He thought back to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge more than a decade earlier, where his army had defeated that of his brother-in-law, the emperor Maxentius. He’d seen something in the lead-up to the big battle. In the sky. He was certain of it. A sign. The
The sign had kept on bringing him victories.
Constantine understood power, but he also understood the power of myth. He was deeply steeped in religion, having been brought up around pagan and Christian thinkers in Nicomedia, in the Eastern Empire. Like all his peers, he sought out the advice of oracles and believed in the rewards of religious piety. After that fateful battle, and throughout his campaigns, Constantine claimed that a divine hand had helped him achieve his victories. And inspired by ancient scripture, he came to see himself as a messiah—a warrior-king, anointed by God to rule over the people he had united and lead them to a golden age of peace and prosperity.
“We have to protect this faith, Hosius,” he told the bishop. “We have to safeguard it and smother any challenges to it before they can grow. Because this faith is truly divinely inspired.” He paced around the room, his face alive with zeal, his arms sweeping the air with unbridled enthusiasm. “It welcomes all and it’s easy to join. Converts don’t need to turn their lives upside down to be part of it. They don’t need to become celibate or worry about what they can and can’t eat or chop off parts of their manhood to be allowed in. And the organization … the hierarchy in the clergy, the churches, the discipline—it’s all hugely effective at bringing in converts and keeping them in line. But most of all, its divine inspiration is in its message.” He smiled at his seated guest, a smile of deep satisfaction. “Good and evil, Heaven and Hell, eternal paradise and eternal damnation? Rewards in the next life to give hope to those who have nothing in this one and keep them from rebelling? Sin and the need to keep temptation at bay, the lot of it administered by men with divine authority and seared into the consciousness of every child from the day the child is born?” He chortled. “It’s so brilliantly conceived and brutally effective it could only have been dreamt up through divine intervention. I mean, imagine … these people out there, these Christians … my predecessors and my rivals have been hounding them and killing them just as they killed Jesus three hundred years ago. They’ve been persecuted, humiliated, shackled and spat upon, and left to rot in dungeons because they wouldn’t worship our pagan gods and perform the sacrifices required of them. They’ve been blamed for everything from famine to flooding, they’ve had their women raped and their property confiscated … and yet they still cling to their faith. They still soldier on.” He paused, marveling at the very concept he was describing. “That’s power. That’s real power. And we need to protect it if we’re going to harness its full potential.”
The Spanish bishop cleared his throat and said, “You’ve achieved a lot, Your Majesty. You put an end to their persecution. You showered them with donations and tax breaks and gave them a chance to be part of the ruling class and prosper and spread their message.”
“Yes,” the emperor agreed, “and it’s going to turn this empire into the greatest empire in the history of mankind. Which is why I can’t let this message—this vision—be compromised. That gentle revolutionary from three hundred years ago is my enabler, he’s the instrument that allowed me to unify this empire and rule over its people with a mandate from God himself. And I can’t let anything threaten that. It would be most unwise—and dangerous for us all.”
Much as the pragmatic ruler within him was concerned about the disputes, the superstitious part of Constantine was just as worried. He feared that schisms within the Church were the work of the devil, and that a divided Church could offend God and incur his wrath. Constantine had to thwart the devil’s ambitions. He saw himself as a successor to the original evangelists, a man whose God-given mission was to protect Christianity and spread the word of God to the far reaches of his empire and beyond.
A thirteenth apostle.
He had to put an end to the infighting.
All of which was why he’d invited the bishops of his empire to come to Nicaea and told them, in no uncertain terms, that they wouldn’t be leaving the imperial palace until they’d settled their disputes and agreed on what story they’d be preaching from their pulpits.
One story.
One dogma.
No divergence.
After many weeks of fierce debate, they’d finally reached a consensus. They’d agreed.
They had their story.
Hosius sat there in silence for a long moment, watching the emperor. Then, hesitant, he asked, “There is one last matter to be discussed, Your Majesty.”
Constantine turned to him, curious. “Yes?”
“The texts,” Hosius asked. “What would you like done with them?”
Constantine frowned. The texts … the infernal works that had caused so much discord. Ancient writings, gospels and ruminations from the very dawn of the faith, opening up all kinds of questions.
Unwelcome questions.
“We have settled on one orthodoxy,” the emperor said. “We’ve agreed on what the gospel truth shall be from here on. I see no need to cloud the issue further.”
“What are you saying, Your Majesty?”
Constantine thought about it for a moment, a shiver of doubt scuttling down his spine.
“Burn them,” he told his trusted advisor. “Burn them all.”
HOSIUS THOUGHT BACK to the emperor’s words as he watched his two acolytes load up the carriage in the dimly lit coach house.
He understood the emperor’s decision, even sympathized with it at many levels. It was the wise thing to do. The texts were, indeed, dangerous.
Hosius was intimately familiar with the debates that had been raging at the heart of the faith. He’d witnessed, firsthand, the zeal with which the various Christian movements argued their views. In the last year alone, the emperor had sent him to Antioch twice to mediate such theological disputes. They hadn’t been pleasant trips.
But he also had his doubts.
Yes, the faith needed to be unified under one vision. Yes, a unified faith would bring about an era of unparalleled peace and prosperity.
But at what cost?
Hosius knew that once Constantine was done with it, Christianity would far more resemble the pagan beliefs that it was superceding, particularly Mithraism and the cult of Sol Invictus, than its own Judaic origins. By necessity. Most of the emperor’s subjects were pagan. To win them over, they needed to move them over gently to the new faith. They couldn’t force them to drop all their previous rituals and beliefs, ones they had been prepared to die for. Even the emperor himself, Hosius knew, still harbored doubts and, deep down, didn’t want to risk displeasing the gods of his past.
Hosius could also see another danger in what was happening. He was fully aware that the Church had been effectively giving its blessing to Constantine’s supplanting of Jesus Christ as the Messiah. The emperor was now the godsend, not Christ. He was the warrior-king with divine backing, the man who would achieve with the sword what Christ had failed to do with his words. He was the polar opposite of the peace-loving, gentle savior, and he still had the backing of all the priests, deacons, and bishops across his empire.
Dangerous indeed.
But if the Church was going to survive, it needed a champion.
Constantine had embraced the faith, stopped the persecutions, and was making Christianity the newly unified empire’s official religion. He would bring about a new golden age. And, as part of that plan, he was turning the old city of Byzantium into his new capital, his New Rome. A capital that was home to great avenues, magnificent
