23. Обращение Константина Великого

Emperor Constantine the Great was the son of Constantius Chlorus, ruler of the western part of the Roman Empire (Gaul and Britain), and Saint Helen, Equal to the Apostles. At the request of Emperor Diocletian, in his youth (18 years old) he was taken from his parents as a hostage and lived at his court in Nicomedia. When Diocletian abdicated the throne, Constantine returned to Gaul and in 306 (after the death of Emperor Constantius) was proclaimed emperor. He was predisposed to accept Christianity by his mother. His father, although he was a pagan, patronized Christians, seeing that Christians were faithful servants and honest citizens. At the court of Diocletian, at a time when he was not yet a persecutor of the Church, there were Christians in various positions, and Constantine had many occasions to ascertain their honesty and devotion to duty. Then he saw the horrors of persecution and the extraordinary firmness of Christ's confessors, and this also predisposed him in their favor 48 . By his nature, active, warlike, accessible and generous to everyone, with a far-sighted and insightful mind, Constantine displays the traits of a world genius, and it was not in vain that Providence chose him to carry out the greatest revolution in the empire and throughout the world. During his reign, Emperor Constantine fought in particular against three enemies, and during this struggle he gradually but decisively leaned toward accepting the holy faith. In 308, he happily emerged from the struggle with Emperor Maximian Herculus and hastened to express his gratitude to the deity with rich sacrifices in the church of Apollo. This revealed a dominant feature in the character of Constantine: although he still remained a pagan, he was a pious man and attributed the reason for his success to help from above. In 312, a new war broke out between Emperor Constantine and Caesar Maxentius, the son of Maximian. During this war, shortly before the decisive battle, at midday, when the sun had already begun to decline to the west, Constantine with his own eyes saw in the sky the sign of the cross made of light with the inscription: “By this, conquer.” At night, in a dream, the Lord appeared to him with the same sign of the cross and said that with this sign he would defeat the enemy. Having defeated Maxentius, Constantine solemnly entered Rome and here in the square he ordered to erect his statue with a cross in his right hand and with the inscription: “With this saving banner I saved the city from the yoke of a tyrant.” After this victory, Emperor Constantine, together with his son-in-law Licinius, issued the first manifesto in Milan, allowing everyone to accept Christianity without hesitation. The second manifesto, signed by him in 313, ordered the return to Christians of places of worship and all real estate taken away during the persecution. Meanwhile, the friendly relations between the emperors Constantine and Licinius gradually deteriorated and turned into open struggle. This struggle was to decide the fate of Christianity in the Roman Empire, because Licinius, suspecting the Eastern Christians of being more attached to Constantine than to him, first began to oppress them, and then moved on to open persecution of them, while Constantine clearly patronized the Christians. Both emperors were preparing for a decisive struggle, each in accordance with his faith. Oracles predicted victory for Licinius; Christians prayed for Constantine. God granted victory to Constantine (in the Battle of Adrianople in 323). Licinius lost his throne and his life. Constantine became autocratic, and Christianity triumphed. Emperor Constantine devoted his entire life to the good of the Church and did so much good to it that he earned the title of Equal-to-the-Apostles. Since his time, government institutions, laws, and military service have conducted their business depending on the requirements of Christianity. As private measures and actions of Emperor Constantine in favor of Christianity, in addition to the above-mentioned edicts, the following can be indicated in order of time: he stopped pagan games (314), freed the clergy from civil positions and church lands from general duties (313–315), abolished execution by crucifixion and issued a strict law against the Jews who rebelled against the Church (315), allowed the emancipation of slaves in churches without special formalities, which were very difficult when carrying out this matter in civil courts (316), forbade private individuals to make sacrifices to idols and turn to fortune telling in their own homes, leaving this right only to societies (319), ordered the celebration of Sunday throughout the empire (321), abolished the laws that the Romans had against celibacy (to protect Christian virgins and virgins) and granted The Church has the right to receive property under wills; allowed Christians to occupy the highest government positions; ordered the construction of Christian churches and forbade the introduction of imperial statues and images into them, according to the custom that existed in pagan temples (325). Most of all, Emperor Constantine encountered opposition to himself in Rome, where the pagan party was especially strong. This opposition of the pagans, revealed especially during Constantine’s celebration of the twentieth anniversary of his reign, cooled him towards the former capital of the state. Finally, he completely left Rome, founded a new, properly Christian capital on the banks of the Bosphorus and invited Christian bishops to solemnly consecrate it. Instead of pagan temples in this new capital of the empire, Constantinople, Christian temples began to be erected, and sacred images were installed instead of pagan gods and goddesses. From the time of Constantine, Jerusalem again began to be called by this name, instead of the name Aelia Capitolinus, given to it under Hadrian. Constantine's mother, Saint Queen Helena, went to Palestine on his instructions. Here she found the cross of the Lord, built churches on Golgotha, on the Mount of Olives, in Bethlehem and in Hebron near the oak of Mamre. Emperor Constantine paid close attention to the unrest that was being aroused in the Church by the Donatist schism and especially the heresy of Arius, and tried in every possible way to reconcile those divided. One of the great merits of Constantine was the convening of the first Ecumenical Council. Devoted with all his soul to the Church, Constantine, however, according to the custom of that time, postponed accepting baptism until the last days of his life. When he felt his death sickness, he accepted this great sacrament with reverence and died peacefully, amid prayer, on May 21, 337. History has given him the name of the Great; the Church, for the great services rendered by him, calls him Equal-to-the-Apostles. – Subsequently, Constantine himself admitted that his stay at the court of Diocletian greatly contributed to his conversion to Christianity. “I became alienated from the hitherto rulers,” he said, “because I saw the savagery of their morals.” You might be interested in: