Chapter XX: The conversion of Constantine and the establishment of Christianity
Read it here or here.
1) Great Quotes
Taking them backwards for a change.
Monks are like insects: ...the swarms of monks, who arose from the Nile, overspread and darkened the face of the Christian world.
The problem with the Histoire Politique et Philosophique des deux Indes is that we don't know why the author gets it wrong: I am ignorant by what guides the Abbé Raynal was deceived; as the total absence of quotations is the unpardonable blemish of his entertaining history.
Virgil as the source of Christianity in his fourth Eclogue, at least according to Constantine: Forty years before the birth of Christ, the Mantuan bard, as if inspired by the celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated, with all the pomp of oriental metaphor, the return of the Virgin, the fall of the serpent, the approaching birth of a godlike child, the offspring of the great Jupiter, who should expiate the guilt of human kind and govern the peaceful universe with the virtues of his father; the rise and appearance of an heavenly race, a primitive nation throughout the world; and the gradual restoration of the innocence and felicity of the golden age. The poet was perhaps unconscious of the secret sense and object of these sublime predictions, which have been so unworthily applied to the infant son of a consul, or a triumvir: but if a more splendid, and indeed specious, interpretation of the fourth eclogue contributed to the conversion of the first Christian emperor, Virgil may deserve to be ranked among the most successful missionaries of the Gospel.
Gibbon is coy about one of his sources: The poem which contains these lines may be read with pleasure, but cannot be named with decency.
Actually the poem itself is Voltaire's La Pucelle d’Orléans, which it is entirely decent to name; the subsection, however, is Chant V, which has this heading: "Le cordelier Grisbourdon, qui avait voulu violer Jeanne, est en enfer très-justement. Il raconte son aventure aux diables."
2) Summary The victories and the civil policy of Constantine no longer influence the state of Europe; but a considerable portion of the globe still retains the impression which it received from the conversion of that monarch; and the ecclesiastical institutions of his reign are still connected, by an indissoluble chain, with the opinions, the passions, and the interests of the present generation.
The first half of the chapter is an investigation into Constantine's conversion, one of Gibbon's few attempts to get under the skin of a complex psychological individual who made a crucial political decision, and on whom the historical sources are in sometimes vigorous conflict. Gibbon comes down in the end in favour of Constantine's gradual conviction of the political and also spiritual necessity of endorsing Christianity in the Edict of Milan, though the emperor waited until his own dying day to actually receive baptism himself. He guesses that Constantine was sincere as well as politically motivated in his decision, looking at the various legends and also the documentary evidence (eg the bit about Virgil); but also points up the paradoxes of his behaviour - the Council of Nicæa held in the same year as the execution of Constantine's son Crispus, for instance. It's the sort of writing we are used to from more recent historians but that Gibbon hasn't really given us so far. While the civil and military professions were separated by the policy of Constantine, a new and perpetual order of ecclesiastical ministers, always respectable, sometimes dangerous, was established in the church and state. The important review of their station and attributes may be distributed under the following heads:
The second half of the chapter is a description of the political set-up of the Christian church during and after Constantine's reign, looking at each of the seven headings above, though starting with the very important point that the establishment of Christianity meant an unprecedented splitting of Church and State - until Constantine, each emperor had also operated as pontifex maximus.
3) Matters arising
i) the state within a state
Gibbon's description of the way the Church operated within the Empire is interesting both for what it says and what it doesn't say. What he portrays is an odd hybrid between the sinister state-within-a-state which he described back in Chapter XV, and the germ of a modern liberal republic with elected leaders, freedom of speech (or at least freedom from the temporal authorities interfering with sermons), and legislation by assemblies after thorough debate (even if the "progress of time and superstition erased the memory of the weakness, the passion, the ignorance, which disgraced these ecclesiastical synods"). I hope he will explore this relationship between church and state, and the legacy of early church practice, a bit further.
What Gibbon doesn't mention, of course, is the details of ecclesiastical debate and the development of religious thought, which he will get to in the next chapter. It is fair enough that he is interested only in the broader sweep of political history; but I think I would fail a student of mine who wrote about the Council of Nicæa without mentioning the nature of Jesus.
ii) Constantine and his legacy
As I said above, I thought this was a very interesting psychological picture. I don't have time to read, but I will link to, a translation of Constantine's Oration (here and in sections with notes here). One gets the picture of a military leader who has reached the top by, as Gibbon puts it, treason and murder, but who makes a calculated (and slightly spiritual) decision to rebalance the entire relationship between the state and the supernatural world. Gibbon laughs at "the Greeks, the Russians, and, in the darker ages, the Latins themselves" for being "desirous of placing Constantine in the catalogue of saints", but I think it is he that is missing the point slightly.
4) Coming next
Chapter XXI, on heresy and paganism. Read it here or here. That will actually mark the half-way point through Volume II, which runs from Chapter XVII to Chapter XXVI.
1) Great Quotes
Taking them backwards for a change.
