St. Zeno
Born 300
Mauretania
Died 12 April 371
Verona
Major shrine Basilica of San Zeno, Verona
Feast 12 April; 21 May (translation of relics)
Attributes fish, fishing rod, or a bishop holding a fishing rod, or with a fish hanging from his crozier.
Patronage Fishermen, anglers, newborn babies, Verona, Campione d'Italia
Zeno was born in Africa. He received an excellent classical education and in 362, was named bishop of Verona, Italy. He was active in missionary work, converted many, and fought Arianism. He built a basilica at Verona, founded a convent that he directed, encouraged charities in his people, and wrote widely on a ecclesiastical subjects, particularly the virgin birth of Christ, in which are revealed many of the customs and practices of the times. He died in 371.
Zeno of Verona (Italian: Zenone da Verona; about 300 – 371 or 380) was either an early Christian Bishop of Verona or a martyr. He is a saint in the Catholic Church and in the Orthodox Church.
Life and historicity
According to a Veronese author named Coronato, a notary of the 7th century, Zeno was a native of Mauretania. He taught many children of Africa about the Catholic religion and he also helped them with their school work. The children could rely on someone who could help them.[1] Another theory is that Zeno was a follower of Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, who accompanied his master when the latter visited Verona in 340.[1]
The style of the 90 or so Sermones attributed to Zeno has also been considered evidence of his African origins due to its literary style, since Christian African writers of the time frequently used neologisms and wordplay.[1] Many of the Sermones concern Old Testament exegesis and are said to "have a definite anti-Semitic element in them".[2] This opinion is not shared by Giuseppe Laiti, expert on San Zeno’s tractatus.[3]
Staying in the city, Zeno entered the monastic, living as a monk until around 362, when he was elected successor to the See of Verona after the death of Bishop Gricinus (Cricinus, Cricino).[1]
Zeno had "received a good classical education",[4] and as bishop baptized many people, won converts back from Arianism, lived a life of poverty, trained priests to work in the diocese, set up a convent for women, reformed how the Agape feast was celebrated, and forbade funeral masses being accompanied by attendees' loud groans and wailing.[4] Zeno's other reforms included instructions concerning adult baptism (which occurred by complete immersion) and issuing medals to people newly baptized to the Catholic faith.[4]
Zeno's episcopate lasted for about ten years, and the date of his death is sometimes given as 12 April 371.[1]
Zeno is described as a confessor of the faith in early martyrologies.[4] Saint Gregory the Great calls him a martyr in his Dialogues; Saint Ambrose, a contemporary of Zeno, does not.[4] Ambrose speaks of Zeno's "happy death", although as a confessor, Zeno may have suffered persecution (but not execution) during the reigns of Constantius II and Julian the Apostate.[4] The entry in the current Roman Martyrology lists him on 12 April, but makes no mention of martyrdom.[5]
The first evidence for his existence is found in a letter written by Saint Ambrose to Bishop Syagrius of Verona in which Ambrose refers to the holiness of Zeno.[1] Later, Bishop Saint Petronius of Verona (r. 412–429) wrote of Zeno's virtues and also confirmed the existence of a cult dedicated to Saint Zeno.[1]
A poem written between 781 and 810, called the Versus de Verona, an elegy of the city in verse, states that Zeno was the eighth bishop of Verona.[1]
Veneration
San Zeno Altarpiece. Zeno is on the far right.
Zeno's liturgical feast day is celebrated on 12 April, but in the diocese of Verona, it is also celebrated on 21 May, in honor of the translation of his relics on 21 May 807.[1]
St Zeno's body ready for his feast day procession on 21 May 2012
Tradition states that Zeno built the first basilica in Verona, situated in the area probably occupied by the present-day cathedral.[1] His eponymous church in its present location dates to the early ninth century, when it was endowed by Charlemagne and his son Pepin, King of Italy. It was consecrated on 8 December 806; two local hermits, Benignus and Carus, were assigned the task of translating Zeno's relics to a new marble crypt.[1] King Pepin was present at the ceremony, as were the Bishops of Cremona and Salzburg, as well as an immense crowd of townspeople.[1]
The church was damaged at the beginning of the tenth century by Hungarians, though the relics of Zeno remained safe.[1] The basilica was rebuilt again, and made much larger and stronger. Financial support was provided by Otto I, and it was re-consecrated in 967, at a ceremony presided over by the Bishop Ratherius of Verona.[1]
The present church of San Zeno in Verona is a work of the twelfth, thirteenth and early fifteenth centuries for the most part. It is well known for its bronze doors (c. 1100 – c. 1200) which depict, besides stories from the Bible, the miracles of Saint Zeno, images drawn from stories, including those recorded by the notary Coronato,[1] the facade sculpture signed by Nicholaus and an associate Guglielmus, and the rose window (c. 1200), which is the work of Brioloto.
Legends and iconography
The Adige flowing through Verona
Zeno is the patron saint of fishermen and anglers, the city of Verona, newborn babies as well as children learning to speak and walk. Some 30 churches or chapels have been dedicated to him, including Pistoia Cathedral.
According to legend he was stolen at birth and briefly replaced by a demonic changeling. One story relates that Saint Zeno, one day fishing on the banks of the Adige, which he did in order to feed himself (rather than as recreation), saw a peasant crossing the river in a horse and cart. The horses began to get strangely skittish. Zeno, believing this to be the work of the devil, made the sign of the cross, and the horses calmed down.[1] Zeno was often said to combat the devil, and is sometimes depicted treading on a demon.[1] Another story relates that he exorcised a demon from the body of the daughter of the Emperor Gallienus (though Zeno probably did not live during the reign of Gallienus). The story relates that the grateful Gallienus allowed Zeno and other Christians freedom of worship in the empire.[1]
Saint Gregory the Great, at the end of the 6th century, relates a miracle associated with the divine intercession of Zeno.[1] In 588, the Adige flooded its banks, inundating Verona. The floodwater reached the church dedicated to Saint Zeno, but miraculously did not enter it, even though the door was wide open. The church was donated to Theodelinda, an alleged eyewitness to the miracle and wife of king Authari.[1]
Zeno is most often represented with fishing-related items such as a fish, fishing rod, or as a bishop holding a fishing rod, or with a fish hanging from his crozier. "Local tradition says the bishop was fond of fishing in the nearby river Adige," writes Alban Butler, "but it is more likely that originally it was a symbol of his success in bringing people to baptism
St. Constantine the Great
புனிதர் பெரிய கான்ஸ்டன்டைன்
ரோமப்பேரரசின் 57வது பேரரசர்:
பிறப்பு: ஃபெப்ரவரி 27, 272
நைஸ்ஸஸ், பெரிய மோஸியா, ரோமப்பேரரசு (தற்போதைய செர்பியா)
இறப்பு: மே 22, 337 (வயது 65)
நிகொமேடியா, பித்தினியா, ரோமப்பேரரசு
“முதலாம் கான்ஸ்டன்டைன்” (Constantine I) என்று பொதுவாக அழைக்கப்படும் இவர், ரோமப்பேரரசின் 57வது ரோமப் பேரரசர் ஆவார். கி.பி. 324ம் ஆண்டுமுதல் 337ம் ஆண்டில் தாம் இறக்கும்வரை ஆட்சியில் இருந்த இவர், முதல் கிறிஸ்தவ ரோமப் பேரரசரானாவார். முக்கியத்துவம் வாய்ந்த ஒரு ஆட்சியாளராக இருந்த கான்ஸ்டன்டைன், எப்போதும் ஒரு சர்ச்சைக்குரிய நபராகவே இருந்தார். கிறிஸ்துவ துன்புறுத்தல்களை நிறுத்துவதும் ரோம சாம்ராஜ்யத்தில் உள்ள மற்ற எல்லா மதங்களுடனும் கிறிஸ்தவர்களுடனும் கிறிஸ்தவத்தை சட்டப்பூர்வமாக்குவதற்குமான முதல் பேரரசராக கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் இருந்தார்.
கி.பி. 308 முதல் 324 வரை ஆட்சி செய்த ரோமப் பேரரசன் “லிசினியஸ்” (Licinius) என்பவரை பின்னாளில் போரிட்டு வெற்றிகொண்ட கான்ஸ்டன்டைன், முதலில் அவரை 313ம் ஆண்டு, ஃபெப்ரவரி மாதம் சந்தித்து, “மிலன் பிரகடணம்” (Edict of Milan) எனும் ஒப்பந்தத்தை செய்துகொண்டனர். இதன்படி, கிறிஸ்தவ மக்கள், அடக்குமுறை இல்லாமல் தமது விசுவாசத்தை பின்பற்ற அனுமதியளிக்கப்பட்டனர். கிறிஸ்தவ போதகம் செய்ததற்கான தண்டனைகள் இரத்து செய்யப்பட்டன. இதற்காக, பலர் மறைசாட்சியாக உயிர்த்தியாகம் செய்திருந்தனர். பறிமுதல் செய்யப்பட்ட திருச்சபையின் சொத்துக்கள் திருப்பித் தரப்பட்டன. கிறிஸ்தவம் மட்டுமல்லாது, பிற மத மக்களுக்கும் அவர்களது விசுவாசத்தை பின்பற்றும் சுதந்திரம் அளிக்கப்பட்டது.
“பிளேவியஸ் வலேரியஸ் கான்ஸ்டன்ஷியஸ்” (Flavius Valerius Constantius) எனும் இயற்பெயர் கொண்ட இவரது தந்தையார், ஒரு ரோமன் இராணுவ (Roman Army officer) அதிகாரியான “பிளேவியஸ் கான்ஸ்டன்ஷியஸ்” (Flavius Constantius) ஆவார். இவரது தாயாரான “புனிதர் ஹெலெனா” (Saint Helena of Constantinople) ஒரு கிரேக்க பெண்மணியாவார். “கிழக்கு மரபுவழி திருச்சபையும்” (Eastern Orthodox Church), “ஓரியண்டல் மரபுவழி திருச்சபையும்” (Oriental Orthodox Church) இவரை புனிதராகப் போற்றுகின்றன.
ஆட்சி:
பேரரசர் கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் காலத்தில் ரோமானிய பேரரசின் பல நிர்வாக, நிதி, சமூக, மற்றும் இராணுவ சீர்திருத்தங்கள் இயற்றப்பட்டது. மேலும் அரசு, குடிமையில் மற்றும் இராணுவ அதிகாரங்கள் தனித்தனியே பிரித்து மறு சீரமைக்கப்பட்டது. மேலும் அப்போதே பணவீக்கத்தை கட்டுப்படுத்த சொலிடுஸ் என்ற ஒரு புதிய தங்க நாணயத்தை அறிமுகப்படுத்தினார். இது ஆயிரம் ஆண்டுகளுக்கு மேலாக பைசண்டைன் மற்றும் ஐரோப்பிய நாணயங்களின் பொதுவான நாணயமாக பயன்பட்டது. உள்நாட்டு அச்சுறுத்தல்கள் மற்றும் காட்டுமிராண்டிகளின் படையெடுப்புகளை எதிர்கொள்வதற்காக ரோமானிய இராணுவத்தில் தரவரிசை முறையில் வகைப்படுத்தி படைகளை பலப்படுத்தினர். கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் முந்தைய நூற்றாண்டின் உள்நாட்டு கலகத்தின் கைவிடப்பட்ட ரோமன் எல்லைகளை பழங்குடியினரிடமிருந்து வெற்றிகரமாக மீட்டார். கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் 324ல் பேரரசர்கள் மசேந்தியஸ் மற்றும் லிசினுஸ் ஆகியோருக்கு எதிரான உள்நாட்டு போர்களை வென்றதன் காரணமாக மேற்கு மற்றும் கிழக்கு ரோமின் ஒரே ஆட்சியாளரானார்.
கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் பண்டைக் கிரேக்கக் குடியேற்றமான பைசன்டியத்தை பேரரசின் தலைநகரமாக ஆக்கினார். அவர் காலத்தில் புதிய ரோம் என பெயரிடப்பட்ட இது பின்னர், அவர் பெயரால் கான்ஸ்டன்டினோப்பிள் என்று அழைக்கப்பட்டது. இது பைசன்டைன் பேரரசின் தலைநகரமாக ஆயிரம் ஆண்டுகளுக்கு மேலாக நீடித்திருந்தது. இதன் காரணமாக, அவர் பைசண்டைன் பேரரசின் நிறுவனர் என்று அழைக்கபடுகின்றார். அவரது அரசு அவருக்கு பின் வந்தவர்களால் தழைத்தோங்கியது.
அவர் மதச்சார்பற்ற ஆட்சியாளர்களின் ஒரு முன்மாதிரி மற்றும் சட்டப்பூர்வ பேரரசின் முன்னோடி என்று கூறப்பட்டார். ஆனால் சில விமர்சகர்கள் அவரை ஒரு கொடுங்கோல் அரசனாகவும் அவர் தன் ஆட்சியை தக்கவைத்து கொள்வதற்க்காக நடித்தார் என்றும் கூறுகின்றனர்.
மத கொள்கை:
கிறிஸ்தவம் வரலாற்றில் கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் - முதல் கிறிஸ்தவ பேரரசர் ஆவர். இயேசுவின் கல்லறை உள்ளதாக நம்பப்படும் ஜெருசலேம் நகரில் அவரது உத்தரவின் பேரில் புனித செபுல்ச்ரே திருச்சபை கட்டப்பட்டது. திருத்தந்தைகள் கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் மூலம் பெரிய அளவில் அதிகாரங்களைப் பெற்றனர்.
