Translated from Philip Schaff's History of The Christian Church

第一章罗马帝国中异教的衰亡与基督教的胜利

J. G. 霍夫曼 (J. G. Hoffmann)：《异教迷信的崩溃》(Ruina Superstitionis Paganae)。维滕贝格 (Vitemb.)，1738年。奇尔纳 (Tzschirner)：《异教的衰亡》(Der Fall des Heidenthums)。莱比锡 (Leipz.)，1829年。A. 伯尼奥 (A. Beugnot)：《西方异教覆灭史》(Histoire de la destruction du paganisme en occident)。巴黎 (Par.)，1835年，2卷。日内瓦的 Et. 沙斯泰尔 (Et. Chastel)：《东方帝国异教覆灭史》(Histoire de la destruction du paganisme dans l’empire d’orient)。巴黎，1850年。E. 冯·拉索尔克斯 (E. v. Lasaulx)：《希腊宗教的衰亡及基督教皇帝对其庙产的没收》(Der Untergang des Hellenismus u. die Einziehung seiner Tempelgüter durch die christl. Kaiser)。慕尼黑 (Münch.)，1854年。F. 吕布克 (F. Lübker)：《异教的衰亡》(Der Fall des Heidenthums)。什未林 (Schwerin)，1856年。Ch. 梅里韦尔 (Ch. Merivale)：《罗马帝国的归信》(Conversion of The Roman Empire)。纽约，1865年。

§ 2. 君士坦丁大帝：公元306–337年

同时代史料：拉克坦提乌斯 (Lactantius，†330)：《逼迫者之死》(De mortibus persecutorum)，第18章及后。优西比乌 (Eusebius)：《教会史》(Hist. Eccl.)，第IX、X卷；以及他那部颂扬君士坦丁、极为偏袒的《君士坦丁传》(Vita Constantini)，共4卷（Εἰς τὸν βίον τοῦ μακαρίου Κωνσταντίνου τοῦ βασιλέως^*），和他的《颂词》(Panegyricus)，又名《君士坦丁赞》(De laudibus Constantini)；以上见瓦莱修斯 (Valesius) 编优西比乌历史著作各版，巴黎，1659–1673年，阿姆斯特丹 (Amstel.)，1695年，剑桥 (Cantabr.)，1720年；齐默尔曼 (Zimmermann) 编，法兰克福 (Frcf.)，1822年；海尼兴 (Heinichen) 编，莱比锡 (Lips.)，1827–30年；伯顿 (Burton) 编，牛津 (Oxon.)，1838年。另参《狄奥多西法典》(Codex Theodos.) 第XVI卷中的帝国文书，以及亚他那修 (Athanasius，†373) 的书信和论著；异教方面则有纳扎里乌斯 (Nazarius) 在罗马所作的《颂词》（321年），以及尤利安 (Julian，†363) 的《诸凯撒》(Caesars)。
后期史料：苏格拉底 (Socrates)：《教会史》(Hist. Eccl.)，第I卷。索佐门 (Sozomenus)：《教会史》(H. E.)，第I、II卷。佐西穆斯 (Zosimus，狄奥多西二世治下的异教史家和宫廷官员，任 comes et advocatus fisci，即伯爵及国库辩护官)：《新史》(Ἱστορία νέα^*)，第II卷，贝克尔 (Bekker) 编，波恩 (Bonn.)，1837年。优西比乌与佐西穆斯分别代表偏袒君士坦丁与反对君士坦丁的两个极端。要公正地评价他的品格，就必须依据双方均承认的事实，以及他的世俗政策和教会政策所产生的影响。
近代研究著作。莫斯海姆 (Mosheim)：《君士坦丁大帝以前的基督教史事》等 (De reb. Christ. ante Const. M. etc.)，末节（第958页及后；默多克〔Murdock〕英译本，第II卷，第454–481页）。纳撒尼尔·拉德纳 (Nath. Lardner)：其巨著《福音历史的可信性》(Credibility of the Gospel History) 第二部分，见基皮斯 (Kippis) 编《著作集》(Works)，伦敦，1838年，第IV卷，第3–55页。德·瓦赞神甫 (Abbé de Voisin)：《君士坦丁异象考辨》(Dissertation critique sur la vision de Constantin)。巴黎，1774年。吉本 (Gibbon)：前引书，第XIV章及第XVII–XXI章。Fr. 古斯塔 (Fr. Gusta)：《君士坦丁大帝传》(Vita di Constantino il Grande)。福利尼奥 (Foligno)，1786年。曼索 (Manso)：《君士坦丁大帝的生平》(Das Leben Constantins des Gr.)。布雷斯劳 (Bresl.)，1817年。胡格 (Hug，罗马天主教徒)：《为君士坦丁名誉辩护的论稿》(Denkschrift zur Ehrenrettung Constant.)。弗赖堡 (Frieb.)，1829年。海尼兴：《优西比乌〈君士坦丁传〉附论》(Excurs. in Eus. Vitam Const.)，1830年。阿伦特 (Arendt，罗马天主教徒)：《君士坦丁及其与基督教的关系》(Const. u. sein Verb. zum Christenthum)。图宾根 (Tüb.)《季刊》(Quartalschrift)，1834年。米尔曼 (Milman)：《基督教史》等 (Hist. of Christianity, etc.)，1840年，第III卷，第1–4章。雅各布·布克哈特 (Jacob Burckhardt)：《君士坦丁大帝的时代》(Die Zeit Const. des Gr.)。巴塞尔 (Bas.)，1853年。阿尔贝·德·布罗伊 (Albert de Broglie)：《四世纪的教会与罗马帝国》(L’église et l’empire romain au IV^me siècle)。巴黎，1856年（第I、II卷）。A. P. 斯坦利 (A. P. Stanley)：《东方教会史讲座》(Lectures on the Hist. of the Eastern Church)，1862年，第VI讲，第281页及后（美国版）。特奥多尔·凯姆 (Theod. Keim)：《君士坦丁大帝归信基督教》(Der Uebertritt Constantins des Gr. zum Christenthum)。苏黎世，1862年（针对布克哈特的观点，为君士坦丁的品格辩护）。

戴克里先 (Diocletian) 和加列里乌斯 (Galerius) 治下，帝国对基督徒发动了最后一次大逼迫，企图将这新宗教连根拔除；这场逼迫以311年的宽容敕令和逼迫者的悲惨覆亡告终。¹这道宽容敕令，是对异教无可挽救的无能和基督教不可摧毁的力量所作的承认，虽非出于本愿，却又无法抗拒。从此，在凯撒的帝国中，距离一方的衰亡和另一方取得至高地位，仅剩一步之遥。

君士坦丁一世 (Constantine I) 的统治，标志着这一伟大的时代。²他洞察时代的征兆，并据此采取行动。他是适合这时代的人，而那掌管时代与人物、使二者彼此相配的上帝的护理，也为他预备了这时代。他置身于真正进步的前列，而他的侄儿背道者尤利安却反对进步，因而被抛在后面。他是使教会从受压迫、遭逼迫的卑微地位，升至应得的尊荣与权势的主要工具。后世怀着感激之情，因这一功绩而尊他为“大帝”；这一称号即便不能以他的道德品格为依据，却无疑可由他的军事与行政才能、明智的政策、对基督教的赏识与保护，以及其统治所产生的深远影响来证明。他的伟大诚然不是第一等，而是第二等；衡量他的伟大，与其看他为人如何，不如看他成就了什么。希腊教会甚至将他列为圣徒来尊崇；他之于希腊教会，正如查理大帝 (Charlemagne) 之于拉丁教会。

君士坦丁是第一位基督徒凯撒，是君士坦丁堡 (Constantinople) 和拜占庭帝国 (Byzantine empire) 的创建者，也是罗马诸帝中最有天赋、最富活力、最为成功的皇帝之一。他首先代表了基督教神权政治这一宏大的观念，亦即这样一种政治体制：认定所有臣民都是基督徒，将公民权利与宗教权利相联，并把教会与国家看作地上同一个神圣政权的两臂。他的继承者更充分地发展了这一观念；它赋予整个中世纪以活力，直到最近的时代，仍以各种形式发挥作用。然而，无论在拜占庭帝国、德意志帝国或俄罗斯帝国，在罗马的教会国家、加尔文派的日内瓦共和国，还是在新英格兰早期的清教徒殖民地，这一观念都从未得到完全实现。但与此同时，君士坦丁也成为一种不加分辨而有害的结合的典型：把基督教与政治、把和平的神圣标记与战争的恐怖、把天国的属灵利益与国家的属世利益结合起来。

在评断这位非凡人物及其统治时，我们务必持守这一重大的历史原则：一切具有代表性的人物，无论自觉与否，都作为其时代精神自由而负责任的器官行事；时代精神先塑造他们，他们才能反过来塑造时代精神。而时代精神本身，无论是善是恶，抑或善恶混杂，都不过是上帝护理手中的工具；这护理统管并支配人的一切行动与动机。

经过三个世纪的历史，基督教已经在内里胜过了世界，因此，那场与这位君主之名相联的外在革命，便既成为可能，也无可避免。若将如此彻底而重大的变革归因于某一个人的个人动机，无论是政治、虔诚还是迷信的动机，都是极其肤浅的。然而，毫无疑问，每个时代都会按照自身目的的需要，产生并塑造自己的器官。君士坦丁的情形也是如此。他以真正的政治智慧见长；这种智慧使他站在时代前列，清楚看出偶像崇拜在罗马帝国已经寿终正寝，唯有基督教能够为帝国注入新的活力，并提供道德上的支柱。尤其在大公教会外在统一这一点上，他的君主政治与教会的等级制主教体制正相契合。因此，从313年起，他便与主教们建立密切联系，在多纳徒派 (Donatist) 和阿里乌派 (Arian) 的争论中，以和平与和谐为首要目标，并在一切官方文书中以“大公”一词称呼教会。他的前任们是帝国异教宗教的最高祭司，他也同样希望被视作某种主教，即教会外部事务的普世主教。³这一切绝非仅仅出于私利，而是为了帝国的福祉。当时帝国根基已遭动摇，四面又受蛮族威胁，唯有借助某种新的统一纽带，才能巩固维系，至少支撑到基督教与文明的种子播撒在蛮族自身之中，因为他们代表着未来。因此，他个人的政策与国家的利益相一致。在他看来，基督教是对帝国进行政治改革的唯一有效力量，事实也证明如此。当时，罗马古老的精神正在迅速消逝，内部的、公民间的和宗教上的纷争，加上蛮族从外部施加的压力，正威胁着社会，使其逐渐瓦解。

然而，除政治动机之外，他还兼有宗教动机；这一动机固然不够明晰深刻，却是真诚的，只是强烈掺杂着一种迷信倾向：以宗教外在的成功来评断宗教，并将某种魔力归于标记与仪式。他的整个家族都受到宗教情感的支配，而这情感又以极为不同的形式表现出来：海伦娜 (Helena) 虔诚的朝圣，君士坦提娅 (Constantia) 和君士坦提乌斯 (Constantius) 狂热的阿里乌派信仰，以及尤利安狂热的异教信仰。君士坦丁起初把基督教作为一种迷信接受下来，将它与自己的异教迷信并列；直到最后，在他的确信中，基督教的迷信战胜了异教的迷信，却并未因此发展成为纯正而明达的信仰。⁴

起初，君士坦丁像他的父亲一样，秉持垂死异教世界中新柏拉图主义 (Neo-Platonic) 的混合主义精神，将一切神祇都尊为神秘的力量；他尤其敬奉太阳神阿波罗 (Apollo)，并于308年向其奉献丰厚礼物。不仅如此，迟至321年，他仍依照古老的异教惯例，下令在公共灾难发生时，按常规征询占卜者的意见；⁵甚至更晚，他还将自己的新驻地拜占庭 (Byzantium) 置于殉道者之上帝与异教命运女神的共同保护之下；⁶直到生命终结，他仍保留 Pontifex Maximus 的称号与尊位，即异教祭司等级体系中的大祭司。⁷他的钱币一面铸有基督名字的字母，另一面则是太阳神的形象，并刻着“Sol invictus”（不可战胜的太阳）。当然，这些不一致之处，也可以归因于政策上的考虑，以及对313年宽容敕令的迁就。从犹太教转入基督教、或从罗马天主教转入新教的人中，也不难找到类似例子：他们在旧立场与新立场之间摇摆不定，以致双方都可以将其视为自己人。他每次战胜异教对手——加列里乌斯、马克森提乌斯 (Maxentius) 和李锡尼 (Licinius)——个人对基督教的倾向，以及对十字架标记之魔力的信赖，便随之增强；然而，他并未正式弃绝异教，直到337年卧于临终病榻时，才领受洗礼。

他仪表威严而富有魅力，谄媚者将他比作阿波罗。他身材高大，肩膀宽阔，容貌俊美，体格异常强健，但在衣着与外在仪态上却过度追求虚荣，总是戴着东方的王冠和镶嵌宝石的头盔，披着紫色丝绸斗篷，上面华丽地缀着珍珠，并以金线绣出花卉。⁸他的心智虽未受过高度陶冶，却天生清明、强健而敏锐，鲜有疏于戒备之时。据说，他一方面玩世不恭、蔑视人类，另一方面又极度喜爱赞誉。他深谙人性，并具备行政上的魄力与机敏。

他的道德品格不乏高尚之处，其中尤为突出的是当时罕见的贞洁，⁹以及近乎挥霍的慷慨与仁惠。他的许多法律和规章都洋溢着基督教的公义与仁爱精神，促进妇女地位的提高，改善奴隶与不幸者的处境，并使教会能够在整个帝国充分发挥效能。总而言之，在罗马历代皇帝中，无论基督徒还是异教徒，他都是最优秀、最幸运、最有影响力的皇帝之一。

然而，他也有重大的缺点。他远不像优西比乌 (Eusebius) 所描绘的那样纯洁可敬；优西比乌因他对教会的恩惠而蒙蔽了眼目，在那部浮夸而颂扬得近乎不诚实的传记中，显然有意将他树为后世一切基督徒君王的典范。我们虽深感遗憾，却必须承认，他在认识基督教方面的进步，并不意味着他在践行基督教美德方面也有进步。他的好炫耀与挥霍、猜疑与专横，都随着权势的增长而加剧。

他统治时期最辉煌的阶段，恰恰也沾染了重罪的污点；这些罪行，即使以时代精神和专制君主的权术，也无法开脱。他沿着血腥的战争道路，实现了独占帝国的野心之后，竟在召集尼西亚大公会议 (Council of Nicaea) 的那一年，下令处死了已经战败的对手、他的妹夫李锡尼 (Licinius)，违背了庄严的赦免承诺（324年）。¹⁰他还不以此为满足，不久又出于政治上的猜疑，害死了自己的外甥小李锡尼，一个年仅十一岁左右的男孩。然而，最恶劣的还是他在326年杀害长子克里斯普斯 (Crispus) 一事。克里斯普斯曾被怀疑参与政治阴谋，并对继母法乌斯塔 (Fausta) 怀有通奸乱伦的意图，但一般认为他是无辜的。这场家庭与政治的悲剧，产生于相互猜疑和争竞的漩涡，令人想起腓力二世 (Philip II) 对唐·卡洛斯 (Don Carlos)、彼得大帝 (Peter the Great) 对其子阿列克谢 (Alexis)，以及苏莱曼大帝 (Soliman the Great) 对其子穆斯塔法 (Mustapha) 的所作所为。后世作者声称，皇帝曾像大卫一样，为这罪深深悔恨，但此说毫无根据。此外，人们还屡次指控他害死了第二任妻子法乌斯塔（326年？），不过这种指控看来全然不公。据说，法乌斯塔在二十年幸福婚姻之后，被判定犯有诬蔑继子克里斯普斯以及与奴隶或某名禁卫军通奸之罪，随后在过热浴室的蒸汽中窒息而死。但关于她死因和死法的记载，年代如此晚出，彼此又如此矛盾，以致君士坦丁是否参与其中，至少是十分可疑的。¹¹

