Constantine's "Eyes to Heaven"... what's the big deal?

Max-flation. ;-D

 

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I'm not so sure!

It seems that Constantine's real claim to fame is in being the first Christian emperor, or more specifically the first to support Christianity, and his epithet of "the Great", not to mention sainthood, follow directly from that, thanks to the church. Other than this, he was obviously a successful emperor, and a capable general, but hardly a legendary one. Most definitely not a saint either, by any normal definition of the word!

In his most famous victory, at the Milvan bridge, Constantine's opponent Maxentius made a suicidically bad decision by choosing to fight with his back to the wall and then deliberately cutting off his own means of retreat! The senate nonetheless awarded Constantine the title of "MAXIMVS" for this, seemingly as an act of self-serving politics. In any case, the legendary name "Constantine the Great" seems unrelated to this title.

To me the most interesting question is whether Constantine's actions actually changed the course of Christianity in any way, and my opinion is that they really did not. It seems much more a case of being "in the right place at the right time", with the church then happy to promote him as a founding figure, perhaps as a role-model they hoped subsequent emperors would also follow.

In order to come to this conclusion, you have to look at the growth of Christianty from its' origins to Constantine and beyond, a good starting point of which are the books by Rodney Stark ("The Rise of Christianity") and Ramsey Macmullen ("Christianizing the Roman Empire", "Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries"). It might be tempting to think of the rise of Christianity as the result of mass conversions, perhaps based on miraculous beliefs, but the evidence seems to suggest it was much less dramatic...

All social phenomena, including religion, naturally grow (while supporting conditions persist) at an exponential rate, which is to say that the speed of growth is a function of the number of current adherents (since the more adherents you have, the more outsiders they can then influence). Accordingly we can (and Stark does) use the formula for exponential growth to figure the growth rate for given endpoints. We don't know the exact numbers, but if you do the calculations it really doesn't make that much difference. The number of Christians goes from perhaps a few dozen/hundreds at time of Christ to maybe 10% of the roman population of ~50 million by the time of Constantine, which interestingly gives us a growth rate almost identical to the birthrate! The conclusion then is that most new Christians were just the children of Christian parents (the same as people behave today). The interesting question then becomes how were Christians nonetheless able to grow as a percentage of the population, which it seems may have been mostly due to keeping their own members alive one way or another (not exposing unwanted babies, caring for their own during the great pandemics of the first few centuries AD). Of course there is more to it than this - the effect of the diaspora, and the failure of the traditional Religio Romana to protect the empire from strife - but it helps to understand the big picture of what was going on.

So, we have a slow but relentless growth of the Christian population resulting in it having grown to a point (~10% of population) where it could no longer be ignored by the time of Diocletian and Constantine. This was occurring regardless of whether the religion was officially supported or opposed, even by persecution, and would continue to do so. Perhaps an emperor different from Constantine might not have embraced Christianity, but as it continued to grow as a percentage of the population at some point it had to be accepted, so if not by him then someone else within the same rough time period.

Outside of religion, Constantine's other claim to fame might be his moving of the capital east to Constantinople, which might, in retrospect, be considered as key to the longevity of the "romano-byzantine" empire. How might things be different if instead the capital was Rome and the fall of the western roman empire had become the fall of rome itself ? However, this was hardly something that Constantine had forseen ... a whole series of eastern soldier-emperors had chosen the east as their base, and it seems Constantine was initially just doing the same (as soon as sole rule gave him the opportunity to do so).

 

Hello Gavin,

Your coin is a ric vii57 coin SMKS. ( oblique lines ). SMKS. is not in RIC VII. The coin Victor Clarck has posted has no oblique lines, that is a different type.

@seth: Your first coin is a SMK(delta). headband with oblique lines.
The second one his a different type. It is a headband with squares, not oblique lines.

 

Oh my--a debate! And since this is CoinTalk, there is a guarantee that it will not end with one of us calling the other one Hitler--or a communist!