கடைசி காலம்:
கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் அவரது மரணத் தருவாயில் புனித அப்போஸ்தலர் தேவாலயம் அருகே ரகசியமாக கல்லறை கட்டி தயாராக வைக்க சொன்னார். அவரது மரணம் அவர் எதிர்பார்த்ததை விட விரைவிலேயே வந்தது. கி.பி. 337ம் ஆண்டு, ஈஸ்டர் விருந்திற்கு பின்னர் கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் தீவிரமாக நோய்வாய்ப்பட்டார். பின்னர் கான்ஸ்டான்டினோபிள் திரும்ப அவர் முயற்சித்தார். அவர் தனக்கு திருமுழுக்கு அளிக்கப்பட வேண்டும் என கேட்டார். அதற்கான ஏற்பாடுகளும் செய்யப்பட்டாலும் அதற்கு முன்பே அச்சிரோனில் 337ம் ஆண்டு, மே மாதம், 22ம் நாளன்று, பாஸ்கா பண்டிகையை தொடர்ந்து பெந்தகோஸ்து ஐம்பது நாள் திருவிழாவின் கடைசி நாளில் கான்ஸ்டன்டைன் இறந்தார்.
Reign 25 July 306 – 22 May 337
(alone from 19 September 324)
Predecessor Constantius I (in the West)
Successor
Constantine II
Constantius II
Constans I
Co-rulers
See list
Born Flavius Constantinus
27 February c. 272[1]
Naissus, Moesia, Roman Empire[2] (modern-day Serbia)
Died 22 May 337 (aged 65)
Achyron, Nicomedia, Bithynia, Roman Empire
(now İzmit, Kocaeli, Turkey)
Burial Originally the Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople, but Constantius II, his son, had it moved
Spouses
Minervina[f]
Fausta
Issue
Detail
Crispus
Constantine II
Constantius II
Constantina
Constans I
Helena
Names
Flavius Valerius Constantinus
Regnal name
Imperator Caesar Flavius Valerius Constantinus Augustus
Greek Κωνσταντῖνος
Dynasty Constantinian
Father Constantius Chlorus
Mother Helena
Religion
Roman polytheism (until 312)
Christianity (from 312)
Resting place Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey)
Venerated in
Eastern Catholic Church[g]
Eastern Orthodox Church
Oriental Orthodoxy
Anglican Communion
Lutheran Church
Major shrine Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey)
Feast 21 May
Junior Emperor and emperor called the "Thirteenth Apostle" in the East. The son of Constantius I Chlorus, junior emperor and St. Helena, Constantine was raised on the court of co-Emperor Diocletian. When his father died in 306, Constantine was declared junior emperor of York, England, by the local legions and earned a place as a ruler of the Empire by defeating of his main rivals at the battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312. According to legend, he adopted the insignia of Christ, the chi-rho, and placed it upon his labarum - the military standards that held the banners his armies carried into battle to vanquish their pagan enemies. His purple banners were inscribed with the Latin for "In this sign conquer." Constantine then shared rule of the Empire with Licinius Licinianus, exerting his considerable influence upon his colleague to secure the declaration of Christianity to be a free religion. When, however, Licinius and Constantine launched a persecution of the Christians, Constantine marched to the East and routed his opponent at the battle of Adrianople. Constantine was the most dominating figure of his lifetime, towering over his contemporaries, including Pope Sylvester I. He presided over the Council of Nicaea, gave extensive grants of land and property to the Church, founded the Christian city of Constantinople to serve as his new capital, and undertook a long-sighted program of Christianization for the whole of the Roman Empire. While he was baptized a Christian only on his deathbed, Constantine nevertheless was a genuinely important figure in Christian history and was revered as a saint, especially in the Eastern Church.
Constantine I (/ˈkɒnstəntaɪn/ KON-stən-tyne, also /ˈkɒnstəntiːn/ KON-stən-teen; Latin: Flavius Valerius Constantinus, Classical Latin: [kõːstanˈtiːnʊs]; Greek: Κωνσταντῖνος, translit. Kōnstantînos; 27 February c. 272 – 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337. He was the first emperor to convert to Christianity.[h] Born in Naissus, Dacia Mediterranea (now Niš, Serbia), he was the son of Flavius Constantius, a Roman army officer of Illyrian origin who had been one of the four rulers of the Tetrarchy. His mother, Helena, was a Greek woman of low birth and a Christian.[7][8][9][10] Later canonized as a saint, she is traditionally attributed with the conversion of her son. Constantine served with distinction under the Roman emperors Diocletian and Galerius. He began his career by campaigning in the eastern provinces (against the Persians) before being recalled in the west (in AD 305) to fight alongside his father in the province of Britannia. After his father's death in 306, Constantine was acclaimed as imperator by his army at Eboracum (York, England). He eventually emerged victorious in the civil wars against emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire by 324.
Upon his ascension to emperor, Constantine enacted numerous reforms to strengthen the empire. He restructured the government, separating civil and military authorities. To combat inflation, he introduced the solidus, a new gold coin that became the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. The Roman army was reorganized to consist of mobile units (comitatenses) and garrison troops (limitanei) which were capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—such as the Franks, the Alemanni, the Goths and the Sarmatians—and resettled territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century with citizens of Roman culture.
Although Constantine lived much of his life as a pagan and later as a catechumen, he began to favor Christianity beginning in 312, finally becoming a Christian and being baptised by either Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian bishop, or by Pope Sylvester I, which is maintained by the Catholic Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church. He played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which declared tolerance for Christianity in the Roman Empire. He convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325 which produced the statement of Christian belief known as the Nicene Creed.[11] The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built on his orders at the purported site of Jesus' tomb in Jerusalem and was deemed the holiest place in all of Christendom. The papal claim to temporal power in the High Middle Ages was based on the fabricated Donation of Constantine. He has historically been referred to as the "First Christian Emperor" and he did favor the Christian Church. While some modern scholars debate his beliefs and even his comprehension of Christianity,[i] he is venerated as a saint in Eastern Christianity, and he did much for pushing Christianity towards the mainstream of Roman culture.
The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire and a pivotal moment in the transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages.[14] He built a new imperial residence at the city of Byzantium and renamed it New Rome, later adopting the name Constantinople after himself, where it was located in modern Istanbul. It subsequently became the capital of the empire for more than a thousand years, the later Eastern Roman Empire often being referred to in English as the Byzantine Empire, a term never used by the Empire, invented by German historian Hieronymus Wolf. His more immediate political legacy was that he replaced Diocletian's Tetrarchy with the de facto principle of dynastic succession by leaving the empire to his sons and other members of the Constantinian dynasty. His reputation flourished during the lifetime of his children and for centuries after his reign. The medieval church held him up as a paragon of virtue, while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype, a point of reference and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity.[15] Beginning with the Renaissance, there were more critical appraisals of his reign with the rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources. Trends in modern and recent scholarship have attempted to balance the extremes of previous scholarship.
Sources
Constantine was a ruler of major importance and has always been a controversial figure.[16] The fluctuations in his reputation reflect the nature of the ancient sources for his reign. These are abundant and detailed,[17] but they have been strongly influenced by the official propaganda of the period[18] and are often one-sided;[19] no contemporaneous histories or biographies dealing with his life and rule have survived.[20] The nearest replacement is Eusebius's Vita Constantini—a mixture of eulogy and hagiography[21] written between 335 and circa 339[22]—that extols Constantine's moral and religious virtues.[23] The Vita creates a contentiously positive image of Constantine,[24] and modern historians have frequently challenged its reliability.[25] The fullest secular life of Constantine is the anonymous Origo Constantini,[26] a work of uncertain date[27] which focuses on military and political events to the neglect of cultural and religious matters.[28]
Lactantius' De mortibus persecutorum, a political Christian pamphlet on the reigns of Diocletian and the Tetrarchy, provides valuable but tendentious detail on Constantine's predecessors and early life.[29] The ecclesiastical histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret describe the ecclesiastic disputes of Constantine's later reign.[30] Written during the reign of Theodosius II (r. 402–450), a century after Constantine's reign, these ecclesiastical historians obscure the events and theologies of the Constantinian period through misdirection, misrepresentation, and deliberate obscurity.[31] The contemporary writings of the orthodox Christian Athanasius and the ecclesiastical history of the Arian Philostorgius also survive, though their biases are no less firm.[32]
The epitomes of Aurelius Victor (De Caesaribus), Eutropius (Breviarium), Festus (Breviarium), and the anonymous author of the Epitome de Caesaribus offer compressed secular political and military histories of the period. Although not Christian, the epitomes paint a favourable image of Constantine but omit reference to Constantine's religious policies.[33] The Panegyrici Latini, a collection of panegyrics from the late 3rd and early 4th centuries, provide valuable information on the politics and ideology of the tetrarchic period and the early life of Constantine.[34] Contemporary architecture—such as the Arch of Constantine in Rome and palaces in Gamzigrad and Córdoba[35]—epigraphic remains, and the coinage of the era complement the literary sources.[36]
Early life
Remains of the luxurious residence palace of Mediana, erected by Constantine I near his birth town of Naissus
Constantine was born in Naissus (today Niš, Serbia), part of the Dardania province of Moesia on 27 February,[37] c. AD 272.[38] His father was Flavius Constantius[j] who was born in the same region (then called Dacia Ripensis)[42][43][39] and a native of the province of Moesia.[44] His original full name, as well as that of his father, is not known.[45][46] His praenomen is variously given as Lucius, Marcus and Gaius.[46] Whatever the case, praenomina had already disappeared from most public records by this time.[47] He also adopted the name "Valerius", the nomen of emperor Diocletian, following his father's ascension as caesar.[46][45]
Constantine probably spent little time with his father[48] who was an officer in the Roman army, part of Emperor Aurelian's imperial bodyguard. Being described as a tolerant and politically skilled man,[49] Constantius advanced through the ranks, earning the governorship of Dalmatia from Emperor Diocletian, another of Aurelian's companions from Illyricum, in 284 or 285.[44] Constantine's mother was Helena, a Greek woman of low social standing from Helenopolis of Bithynia.[50] It is uncertain whether she was legally married to Constantius or merely his concubine.[51] His main language was Latin, and during his public speeches he needed Greek translators.[52]
Bust of Maximian, Diocletian's co-emperor
In July 285, Diocletian declared Maximian, another colleague from Illyricum, his co-emperor. Each emperor would have his own court, his own military and administrative faculties, and each would rule with a separate praetorian prefect as chief lieutenant.[53] Maximian ruled in the West, from his capitals at Mediolanum (Milan, Italy) or Augusta Treverorum (Trier, Germany), while Diocletian ruled in the East, from Nicomedia (İzmit, Turkey). The division was merely pragmatic: the empire was called "indivisible" in official panegyric,[54] and both emperors could move freely throughout the empire.[55] In 288, Maximian appointed Constantius to serve as his praetorian prefect in Gaul. Constantius left Helena to marry Maximian's stepdaughter Theodora in 288 or 289.[56]
Diocletian divided the empire again in 293, appointing two caesars to rule over further subdivisions of East and West. Each would be subordinate to his respective augustus but would act with supreme authority in his assigned lands. This system would later be called the Tetrarchy. Diocletian's first appointee for the office of caesar was Constantius; his second was Galerius, a native of Felix Romuliana. According to Lactantius, Galerius was a brutal, animalistic man. Although he shared the paganism of Rome's aristocracy, he seemed to them an alien figure, a semi-barbarian.[57] On 1 March, Constantius was promoted to the office of caesar, and dispatched to Gaul to fight the rebels Carausius and Allectus.[58] In spite of meritocratic overtones, the Tetrarchy retained vestiges of hereditary privilege,[59] and Constantine became the prime candidate for future appointment as caesar as soon as his father took the position. Constantine went to the court of Diocletian, where he lived as his father's heir presumptive.[60]
In the East
Constantine received a formal education at Diocletian's court, where he learned Latin literature, Greek, and philosophy.[61] The cultural environment in Nicomedia was open, fluid, and socially mobile; in it, Constantine could mix with intellectuals both pagan and Christian. He may have attended the lectures of Lactantius, a Christian scholar of Latin in the city.[62] Because Diocletian did not completely trust Constantius—none of the Tetrarchs fully trusted their colleagues—Constantine was held as something of a hostage, a tool to ensure Constantius' best behavior. Constantine was nonetheless a prominent member of the court: he fought for Diocletian and Galerius in Asia and served in a variety of tribunates; he campaigned against barbarians on the Danube in 296 and fought the Persians under Diocletian in Syria in 297, as well as under Galerius in Mesopotamia in 298–299.[63] By late 305, he had become a tribune of the first order, a tribunus ordinis primi.[64]
Porphyry bust of Emperor Galerius
Constantine had returned to Nicomedia from the eastern front by the spring of 303, in time to witness the beginnings of Diocletian's "Great Persecution", the most severe persecution of Christians in Roman history.[65] In late 302, Diocletian and Galerius sent a messenger to the oracle of Apollo at Didyma with an inquiry about Christians.[66] Constantine could recall his presence at the palace when the messenger returned, when Diocletian accepted his court's demands for universal persecution.[67] On 23 February 303, Diocletian ordered the destruction of Nicomedia's new church, condemned its scriptures to the flames, and had its treasures seized. In the months that followed, churches and scriptures were destroyed, Christians were deprived of official ranks, and priests were imprisoned.[68] It is unlikely that Constantine played any role in the persecution.[69] In his later writings, he attempted to present himself as an opponent of Diocletian's "sanguinary edicts" against the "Worshippers of God",[70] but nothing indicates that he opposed it effectively at the time.[71] Although no contemporary Christian challenged Constantine for his inaction during the persecutions, it remained a political liability throughout his life.[72]
On 1 May 305, Diocletian, as a result of a debilitating sickness taken in the winter of 304–305, announced his resignation. In a parallel ceremony in Milan, Maximian did the same.[73] Lactantius states that Galerius manipulated the weakened Diocletian into resigning and forced him to accept Galerius' allies in the imperial succession. According to Lactantius, the crowd listening to Diocletian's resignation speech believed, until the last moment, that Diocletian would choose Constantine and Maxentius (Maximian's son) as his successors.[74] It was not to be: Constantius and Galerius were promoted to augusti, while Severus and Maximinus, Galerius' nephew, were appointed their caesars respectively. Constantine and Maxentius were ignored.[75]
Some of the ancient sources detail plots that Galerius made on Constantine's life in the months following Diocletian's abdication. They assert that Galerius assigned Constantine to lead an advance unit in a cavalry charge through a swamp on the middle Danube, made him enter into single combat with a lion, and attempted to kill him in hunts and wars. Constantine always emerged victorious: the lion emerged from the contest in a poorer condition than Constantine; Constantine returned to Nicomedia from the Danube with a Sarmatian captive to drop at Galerius' feet.[76] It is uncertain how much these tales can be trusted.[77]