无论如何，基督教并未使君士坦丁发生彻底的道德转变。他更关心提高基督教外在的社会地位，而非推进其内在的使命。基督徒与异教徒、正统派与阿里乌派，随着各自先后受到他的恩宠或厌弃，轮番赞扬或谴责他。他在公共作为和私人品格两方面，都与彼得大帝有几分相似：伟大的美德与功绩，竟与骇人的罪行集于一身。他临终时所怀的安慰，可能也与彼得相同，后者的遗言是：“我相信，鉴于我竭力为我的人民（教会）所行的善，上帝必赦免我的罪。”海伦娜从耶路撒冷带回救主十字架上的圣钉，他竟将一枚制成战马的嚼环，另一枚制成头盔的饰物，这十分鲜明地表现了他的虔诚。他不是一个坚定、纯洁、始终如一的人物，而是站在两个时代、两种宗教交替的分界线上；他的生平清楚地带有两者的印记。最后，他在临终病榻上接受洗礼时，说道：“现在，让我们抛弃一切两面性。”这句话诚实地承认了两种敌对原则之间的冲突；它们一直左右着他的私人品格与公共生活。¹²

以上是概括性的评论，现在我们转而叙述君士坦丁生平及统治中与教会历史有关的主要方面。我们将依次考察他的青年时期与所受训练、十字架异象、宽容敕令、他有利于基督教的立法，以及他的受洗与去世。

君士坦丁是共治皇帝君士坦提乌斯·克洛鲁斯 (Constantius Chlorus) 的儿子，后者统治高卢 (Gaul)、西班牙和不列颠 (Britain)，直至306年去世。君士坦丁可能生于272年，出生地或是不列颠，或是伊利里库姆 (Illyricum) 达尔达尼亚 (Dardania) 的一座城镇奈苏斯 (Naissus，今称尼萨 Nissa)。¹³他的母亲海伦娜是一位旅店主人的女儿，¹⁴也是君士坦提乌斯的第一任妻子；后来，君士坦提乌斯出于政治原因，娶了马克西米安 (Maximian) 的一个女儿，便与她离婚。¹⁵基督徒作家将她描述为一位审慎而虔诚的妇人，她也获列圣徒名录。她的名字与十字架的发现，以及围绕圣地的虔诚迷信联系在一起。她活到很高的年岁，于326或327年在罗马城内或附近去世。她凭着美貌与好运，从默默无闻之辈升入辉煌的宫廷，继而遭遇约瑟芬 (Josephine) 那样的命运，却又因儿子而恢复皇室尊荣，最终成为大公教会的圣徒：海伦娜的一生，足以成为一部引人入胜的历史小说的题材，借此展现尼西亚时代的主要事件，以及基督教在罗马帝国的胜利。

君士坦丁起初在戴克里先 (Diocletian) 麾下参加埃及和波斯战争，崭露头角；后来前往高卢和不列颠，在约克 (York) 的统帅府，被垂死的父亲和罗马军队拥立为皇帝。他的父亲早已对基督徒抱有好感，认为他们是安分而正直的公民；当东方发生戴克里先逼迫时，他在西方保护了他们。这种尊重宽容的态度传给了君士坦丁；其良好成效，与他的对手加列里乌斯 (Galerius) 采取相反政策所造成的恶果相较，不能不鼓励他继续走这条道路。据优西比乌转述他亲口所言，他作了如下推论：“我父亲敬奉基督徒的上帝，始终兴盛；那些敬拜异教诸神的皇帝，却都悲惨地死去。因此，为使我的生活和统治幸福，我要效法父亲的榜样，投身基督徒的事业；他们的人数日益增多，异教徒却日渐减少。”对于一个胸怀野心、企望登上当时所能企及的最高权位的将领而言，这种低层次的功利考量有着极大的分量。他一向敬重母亲；她在八十岁时（公元325年）曾赴耶路撒冷朝圣。究竟是她如狄奥多勒 (Theodoret) 所推想的那样，在儿子心中播下基督教信仰的种子，还是她自己如优西比乌所断言的那样，因儿子的影响而成为基督徒，这一点仍无法断定。据异教徒佐西穆斯 (Zosimus) 所说，有一个从西班牙来的埃及人（所指的可能是出身埃及的科尔多瓦主教何西乌斯〔Hosius of Cordova〕），在克里斯普斯被杀之后（此事不早于326年发生），劝君士坦丁归信基督教，说这样便可获得罪的赦免；这一说法无疑是虚假而恶意的。

君士坦丁在与异教徒马克森提乌斯的争战中，首次公开表明自己明确倾向基督教。马克森提乌斯篡夺了意大利和非洲的统治权，众口一词地被描述为残酷放荡的暴君，为异教徒与基督徒共同憎恨。¹⁶罗马人民呼吁君士坦丁前来援助，他便率领一支由各族士兵组成、共九万八千人的军队，从高卢越过阿尔卑斯山 (Alps)，在三次战役中击败马克森提乌斯；最后一战于312年10月发生在罗马附近的米尔维安桥 (Milvian bridge)，马克森提乌斯在那里葬身台伯河 (Tiber)，死得极不光彩。

那则人所熟知的神奇十字架的故事，就发生在这时。确切的日期和地点无法确定，但此事必定发生在罗马附近、最终战胜马克森提乌斯之前不久。这异象是教会历史中最著名的神迹之一，又具有代表性的意义，因此值得更仔细地考察。对我们而言，它一方面标志着基督教在罗马帝国战胜异教，另一方面也标志着外来的政治与军事利益开始混入基督教，预示着不祥的后果。¹⁷如此重大的变革与过渡，在尼西亚时代被赋予超自然的性质，我们不必感到惊讶。

关于此事的描述各不相同，其中不乏严重的难题。最早的见证人拉克坦提乌斯 (Lactantius)，在战役发生约三年后，仅提到一个夜间的梦；梦中有人指示皇帝（未说明是基督还是天使），要在士兵的盾牌上印上“上帝的天上标记”，即带有基督之名的十字架，然后出去迎敌。¹⁸优西比乌的记述则更为详尽，依据的是年迈的君士坦丁后来私下亲口向他所作、并以誓言保证的陈述；然而，这记述直到338年才写成，此时他唯一的见证人——皇帝本人——已去世一年，距事件本身则已有二十六年。¹⁹皇帝从高卢进军意大利途中（地点和日期均未说明），正恳切祈求真神在这危急关头赐予光照与帮助；将近傍晚，天色仍明亮时，他与全军一同²⁰看见天空中太阳上方有一个发光的十字架，上面写着：“靠此得胜。”²¹次日夜间，他睡梦之中，基督亲自向他显现，吩咐他照着这十字架标记的形状制作一面军旗，带着它去迎战马克森提乌斯和所有其他敌人。优西比乌——更确切地说，君士坦丁本人——的这一记述，在拉克坦提乌斯所述的夜梦之前，加上了白昼的异象，以及关于军旗的指示；而拉克坦提乌斯所说的，是将基督名字的首字母刻在士兵的盾牌上。据后来的史家鲁菲努斯 (Rufinus)²²所说，十字架的标记是在梦中向君士坦丁显现的（这与拉克坦提乌斯的记述相合）；他惊醒后，有一位天使（而非基督）向他高声说：“Hoc vince.”（靠此得胜。）鲁菲努斯在其他地方完全依赖优西比乌，因此不能视为此事的独立见证人。拉克坦提乌斯、优西比乌和鲁菲努斯，是第四世纪提及这一显现的仅有的基督徒作家。不过，此外还有一两项异教方面的证言，虽然模糊晦暗，仍有助于加强确曾发生某种事件的证据。同时代的演说家纳扎里乌斯 (Nazarius)，在321年3月1日发表的一篇颂扬皇帝的演说中——发表地点显然是在罗马——提到君士坦丁与马克森提乌斯交战时，曾得到一支神圣战士的军队和神明的援助；但他援引卡斯托耳 (Castor) 与波吕克斯 (Pollux) 显现之类的古老奇事，将此事转而用于为异教服务。²³

这一著名传说，可以解释为真实的神迹，其中包含基督亲自显现；²⁴也可以解释为虔诚的骗局；²⁵或是云中的自然现象与视觉错觉；²⁶最后，也可以解释为一个预示未来的梦。

这一胜利标志着历史上的一个伟大时代，即异教的衰落与基督教在帝国中的确立；由其意义之重大，或可说明此时出现神迹是合宜的，正如耶路撒冷毁灭之前天上出现的征兆一样。然而，即使我们暂且撇开对优西比乌记述的纯粹考据上的异议，在这件事上，若假定温柔的和平之君与战争之神有所联系，并使救赎的神圣象征屈从于军事野心，仍与福音的精神和健全的基督徒情感相抵触；除非我们把上帝俯就时代精神及个人情欲与利益的理论，推展到通常界限之外。此外，我们应当认为，基督若真向君士坦丁显现，无论是亲自显现（按优西比乌的说法），还是借着天使显现（按鲁菲努斯和索佐门 (Sozomen) 修改后的说法），他所劝勉的应是悔改受洗，而不是为一场血战制作军旗。²⁷无论如何，我们都不能像优西比乌、狄奥多勒 (Theodoret) 和较早的作家那样，将这件事视为一次突然而真实的归信，与保罗在往大马士革的路上见到基督的异象相提并论；²⁸因为，一方面，君士坦丁从未敌视基督教，反而极可能自幼便效法父亲的榜样，对基督教怀有好感；另一方面，他竟将受洗推迟了整整二十五年，几乎直到临终之时。

相反，若假定这不过是一项军事计谋或蓄意的骗局，则更加难以接受；这会迫使我们或者指控第一位基督徒皇帝在年高德劭之时犯下说谎与背誓的双重罪行，或者，若故事是优西比乌编造的，就否认这位“教会史之父”有任何可信之处，连通常应得的尊重也不配享有。此外，应当记得，拉克坦提乌斯——或《逼迫者之死》一书的实际作者——较早的见证，完全独立于优西比乌的记述，而当时异教徒中间流传的模糊传闻，又加强了这一见证的分量。最后，Hoc vince（靠此得胜）已经具有格言的意义，成为十字架这一不可战胜之宗教极其贴切的箴言；它实在太美好，不能归源于纯粹的谎言。因此，我们必须假定，这一传统背后有某种实际发生的事实；问题只在于，这究竟是一种外在可见的现象，还是一种内在的经历。

还有一种假说，认为那是云层自然形成的形状，君士坦丁因视觉错觉，将它误认作超自然的十字架标记。这种说法不仅带有那种早已被驳倒的、以理性主义解释新约神迹的意味，并将一件重大事件归因于偶然，而且全然无法解释基督的形象，以及那句希腊文或拉丁文的题词：靠此标记，你必得胜！

因此，我们只能采用梦或异象的理论，将此事看作君士坦丁心灵中的一种经历。拉克坦提乌斯最早的见证，以及鲁菲努斯和索佐门的记述，都支持这一解释；我们毫不犹豫地认为，优西比乌所说天空中的十字架，原本是梦的一部分，²⁹只是后来，或由于君士坦丁的想象，或由于史家的记忆失误，才具有外在客观显现的性质；但无论哪一种情形，都不含蓄意欺骗。人们将这一异象归于超自然的来源，尤其在获得圆满胜利以后，是十分自然的，也完全符合那个时代流行的观念。³⁰德尔图良和其他尼西亚会议以前及尼西亚时代的教父，都曾将许多人的归信归因于夜间的梦与异象。君士坦丁和他的朋友们，也将他一生中最重要的事件，如预知敌军逼近、发现圣墓、建立君士坦丁堡 (Constantinople)，归因于上帝借异象和梦所赐的启示。我们也丝毫无意否认，十字架的异象与上帝护理的作为有关；正是这护理掌管着历史上这一非凡的转折。我们还可以进一步承认，这是一种特别的护理，或旧时神学家所谓的 a providentia specialissima（极其特别的护理）；但这并不必然意味着自然秩序遭到违背，或救主以客观、亲身显现的方式施行了真实的神迹。我们可以提及虔诚的英国上校詹姆斯·加德纳 (James Gardiner) 生平中的一个异象，虽然其重要性小得多，却多少与此相似。³¹圣经本身也认可这一普遍的理论：上帝借护理之中或具有预言性质的梦，以及夜间的异象，向人传达神圣的启示与劝戒。³²

因此，事实可能是这样。战役之前，君士坦丁已经倾向基督教，认为它可能是各种宗教中最好、最有希望的一种；正如他向优西比乌讲述的，他在祷告中恳切寻求基督徒之上帝的帮助，而据佐西穆斯 (Zosimus) 所说，³³他的异教对手马克森提乌斯则在查考《西卜林神谕书》(sibylline books)，向偶像献祭。他对战事的结局既恐惧又盼望，怀着这种交织的心情入睡，在梦中看见基督十字架的标记，上面有意义深长的题词和得胜的应许。他早已熟悉帝国众多基督徒普遍使用这一标记的习惯，而自己的军中无疑也有许多基督徒，于是他制作了 labarum（拉巴伦军旗）；³⁴更确切地说，他将异教的 labarum 改为基督教的十字架旗，上面有基督之名的希腊字母组合，³⁵他还将这一标记加在士兵的盾牌上。他将战胜异教徒马克森提乌斯的决定性胜利，归功于这面如今取代罗马鹰旗的十字架军旗。

因此，他凯旋进入罗马以后，便命人在广场上竖立自己的雕像，右手执着拉巴伦军旗，下方刻着题词：“靠着这一拯救的标记，这勇武的真正象征，我已将你们的城市从暴君的轭下解救出来。”³⁶三年后，元老院为他建起一座大理石凯旋门。直到今日，这座凯旋门仍矗立在可以望见异教斗兽场 (Colosseum) 宏伟废墟的地方，同时标示着古代艺术的衰落与异教的败亡；正如邻近的提图斯凯旋门纪念着犹太教的倾覆与圣殿的毁灭一样。然而，这座君士坦丁凯旋门上的铭文，不仅将他战胜可憎暴君的功绩归于他卓越的才智，也以含混的措辞归于神明的感召；³⁷基督徒自然会将此理解为真神，异教徒则可能像演说家纳扎里乌斯在颂扬君士坦丁时那样，将其理解为“urbs aeterna”（永恒之城）的天上守护神力。

无论如何，君士坦丁战胜马克森提乌斯，乃是基督教在军事和政治上战胜异教；而在思想与道德上的胜利，早已由前一时期教会的著述与生活赢得了。那羞辱与压迫的象征³⁸，从此成为荣耀与统治的标志；按照当时教会的精神，在皇帝看来，它还具有一种神奇的效力。³⁹它如今取代了鹰旗和其他军旗，而异教的罗马人从前正是在那些旗帜之下征服了世界。它被印在帝国钱币上，也被印在士兵的军旗、头盔与盾牌上。在所有用于军事的十字架形象中，最初那面御用拉巴伦军旗尤为辉煌，以极其华贵的黄金和宝石装饰；它被托付给近卫军中最忠诚、最勇敢的五十名卫士守护，使基督徒充满得胜的精神，使敌人惊恐战栗；直到狄奥多西二世 (Theodosius II.) 那些软弱的继承者统治时，它才不再使用，作为一件可敬的遗物，被收藏在君士坦丁堡的皇宫中。

