who were compared to him and sometimes even celebrated as New Constantines. The last emperor to bear the name of New Constantine was Michael VIII Palaiologos. He has earned his Constantine name rightly, for it was during his reign that the Byzantines recaptured Constantinople in 1261. His son, Andronikos II, although he was not compared to Constantine in the speeches in which he was praised, has been celebrated as Constantine in the Ecclesiastical History of Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos for the restoration of Orthodoxy and for bringing peace and order within the Byzantine church. Thus the story of Constantine the Great served as a perfect model for the celebration of the religious policy of the emperor Andronikos. This is also the case with the Logos dedicated to Constantine the Great, written by one of the most prominent hagiographers of the Palaiologan period, Constantine Acropolites. In the Logos of Nikephoros Gregoras, written somewhere between 1334 and 1341/2, and in the Bios by Ioannes Chortasmenos, written probably during the siege of Constantinople by Murad II in 1422, the story is somewhat different. Both writers add nothing new to the already established image of the first Christian emperor. In both of these works stories about Constantine’s youth and education, his vision of the Cross, wars with Maxentius and Licinius, Arian controversy and the council of Nicea, as well as the foundation of Constantinople are present. Still, the two works slightly differ in genre and style. Since Gregoras’ work has been written more as a eulogy for the Emperor it contains more secular than spiritual elements. Chortasmenos’ work, on the other hand, is a Vita and thus it relates spiritual elements in more details (he tells us the story of Constantine’s conversion and places it in Rome, whereas Gregoras mentions Constantine’s baptism at the mere end of his Logos, saying that it was done at the emperor’s deathbed). Both works end with the invocation of Constantine’s name which, although a common place in the hagiographical literature, points out Empire’s need for protection and savior in the time of crisis and external danger. Logos and Bios should therefore be understood as a reminder of the glorious past of Byzantium through a story of its illustrious emperor, compared to the poor state of affairs in which the Empire was in the 14th and 15th centuries. The image of Constantine the Great in the time of the Palaiologan emperors did not differ from the already established image in the first centuries of Christianity. The wirters of the Palaiologan renaissance had nothing to add to the image of the illustrious emperor for there was nothing much illustrious about their time and their rulers that could be used for the construction of an even greater image of their famous imperial predecessor. Byzantine emperors were still compared to famous ancient rulers such as Cyrus and Alexander the Great, or biblical kings such as David and Solomon, but the one emperor who represented the mere peak of the Roman power and strength did not appear in the ΕΓΚΩΜΙΑ of that time. The invocation of Constantine the Great in some of the literary works served more as a reminder of the glory and fame the Empire once had and to which the Byzantines were still ideologically strongly connected. In those works the name of Constantine stood alone like a very distant ideal hardly achievable in the last centuries of empire’s existence.
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