In the West
Constantine recognized the implicit danger in remaining at Galerius' court, where he was held as a virtual hostage. His career depended on being rescued by his father in the West. Constantius was quick to intervene.[78] In the late spring or early summer of 305, Constantius requested leave for his son to help him campaign in Britain. After a long evening of drinking, Galerius granted the request. Constantine's later propaganda describes how he fled the court in the night, before Galerius could change his mind. He rode from post-house to post-house at high speed, hamstringing every horse in his wake.[79] By the time Galerius awoke the following morning, Constantine had fled too far to be caught.[80] Constantine joined his father in Gaul, at Bononia (Boulogne) before the summer of 305.[81]
Modern bronze statue of Constantine I in York, England, near the spot where he was proclaimed Augustus in 306
From Bononia, they crossed the English Channel to Britain and made their way to Eboracum (York), capital of the province of Britannia Secunda and home to a large military base. Constantine was able to spend a year in northern Britain at his father's side, campaigning against the Picts beyond Hadrian's Wall in the summer and autumn.[82] Constantius' campaign, like that of Septimius Severus before it, probably advanced far into the north without achieving great success.[83] Constantius had become severely sick over the course of his reign and died on 25 July 306 in Eboracum. Before dying, he declared his support for raising Constantine to the rank of full augustus. The Alamannic king Chrocus, a barbarian taken into service under Constantius, then proclaimed Constantine as augustus. The troops loyal to Constantius' memory followed him in acclamation. Gaul and Britain quickly accepted his rule;[84] Hispania, which had been in his father's domain for less than a year, rejected it.[85]
Constantine sent Galerius an official notice of Constantius' death and his own acclamation. Along with the notice, he included a portrait of himself in the robes of an augustus.[86] The portrait was wreathed in bay.[87] He requested recognition as heir to his father's throne and passed off responsibility for his unlawful ascension on his army, claiming they had "forced it upon him".[88] Galerius was put into a fury by the message; he almost set the portrait and messenger on fire.[89] His advisers calmed him and argued that outright denial of Constantine's claims would mean certain war.[90] Galerius was compelled to compromise: he granted Constantine the title "caesar" rather than "augustus" (the latter office went to Severus instead).[91] Wishing to make it clear that he alone gave Constantine legitimacy, Galerius personally sent Constantine the emperor's traditional purple robes.[92] Constantine accepted the decision,[91] knowing that it would remove doubts as to his legitimacy.[93]
Early rule
Constantine's share of the empire consisted of Britain, Gaul, and Spain, and he commanded one of the largest Roman armies which was stationed along the important Rhine frontier.[94] He remained in Britain after his promotion to emperor, driving back the tribes of the Picts and securing his control in the northwestern dioceses. He completed the reconstruction of military bases begun under his father's rule, and he ordered the repair of the region's roadways.[95] He then left for Augusta Treverorum (Trier) in Gaul, the Tetrarchic capital of the northwestern Roman Empire.[96] The Franks learned of Constantine's acclamation and invaded Gaul across the lower Rhine over the winter of 306–307.[97] He drove them back beyond the Rhine and captured kings Ascaric and Merogais; the kings and their soldiers were fed to the beasts of Trier's amphitheatre in the adventus (arrival) celebrations which followed.[98]
Public baths (thermae) built in Trier by Constantine, more than 100 metres (328 ft) wide by 200 metres (656 ft) long and capable of serving several thousand at a time, built to rival those of Rome[99]
Constantine began a major expansion of Trier. He strengthened the circuit wall around the city with military towers and fortified gates, and he began building a palace complex in the northeastern part of the city. To the south of his palace, he ordered the construction of a large formal audience hall and a massive imperial bathhouse. He sponsored many building projects throughout Gaul during his tenure as emperor of the West, especially in Augustodunum (Autun) and Arelate (Arles).[100] According to Lactantius, Constantine followed a tolerant policy towards Christianity, although he was not yet a Christian. He probably judged it a more sensible policy than open persecution[101] and a way to distinguish himself from the "great persecutor" Galerius.[102] He decreed a formal end to persecution and returned to Christians all that they had lost during them.[103]
Constantine was largely untried and had a hint of illegitimacy about him; he relied on his father's reputation in his early propaganda, which gave as much coverage to his father's deeds as to his.[104] His military skill and building projects, however, soon gave the panegyrist the opportunity to comment favourably on the similarities between father and son, and Eusebius remarked that Constantine was a "renewal, as it were, in his own person, of his father's life and reign".[105] Constantinian coinage, sculpture, and oratory also show a tendency for disdain towards the "barbarians" beyond the frontiers. He minted a coin issue after his victory over the Alemanni which depicts weeping and begging Alemannic tribesmen, "the Alemanni conquered" beneath the phrase "Romans' rejoicing".[106] There was little sympathy for these enemies; as his panegyrist declared, "It is a stupid clemency that spares the conquered foe."[107]
Maxentius' rebellion
Dresden bust of Emperor Maxentius, who was defeated by Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
Following Galerius' recognition of Constantine as caesar, Constantine's portrait was brought to Rome, as was customary. Maxentius mocked the portrait's subject as the son of a harlot and lamented his own powerlessness.[108] Maxentius, envious of Constantine's authority,[109] seized the title of emperor on 28 October 306. Galerius refused to recognize him but failed to unseat him. Galerius sent Severus against Maxentius, but during the campaign, Severus' armies, previously under command of Maxentius' father Maximian, defected, and Severus was seized and imprisoned.[110] Maximian, brought out of retirement by his son's rebellion, left for Gaul to confer with Constantine in late 307. He offered to marry his daughter Fausta to Constantine and elevate him to augustan rank. In return, Constantine would reaffirm the old family alliance between Maximian and Constantius and offer support to Maxentius' cause in Italy. Constantine accepted and married Fausta in Trier in late summer 307. Constantine gave Maxentius his meagre support, offering Maxentius political recognition.[111]
Constantine remained aloof from the Italian conflict, however. Over the spring and summer of 307, he had left Gaul for Britain to avoid any involvement in the Italian turmoil;[112] now, instead of giving Maxentius military aid, he sent his troops against Germanic tribes along the Rhine. In 308, he raided the territory of the Bructeri and made a bridge across the Rhine at Colonia Agrippinensium (Cologne). In 310, he marched to the northern Rhine and fought the Franks. When not campaigning, he toured his lands advertising his benevolence and supporting the economy and the arts. His refusal to participate in the war increased his popularity among his people and strengthened his power base in the West.[113] Maximian returned to Rome in the winter of 307–308 but soon fell out with his son. In early 308, after a failed attempt to usurp Maxentius' title, Maximian returned to Constantine's court.[114]
On 11 November 308, Galerius called a general council at the military city of Carnuntum (Petronell-Carnuntum, Austria) to resolve the instability in the western provinces. In attendance were Diocletian, briefly returned from retirement, Galerius, and Maximian. Maximian was forced to abdicate again and Constantine was again demoted to caesar. Licinius, one of Galerius' old military companions, was appointed augustus in the western regions. The new system did not last long: Constantine refused to accept the demotion and continued to style himself as augustus on his coinage, even as other members of the Tetrarchy referred to him as a caesar on theirs. Maximinus was frustrated that he had been passed over for promotion while the newcomer Licinius had been raised to the office of augustus and demanded that Galerius promote him. Galerius offered to call both Maximinus and Constantine "sons of the augusti",[115] but neither accepted the new title. By the spring of 310, Galerius was referring to both men as augusti.[116]
Maximian's rebellion
A gold solidus of "Unconquered Constantine" with the god Sol Invictus behind him, struck in AD 313. The use of Sol's image stressed Constantine's status as his father's successor, appealed to the educated citizens of Gaul, and was considered less offensive than the traditional pagan pantheon to the Christians.[117]
In 310, a dispossessed Maximian rebelled against Constantine while Constantine was away campaigning against the Franks. Maximian had been sent south to Arles with a contingent of Constantine's army, in preparation for any attacks by Maxentius in southern Gaul. He announced that Constantine was dead and took up the imperial purple. In spite of a large donative pledge to any who would support him as emperor, most of Constantine's army remained loyal to their emperor, and Maximian was soon compelled to leave. When Constantine heard of the rebellion, he abandoned his campaign against the Franks and marched his army up the Rhine.[118] At Cabillunum (Chalon-sur-Saône), he moved his troops onto waiting boats to row down the slow waters of the Saône to the quicker waters of the Rhone. He disembarked at Lugdunum (Lyon).[119] Maximian fled to Massilia (Marseille), a town better able to withstand a long siege than Arles. It made little difference, however, as loyal citizens opened the rear gates to Constantine. Maximian was captured and reproved for his crimes. Constantine granted some clemency but strongly encouraged his suicide. In July 310, Maximian hanged himself.[118]
In spite of the earlier rupture in their relations, Maxentius was eager to present himself as his father's devoted son after his death.[120] He began minting coins with his father's deified image, proclaiming his desire to avenge Maximian's death.[121] Constantine initially presented the suicide as an unfortunate family tragedy. By 311, however, he was spreading another version. According to this, after Constantine had pardoned him, Maximian planned to murder Constantine in his sleep. Fausta learned of the plot and warned Constantine, who put a eunuch in his own place in bed. Maximian was apprehended when he killed the eunuch and was offered suicide, which he accepted.[122] Along with using propaganda, Constantine instituted a damnatio memoriae on Maximian, destroying all inscriptions referring to him and eliminating any public work bearing his image.[123]
The death of Maximian required a shift in Constantine's public image. He could no longer rely on his connection to the elder Emperor Maximian and needed a new source of legitimacy.[124] In a speech delivered in Gaul on 25 July 310, the anonymous orator reveals a previously unknown dynastic connection to Claudius II, a 3rd-century emperor famed for defeating the Goths and restoring order to the empire. Breaking away from tetrarchic models, the speech emphasizes Constantine's ancestral prerogative to rule, rather than principles of imperial equality. The new ideology expressed in the speech made Galerius and Maximian irrelevant to Constantine's right to rule.[125] Indeed, the orator emphasizes ancestry to the exclusion of all other factors: "No chance agreement of men, nor some unexpected consequence of favor, made you emperor," the orator declares to Constantine.[126]
The oration also moves away from the religious ideology of the Tetrarchy, with its focus on twin dynasties of Jupiter and Hercules. Instead, the orator proclaims that Constantine experienced a divine vision of Apollo and Victory granting him laurel wreaths of health and a long reign. In the likeness of Apollo, Constantine recognized himself as the saving figure to whom would be granted "rule of the whole world",[127] as the poet Virgil had once foretold.[128] The oration's religious shift is paralleled by a similar shift in Constantine's coinage. In his early reign, the coinage of Constantine advertised Mars as his patron. From 310 on, Mars was replaced by Sol Invictus, a god conventionally identified with Apollo.[129] There is little reason to believe that either the dynastic connection or the divine vision are anything other than fiction, but their proclamation strengthened Constantine's claims to legitimacy and increased his popularity among the citizens of Gaul.[130]
By the middle of 310, Galerius had become too ill to involve himself in imperial politics.[131] His final act survives: a letter to provincials posted in Nicomedia on 30 April 311, proclaiming an end to the persecutions, and the resumption of religious toleration.[132]
Eusebius maintains "divine providence […] took action against the perpetrator of these crimes" and gives a graphic account of Galerius' demise:
"Without warning suppurative inflammation broke out round the middle of his genitals, then a deep-seated fistula ulcer; these ate their way incurably into his innermost bowels. From them came a teeming indescribable mass of worms, and a sickening smell was given off, for the whole of his hulking body, thanks to over eating, had been transformed even before his illness into a huge lump of flabby fat, which then decomposed and presented those who came near it with a revolting and horrifying sight."[133]
Galerius died soon after the edict's proclamation,[134] destroying what little remained of the Tetrarchy.[135] Maximinus mobilized against Licinius and seized Asia Minor. A hasty peace was signed on a boat in the middle of the Bosphorus.[136] While Constantine toured Britain and Gaul, Maxentius prepared for war.[137] He fortified northern Italy and strengthened his support in the Christian community by allowing it to elect Eusebius as bishop of Rome,.[138]
A Roman fresco in Trier, Germany, possibly depicting Constantia.[139]
Maxentius' rule was nevertheless insecure. His early support dissolved in the wake of heightened tax rates and depressed trade; riots broke out in Rome and Carthage;[140] and Domitius Alexander was able to briefly usurp his authority in Africa.[141] By 312, he was a man barely tolerated, not one actively supported,[142] even among Christian Italians.[143] In the summer of 311, Maxentius mobilized against Constantine while Licinius was occupied with affairs in the East. He declared war on Constantine, vowing to avenge his father's "murder".[144] To prevent Maxentius from forming an alliance against him with Licinius,[145] Constantine forged his own alliance with Licinius over the winter of 311–312 and offered him his sister Constantia in marriage. Maximinus considered Constantine's arrangement with Licinius an affront to his authority. In response, he sent ambassadors to Rome, offering political recognition to Maxentius in exchange for a military support, which Maxentius accepted.[146] According to Eusebius, inter-regional travel became impossible, and there was military buildup everywhere. There was "not a place where people were not expecting the onset of hostilities every day".[147]
Battle of Constantine and Maxentius (detail of part of a fresco by Giulio Romano in the Hall of Constantine in the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican), copy c. 1650 by Lazzaro Baldi, now at the University of Edinburgh
Constantine's advisers and generals cautioned against preemptive attack on Maxentius;[148] even his soothsayers recommended against it, stating that the sacrifices had produced unfavourable omens.[149] Constantine, with a spirit that left a deep impression on his followers, inspiring some to believe that he had some form of supernatural guidance,[150] ignored all these cautions.[151] Early in the spring of 312,[152] Constantine crossed the Cottian Alps with a quarter of his army, a force numbering about 40,000.[153] The first town his army encountered was Segusium (Susa, Italy), a heavily fortified town that shut its gates to him. Constantine ordered his men to set fire to its gates and scale its walls. He took the town quickly. Constantine ordered his troops not to loot the town and advanced into northern Italy.[152]