在罗马取得这次胜利（发生于312年10月27日）以后，君士坦丁与他在东方的共治者李锡尼 (Licinius) 于313年1月在米兰 (Milan) 联合颁布了一道宗教宽容敕令。这道敕令比仍然反对基督教的伽列里乌斯 (Galerius) 于311年颁布的敕令更进一步，本着宗教折衷主义的精神，给予一切现存的敬拜形式以充分自由，并特别提到基督教。⁴⁰313年的敕令不仅承认基督教在既有范围内的地位，还准许罗马帝国的每一个臣民选择自己所喜爱的任何宗教。⁴¹同时，敕令命令归还戴克里先 (Diocletian) 逼迫期间所没收的教会建筑和财产，并由国库补偿持有这些财产的私人业主。

然而，我们若在这道著名敕令中寻找现代新教及英美的宗教自由理论，即将宗教自由视为人类普遍而不可剥夺的权利之一，必定徒劳无功。诚然，当时基督教会内部，如同此前和此后一样，也有各种声音反对在宗教上施行任何强制。⁴²但罗马帝国的精神过于专制，不肯放弃监督公共敬拜的特权。君士坦丁的宗教宽容，是国家政策上的一种临时措施；正如敕令明言的动机，这一措施有望最有效地保障公共安宁，并为皇帝和帝国赢得一切神圣与属天力量的保护。结果表明，它不过是通向一种新秩序所必需的过渡步骤。它为基督教升为国教打开了门户，具体说来，就是为那种具有圣统组织、排斥异端及分裂派别的大公基督教升为国教打开了门户。因为基督教一旦与异教取得平等地位，尽管人数仍占少数，也必定很快战胜那种内在生命早已衰竭的宗教。

从这时起，君士坦丁明确地优待教会，尽管他并未逼迫或禁止异教诸宗教。他在诏令中提及基督教会时，总是怀着敬意，而且如我们已经指出的，始终以“大公”一词称之。因为，只有作为一个普世的、组织完备、结合牢固而保守的机构，教会才能符合他严格的君主专制利益，并为他的帝国提供他所期望的华美国服与宫廷礼服。早在313年，我们就发现科尔多瓦 (Cordova) 主教何西乌 (Hosius) 已在他的顾问之列，异教作家甚至认为这位主教对皇帝有一种魔法般的影响。拉克坦提乌斯和凯撒利亚的优西比乌也属于他的亲信。他免除基督教教士的兵役和市政义务（313年3月）；废除各种冒犯基督徒的习俗和法令（315年）；使基督徒奴隶获得释放更为便利（316年以前）；使遗赠财产给大公教会的行为合法化（321年）；下令在民事生活中遵守星期日，不过不是将它视为 dies Domini（主日），而是按照他对阿波罗 (Apollo) 的崇拜，将它视为 dies Solis（太阳日），并同时颁布法令，规定定期咨询 haruspex（察验牺牲内脏的占卜祭司）（321年）；慷慨资助教堂的兴建和教士的供养；从帝国钱币上除去朱庇特 (Jupiter)、阿波罗、玛尔斯 (Mars) 和赫拉克勒斯 (Hercules) 的异教象征（323年）；并使自己的儿子们接受基督教教育。

不出所料，这一强有力的榜样，使那些行为更受外在环境、而非内在信念与原则支配的臣民，普遍转向基督教。据传，在一年之内（324年），罗马就有一万二千名男子受洗，妇女和儿童的人数也与此相称；皇帝还曾应许，赐给每一个归信者一件白衣和二十枚金币。这件事本身极可能大有夸张，但至少符合那一朝代的精神。⁴³

君士坦丁战胜他在东方的共治者兼姻亲李锡尼 (Licinius)，成为整个罗马帝国的唯一元首以后，态度便更加鲜明。李锡尼为巩固自己的地位，逐渐成为人数仍然众多的异教党派的领袖；他起初肆意嘲弄基督徒，⁴⁴继而将他们排斥于文武官职之外，放逐他们，在某些情况下甚至可能施以流血的逼迫。这就使他与君士坦丁争夺独尊地位的政治斗争，也带上了宗教战争的性质；李锡尼于324年7月在阿德里安堡 (Adrianople) 战役中、又于9月在迦克墩 (Chalcedon) 战败，成为十字架旗帜对诸神祭祀的又一次胜利；只可惜君士坦丁处死李锡尼及其子，使自己和自己的事业蒙了羞辱。

皇帝如今向臣民普遍发出劝告，要他们接受基督教，不过仍让他们凭自己的自由确信作出选择。325年，他以教会保护人的身份召集尼西亚 (Nice) 会议，并亲自出席；他放逐了阿里乌派 (Arians)，后来却又将他们召回；他本着君主专制所追求的划一精神，热心于平息一切神学争论，却看不见这些争论的深刻意义。他首先引入了签署书面信经条款的做法，并对不遵从者施以民事刑罚。325至329年间，他与母亲海伦娜 (Helena) 合力，在耶路撒冷各处圣迹所在地兴建了宏伟的教堂。

异教在罗马仍占优势，并因其伟大的传统而被尊为神圣，因此君士坦丁于330年将政府所在地迁至拜占庭 (Byzantium)，自以为这是奉了神的命令，⁴⁵从而确立了图密善 (Domitian) 已经开创的使帝国东方化并将其分割的政策。在选择这一无与伦比的地点上，他表现出的鉴赏力和才智，胜过马德里 (Madrid)、维也纳 (Vienna)、柏林 (Berlin)、圣彼得堡 (St. Petersburg) 或华盛顿 (Washington) 的创建者。他以令人难以置信的速度，运用专制君主所能掌握的一切手段，将这座位置优越、连接两海两洲的城镇，变为华美的帝王居所和一座新的基督教罗马；正如拿先斯的贵格利 (Gregory of Nazianzen) 所说：“如今海洋与陆地竞相将珍宝满载而来，给她戴上众城之后的冠冕。”⁴⁶这里兴起的是教堂和苦像，取代了偶像的庙宇和祭坛；不过，从希腊各地运来的守护神雕像，也聚集在这座新都之中，经过种种毫无品味的改制，已变得残缺不全。⁴⁷宫殿的正厅饰有描绘基督被钉十字架及其他圣经场景的图像。罗马极为流行的角斗表演在这里被禁止，剧场、圆形竞技场和赛马场却仍然保留。人们无论走到哪里，都不会看不出，这座新的帝王驻地就一切外观而言，乃是一座基督教城市。除了背道者尤利安 (Julian the Apostate) 短暂在位期间，新罗马的七座山丘上从未升起异教祭祀的烟雾。这里成为一位主教的驻地；他不仅声称拥有邻近以弗所 (Ephesus) 使徒教座的权威，而且很快便使亚历山大 (Alexandria) 的牧首区黯然失色，并在数百年间与古罗马的教皇权力相抗衡。

皇帝殷勤参加敬拜，纪念章上也刻有他祷告的姿态。他极其虔诚地守复活节前夕的通宵礼拜。主教们总是围绕着他，不幸的是，对他的奉承也实在过了头；即便他们的讲道再长，他也站着聆听。他甚至亲自用拉丁语撰写讲辞，向宫廷众人讲说，再由特派的译员译成希腊语。⁴⁸宫中发出普遍邀请，市民便成群涌入宫殿，聆听这位帝王传道者讲道；他指向天上，表示自己的智慧来自那里，想以此制止他们响亮的喝彩，却是徒劳。他主要讲论基督教的真理、偶像崇拜的愚妄、上帝的独一与护理、基督的降临和审判。他有时严厉斥责廷臣的贪婪与掠夺；他们口中高声喝彩，行为却与他的劝诫相违。⁴⁹这些作品中有一篇至今尚存，⁵⁰其中他以独具特色的语调推崇基督教，尤其援引预言的应验，包括《西卜林书》 (Sibylline books) 和维吉尔 (Virgil) 的《牧歌第四首》 (Fourth Eclogue)，来证明基督教出于神；又将自己幸福辉煌的统治，与那些逼迫基督徒的前任皇帝和共治者的悲惨结局相对照。

然而，他晚年大体上仍忠于313年敕令的宽容原则，保护异教祭司与庙宇的特权，并且明智地避免以任何暴力手段对付异教，深信它终将自行消亡。他虽然喜欢擢升基督徒，使之居于显要地位，却仍在宫廷和公职中留用了许多异教徒。不过，在某些情况下，他也禁止偶像崇拜：或因它认可令人发指的淫行，例如腓尼基 (Phenicia) 对维纳斯 (Venus) 的淫秽崇拜；或因地点对基督徒特别神圣，例如基督的坟墓和幔利 (Mamre) 的树林。他又下令毁掉一些废弃的庙宇和偶像，或将庙宇改作基督教堂。优西比乌 (Eusebius) 叙述了几个这样的事例，显然表示赞许；他还称赞皇帝后来颁布的针对各种异端和分裂派的敕令，却没有提到阿里乌派。君士坦丁晚年似乎确曾颁布普遍禁止偶像祭祀的命令；优西比乌提到此事，他的儿子们也在341年援引过一道具有这种内容的敕令；不过，继任者一再重申这一禁令，证明即使他颁布过此令，在他统治期间也没有得到普遍执行。

君士坦丁将自己的洗礼推迟到最后一次患病时才领受，⁵¹这与他精明、谨慎而温和的政策相一致，恰与他儿子们激烈的狂热形成鲜明对照。此外，他还有别的动机：他自己曾表示，怀着一种迷信的愿望，想在约旦河受洗，因为救主的洗礼已经使那里的河水成圣；无疑，他也害怕自己日后再犯罪，会丧失圣礼所赐的赦罪之恩。他希望尽可能少冒风险，却又得到洗礼的全部益处，使过去的罪得到完全洗除，从而在今世和来世都获最大好处。临终受洗对于那个时代半心半意的基督徒，正如临终归信和临终领圣餐对于今日之人一样。然而，早在受洗以前很久，他竟已敢于传讲福音，自称众主教之主教，召集第一次大公会议，并使基督教成为帝国的宗教！这种矛盾在我们看来固然奇怪，但那些宫廷主教又当作何评说呢？他们出于错误的审慎，为他放宽了教会在其他情况下严格执行的纪律；他甚至还没有承担慕道者的任何一项义务，他们便至少默许他享受几乎一切信徒的特权！

他一生几乎一直健康，直到感到死亡临近，才借着按手礼被接纳为慕道者；随后于337年、他六十五岁时，由尼科米底亚 (Nicomedia) 的阿里乌派（确切地说是半阿里乌派）主教优西比乌施洗，正式获准进入教会完全的团契。这位主教是不久以前才由他连同阿里乌 (Arius) 一起从流放中召回的。⁵²因此，就形式而言，他临终的见证有利于异端的基督教，而非正统的基督教，但这纯属偶然，并非出于本意。他所认同的是与异教相对的基督教；而他的洗礼无论可能沾染了多少阿里乌主义，在希腊教会看来，都已因正统教会将他封为圣徒而彻底洗净。庄严的仪式之后，他应许从此过配得耶稣门徒身份的生活；他不肯再穿那件织工精巧、金饰华丽的丝绸御袍，仍穿着受洗时的白袍；几天以后，于337年5月22日五旬节，他倚靠上帝的怜悯而死，结束了漫长、幸运而辉煌的统治；在他的所有前任中，除了奥古斯都 (Augustus)，无人享有这样的统治。“第一位基督徒皇帝、第一位信仰的捍卫者、教皇教座和整个东方教会的第一位帝王保护人、圣地的第一位营建者，就这样逝去了；他既是异教徒，又是基督徒，既正统，又属异端，既宽容，又狂热；他不值得效法，也不值得钦佩，却大值得记念，值得深入研究。”⁵³

他的遗体装在金棺中，由显贵文官和全军组成的行列护送，从尼科米底亚迁往君士坦丁堡 (Constantinople)，以基督教最高的礼仪安葬在使徒教堂中；⁵⁴与此同时，罗马元老院仍按古老的习俗，傲然无视这个时代伟大的宗教革命，将他列入异教奥林匹斯 (Olympus) 诸神之中。他死后不久，优西比乌便将他置于历代最伟大的君王之上；从第五世纪起，他在东方开始被尊为圣徒；希腊和俄国教会直到今日仍以“Isapostolos”，即“与使徒同等者”这一夸张的称号来纪念他。⁵⁵相反，拉丁教会以更为恰当的判断，从未将他列入圣徒之中，而只称他为“大帝”，以公正而感恩的心，纪念他对基督教和文明事业的贡献。

§ 3. 君士坦丁的诸子，公元337—361年

参考文献见§ 2及§ 4。

随着君士坦丁去世，一人独尊的统治也暂时告终。帝国由他的三个儿子君士坦丁二世 (Constantine II.)、君士坦斯 (Constans) 和君士坦提乌斯 (Constantius) 分割。他们的登位并非采取基督徒的方式，而是十足土耳其式、东方专制的方式；他们踏着父亲众多亲属的尸体登上皇位，只有两个堂兄弟加卢斯 (Gallus) 和尤利安 (Julian) 例外，前者因患病、后者因年幼，才逃过士兵们的狂怒。三年后，兄弟之间爆发了争夺独尊地位的战争。君士坦丁二世被君士坦斯所杀（340年），君士坦斯又被一名出身蛮族的战地军官兼竞争者马格嫩提乌斯 (Magnentius) 谋杀（350年）。马格嫩提乌斯战败自杀后，此前一直统治东方的君士坦提乌斯成为唯一的皇帝，历经许多风暴仍保住地位，直到自然死亡（353—361年）。

君士坦丁的儿子们并未使他们所受的基督教教育增添多少光彩，反倒偏离了父亲明智的宽容政策。君士坦提乌斯是一位节制而贞洁，却又猜忌、虚荣、软弱的君主，完全受宦官、妇女和主教们支配。他开始以暴力压制异教，劫掠并毁坏许多神庙，将掠物赐给教会，或赐给他的宦官、谄媚者和毫无价值的宠臣；又以死刑为惩罚，禁止罗马、亚历山大和雅典的一切献祭及偶像崇拜，尽管这项禁令无法贯彻执行。如今，大群的人转向基督教，当然，其中大多数只是口头承认，并非出于内心。然而，这位皇帝也以同样不宽容的态度对待尼西亚正统信仰的拥护者，没收他们的财产，将他们放逐。他的兄弟们支持亚他那修 (Athanasius)，他自己却是狂热的阿里乌派 (Arian) 信徒。事实上，他干预教会的一切事务，而教会在他统治期间一直因教义争论而动荡不安。他在高卢 (Gaul)、意大利、伊利里库姆 (Illyricum) 和亚细亚召集了许多会议，渴望获得神学家的声誉，喜欢别人称他为“众主教的主教”；然而，他像父亲一样，直到临死前不久才受洗。

