In Hoc Signo Vinces - The Vision of Constantine

Their Augustus, the swift moving Constantine, had led them over the Alps and, as he had done against the Picts, the Franks, and other enemies of the empire, now led them to victory after victory in a civil war--civil war being practically a tradition these days--rolling up armies loyal to Maxentius, the young, decadent usurper in Rome.

Maxentius had risen to power by promising to keep Rome free of taxes and had kept power by seeing off the mightiest armies--whether led my Caesar Severus or by the emperors Galerius and Domitius Alexander. He had even faced down his own father, the former Maximian, and the greatest of emperors, Diocletian, who had divided the responsibilities of the empire, only to have Maxentius seize the capital city.

Yet now, on a path parallel to the River Po, Constantine's legions had thrown back Maxentius's armies again and again, smashing his shock troops, the heavily armored cavalry known as the katafraktoi. Constantine had a plan to neutralize them. His infantry trapped them in a pocket of legionnaires, where the horses could neither maneuver nor charge; then the foot soldiers, holding four-foot high shields close to their helmets, slashed at the horses unprotected fetlocks. The steel-encased cavalrymen where hurled to the ground, where Constantine's men butchered them.

But while he conquered, Constantine was forgiving to the civilians who lay in his path. Word of his generosity spread. Now after a march down the Adriatic coast, he had camped at the gates of Rome, a short siege away from restoring the ancient seat of imperial grandeur to the Western Empire, his Western Empire.

Behind Rome's walls, an indifferent Maxentius awaited the defeat of yet another challenger. Protected by his Praetorian Guard, he serenely pursued his pastimes of drinking and sleeping with other men's wives, Knowing (had not the auguries foretold it?) that Constantine was marching to his doom? The very words of the omen in the Sibylline books had stated it clearly: "Tomorrow the enemy of Rome will perish."

Maxentius was making sure of it. At the Circus Maximus, the people had publicly mocked him with jeers of "Are you a coward? for relying on the strength of Rome's defenses and not taking the field against Constantine. While Maxentius was popular with the common people, he was resented by the aristocracy. They hated his demands for bribes, his importuning of their wives for his private sport. Some remembered the martyrdom of Sophronia, who had killed herself rather than obey Maxentius's summons to leave her husbands bed for his own.

The time would come when, with the marriage of soldiering and the Catholic Church, chivalry would be born and, in Edmund Burke's phrase, "ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened a woman with an insult."

But that time had not yet arrived. And if Constantine was the rescuer of Sophronia's metaphorical sisters, it was not for their sake that he acted, but for Rome and his own.

Maxentius, stung by the mob's call of cowardice, decided to end Constantine's impertinence now. Early on the morning of October 28, A.D. 312, Rufius Volusanius, prefect of Maxentuius's Praetorian Guard, led his crack troops across the River Tiber in a surprise attack on Constantine's encamped forces.

Constantine's men were sleeping when the Praetorians burst upon them, piercing their unprotected bellies with swords or pilums -- six foot lances tipped by eighteen inches of steel. While Constantine's vanguard struggled to protect itself, the legionnaires farther back hurriedly donned their breastplates and helmets, grabbed their arms, and ran to rescue their comrades. Constantine, to the shock of his own officers, swung aboard his horse and rode at the enemy, plunging into the blood-spattering scrimmage just as he had done in Verona. Too much was at stake--it was death or glory.

And there was something more. Constantine meant to deny fate--the fate prophesied by the Sibylline books, a prophecy that had been broadcast By Maxentius's agents.

Constantine had a new symbol, a prophecy of his own. At Verona, he had called upon the Sol Invictus, the invincible sun god. But here, before the gates of Rome, he had a dream, a vision that he would conquer under the sign of the cross--the cross of Christianity, an unpopular and persecuted minority religion. Constantine himself had, as of yet, no belief in Christianity, but his mother and stepmother were Christians. His late father, Constantius, Augustus of the West, had been lax when ordered to persecute the sect. And earlier in his own career, as a young officer serving the emperor Diocletian, Constantine had seen Christians go to their death rather than accept other gods. Perhaps too he was encouraged in the interpreting of his dream by his stepmother's confessor Osius, the Catholic bishop of Cordova, who was traveling with him, an unofficial chaplain on the campaign.

As Constantine's men sprang to battle, it was with the Christian symbol marked on their shields in charcoal. Constantine and his officers also drew the cross on their helmets. With sanctified bucklers they parried blows; with swords they plunged at the enemy. The Praetorians were outnumbered, and the advantage they had gained by surprise was collapsing under Constantine's counterattack. Archers pummeled the Praetorians with arrows; cavalry crashed their infantry. Constantine saw what needed to be done: Drive the Praetorians to the river at their backs, leaving them no escape save a jammed, panic-stricken flight across the Milvian Bridge--a bridge that he could turn into a slaughter pen.