At the approach to the west of the important city of Augusta Taurinorum (Turin, Italy), Constantine met a large force of heavily armed Maxentian cavalry.[154] In the ensuing Battle of Turin Constantine's army encircled Maxentius' cavalry, flanked them with his own cavalry, and dismounted them with blows from his soldiers' iron-tipped clubs. Constantine's armies emerged victorious.[155] Turin refused to give refuge to Maxentius' retreating forces, opening its gates to Constantine instead.[156] Other cities of the north Italian plain sent Constantine embassies of congratulation for his victory. He moved on to Milan, where he was met with open gates and jubilant rejoicing. Constantine rested his army in Milan until mid-summer 312, when he moved on to Brixia (Brescia).[157]
Brescia's army was easily dispersed,[158] and Constantine quickly advanced to Verona where a large Maxentian force was camped.[159] Ruricius Pompeianus, general of the Veronese forces and Maxentius' praetorian prefect,[160] was in a strong defensive position since the town was surrounded on three sides by the Adige. Constantine sent a small force north of the town in an attempt to cross the river unnoticed. Ruricius sent a large detachment to counter Constantine's expeditionary force but was defeated. Constantine's forces successfully surrounded the town and laid siege.[161] Ruricius gave Constantine the slip and returned with a larger force to oppose Constantine. Constantine refused to let up on the siege and sent only a small force to oppose him. In the desperately fought encounter that followed, Ruricius was killed and his army destroyed.[162] Verona surrendered soon afterwards, followed by Aquileia,[163] Mutina (Modena),[164] and Ravenna.[165] The road to Rome was now wide open to Constantine.[166]
The Milvian Bridge (Ponte Milvio) over the River Tiber, north of Rome, where Constantine and Maxentius fought in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
Maxentius prepared for the same type of war he had waged against Severus and Galerius: he sat in Rome and prepared for a siege.[167] He still controlled Rome's Praetorian Guard, was well-stocked with African grain, and was surrounded on all sides by the seemingly impregnable Aurelian Walls. He ordered all bridges across the Tiber cut, reportedly on the counsel of the gods,[168] and left the rest of central Italy undefended; Constantine secured that region's support without challenge.[169] Constantine progressed slowly[170] along the Via Flaminia,[171] allowing the weakness of Maxentius to draw his regime further into turmoil.[170] Maxentius' support continued to weaken: at chariot races on 27 October, the crowd openly taunted Maxentius, shouting that Constantine was invincible.[172] Maxentius, no longer certain that he would emerge from a siege victorious, built a temporary boat bridge across the Tiber in preparation for a field battle against Constantine.[173] On 28 October 312, the sixth anniversary of his reign, he approached the keepers of the Sibylline Books for guidance. The keepers prophesied that, on that very day, "the enemy of the Romans" would die. Maxentius advanced north to meet Constantine in battle.[174]
Maxentius' forces were still twice the size of Constantine's, and he organized them in long lines facing the battle plain with their backs to the river.[175] Constantine's army arrived on the field bearing unfamiliar symbols on their standards and their shields.[176] According to Lactantius "Constantine was directed in a dream to cause the heavenly sign to be delineated on the shields of his soldiers, and so to proceed to battle. He did as he had been commanded, and he marked on their shields the letter Χ, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round thus at the top, being the cipher of Christ. Having this sign (☧), his troops stood to arms."[177] Eusebius describes a vision that Constantine had while marching at midday in which "he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, In Hoc Signo Vinces" ("In this sign thou shalt conquer").[178] In Eusebius's account, Constantine had a dream the following night in which Christ appeared with the same heavenly sign and told him to make an army standard in the form of the labarum.[179] Eusebius is vague about when and where these events took place,[180] but it enters his narrative before the war begins against Maxentius.[181] He describes the sign as Chi (Χ) traversed by Rho (Ρ) to form ☧, representing the first two letters of the Greek word ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ (Christos).[182][183] A medallion was issued at Ticinum in 315 which shows Constantine wearing a helmet emblazoned with the Chi Rho,[184] and coins issued at Siscia in 317/318 repeat the image.[185] The figure was otherwise rare and is uncommon in imperial iconography and propaganda before the 320s.[186] It was not completely unknown, however, being an abbreviation of the Greek word chrēston (good), having previously appeared on the coins of Ptolemy III Euergetes in the 3rd century BC.
Constantine deployed his own forces along the whole length of Maxentius' line. He ordered his cavalry to charge, and they broke Maxentius' cavalry. He then sent his infantry against Maxentius' infantry, pushing many into the Tiber where they were slaughtered and drowned.[175] The battle was brief,[187] and Maxentius' troops were broken before the first charge.[188] His horse guards and praetorians initially held their position, but they broke under the force of a Constantinian cavalry charge; they also broke ranks and fled to the river. Maxentius rode with them and attempted to cross the bridge of boats (Ponte Milvio), but he was pushed into the Tiber and drowned by the mass of his fleeing soldiers.[189]
Head of a bronze colossus of Constantine, now in the Capitoline Museums[190]
Constantine entered Rome on 29 October 312[191][192] and staged a grand adventus in the city which was met with jubilation.[193] Maxentius' body was fished out of the Tiber and decapitated, and his head was paraded through the streets for all to see.[194] After the ceremonies, the disembodied head was sent to Carthage, and Carthage offered no further resistance.[195] Unlike his predecessors, Constantine neglected to make the trip to the Capitoline Hill and perform customary sacrifices at the Temple of Jupiter.[196] However, he did visit the Senatorial Curia Julia,[197] and he promised to restore its ancestral privileges and give it a secure role in his reformed government; there would be no revenge against Maxentius' supporters.[198] In response, the Senate decreed him "title of the first name", which meant that his name would be listed first in all official documents,[199] and they acclaimed him as "the greatest augustus".[200] He issued decrees returning property that was lost under Maxentius, recalling political exiles, and releasing Maxentius' imprisoned opponents.[201]
An extensive propaganda campaign followed, during which Maxentius' image was purged from all public places. He was written up as a "tyrant" and set against an idealized image of Constantine the "liberator". Eusebius is the best representative of this strand of Constantinian propaganda.[202] Maxentius' rescripts were declared invalid, and the honours that he had granted to leaders of the Senate were also invalidated.[203] Constantine also attempted to remove Maxentius' influence on Rome's urban landscape. All structures built by him were rededicated to Constantine, including the Temple of Romulus and the Basilica of Maxentius.[204] At the focal point of the basilica, a stone statue was erected of Constantine holding the Christian labarum in its hand. Its inscription bore the message which the statue illustrated: "By this sign, Constantine had freed Rome from the yoke of the tyrant."[205]
Constantine also sought to upstage Maxentius' achievements. For example, the Circus Maximus was redeveloped so that its seating capacity was 25 times larger than that of Maxentius' racing complex on the Via Appia.[206] Maxentius' strongest military supporters were neutralized when he disbanded the Praetorian Guard and Imperial Horse Guard.[207] The tombstones of the Imperial Horse Guard were ground up and used in a basilica on the Via Labicana,[208] and their former base was redeveloped into the Lateran Basilica on 9 November 312—barely two weeks after Constantine captured the city.[209] The Legio II Parthica was removed from Albano Laziale,[203] and the remainder of Maxentius' armies were sent to do frontier duty on the Rhine.[210]
In the following years, Constantine gradually consolidated his military superiority over his rivals in the crumbling Tetrarchy. In 313, he met Licinius in Milan to secure their alliance by the marriage of Licinius and Constantine's half-sister Constantia. During this meeting, the emperors agreed on the so-called Edict of Milan,[211] officially granting full tolerance to Christianity and all religions in the empire.[212] The document had special benefits for Christians, legalizing their religion and granting them restoration for all property seized during Diocletian's persecution. It repudiates past methods of religious coercion and used only general terms to refer to the divine sphere—"Divinity" and "Supreme Divinity", summa divinitas.[213] The conference was cut short, however, when news reached Licinius that his rival Maximinus had crossed the Bosporus and invaded European territory. Licinius departed and eventually defeated Maximinus, gaining control over the entire eastern half of the Roman Empire. Relations between the two remaining emperors deteriorated, as Constantine suffered an assassination attempt at the hands of a character that Licinius wanted elevated to the rank of Caesar;[214] Licinius, for his part, had Constantine's statues in Emona destroyed.[215] In either 314 or 316, the two augusti fought against one another at the Battle of Cibalae, with Constantine being victorious. They clashed again at the Battle of Mardia in 317 and agreed to a settlement in which Constantine's sons Crispus and Constantine II, and Licinius' son Licinianus were made caesars.[216] After this arrangement, Constantine ruled the dioceses of Pannonia and Macedonia and took residence at Sirmium, whence he could wage war on the Goths and Sarmatians in 322, and on the Goths in 323, defeating and killing their leader Rausimod.[214]
In 320, Licinius allegedly reneged on the religious freedom promised by the Edict of Milan and began to oppress Christians anew,[217] generally without bloodshed, but resorting to confiscations and sacking of Christian office-holders.[218] Although this characterization of Licinius as anti-Christian is somewhat doubtful, the fact is that he seems to have been far less open in his support of Christianity than Constantine. Therefore, Licinius was prone to see the Church as a force more loyal to Constantine than to the Imperial system in general,[219] as the explanation offered by the Church historian Sozomen.[220]
This dubious arrangement eventually became a challenge to Constantine in the West, climaxing in the great civil war of 324. Constantine's Christian eulogists present the war as a battle between Christianity and paganism; Licinius, aided by Gothic mercenaries, represented the past and ancient paganism, while Constantine and his Franks marched under the standard of the labarum.[citation needed] Outnumbered but fired by their zeal, Constantine's army emerged victorious in the Battle of Adrianople. Licinius fled across the Bosphorus and appointed Martinian, his magister officiorum, as nominal augustus in the West, but Constantine next won the Battle of the Hellespont and finally the Battle of Chrysopolis on 18 September 324.[221] Licinius and Martinian surrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia on the promise their lives would be spared: they were sent to live as private citizens in Thessalonica and Cappadocia respectively, but in 325 Constantine accused Licinius of plotting against him and had them both arrested and hanged; Licinius' son (the son of Constantine's half-sister) was killed in 326.[222] Thus Constantine became the sole emperor of the Roman Empire.[223]
Diocletian had chosen Nicomedia in the East as his capital during the Tetrarchy[224]—not far from Byzantium, well situated to defend Thrace, Asia, and Egypt, all of which had required his military attention.[225] Constantine had recognized the shift of the empire from the remote and depopulated West to the richer cities of the East, and the military strategic importance of protecting the Danube from barbarian excursions and Asia from a hostile Persia in choosing his new capital[226] as well as being able to monitor shipping traffic between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.[227] Licinius' defeat came to represent the defeat of a rival centre of pagan and Greek-speaking political activity in the East, as opposed to the Christian and Latin-speaking Rome, and it was proposed that a new Eastern capital should represent the integration of the East into the Roman Empire as a whole, as a center of learning, prosperity, and cultural preservation for the whole of the Eastern Roman Empire.[228] Among the various locations proposed for this alternative capital, Constantine appears to have toyed earlier with Serdica (present-day Sofia), as he was reported saying that "Serdica is my Rome".[229] Sirmium and Thessalonica were also considered.[230] Eventually, however, Constantine decided to work on the Greek city of Byzantium, which offered the advantage of having already been extensively rebuilt on Roman patterns of urbanism during the preceding century by Septimius Severus and Caracalla, who had already acknowledged its strategic importance.[231] The city was thus founded in 324,[232] dedicated on 11 May 330[232] and renamed Constantinopolis ("Constantine's City" or Constantinople in English). Special commemorative coins were issued in 330 to honor the event. The new city was protected by the relics of the True Cross, the Rod of Moses and other holy relics, though a cameo now at the Hermitage Museum also represented Constantine crowned by the tyche of the new city.[233] The figures of old gods were either replaced or assimilated into a framework of Christian symbolism. Constantine built the new Church of the Holy Apostles on the site of a temple to Aphrodite. Generations later there was the story that a divine vision led Constantine to this spot, and an angel no one else could see led him on a circuit of the new walls.[234] The capital would often be compared to the 'old' Rome as Nova Roma Constantinopolitana, the "New Rome of Constantinople".[223][235]
Constantine was the first emperor to stop the persecution of Christians and to legalize Christianity, along with all other religions/cults in the Roman Empire. In February 313, he met with Licinius in Milan and developed the Edict of Milan, which stated that Christians should be allowed to follow their faith without oppression.[236] This removed penalties for professing Christianity, under which many had been martyred previously, and it returned confiscated Church property. The edict protected all religions from persecution, not only Christianity, allowing anyone to worship any deity that they chose. A similar edict had been issued in 311 by Galerius, senior emperor of the Tetrarchy, which granted Christians the right to practise their religion but did not restore any property to them.[237] The Edict of Milan included several clauses which stated that all confiscated churches would be returned, as well as other provisions for previously persecuted Christians. Scholars debate whether Constantine adopted his mother Helena's Christianity in his youth or whether he adopted it gradually over the course of his life.[238]
Constantine possibly retained the title of pontifex maximus which emperors bore as heads of the ancient Roman religion until Gratian renounced the title.[239][240] According to Christian writers, Constantine was over 40 when he finally declared himself a Christian, making it clear that he owed his successes to the protection of the Christian High God alone.[241] Despite these declarations of being a Christian, he waited to be baptized on his deathbed, believing that the baptism would release him of any sins he committed in the course of carrying out his policies while emperor.[242] He supported the Church financially, built basilicas, granted privileges to clergy (such as exemption from certain taxes), promoted Christians to high office, and returned property confiscated during the long period of persecution.[243] His most famous building projects include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Old St. Peter's Basilica. In constructing the Old St. Peter's Basilica, Constantine went to great lengths to erect the basilica on top of St. Peter's resting place, so much so that it even affected the design of the basilica, including the challenge of erecting it on the hill where St. Peter rested, making its complete construction time over 30 years from the date Constantine ordered it to be built.