诚然，当时有人援引约书亚率领以色列人灭绝迦南人的事，为这种以暴力压制偶像崇拜的做法辩护。⁵⁶然而，亚他那修、何西乌斯 (Hosius) 和希拉里 (Hilary) 等明达的教会教师却发声赞成宽容；不过，即使他们所指的，也主要是对正统信仰的宽容，因为他们自己正是为此遭阿里乌派当局罢黜和放逐。例如，亚他那修说：“撒但心里没有真理，所以带着斧头和刀剑闯入。但救主是温柔的；他来到人那里，并不强迫任何人，只是叩门，对灵魂说：我的妹子，给我开门好吗？⁵⁷我们若向他开门，他就进来；我们若不肯，他便离去。因为真理不是靠刀剑和牢狱，也不是靠军队的威势传扬，而是靠劝服和勉励。人若满心惧怕皇帝，哪里还谈得上劝服？反对者若只能等待放逐和死亡，哪里还谈得上勉励？”希拉里也同样切中真理，以这些话当面指责皇帝的错误行径：“你用国库的黄金使上帝的圣所背负重担；凡从神庙夺来的、借没收所得的、用刑罚勒索来的，你都强加给上帝。”

按照历史的规律，君士坦提乌斯强制推行的基督教必然激起异教的反动。这样的反动果然发生了，不过只限于这位皇帝死后紧接着的一段短暂时期。

§ 4. 背教者尤利安与异教的反动，公元361—363年

史料

这些史料在所有主要事实，甚至无关紧要的细节上都彼此一致，但在精神和判断上却迥然不同：尤利安本人显露出自我赞扬的虚荣；利巴尼乌斯 (Libanius) 和佐西穆斯 (Zosimus) 表现出热烈崇拜的极端；贵格利 (Gregory) 和区利罗 (Cyril) 则走向仇恨与憎恶的另一极端；阿米阿努斯·马尔凯利努斯 (Ammianus Marcellinus) 则褒贬参半。

异教史料：《尤利安皇帝现存著作全集》(Juliani imperatoris Opera, quae supersunt omnia)，佩塔维乌斯 (Petavius) 编，巴黎 (Par.)，1583年；较完备的版本由 埃泽基尔·斯潘海姆 (Ezech. Spanhemius) 编，莱比锡 (Lips.)，1696年，2卷合为一册，对开本（斯潘海姆刊载了希腊文原文及优良的拉丁文译本，并收入亚历山大的区利罗反驳尤利安的十卷著作）。尤利安留存下来的作品有：《厌须者》(Misopogon，Μισοπώγων^*，即“憎恶胡须的人”，为自己辩护，反驳安提阿人的指控）；《诸凯撒》(Caesares，讽刺其前任皇帝的两篇作品)；八篇《演说》(Orationes)；六十五封《书信》(Epistolae，这些书信连同较短的残篇，由海勒尔 (Heyler) 单独编成最完备的版本，美因茨 (Mog.)，1828年）；以及保存在区利罗《答辩》中的三卷或七卷《反基督徒》(κατὰ Χριστιανῶν^*) 残篇。利巴尼乌斯：Ἐπιτάφιος ἐπ’ Ἰουλιανῷ^*（《尤利安悼词》），载《利巴尼乌斯著作集》(Lib. Opp.)，赖斯克 (Reiske) 编，阿尔滕堡 (Altenb.)，1791—97年，4卷。马梅尔提努斯 (Mamertinus)：《致尤利安的谢辞》(Gratiarum actio Juliano)。另见异教史家阿米阿努斯·马尔凯利努斯（前引书，第xxi—xxv卷第3章）、佐西穆斯和欧纳皮乌斯 (Eunapius) 著作中的有关段落。
基督教史料（均为希腊文）：早期教会史家苏格拉底 (Socrates，第iii卷)、索佐门 (Sozomen，第v、vi卷)、狄奥多勒 (Theodoret，第iii卷)。拿先斯的贵格利 (Gregory Naz.)：《斥尤利安演说二篇》(Orationes invectivae in Jul. duae)，约写于尤利安死后六个月（《著作集》Opp.，第i卷）。亚历山大的区利罗 (Cyril of Alex.)：《反驳不敬神的尤利安十卷》(Contra impium Jul. libri x.)，载《区利罗著作集》(Opp. Cyr.)，J. 奥贝尔 (J. Aubert) 编，巴黎，1638年，第vi卷；亦见于斯潘海姆 (Spanheim) 所编的尤利安著作集。

参考文献

蒂耶蒙 (Tillemont)：《回忆录》等 (Memoires, etc.)，第vii卷，第322—423页（威尼斯版）；以及《罗马皇帝史》(Histoire des empereurs Rom.)，巴黎，1690年及以后，第iv卷，第483—576页。德·拉·布莱特里神父 (Abbé De la Bleterie)：《尤利安皇帝传》(Vie de l’empereur Julien)，阿姆斯特丹 (Amst.)，1735年，2卷；同书英译本，伦敦，1746年。W. 沃伯顿 (W. Warburton)：《尤利安》(Julian)，伦敦，第3版，1763年。纳撒尼尔·拉德纳 (Nath. Lardner)：《著作集》(Works)，基皮斯博士 (Dr. Kippis) 编，第vii卷，第581页及后。吉本 (Gibbon)：前引书，第xxii—xxiv章，尤其第xxiii章。尼安德 (Neander)：《尤利安及其时代》(Julian u. sein Zeitalter)，莱比锡 (Leipz.)，1812年（他的第一部历史著作）；以及《教会通史》(Allg. K. G.)，第iii卷（第2版，1846年），第76—148页；托里 (Torrey) 英译本，第ii卷，第37—67页。容多 (Jondot，罗马天主教徒)：《尤利安皇帝史》(Histoire de l’empereur Julien)，1817年，2卷。C. H. 范赫尔韦尔登 (C. H. Van Herwerden)：《尤利安皇帝：基督教的敌人兼维护者》(De Juliano imper. religionis Christ. hoste, eodemque vindice)，莱顿 (Lugd. Bat.)，1827年。G. F. 维格斯 (G. F. Wiggers)：《背教者尤利安》(Jul. der Abtrünnige)，莱比锡，1837年（载伊尔根 (Illgen) 的《历史神学杂志》Zeitschr. f. Hist. Theol.）。H. 舒尔策 (H. Schulze)：《论尤利安的哲学与品行》(De philos. et moribus Jul.)，施特拉尔松德 (Strals.)，1839年。D. Fr. 施特劳斯 (D. Fr. Strauss，神话论著作《耶稣传》Leben Jesu 的作者)：《凯撒宝座上的浪漫主义者，或背教者尤利安》(Der Romantiker auf dem Thron der Caesaren, oder Julian der Abtr.)，曼海姆 (Manh.)，1847年（清楚综述了从利巴尼乌斯和贵格利直到吉本、施洛塞尔 (Schlosser)、尼安德和乌尔曼 (Ullmann) 对尤利安的各种评价，却暗藏着反对普鲁士国王腓特烈·威廉四世 (Frederick William IV.) 的政治目的）。J. E. 奥尔 (J. E. Auer，罗马天主教徒)：《背教者尤利安皇帝与同时代教父的斗争》(Kaiser Jul. der Abtr. im Kampf mit den Kirchenvaetern seiner Zeit)，维也纳 (Wien)，1855年。W. 曼戈尔德 (W. Mangold)：《背教者尤利安》(Jul. der Abtr.)，斯图加特 (Stuttg.)，1862年。C. 泽米施 (C. Semisch)：《背教者尤利安》(Jul. der Abtr.)，布雷斯劳 (Bresl.)，1862年。F. 吕布克 (F. Lübker)：《尤利安的斗争与结局》(Julians Kampf u. Ende)，汉堡 (Hamb.)，1864年。

尽管政府与公众舆情发生了这一重大转变，异教仍有许多信徒，并借着习俗和迷信，对粗朴的农民保持着重要影响，又借着文学，以及亚历山大、雅典等地博学的哲学和修辞学学派，对受教育阶层保持着重要影响。如今，在一位才干、精力和声望均属罗马皇帝中最杰出者的领导下，异教再次作出有系统而强有力的努力，企图恢复它在罗马帝国中的支配地位。然而，这一努力的彻底失败，恰恰是异教本身所提供的最有力证明，表明它的时代已永远过去。在尤利安统治这一短暂、却饶有趣味并富于教益的插曲中，情况如今已十分明显：君士坦丁的政策完全明智，并与历史本身的进程相合；基督教确实承载着当代全部的道德活力和未来的一切希望。同时，这场暂时的逼迫，也是对世俗化的教会和教士公正的惩罚与有益的管教。⁵⁸

尤利安 (Julian)，别号“背教者”(Apostata)，是君士坦丁大帝的侄子、君士坦提乌斯的堂弟，生于331年，因此在伯父去世时才六岁。皇位更替时，他的亲属遭到普遍屠杀，连他的父亲也未能幸免；这既不可能使他爱戴君士坦提乌斯，也不可能使他尊重其宫廷的基督教。他后来将自己的脱险归于古老诸神的特别恩宠。错误的教育有系统地败坏了他，使他成为那宗教的敌人；迂腐的教师们企图将这宗教强加于他自由独立的心灵，却又未能以自己的生活使它显得可亲。近代史上，普鲁士的腓特烈大帝 (Frederick the Great) 就是一个鲜明的类似例子。尤利安受到皇帝猜忌的监视，被幽居在乡间，几乎如同囚犯。他与同父异母的兄长加卢斯 (Gallus) 一起，在阿里乌派主教尼科米底亚的优西比乌 (Eusebius of Nicomedia) 和几名宦官指导下，接受了名义上的基督教训练；他受了洗，甚至为担任教职而受教育，并被按立为读经员 (Lector)。⁵⁹他祷告、禁食、纪念殉道者，向主教们致以惯常的敬意，求隐修士祝福，并在尼科米底亚的教堂中诵读圣经。甚至他的游戏，也必须带上虔敬的色彩。然而，这种专横而机械的强制教育，所灌输的是一种严酷得令人厌恶、又热衷激烈论争的基督教；它激起了尤利安聪慧、警觉而充满活力的精神的反抗，将他推向异教一边。君士坦提乌斯的阿里乌派伪基督教，产生了尤利安的异教反基督教；后者正是前者应得的惩罚。这位年轻的王子怀着热情，孜孜不倦地研究荷马 (Homer)、柏拉图 (Plato)、亚里士多德 (Aristotle) 和新柏拉图派 (Neo-Platonists)。对此类阅读的部分禁止，使其吸引力倍增。他秘密获得了著名修辞学家利巴尼乌斯的讲稿；此人后来成为他的颂扬者，不过，其作品却代表了当时异教文学的衰颓，以浮夸而俗艳的文风掩饰内容的空虚，只有趣味败坏的人才会欣赏。他逐渐结识了异教最杰出的代表，尤其是新柏拉图派哲学家、修辞学家和祭司，如利巴尼乌斯、埃德西乌斯 (Aedesius)、马克西穆斯 (Maximus) 和克律桑提乌斯 (Chrysanthius)。这些人用各样诡辩和巫术使他的迷信更加牢固。他逐渐成为异教党派的秘密领袖。由于皇后优西比娅 (Eusebia) 的恩宠和斡旋，他曾到雅典的学园游学数月（公元355年），在那里接受了厄琉西斯秘仪 (Eleusinian mysteries) 的入教礼，从而完成了向希腊偶像崇拜的转变。

然而，这种异教并不是单纯、自发的产物，而完全是人为而病态的产物。这是新柏拉图派泛神论折衷主义的异教，是哲学、诗歌和迷信的奇异混合；至少在尤利安身上，它在很大程度上是对基督教的模仿或歪曲仿制。它将东方的神智学说及少数基督教观念融入古老神话，企图使其灵性化而重获生机；它教导说，在各民族众多的神明、精灵、英雄和自然力量之上，存在着一种更高的、抽象的统一体；它相信诸神借着梦境、异象、神谕、祭牲内脏和异兆，直接与人交往并赐下启示；它又与各样魔法和通神术相结合。⁶⁰尤利安本人尽管具有哲学上的才智，却相信诸神最乏味的传说，或以极其武断的寓意解释，赋予它们更深的神秘含义。他与朱庇特 (Jupiter)、密涅瓦 (Minerva)、阿波罗 (Apollo) 和赫拉克勒斯 (Hercules) 有着亲密的个人交往；这些神明在夜间造访他狂热的想象，向他保证给予特别的保护。他又精通占卜之术。⁶¹在各样神祇中，他尤其虔诚地敬拜伟大的赫利俄斯王 (Helios)，即太阳神，自称是他的仆人；早在幼年，太阳神那天界的光辉就以魔法般的力量吸引着他。他视太阳神为宇宙的中心，光明、生命和救恩由此临到一切受造之物。⁶²在这种至高神明的观念上，他接近了基督教的一神论，却以虚幻的神话和泛神论的幻想，取代了独一、真实而永活的上帝，以及作为有位格的历史人物的基督。

他的道德品格，与这一体系的荒谬性质相称。他虽有卓越的才干和斯多亚式的德行，却缺乏真正的纯朴与自然，而这正是一切真正伟大的心智与品格的根基。他对赫利俄斯的崇拜，不过是基督教一神论的模糊倒影，就此而言，也是对他所反对的宗教不由自主的致敬；同样，在他矫揉造作、炫耀于人的禁欲生活中，我们只能看见当时教会隐修主义的一幅滑稽摹本，而他却因这种隐修主义的谦卑与属灵性而深深鄙视它。他满是矫饰、虚荣、诡辩和饶舌，又精于伪装。他所说所写的一切，都经过刻意雕琢，算计其效果。他没有洞察时代的精神，也没有使自己站在真正进步潮流的前列，反而与一个既无活力又无前途的党派认同，因而陷入一个错误而无法维持的地位，与统治者的使命背道而驰。诚然，伟大的心灵总是或多或少地与自己的时代交战；在宗教改革者、使徒，甚至基督自己身上，我们都可以看见这一点。但他们的抗争，出于对时代真实需要的清楚认识，以及对时代最高福祉的真诚献身；这种抗争全然是进步的、改革的，最终使时代更深层的精神与之同行，并将它提升到更高的境界。尤利安的抗争，却以对历史趋向的根本误解为出发点，以自私的野心为动力，是倒退的、反动的，而且献身于邪恶的事业。他具备一个狂热的反动者所有的缺点，因此也理应遭受这种人的悲剧命运。

尤利安自己将他背弃基督教的时间，定在早至二十岁时，即公元351年；他很可能从未在内心真正信奉过基督教。但君士坦提乌斯在世时，他以极其高明的伪善掩饰自己对异教的倾向，公开遵守基督教礼仪，暗中却向朱庇特和赫利俄斯献祭；迟至361年1月，他仍在维埃纳 (Vienne) 的教堂中庆祝显现节，并以极尽夸张的言辞颂扬皇帝，尽管他对皇帝恨之入骨，而在皇帝死后，对他的嘲讽也越发尖刻。⁶³他戴着这副面具，长达十年。355年12月以后，这位埋首书卷的学子以凯撒的身份治理高卢 (Gaul)，展现出卓越的军事与行政才干，使举世惊异；当时高卢正受到日耳曼蛮族的严重威胁。他赢得了士兵们热烈的爱戴，并从他们那里接受了奥古斯都的尊号。随后，他举起叛旗，反抗那位多疑善妒、既是他堂兄又是他妻兄的皇帝，并于361年公开宣称自己是诸神的朋友。同年，君士坦提乌斯突然去世，使他成为罗马帝国唯一的元首；12月，他作为君士坦丁家族仅存的继承人，⁶⁴进入君士坦丁堡，四周尽是欢呼，人们为免于内战而普遍欢欣。

