As surprising as Constantine’s embrace of Christianity was, he appears to have come by it fairly honestly. It is very likely that Constantine’s faith had its origins in his mother, Helena, who was a Christian from her youth and had already opened the future emperor to “the inner life of the communities, which he admired for its monotheism and practicality of morals.”[2] He also appears to have been profoundly influenced by his tutor, the philosopher-rhetorician Lacantius, who accompanied him while he was an imperial hostage in Nicomedia and then through a portion of his time as emperor. Lacantius’ teachings on humanity’s shared need for justice likely influenced Constantine’s later decision to make Christian bishops into local magistrates, thereby expanding the poor's access to the Rome’s court system, and Lacantius' influence would result in the emperor’s consistent support for Christian intellectuals.[3]
Surpassing the influence of his mother Helena and Lacantius, however, was Constantine’s staggering ambition to imperial power and his somewhat surprising belief that worshiping the new god of the Christians would serve as the means of securing his military success. Historian Peter Brown notes that Constantine’s conversion to Christianity “was an act of supreme willfulness, such as only a charismatic Roman emperor could have undertaken” and one in defiance of the majority of the empire. In converting to Christianity, “[Constantine] put himself under the protection of the Christian God, and in so doing, he deliberately chose a God as big and as new as himself”, one that was “an all-powerful and transcendent deity who owed nothing to the past.”[4]
Constantine’s journey to becoming sole emperor of Rome began in the year 306 as his father, Constantius I, who was the emperor of the Western half of the Roman Empire, lay dying in what is now York in Britain. In 295, the prior Roman emperor Diocletian had divided the empire into east and west and appointed a ‘tetrarchy’ composed of two senior emperors who were each accompanied by deputy emperors-in-training to rule over the two vast parts of the empire. This essentially resulted in four different emperors perpetually vying for legitimacy and power. The danger of this approach became apparent soon after Diocletian’s abdication in 305. Upon Constantius I’s death in 306, the troops he commanded declared Constantius I’s son, Constantine, to be emperor. The military’s declaration of Constantine as emperor occurred in spite of the tetrarchy’s decision to replace Constantius with Flavius Valerius Severus. This set the stage for a civil war in which Constantine would defeat Maxentius, who through many dramatic twists and turns had become his rival for control of the western portion of the Roman empire, in the crucial battle at the Milvian Bridge in Rome of 312. A new, military-grade version of Christianity played a key role in this defeat for “during what became a crushing victory for Constantine, his troops bore on their shields a new Christian symbol, the Chi Rho, the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek combined as monogram.”[5] “The Christians ever after attributed the startlingly ‘easy’ conquest of Rome to the ‘new god’ who had instructed Constantine to draw on the cross as the new palladium of Rome.”[6]
Having defeated his rival in the western half of the empire, Constantine continued his quest to become sole emperor of all of Rome through a protracted challenge of the remaining emperor of the east, Licinius. With Constantine’s rise to power now closely tied to Christianity, Licinus acquiesced to the Edict of Milan in 313, considered the first imperial edict of religious toleration for Christians which granted Christianity legal status and rights in Rome.[7] However, over the course of the next ten years, as Constantine poured financial support for Christian clergy and churches, Licinius became increasingly anxious that Christians generally - but especially his Christian troops - would shift their loyalties toward Constantine. As a result, Licinius began sporadic persecutions of Christians which “became the substantive cause of the final war with Constantine, who was, no doubt, glad of the excuse which they provided for him.”[8] In 324, eighteen years after he had first been declared by his father’s troops to be emperor of western half of the empire, Constantine defeated Licinius, thereby completing his quest to become the sole emperor of Rome, and he did so under the banner of the new, militarily-styled god of the Christians.
Constantine’s version of the Christian faith represented a reinterpretation (if not radical transformation) of Christian teachings through the lens of his own military quest for imperial power. Gone missing is the Jesus who urged his followers to turn the other cheek, and the tradition of Christians being forbidden from serving in the military was replaced with not only Christian troops but also with the emergence of military chaplaincy.[9] In this reinterpretation, Constantine pulled from many sources. The supposedly Christian God Constantine was said to have called upon before his battle at the Milvian Bridge in 312 seems to have more in common with the Unconquered Sun god of soldiers and of military victory than with Jesus’ life and teachings. Nevertheless, despite Constantine’s apparent confusion on such matters, “as he began showering privileges on the Christian clergy, it is unlikely that many of them considered whether the Emperor should be given an theological cross-examination before they accepted their unexpected gifts.”[10] The considerable gifts and privileges now afforded to clergy would mark a significant turning point in how Christians thought about their newfound wealth and power.