Constantine might not have patronized Christianity alone. A triumphal arch was built in 315 to celebrate his victory in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge which was decorated with images of the goddess Victoria, and sacrifices were made to pagan gods at its dedication, including Apollo, Diana, and Hercules. Absent from the arch are any depictions of Christian symbolism. However, the arch was commissioned by the Senate, so the absence of Christian symbols may reflect the role of the Curia at the time as a pagan redoubt.[244]
In 321, he legislated that the venerable Sunday should be a day of rest for all citizens.[245] In 323, he issued a decree banning Christians from participating in state sacrifices.[246] After the pagan gods had disappeared from his coinage, Christian symbols appeared as Constantine's attributes, the chi rho between his hands or on his labarum,[247] as well on the coinage.[248] The reign of Constantine established a precedent for the emperor to have great influence and authority in the early Christian councils, most notably the dispute over Arianism. Constantine disliked the risks to societal stability that religious disputes and controversies brought with them, preferring to establish an orthodoxy.[249] His influence over the Church councils was to enforce doctrine, root out heresy, and uphold ecclesiastical unity; the Church's role was to determine proper worship, doctrines, and dogma.[250]
North African bishops struggled with Christian bishops who had been ordained by Donatus in opposition to Caecilian from 313 to 316. The African bishops could not come to terms, and the Donatists asked Constantine to act as a judge in the dispute. Three regional Church councils and another trial before Constantine all ruled against Donatus and the Donatism movement in North Africa. In 317, Constantine issued an edict to confiscate Donatist church property and to send Donatist clergy into exile.[251] More significantly, in 325 he summoned the First Council of Nicaea, most known for its dealing with Arianism and for instituting the Nicene Creed. He enforced the council's prohibition against celebrating the Lord's Supper on the day before the Jewish Passover, which marked a definite break of Christianity from the Judaic tradition. From then on, the solar Julian Calendar was given precedence over the lunisolar Hebrew calendar among the Christian churches of the Roman Empire.[252]
Constantine made some new laws regarding the Jews; some of them were unfavorable towards Jews, although they were not harsher than those of his predecessors.[253] It was made illegal for Jews to seek converts or to attack other Jews who had converted to Christianity.[253] They were forbidden to own Christian slaves or to circumcise their slaves.[254][255] On the other hand, Jewish clergy were given the same exemptions as Christian clergy.[253][256]
Hexagonal gold pendant with double solidus of Constantine the Great in the centre, AD 321, now in the British Museum
Beginning in the mid-3rd century, the emperors began to favor members of the equestrian order over senators, who had a monopoly on the most important offices of the state. Senators were stripped of the command of legions and most provincial governorships, as it was felt that they lacked the specialized military upbringing needed in an age of acute defense needs;[257] such posts were given to equestrians by Diocletian and his colleagues, following a practice enforced piecemeal by their predecessors. The emperors, however, still needed the talents and the help of the very rich, who were relied on to maintain social order and cohesion by means of a web of powerful influence and contacts at all levels. Exclusion of the old senatorial aristocracy threatened this arrangement.
In 326, Constantine reversed this pro-equestrian trend, raising many administrative positions to senatorial rank and thus opening these offices to the old aristocracy; at the same time, he elevated the rank of existing equestrian office-holders to senator, degrading the equestrian order in the process (at least as a bureaucratic rank).[258] The title of perfectissimus was granted only to mid- or low-level officials by the end of the 4th century.
By the new Constantinian arrangement, one could become a senator by being elected praetor or by fulfilling a function of senatorial rank.[259] From then on, holding actual power and social status were melded together into a joint imperial hierarchy. Constantine gained the support of the old nobility with this,[260] as the Senate was allowed to elect praetors and quaestors in place of the usual practice of the emperors directly creating magistrates (adlectio). An inscription in honor of city prefect Ceionius Rufus Albinus states that Constantine had restored the Senate "the auctoritas it had lost at Caesar's time".[261]
The Senate as a body remained devoid of any significant power; nevertheless, the senators had been marginalized as potential holders of imperial functions during the 3rd century but could dispute such positions alongside more upstart bureaucrats.[262] Some modern historians see in those administrative reforms an attempt by Constantine at reintegrating the senatorial order into the imperial administrative elite to counter the possibility of alienating pagan senators from a Christianized imperial rule;[263] however, such an interpretation remains conjectural, given the fact that we do not have the precise numbers about pre-Constantine conversions to Christianity in the old senatorial milieu. Some historians suggest that early conversions among the old aristocracy were more numerous than previously supposed.[264]
Constantine's reforms had to do only with the civilian administration. The military chiefs had risen from the ranks since the Crisis of the Third Century[265] but remained outside the Senate, in which they were included only by Constantine's children.[266]
A nummus of Constantine
In the 3rd century, the production of fiat money to pay for public expenses resulted in runaway inflation, and Diocletian tried unsuccessfully to re-establish trustworthy minting of silver coins, as well as silver-bronze "billon" coins (the term "billon" meaning an alloy of precious and base metals that is mostly base metal). Silver currency was overvalued in terms of its actual metal content and therefore could only circulate at much discounted rates. Constantine stopped minting the Diocletianic "pure" silver argenteus soon after 305, while the "billon" currency continued to be used until the 360s. From the early 300s on, Constantine forsook any attempts at restoring the silver currency, preferring instead to concentrate on minting large quantities of the gold solidus, 72 of which made a pound of gold. New and highly debased silver pieces continued to be issued during his later reign and after his death, in a continuous process of retariffing, until this "billon" minting ceased in 367, and the silver piece was continued by various denominations of bronze coins, the most important being the centenionalis.[267]
These bronze pieces continued to be devalued, assuring the possibility of keeping fiduciary minting alongside a gold standard. The author of De Rebus Bellicis held that the rift widened between classes because of this monetary policy; the rich benefited from the stability in purchasing power of the gold piece, while the poor had to cope with ever-degrading bronze pieces.[268] Later emperors such as Julian the Apostate insisted on trustworthy mintings of the bronze currency.[269]
Constantine's monetary policies were closely associated with his religious policies; increased minting was associated with the confiscation of all gold, silver, and bronze statues from pagan temples between 331 and 336 which were declared to be imperial property. Two imperial commissioners for each province had the task of getting the statues and melting them for immediate minting, with the exception of a number of bronze statues that were used as public monuments in Constantinople.[270]
Constantine had his eldest son Crispus seized and put to death by "cold poison" at Pola (Pula, Croatia) sometime between 15 May and 17 June 326.[271] In July, he had his wife Empress Fausta (stepmother of Crispus) killed in an overheated bath.[272] Their names were wiped from the face of many inscriptions, references to their lives were eradicated from the literary record, and their memory was condemned. Eusebius, for example, edited out any praise of Crispus from later copies of Historia Ecclesiastica, and his Vita Constantini contains no mention of Fausta or Crispus.[273] Few ancient sources are willing to discuss possible motives for the events, and the few that do are of later provenance and are generally unreliable.[274] At the time of the executions, it was commonly believed that Empress Fausta was either in an illicit relationship with Crispus or was spreading rumors to that effect. A popular myth arose, modified to allude to the Hippolytus–Phaedra legend, with the suggestion that Constantine killed Crispus and Fausta for their immoralities;[275] the largely fictional Passion of Artemius explicitly makes this connection.[276] The myth rests on slim evidence as an interpretation of the executions; only late and unreliable sources allude to the relationship between Crispus and Fausta, and there is no evidence for the modern suggestion that Constantine's "godly" edicts of 326 and the irregularities of Crispus are somehow connected.[275]
Although Constantine created his apparent heirs "caesars", following a pattern established by Diocletian, he gave his creations a hereditary character, alien to the tetrarchic system: Constantine's caesars were to be kept in the hope of ascending to empire and entirely subordinated to their augustus, as long as he was alive.[277] Adrian Goldsworthy speculates an alternative explanation for the execution of Crispus was Constantine's desire to keep a firm grip on his prospective heirs, this—and Fausta's desire for having her sons inheriting instead of their half-brother—being reason enough for killing Crispus; the subsequent execution of Fausta, however, was probably meant as a reminder to her children that Constantine would not hesitate in "killing his own relatives when he felt this was necessary".[278]
The northern and eastern frontiers of the Roman Empire in the time of Constantine, with the territories acquired in the course of the thirty years of military campaigns between 306 and 337
Constantine considered Constantinople his capital and permanent residence. He lived there for a good portion of his later life. In 328 construction was completed on Constantine's Bridge at Sucidava, (today Celei in Romania)[279] in hopes of reconquering Dacia, a province that had been abandoned under Aurelian. In the late winter of 332, Constantine campaigned with the Sarmatians against the Goths. The weather and lack of food reportedly cost the Goths dearly before they submitted to Rome. In 334, after Sarmatian commoners had overthrown their leaders, Constantine led a campaign against the tribe. He won a victory in the war and extended his control over the region, as remains of camps and fortifications in the region indicate.[280] Constantine resettled some Sarmatian exiles as farmers in Illyrian and Roman districts and conscripted the rest into the army. The new frontier in Dacia was along the Brazda lui Novac line supported by new castra.[281] Constantine took the title Dacicus maximus in 336.[282]
In the last years of his life, Constantine made plans for a campaign against Persia. In a letter written to the king of Persia, Shapur, Constantine had asserted his patronage over Persia's Christian subjects and urged Shapur to treat them well.[283] The letter is undatable. In response to border raids, Constantine sent Constantius to guard the eastern frontier in 335. In 336, Prince Narseh invaded Armenia (a Christian kingdom since 301) and installed a Persian client on the throne. Constantine then resolved to campaign against Persia. He treated the war as a Christian crusade, calling for bishops to accompany the army and commissioning a tent in the shape of a church to follow him everywhere. Constantine planned to be baptized in the Jordan River before crossing into Persia. Persian diplomats came to Constantinople over the winter of 336–337, seeking peace, but Constantine turned them away. The campaign was called off, however, when Constantine became sick in the spring of 337.[284]
From his recent illness, Constantine knew death would soon come. Within the Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantine had secretly prepared a final resting-place for himself.[285] It came sooner than he had expected. Soon after the Feast of Easter 337, Constantine fell seriously ill.[286] He left Constantinople for the hot baths near his mother's city of Helenopolis (Altinova), on the southern shores of the Gulf of Nicomedia (present-day Gulf of İzmit). There, in a church his mother built in honor of Lucian the Apostle, he prayed, and there he realized that he was dying. Seeking purification, he became a catechumen and attempted a return to Constantinople, making it only as far as a suburb of Nicomedia.[287] He summoned the bishops and told them of his hope to be baptized in the River Jordan, where Christ was written to have been baptized. He requested the baptism right away, promising to live a more Christian life should he live through his illness. The bishops, Eusebius records, "performed the sacred ceremonies according to custom".[288] He chose the Arianizing bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, bishop of the city where he lay dying, as his baptizer.[289] In postponing his baptism, he followed one custom at the time which postponed baptism until after infancy.[290] It has been thought that Constantine put off baptism as long as he did so as to be absolved from as much of his sin as possible.[291] Constantine died soon after at a suburban villa called Achyron, on the last day of the fifty-day festival of Pentecost directly following Pascha (or Easter), on 22 May 337.[292]
