B.'s admirers and detractors will be equally delighted by his latest launch of scholarly salvoes on Constantine's life and achievement. Since the appearance of his classic studies Constantine and Eusebius (1981) and The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (1982), B. has thought and rethought questions of sources and interpretation of detail but his fundamental thesis has remained unchanged: Constantine was a committed Christian from an early age and a Christian emperor who set out aggressively to ‘Christianise’ the Roman empire, although, being also a gifted politician, he adhered to the limits of what was possible. Both this argument, as phrased, and some of the source-readings used to support it are controversial and B.'s methods of presentation are often provocative. The book is a work of scholarship but it is also a polemic. Unwary students, new to Constantine, should tread carefully.
B. begins with a survey of the (in his view often parlous) state of modern scholarship on Constantine, and a discussion of the sources, of which B. has a unique if sometimes perverse mastery. Chapters follow on the future emperor's parents, Constantius and his first wife Helena; his early life down to 305; his dealings with Maxentius down to 312; and with Licinius to 325. These combine narrative with a series of disquisitions on contentious points. In Chapters 6 and 7 narrative is rightly abandoned as impossible; instead, in Chapter 6, discussions are offered of Constantinople as a ‘Christian city’, the Oratio ad Sanctos dated now to 16/17 April 325, at Nicaea, the Council of Nicaea itself and Constantine's attitude to ecclesiastical politics and what B. terms Constantine's pro-Christian legislation. Chapter 7 offers a variety of perspectives on Constantine's last years and the succession question. In addition, a series of invaluable appendices offer translations of often inaccessible sources, notably Eusebius On Easter, Photius' entry on Praxagoras of Athens and a curious fragment of an anonymous panegyric of Constantine.
Overt polemic may not inspire conviction in the modern reader and B.'s frequent castigation of the demerits of his fellow-academics can distract attention from the arguments, where he is clearly right. For example, as B. argues, Helena was indeed Constantius' wife, not his concubine, and Constantine was therefore legitimate; their marriage took place while both were in relatively humble situations. B. is also right to deal once and for all with the status of the ‘Edict of Milan’, in fact a letter of Licinius to his eastern provinces. The discussion of the Hispellum inscription, a rescript of Constans, not Constantine, is enlightening and probably definitive.
Some readings of the sources, however, over-simplify the complexities of the late-antique religious landscape, which moulded the religious consciousness of Constantine himself. In the Oratio ad Sanctos (16.2) Constantine recalled his thoughts as he viewed the ruins of Memphis and Babylon, which had reaped the fruits of idolatry; this, B. suggests, shows that Constantine in 298 ‘already had an interest in the Old Testament’ (p. 52). Yet surely the young tourist was more likely to visit Babylon because of its associations with Alexander the Great. A second example: it is categorically stated (p. 169) on Firmicus Maternus' praise of Constantine (Mathesis 1.10.13–14) that the ‘Supreme God’, who decreed perpetual rule to Constantine and his descendants, ‘can only be the God of the Christians’. Yet monotheism was widespread in the Roman empire (cf. S. Mitchell and P. van Nuffelen [edd.], One God. Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire [2010], not cited by B.), and non-Christian admirers of Constantine, as Maternus was at that stage, were not likely to be too precise about the identity of the Divinity, any more than the Senate at Rome had been when inscribing the Arch of Constantine in 315. Thirdly, we have the uncritical acceptance of the tendentious and ignorant sources' account of the death of Fausta in the sauna, rationalised as suicide or a failed abortion attempt. As the sources also treat us to Fausta-Phaedra, the denouncer of her stepson Crispus, further fiction can be reasonably inferred: the lady in the bath is Fausta-Octavia, the wife of Nero, to whom Constantine was compared by an anonymous scribbler (who may have been anti-Constantine rather than anti-Christian).
B.'s understanding of the legislative process is open to dispute. He glosses Lactantius' celebration (On the Deaths of the Persecutors 24.9) of Constantine's restoration of ‘justice’ (Christianity) in 306, as Caesar, as a ‘law or general edict’ (p. 66), thus proving that Caesars could issue edicts. In fact, the text, which B. helpfully quotes, uses the non-specific sanctio: a rescript (which would have acquired general application de facto) to, say, an enterprising bishop would have done just as well. Repeatedly in the discussion of Constantine's legislation benefiting the Christians (although B. concedes that is not his sole motive), B. assumes the existence of a lost major initiative, ignoring the implications of a proposal (suggestio) and response system, now recognised as the prevalent method of inducing new legislation. Doubtless Constantine was the initiator of some changes; the statements of his religious position addressed to the eastern provinces and quoted in full by Eusebius are cases in point. However, often all Constantine had to do was wait for someone to ask the right question. B. acknowledges that ‘episcopal hearings’ were a long-standing quasi-arbitral process. Consequently, as he does not concede, they did not require introduction ‘into the Roman legal system’ (p. 134): the much overrated and textually corrupt CTh. 1.27.1 was simply a response to a question about how episcopal arbitration related to the civil courts. Likewise, while Eusebius signals the general reform on Sundays, the relevant Theodosian Code texts do not ‘lay down’ (p. 132) that Sunday is a day of rest but define, in response to specific queries, what ‘rest’ means in practice. Nor is CTh 16.2.4, reducing testamentary formalities for bequests to the Church, especially ‘significant’ (p. 139); not only soldiers (p. 140) but testators in general benefited from Constantine's urge to simplify legal transactions and naturally Christians were included (see my article on ‘Constantine the Lawgiver’ in S. McGill et al. [edd.], From the Tetrarchs to the Theodosians [2010], pp. 73–92). This is more than a mere quibble about words. B.'s legislative model assumes an emperor legislating from on high; the responsive model sees Constantine as a man who moved forward by incremental changes, allowing existing institutions and practices to evolve at their own pace and prompted by others, thus creating the illusion that his actions were endorsed by the consent of the governed.
At the heart of the book is the contention that Constantine was aggressively Christian and that he actively promoted Christianity, especially but not exclusively after 325, imposing his will on his subjects (while allowing individual religious freedom) and confiscating temple treasures on a massive scale. Yet at no point is a discussion offered of what ‘Christian’ meant in a fourth-century context, or of the wider religious environment, where many expressed a preference for ‘one god’ and, like Constantine, rejected blood sacrifices. While Constantine was founding Constantinople as, in B.'s view, a ‘Christian city’, non-Christians like Sopatros of Apamea and Nikagoras and Praxagoras of Athens manoeuvred for preferment, undeterred by Constantine's much publicised disapproval of pagan error. In the world of late antiquity, the religious landscape was more diffuse and distinctions of belief and practice more blurred than could be admitted by the polemicists, whatever their religious persuasion.
That B. is also, in his own terms, a polemicist is perhaps no bad thing. On many things he has done an excellent job in ‘setting the record straight’ (p. 175). On other matters, such as the reading of some sources, B.'s belief in the reality of some kind of vision, perhaps in 310 (pp. 74–80), and his speculations on family and dynastic policies (see especially pp. 93–7, 144–50, 163–8), B.'s colleagues may beg to differ. Readers who tire of the disputes with other scholars, which make this a difficult read for undergraduates, will none the less appreciate that to argue is, for B., also to advocate. Athanasius, that great controversialist, so unsparing of his foes, would doubtless have approved.