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The material benefits of Constantine’s reign for Christians began even before he defeated Licinius in the east and had become sole emperor in 324. The Edict of Milan of 313 “officially acknowledged what had been a de facto reality of the church’s ownership of buildings, cemeteries, gardens, and other movable and immovable properties throughout the third century by ordering their restoration.”[11] Constantine’s imperial subsidy of the Church and the exemption of Christian clergy from taxation and civic duties began as early as that same year.[12] The imperial benefits made to Christians included Christian clergy becoming exempt from taxation; slaves being able to be manumitted before a gathering in the presence of a bishop; Sunday being declared a day of rest; and the rescinding of penalties against celibacy and childlessness, which represented an easing of prior restrictions on Christian clergy.[13]
Significantly, and as a harbinger of things to come, it is among these benefits that one also finds the legal privileging of Christians over and against Jews, possibly for the first time.[14] A new imperial prohibition stating that “Christians may not be insultingly called Jews” (Theodosian Code 16.8.9) signals a new era in which the legal distinctiveness of Christianity was established by revoking privileges previously extended to Judaism. Jews were no longer permitted to own Christian slaves (Theodosian Code 16.9.3); they were to refrain from harassing members of their communities who converted to Christianity (Theodosian Code 16.8.5); they were also no longer permitted to enter imperial service (Theodosian Code 16.8.24); and the building of synagogues was to cease (Theodosian Code 16.8.27). Constantine appears to have adopted Christians’ existing resentments toward Jewish communities and codified it into law.
Such privileging and prioritization of Christianity over Jewish communities but also generally represented a stunning change of fortunes for the clergy and communities who had just been fiercely persecuted by one of Constantine’s predecessors, Diocletian. Helen Rhee notes, “When Constantine seized the imperial power (in the West) with the power of the Christian God (312 CE), the church had been functioning as a formidable social and economic institution with massive operation of charity,” but that the impact of Constantine suddenly granting religious freedom, financial subsidy, and clerical exemption from taxes “was nothing less than revolutionary.”[15] Until Constantine, Christianity had been growing from a small Jewish sect in the first century to somewhere between 7 to 10 percent of the imperial population by the third century.[16] The dramatic shift in being just 7 to 10 percent of the empire-wide population in the third century to becoming the imperial religion in the fourth would transform Christianity forever.
One way of considering the material impact of this change is by looking at church buildings. Bill Leadbetter notes that prior to Constantine, “Christians had not developed a distinct architecture for their public buildings for the simple reason that they did not have many,” and that those which Christians did possess “were, by and large, private dwellings converted for the purpose…”[17] In the city of Rome, there were twenty-five known pre-Constantinian Christian communities that met in converted premises, humble venues that had largely been confiscated by the state in the emperor Diocletian’s persecutions. Constantine both restored these properties to Christians after his victory over Maxentius in 312, and jumpstarted Christianity’s love of church architecture through an empire-wide building campaign, for such humble venues “did not befit a religious community now in imperial favour.”[18] Famous examples of churches built in this period include “St. Peter’s and the Basilica of St. Laurentius (outside the walls) in Rome, the Golden Church in Antioch, the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Constantinople, and churches on the supposed sites of Golgotha, of Christ’s resurrection, and at Mamre for the theophany to Abraham.”[19] It is revealing of how Constantine understood his own role in Christian history in that he began construction on his own mausoleum seven years before his death. This would become the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople “intended to be endowed with memorials of all twelve apostles” wherein “he would lie as the thirteenth and last of the messengers of God.”[20]
Alongside the development of church architecture came innovations in the liturgical objects and vestments that were on display during the worship that took place within them. Among Constantine’s donations were fifty copies of the Bible, two of which remain today called the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. Diarmaid MacCullough writes that these fifty bibles represented “an extraordinary expenditure on creating deluxe written texts, for which the parchment alone would have required the death of around five thousand cows (so much for Christian disapproval of animal sacrifice).”[21]
Constantine’s wealth also transformed how bishops and clergy dressed in ways that still remain with us today. “The copes, chasubles, mitres, maples, fans, bells, censers of solemn ceremony throughout the Church from East to West were all borrowed from the daily observances of imperial and royal households. Anything less would have been a penny-pinching insult to God.”[22] This has led to that visual dissonance which I personally still struggle to overcome: namely, of churches worshiping a Jewish man crucified by the Roman Empire in liturgies led by clergy vested in Roman imperial splendor.