Although Constantine's death follows the conclusion of the Persian campaign in Eusebius's account, most other sources report his death as occurring in its middle. Emperor Julian (a nephew of Constantine), writing in the mid-350s, observes that the Sassanians escaped punishment for their ill-deeds, because Constantine died "in the middle of his preparations for war".[293] Similar accounts are given in the Origo Constantini, an anonymous document composed while Constantine was still living, which has Constantine dying in Nicomedia;[294] the Historiae abbreviatae of Sextus Aurelius Victor, written in 361, which has Constantine dying at an estate near Nicomedia called Achyrona while marching against the Persians;[295] and the Breviarium of Eutropius, a handbook compiled in 369 for the Emperor Valens, which has Constantine dying in a nameless state villa in Nicomedia.[296] From these and other accounts, some have concluded that Eusebius's Vita was edited to defend Constantine's reputation against what Eusebius saw as a less congenial version of the campaign.[297]
Following his death, his body was transferred to Constantinople and buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles,[298] in a porphyry sarcophagus that was described in the 10th century by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the De Ceremoniis.[299] His body survived the plundering of the city during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 but was destroyed at some point afterwards.[300] Constantine was succeeded by his three sons born of Fausta, Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans. A number of relatives were killed by followers of Constantius, notably Constantine's nephews Dalmatius (who held the rank of caesar) and Hannibalianus, presumably to eliminate possible contenders to an already complicated succession. He also had two daughters, Constantina and Helena, wife of Emperor Julian.[301]
Legacy
Constantine reunited the empire under one emperor, and he won major victories over the Franks and Alamanni in 306–308, the Franks again in 313–314, the Goths in 332, and the Sarmatians in 334. By 336, he had reoccupied most of the long-lost province of Dacia which Aurelian had been forced to abandon in 271. At the time of his death, he was planning a great expedition to end raids on the eastern provinces from the Persian Empire.[302]
In the cultural sphere, Constantine revived the clean-shaven face fashion of earlier emperors, originally introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236 - 183 BCE) and changed into the wearing of the beard by Hadrian (r. 117 - 138). This new Roman imperial fashion lasted until the reign of Phocas (r. 602 - 610) in the 7th century.[303][304]
The Holy Roman Empire reckoned Constantine among the venerable figures of its tradition. In the later Byzantine state, it became a great honor for an emperor to be hailed as a "new Constantine"; ten emperors carried the name, including the last emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire.[305] Charlemagne used monumental Constantinian forms in his court to suggest that he was Constantine's successor and equal. Charlemagne, Henry VIII, Philip II of Spain, Godfrey of Bouillon, House of Capet, House of Habsburg, House of Stuart, Macedonian dynasty and Phokas family claimed descent from Constantine.[306][307][308][309][310][311][312][313][314] Geoffrey of Monmouth embroidered a tale that the legendary king of Britain, King Arthur, was also a descendant of Constantine.[315] Constantine acquired a mythic role as a warrior against heathens. His reception as a saint seems to have spread within the Byzantine empire during wars against the Sasanian Persians and the Muslims in the late 6th and 7th century.[316] The motif of the Romanesque equestrian, the mounted figure in the posture of a triumphant Roman emperor, became a visual metaphor in statuary in praise of local benefactors. The name "Constantine" enjoyed renewed popularity in western France in the 11th and 12th centuries.[317]
The Niš Constantine the Great Airport is named in honor of him. A large cross was planned to be built on a hill overlooking Niš, but the project was cancelled.[318] In 2012, a memorial was erected in Niš in his honor. The Commemoration of the Edict of Milan was held in Niš in 2013.[319] The Orthodox Church considers Constantine a saint (Άγιος Κωνσταντίνος, Saint Constantine), having a feast day on 21 May,[320] and calls him isapostolos (ισαπόστολος Κωνσταντίνος)—an equal of the Apostles.[321]
During Constantine's lifetime, Praxagoras of Athens and Libanius, pagan authors, showered Constantine with praise, presenting him as a paragon of virtue. His nephew and son-in-law Julian the Apostate, however, wrote the satire Symposium, or the Saturnalia in 361, after the last of his sons died; it denigrated Constantine, calling him inferior to the great pagan emperors, and given over to luxury and greed.[322] Following Julian, Eunapius began – and Zosimus continued – a historiographic tradition that blamed Constantine for weakening the empire through his indulgence to the Christians.[323]
During the Middle Ages, European and Near-East Byzantine writers presented Constantine as an ideal ruler, the standard against which any king or emperor could be measured.[323] The Renaissance rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources prompted a re-evaluation of his career. German humanist Johannes Leunclavius discovered Zosimus' writings and published a Latin translation in 1576. In its preface, he argues that Zosimus' picture of Constantine offered a more balanced view than that of Eusebius and the Church historians.[324] Cardinal Caesar Baronius criticized Zosimus, favoring Eusebius' account of the Constantinian era. Baronius' Life of Constantine (1588) presents Constantine as the model of a Christian prince.[325] Edward Gibbon aimed to unite the two extremes of Constantinian scholarship in his work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–89) by contrasting the portraits presented by Eusebius and Zosimus.[326] He presents a noble war hero who transforms into an Oriental despot in his old age, "degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch".[327]
Modern interpretations of Constantine's rule begin with Jacob Burckhardt's The Age of Constantine the Great (1853, rev. 1880). Burckhardt's Constantine is a scheming secularist, a politician who manipulates all parties in a quest to secure his own power.[328] Henri Grégoire followed Burckhardt's evaluation of Constantine in the 1930s, suggesting that Constantine developed an interest in Christianity only after witnessing its political usefulness. Grégoire was skeptical of the authenticity of Eusebius' Vita, and postulated a pseudo-Eusebius to assume responsibility for the vision and conversion narratives of that work.[329] Otto Seeck's Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt (1920–23) and André Piganiol's L'empereur Constantin (1932) go against this historiographic tradition. Seeck presents Constantine as a sincere war hero whose ambiguities were the product of his own naïve inconsistency.[330] Piganiol's Constantine is a philosophical monotheist, a child of his era's religious syncretism.[331] Related histories by Arnold Hugh Martin Jones (Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, 1949) and Ramsay MacMullen (Constantine, 1969) give portraits of a less visionary and more impulsive Constantine.[332]
These later accounts were more willing to present Constantine as a genuine convert to Christianity. Norman H. Baynes began a historiographic tradition with Constantine the Great and the Christian Church (1929) which presents Constantine as a committed Christian, reinforced by Andreas Alföldi's The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome (1948), and Timothy Barnes's Constantine and Eusebius (1981) is the culmination of this trend. Barnes' Constantine experienced a radical conversion which drove him on a personal crusade to convert his empire.[333] Charles Matson Odahl's Constantine and the Christian Empire (2004) takes much the same tack.[334] In spite of Barnes' work, arguments continue over the strength and depth of Constantine's religious conversion.[335] Certain themes in this school reached new extremes in T.G. Elliott's The Christianity of Constantine the Great (1996), which presented Constantine as a committed Christian from early childhood.[336] Paul Veyne's 2007 work Quand notre monde est devenu chrétien holds a similar view which does not speculate on the origin of Constantine's Christian motivation, but presents him as a religious revolutionary who fervently believed that he was meant "to play a providential role in the millenary economy of the salvation of humanity".[337]
Latin Rite Catholics considered it inappropriate that Constantine was baptized only on his death bed by an unorthodox bishop, and a legend emerged by the early 4th century that Pope Sylvester I had cured the pagan emperor from leprosy. According to this legend, Constantine was baptized and began the construction of a church in the Lateran Basilica.[338][339] The Donation of Constantine appeared in the 8th century, most likely during the pontificate of Pope Stephen II, in which the freshly converted Constantine gives "the city of Rome and all the provinces, districts, and cities of Italy and the Western regions" to Sylvester and his successors.[340] In the High Middle Ages, this document was used and accepted as the basis for the pope's temporal power, though it was denounced as a forgery by Emperor Otto III[341] and lamented as the root of papal worldliness by Dante Alighieri.[342] Philologist and Catholic priest Lorenzo Valla proved in 1440 that the document was indeed a forgery.[343]
During the medieval period, Britons regarded Constantine as a king of their own people, particularly associating him with Caernarfon in Gwynedd. While some of this is owed to his fame and his proclamation as emperor in Britain, there was also confusion of his family with Magnus Maximus's supposed wife Elen and her son, another Constantine (Welsh: Custennin). In the 12th century Henry of Huntingdon included a passage in his Historia Anglorum that the Emperor Constantine's mother was a Briton, making her the daughter of King Cole of Colchester.[344] Geoffrey of Monmouth expanded this story in his highly fictionalized Historia Regum Britanniae, an account of the supposed Kings of Britain from their Trojan origins to the Anglo-Saxon invasion.[345] According to Geoffrey, Cole was King of the Britons when Constantius, here a senator, came to Britain. Afraid of the Romans, Cole submits to Roman law so long as he retains his kingship. However, he dies only a month later, and Constantius takes the throne himself, marrying Cole's daughter Helena. They have their son Constantine, who succeeds his father as King of Britain before becoming Roman emperor.
Historically, this series of events is extremely improbable. Constantius had already left Helena by the time he left for Britain.[56] Additionally, no earlier source mentions that Helena was born in Britain, let alone that she was a princess. Henry's source for the story is unknown, though it may have been a lost hagiography of Helena
Saint Eugene de Mazenod
புனிதர் யூஜின் டி மஸெனோட்
மர்சேல் ஆயர்/ துறவற உறுதிமொழிகள் ஏற்காத அமலமரியாள் சபை நிறுவனர்:
பிறப்பு: ஆகஸ்ட் 1, 1782
ஈக்ஸ்-என்-பிராந்தியம், ஃபிரான்ஸ்
இறப்பு: மே 21, 1861 (அகவை 78)
மார்செயில், ஃபிரான்ஸ்
ஏற்கும் சமயம்:
ரோமன் கத்தோலிக்க திருச்சபை
முக்கிய திருத்தலங்கள்:
நொட்ரே-டேம் டி லா கார்டே, மார்செயில், ஃபிரான்ஸ்
அருளாளர் பட்டம்: அக்டோபர் 19, 1975
திருத்தந்தை ஆறாம் பவுல்
புனிதர் பட்டம்: டிசம்பர் 3, 1995,
திருத்தந்தை இரண்டாம் ஜான் பவுல்
நினைவுத் திருவிழா: மே 21
பாதுகாவல்: சிதைந்த குடும்பங்கள்
புனிதர் யூஜின் டி மஸெனோட், ஒரு ஃபிரெஞ்ச் கத்தோலிக்க குரு ஆவார். இவருக்கு 1975ம் ஆண்டு, அக்டோபர் மாதம், 19ம் நாளன்று, திருத்தந்தை ஆறாம் பவுல் அவர்களால் அருளாளர் பட்டமும், 1995ம் ஆண்டு, டிசம்பர் மாதம், 3ம் தேதியன்று, திருத்தந்தை இரண்டாம் ஜான் பவுல் அவர்களால் புனிதர் பட்டமும் வழங்கப்பட்டது.
யூஜின் டி மஸெனோட் ஃபிரான்சில் பிரபுக் குடும்பம் ஒன்றில் பிறந்தார். இவரது தந்தை பெயர் "சார்ள்ஸ்" (Charles Antoine de Mazenod) ஆகும். இவரது தாயார், "மேரி ரோஸ்" (Marie Rose Joannis) ஆவார். கி.பி. 1790ம் ஆண்டு ஏற்பட்ட ஃபிரான்ஸ் புரட்சியை அடுத்து, புரட்சியாளர்களின் வற்புறுத்தலால் தமது குடும்பத்தினருடன் இத்தாலி நாட்டுக்கு புலம்பெயர்ந்து சென்றார். கையிருப்பிருந்த பணம் கரைந்ததாலும், நிதிச் சுமையாலும் யூஜினின் பெற்றோர் பிரிந்தனர். அவரது தாயாரும் சகோதரியும் ஃபிரான்ஸ் திரும்பினர். அக்காலத்திய புரட்சியாளரின் சட்டப்படி, அவர்கள் விவாகரத்து பெற்றால் அபகரிக்கப்பட்ட அவர்களது சொத்துக்கள் திரும்ப அவர்களிடமே தரப்படும் என்பதால் யூஜினின் தாயார் விவாகரத்துக்கு விண்ணப்பித்து அதனை பெற்றார். இத்தாலியிலும் நிரந்தரமாக வாழ வழியற்ற யூஜின், வெனிஸ், நேப்பிள்ஸ், இறுதியில் சிசிலியிளுள்ள பலெர்மோ (Venice, Naples, Palermo in Sicily) ஆகிய இடங்களில் வசித்தபின்னர் தமது இருபது வயதில் ஃபிரான்ஸ் திரும்பினார். 1808ம் ஆண்டு குரு மடத்தில் இணைந்து இறையியல், மெய்யியல் கல்விகளைக் கற்று கி.பி. 1811ம் ஆண்டு, டிசம்பர் மாதம், 21ம் நாளன்று, குருத்துவ அருட்பொழிவு செய்விக்கப்பட்டார்.
அமலமரியாளின் தியாகிகள் (Oblates of Mary Immaculate) சபை உருவாக்கல்:
ஏழைகள் வாழும் சேரிப்புறம், வைத்தியசாலை, சிறைச்சாலை போன்ற இடங்களில் சென்று பணியாற்றினார். தனது பணியின் தேவையை உணர்ந்த இவர் ஒரு புதிய சபையை உருவாக்கினார். கி.பி. 1816ம் ஆண்டில் "மிகவும் கைவிடப்பட்டவர்களுக்கான குழு" (Group for most abandoned of Provence) என்ற பெயருடன் புதிய குழுவாக மறை மாவட்டத்தால் அதிகாரபூர்வமாக ஏற்றுக் கொள்ளப்பட்டது. இதில் 5 குருக்கள் மாத்திரமே இருந்தார்கள்.
கி.பி. 1826ம் ஆண்டு ஃபெப்ரவரி 17ம் நாள் இக்குழுவின் பெயர் "அமலமரியின் மறைபரப்புத் தியாகிகள்" (Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate) என மாற்றப்பட்டது. கி.பி. 1832ம் ஆண்டு இவர் மார்செயில் ஆயராக பதவி உயர்வு பெற்றார்.
இலங்கையில் அமலமரியாளின் தியாகிகள்:
கி.பி. 1847ம் ஆண்டு காலப்பகுதியில் இலங்கை கத்தோலிக்கத் திருச்சபை பெரும் சவால்களை எதிர்நோக்கியது. அவர்களின் பணியின் தேவை அதிகமாக காணப்பட்டது. இதனால் அங்கு குருக்களின் தேவையும் அதிகரித்தது. அப்பொழுது இருந்த ஆயர் ஒராசியோ பெற்றக்கினி குருக்களைத் தேடி ஐரோப்பா சென்றார். ஃபிரான்ஸில் அவர் ஆயர் யூஜினை சந்தித்து, அவரை இலங்கையில் பணியாற்ற சில குருக்களை அனுப்புமாறு கேட்டுக் கொண்டார்.