Monks are like insects: ...the swarms of monks, who arose from the Nile, overspread and darkened the face of the Christian world.
The problem with the Histoire Politique et Philosophique des deux Indes is that we don't know why the author gets it wrong: I am ignorant by what guides the Abbé Raynal was deceived; as the total absence of quotations is the unpardonable blemish of his entertaining history.
Virgil as the source of Christianity in his fourth Eclogue, at least according to Constantine: Forty years before the birth of Christ, the Mantuan bard, as if inspired by the celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated, with all the pomp of oriental metaphor, the return of the Virgin, the fall of the serpent, the approaching birth of a godlike child, the offspring of the great Jupiter, who should expiate the guilt of human kind and govern the peaceful universe with the virtues of his father; the rise and appearance of an heavenly race, a primitive nation throughout the world; and the gradual restoration of the innocence and felicity of the golden age. The poet was perhaps unconscious of the secret sense and object of these sublime predictions, which have been so unworthily applied to the infant son of a consul, or a triumvir: but if a more splendid, and indeed specious, interpretation of the fourth eclogue contributed to the conversion of the first Christian emperor, Virgil may deserve to be ranked among the most successful missionaries of the Gospel.
Gibbon is coy about one of his sources: The poem which contains these lines may be read with pleasure, but cannot be named with decency.
Actually the poem itself is Voltaire's La Pucelle d’Orléans, which it is entirely decent to name; the subsection, however, is Chant V, which has this heading: "Le cordelier Grisbourdon, qui avait voulu violer Jeanne, est en enfer très-justement. Il raconte son aventure aux diables."
2) Summary The victories and the civil policy of Constantine no longer influence the state of Europe; but a considerable portion of the globe still retains the impression which it received from the conversion of that monarch; and the ecclesiastical institutions of his reign are still connected, by an indissoluble chain, with the opinions, the passions, and the interests of the present generation.
The first half of the chapter is an investigation into Constantine's conversion, one of Gibbon's few attempts to get under the skin of a complex psychological individual who made a crucial political decision, and on whom the historical sources are in sometimes vigorous conflict. Gibbon comes down in the end in favour of Constantine's gradual conviction of the political and also spiritual necessity of endorsing Christianity in the Edict of Milan, though the emperor waited until his own dying day to actually receive baptism himself. He guesses that Constantine was sincere as well as politically motivated in his decision, looking at the various legends and also the documentary evidence (eg the bit about Virgil); but also points up the paradoxes of his behaviour - the Council of Nicæa held in the same year as the execution of Constantine's son Crispus, for instance. It's the sort of writing we are used to from more recent historians but that Gibbon hasn't really given us so far. While the civil and military professions were separated by the policy of Constantine, a new and perpetual order of ecclesiastical ministers, always respectable, sometimes dangerous, was established in the church and state. The important review of their station and attributes may be distributed under the following heads:
- Popular election.
- Ordination of the clergy.
- Property.
- Civil jurisdiction.
- Spiritual censures.
- Exercise of public oratory.
- Privilege of legislative assemblies.
The second half of the chapter is a description of the political set-up of the Christian church during and after Constantine's reign, looking at each of the seven headings above, though starting with the very important point that the establishment of Christianity meant an unprecedented splitting of Church and State - until Constantine, each emperor had also operated as pontifex maximus.
3) Matters arising
i) the state within a state
Gibbon's description of the way the Church operated within the Empire is interesting both for what it says and what it doesn't say. What he portrays is an odd hybrid between the sinister state-within-a-state which he described back in Chapter XV, and the germ of a modern liberal republic with elected leaders, freedom of speech (or at least freedom from the temporal authorities interfering with sermons), and legislation by assemblies after thorough debate (even if the "progress of time and superstition erased the memory of the weakness, the passion, the ignorance, which disgraced these ecclesiastical synods"). I hope he will explore this relationship between church and state, and the legacy of early church practice, a bit further.
What Gibbon doesn't mention, of course, is the details of ecclesiastical debate and the development of religious thought, which he will get to in the next chapter. It is fair enough that he is interested only in the broader sweep of political history; but I think I would fail a student of mine who wrote about the Council of Nicæa without mentioning the nature of Jesus.
ii) Constantine and his legacy
As I said above, I thought this was a very interesting psychological picture. I don't have time to read, but I will link to, a translation of Constantine's Oration (here and in sections with notes here). One gets the picture of a military leader who has reached the top by, as Gibbon puts it, treason and murder, but who makes a calculated (and slightly spiritual) decision to rebalance the entire relationship between the state and the supernatural world. Gibbon laughs at "the Greeks, the Russians, and, in the darker ages, the Latins themselves" for being "desirous of placing Constantine in the catalogue of saints", but I think it is he that is missing the point slightly.
4) Coming next
Chapter XXI, on heresy and paganism. Read it here or here. That will actually mark the half-way point through Volume II, which runs from Chapter XVII to Chapter XXVI.