Part 32 (1/2)
By a decree issued from Milan A.D. 313, Christianity was made in effect the state religion; but all other forms of wors.h.i.+p were tolerated. With the view of harmonizing the different sects that had sprung up among the Christians, and to settle the controversy between the Arians and the Athanasians respecting the nature of Christ,--the former denied his equality with G.o.d the Father,--Constantine called the first OEc.u.menical, or General Council of the Church, at Nicaea, a town of Asia Minor, A.D.
325. Arianism was denounced, and a formula of Christian faith adopted, which is known as the Nicene Creed.
After the recognition of Christianity, the most important act of Constantine was the selection of Byzantium, on the Bosporus, as the new capital of the empire. One reason which led the emperor to choose this site in preference to Rome was the ungracious conduct towards him of the inhabitants of the latter city, because he had abandoned the wors.h.i.+p of the old national deities. But there were political reasons for such a change. Through the Eastern conquests of Rome, the centre of the population, wealth, and culture of the empire had s.h.i.+fted eastward. The West--Gaul, Britain, Spain--was rude and barbarous; the East--Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor--was the abode of ancient civilizations from which Rome was proud to trace her origin. Constantine was not the first to entertain the idea of seeking in the East a new centre for the Roman world. The Italians were inflamed against the first Caesar by the report that he intended to restore Ilium, the cradle of the Roman race, and make that the capital of the empire.
Constantine organized at Byzantium a new Senate, while that at Rome sank to the obscure position of the council of a provincial munic.i.p.ality.
Mult.i.tudes eagerly thronged to the new capital, and almost in a night the little colony grew into an imperial city. In honor of the emperor its name was changed to Constantinople, the ”City of Constantine.” Hereafter the eyes of the world were directed towards the Bosporus instead of the Tiber.
To aid in the administration of the government, Constantine laid out the empire into four great divisions, called prefectures (see map), which were subdivided into thirteen dioceses, and these again into one hundred and sixteen provinces.
The character of Constantine has been greatly eulogized by Christian writers, while pagan historians very naturally painted it in dark colors.
It is probable that he embraced Christianity, not entirely from conviction, but partly from political motives. As the historian Hodgkin puts it, ”He was half convinced of the truth of Christianity, and wholly convinced of the policy of embracing it.” In any event, Constantine's religion was a strange mixture of the old and the new faith: on his medals the Christian cross is held by the pagan deity, Victory. In his domestic relations he was tyrannical and cruel. He died in the thirty-first year of his reign, leaving his kingdom to his three sons, Constans, Constantius, and Constantine.
REIGN OF JULIAN THE APOSTATE (A.D. 361-363).--The parcelling out of the empire by Constantine among his sons led to strife and wars, which, at the end of sixteen years, left Constantius master of the whole. He reigned as sole emperor for about eight years, engaged in ceaseless warfare with German tribes in the West and with the Persians [Footnote: The great Parthian empire, which had been such a formidable antagonist of Rome, was, after an existence of five centuries, overthrown (A.D. 226) by a revolt of the Persians, and the New Persian, or Sa.s.sanian monarchy established. This empire lasted till the country was overrun by the Saracens in the seventh century A.D.] in the East. Constantius was followed by his cousin Julian, who was killed while in pursuit of the troops of Sapor, king of the Persians (A.D. 363).
Julian is called the Apostate because he abandoned Christianity and labored to restore the pagan faith. In his persecution of the Christians, however, he could not resort to the old means--”the sword, the fire, the lions;” for, under the softening influences of the very faith he sought to extirpate, the Roman world had already learned a gentleness and humanity that rendered impossible the renewal of the Neronian and Diocletian persecutions. Julian's weapons were sophistry and ridicule, in the use of which he was a master. To degrade the Christians, and place them at a disadvantage in controversy, he excluded them from the schools of logic and rhetoric.
Furthermore, to cast discredit upon the predictions of the Scriptures, Julian determined to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, which the Christians contended could not be restored because of the prophecies against it. He actually began excavations, but his workmen were driven in great panic from the spot by terrific explosions and bursts of flame. The Christians regarded the occurrence as miraculous; and Julian himself, it is certain, was so dismayed by it that he desisted from the undertaking. [Footnote: The explosions which so terrified the workmen of Julian are supposed to have been caused by acc.u.mulations of gases--similar to those that so frequently occasion accidents in mines--in the subterranean chambers of the Temple foundations.]
It was in vain that the apostate emperor labored to uproot the new faith; for the purity of its teachings, the universal and eternal character of its moral precepts, had given it a name to live. Equally in vain were his efforts to restore the wors.h.i.+p of the old Grecian and Roman divinities.
Polytheism was a transitional form of religious belief which the world had now outgrown: Great Pan was dead.
The disabilities under which Julian had placed the Christians were removed by his successor Jovian (A.D. 363-4), and the Christian wors.h.i.+p was re- established.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GERMANS CROSSING THE RHINE. (Drawing by Alphonse de Neuville.)]
VALENTINIAN AND VALENS.--Upon the death of Jovian, Valentinian, the commander of the imperial guard, was elected emperor by a council of the generals of the army and the ministers of the court. He appointed his brother Valens as his a.s.sociate in office, and a.s.signed to him the Eastern provinces, while reserving for himself the Western. He set up his own court at Milan, while his brother established his residence at Constantinople.
