The ascendant Constantinople soon eclipsed Rome. The Western Empire gradually disintegrated until the fall of Rome in 476 AD. But Constantine`s capital – and the Christian foundations he laid there for the empire – continued to thrive for nearly a thousand years. The Roman Empire into which Constantine was born was an empire of chaos and anarchy. Civil wars, invasions and diseases have torn the empire apart so much that the era is considered the crisis of the third century. Emperor Diocletian attempted to establish order by distributing power to a tetrarchy of four rulers to rule the four quarters of the empire. Constantine`s father, Constantius I, was one of the rulers. The Council of Nicaea also set the date for the national celebration of Easter. Some congregations had insisted on following the evangelical tradition during Passover. Constantine is said to have written: Some of the ancient sources describe conspiracies that Galerius made about Constantine`s life in the months following Diocletian`s abdication. They claim that Galerius instructed Constantine to lead a forward unit in a cavalry charge through a swamp on the Middle Danube, let him enter a one-on-one battle with a lion, and tried to kill him in hunts and wars. Constantine always emerged victorious: the lion emerged from the competition in a worse state than Constantine; Constantine returned from the Danube to Nicomedia with a Sarmatian prisoner to fall at the feet of Galerius.
[76] It is unclear how much trust these stories can be trusted. [77] Exhibit 19 is one of the most notable pieces in the collection because it is made entirely of gold. The obverse shows Justinian helmeted and bent, with a prominent Christian cross to the left of his head. Justinian is often considered the most famous and important Byzantine emperor after uniting ancient Roman territories across the Mediterranean during his reign. To ensure stability between these different regions, Justinian believed that religious unity was necessary to maintain political stability. Therefore, he sought to destroy paganism and led councils to promote unity among four orthodox sects of Christianity (Meyendorff 1968). Stylistically, it is also important to note that Justinian is curiously straight and not in profile. This choice distinguishes his style and that of Byzantine, opening a new path for self-expression in Byzantine art. Constantine`s share of the empire consisted of Britain, Gaul and Spain, and he commanded one of the largest Roman armies stationed along the important Rhine border. [94] He remained in Britain after his promotion to emperor, repelling the tribes of the Picts and ensuring his control in the northwestern dioceses. He completed the reconstruction of the military bases, begun during his father`s reign, and ordered the repair of roads in the region. He then went to Augusta Treverorum (Trier) in Gaul, the tetrarch capital of the Northwestern Roman Empire.[95] [96] The Franks learned of Constantine`s acclamation and invaded Gaul through the Lower Rhine in the winter of 306/307.
[97] He drove them back across the Rhine and captured kings Ascaric and Merogais; the kings and their soldiers were eaten to the animals of the Trier amphitheatre during the Advent celebrations that followed. [98] Following Constantine`s vision and the legalization of Christianity, subsequent emperors, such as Magnence, who appears on the above coin, began to include Christograms on their coins. Magnentius, who was indeed very tolerant of pagans and sympathetic to them, best illustrates this on the reverse of this coin from around 352 AD. The Christogram occupies most of the composition on the reverse, almost as large as his bust on the obverse, making it the “greatest numismatic affirmation of Christianity in antiquity” (Rubin 1998). The Greek letters A and Ω can also be seen in the field of the horizontal cross, a direct reference to Revelation 1:8 of the Christian Bible: “I am the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end, says the Lord God.” But conditions were about to improve further for the followers of Christianity. On February 27, 380, Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I (347–395) signed the title of Roman Emperor Valentinian II in the presence of Western Roman Emperor Valentinian II. (371 – 392) in Thessalonica a decree that made Christianity the state religion and punished the practice of pagan rituals. During Constantine`s lifetime, Praxagoras of Athens and Libanius, pagan authors, showered Constantine with praise and portrayed him as a model of virtue. However, his nephew and son-in-law Julian the Apostate wrote the Symposium of Satire or Saturnalia in 361, after the death of the last of his sons; she denigrated Constantine, called him inferior to the great pagan emperors, and indulged in luxury and greed. [311] According to Julian, Eunapius began—and Zosimus continued—a historiographical tradition that accused Constantine of weakening the empire by his clemency toward Christians. [312] The Holy Roman Empire counted Constantine among the venerable figures of its tradition.
In the later Byzantine state, it became a great honor for an emperor to be celebrated as the “new Constantine”; ten emperors bore this name, including the last emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. [304] Charlemagne used monumental Constantinian forms at his court to suggest that he was Constantine`s successor and equal. Constantine acquired a mythical role as a warrior against the pagans. His reception as a saint seems to have spread throughout the Byzantine Empire during the wars against the Persians and Sassanid Muslims in the late 6th and 7th centuries. [305] The motif of the Romanesque horseman, the figure mounted in the posture of a triumphant Roman emperor, became a visual metaphor in statues praising local benefactors. The name “Constantine” experienced a resurgence in popularity in western France in the 111th and 12th centuries. [306] This later description of Eusebius, written after 324, suggests a more detailed symbol than Lactantius` earlier text, which contains the Greek letters rho (Ρ) and chi (Χ), known as chi rho (☧), a monogram from Ancient Greek: χριστός, romanized: khrīstós, lit. “anointed,” referring to Jesus. [17] Eusebius` description can refer to a Chi-Rho in the loop of an Ankh. [22] Constantine may not have promoted Christianity alone. A triumphal arch was built in 315 to celebrate his victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, decorated with images of the goddess Victoria, and upon its inauguration, sacrifices were offered to pagan gods, including Apollo, Diana and Hercules.
The arch lacks representations of Christian symbolism. However, the arch was commissioned by the Senate, so the absence of Christian symbols may reflect the Curia`s role as a pagan redoubt at the time. [243] The era of Constantine marks a marked period in the history of the Roman Empire and a decisive moment in the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. He built a new imperial residence in the city of Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople (now Istanbul) in his honor.[14] It then became the capital of the empire for more than a thousand years, with the Eastern Roman Empire referred to by modern historians as the Byzantine Empire. His most immediate political legacy was that he replaced Diocletian`s tetrarchy with the de facto principle of dynastic succession, leaving the empire to his sons and other members of the Constantinian dynasty. His reputation flourished during his children`s lifetime and for centuries after his reign. The medieval church regarded it as a model of virtue, while secular leaders invoked it as a prototype, reference point, and symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity. [15] From the Renaissance onwards, there have been more critical assessments of his reign with the rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources.
Modern and recent research trends have sought to balance the extremes of previous research. The reign of Constantine set a precedent for the position of the Christian emperor in the Church. Emperors saw themselves as gods for the spiritual health of their subjects, and according to Constantine, they had a duty to help the Church define orthodoxy and maintain orthodoxy. [40] The Church generally regarded the definition of doctrine as the task of bishops; The role of the emperor was to apply doctrine, eradicate heresy and maintain ecclesiastical unity. [41] The emperor ensured that God was properly worshipped in his kingdom; What was correct worship (orthodoxy), doctrines and dogmas were to be determined by the Church. After his rise to the rank of emperor, Constantine promulgated many reforms to strengthen the empire.[42] .