That said, I don't think that you have addressed the first of my arguments at all, the first of which are:

• that Constantine survived against long odds and multiple competitors
• that he was a long-reigning emperor (30 years, including 13 as sole emperor). Not that being long-reigning is necessarily a sign of greatness per se, but when the fifty years before Diocletian saw a dozen emperors or so, and when there were as many as six co-emperors at one point during the Tetrarchy, this is a sign of something very significant
• that he united the empire together after a very long period of disunity
• that he founded a dynasty--again, no small feat for the time

I don't think that any of this can really be attributed to simply being in the right place at the right time. To be sure, he did need to be in the right place and at the right time, but that was not enough on its own; he was not simply carried forward passively, like a surfer riding a wave.

In addition, I definitely do not agree that Constantine had no effect on the development of Christianity. As I mentioned, he took an intense interest in settling the Christian theological squabbles, and his convening of the Nicene Council is universally agreed as a major development in the history of Christianity. Interestingly, the bishop he chose to oversee the Nicene Council was not Arian, and it was the Arians who ended up losing, eventually, to the group we now call "orthodox." So Constantine not only had a profound effect on Christianity in terms of its doctrinal development, but in terms of everything that flowed from those ideas, too.

As far as the numbers go, I don't think I quite understand your argument, so you can help me there. On the one hand, you say that Christianity grew exponentially, but on the other, you say that it was growing at about the same rate as the birth rate.

What I can say is that Christianity had grown to about 10% of the empire's population by about 300 CE or so--about 6 million people. After only 50 years, the first of which saw Constantine and his dynasty in power, that number grew to many times that, with Christians forming an actual majority of the population.

I do agree that Christian growth was trending--not least because of what is called the "enthusiasm gap"--but without having a sitting emperor, the most powerful in perhaps a century, to favour them and to try to unite them, and to officially use their religion as the very basis of his very significant power, what would have happened? I just don't think it's possible to simply assert that Christian development in terms of doctrine, practice, and demographics, would simply have turned out the same or even similarly. And indeed, Christianity was not the only successful religion at the time; one could argue that Mithraism was far more successful. Constantine placed a very heavy thumb on the scale.

In addition to these things, the establishment of the capital at Byzantium was extremely significant. I agree that Constantine was following in the footsteps of a number of his predecessors in choosing an eastern city to be his capital, but I don't really agree that he could not have foreseen how long-enduring Constantinople would be as the seat of Roman power. If anything, he probably took it for granted that it would be.

And he chose the site of his capital very well, too: it was close to the Dacian front, so he could respond more quickly to barbarian trouble there, and closer to the Persian front so he could respond more quickly there. In addition, unlike Rome, it was a port city on the Mediterranean, and so conferred substantial advantages that way. And finally, the city itself was geographically very defensible--a key to its longevity in the face of Islamic expansion later.

In addition to all this, Constantine brought a lot of wealth into the city. One consequence of that would be the presence of scholars who preserved and wrote about many important books of classical antiquity--works that would go on to have a profound influence on Europe during the Renaissance thanks to the dispersal of many scholars after the conquest of the city by the Turks in the mid 14th century.

I also think it's important to note that Constantine was able to accomplish all this despite not being a military genius. Being such is not a requirement to greatness for a ruler. It was enough for Constantine to use capable commanders and to take advantage of the mistakes of his opponents even as Octavian had earlier used Mark Antony and Agrippa to expand his own power until he became the first emperor. In so doing, Constantine was creating the circumstances that led to all the accomplishments he was able to achieve.

Speaking of accomplishments, it's odd that on a numismatic forum, I had completely forgotten to mention in my previous post that Constantine also initiated a new and very long-lasting gold denomination, the solidus, which was a very significant development in the economy and finance of the empire.

So overall, I do think that Constantine was definitely deserving of his MAX moniker by which he continues to be identified today.

 

A humble coin with a MAX obverse text. As far as I know he used his MAX on all the later Gloria coins and of course on the reverse of the Votive series

 

RIC's classification of diadem types is rather unsatisfactory. RIC only recognizes three varieties of diadem: "plain", "rosette" and "pearl", which for these "eyes to heaven" busts corresponds to bust types E4, E5 and E6 respectively.

The name "plain diadem" is a bit unfortunate since these are hardly ever plain (never on the bronze). Band diadem would be a more descriptive name. These oblique-line diadems are a type of plain diadem, but so are the ladder-type ones having the appearance of box-like compartments with a huge variety of additional decoration (not exactly "plain").

