Christianity and the Roman Empire by Allard Paul;

Author:Allard, Paul;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780881415636
Publisher: Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press
Published: 2017-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

3. Constans and Constantius (337–361)

What was to become of the religious policy inaugurated by Constantine? And how would relations between paganism and Christianity be continued by his successors?

Three years after the death of the first Christian emperor, the answers were no longer in doubt. A system rather simple in appearance, quite uncertain and contradictory in practice, yet nevertheless accepted by all—and thanks to which it was able to preserve the balance between two rival cults for a quarter century—now received an initial attack. “Let superstition cease,” states a law of 241 signed by the two Augusti, Constantius and Constans, “and let the foolishness of sacrifices be abolished; for whoever dares to celebrate the sacrifices, contrary to the order of our divine father, will be punished.”71 We note the care with which the two emperors invoked the standard intentions of Constantine in support of these severe measures. They even went so far as to claim a formal act on his part. No trace of such an act is preserved in the codes. The authentic texts from Constantine that survive all proclaim a different policy, as we have seen. Must we believe that in the last years of his reign Constantine repudiated it to the point of banishing the pagan cult, despite so many promises to tolerate it?72 In his sons’ allusion to a law made by the great emperor, should we see the altered, enlarged, and generalized memories of those laws he actually issued against divination and secret sacrifices, or the transitory measures he took in the East after the defeat of Licinius?73 The answer will probably always remain uncertain, but the hypothesis we have outlined is not infeasible. Constantine’s children seemed to have been willing to ascribe their own intentions to him. Thus, in pursuit of the praiseworthy goal of preparing the return of the exiled Athanasius, Constantine the Younger alleged without proof, and against all probability, a resolution that only death would have prevented his father from accomplishing.74

The law of Constantius and Constans could not fail to please certain Christians. Even in the West, where paganism still had many roots, it awakened premature hopes. The welcome it was given by eager minds seems to prove that it inaugurated a new policy and marked a decisive step along a path that Constantine had barely trodden. In his intriguing book, written between 343 and 350, Firmicus Maternus lauds the two emperors as destroyers of the temples and the gods. “Your laws,” he tells them, “have almost entirely defeated the devil and dissipated the fatal contagion by extinguishing idolatry.”75 He exhorted them to pursue their work and to overthrow through violence what remained of the old cult. It is hard to imagine such a text addressed to Constantine. It seems strangely out of place, even in the empire he passed on to his sons, and its tumultuous cry does not agree with the sound of the facts. A year after the law that inspired these strains from Firmicus Maternus, Constantius addressed another to the prefect of Rome.

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