In addition to these more obvious displays of wealth, Peter Brown’s book Eye of the Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD, offers a fascinating look at Constantine’s decision to release bishops and clergy both from taxes as well as various forms of public service. “From 313 onward, Constantine granted to bishops and clergymen the same privileges that had always been accorded by Roman emperors to those who furthered the cultural and religious ends of Roman society,” which “consisted of exemption from many forms of public service and even (but more grudgingly) from certain forms of personal taxation.”[23] This resulted in clergy enjoying an enviable leisure which allowed them to devote themselves wholeheartedly to worship. This, in turn, was intended to ensure the loyalty of Christian clergy to Constantine.[24]
To understand the day-to-day significance of this decision to grant tax exemptions and leisure to the clergy, Brown argues we have to look at the ways that taxes and duties were collected across the Roman empire. The Roman empire functioned as a minimal state in which as many tasks of government were delegated to local authorities, particularly town councillors (the curiales) and the trade associations (the collegia and the corpora) of the cities. “Imperial demands for labor bit into the time of town councillors—and even, for the average townsman (who was subject to corvée labor), into their own bodies—quite as deeply as the imperial taxes bit into their pockets. To receive exemption from such duties was to step into an altogether enviable oasis of leisure.”[25]
The newly granted benefit of tax exemptions and clergy leisure was immediately and repeatedly contested by the curiales, collegia, and corpora who would then have to pick up the slack. In this zero-sum game, “the more members each group lost through some of their number receiving personal exemptions, the more ‘official duties, physical toil and sweat’ would be left to be borne by the few who remained.”[26] This set up a competitive dynamic between town councils, trade associations, and Christian communities who were all now seeking moderately wealthy plebians to fill leadership roles. As a result of Constantine’s tax exemptions for clergy, Christians were now able to draw from the moderately wealthy who would otherwise have been pressured into service as town councilors and heads of trade associations who helped administer Rome’s minimal state.
And yet the freedoms and privileges, the building campaigns, vestments and liturgical objects, the tax exemptions and leisure -- namely, all the wealth which now very publicly flowed into Christian churches - were in exchange for political support from clergy and soldiers who now expressed their loyalty to the Christian emperor.[27] In addition, “with imperial largesse, Constantine made the church not only officially visible (much more so than before) but also accountable to the public for the very public gifts it received.”[28] The considerable wealth now flowing to the clergy and into churches came with a very public responsibility now placed upon the Christian church to care for Rome’s poor.
A New Public Role: Poverty and Justice
Within the span of a few decades, Christians went from being a persecuted minority -- a religion whose stories of crucifixion and martyrdoms were at the hands of imperial Rome -- to being a faith suddenly receiving the munificence of the first Christian emperor, and now publicly refashioning itself in accordance with the gifts received. The wealth that was now flowing to clergy and churches was to be justified to the Roman public by Christian churches taking on a new and public role of caring for the poor (both Christian and non-Christian alike) and by practicing Roman virtue of verecundia, the art and practice of knowing one’s place.
Prior to Constantine, the Christian church’s collections for the poor had been primarily for the poor among and within the Christian assemblies, both in the congregations or also to other Christian communities who were suffering a particular hardship such as famine. Helen Rhee notes, “Up to this point, the church received offerings from the faithful, especially the middling group and the wealthy, because it primarily cared for the poor of its own, i.e., Christians.”[29] The very public gifts which Christian churches were now receiving, however, came with a newly-imposed, public responsibility of caring not only for their own poor but for the publicly registered poor, both Christian and non-Christian alike.[30] It is intriguing to note that it is during this period that a new and universal interpretation of Matthew 25: 31-45 begins to surface, one in which Christ appears in every person - not just fellow Christians - who are hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, and imprisoned. “It is significant that only in the post-Constantinian era with the public service of the church that the non-Christians were explicitly included as legitimate recipients of alms by the church.”[31] As will be discussed in the upcoming discussion of Basil of Cesarea, this line of thinking would evolve into bishops’ public-facing role being described as ‘lovers of the poor’ and ‘governors of the poor.’
