1-3. Constantine Caesar and the Shining Cross
When Diocletian and Maximian abdicated (1 May 305) it was generally believed that Constantine would be one of the new Caesars. There was reason for this belief. He had been betrothed to Fausta the daughter of Maximian as far back as 293, when she was a mere child; and daughters of emperors were not common enough to be thrown away on outsiders. Moreover, money had recently been coined at Alexandria with the inscription CONSTANTINUS CAESAR.
But at the last moment Diocletian passed him over. Perhaps he was over-persuaded by Galerius: more likely he was reserving him to succeed his father in Gaul. After this, however, the court of Galerius was no place for Constantine. Presently he managed to escape, and joined his father at Boulogne. After a short campaign in Caledonia, Constantius died at York (25 July 306) and the army hailed Constantine Augustus. He was a good officer, the sons of Theodora were only boys, and the army of Britain (always the most mutinous in the Empire) had no mind to wait for a new Caesar from the East. Its chief mover was Crocus the Alemannic king: and this would seem to be the first case of a barbarian king as a Roman general, and also the first case of barbarian action in the election of an emperor. Willingly or unwillingly, Galerius recognised Constantine, though only as Caesar. It mattered little: he had the power, and the title came a couple of years later.
Thus Constantine succeeded his father in Gaul and Britain. We hear little of his administration during the next six years (306-312), but we get a general impression that he was a good ruler, and careful of his people. Such fighting as he had to do was of the usual sort against the Franks, mostly inside the Rhine, and against the Alemanni and the Bructeri beyond it. The war however was merciless, for even heathen feeling was shocked when he gave barbarian kings to the beasts, along with their followers by thousands at a time. But Gaul had never recovered from the great invasions (254-285) and his remissions of taxation gave no permanent relief to the public misery. In religion he was of course heathen; but he grew more and more monotheistic, and the Christians always counted him friendly like his father.
The last act of Galerius (Apr. 311) was an edict of toleration for the Christians. It was not encumbered with any "hard conditions," but it was given on the heathen principle that every god is entitled to the worship of his own people, whereas the persecution hindered the Christians from rendering that worship. A few days after this Galerius died. There were now four emperors. Constantine held Gaul and Britain, Maxentius Italy, Spain and Africa, while Licinius (more properly Licinian) ruled Illyricum, Greece and Thrace, and Maximin Daza (or Daia) held everything beyond the Bosphorus. Their political alliances were partly determined by their geographical position, Constantine reaching over Maxentius to Licinius, while Maximin reached over Licinius to Maxentius; partly also by their relation to the Christians, for this was now the immediate question of practical politics.
Constantine was friendly to them, and Licinius had never been an active persecutor; whereas Maximin was a cruel and malicious enemy, and Maxentius, standing as he did for Rome, could not but be hostile to them. So Maxentius was to crush Constantine, and Maximin to deal with Licinius.
Constantine did not wait to be crushed. Breaking up his camp at Colmar, be pushed rapidly across the Alps. In a cavalry fight near Turin, the Gauls overcame the formidable cataphracti — horse and rider clad in mail — of Maxentius. Then straight to Verona, where in Ruricius Pompeianus he found a foeman worthy of his steel. Right well did Pompeianus defend Verona; and if he escaped from the siege, it was only to gather an army for its relief. Then another great battle. Pompeianus was killed, Verona surrendered, and Constantine made straight for Rome.
Still Maxentius gave no sign. He had baffled invasion twice before by sitting still in Rome, and Constantine could not have besieged the city with far inferior forces. At the last moment Maxentius came out a few miles, and offered battle (28 Oct. 312) at Saxa Rubra. A skilful flank march of Constantine forced him to fight with the Tiber behind him, and the Mulvian bridge for his retreat. His Numidians fled before the Gaulish cavalry, the Praetorian Guard fell fighting where it stood, and the rest of the army was driven headlong into the river. Maxentius perished in the waters, and Constantine was master of the West.
This short campaign — the most brilliant feat of arms since Aurelian's time — was an epoch for Constantine himself. To it belongs the story of the Shining Cross. Somewhere between Colmar and Saxa Rubra he saw in the sky one afternoon a bright cross with the words Hoc vince, and the army saw it too; and in a dream that night Christ bade him take it for his standard. So Constantine himself told Eusebius, and so Eusebius recorded it in 338; and there is no reason to suspect either the one or the other of deceit. The evidence of the army is in any case not worth much; but that of Lactantius in 314 and of the heathen Nazarius in 321 puts it beyond reasonable doubt that something of the sort did happen.
But we need not therefore set it down for a miracle. The cross observed may very well have been a halo, such as Whymper saw when he came down after the accident on the Matterhorn in 1805 — three crosses for his three lost companions. The rest is no more than can be accounted for by Constantine's imagination, inflamed as it must have been by the intense anxiety of the unequal contest. Yet after all, the cross was not an exclusively Christian symbol. The action was ambiguous, like most of Constantine's actions at this period of his life. He was quite clear about monotheism; but he was not equally clear about the difference between Christ and the Unconquered Sun. The Gauls had fought of old beneath the Sun-god's cross of light: so while the Christians saw in the labarum the cross of Christ, the heathens in the army would only be receiving an old standard back again. Such was the origin of the Byzantine Labarum.
One enduring monument of the victory is the triumphal arch still standing at Rome, dedicated to him by the Senate and People in 315. Its inscription recites how INSTINCTU DIVINITATIS he inflicted just punishment on the tyrant and all his party. The expression has been set down as a later correction of some such heathen form as NUTU IOVIS O. M.: but it is certainly original, and must express Constantine's declared belief — for we may trust the Senate and the other panegyrists for knowing what was likely to please him.
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