Crossing the bridge on horseback was Maxentius, who was expecting the acclamation of his victorious soldiers; instead he saw their imminent collapse. He ordered their recall: in the open field they might be destroyed; behind Rome's walls they would be impregnable. But Praetorian discipline had snapped; the retreat was a mass stampede of fear-frenzied men, razor sharp swords at their backs, cavalry horses pounding after them, arrows slashing down in unpredictable, deadly flurries. They turned as a mob against their own officers, who tried in vain to stop them. In their blood-pounding ears was the roar of Constantine's legions, roused as the Augustus of the West reared his horse and waved a bloody sword at the enemy.

Maxentius, trying to rally his men at the Milvian Bridge, was hurled into the rushing river as the brutal, blood-panicked mob tackled his horse. Shaken by the impact of his fall, and weighted down by his heavy armor, he was swept helplessly along by the swift current. The Emperor's lungs were punished by blow after blow of suffocating water until he sank to the weeds at the river bottom, eventually resurfacing, only to have his head severed by a soldier of the new emperor.

As Constantine rode victorious into the city, Maxentius's head, raised on a spear point, followed him--a trophy for the conqueror, a warning to rivals, a target for the spit of the Roman mob, and something more than all this. For Constantine gave no thanks to the Roman gods. If Maxentius was their champion, here was his head.

Triumphant Constantine, Augustus Maximus of the empire, was about to inaugurate a revolution in the history of the world. Shortly after his victory, Constantine, and his fellow Augustus, Licinius, met in Milan to discuss imperial problems. Constantine's priority was the guarantee of religious freedom, which became known as the Edict of Milan. It is the first legal affirmation of religious liberty, issued more than 1,400 years before a similar idea would be promulgated in America. But what is equally interesting about the Edict of Milan is that it mentions only one specific religion--Christianity--and it mentions it repeatedly. Eusebius, who knew Constantine reproduces the imperial edicts in his The History of the Church: "Christians and non-Christans alike should be allowed to keep the faith of their own religious beliefs and worship...[N]o one whatever was to be denied the right to follow and choose the Christian observance or form of worship...[E]very individual still desirous of observing the Christian form of worship should without interference be allowed to do so....[W]e have given the said Christians free and absolute permission to practice their own form of worship."

In a follow up document, the Augusti are more specific still: "Accordingly it is our wish that when you receive this letter you will see to it that any of the former property of the Catholic Church of the Christians...shall be restored forthwith."

The Edict of Milan, issued by two professing pagans, was the first royal proclamation in a series that would establish Catholic Christianity as the religion of empire, an empire of which it remains the living embodiment, from a beginning that stretches before all time.

Constantine's priority was the guarantee of religious freedom, which became known as the Edict of Milan. It is the first legal affirmation of religious liberty, issued more than 1,400 years before a similar idea would be promulgated in America. But what is equally interesting about the Edict of Milan is that it mentions only one specific religion--Christianity--and it mentions it repeatedly...

The Edict of Milan, issued by two professing pagans, was the first royal proclamation in a series that would establish Catholic Christianity as the religion of empire,...

The Edict of Milan is ante-dated by the Edict of Toleration of the pagan Augustus Galerius, issued as a last-ditch political maneuver in 309-310. Here's the text in its entirety:

Among other arrangements which we are always accustomed to make for the prosperity and welfare of the republic, we had desired formerly to bring all things into harmony with the ancient laws and public order of the Romans, and to provide that even the Christians who had left the religion of their fathers should come back to reason ; since, indeed, the Christians themselves, for some reason, had followed such a caprice and had fallen into such a folly that they would not obey the institutes of antiquity, which perchance their own ancestors had first established; but at their own will and pleasure, they would thus make laws unto themselves which they should observe and would collect various peoples in diverse places in congregations. Finally when our law had been promulgated to the effect that they should conform to the institutes of antiquity, many were subdued by the fear of danger, many even suffered death. And yet since most of them persevered in their determination, and we saw that they neither paid the reverence and awe due to the gods nor worshipped the God of the Christians, in view of our most mild clemency and the constant habit by which we are accustomed to grant indulgence to all, we thought that we ought to grant our most prompt indulgence also to these, so that they may again be Christians and may hold their conventicles, provided they do nothing contrary to good order. But we shall tell the magistrates in another letter what they ought to do.

Wherefore, for this our indulgence, they ought to pray to their God for our safety, for that of the republic, and for their own, that the republic may continue uninjured on every side, and that they may be able to live securely in their homes.