இதனை ஏற்றுக் கொண்ட யூஜின் டி மஸெனோட் மூன்று அமலமரியாளின் தியாகிகளை இலங்கைக்கு அனுப்ப முன்வந்தார். முதன் முதலில் கி.பி. 1847ம் ஆண்டு, நவம்பர் மாதம், 28ம் தேதி, அருட்தந்தை செமேரியாவின் தலைமையில் மூன்று அமலமரியாளின் தியாகிகள் தென்னிலங்கையின் காலி துறைமுகத்தை வந்தடைந்தார்கள். இவர்கள் அங்கிருந்து கி.பி. 1848ம் ஆண்டு, ஃபெப்ரவரி மாதம், 4ம் தேதியன்று, வடக்கே மன்னார் வந்தடைந்தார்கள். பின் ஊர்காவற்றுறை சென்றார்கள். அமலமரியாளின் தியாகிகளின் பணி யாழ்ப்பாணத்தில் ஆரம்பமாகி விரிந்தது. அமலமரியாளின் தியாகிகளே 1862ம் ஆண்டு, திருக்குடும்ப கன்னியர் சபையினரை இலங்கைக்கு அழைத்து வந்தார்கள்.
கி.பி. 1837 – 1861ம் ஆண்டு காலத்தில், தென் கிழக்கு ஃபிரான்ஸ் (South-Eastern France) நாட்டின் “புரொவென்ஸ்” (Provence) பிராந்தியத்திலுள்ள “மார்செய்ல்” (Marseille) மறைமாவட்டத்தின் ஆயராக பணியாற்றிய யூஜின், தமது பதவி காலத்தில் “நோட்ரே-டேம்-டி-லா கர்ட்” (Basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde) பேராலயத்தைக் கட்டினார். இவர், 1852ம் ஆண்டு, உள்ளூர் கத்தோலிக்க குருவான “ஜோசஃப்-மரி டிமோன்-டேவிட்” (Joseph-Marie Timon-David) என்பவரை மார்செய்ல் (Marseille) நகரில், இயேசுவின் திருஇருதய சபை (Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) நிறுவிட ஊக்குவித்தார்.
Also known as
Charles Joseph Eugene de Mazenod
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Eldest son of Charles-Antoine De Mazenod and Marie-Rose Joannis. His mother was of the French middle class, convent educated, and wealthy; his father was an aristocrat, classically educated, and poor. Their marriage, and Eugene's home life, were plagued by constant family in-fighting, and interference from his maternal grandmother and a neurotic maternal aunt. The women never let his father forget that they brought the money to the family.
On 13 December 1790, at age eight, Eugene fled with his family to exile in Italy to escape the French Revolution. He spent eleven years in Italy, living in Nice, Turin, Venice, Naples, and Palermo. While he learned Italian and German from dealing with people day to day, the bulk of his education came in Venice from Father Bartolo Zinelli, a local priest. In Palermo he was exposed to a wild and worldly life among rich young Italian nobles.
After the Revolution, his mother returned to France, but his father stayed in Italy, ostensibly for political reasons. Upon his own return to France in 1802 in an attempt to reclaim the family lands, Eugene tried to reunite his parents, but failed, and they were divorced, an unusual event in the early 19th century. His often unsupervised youth, the constant fighting at home, and the eventual break up of his family led to his patronage of dysfunctional families and those in them.
For years, Eugene struggled in himself, drawn on the one hand to the wordly life he knew from Palermo, and the beauty of the religious life he had seen in Venice with Don Bartolo. In an effort to work it out, Eugene began teaching catechism and working with prisoners in 1805. God won at last, assisted by a mystical experience at the foot of a cross on Good Friday 1807 when Eugene was momentarily touched by the full force of the love of God. He entered the seminary of Saint Sulpice, Paris in 1808. Ordained on 21 December 1811 at age 29 at Amiens, France.
Because of his noble birth, he was immediately offered the position of Vicar General to the bishop of Amiens. Eugene renounced his family's wealth, and preferred to become a parish priest in Aix-en-Provence, working among the poor, preaching missions and bringing them the church in their native Provencal dialect, not the French used by the upper classes. He worked among the sick, prisoners, the poor, and the overlooked young. Eugune contracted, and nearly died from, typhus while working in prisons.
Eugene gathered other workers around him, both clergy and laymen. They worked from a former Carmelite convent, and the priests among them formed the Missionaries of Provence who conducted parish missions throughout the region. They were successful, and their reputation spread, bringing requests for them outside the region. Eugene realized the need for formal organization, and on 17 February 1826 he received approval from Pope Leo XII to found a new congregation, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate founded on his core of missionaries.
Though he would have preferred to remain a missionary, Eugene knew that position with the Church hierarchy would allow him to insure the success of his little congregation. He was appointed Vicar-General of Marseille in 1823. Titular bishop of Icosia on 14 October 1832. Co-adjutor in 1834. Bishop of Marseilles, France on 24 December 1837, ordained by Pope Gregory XVI.
He founded 23 parishes, built or retored 50 churches, cared for aged and persecuted priests, restored ecclesiastical discipline, and developed catechetics for young people. Started work on the cathedral and shrine of Notre-Dame de la Garde in Marseille. Welcomed 33 congregations of religious brothers and sisters into the diocese. More than doubled the number of priests in his diocese, and celebrated all ordinations himself.
Eugene realigned parishes and maneuvered behind the scenes to weaken the government monopoly on education. He was an outspoken supporter of the papacy, and fought government intervention into Church matters. Publicly endorsed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and worked for its promulgation. His printed writings run to 25 volumes. Made a peer of the French Empire. Archbishop of Marseille in 1851 by Pope Blessed Pius IX. Helped Saint Emily de Vialar re-build the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition after their move to Marseille. Named senator and member of the Legion of Honour by Napoleon III in 1856. Proposed as cardinal in 1859.
On 2 December 1841, Bishop de Mazenod's first overseas missionaries arrived in Canada. By the time of his death in 1861, there were six Oblate bishops and over 400 missionaries working in ten countries. The Oblates continue their good work to this day with some 5,000 missionaries in 68 countries.
Born
1 August 1782 at Aix-en-Provence, southern France as Charles Joseph Eugene de Mazenod
Died
• 21 May 1861 at Marseille, France of cancer
• on 12 December 1936, his body was exhumed and found to be intact
• part of his heart is venerated at Blessed Sacrament Chapel at the Oblate-owned Lourdes Grotto of the Southwest in San Antonio, Texas, USA
Canonized
3 December 1995 by Pope John Paul II at Saint Peter's Square, Rome, Italy
Patronage
dysfunctional families
Blessed Franz Jägerstätter
Also known as
Franz Jaegerstaetter
Profile
Born to Rosalia Huber and Franz Bachmeier, servants too poor to get married. His father died in World War I when the boy was less than ten years old; his mother then married local famer Heinrich Jägerstätter who adopted Franz. Franz had little formal education, but his adoptive father was serious about the boy being able to read so that he could educate himself. At age 20 he began three years of work in the iron ore industry. He led a rather wild and dissolute life in his early 20's, but by his late 20's had settled down to life as a peasant farmer, became serious about his faith, married, and became the father of three daughters. He worked as sacristan for his parish, arranging funeral and prayer services, attended Mass daily, and developed a special ministry to the bereaved.
He became known as a vocal critic of the Nazis; he was the only one in his village to vote against Austrian unification with Germany in 1938, when greeted with "Heil Hitler" would respond "Pfui Hitler", and basically had no social life in the town because of his beliefs. When drafted into the army of the Third Reich, Franz could not reconcile such service with his faith; after a brief period served behind the lines, he refused to report for further service, was arrested, imprisoned in Linz, Austria, and Berlin, Germay, given a military trial, and finally executed. He spent time in prison praying, supporting other prisoners, and writing a series of letters and essays.
Born
20 May 1907 in Sankt Radegund, Oberösterreich, Austria
Died
beheaded on 9 August 1943 in Brandenburg an der Havel, Brandenburg, Germany
Beatified
26 October 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI
Martyrs of the Mexican Revolution
Profile
The 1917 Mexican constitution was pointedly anti-clerical and anti-Church, and its adoption instituted years of violent religious persecution including expulsion of foreign priests, closing of parochial schools, and the murders of several priests and lay leaders who work to minister to the faithful and support religious freedom. 25 of them who died at different times and places but all as a result of this persecution were celebrated together. They each have separate memorials, but are also remembered as a group.
• Saint Agustin Caloca Cortes
• Saint Atilano Cruz Alvarado
• Saint Cristobal Magallanes Jara
• Saint David Galván-Bermúdez
• Saint David Roldán-Lara
• Saint David Uribe-Velasco
• Saint Jenaro Sánchez DelGadillo
• Saint Jesús Méndez-Montoya
• Saint Jose Isabel Flores Varela
• Saint José María Robles Hurtado
• Saint Julio álvarez Mendoza
• Saint Justino Orona Madrigal
• Saint Luis Batiz Sainz
• Saint Manuel Moralez
• Saint Margarito Flores-García
• Saint Mateo Correa-Magallanes
• Saint Miguel de la Mora
• Saint Pedro de Jesús Maldonado-Lucero
• Saint Pedro Esqueda Ramírez
• Saint Rodrigo Aguilar Alemán
• Saint Roman Adame Rosales
• Saint Sabas Reyes Salazar
• Saint Salvador Lara Puente
• Saint Toribio Romo González
• Saint Tranquilino Ubiarco Robles
Canonized
21 May 2000 by Pope John Paul II
Saint Godric of Finchale
Also known as
Godrick
Profile
Oldest of three children born to a freedman Anglo-Saxon farmer. An adventurous seafaring man, Godric spent his youth in travel, both on land and sea, as a peddler and merchant mariner first along the coast of the British Isles, then throughout Europe. Sometime sailor, sometime ship's captain, he lived a seafarer's life of the day, and it was hardly a religious one. He was known to drink, fight, chase women, con customers, and in a contemporary manuscript, was referred to as a "pirate". Converted upon visiting Lindisfarne during a voyage, and being touched by the life of Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.
Pilgrim to Jerusalem and the holy lands, Saintiago de Compostela, the shrine of Saint Gaul in Provence, and to Rome, Italy. As a self-imposed austerity, and a way to always remember Christ's lowering himself to become human, Godric never wore shoes, regardless of the season. He lived as a hermit in the holy lands, and worked in a hospital near Jerusalem. Hermit for nearly sixty years at Finchale, County Durham, England, first in a cave, then later in a more formal hermitage; he was led to its site by a vision of Saint Cuthbert. It was a rough life, living barefoot in a mud and wattle hut, wearing a hair shirt under a metal breastplate, standing in icy waters to control his lust, living for a while off berries and roots, and being badly beaten by Scottish raiders who strangely thought he had a hidden treasure.
Noted for his close familiarity with wild animals, his supernatural visions, his gift of prophecy, and ability to know of events occurring hundreds or thousands of miles away. Counseled Saint Aelred, Saint Robert of Newminster, Saint Thomas Beckett, and Pope Alexander III. Wrote poetry in Medieval English. The brief song Sainte nicholaes by Godric is one of the oldest in the English language, and is believed to be the earliest surviving example of lyric poetry. He was said to have received his songs, lyrics and music, complete during his miraculous visions.
Born
1069 at Walpole, Norfolk, England
Died
1170 at Finchale, County Durham, England of natural causes
Representation
very old hermit dressed in white, kneeling on grass and holding a rosary, with a stag by him
Blessed Hyacinth-Marie Cormier
Also known as
• Louis-Stanislas-Henri Cormier
• Henri Cormier Bracquemond
Memorials
• 21 May (chosen in rememberance of the date of his election to Master of the Dominicans)
• 17 December (Martyrologium Romanum)
Profile
Born to a family of wealthy merchants, the son of François-Bernard Cormier and Marguerite-Felicité Bracquemond, he was baptized at the age of one day with the name Louis-Stanislas-Henri Cormier, but his family always called him Henri. His father died when Louis was a small boy, his brother soon after, and his uncle, a parish priest, helped raise him. Studied at home, then with the Christian Brothers, and entered the minor seminary in the diocese of Orléans, France at age 13. Could play the flageolet (a woodwind similar to a recorder), organ and ophicleide (a brass, trumpet-like instrument), and was known as a fine singer; Franz Liszt is reported to have admired Louis’ skills at the organ.
Henry became a Dominican tertiary while in seminary, graduated at the top of his class, and was ordained on 17 May 1856, having obtained a special dispensation as he was technically too young. Received the Dominican habit on 29 June 1856, taking the name Hyacinthe-Marie. Afflicted with a recurring hemorrhaging problem, he continued his studies and was allowed to make his profession on 23 May 1859 though everyone assumed it was on his death-bed. However, he survived, soon after made a complete recovery, and became active in his Order and his house.
Noted confessor and teacher, he is known to have written 171 texts in his life. Master of novices. Prior of the convent of Corbara in Corsica, France in 1863. Prior-Provincial of Toulouse, France from 1865 to 1874. Prior of the Dominican community in Marseilles, France. Served as Prior-Provincial again from 1878 to 1888. Definitor of the Dominican General Chapter of Lyons, France in 1891. Procurator of the Dominicans, working in Rome, Italy. In 1899 Pope Leo XIII considered elevating Father Hyacinthe-Marie to cardinal, but held off due to the political problems with France that would ensure over the appointment.
Served as the 76th Master of the Dominicans from 21 May 1904 until 1916. He restored many of the suppressed Dominican provinces, and helped the Order expand into western United States. Founded the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena of Auch. Noted and powerful preacher. Worked for the beatifications of Blessed Reginald of Orléans, Blessed Bertrand Garrigue, Blessed Raymond of Capua, and Blessed Andrew Abellon. Helped re-organize what became the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He finally retired to live his remaining days as a prayerful monk at the priory of the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome.
Born
8 December 1832 in Orléans, Loiret, France as Henri Cormier Bracquemond
Died
• 12:30pm on 17 December 1916 at the priory of the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome, Italy of natural causes
• interred at the church of San Domenico e San Sisto, Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Rome in December 1934
Beatified
20 November 1994 by Pope John Paul II
Saint Restituta of Corsica
Also known as
Restitude, Restitute, Ristituta
Additional Memorial
5 August (in Calenzana, Corsica, France which commemorates her intercession that miraculously ended a plague there)
Profile
We have two stories about this martyr, one medieval with limited information, the second later in composition, and much more colourful.
