06. Chapter 5: The Church Is Victorious, 313

CHAPTER 5 The Church Is Victorious, 313

1. "In This Sign, Conquer" In the year 306 the Roman army in Britain proclaimed Constantine emperor. That gave him the rule over Britain, Gaul (now France), and Spain. Maxentius ruled over Italy and North Africa, but he wanted to be emperor over the entire western part of the Roman Empire. More and more openly he showed his hostility to Constan­tine. He ordered all the statues of Constantine in Italy to be thrown down. Constantine decided to get ahead of Maxentius. Before Max­entius had made preparations for war, Constantine marched into It­aly at the head of an army of forty thousand men. At Saxa Rubra, ten miles from Rome and a little north of it, the armies of Maxentius and Constantine met. Between Rome and the army of Maxentius was the Tiber River and, crossing it, the Milvian Bridge. The army of Max­entius was three times as large as that of Constantine, and it con­tained the Praetorian Guards, the flower of all the Roman armies. Night fell. What the outcome of the battle would be the next day was doubtful.

Constantine found himself in an extremely dangerous situation. He felt the need of supernatural help. He was a worshipper of Mithra, as his father before him had been. Mithra was the Persian sun-god, said to be a great fighter and champion of truth and justice. Mith­raism, the worship of Mithra, was a religion which at this time had a great many followers in the Roman Empire. Mithra was worshipped es­pecially by the army, in all the mili­tary camps in every part of the Empire. Mithra was most of all a soldier’s god. On the evening before the battle, so the story goes, Constantine saw a cross above the sun as it was setting in the west. In letters of light the cross bore the words: Hoc Signo Vinces, which means, "In this sign, conquer." The next day, October 28 in the year 312, the battle was joined. It was a furious battle. The Prae­torian Guards fought like lions. They never gave ground, but their ranks were cut down where they stood. The army of Maxentius was completely defeated. Maxentius himself, attempting to escape over the Milvian Bridge across the Tiber River, was drowned. The Edict of Milan Grants Equality The battle of the Milvian Bridge was one of the great decisive bat­tles in the history of the world. It made Constantine master of the entire western part of the Roman Empire. But it had another and far more important result. Con­stantine felt that he had won the battle because he had received help from the God of the Christians, and he became a Christian. He who had been a worshipper of the sun-god Mithra now embraced the religion of Him who is the true light of the world.

VISION OF CONSTANTINE
Schoenfeld Collection from Three Lions
The cross above the sun, seen by the emperor the evening before the bat­tle near the Milvian Bridge. In the city of Milan, Constantine in the year 313 issued an edict concerning religion. This edict did not set up Christianity as the only and official religion of the Empire. It did not forbid the practice of heathen religions. But it did more than merely grant toleration to the Christian religion as the decree of Galerius in the year 311 had done. The Edict of Milan put a stop to the persecutions, and proclaimed absolute freedom of conscience. It placed Christianity upon a footing of equality, before the law, with the other religions in the Empire.

THE BAPTISM OF CONSTANTINE THE GREAT BY POPE SYLVESTER I
Schoenfeld Collection from Three Lions
After a painting by Raphael in the Vatican 3. The Church’s Victory Is a Marvel The Edict of Milan marks the victory of the Church over hea­thenism. This victory of the Church is one of the most marvelous things in all history. The Church had had its beginning as a very small organization only three hundred years before. It was composed of people who belonged to the small and despised Jewish nation. The members of this organization were poor people without education or prestige. The message which the Church brought was to many who heard it either a stumbling block or foolishness. Arrayed against the Church were overwhelming numbers, money, learning, culture, social prestige, political and mili­tary power: the whole world of that time, Jews and gentiles, the mighty Roman Empire. Not infre­quently the Church was disgraced by serious moral lapses of some of its members. It was rent asunder over questions of church discipline. It was harassed from without by strange doctrines and deadly here­sies. It was distressed within by heated and bitter controversies over questions touching the very heart of its message. In the midst of these unfavorable conditions, which one would think would have stopped all growth, the Church for three hundred years was subjected to fierce and bloody persecutions.

How was it possible for the Church to emerge victorious from all these conflicts? Many things can be mentioned in explanation. One thing is that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. It has always been true that the more martyr-blood there is shed, the more the Church grows and flourishes. But there is only one complete, all-comprehensive an­swer, and that is Christ.

4. The Third Turning Point in the History of the Church The year 313 marks the third and a very decisive turning point in the history of the Church. For, as we learned in section 2, it was in this year that the Edict of Milan granted Christians the same rights that the followers of other reli­gions had. In other words, Chris­tians now enjoyed freedom of religion.

There now sat upon the throne of the Empire a man who was a Christian. Instead of persecuting the Church, he showered favors upon it. The Christian clergy were relieved of certain unpleasant civil duties. Constantine gave large grants of money to the clergy. In Constantinople, Jerusalem, Bethle­hem, and other places he erected magnificent church buildings. One of the outstanding features of Christianity is the observance of the Sabbath, its weekly sacred day; Constantine now forbade Sun­day work.

5. The World Invades the Church The Edict of Milan proved to have a very definite disadvantage. It was now no longer a shame, but an honor to be a Christian. The Christian name now secured many and great material advantages. The Christian name had become a passport to political, military, and social promotion. As a result, thou­sands upon thousands of heathen joined the Church.

Unfortunately many of these were Christians in name only. The Christianity of Emperor Constan­tine himself was, if not of a doubt­ful, at least not of a very high character. What the Church gained in quantity it lost in quality. Constantine’s edict of 313, which signalized a great victory for the Church, at the same time opened the floodgates through which a mighty stream of corruption poured into the Church. The emblem of the Roman armies had been the eagle. The eagle was now replaced by the cross. At the end of a conflict ex­tending over three hundred years the Church had at last won the victory over heathenism — not by fighting, but by enduring suffer­ing. But from this time on Chris­tians under the banner of the cross fought many wars.

6. The Problem of the Relation be­tween Church and State Has Its Beginning Here

There is one result of Constan­tine’s conversion which should re­ceive our very special attention. Constantine had granted the Church freedom of religion and many favors. In turn he demanded that the Church should allow him to have a good deal to say about its affairs. The close connection be­tween State and Church, which has deeply colored and to a very large extent given direction to the his­tory of the Church, even down to our own times, dates from the year 313. Many a page in this book will be devoted to the problem of the relation between Church and State. That problem has been the occasion for much disagreement, strife, and even bloodshed. It remains un­solved to this very day.

7. Julian Fails to Revive Heathen­ism In the year 361 Julian, a nephew of the great Constantine, became emperor. He had been brought up as a Christian, but had remained a pagan at heart. Now he made it known that he was a heathen. Once more the Roman Empire had a heathen emperor. Because he forsook Christianity and returned to heathenism he is known as Jul­ian the Apostate. (An apostate is one who forsakes his religion.)

Although he indulged in a certain amount of persecution (Athanasius had said: "It is only a little cloud; it will pass"), he at­tacked Christianity chiefly by means of his clever pen dipped in biting satire and ridicule. He did his best to breathe new life into heathenism, but in that he failed. The heathen temples stood for­saken, and the heathen altars smoked no more. Heathenism was dead. In the year 363, fifty years after Constantine the Great had an­nounced the famous Edict of Milan, Julian the Apostate fell in battle against the Persians, mortally wounded in the thigh by a spear. As the story goes, the dying man caught some of the spurting blood in his hand, threw it toward heaven, and exclaimed, "So thou halt conquered after all Galilean !"