The City of Constantine
Figure 1: Emperor Constantine I is often credited with converting the Roman Empire to Christianity. nationalgeographic
Figure 2: Emperor Constantine I, presenting a model of the city to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Detail of the southwestern entrance mosaic in Hagia Sophia.
Constantine I the Great
Augustus (from 25 July 306); born Naissos 273/4, died Nikomedeia 22 May 337; feastday 21 May. Son of Constantius Chlorus and Helena, he was proclaimed as augustus in Britain upon the death of his father. He was subsequently acknowledged as caesar by Galerius and as augustus by Maximian, and his imperial position was confirmed at the Conference of Carnuntum in 308. He defeated Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, thus becoming sole ruler of the West. Alliance with Licinius turned to hostility, and after victory over his rival at Chrysoupolis in Bithynia in 324 Constantine became ruler of the whole empire. He associated his sons with him as caesars—Crispus (317), Constantine II (317), Constantius II (324), and Constans I (333)—but he remained sole augustus until his death. He had two consorts, Minervina (perhaps a concubine) and Fausta (see genealogical table).
Constantine carried out important administrative and military reforms, completing and/or reversing those of Diocletian. He organized the entire empire into three or four prefectures, each under its own praetorian prefect, below whom were provinces and the cities. At court, officials such as the comes rei privatae, comes sacrarum largitionum, and magister officiorum, wielded great power as heads of large amorphous bureaus, while magistri militum commanded the army, increasingly dominated by the comitatenses. Constantine reformed the coinage, issuing a gold solidus that remained the standard coin through the 11th C. To celebrate his victory over Licinius he founded a new city on the site of ancient Byz.; Constantinople was inaugurated on 11 May 330, not so much a “new capital” as an imperial residence and monument to the emperor's greatness. According to the Chronicon Paschale (1:527–29), his huge building program consisted almost entirely of secular structures, whereas Eusebios of Caesarea emphasizes the churches and martyria that Constantine built in the capital and at Nikomedeia, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
Like most of his predecessors, Constantine sought divine support for his rule and ultimately came to base his power on a special connection with the Christian God. This concept developed slowly, augmented by the emperor's victories, and culminating in the image of Constantine in the works of Eusebios of Caesarea, esp. the Vita Constantini. In the latter work (VC 4.15) Eusebios interprets the upward gaze exhibited by Constantine on his coins as a gesture of piety. In fact, his numismatic portraits exhibit a remarkable range of types (D.H. Wright, DOP 41 [1987] 493–507). It is still debated whether Constantine actually issued the so-called Edict of Milan. Constantine became involved in the controversies surrounding Donatism and Arianism, convoked the first ecumenical council at Nicaea, and approved its decisions, although he later came to support Arianism. He was baptized on his deathbed by Eusebios of Nikomedeia. The so-called Donation of Constantine is a forgery, probably of the 8th C.
As the first Christian emperor and the founder of Constantinople, Constantine set the style that was followed by nearly all Byz. emperors. Despite his very real human failings, Constantine was very quickly heroized as founder of the new politico-religious order and regarded as a saint; he was commonly pictured, frequently along with his mother, in figural representations of rulers in church decoration.Timothy E. Gregory, Anthony Cutler
Kazhdan, Alexander, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.oxfordreference
Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age by Call Number: DG315 .B371 2012ISBN: 9780521764230Publication Date: 2011-10-31Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age offers a radical reassessment of Constantine as an emperor, a pagan, and a Christian. The book examines in detail a wide variety of evidence, including literature, secular and religious architectural monuments, coins, sculpture, and other works of art. Setting the emperor in the context of the kings and emperors who preceded him, Jonathan Bardill shows how Constantine's propagandists exploited the traditional themes and imagery of rulership to portray him as having been elected by the supreme solar God to save his people and inaugurate a brilliant golden age.
Constantine by Call Number: DG315 .B37 2011ISBN: 9781405117272Publication Date: 2011-05-06Drawing on recent scholarly advances and new evidence, Timothy Barnes offers a fresh and exciting study of Constantine and his life.
First study of Constantine to make use of Kevin Wilkinson's re-dating of the poet Palladas to the reign of Constantine, disproving the predominant scholarly belief that Constantine remained tolerant in matters of religion to the end of his reign,
clearly sets out the problems associated with depictions of Constantine and answers them with great clarity
Includes Barnes' own research into the marriage of Constantine's parents, Constantine's status as a crown prince and his father's legitimate heir, and his dynastic plans.