他立即以最大的热忱投身于崇高职位的职责，不知疲倦地以君主、将军、法官、演说家、大祭司、通信者和作家的身份从事活动。他企图将亚历山大 (Alexander)、马可·奥勒留 (Marcus Aurelius)、柏拉图和第欧根尼 (Diogenes) 的盛名集于一身。他唯一的休息，就是更换工作。他能一面执笔书写，一面侧耳聆听，同时又开口说话。他认为自己的全部时间，都应献给帝国和自身心智的修养。他在位的短短十八个月（361年12月至363年6月），容纳了足供终身执政的种种计划，以及他大部分的文学著作。他在公共事务上实行最严格的节约，将一切无用的奢侈逐出宫廷，以一道诏令罢免了成群的理发师、司酒、厨师、典礼官以及其他充斥宫中的冗员，却转而让同样无用的异教神秘主义者、诡辩家、幻术师、通神术士、占卜者、饶舌者和讥诮者围绕自己；这些人如今从四面八方涌向宫廷。他的生活方式与前任诸帝形成鲜明对照，保持着哲学家和禁欲者的简朴，并以蔑视帝王尊位的排场与享乐，来满足自己的骄傲和虚荣。他主要以蔬食为生，按照每日所奉祀的男神或女神的喜好，时而禁食这种食物，时而禁食那种食物。他穿着普通衣服，通常睡在地上，任凭胡须和指甲长长，并像埃及严苛的独修士一样，不顾体面与清洁的准则。⁶⁵这种犬儒式的怪僻和虚荣的炫耀，无疑损害了他简朴克己的声誉，使他显得可笑。这所表明的，也与其说是改革者的勇气和智慧，不如说是反动者的迂腐和愚妄。他的军事与行政才干及个人勇气不亚于君士坦丁；在心智、文学修养，以及精力和道德上的自制力方面，他则远远胜过伯父；而且，无疑值得称道的是，他结束政治生涯时的年龄，正是伯父开始政治生涯的年龄。然而，他完全缺乏这位伟大前辈清明健全的常识，也缺乏那种洞察时代需要并据此行事的实际政治才能。他的奇识多于常识，而后者往往比前者更为重要，更是优秀的务实政治家不可或缺的。但作为统治者，他最大的错误，在于对当时首要的问题——宗教问题——采取了全然错误的立场。这正是他彻底失败的原因，使他的统治如流星一般，未留下任何持久的痕迹。

尤利安支配一切的热情，也是他短暂却极其活跃、非同寻常，并因其消极结果而富于教益的统治的灵魂，乃是对异教的狂热爱恋与对基督教的刻骨仇恨；而在当时，前者早已将世界统治的缰绳永远交给了后者。他认为自己一生的伟大使命，就是恢复诸神的崇拜，先使耶稣的宗教沦为一个可鄙的教派，最终若有可能，便将它从地上彻底消灭。他相信这是诸神亲自赐给他的呼召，而通神术、异象和梦境，又坚定了他的这一信念。凡才干、热忱和权力所能支配的一切手段，都被用于这一目的；而其失败，只能归因于这一目的本身内在的愚妄与不可实行。

I. 首先来看他的计划中积极的一面，即恢复并改革异教：

他动用公帑，恢复诸神崇拜昔日的辉煌；召出大批藏匿的祭司，将他们从前所有的特权一一恢复，并给予他们种种尊荣；命令士兵和文官到那些被遗弃的庙宇和祭坛参加敬拜；尽管自己特别崇拜阿波罗，即太阳神，却不遗漏任何男神或女神。他虽然在其他方面十分节俭，却命人献上最珍稀的鸟类，以及整群的公牛和羔羊，以致这些物种能否延续，都成了令人忧虑的问题。⁶⁶他从钱币和军旗上除去十字架和基督名号的组合字母，恢复从前的异教象征。他在皇帝的雕像和画像四周布置偶像崇拜的标志，使每一个愿向皇帝致以应有敬意的人，都不得不向诸神下拜。他为神像所作的辩护，与后来基督教圣像崇拜者为圣徒画像辩护的理由相同。他说，你若爱皇帝，若爱自己的父亲，就会喜欢看他的画像；同样，诸神的朋友也喜爱瞻仰诸神的形像，借此满怀敬畏，敬奉那些正俯视着他的无形诸神。

尤利安亲自带头，作出了全备的榜样。他在每一个场合都表现出对异教极大的热忱，并以最为一丝不苟的虔诚，履行最高祭司 (pontifex maximus) 的职务；这一职务在他的两位前任治下虽未正式废除，却已完全荒废。他每日早晚向初升与落下的太阳，即至高的光明之神献祭；每夜向月亮和星辰献祭；每天又向某个别的神明献祭。他的异教仰慕者利巴尼乌斯说：“他以鲜血迎接初升的太阳，又以鲜血为落日送行。”他不能随心所愿地频繁外出，便将自己的宫殿变成庙宇，在花园里设立祭坛；这花园比大多数神堂还保持得洁净。同一位作者又说：“凡有庙宇之处，无论是在城中，还是在山坡或山巅，不管道路多么崎岖、多么难以攀登，他都奔赴那里。”他虔诚地俯伏在祭坛和神像之前，即使最猛烈的风暴也不能阻挡他。他每天数次在祭司和舞女的簇拥下，献上一百头公牛，亲自供给木柴，点燃火焰。他亲自操刀，又以脏卜祭司 (haruspex) 的身份，亲手在热气腾腾的内脏中探寻未来的秘密。

然而，他的热忱得不到响应，反而使他在有教养的异教徒眼中也显得可笑。他一再抱怨自己党派的冷漠，并指控他的一名祭司暗中与基督教主教结盟。观看他献祭的人，并非出于虔诚，而是出于好奇；他们一阵阵鼓掌，仿佛他不过是个演出宗教戏剧的演员，使这位虔诚的皇帝深感悲伤。往往甚至连一个观众也没有。当他试图在安提阿 (Antioch) 著名的柏树林中恢复达芙涅的阿波罗 (Apollo Daphneus) 的神谕，并筹备了有奠酒、舞蹈和焚香的盛大游行时，却发现庙中只有一位孤零零的老祭司，而这位祭司所献上的祭物，竟是一只鹅——一个不祥的兆头。⁶⁷

然而，与此同时，尤利安又试图将基督教的道德融入异教，以此革新并改造异教；他徒然以为，这样便能使异教恢复原初的纯洁。在这件事上，他自己不知不觉、也并非出于本意地见证了异教宗教的贫乏，并向基督教致以最高的敬意；基督徒因此称他为“基督教的猿猴”，倒也十分贴切。

首先，他打算仿照基督教教牧的榜样，改良那无可救药的祭司阶层。祭司既是诸神与人之间真正的中保，就应常在庙宇中，专心圣事；不应研读伊壁鸠鲁 (Epicurus) 和皮浪 (Pyrrho) 学派那些不道德或怀疑主义的书籍，而应研读荷马 (Homer)、毕达哥拉斯 (Pythagoras)、柏拉图 (Plato)、克律西波 (Chrysippus) 和芝诺 (Zeno) 的著作；他们不应出入酒馆和剧场，不应从事有失体面的行业，而应施舍、好客，严守贞洁与节制，衣着朴素，但在执行圣职时，却总要穿着最华贵的礼服，显出最庄严的威仪。他几乎借用了当时流行的基督教祭司观念的每一个特点，将其应用于多神教。⁶⁸其次，他从教会的体制和崇拜中，借用了一套圣职等级制度，以及一种包括逐出教会、赦罪和复归在内的悔罪纪律，此外还有包含教导与音乐要素的固定礼仪。头戴高冠、身穿紫袍的祭司，要定期以讲道造就百姓；也就是说，对那些乏味而不道德的神话故事作寓意解释，并引申出实际应用！每座庙宇都要有组织完善的诗班，会众也要有应答。最后，尤利安在各行省设立男修道院、女修道院，以及收容病人、孤儿和异乡人的救济院，不分宗教；他从国库中拨出巨款供其使用，同时邀请人们自愿捐献，却毫无成效。他作出了一个值得注意的承认：异教徒甚至不帮助自己同信仰的弟兄；犹太人却从不行乞，而那些“无神的加利利人”——这是他对基督徒的恶意称呼——不仅供养自己人，甚至也供养异教的穷人，因而以善行助长了最坏的事业。

然而，这一切借助外来要素使异教重获新生的尝试，当然全属徒劳。这好比用电流刺激一具腐烂的尸体，或将新枝接在枯死的树干上，把好种子撒在磐石上，或将新酒装入旧皮袋，结果皮袋破裂，酒也白白流失。

尤利安计划中消极的一面，是压制并最终消灭基督教。

在这方面，他行事极其精明。他不采取流血的逼迫，因为他既不愿丧失哲学式宽容的美名，也不愿使教会获得新一轮殉道的荣耀。三个世纪的历史也已证明，暴力手段徒劳无益。据利巴尼乌斯 (Libanius) 说，他奉行一条原则：刀剑与烈火不能改变人的信仰，逼迫只会造就伪善者和殉道者。最后，他无疑也看出，基督徒人数已太多，若发动全面逼迫，就有引起流血内战的危险。因此，他披着公正和普遍宽容的外衣，“温和地”压迫教会。⁶⁹他所逼迫的，与其说是基督徒，不如说是基督教，因为他力图使信奉者离弃它。他以为这样既能收到逼迫的效果，又不必承担逼迫本身给个人招致的恶名和给国家带来的危险。然而，屡遭挫折使他的怨恨日益加深；倘若他在波斯战争中凯旋归来，很可能便会诉诸公开的暴力。事实上，纳齐安祖的贵格利 (Gregory Nazianzen)、索佐门 (Sozomen)，以及一些异教作家，都记述了行省中的局部逼迫，尤其是在安图萨 (Anthusa) 和亚历山大 (Alexandria)；皇帝至少应为这些事负间接责任。在这些事件中，他的官员固然不是奉公开命令行事，却是顺从尤利安的隐秘心愿；他尽可能对他们的违法行为置之不理，随后又以轻微的斥责和实质上的开脱，显露了自己对这些犯罪官员的真实态度。

因此，他起初对各党各派的基督徒采取宽容政策，希望他们因内部争论而彼此毁灭。他准许在君士坦提乌斯 (Constantius) 治下被放逐的正统派主教及其他所有教牧返回各自的教区，任凭阿里乌派 (Arians)、亚波里拿留派 (Apollinarians)、诺瓦atian派 (Novatians)、马其顿尼派 (Macedonians)、多纳徒派 (Donatists) 等自行其是。他装作怜悯那些“可怜、瞎眼、受迷惑的加利利人，他们抛弃了人最荣耀的特权——敬拜不朽的诸神，反倒敬拜死人和死人的骨头”。他甚至一度容忍迦克墩 (Chalcedon) 的盲眼主教马里斯 (Maris) 侮辱自己；当他提醒这位主教，加利利人的神不能使他重见光明时，主教回答说：“我为自己的失明感谢我的上帝，因为这使我免于痛苦地看见你这样一个不敬虔的背道者。”然而，他后来还是命人严惩了这位主教。⁷⁰同样，在安提阿，他也曾以哲人的镇静忍受基督徒民众的嘲弄，却又在《厌须者》(Misopogon) 中以毫不留情的讽刺报复城中居民。他对基督徒的整个态度，充满刻毒的仇恨，并伴以尖酸的嘲弄。⁷¹这甚至从他一贯仿效犹太人、轻蔑地称他们为加利利人一事中便显露出来；他很可能还命令别人也如此称呼他们。⁷²他认为他们是一群被人鄙视、被诸神憎恶的狂热教派分子，是公开与世间一切神圣事物为敌的无神论者。⁷³他有时让不同党派的代表在自己面前辩论，随后便喊道：“没有什么野兽像加利利的宗派分子这样凶猛，这样势不两立。”当他发现宽容对教会非但无害，反而有益，而且有助于缓和教义争论的激烈程度时，他便采取了别的手段；例如，将令他格外厌恶的亚他那修 (Athanasius) 逐出亚历山大，甚至逐出埃及，称这位当代最伟大的人为无足轻重的小矮子，⁷⁴并用粗鄙的言语辱骂他，因为许多显赫的异教徒，尤其是异教妇女，在他的影响下归信了基督教。因此，他的宽容既非出于真正的人道，也非出于对宗教的漠不关心，而是一副虚伪的面具，掩盖着对异教狂热的爱和对基督教刻毒的恨。

这一点也显明在他公开偏袒异教、苛待基督徒的不公行为中。他对异教的慷慨扶持，本身就是对基督教的损害。没有什么比有人背道更令他欢喜，他以丰厚的赏赐加以引诱；这样，他自己也使用了不纯正的劝诱改宗手段，而这正是他指责基督徒的事。有一次，他甚至主张用暴力手段使人改宗。他任命异教徒担任一切较高的官职；即便他们公然违命，他也只给予极轻的惩罚，甚至全然不罚。基督徒却处处受到轻视，他们的申诉被法庭驳回，法官还嘲弄地引述他们的主所赐的训诫：有人要拿他们的里衣，连外衣也给他；有人打他们的一边脸，连另一边也转过来。⁷⁵他们被革除军职和文职，被剥夺从前的一切特权，被苛捐重税压迫，又被迫无偿交还庙产，连同自己在其上所作的一切改良，并为公共偶像崇拜提供经费。埃德萨 (Edessa) 的阿里乌派与正统派发生争执时，尤利安没收了教会财产，分给士兵，并以讥讽的口吻声称，这是为了帮助基督徒进入天国，因为按他们的宗教教义，财富可能使他们不得进入天国（参《马太福音》十九章23、24节）。

同样不公而专横的，是那条将所有公立学校置于异教徒管理之下、禁止基督徒教授学术与技艺的法律。⁷⁶尤利安借此剥夺基督徒青年受教育的益处，迫使他们要么沉沦于无知和野蛮，要么在异教学校研读古典作品时，一并吸收偶像崇拜的原则。在他看来，希腊著作，尤其是诗人的作品，不仅是文学文献，也是异教徒独享的宗教文献；他认为基督教与真正的人文教养不能相容。他讥讽地说，加利利人应当满足于在自己的教会中讲解马太和路加，而不应亵渎光辉灿烂的希腊作家。因为他们一面研读古典著作，一面又鄙视这些作家所敬奉的诸神，实在荒谬而忘恩负义；事实上，荷马、赫西俄德 (Hesiod)、德摩斯梯尼 (Demosthenes)、修昔底德 (Thucydides)、伊索克拉底 (Isocrates) 和吕西亚斯 (Lysias) 这些人的才智，正是由诸神赋予并引导的，而这些作家也把自己的作品献给墨丘利 (Mercury) 或缪斯诸女神 (muses)。⁷⁷因此，他尤其憎恨那些学识渊博的教会教师，如巴西流 (Basil)、纳齐安祖的贵格利和老底嘉的亚波里拿留 (Apollinaris of Laodicea)，因为他们运用古典学养反驳异教、捍卫基督教。为了规避他的禁令，两位亚波里拿留匆忙写成了仿效荷马、品达 (Pindar)、欧里庇得斯 (Euripides) 和米南德 (Menander) 的基督教作品；索佐门认为这些作品足以媲美原作，但它们很快便湮没无闻了。贵格利也写了悲剧《受难的基督》及数首赞美诗，至今尚存。这些教父由此见证，古典文学对于较高层次的基督教教育不可或缺，而教会此后也始终持守这一见解。⁷⁸

