Posted on 08/06/2002 7:46:53 PM PDT by JMJ333
Perhaps the legion had grown overconfident.
Their Augustus, the swift moving Constantine, had led them over the Alps and, as he had done against the Picts, the Franks, and other enemies of the empire, now led them to victory after victory in a civil war--civil war being practically a tradition these days--rolling up armies loyal to Maxentius, the young, decadent usurper in Rome.
Maxentius had risen to power by promising to keep Rome free of taxes and had kept power by seeing off the mightiest armies--whether led my Caesar Severus or by the emperors Galerius and Domitius Alexander. He had even faced down his own father, the former Maximian, and the greatest of emperors, Diocletian, who had divided the responsibilities of the empire, only to have Maxentius seize the capital city.
Yet now, on a path parallel to the River Po, Constantine's legions had thrown back Maxentius's armies again and again, smashing his shock troops, the heavily armored cavalry known as the katafraktoi. Constantine had a plan to neutralize them. His infantry trapped them in a pocket of legionnaires, where the horses could neither maneuver nor charge; then the foot soldiers, holding four-foot high shields close to their helmets, slashed at the horses unprotected fetlocks. The steel-encased cavalrymen where hurled to the ground, where Constantine's men butchered them.
But while he conquered, Constantine was forgiving to the civilians who lay in his path. Word of his generosity spread. Now after a march down the Adriatic coast, he had camped at the gates of Rome, a short siege away from restoring the ancient seat of imperial grandeur to the Western Empire, his Western Empire.
Behind Rome's walls, an indifferent Maxentius awaited the defeat of yet another challenger. Protected by his Praetorian Guard, he serenely pursued his pastimes of drinking and sleeping with other men's wives, Knowing (had not the auguries foretold it?) that Constantine was marching to his doom? The very words of the omen in the Sibylline books had stated it clearly: "Tomorrow the enemy of Rome will perish."
Maxentius was making sure of it. At the Circus Maximus, the people had publicly mocked him with jeers of "Are you a coward? for relying on the strength of Rome's defenses and not taking the field against Constantine. While Maxentius was popular with the common people, he was resented by the aristocracy. They hated his demands for bribes, his importuning of their wives for his private sport. Some remembered the martyrdom of Sophronia, who had killed herself rather than obey Maxentius's summons to leave her husbands bed for his own.
The time would come when, with the marriage of soldiering and the Catholic Church, chivalry would be born and, in Edmund Burke's phrase, "ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened a woman with an insult."
But that time had not yet arrived. And if Constantine was the rescuer of Sophronia's metaphorical sisters, it was not for their sake that he acted, but for Rome and his own.
Maxentius, stung by the mob's call of cowardice, decided to end Constantine's impertinence now. Early on the morning of October 28, A.D. 312, Rufius Volusanius, prefect of Maxentuius's Praetorian Guard, led his crack troops across the River Tiber in a surprise attack on Constantine's encamped forces.
Constantine's men were sleeping when the Praetorians burst upon them, piercing their unprotected bellies with swords or pilums -- six foot lances tipped by eighteen inches of steel. While Constantine's vanguard struggled to protect itself, the legionnaires farther back hurriedly donned their breastplates and helmets, grabbed their arms, and ran to rescue their comrades. Constantine, to the shock of his own officers, swung aboard his horse and rode at the enemy, plunging into the blood-spattering scrimmage just as he had done in Verona. Too much was at stake--it was death or glory.
And there was something more. Constantine meant to deny fate--the fate prophesied by the Sibylline books, a prophecy that had been broadcast By Maxentius's agents.
Constantine had a new symbol, a prophecy of his own. At Verona, he had called upon the Sol Invictus, the invincible sun god. But here, before the gates of Rome, he had a dream, a vision that he would conquer under the sign of the cross--the cross of Christianity, an unpopular and persecuted minority religion. Constantine himself had, as of yet, no belief in Christianity, but his mother and stepmother were Christians. His late father, Constantius, Augustus of the West, had been lax when ordered to persecute the sect. And earlier in his own career, as a young officer serving the emperor Diocletian, Constantine had seen Christians go to their death rather than accept other gods. Perhaps too he was encouraged in the interpreting of his dream by his stepmother's confessor Osius, the Catholic bishop of Cordova, who was traveling with him, an unofficial chaplain on the campaign.