Where things get confusing is where a band-type diadem contains rosettes as part of it's decoration, such as this one. From the illustration of RIC 56 on plate 22, RIC would consider this as a rosette diadem. It makes more sense to me to consider this as a band-type diadem (i.e. a type of "plain" diadem).



A classic rosette diadem is decorated/made from alternating pairs of laurel leaves and rosettes, with no band in sight (even if these decorative elements would in reality be attached to a band). Another confusing type is where there is just a hint of these alternating laurel and rosette elements, but contained withing a ladder type diadem, such as this one:



So ... many/most of these eyes-to-heaven Cyzicus campgate diadems are varieties of band-type (i.e "plain") diadem, hence E4 bust, but not necessarily all. For example Victor's specimen linked above - band-type E4 or rosette E5 ? It's hard to guess where RIC intended to draw the line.

 

Seems reasonable.

I didn't mean to dismiss the accomplishment of having managed to rule for so long, when so many had failed to do that, but this seems more a matter of competence (and not upsetting the army) rather than greatness. Diocletian had done the same too. I'd hardly give Constantine any credit for having formed a "dynasty" .. all he really left behind was a chaotic mess that only resolved when Constantius II was left only man standing.

My main argument was that I think Christianity would have thrived regardless of his involvement, although of course he was highly engaged. It's interesting to consider would Christanity have taken a different form if it had emerged into the mainstream under a different emperor, and without his particular touch, but it's hard to imagine that the infighting would not have eventually settled itself and some doctrinal consensus emerged.

As far as the growth rate - birthrate is expressed as an annual percentage of the population, which is again an exponential rate (# births dependent on # parents). The thing with an exponential growth rate is that the numbers start small and then get extremely large with no change in growth rate. It took 300 years to go from close to 0% of the population to 10%, and in the early years that would have been small gains in absolute numbers, but when you've reached the point of 5 million Christian parents, the absolute numbers are going to increase much more rapidly. It just happened to be Constantine on watch when it had gotten to this point. Maybe a different emperor (had Constantine not emerged), say Maximinus II, would have fought Christianity for another 20 years, but given the nature of it's growth it seems continued resistance was futile.

Of course the growth rate won't have been exactly the same for 3-400 years, and in later years there may have been a "tipping point" where there was less resistance to pagan-Christian marriage and the rate grew.

There is some evidence, which I currently forget, that when Constantine initially started work expanding Byzantium he wasn't intending to make it a new capital (not that he ever admitted it, despite Constantinople gaining it's own senate), but his plans changed and expanded after his frosty reception in Rome at his vicennalia in 327 AD. Given the mess and divided empire (split between his sons, Hannibilianus and Delmatius) he left behind, it also seems somewhat down to chance that it was Constantinople, and not Rome, that "won" as the capital. Perhaps down to Constantius II being the eventual sole survivor rather than Constantine II (Gaul) or Constans (Italy). Could Constantine have guessed this would be how it panned out?

 

Hallo Heliodromus, pic1

I have drawn the two main types of the band shown here. (image 1) That is for the 3 crosses type RIC VII 55 ii b. The red broken line indicates the normal type. I have never seen anything from RIC VII 55 ii a. I made an enlargement of RIC VII nr 56, (image 2) and marked what is different (not much, but still in the right place). This for clarity.
pic2

greetings sky92880

 

Thanks! I was wondering what your references were to ii (a) and ii (b), then realized these are from the descriptions in the appendix:



It seems that RIC's description and illustration of RIC 56 don't match! Even if we assume that the plate coin is a type ii (a) diadem (with an "end-rosette"), which it doesn't really look like, the appendix makes it clear this would still be attributed as a plain diadem (E1 bust), not the rosette diadem (E2 bust) that RIC 56 is supposed to have!

There are also diadem varieties outside of the ones listed in the appendix, such as these that have an "end rosette" (with central dot), or similar (with central "X"), but are type i "ladder-shaped" diadems rather than type ii. At least the appendix seems to make it clear these should also be considered as plain, not rosette, diadems.

 

How about Constans with eyes to heaven (and a giraffe neck and a PF F AVG legend and other peculiarities that come with this strike)?