尤利安还试图通过著述攻击基督教，以推进自己的事业；就在临死前不久，忙于筹备波斯战役之际，他还亲自写了一部恶毒攻击基督教的著作，我们将在后面一节中更详细地论及此书。⁷⁹

尤利安对基督教世代以来的宿敌——犹太教——所施的恩惠，也应归于同一种敌视基督教的图谋。

皇帝在一份官方文书中，装出尊重这一古老民族宗教、同情其信徒的样子，赞扬他们在患难中的坚定，并谴责压迫他们的人。他免除了犹太人沉重的赋税，甚至鼓励他们返回圣地，在摩利亚山 (Moriah) 上重建圣殿，恢复其原有的辉煌。他为此从国库拨出巨款，委派干练的大臣阿吕庇乌斯 (Alypius) 监督工程，并应许若能从波斯战争中凯旋归来，就要亲临重新献殿及恢复摩西献祭礼仪的盛典，为其增光。⁸⁰

他从事这一事业的真实目的，当然不是促进犹太教；因为他在反对基督徒的著作中，极其轻蔑地论及《旧约》，并把摩西和所罗门置于异教立法者与哲学家之下，认为远不能与之相比。他重建圣殿的目的，首先毋宁是增添自己统治的光彩，以满足个人的虚荣；其次极可能是要使耶稣关于圣殿被毁的预言落空（然而，这预言实际上早在三百年前就已一次而永远地应验了），夺去基督徒反驳犹太人时最通行的论据，并摧毁这新宗教在耶路撒冷的势力。⁸¹

犹太人如今从东西各地涌入他们祖先的圣城——自哈德良 (Hadrian) 以来，他们一直被禁止进入此城——并以狂热的热忱着手这项伟大的民族宗教工程，盼望弥赛亚的统治迅速降临，一切预言都得应验。据说，妇女们献出贵重的首饰，将其制成银铲银锹，甚至用丝绸围裙搬运圣地的土石。然而，异教皇帝与犹太民族联合起来的力量，仍不足以恢复那因上帝审判而倾覆的工程。正如一位公认可信的同时代异教历史家所记述的，地下穹窿中喷出的烈火，使屡次重建的尝试彻底受挫；⁸²此外，或许还有基督教作家所补述的猛烈旋风、闪电、地震和天上的神迹，尤其是一道发光的十字架，⁸³以致工人或葬身火焰，或在惊恐绝望中逃离这受咒诅之地。这样，尤利安非但未能夺去基督徒信仰的一项凭据，反而在这徒劳工程的废墟中，为他们提供了一个新的论据。

这一计划在上帝护理之下受挫，象征着尤利安 (Julian) 的整个统治；不久之后，这统治便过早地归于坟墓。他任凯撒时，曾在西方征服罗马帝国的蛮族仇敌；如今身为世界的统治者，他又打算使帝国在东方的仇敌屈服，并借征服波斯赢得第二个亚历山大 (Alexander) 的声名。他傲然拒绝一切议和建议；在安提阿 (Antioch) 过冬，并郑重求问神谕之后，率领六万五千大军渡过底格里斯河 (Tigris)；攻取美索不达米亚 (Mesopotamia) 的几座设防城镇；亲历战争的一切艰难险阻；同时，所到之处，只要可能，便恢复对异教诸神的崇拜。然而，他却使军队陷入极其危急的境地，并在一次无关紧要的夜间小规模战斗中，被敌方一箭射成致命重伤。不久，他便于363年6月27日去世，年仅三十二岁。据异教方面的见证，他临终时保持着斯多葛派 (Stoic) 哲学家那种高傲的安详与尊严，谈论灵魂的荣耀（不过，对于灵魂不朽，他至多也只视之为一种未定的意见）；⁸⁴但据较晚且多少有些可疑的基督教记载，他却绝望地喊道：“加利利人，你得胜了！”⁸⁵阿米阿努斯 (Ammianus) 记在他名下的那篇向友人告别的讲话，充分显露了他的性格。它使人想起苏格拉底 (Socrates) 临终的时刻，却没有原型那种自然的质朴，而浓重地掺杂着自满与戏剧性的矫饰。他的遗体遵照他本人的吩咐，运往使徒保罗的出生地大数 (Tarsus)；在众使徒中，他最憎恨的就是保罗。当地为他竖立了一座纪念碑，碑上简短的铭文称他为善良的统治者和英勇的战士，却只字未提他的宗教。

这样，一位正值盛年的君主便死去了。他对虚假宗教的狂热，以及对真宗教的敌视，遮蔽了他卓越的军事、行政和文学才能，也遮蔽了他罕有的精力；他将这一切误用于徒劳而邪恶的目的，所赢得的不是不朽的荣誉，而是一个失败的背道者的耻辱。假如他活得更久，很可能会使帝国陷入宗教内战的悲惨纷乱之中。基督徒普遍预料，倘若他从波斯战争中凯旋归来，就会发动血腥的逼迫。因此，他们憎恶对他的追忆，我们便更不必惊讶了。在安提阿，他们在教堂和剧场中以节庆的舞蹈庆祝他的死。⁸⁶甚至著名的神学家和演说家纳齐安祖的贵格利 (Gregory Nazianzen)，也把他比作法老、亚哈和尼布甲尼撒。⁸⁷直到近代较为公正的史学兴起，人们才公允地评价他较高尚的品格，并试图以他所受的错误教育、前任皇帝的专制，以及当时教会的不完善，来宽解、至少说明他对基督教所持的全然错误的立场。

随着尤利安本人的倒下，他那人为制造、勉强注入活力的异教也一同倒下，“如幻象中无根基的楼阁，消散后不留一丝残迹”；留下的只有一条重大的教训：人不可能逆历史潮流而行，也不可能阻止基督教的前进。那些曾沐浴在他恩宠之中的异教哲学家和占卜者，又退回默默无闻的境地。他们的梦想破灭时，迷信未能给他们任何安慰。利巴尼乌斯 (Libanius) 将罪责归于自己的诸神，因为诸神竟容许君士坦提乌斯 (Constantius) 统治二十年，却只让尤利安统治了不到二十个月。但基督徒可以从中学到纳齐安祖的贵格利在这次统治开始时所说的话：教会对于内部仇敌所当有的戒惧，远胜于外部仇敌。

§ 5. 从约维安到狄奥多西：公元363—392年

I. 此处的异教史料，除阿米阿努斯·马尔切利努斯 (Ammianus Marcellinus，可惜其记载止于瓦伦斯之死)、佐西穆斯 (Zosimus) 和欧纳庇乌斯 (Eunapius，后二者都极为偏颇) 外，尚有：利巴尼乌斯 (Libanius)：《为神庙辩护》(Ὑπὲρ τῶν ἱερῶν^*，或 Oratio pro templis；首个完整版本由 L. de Sinner 编入 Novus Patrum Grace. saec. iv. delectus，Par.，1842年)。叙马库斯 (Symmachus)：《书信》(Epist.)，x. 61（Pareus 编，Frcf.，1642年）。基督教方面：安布罗斯 (Ambrose)：《致瓦伦提尼安二世书信》(Epist. xvii. and xviii. ad Valentinian. II.)。普鲁登修斯 (Prudentius)：《驳叙马库斯》(Adv. Symmachum)。奥古斯丁 (Augustin)：《上帝之城》(De civitate Dei)，第v卷，第24—26章（论从约维尼安到狄奥多西诸帝，尤其极力颂扬后者）。苏格拉底 (Socr.)：第iii卷，第22章及后。索佐门 (Sozom.)：第vi卷，第3章及后。狄奥多勒 (Theodor.)：第iv卷，第1章及后。《狄奥多西法典》(Cod. Theodos.)：第ix—xvi卷。

德·拉·布莱特里 (De la Bleterie)：《约维安皇帝史》(Histoire de l’empereur Jovien)。Amsterd.，1740年，2卷。吉本 (Gibbon)：第xxv—xxviii章。施勒克 (Schröckh)：第vii卷，第213页及下页。施图夫肯 (Stuffken)：《论狄奥多西大帝对基督教事业的功绩》(De Theodosii M. in rem christianam meritis)。Lugd. Batav.，1828年。

从此，异教便以缓慢而坚定的步伐走向其不可避免的瓦解，直到在民族大迁徙的风暴和凯撒帝国的废墟中，找到一个不光彩的坟墓，并以自身的死亡宣告基督教的胜利。诚然，皇帝、主教和修士在拆毁神庙、没收财产时，犯下了种种不义；但与三百年来对基督教的血腥逼迫相比，这些不义便算不得什么了。古希腊罗马的异教死于内部的腐朽，这是任何人间力量都无法阻止的。

尤利安之后，基督徒皇帝相继在位，再未中断。他死的那一天，也是君士坦丁家族绝嗣之日；军队推举基督徒将领约维安 (Jovian，363—364年在位) 为皇帝。他与波斯人缔结了一项不利却必要的和约，重新将十字架置于军旗 (labarum) 上，并恢复教会的特权；但除此之外，他本着君士坦丁的精神，宣布普遍的宗教宽容。在当时的情势下，这显然是最明智的政策。他也像君士坦丁一样，不干预教会的任何内部事务，尽管他本人持守尼西亚信仰，并热诚支持亚他那修 (Athanasius)。他仅在位八个月便去世，年仅三十三岁。奥古斯丁说，上帝使他比尤利安更早离世，是要使任何皇帝都不致为求君士坦丁那样的好运而成为基督徒，而只为永生的缘故。

他的继任者瓦伦提尼安一世 (Valentinian I.，卒于375年)，虽然通常倾向采用专制手段，却也声明赞同宗教自由的政策；⁸⁸尽管他本人信奉尼西亚正统信仰，却不介入教义争论。他的弟弟兼共治皇帝瓦伦斯 (Valens)，在东方统治直到378年，却支持阿里乌派 (Arians)，逼迫大公教会信徒。不过，二人都禁止流血献祭⁸⁹和占卜。瓦伦提尼安驻罗马的代表马克西明 (Maximin)，以野蛮的残酷手段对付一切被判犯有巫术罪的人，尤其是罗马贵族。占卜者被活活烧死，地位较低的同犯则被用嵌铅的皮带鞭打致死。在几乎所有有记载的案件中，这些巫术都可追溯到异教的宗教习俗。

在这一统治时期，异教首次被正式称为 paganismus，即乡民的宗教；因为它在城市中几乎完全消亡，只在偏僻乡村中衰弱而默默无闻地苟延残喘。⁹⁰这与第二世纪的情形相比，是何等的颠倒！那时，塞尔苏斯 (Celsus) 曾轻蔑地把基督教称为工匠和奴隶的宗教。当然，这两种情形都有不少例外。尤其在罗马，许多最古老、最受尊重的家族，仍长期依附异教传统；直到第四世纪后半叶，城中似乎还保留着一百五十二座神庙，以及一百八十三座守护神的小祠和祭坛。⁹¹然而，旧宗教的辩护者——如忒弥斯提乌斯 (Themistius)、利巴尼乌斯和叙马库斯——已只求获得宽容；这样，他们在受压迫的处境中，也成了宗教自由的倡导者，正如从前的基督徒，以及后来大公教会和新教国教会中受逼迫的教派一样。

瓦伦提尼安之子兼继承人格拉提安 (Gratian，375—383年在位) 继续实行同样的宽容政策。然而，过了一段时间，这位皇帝在米兰主教安布罗斯的影响下，又向前迈进了一步。他放弃了最高祭司 (Pontifex Maximus) 的称号与尊位，没收神庙财产，废除祭司和维斯塔贞女 (vestal virgins) 的大部分特权，并至少部分撤销了国库供养他们的拨款。⁹²这一步使异教像君士坦丁以前、以及如今美利坚共和国中的基督教一样，依赖自愿捐助制度；但它与基督教不同，既无自我牺牲的精神，也无自我保存的活力。公共资助的撤销切断了它的命脉，使它只能凭着 vis inertiae（惰性之力）再存留一时。格拉提安还不顾异教派的抗议，于382年撤去了罗马元老院大厦内胜利女神维多利亚 (Victoria) 的雕像和祭坛；从前元老们常在那里宣誓、焚香和献祭。不过，他仍不得不容忍那里举行在别处已遭禁止的献祭，也不得不容忍以公款资助某些异教节庆。安布罗斯激发了他对大公信仰的极大热忱，因而他不准异端享有自由，并禁止欧诺米派 (Eunomians)、佛提努派 (Photinians) 和摩尼教徒 (Manichaeans) 公开聚会。

他的弟弟瓦伦提尼安二世 (Valentinian II.，383—392年在位) 拒绝了罗马人再次提出的恢复胜利女神祭坛的请求（384年）。雄辩而确实可敬的行政长官叙马库斯 (Symmachus)，身为罗马的元老院首席 (princeps senatus) 和首席祭司 (Pontifex)，此时成了异教一派的代言人。他以庄重优雅的陈词，却带着辩护者的谦怯语气，请求皇帝将自己的私人宗教与罗马城的宗教 (religio urbis) 区别开来，尊重古代传统的权威，以及这座可敬之城的权利；这城正是在敬拜诸神之时取得了世界的统治权。但米兰的安布罗斯 (Ambrose) 带着主教尊严和自信必胜的坚定语气，向皇帝指出，准许这一请求就是认可异教，放弃自己的基督教信念；他否认罗马的伟大源于偶像崇拜，因为被罗马征服的敌人也同样沉溺于此；他又将基督教的力量与异教的软弱加以对照：基督教在逼迫中大大增长，产生了大批献身的童贞女和修道者，而异教虽享有种种特权，却几乎连七名维斯塔贞女的数目也维持不了，更拿不出任何救济受压迫者的仁爱怜悯之工。389年，同样的请求又呈给狄奥多西 (Theodosius)，却再次因安布罗斯的影响而被拒绝。罗马人最后的民族圣所已经倾覆，再无恢复的希望。异教一派在篡位者尤金尼乌斯 (Eugenius，392—394年在位) 治下取得的胜利，只维持了两年；据普鲁登修斯 (Prudentius) 所说，他被狄奥多西击败以后，六百个最显赫的贵族家族，如安尼氏 (Annii)、普罗比氏 (Probi)、安尼基氏 (Anicii)、奥利比氏 (Olybii)、保利尼氏 (Paulini)、巴西氏 (Bassi)、格拉古氏 (Gracchi) 等，立即归信了基督教。

§ 6. 狄奥多西大帝及其继承者，公元392—550年

J. R. 施图夫肯 (J. R. Stuffken)：《论狄奥多西大帝对基督教的功绩》(Diss. de Theod. M. in rem. Christ. meritis.)。莱顿 (Leyden)，1828年。M. 弗莱希耶 (M. Fléchier)：《狄奥多西大帝史》(Histoire de Theodose le Grand)。巴黎 (Par.)，1860年。