As Constantine's men sprang to battle, it was with the Christian symbol marked on their shields in charcoal. Constantine and his officers also drew the cross on their helmets. With sanctified bucklers they parried blows; with swords they plunged at the enemy. The Praetorians were outnumbered, and the advantage they had gained by surprise was collapsing under Constantine's counterattack. Archers pummeled the Praetorians with arrows; cavalry crashed their infantry. Constantine saw what needed to be done: Drive the Praetorians to the river at their backs, leaving them no escape save a jammed, panic-stricken flight across the Milvian Bridge--a bridge that he could turn into a slaughter pen.
Crossing the bridge on horseback was Maxentius, who was expecting the acclamation of his victorious soldiers; instead he saw their imminent collapse. He ordered their recall: in the open field they might be destroyed; behind Rome's walls they would be impregnable. But Praetorian discipline had snapped; the retreat was a mass stampede of fear-frenzied men, razor sharp swords at their backs, cavalry horses pounding after them, arrows slashing down in unpredictable, deadly flurries. They turned as a mob against their own officers, who tried in vain to stop them. In their blood-pounding ears was the roar of Constantine's legions, roused as the Augustus of the West reared his horse and waved a bloody sword at the enemy.
Maxentius, trying to rally his men at the Milvian Bridge, was hurled into the rushing river as the brutal, blood-panicked mob tackled his horse. Shaken by the impact of his fall, and weighted down by his heavy armor, he was swept helplessly along by the swift current. The Emperor's lungs were punished by blow after blow of suffocating water until he sank to the weeds at the river bottom, eventually resurfacing, only to have his head severed by a soldier of the new emperor.
As Constantine rode victorious into the city, Maxentius's head, raised on a spear point, followed him--a trophy for the conqueror, a warning to rivals, a target for the spit of the Roman mob, and something more than all this. For Constantine gave no thanks to the Roman gods. If Maxentius was their champion, here was his head.
Triumphant Constantine, Augustus Maximus of the empire, was about to inaugurate a revolution in the history of the world. Shortly after his victory, Constantine, and his fellow Augustus, Licinius, met in Milan to discuss imperial problems. Constantine's priority was the guarantee of religious freedom, which became known as the Edict of Milan. It is the first legal affirmation of religious liberty, issued more than 1,400 years before a similar idea would be promulgated in America. But what is equally interesting about the Edict of Milan is that it mentions only one specific religion--Christianity--and it mentions it repeatedly. Eusebius, who knew Constantine reproduces the imperial edicts in his The History of the Church: "Christians and non-Christans alike should be allowed to keep the faith of their own religious beliefs and worship...[N]o one whatever was to be denied the right to follow and choose the Christian observance or form of worship...[E]very individual still desirous of observing the Christian form of worship should without interference be allowed to do so....[W]e have given the said Christians free and absolute permission to practice their own form of worship."
In a follow up document, the Augusti are more specific still: "Accordingly it is our wish that when you receive this letter you will see to it that any of the former property of the Catholic Church of the Christians...shall be restored forthwith."
The Edict of Milan, issued by two professing pagans, was the first royal proclamation in a series that would establish Catholic Christianity as the religion of empire, an empire of which it remains the living embodiment, from a beginning that stretches before all time.
I appreciate your contributions! =)
You're peddling a ludicrous anachronism. It was Catholic Christianity (incorporating the churches of Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, and more) that Constantine promoted, not the Church o' Rome. The great majority of Christians in Contantine's time lived in the East; Rome was comparitively pagan until quite late. Although the universal Church was acknowledging the primacy of the bishop of Rome for a good two centuries before the Battle of the Ponte Milvio, no one at that time would have understood "Church of Rome" as meaning anything but that metropolitan see and possibly its suffragans.
But I would like to pursue this theory of yours, that what kick-started the Dark Ages was not barbarian invasion, nor economic collapse, plague, internecine warfare, or the destruction of the aqueducts, but the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Moreover, please explain how Christianity triggered a "dark" age only in the West, while the Eastern Empire with its capital in Constantinople (even more fervently Christian, and consumed with theological debate) survived as a powerhouse of fabulous wealth, learning, and political might for centuries after the political-economic smash-up of the West.
I look forward to hearing from you.
It also stops the story early: Constantine, while still technically a pagan, not having received Holy Bapstism, proceeded to build a new capital for the Empire, a capital city without any pagan temples, but with many Christian temples. He also looked after the interests of the Church by calling the First Ecumenical Council, and accepting its outcome, despite the fact he personally seemed to have Arian sympathies (witness his choice of bishop from whom to receive Baptism on his death bed.)
It should be noted that the forgiveness of post-baptismal sins was not yet generally received throughout the Church in St. Constantine's day, so his decision to delay baptism should likely be understood as a desire to be forgiven of the sins which were occasioned by statecraft, rather than a lingering pagan belief.
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