The oldest sources say that Restituta fled persecution in north Africa with five male companions (possibly the Martyrs of Noli). She evangelized the Balagne region of Corsica, and was martyred by Roman authorities during one of the imperial persecutions (dates vary).
The later documents say that she was born to a pagan family with ties to the imperial Roman army, converted to Christianity as a girl and was soon denounced to anti–Christian local authorities. She was beaten and stoned to get her to renounce Christianity. When she refused, she was thrown into a fire, but would not burn. She was then beaten with iron combs, but her wounds bled milk. These miracles converted several of the soldiers who were guarding and torturing her. She was then taken out to sea and thrown in to drown, but a chunk of cork floated her back to shore while the pagans on the boat were drowned. Her tormentors finally gave up on these slow, torturous methods of murder, and beheaded her with several other stubborn Christians. These martyrs then picked up the severed heads and walked to the place where the first chapel of Saint Restituta was built.
Died
• beheaded 21 May in 217, 218, 225 or 303 (records vary)
• relics interred under the altar in the chapel of Saint Resistude in Calenzana in the 16th century and re-discovered during repairs in 1951
Patronage
• Calenzana, Corsica, France (declared in 1984 by the Congregation for Divine Worship)
• Balagne, Corsica, France (declared in 1984 by the Congregation for Divine Worship)
Saint Collen of Denbighshire
Also known as
Colan, Gollen
Profile
Monk in Wales, Brittany and Cornwall. Believed to have travelled to Rome, Italy. Lived as a hermit in a small cave near Glastonbury Abbey. Abbot of a monastery in Wales. The Welsh town of Llangollen (Collen's enclosure), Clwd is named for him, indicating that it formed around his hermitage and church.
Collen was at the right time and place to be a transitional figure in the folklore of the region. There are tales of him slaying a Welsh giantess to save the people of Llangollen (the church there still has an image of him in this triumph), and of fighting a duel with a Saracen in front of the Pope. Stories have him being taken to the land of faerie, but always as a Christian, and always showing the power of God over the old ways.
Legend says that Collen was once invited to dine with the King of the Fairies; some say he was asked by a man, some say by a fairy, and some say by a talking peacock; I cannot say. The saint declined three times, but finally accepted. Though the king appeared to live in an enormous castle, wealthy and fair, surrounded by courtiers and servants, and seated before a table groaning under the weight of good eatings. Collen, however, knew him for the lying spirit he was. The saint reminded the king of the fate of the Godless, then sprinkled holy water in all directions; in an instant there was nothing left but an angry, demonic bird, flying away from the scene.
Another version has it that Collen, while he lived as a hermit near Glastonbury, was summoned to settle the eternal May Day struggle of Gwynn ap Nudd, Lord of the Underworld, with Gwyther, Lord of Summer, for the hand of the fair Creiddylad, the Maiden of Spring. Collen ordained that the quarrel would be resolved on Doomsday, and not before. Then with a sprinkle of holy water, the faerie folk and fortress disappeared.
Born
c.600 in Wales
Blessed Pietro Parenzo
Profile
Born to the Italian nobility, the son of Giovanni, a senator and judge; his mother‘s name was Odolina. We know he had brothers, and was married at one point, but nothing else survives of his early life. Served in the court of Pope Innocent III. Chosen rector and papal governor of Orvieto, Italy in 1199, a turbulent area used as a base by Patarine Cathar heretics, and in the middle of endless struggles and machinations of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, between supporters of the Pope and those of the Emperor of Germany; Pietro was given a mission to bring peace and suppress heresy which meant he was welcomed with open arms by orthodox Catholics, with open opposition by the supporters of the various heresies and factions. Kidnapped by a gang of Patarine heretics, he was beaten and offered freedom if he would retract all anti–heresy laws in the area, and agree to never trouble the Patarines and Carthars again; he declined. Martyr. The backlash against his killers led to a popular uprising, suppression and exile of the heretics.
Born
12th century Rome, Italy
Died
• hit in the head with a hammer by Patarine heretic kidnappers on 21 May 1199 in a hut just outside Orvieto, Italy; other kidnappers stabbed his body numerous times with knives and swords
• buried in the graveyard of the church of Santa Maria in Orvieto
• relics in the Chapel of the Corporal in the cathedral of Orvieto
Beatified
• popularly considered a martyr at the time of his death, there were commemorations beginning in 1200
• his tomb became a stopping point for people passing through Orvieto while on pilgrimages to Rome, Italy
• 16 March 1879 by Pope Leo XIII (cultus confirmation)
Patronage
Orvieto, Italy
Saint Hospitius of Cap-Saint-Hospice
Also known as
Ospicio, Sospis
Profile
Hermit at a place now named Cap-Saint-Hospice in his honour, living in the ruins of an old tower, wearing heavy iron chains, living off bread and dates and not even that during Lent. Foretold the invasion of Gaul by the Lombards. A Lombard patrol c.575, finding Hospitius loaded with chains and living in isolation, decided he was some type of criminal; Hospitius agreed that he was a terrible sinner, with a litany of offenses to his shame. Convinced he was a danger of some sort, one of the soldiers raised his sword to kill the old hermit; the soldier's sword arm became paralyzed, moving again only after Hospitius made the sign of the cross over it. The soldier was converted on the spot, and spent the rest of his life in service to God. Hospitius foretold the hour of his own death, spent his last hours in prayer, took off his chains, and passed on.
Died
• 21 May 581
• buried by his friend, Austadius, Bishop of Cimiez
• relics distributed to the French towns of Lerins, Nice, Villefranche, La Turbie, and San-Sospis
Blessed Hemming of Åbo
Profile
Studied in Uppsala, Sweden and Paris, France; one of his classmates in Paris became Pope Clement VI. Priest. Canon of the cathedral of Åbo, Turku (in modern Finland) in 1329. Evangelizing bishop of Åbo in 1338 where he served for 28 years. He renewed the faith of his flock, improved the education, training and discipline of his priests, improved liturgical furnishings and diocesan finances, and worked for peace among the peoples of his area. Friend of Saint Bridget of Sweden.
Born
late 13th century in Balinge parish, north of Uppsala, Sweden
Died
21 May 1366 of natural causes
Beatified
• miracles reported at his tomb, and by 1400 there were pilgrimages made to it
• Pope Leo X approves enshrining of his relics in the cathedral of Åbo, Turku (in modern Finland) in 1514
Blessed Manuel Gómez González
Profile
Ordained in 1902 in the archdiocese of Braga, Portugal. Transferred to the diocese of Frederico Westphalen, Brazil in 1913. Known as a concerned pastor to his flock, and for his social work in the region. Martyred with his altar boy, Blessed Adilo Daronche.
Born
29 May 1877 in San José de Ribarteme, Pontevedra, Spain
Died
21 May 1924 in Feijão Miúdo, Três Passos, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Beatified
21 October 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI
Blessed Jean Mopinot
Also known as
Brother Léon
Profile
Member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, entering the novitiate on 14 January 1744. Imprisoned on a ship in the harbor of Rochefort, France and left to die during the anti–Catholic persecutions of the French Revolution. One of the Martyrs of the Hulks of Rochefort.
Born
12 December 1724 in Rheims, Ardennes, France
Died
21 May 1794 aboard the prison ship Deux-Associés, in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, France
Beatified
1 October 1995 by Pope John Paul II
Saint Bairfhion of Killbarron
Also known as
Barrfoin, Barrindus
Profile
Led the church founded by Saint Columba in Drum Cullen, Offaly, Ireland in the 6th century. Later lived in Killbarron near Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland. Legend says that the sailed to America even before Saint Brendan the Navigator.
Born
Irish
Patronage
• Drumcuillan, County Laoghis, Ireland
• Killbarron, County Donegal, Ireland
Blessed Adilio Daronch
Profile
Young lay person in the diocese of Frederico Westphalen, Brazil. Martyr.
Born
25 October 1908 in Dona Francisca, Cachoeira do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Died
martyred on 21 May 1924 in Feijão Miúdo, Três Passos, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Beatified
21 October 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI
Blessed Silao
Profile
Born to the Irish nobility. Priest. Benedictine monk. Abbot. Bishop. Having encountered opposition from a local lord, Silao went to Rome, Italy to appeal for support from Pope Gregory VII, but died on the road on the return trip.
Born
early 11th century Ireland
Died
• late 11th century in Lucca, Italy of natural causes
• relics in Lucca, Italy
Saint Paternus of Vannes
Also known as
• Paternus the Elder
• Paterno, Patern, Pern
Profile
Fifth-century bishop of Vannes in Brittany (in modern France). Late in life he retired from his see to spend his final years as a hermit.
Died
c.475
Saint Serapion the Sindonite
Profile
Early desert monk whose unflinching dedication to the ascetic life was an example to many others at the beginning of the monastic movement. Pilgrim to Rome, Italy.
Born
Egypt
Died
356 of natural causes
Saint Ageranus of Blèze
Also known as
Ayran, Ayrman
Profile
Benedictine monk. Martyred defending the altar at the monastery of Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France against Norman invaders.
Died
in 888 at Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France
Saint Polieuctus of Caesarea
Also known as
Polieuto, Polieutto
Profile
Martyr.
Died
Caesarea, Cappadocia (in modern Turkey)
Saint Isberga
Also known as
Itisberga
Profile
Sister of Charlemagne. Nun at Aire in the Artois region of France.
Died
c.800 of natural causes
Patronage
Artois, France
Saint Secundus of Alexandria
Profile
Priest. Martyred along with a group of unnamed clergy in the persecutions of Constantius for opposing the Arian heresy.
Died
Pentecost season, year unknown, at Alexandria, Egypt
Blessed Lucio del Rio
Profile
Mercedarian priest. Confessor of King James II of Castille, and the Infanta Isabella.
Born
1242
Died
1342 at the Santa Eulalia Mercedarian convent in Barcelona, Spain of natural causes
Saint Genesius of Blèze
Profile
Benedictine monk. Martyred defending the altar at the monastery Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France against Norman invaders.
Died
888 at Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France
Saint Ansuinus of Blèze
Profile
Priest. Martyred defending the altar at the monastery at Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France against Norman invaders.
Died
in 888 at Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France
Saint Berard of Blèze
Profile
Benedictine monk. Martyred defending the altar at the monastery Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France against Norman invaders.
Died
888 at Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France
Saint Sifrard of Blèze
Profile
Benedictine monk. Killed defending the altar at the Blèze Abbey, Côte-d'Or, France against Norman invaders.
Died
888 at Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France
Saint Rodron of Blèze
Profile
Benedictine monk. Killed defending the altar at the Blèze Abbey, Côte-d'Or, France against Norman invaders.
Died
888 at Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France
Saint Nicostratus of Caesarea Philippi
Profile
Soldier. Tribune in the imperial Roman army. Martyred with other soldiers.
Died
Caesarea Philippi
Saint Adalric of Blèze
Profile
Young boy. Martyred at the monastery of Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France against Norman invaders.
Died
in 888 at Blèze, Côte-d'Or, France
Saint Antiochus of Caesarea Philippi
Profile
Soldier. Tribune in the imperial Roman army. Martyred with other soldiers.
Died
Caesarea Philippi
Saint Theobald of Vienne
Also known as
Thibaud of Vienne
Profile
Archbishop of Vienne, France from 970 to 1001.
Died
1001
Saint Eutychius of Mauretania
Profile
Deacon in Mauretania Caesariensis in North Africa. Martyred in the persecutions of Diocletian.
Saint Timothy of Mauretania
Profile
Deacon in Mauretania Caesariensis in North Africa. Martyred in the persecutions of Diocletian.
Saint Polius of Mauretania
Profile
Deacon in Mauretania Caesariensis in North Africa. Martyred in the persecutions of Diocletian.
Saint Valens of Auxerre
Profile
Bishop. Martyred with three boys whose names have not come down to us.
Died
Auxerre, France
Saint Secundinus of Cordoba
Profile
Martyred in the persecutions of Diocletian.
Died
c.306 in Cordoba, Spain
Saint Mancio of évora
Also known as
Mancinelli
Profile
Sixth century bishop of évora, Portugal. Martyr.
Saint Victorius of Caesarea
Profile
Martyr.
Died
Caesarea, Cappadocia (in modern Turkey)
Saint Donatus of Caesarea
Profile
Martyr.
Died
Caesarea, Cappadocia
Saint Synesius
Profile
Martyr.
Saint Vales
Profile
Fourth century priest in France.
Saint Theopompus
Profile
Martyr.
Martyrs of Egypt
Profile
Large number of bishops, priests, deacons and lay people banished when the Arian heretics seized the diocese of Alexandria, Egypt in 357 and drove out Saint Athanasius and other orthodox Christians. Many were old, many infirm, and many, many died of abuse and privations while on the road and in the wilderness. Very few survived to return to their homes in 361 when Julian the Apostate recalled all Christians; and then many of those later died in the persecutions of Julian.
Martyrs of Pentecost in Alexandria
Profile
An unspecified number of Christian clerics and lay people who, on Pentecost in 338, were rounded up by order of the Arian bishop and emperor Constantius, and were either killed or exiled for refusing to accept Arian teachings.
Died
339 in Alexandria, Egypt
Martyrs of Bèze
Adalric
Ageranus
Ansuinus
Berard
Genesius
Rodron
Sifrard
Martyrs of Caesarea
Donatus
Polieuctus
Victorius
Martyrs of Caesarea Philippi
Antiochus
Nicostratus
Martyrs of Mauretania
Eutychius
Polius
Timothy
Monks of Tibhirine
Célestin Ringeard
Christian de Chergé
Christian Lemarchand
Christophe Lebreton
Michel Fleury
Paul Dochier
Paul Favre-Miville