人们通常把异教的最终禁绝归功于皇帝狄奥多西一世 (Theodosius I.)，虽然这并不完全公允。他因此，也因战胜哥特人 (Goths)、制定明智的法律，以及为帝国所建的其他功业，获得了“大帝”的尊号；而就其个人美德而言，他也配列于罗马最优秀的皇帝之中。⁹³他生于西班牙，父亲是同名的一位极有德望的将军。在蛮族威胁造成严重危机之际，格拉提安于379年召他出任东方的共治皇帝；瓦伦提尼安死后，他成为整个帝国的元首（392—395年）。他致力于国家的统一和大公信仰至高地位的确立。他坚定拥护尼西亚正统信仰，使之在第二次大公会议（381年）上取得胜利，赋予它国教的一切特权，并颁布一系列严厉法律，对付一切异端和分裂派。在对待异教方面，他起初只执行既有的禁令，禁止为施行巫术和占卜而献祭（385年），但逐渐将禁令扩及整个献祭崇拜。391年，他禁止为宗教目的进入异教神庙，违者处以重罚；次年，甚至禁止私下举行奠酒及其他异教仪式。因此，从此以后，偶像崇拜便成为一种政治罪行，正如君士坦提乌斯 (Constantius) 早已作过、却为时过早的宣告一样，并受到最严厉的惩罚。⁹⁴

然而，在异教一派仍保有相当势力的地方，狄奥多西并不强行推行这些法律；他没有将异教徒排除于公职之外，并且至少容许他们享有充分的思想和言论自由。他的同乡、基督教诗人普鲁登修斯赞许地说，他授予世俗官职时，所看的不是宗教，而是功绩和才干，并将异教徒叙马库斯擢升为执政官。⁹⁵皇帝同样任命异教修辞学家忒弥斯提乌斯 (Themistius) 为君士坦丁堡行政长官，甚至把儿子阿卡狄乌斯 (Arcadius) 的教育托付给他。他公开承认自己与利巴尼乌斯 (Libanius) 的私人友谊；后者于384年或390年向他呈上了那篇著名的为神庙辩护的陈词，不过，他是否真的曾在御前宣读，仍有疑问。总之，这位皇帝如此受到异教徒的爱戴，以致死后元老院依照古俗，将他列入诸神之中。⁹⁶

狄奥多西没有颁布过毁坏神庙的法律。他只是继续实行格拉提安的政策，没收神庙财产，并完全撤销供养偶像崇拜的公共拨款。但在许多地方，尤其在东方，修士和基督徒民众的狂热爆发为毁坏的狂潮，利巴尼乌斯为此痛加哀叹。他称这些毁坏神像的修士为“身穿黑衣的人，像大象一样贪食，饮欲永不知足，却以装出的苍白脸色掩饰其肉欲”。基督徒相信，异教诸神是活的存在，是鬼魔，⁹⁷并且住在神庙里；这种信念在此起了主导作用，压倒了一切艺术和考古方面的考虑。在新柏拉图派神秘主义的一个主要中心亚历山大城，性情暴烈而缺乏属灵生命的主教提阿非罗 (Theophilus) 煽动起了⁹⁸异教徒与基督徒之间的流血冲突；在冲突中，塞拉皮斯 (Serapis) 的巨大雕像和宏伟神庙被毁。这座神庙是异教建筑中仅次于罗马卡庇托山朱庇特神庙 (Jupiter Capitolinus) 的最辉煌纪念建筑，⁹⁹但当时流传的预言——神庙一毁，天空就会坍塌——并未应验（391年）。迷信的势力既被这一决定性的打击摧破，埃及其余神庙不久也遭到同样的命运；然而，尼罗河谷中法老、托勒密诸王和罗马皇帝所建工程的遗迹，至今仍巍然屹立，默默诉说往事，把微光投向古代神秘的幽暗。叙利亚阿帕米亚 (Apamea) 主教马尔凯卢斯 (Marcellus)，由一队武装士兵和角斗士陪同，以同样的热忱摧毁其教区内异教崇拜的纪念建筑和重要中心，却因此被愤怒的异教徒活活烧死，而凶手并未受到惩罚。在高卢 (Gaul)，图尔的圣马丁 (St. Martin of Tours) 于375至400年间毁坏了许多神庙和神像，并在原址建起教堂和修道院。

但我们也听见教会内部对这种虔诚的破坏行径发出了有力的抗议。金口约翰 (Chrysostom) 在这一朝代之初，于安提阿撰写的论殉道者巴比拉斯 (Babylas) 的优美短论中说：“基督徒不应以强力和暴力摧毁谬误，而应以劝导、教诲和爱促成人的得救。”奥古斯丁也本着同样的精神说，尽管他的立场并非完全一致：“让我们先除掉异教徒心中的偶像；一旦他们成为基督徒，就会亲自邀请我们来完成这样美好的工作〔毁坏偶像〕，或抢先动手。现在我们必须为他们祈祷，不可激怒他们。”然而，他却赞许皇帝们针对偶像崇拜所颁布的严厉法律。

在西方，毁坏的工作并未有系统地推行；希腊和意大利至今尚存的许多神庙遗址证明，即使在当时，理性和审美有时也能胜过狂热粗暴的恣意妄为，也证明“拆毁容易建造难”这句格言同样有其例外。

狄奥多西死后，帝国再度分为两部分，此后再未统一。这位君主软弱的儿子兼继承者——东方的阿卡狄乌斯（395—408年在位）和西方的霍诺里乌斯 (Honorius，395—423年在位)，以及狄奥多西二世，又称小狄奥多西（阿卡狄乌斯之子，408—450年在位），和瓦伦提尼安三世 (Valentinian III.，423—455年在位)，都重申了前朝针对异教徒的法律，有时还增添新的条款。408年，霍诺里乌斯甚至颁布敕令，禁止异教徒担任文武官职；¹⁰⁰423年，又有一道敕令问世，对异教徒是否仍然存在提出了疑问。¹⁰¹然而，首先，在民族大迁徙的混乱之中，帝国当时处境危急，尤其在西方，这样的法律只能得到不完全的执行；其次，这些法律一再重申，本身就证明异教仍有信奉者。各位异教作家的著述也为此作证。佐西穆斯 (Zosimus) 在小狄奥多西统治期间，身居其宫廷，撰写了记事下迄410年的《新史》；他自称任有伯爵 (comes) 和国库辩护官 (advocatus fisci) 的高职，在书中对基督徒皇帝怀有强烈的偏见。在许多地方，基督徒在拆毁偶像时，被狂怒的异教徒杀害。

不过，基督徒一方同时也有残酷的行为。其中最后的事例之一，就是希帕提娅 (Hypatia) 那场可怕的悲剧。这位女士在亚历山大城教授新柏拉图派哲学，以美貌、才智、学识和德行著称，受到基督徒和异教徒双方的敬重；她却在大街上被基督徒民众和狂热的修士抓住——这或许并非没有得到暴烈的主教西里尔 (Cyril) 的默许——被拖出马车，拽到主教座堂，剥光衣服，在祭坛前被人用贝壳残忍地杀害，随后肢解焚烧，时在公元415年。¹⁰²记述此事的苏格拉底 (Socrates) 补充说：“这使西里尔和亚历山大教会都遭受了极大的谴责。”

§ 7. 异教的衰亡

东部帝国中异教的最终瓦解，可以第五世纪中叶为起点。435年，狄奥多西二世下令拆毁神庙，或将其改为教堂。直到查士丁尼一世 (Justinian I.，527—567年在位) 统治初期，仍有一些异教徒出现在文官职位和宫廷之中。但这位专制皇帝禁止在帝国境内举行异教崇拜，违者处死；529年，他又关闭了异教最后的学术教育中心——延续了九百年的雅典哲学学园。那时，学园中恰有七位哲学家任教，¹⁰³仿佛古希腊七贤的幽影；这真是历史的一场奇特巧合，正如西罗马最后一位皇帝的名字罗慕路斯·奥古斯都 (Romulus Augustus)，或用带有轻蔑意味的指小形式称作奥古斯图卢斯 (Augustulus)，把罗马城创建者与罗马帝国创建者的名字合在了一起。

在西方，异教一直维持到第六世纪中叶前后，甚至更晚：一部分作为私人宗教信念，存留于罗马许多有教养的贵族家庭之中；一部分在偏远行省，以及西西里 (Sicily)、撒丁 (Sardinia)¹⁰⁴和科西嘉 (Corsica) 的山地，甚至仍保有完整的崇拜形式；还有一部分则存留于异教习俗和民间惯例之中，例如404年罗马仍有的角斗表演，以及放荡的牧神节 (Lupercalia)。后者是一种异教狂欢节，是畜群之神卢佩尔库斯 (Lupercus) 的节日，直到495年2月，人们庆祝时仍旧穷极放纵。不过，总的说来，可以说希腊—罗马异教作为一种崇拜体系，已埋葬在西罗马帝国的废墟之下；这个帝国在民族大迁徙的风暴中覆亡了。值得注意的是，北方蛮族摧毁偶像崇拜，与摧毁帝国同样热心，实际上促进了基督教的胜利。哥特王阿拉里克 (Alaric) 进入罗马时，曾明令保护使徒彼得和保罗的教堂，视之为不可侵犯的圣所；他所表现的人道精神，被奥古斯丁恰当地归因于基督教（即使是遭到歪曲的阿里乌派基督教）对这些蛮族的影响。奥古斯丁说，异教徒所亵渎的基督之名，所成就的不是这座城的毁灭，而是它的拯救。¹⁰⁵476年终结西罗马帝国的奥多亚塞 (Odoacer)，是在圣塞韦里努斯 (St. Severin) 的激励下远征意大利的；他自己虽是阿里乌派，却十分尊重大公教会的主教。他的征服者和继承人、东哥特人狄奥多里克 (Theodoric) 也是如此；他同样是阿里乌派，并于公元500年得到东罗马皇帝阿纳斯塔修斯 (Anastasius) 的承认，成为意大利国王。这样，在蛮族与罗马人之间，正如在罗马人与希腊人之间，以及在一定程度上与犹太人之间一样，被征服者反倒为征服者立下了法则。基督教战胜了双方。

这就是希腊—罗马异教连同其智慧与美的结局。它在缓慢而持续、无可救治的衰耗中灭亡了。它的覆亡是一出崇高的悲剧；尽管我们憎恶偶像崇拜，目睹此景，仍不能不感到几分悲哀。基督教初现之时，异教囊括了文明世界全部的智慧、文学、艺术和政治权力，并将这一切投入战场，攻击那位被钉十字架的拿撒勒人所传的、手无寸铁的宗教。经过四五个世纪的争战，它伏倒尘埃，再无复起的希望。它一旦失去国家的外在保护，也就丧失了一切力量，甚至连殉道的勇气也没有；反观基督教会，却涌现了无数认信者和以血作见证的人，而犹太教虽屡遭逼迫，至今犹存。曾有人预期，基督教存在三百六十五年之后，将在398年前后覆灭；¹⁰⁶结果，这预言所应验的对象，竟是异教本身。这个古老宗教最后的一线生机，表现为可怜地乞求宽容，以及哀叹帝国的倾覆。它最好的成分投身教会，得到转化，或者至少冠上了基督教的名称。如今，诸神被赶下宝座，神谕和奇兆止息，西卜林神谕书 (sibylline books) 被焚毁，神庙遭拆毁，或改为教堂，或至今仍然矗立，成为基督教胜利的纪念。¹⁰⁷

然而，古希腊和罗马虽已永远覆亡，希腊—罗马异教的精神却并未灭绝。它仍活在人天然的心中；这颗心直到今日，仍像从前一样，需要由上帝的灵使之重生。它也活在希腊教会和罗马教会许多拜偶像与迷信的习俗之中；基督教纯正的精神，从起初就本能地反对这些习俗，而且还要继续反对，直到一切粗鄙与精巧的偶像崇拜残余，无论在外在还是内在，都被克服，不仅受水的洗礼，也受福音之灵与火的洗礼，并得以成圣。

最后，古希腊和罗马较为高尚的才智，仍活在其诗人、哲学家、历史学家和演说家的不朽作品之中——不过，它已不再是基督的敌人，而是他的朋友和仆人。凡真正伟大、高贵、美好的，永远不会消逝。古典文学曾在自然文化的领域为福音预备道路，此后则要转而成为捍卫福音的武器。它像《旧约》一样，作为合法的产业归基督教会所有；在民族大迁徙的蹂躏和中世纪的黑暗中，教会保存了这些珍贵的天才之作，并将它们用作建造现代文明殿堂的材料。那位伟大的外邦人使徒所说的话，在这里应验了：“万有全是你们的。”古代经典摆脱了偶像崇拜的魔鬼辖制，开始事奉那位独一、又真又活的上帝；他从前是它们所“不认识”的，如今却处处显明。这样，古典作品便能履行其真正的使命，作青年的启蒙教师，为他们接受基督教的学问与文化作预备。这是基督教最高尚、最配得、也最完全的胜利：将敌人变为朋友和盟友。

Original Text

CHAPTER I. DOWNFALL OF HEATHENISM AND VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

General Literature.

J. G. Hoffmann: Ruina Superstitionis Paganae. Vitemb. 1738. Tzschirner: Der Fall des Heidenthums. Leipz. 1829. A. Beugnot: Histoire de la destruction du paganisme en occident. Par. 1835. 2 vols. Et. Chastel (of Geneva): Histoire de la destruction du paganisme dans l’empire d’orient. Par. 1850. E. v. Lasaulx: Der Untergang des Hellenismus u. die Einziehung seiner Tempelgüter durch die christl. Kaiser. Münch. 1854. F. Lübker: Der Fall des Heidenthums. Schwerin, 1856. Ch. Merivale: Conversion of The Roman Empire. New York, 1865.

§ 2. Constantine The Great. a.d. 306–337.

Contemporary Sources: Lactantius († 330): De mortibus persecutorum, cap. 18 sqq. Eusebius: Hist. Eccl. l. Ix. et x.; also his panegyric and very partial Vita Constantini, in 4 books (Eij" tovn bivon tou' makarivou Kwnstantivnou tou' basilevw") and his Panegyricus or De laudibus Constantini; in the editions of the hist. works of Euseb. by Valesius, Par. 1659–1673, Amstel. 1695, Cantabr. 1720; Zimmermann, Frcf. 1822; Heinichen, Lips. 1827–30; Burton, Oxon. 1838. Comp. the imperial documents in the Codex Theodos.l. xvi. also the Letters and Treatises of Athanasius († 373), and on the heathen side the Panegyric of Nazarius at Rome (321) and the Caesars of Julian († 363).
Later sources: Socrates: Hist. Eccl. l. i. Sozomenus: H. E. l. i et ii. Zosimus (a heathen historian and court-officer, comes et advocatus fisci, under Theodosius II.): Jistoriva neva, l. ii. ed. Bekker, Bonn. 1837. Eusebius and Zosimus present the extremes of partiality for and against Constantine. A just estimate of his character must be formed from the facts admitted by both, and from the effect of his secular and ecclesiastical policy.
Modern authorities. Mosheim: De reb. Christ. ante Const. M. etc., last section (p. 958 sqq. In Murdock’s Engl. transl., vol. ii. p. 454–481). Nath. Lardner, in the second part of his great work on the Credibility of the Gospel History, see Works ed. by Kippis, Lond. 1838, vol. iv. p. 3–55. Abbé de Voisin: Dissertation critique sur la vision de Constantin. Par. 1774. Gibbon: l.c. chs. xiv. and xvii.–xxi. Fr. Gusta: Vita di Constantino il Grande. Foligno, 1786. Manso: Das Leben Constantins des Gr. Bresl. 1817. Hug (R.C.): Denkschrift zur Ehrenrettung Constant. Frieb. 1829. Heinichen: Excurs. in Eus. Vitam Const. 1830. Arendt (R.C.): Const. u. sein Verb. zum Christenthum. Tüb. (Quartalschrift) 1834. Milman: Hist. of Christianity, etc., 1840, book iii. ch. 1–4. Jacob Burckhardt: Die Zeit Const. des Gr. Bas. 1853. Albert de Broglie: L’église et l’empire romain au IV^me siècle. Par. 1856 (vols. i. and ii.). A. P. Stanley: Lectures on the Hist. of the Eastern Church, 1862, Lect. vi. p. 281 sqq. (Am. Ed.). Theod. Keim: Der Uebertritt Constantins des Gr. zum Christenthum. Zürich, 1862 (an apology for Constantine’s character against Burckhardt’s view).