There are many different ways that this new, public role manifested itself but I will limit myself to discussing just two: namely, the new role of bishops as local magistrates and the all-important food distribution.
Constantine elevated the role of Christian bishops to that of local magistrates, a striking development if one is interested in tracing the history of Christian engagement around criminal justice issues. Constantine was keenly aware of the strength of Christianity’s administrative structures, particularly the way Christians divided their regions into dioceses and appointed bishops as 'overseers'. By elevating bishops to the role of local magistrates, he opened a judicial court system to a greater number of Roman citizens, including, for the first time, the poor. Helen Rhee writes that this was, essentially, “an ecclesiastical court for appeals cases, open to both Christians and non-Christians, especially for the poor and the powerless, that granted bishops the final judicial authority in arbitrating civil suits.”[32] John McGuckin adds that “This meant that poorer people could for the first time feel confident about having access to Roman law, with a chance of receiving equity and justice from someone who possibly knew them and their family and was committed to pastoral care and moral values, without desire for corrupt profit.”[33]
In addition to this new role for bishops, churches became imperially-subsidized distribution points for food and clothing. Helen Rhee writes, “Constantine delegated distribution of grain dole and clothing to the bishops for the continuing care of widows, orphans, the elderly, and the poor who were registered on the church lists as the ‘official’ poor; and the church in Antioch, for example, received thirty-six thousand measures of grain, an amount sufficient for supporting a thousand people for a year.”[33a] One of Constantine’s successors (and nephew), Julian the Apostate (331-363), would gripe about the way such food and clothing distribution had become so closely identified with the Christians and their churches. Julian tried in his very brief reign to return the Roman empire to the traditional gods worshiped prior to Constantine. Referring to Christians as Galileans and atheists, Julian famously complained, “For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us.”[34] As will be discussed in a later chapter, part of Julian’s plan to undermine Christianity involved replicating such distribution of food and clothing to the poor among the Hellenic temples he was newly subsidizing, reflecting a begrudging admiration for the administrative structures that Christians had implemented.
With this new public responsibility to care for the poor came an additional imperial requirement to keep one’s head down, to not draw clergy from most wealthy classes, and to practice the virtue of “knowing one’s place.” Peter Brown notes that the church’s “business was to look downward to the poor. As Constantine explained in an edict issued in 329: ‘The wealthy must be there to support the obligations of the secular world, while the poor are maintained by the wealth of the churches.’”[35] Christians were to offer their loyalty and support to the Roman emperor and clergy were to practice verecundia, a virtue of sub-elites. Christian bishops and priests were to join “experts such as schoolteachers, grammarians, and doctors [who] were expected to show verecundia in the presence of their social superiors. For all the indispensable skills they communicated to their patrons, they remained ‘social paupers’ compared with the real leaders of society. They were not to be ‘pushy.’”[36]
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Exploring how Constantine’s benefits transformed Christianity has helped me to reflect on the various benefits that Christian churches receive under governments today. In the United States, there are various tax exemptions for churches which become threatened if/when churches become excessively partisan in political campaigns. The faith-based initiatives George Bush’s presidency initiated now sound very much like Constantine’s view of Christian church’s special role and responsibility for the poor. More ominously, in an echo of Constantine’s privileging of Christianity over and against Jews and other religious minorities, a recent spate of Supreme Court decisions appear to be radically expanding Christian institutions’ license to discriminate in the name of religious liberty. This June, for instance, the Supreme Court will decide the case of Fulton versus Philadelphia which has the potential to empower mainly Roman Catholic and Evangelical Christian adoption agencies to continue to receive federal funds even while refusing to allow adoptions by LGBTQ+ and minority religious (including Jewish) families.[37] Under the Roberts Supreme Court, conservative Roman Catholic and evangelical Christians are coming to occupy a strikingly privileged place, one in which such churches are increasingly exempt from the non-discrimination requirements placed on other institutions around employment and who must be served.[38]
And then there is the subtler reality of today’s version of verecundia, the pervasive sense that in exchange for the public benefits received, church leaders need to “know their place” and not get pushy or uppity in protesting against the government. This is frequently expressed as a misinterpretation of the Johnson amendment -- an amendment which rightly prohibits churches from participating or intervening in “any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office”. In an echo of Rome’s verecundia, this often intentionally misinterpreted to mean that faith leaders should thereby avoid values statements such as “Black Lives Matter” and “the criminal justice system needs to be reformed” which would require significant change in current policies, practices, and law. Faith leaders - and especially progressive faith leaders, in my opinion - who make such values statements and demands are frequently derided as pushy, uppity, and as forgetting the church’s proper place in society, and it is always striking to hear how often this is accompanied by the threat to remove religious tax exemptions.
