When this conviction asserted itself with overwhelming power at the
Council of Nicaea, Constantine gave way with a good grace. As it had
been decided at Saxa Rubra that the Empire was to fight beneath the
cross of God, so now it was decided at Nicaea that the cross was to be
the cross of Christ, and not the Sun-god’s cross of light.
We may doubt whether Constantine took in the full meaning of the decision: but at any rate it meant that the Christians refused to be included with others in a monotheistic state religion. If the Empire was to have their full friendship, it must become definitely Christian : and this is the goal to which Constantine seems to have looked forward in his later years, though he can hardly have hoped himself to reach it. Heathenism was still strong, and he continued to use vague monotheistic language. Only in his last illness did he feel it safe to throw off the mask and avow himself a Christian. “Let there be no ambiguity,” said he, as he asked for baptism; and then he laid aside the purple, and passed awa in the white robe of a Christian neophyte (22 May 337).
This would seem to be the general outline of Constantine’s religious life and policy. We can now return to the morrow of Chrysopolis, and take it more in detail. Now that he was master of the Empire, he made his alliance with the Christians as dose as he could without abandoning the official neutrality of his monotheism. His attitude is well shown by his coins. Mars and Genius P. R. disappear after Saxa Rubra, or at latest by 317: Sol invictus by 315, or at any rate 323. Coins of Iuppiter Aug. seem to have been struck only for Licinius. Later on, the heathen inscriptions are replaced by phrases as neutral as the cross itself, like Beata tranquillitas or Providentia Augg., or Instinctii Divinitatis on his triumphal arch at Rome. His laws keep pace with the coins. In form they are mostly neutral; but they show an increasing leaning to Christianity. Thus his edict for the observance of “the venerable day of the Sun” only raised it to the rank of the heathen feriae by closing the law-courts; and the Latin prayer he imposed on the army (the first case known of prayer in an unknown tongue) is quite indeterminate as between Christ and Jupiter. So too when before 316 he sanctioned manumissions in churches, he was only taking a hint from the manumissions in certain temples. Yet again, when in 313 (and by later law) he exempted the clergy of the Catholic Church—not those of the sects—from the decurionate and other burdens, he gave them only the privileges already enjoyed by some of the heathen priests and teachers. But the relief was great enough to cause an ungodly rush for holy Orders, and with it such a loss of taxpayers that in 320 he had to forbid the ordination of anyone qualified for the curia of his city. None but the poor (and an occasional official) could now be ordained, and those only to fill vacancies caused by death. The second limitation may not have been enforced, but the first remained. To save the revenue, the Church was debased at a stroke.