Constantine the Great and the Christian Church by Call Number: BR180 .B3 1972ISBN: 0197256724Publication Date: 1972-04-01Norman Baynes's Raleigh Lecture on Constantine, delivered in 1930 and published the following year, provided not only a major and incisive contribution to the study of the Emperor and the early Christian Church, but also a unique survey of research up to that date. Subsequent bibliographical surveys have done no more than supplement his work on defined areas within the field. This important lecture is now reprinted with a new Preface by Dr. Henry Chadwick which outlines the progress of studies on the subject in the intervening forty years, including Baynes's own contributions before his death in 1961.
Constantine and the Bishops by Call Number: DG315 .D72 2002ISBN: 0801862183Publication Date: 1999-12-14Historians who viewed imperial Rome in terms of a conflict between pagans and Christians have often regarded the emperor Constantine's conversion as the triumph of Christianity over paganism. But in Constantine and the Bishops, historian H. A. Drake offers a fresh and more nuanced understanding of Constantine's rule and, especially, of his relations with Christians.Constantine, Drake suggests, was looking not only for a god in whom to believe but also a policy he could adopt. Uncovering the political motivations behind Constantine's policies, Drake shows how those policies were constructed to ensure the stability of the empire and fulfill Constantine's imperial duty in securing the favor of heaven.Despite the emperor's conversion to Christianity, Drake concludes, Rome remained a world filled with gods and with men seeking to depose rivals from power. A book for students and scholars of ancient history and religion, Constantine and the Bishops shows how Christian belief motivated and gave shape to imperial rule.
Constantine and Christendom by Call Number: BR180 .C67 2003ISBN: 9780853236481Publication Date: 2003-01-03This volume makes available three works attributed to Constantine - two of which were certainly not written by him - which are important sources for historians of the papacy, Christianity and Constantine himself. The Oration to the Saints is an intellectual defence of Christianity, which puts the case for monotheism, extols the incarnation and voluntary abasement of the Son of God, and finally declares Constantine's personal adherence to the Saviour. The legend of the discovery of the True Cross by the empress Helena, mother of Constantine, following her conversion to Christianity is presented in translations of two variant accounts. The third text, the Edict of Constantine, presents Constantine's supposed edict to Pope Silvester transferring lands to the papacy. An introduction considers the authorship, motivation and historical context for each of the works, and extensive annotation elucidates textual difficulties and allusions.
Constantine the Great by Call Number: DG315 .G73 1994ISBN: 0684195208Publication Date: 1994-06-01The author of Founders of the Western World assesses the achievements of the man who founded Constantinople and converted the Roman Empire to Christianity.
Constantine and Rome by Call Number: NA5620.A1 H65 2004ISBN: 0300100434Publication Date: 2004-07-11Constantine the Great (285-337) played a crucial role in mediating between the pagan, imperial past of the city of Rome, which he conquered in 312, and its future as a Christian capital. In this learned and highly readable book, Ross Holloway examines Constantine's remarkable building programme in Rome. Holloway begins by examining the Christian Church in the period before the Peace of 313, when Constantine and his co-emperor Licinius ended the persecution of the Christians. He then focuses on the structure, style, and significance of important monuments: the Arch of Constantine and the two great Christian basilicas, St. John's in the Lateran and St. Peter's, as well as the imperial mausoleum at Tor Pignatara. In a final chapter Holloway advances a new interpretation of the archaeology of the Tomb of St. Peter beneath the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica. The tomb, he concludes, was not the original resting place of the remains venerated as those of the Apostle but was created only in 251 by Pope Cornelius. Drawing on the most up-to-date archaeological evidence, he describes a cityscape that was at once Christian and pagan, mirroring the personality of its ruler.
Constantine by Call Number: DG315 .C65 1998ISBN: 0415107474Publication Date: 1998-07-23Constantine examines the reign of Constantine, the first Christian emperor and the founder of Constantinople. From a variety of angles: historical, historiographical and mythical. The volume examines the circumstances of Constantine's reign and the historical problems surrounding them, the varied accounts of Constantine's life and the plethora of popular medieval legends surrounding the reign, to reveal the different visions and representations of the emperor from saint and patron of the Western church to imperial prototype. Constantine: History, Historiography and Legend presents a comprehensive and arresting study of this important and controversial emperor.