Having said all this, I want to end by complicating the common narrative around this particular moment in Christian history. It is oftentimes the case that Christians today (including myself) have seen Constantine’s conversion and subsequent transformation of Christianity in exclusively negative terms, a time when the church basically sold its soul for imperial subsidies, tax exemptions, architecture and ornate vestments. That still seems generally true to me. And yet, a more nuanced version of this story must also include the fact that this is also when what had been a relatively insular faith was dramatically turned outward, and that Christians now began to have a much more public role in addressing issues of societal injustice and poverty for Christians and non-Christians alike. Suddenly Christians are directly connected to an expanded justice system (bishops as court magistrates) and are on the public square with a public responsibility for the poor. It’s hard to imagine the riveting sermons of Basil of Cesarea and John Chrysostom - both of whom offered a deep social critique of Roman society - without Constantine’s imposing on the church generally and bishops, especially, this public role as ‘governors’ and ‘lovers’ of the poor. One uncomfortable fact that justice-minded Christians must wrestle with is that the church on the public square is also a part of Constantine's legacy, an aspect that comes from Christianity’s transformation into a public, imperial faith.
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[1] Bill Leadbetter’s chapter on Constantine in The Early Christian World: Volume 1 (Routledge Worlds) (p. 996). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. Page 996
[2] McGuckin, 281
[3] McGuckin, 281
[4] Brown, Peter. Eye of the Needle. Page 31
[5] Diarmaid McCullough, 189
[6] McGuckin. 280-281
[7] McGuckin, 338
[8] Bill Leadbetter’s chapter on Constantine in The Early Christian World: Volume 1 (Routledge Worlds) (p. 996). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 1001
[9] Bill Leadbetter’s chapter on Constantine in The Early Christian World: Volume 1 (Routledge Worlds) (p. 996). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 1005
[10] McCullough, Diarmaid. 191
[11] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 4213-4240
[12] Bill Leadbetter’s chapter on Constantine in The Early Christian World: Volume 1 (Routledge Worlds) (p. 996). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 1002-1003
[13] Bill Leadbetter’s chapter on Constantine in The Early Christian World: Volume 1 (Routledge Worlds) (p. 996). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 1002-1003
[14] Bill Leadbetter’s chapter on Constantine in The Early Christian World: Volume 1 (Routledge Worlds) (p. 996). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 1002-1003
[15] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 4213-4240
[16] McGuckin, John. 336
[17] Bill Leadbetter’s chapter on Constantine in The Early Christian World: Volume 1 (Routledge Worlds) (p. 996). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 1003
[18] Bill Leadbetter’s chapter on Constantine in The Early Christian World: Volume 1 (Routledge Worlds) (p. 996). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 1003
[19] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 4213-4240
[20] Bill Leadbetter’s chapter on Constantine in The Early Christian World: Volume 1 (Routledge Worlds) (p. 996). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 1004
[21] McCullough 191-192
[22] McCullough 199
[23] Brown, Peter. Eye of Needle. 35-36
[24] Brown, Peter. Eye of Needle. 35-36
[25] Brown, Peter. Eye of Needle. 35-36
[26] Brown, Peter. Eye of Needle. 35-36
[27] McGuckin, John. 130
[28] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Location 4240
[29] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 4240 - 4257
[30] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 4240 - 4257
[31] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 4240 - 4257
[32] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 4213-4240
[33] McGuckin, John. 296
[33a] Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Loc 4240 - 4257
[34] The Works of the Emperor Julian, volume III (1913) Loeb Classical Library
[35] Brown, Peter. 43-44
[36] Brown, Peter. 44-45
[37] https://www.childrensrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Fulton-Report-08182020.pdf
[38] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/05/us/politics/supreme-court-religion.html
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