I ought to study this history more. My mother had a particular devotion to Constantine's mother, St. Helena, whose prayers, like those of St. Monica, "availeth much."
Question, if somebody can answer: was Constantine baptized by his biographer, this same BIshop Eusebius of Pamphylia? And was Eusebius of the Arian party, or of Orthodox Catholic belief?
Question, if somebody can answer: was Constantine baptized by his biographer, this same BIshop Eusebius of Pamphylia? And was Eusebius of the Arian party, or of Orthodox Catholic belief?
Great question. The answers are "No" and "sort of."
Constantine was baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia, not Eusebius Pamphilus (who, for the record, owed his second name to the martyr, Pamphilus, who was his teacher. He was a native of Caesarea in Palestine). Eusebius Pamphilus would later be considered sympathetic to "semi-Arianism".
Eusebius of Nicomedia was more clearly sympathetic to the Arian party, and this is where things get complicated. Eusebius of Nicomedia, though a defender of the Arian party, nonetheless signed the Creed of Nicaea in AD 325. He was exiled by Constantine and the bishops anyway because he refused to participate in the excommunication of Arius. Three years later, he would write a letter to the bishops as recorded in the
Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen disavowing Arianism and was thus reinstated in his see at Nicomedia. From that point on, Eusebius carried on a very worldly (as opposed to theological) vendetta against his opponents who had gotten him exiled after Nicaea. To the best of my knowledge, he never publicly repudiated the creed he has signed at Nicaea, never posed as an Arian, and was considered a bishop in good standing when he baptized Constantine. The eventual victory of Saint Athanasius over Eusebius's much more clearly Arian minions decades later cast a pall of Arianism over Eusebius that has persisted to this day.
A good summary of his life may be found here:
Eusebius of Nicomedia.