THE MOVEMENTS OF THE BARBARIANS.--The reigns of Valentinian and Valens were signalized by threatening movements of the barbarian tribes, that now, almost at the same moment, began to press with redoubled energy against all the barriers of the empire. The Alemanni (Germans) crossed the Rhine--sometimes swarming over the river on the winter's ice--and, before pursuit could be made, escaped with their booty into the depths of the German forests. The Saxons, pirates of the northern seas, who issued from the mouth of the Elbe, ravaged the coasts of Gaul and Britain, even pus.h.i.+ng their light skiffs far up the rivers and creeks of those countries, and carrying spoils from the inland cities. In Britain, the Picts broke through the Wall of Antoninus, and wrested almost the entire island from the hands of the Romans. In Africa, the Moorish and other tribes, issuing from the ravines of the Atlas Mountains and swarming from the deserts of the south, threatened to obliterate the last trace of Roman civilization occupying the narrow belt of fertile territory skirting the sea.
The barbarian tide of invasion seemed thus on the point of overwhelming the empire in the West; but for twelve years Valentinian defended with signal ability and energy, not only his own territories, but aided with arms and counsel his weaker brother Valens in the defence of his. Upon the death of Valentinian, his son Gratian succeeded to his authority (A.D.
375).
THE GOTHS CROSS THE DANUBE.--The year following the death of Valentinian, an event of the greatest importance occurred in the East. The Visigoths (Western Goths) dwelling north of the Lower Danube, who had often in hostile bands crossed that river to war against the Roman emperors, now appeared as suppliants in vast mult.i.tudes upon its banks. They said that a terrible race, whom they were powerless to withstand, had invaded their territories, and spared neither their homes nor their lives. They begged permission of the Romans to cross the river and settle in Thrace, and promised, should this request be granted, ever to remain the grateful and firm allies of the Roman state.
Valens consented to grant their pet.i.tion on condition that they should surrender their arms, give up their children as hostages, and all be baptized in the Christian faith. Their terror and despair led them to a.s.sent to these conditions. So the entire nation, numbering one million souls,--counting men, women, and children,--were allowed to cross the river. Several days and nights were consumed in the transport of the vast mult.i.tudes. The writers of the times liken the pa.s.sage to that of the h.e.l.lespont by the hosts of Xerxes.
The enemy that had so terrified the Goths were the Huns, a monstrous race of fierce nomadic hors.e.m.e.n, that two centuries and more before the Christian era were roving the deserts north of the Great Wall of China (see p. 13). Migrating from that region, they moved slowly to the west, across the great plains of Central Asia, and, after wandering several centuries, appeared in Europe. They belonged to a different race (the Turanian) from all the other European tribes with which we have been so far concerned. Their features were hideous, their noses being flattened, and their cheeks gashed, to render their appearance more frightful, as well as to prevent the growth of a beard. Even the barbarous Goths called them ”barbarians.”
Scarcely had the fugitive Visigoths been received within the limits of the empire before a large company of their kinsmen, the Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths), also driven from their homes by the same terrible Huns, crowded to the banks of the Danube, and pleaded that they might be allowed, as their countrymen had been, to place the river between themselves and their dreaded enemies. But Valens, becoming alarmed at the presence of so many barbarians within his dominions, refused their request; whereupon they, dreading the fierce and implacable foe behind more than the wrath of the Roman emperor in front, crossed the river with arms in their hands. At this moment the Visigoths, rising in revolt, joined their kinsmen that were just now forcing the pa.s.sage of the Danube, and began to ravage the Danubian provinces. Valens despatched swift messengers to Gratian in the West, asking for a.s.sistance against the foe he had so imprudently admitted within the limits of the empire.
THEODOSIUS THE GREAT (A.D. 379-395).--Gratian was hurrying to the help of his colleague Valens, when news of his defeat and death at the hands of the barbarians was brought to him, and he at once appointed as his a.s.sociate Theodosius, known afterwards as the Great, and entrusted him with the government of the Eastern provinces. Theodosius, by wise and vigorous measures, quickly reduced the Goths to submission. Vast mult.i.tudes of the Visigoths were settled upon the waste lands of Thrace, while the Ostrogoths were scattered in various colonies in different regions of Asia Minor. The Goths became allies of the Emperor of the East, and more than 40,000 of these warlike barbarians, who were destined to be the subverters of the empire, were enlisted in the imperial legions.
While Theodosius was thus composing the East, the West, through the jealous rivalries of different compet.i.tors for the control of the government, had fallen into great disorder. Theodosius twice interposed to right affairs, and then took the government into his own hands. For four months he ruled as sole monarch of the empire.
FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE (A.D. 395).--The Roman world was now united for the last time under a single master. Just before his death, Theodosius divided the empire between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, a.s.signing the former, who was only eighteen years of age, the government of the East, and giving the latter, a mere child of eleven, the sovereignty of the West. This was the final part.i.tion of the Roman empire--the issue of that growing tendency, which we have observed in its immoderately extended dominions, to break apart. The separate histories of the East and the West now begin.
THE EASTERN EMPIRE.--The story of the fortunes of the Empire in the East need not detain us long at this point of our history. This monarchy lasted over a thousand years--from the accession to power of Arcadius, A.D. 395, to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, A.D. 1453. It will thus be seen that the greater part of its history belongs to the mediaeval period.