Constantine by Call Number: DG315 .M3 1971Publication Date: 1971This study, first published in 1969, presents an astute and authoritative depiction of the cultural, religious and secular developments which shook the Roman world in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries AD, much of it under the auspices of the Emperor, Constantine the Great.Constantine was at the heart of the transition from pagan antiquity to Christendom. Rejecting the collegiate imperial system of his recent predecessors, he reunited the two halves of the Empire; established Christianity as its formal religion; and shifted the capital of the Roman world definitively to the city which would survive the collapse of the West and persevere for another thousand years, Constantinople.The general reader will enjoy Constantine as a lucidly composed and accessible synthesis of ancient sources and modern contributions to the study of this towering figure.
Constantine and the Christian Empire by Call Number: DG315 .O33 2005ISBN: 0415386551Publication Date: 2006-03-01This biographical narrative is a detailed portrayal of the life and career of the first Christian emperor Constantine the Great (273 – 337). Combining vivid narrative and historical analysis, Charles Odahl relates the rise of Constantine amid the crises of the late Roman world, his dramatic conversion to and public patronage of Christianity, and his church building programs in Rome, Jerusalem and Constantinople which transformed the pagan state of Roman antiquity into the Christian empire medieval Byzantium.
Constantine by Call Number: DG315 .S74 2010ISBN: 9781590203248Publication Date: 2010-06-10Constantine is a masterly survey of the life and enduring legacy of the greatest and most unjustly ignored of the later Roman emperors - from a richly gifted young British historian. In 312, Constantine - one of four Roman emperors ruling a divided empire - marched on Rome to establish his sole control of its western half. Having claimed the imperial capital for himself, he then converted to Christianity and led its emergence from the shadows, its adherents no longer persecuted. Constantine founded Constantinople on the site of the ancient trading colony of Byzantium, a new Christian capital set apart from Rome's pagan past. Thereafter the Christian Roman Empire endured in the East as Byzantium, while Rome itself fell to the barbarian hordes in AD 476. Paul Stephenson offers a nuanced and deeply satisfying account of a man whose cultural and spiritual renewal of the Roman Empire gave birth to the historically crucial idea of a unified Christian Europe. In Constantine, a seminal figure in the political and cultural history of the West has at last found the biographer he deserves.
Constantine and the Cities by Call Number: DG315 .L46 2016ISBN: 9780812247770Publication Date: 2016-02-01Over the course of the fourth century, Christianity rose from a religion actively persecuted by the authority of the Roman empire to become the religion of state—a feat largely credited to Constantine the Great. Constantine succeeded in propelling this minority religion to imperial status using the traditional tools of governance, yet his proclamation of his new religious orientation was by no means unambiguous. His coins and inscriptions, public monuments, and pronouncements sent unmistakable signals to his non-Christian subjects that he was willing not only to accept their beliefs about the nature of the divine but also to incorporate traditional forms of religious expression into his own self-presentation. In Constantine and the Cities, Noel Lenski attempts to reconcile these apparent contradictions by examining the dialogic nature of Constantine's power and how his rule was built in the space between his ambitions for the empire and his subjects' efforts to further their own understandings of religious truth.
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine by Call Number: DG315 .C36 2012ISBN: 9781107601109Publication Date: 2011-12-29The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine offers students a comprehensive one-volume survey of this pivotal emperor and his times. Richly illustrated and designed as a readable survey accessible to all audiences, it also achieves a level of scholarly sophistication and a freshness of interpretation that will be welcomed by the experts. The volume is divided into five sections that examine political history, religion, social and economic history, art, and foreign relations during the reign of Constantine, who steered the Roman Empire on a course parallel with his own personal development. Each chapter examines the intimate interplay between emperor and empire, and between a powerful personality and his world. Collectively, they show how both were mutually affected in ways that shaped the world of Late Antiquity and even affect our own world today. This edition has been revised, the notes and bibliography have been updated, and a new preface has been added.
The Roman Revolution of Constantine by Call Number: DG315 .V36 2007ISBN: 9780521882095Publication Date: 2007-09-03The reign of the emperor Constantine (306-337) was as revolutionary for the transformation of Rome's Mediterranean empire as that of Augustus, the first emperor three centuries earlier. The abandonment of Rome signaled the increasing importance of frontier zones in northern and central Europe and the Middle East. The foundation of Constantinople as a new imperial residence and the rise of Greek as the language of administration previewed the establishment of a separate eastern Roman empire.