This edict is published at Nicomedia on the day before the Kalends of May, in our eighth consulship and the second of Maximinus.

from Lactantius, De Mort. Pers. ch. 34, 35. Opera, ed. O. F. Fritzsche, II, P. 273. (Bibl. Patt. Ecc. Lat. XI, Leipzig, 1844.)

Something abouts Catholics/Christians really ticks you off, I see. I could link you with articles that debunk your assertions, but would you even read them?

For the sake of argument I will debunk your liberal public-school group think on the inquisition. And if Romulus doesn't address your other errors, I will.

From Noted Historian Anne. W. Carroll

From the Inquisition:

One other task within Spain faced Isabel. During the years of turmoil, the Church had become weak and corrupt. Isabel was a fervent Catholic, putting the cause of Christ first in all she did. Furthermore, she knew that Spain's unity as a nation depended upon a strong Church — Spain might as well not exist if it were not Catholic through and through. She set about reforming the Church, raising the educational and moral standards of the clergy. Many abuses were halted, including the practice of selling indulgences, which would cause much grief in the rest of Europe.

One of the most serious problems the Church faced was the number of Jews and Moors who had been baptized Catholics and risen to high positions in the government and the Church without really believing in Christian doctrine. These false Conversos and Moriscos (converted Jews and Moors) were a threat to the Church and to Spain, and a way had to be found of determining who was a true Christian and loyal Spaniard and who was a traitor. Isabel knew that not all the Conversos and Moriscos were enemies — her own confessor was a Converso as was the husband of her best friend. But to protect the innocent, the guilty had to be found.

The method Isabel chose was the Inquisition: a court which would examine evidence and judge whether a person was a faithful Christian or an enemy of Church and country. At the beginning of the Inquisition, there were many abuses — some innocent people suffered and torture was used frequently. At this point the Pope stepped in and appointed new Inquisitors, with the Grand Inquisitor (head of the Inquisition) being a Dominican monk named Tomas de Torquemada. Torquemada reformed the procedure of the Inquisition to ensure that justice would he done. He made its procedures more lenient and improved conditions in the prisons. He personally examined appeals from the accused and gave money to help the families of those on trial.

The actions of the Inquisitors are often criticized, usually as a means of attacking Spain by those who resent the strong Catholic character of the country. One criticism is that the Inquisition used torture. It did, though less so under Torquemada than before him. Torture is wrong, and the Church has since condemned any use of torture. But at the time, all governments routinely used torture as a means of extracting confessions. Though the fact that a sin is routinely committed does not justify it, the Inquisitors were most probably acting in good faith, and they should not be singled out as unusually evil.

A second attack is that the Inquisition's judgments led to the execution of the guilty. People in modern times consider it wrong to execute people for not truly believing in the religion they professed, but that is not in fact why they were executed. Those found guilty were traitors to the state and to the Church, and treason has almost always been recognized as a crime justifying capital punishment. Furthermore, those found guilty were always given a chance to repent. Only if they refused to repent or if they relapsed into their crimes after promising repentance were they executed. Finally, only 2,000 were executed, a small percentage of the 100,000 put on trial.

A final charge is that the method of execution, burning at the stake, was unusually barbaric. But the 16th century was a brutal time. In England capital punishment consisted of being hanged, cut down while still alive, disembowelled, and then cut into four pieces (hanged, drawn and quartered); in France, it was to be boiled alive. Again, Spain should not be singled out for condemnation.

The Inquisition, in fact, though not perfect, was a more just court than most. Often, people charged with regular crimes would pretend to be heretics so that they could be transferred to the custody of the Inquisition, whose prisoners were better treated.

Looking at the Inquisition historically, we see that it avoided more deaths than it caused. Because Spain was united religiously as well as politically, it did not suffer the religious wars which came when Protestantism began in other countries. Furthermore, a few years later other parts of Europe went through a witchcraft hysteria, when many people were executed as witches on only the flimsiest of evidence, or no evidence at all (30,000 in England, 100,000 in Germany). In Spain, the Inquisition investigated charges of witchcraft and found them baseless, thus saving many innocent people from death.

All the efforts of Ferdinand and lsabel — ending civil war, restoring order and justice, completing the Reconquista, reforming the Church — brought peace and prosperity to Spain. The latter years of their reign and the years immediately following are known as Spain's Golden Age, when art, literature, culture and science reached a high point. During the 16th century, Spain was the intellectual capital of the world, with scholars coming from all over Europe to study there.

Out of Spain's optimism, joy and excitement came the explorations and discoveries which were to open up our own hemisphere and bring about the settlement of a whole new world.

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