The last great imperial persecution of the Christians under Diocletian and Galerius, which was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical ruin of the persecutors.(1) The edict of toleration was an involuntary and irresistible concession of the incurable impotence of heathenism and the indestructible power of Christianity. It left but a step to the downfall of the one and the supremacy of the other in the empire of the Caesars.

This great epoch is marked by the reign of Constantine I.(2) He understood the signs of the times and acted accordingly. He was the man for the times, as the times were prepared for him by that Providence which controls both and fits them for each other. He placed himself at the head of true progress, while his nephew, Julian the Apostate, opposed it and was left behind. He was the chief instrument for raising the church from the low estate of oppression and persecution to well deserved honor and power. For this service a thankful posterity has given him the surname of the Great, to which he was entitled, though not by his moral character, yet doubtless by his military and administrative ability, his judicious policy, his appreciation and protection of Christianity, and the far-reaching consequences of his reign. His greatness was not indeed of the first, but of the second order, and is to be measured more by what he did than by what he was. To the Greek church, which honors him even as a canonized saint, he has the same significance as Charlemagne to the Latin.

Constantine, the first Christian Caesar, the founder of Constantinople and the Byzantine empire, and one of the most gifted, energetic, and successful of the Roman emperors, was the first representative of the imposing idea of a Christian theocracy, or of that system of policy which assumes all subjects to be Christians, connects civil and religious rights, and regards church and state as the two arms of one and the same divine government on earth. This idea was more fully developed by his successors, it animated the whole middle age, and is yet working under various forms in these latest times; though it has never been fully realized, whether in the Byzantine, the German, or the Russian empire, the Roman church-state, the Calvinistic republic of Geneva, or the early Puritanic colonies of New England. At the same time, however, Constantine stands also as the type of an undiscriminating and harmful conjunction of Christianity with politics, of the holy symbol of peace with the horrors of war, of the spiritual interests of the kingdom of heaven with the earthly interests of the state.

In judging of this remarkable man and his reign, we must by all means keep to the great historical principle, that all representative characters act, consciously or unconsciously, as the free and responsible organs of the spirit of their age, which moulds them first before they can mould it in turn, and that the spirit of the age itself, whether good or bad or mixed, is but an instrument in the hands of divine Providence, which rules and overrules all the actions and motives of men.

Through a history of three centuries Christianity had already inwardly overcome the world, and thus rendered such an outward revolution, as has attached itself to the name of this prince, both possible and unavoidable. It were extremely superficial to refer so thorough and momentous a change to the personal motives of an individual, be they motives of policy, of piety, or of superstition. But unquestionably every age produces and shapes its own organs, as its own purposes require. So in the case of Constantine. He was distinguished by that genuine political wisdom, which, putting itself at the head of the age, clearly saw that idolatry had outlived itself in the Roman empire, and that Christianity alone could breathe new vigor into it and furnish its moral support. Especially on the point of the external Catholic unity his monarchical politics accorded with the hierarchical episcopacy of the church. Hence from the year 313 he placed himself in close connection with the bishops, made peace and harmony his first object in the Donatist and Arian controversies and applied the predicate "catholic" to the church in all official documents. And as his predecessors were supreme pontiffs of the heathen religion of the empire, so he desired to be looked upon as a sort of bishop, as universal bishop of the external affairs of the church.(3) All this by no means from mere self-interest, but for the good of the empire, which, now shaken to its foundations and threatened by barbarians on every side, could only by some new bond of unity be consolidated and upheld until at least the seeds of Christianity and civilization should be planted among the barbarians themselves, the representatives of the future. His personal policy thus coincided with the interests of the state. Christianity appeared to him, as it proved in fact, the only efficient power for a political reformation of the empire, from which the ancient spirit of Rome was fast departing, while internal, civil, and religious dissensions and the outward pressure of the barbarians threatened a gradual dissolution of society.

But with the political he united also a religious motive, not clear and deep, indeed, yet honest, and strongly infused with the superstitious disposition to judge of a religion by its outward success and to ascribe a magical virtue to signs and ceremonies. His whole family was swayed by religious sentiment, which manifested itself in very different forms, in the devout pilgrimages of Helena, the fanatical Arianism of Constantia, and Constantius, and the fanatical paganism of Julian. Constantine adopted Christianity first as a superstition, and put it by the side of his heathen superstition, till finally in his conviction the Christian vanquished the pagan, though without itself developing into a pure and enlightened faith.(4)

At first Constantine, like his father, in the spirit of the Neo-Platonic syncretism of dying heathendom, reverenced all the gods as mysterious powers; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in the year 308 he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year 321 he enjoined regular consultation of the soothsayers(5) in public misfortunes, according to ancient heathen usage; even later, he placed his new residence, Byzantium, under the protection of the God of the Martyrs and the heathen goddess of Fortune;(6) and down to the end of his life he retained the title and the dignity of a Pontifex Maximus, or high-priest of the heathen hierarchy.(7) His coins bore on the one side the letters of the name of Christ, on the other the figure of the Sun-god, and the inscription "Sol invictus." Of course there inconsistencies may be referred also to policy and accommodation to the toleration edict of 313. Nor is it difficult to adduce parallels of persons who, in passing from Judaism to Christianity, or from Romanism to Protestantism, have so wavered between their old and their new position that they might be claimed by both. With his every victory, over his pagan rivals, Galerius, Maxentius, and Licinius, his personal leaning to Christianity and his confidence in the magic power of the sign of the cross increased; yet he did not formally renounce heathenism, and did not receive baptism until, in 337, he was laid upon the bed of death.

He had an imposing and winning person, and was compared by flatterers with Apollo. He was tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, and of a remarkably vigorous and healthy constitution, but given to excessive vanity in his dress and outward demeanor, always wearing an oriental diadem, a helmet studded with jewels, and a purple mantle of silk richly embroidered with pearls and flowers worked in gold,(8) His mind was not highly cultivated, but naturally clear, strong, and shrewd, and seldom thrown off its guard. He is said to have combined a cynical contempt of mankind with an inordinate love of praise. He possessed a good knowledge of human nature and administrative energy and tact.

His moral character was not without noble traits, among which a chastity rare for the time,(9) and a liberality and beneficence bordering on wastefulness were prominent. Many of his laws and regulations breathed the spirit of Christian justice and humanity, promoted the elevation of the female sex, improved the condition of slaves and of unfortunates, and gave free play to the efficiency of the church throughout the whole empire. Altogether he was one of the best, the most fortunate, and the most influential of the Roman emperors, Christian and pagan.

Yet he had great faults. He was far from being so pure and so venerable as Eusebius, blinded by his favor to the church, depicts him, in his bombastic and almost dishonestly eulogistic biography, with the evident intention of setting him up as a model for all future Christian princes. It must, with all regret, be conceded, that his progress in the knowledge of Christianity was not a progress in the practice of its virtues. His love of display and his prodigality, his suspiciousness and his despotism, increased with his power.

The very brightest period of his reign is stained with gross crimes, which even the spirit of the age and the policy of an absolute monarch cannot excuse. After having reached, upon the bloody path of war, the goal of his ambition, the sole possession of the empire, yea, in the very year in which he summoned the great council of Nicaea, he ordered the execution of his conquered rival and brother-in-law, Licinius, in breach of a solemn promise of mercy (324).(10) Not satisfied with this, he caused soon afterwards, from political suspicion, the death of the young Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the worst of all is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had incurred suspicion of political conspiracy, and of adulterous and incestuous purposes towards his step-mother Fausta, but is generally regarded as innocent. This domestic and political tragedy emerged from a vortex of mutual suspicion and rivalry, and calls to mind the conduct of Philip II. towards Don Carlos, of Peter the Great towards his son Alexis, and of Soliman the Great towards his son Mustapha. Later authors assert, though gratuitously, that the emperor, like David, bitterly repented of this sin. He has been frequently charged besides, though it would seem altogether unjustly, with the death of his second wife Fausta (326?), who, after twenty years, of happy wedlock, is said to have been convicted of slandering her stepson Crispus, and of adultery with a slave or one of the imperial guards, and then to have been suffocated in the vapor of an over-heated bath. But the accounts of the cause and manner of her death are so late and discordant as to make Constantine’s part in it at least very doubtful.(11)

At all events Christianity did not produce in Constantine a thorough moral transformation. He was concerned more to advance the outward social position of the Christian religion, than to further its inward mission. He was praised and censured in turn by the Christians and Pagans, the Orthodox and the Arians, as they successively experienced his favor or dislike. He bears some resemblance to Peter the Great both in his public acts and his private character, by combining great virtues and merits with monstrous crimes, and he probably died with the same consolation as Peter, whose last words were: "I trust that in respect of the good I have striven to do my people (the church), God will pardon my sins." It is quite characteristic of his piety that he turned the sacred nails of the Saviour’s cross which Helena brought from Jerusalem, the one into the bit of his war-horse, the other into an ornament of his helmet. Not a decided, pure, and consistent character, he stands on the line of transition between two ages and two religions; and his life bears plain marks of both. When at last on his death bed he submitted to baptism, with the remark, "Now let us cast away all duplicity," he honestly admitted the conflict of two antagonistic principles which swayed his private character and public life.(12)

From these general remarks we turn to the leading features of Constantine’s life and reign, so far as they bear upon the history of the church. We shall consider in order his youth and training, the vision of the Cross, the edict of toleration, his legislation in favor of Christianity, his baptism and death.

Constantine, son of the co-emperor Constantius Chlorus, who reigned over Gaul, Spain, and Britain till his death in 306, was born probably in the year 272, either in Britain or at Naissus (now called Nissa), a town of Dardania, in Illyricum.(13) His mother was Helena, daughter of an innkeeper,(14) the first wife of Constantius, afterwards divorced, when Constantius, for political reasons, married a daughter of Maximian.(15) She is described by Christian writers as a discreet and devout woman, and has been honored with a place in the catalogue of saints. Her name is identified with the discovery of the cross and the pious superstitions of the holy places. She lived to a very advanced age and died in the year 326 or 327, in or near the city of Rome. Rising by her beauty and good fortune from obscurity to the splendor of the court, then meeting the fate of Josephine, but restored to imperial dignity by her son, and ending as a saint of the Catholic church: Helena would form an interesting subject for a historical novel illustrating the leading events of the Nicene age and the triumph of Christianity in the Roman empire.

Constantine first distinguished himself in the service of Diocletian in the Egyptian and Persian wars; went afterwards to Gaul and Britain, and in the Praetorium at York was proclaimed emperor by his dying father and by the Roman troops. His father before him held a favorable opinion of the Christians as peaceable and honorable citizens, and protected them in the West during the Diocletian persecution in the East. This respectful tolerant regard descended to Constantine, and the good effects of it, compared with the evil results of the opposite course of his antagonist Galerius, could but encourage him to pursue it. He reasoned, as Eusebius reports from his own mouth, in the following manner: "My father revered the Christian God and uniformly prospered, while the emperors who worshipped the heathen gods, died a miserable death; therefore, that I may enjoy a happy life and reign, I will imitate the example of my father and join myself to the cause of the Christians, who are growing daily, while the heathen are diminishing." This low utilitarian consideration weighed heavily in the mind of an ambitious captain, who looked forward to the highest seat of power within the gift of his age. Whether his mother, whom he always revered, and who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in her eightieth year (a.d. 325), planted the germ of the Christian faith in her son, as Theodoret supposes, or herself became a Christian through his influence, as Eusebius asserts, must remain undecided. According to the heathen Zosimus, whose statement is unquestionably false and malicious, an Egyptian, who came out of Spain (probably the bishop Hosius of Cordova, a native of Egypt, is intended), persuaded him, after the murder of Crispus (which did not occur before 326), that by converting to Christianity he might obtain forgiveness of his sins.

The first public evidence of a positive leaning towards the Christian religion he gave in his contest with the pagan Maxentius, who had usurped the government of Italy and Africa, and is universally represented as a cruel, dissolute tyrant, hated by heathens and Christians alike,(16) called by the Roman people to their aid, Constantine marched from Gaul across the Alps with an army of ninety-eight thousand soldiers of every nationality, and defeated Maxentius in three battles; the last in October, 312, at the Milvian bridge, near Rome, where Maxentius found a disgraceful death in the waters of the Tiber.

Here belongs the familiar story of the miraculous cross. The precise day and place cannot be fixed, but the event must have occurred shortly before the final victory over Maxentius in the neighborhood of Rome. As this vision is one of the most noted miracles in church history, and has a representative significance, it deserves a closer examination. It marks for us on the one hand the victory of Christianity over paganism in the Roman empire, and on the other the ominous admixture of foreign, political, and military interests with it.(17) We need not be surprised that in the Nicene age so great a revolution and transition should have been clothed with a supernatural character.

The occurrence is variously described and is not without serious difficulties. Lactantius, the earliest witness, some three years after the battle, speaks only of a dream by night, in which the emperor was directed (it is not stated by whom, whether by Christ, or by an angel) to stamp on the shields of his soldiers "the heavenly sign of God," that is, the cross with the name of Christ, and thus to go forth against his enemy.(18) Eusebius, on the contrary, gives a more minute account on the authority of a subsequent private communication of the aged Constantine himself under oath—not, however, till the year 338, a year after the death of the emperor, his only witness, and twenty-six years after the event.(19) On his march from Gaul to Italy (the spot and date are not specified), the emperor, whilst earnestly praying to the true God for light and help at this critical time, saw, together with his army,(20) in clear daylight towards evening, a shining cross in the heavens above the sun) with the inscription: "By this conquer,"(21) and in the following night Christ himself appeared to him while he slept, and directed him to have a standard prepared in the form of this sign of the cross, and with that to proceed against Maxentius and all other enemies. This account of Eusebius, or rather of Constantine himself, adds to the night dream of Lactantius the preceding vision of the day, and the direction concerning the standard, while Lactantius speaks of the inscription of the initial letters of Christ’s name on the shields of the soldiers. According to Rufinus,(22) a later historian, who elsewhere depends entirely on Eusebius and can therefore not be regarded as a proper witness in the case, the sign of the cross appeared to Constantine in a dream (which agrees with the account of Lactantius), and upon his awaking in terror, an angel (not Christ) exclaimed to him: "Hoc vince." Lactantius, Eusebius, and Rufinus are the only Christian writers of the fourth century, who mention the apparition. But we have besides one or two heathen testimonies, which, though vague and obscure, still serve to strengthen the evidence in favor of some actual occurrence. The contemporaneous orator Nazarius, in a panegyric upon the emperor, pronounced March 1, 321, apparently at Rome, speaks of an army of divine warriors and a divine assistance which Constantine received in the engagement with Maxentius, but he converts it to the service of heathenism by recurring to old prodigies, such as the appearance of Castor and Pollux.(23)

This famous tradition may be explained either as a real miracle implying a personal appearance of Christ,(24) or as a pious fraud,(25) or as a natural phenomenon in the clouds and an optical illusion,(26) or finally as a prophetic dream.

The propriety of a miracle, parallel to the signs in heaven which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, might be justified by the significance of the victory as marking a great epoch in history, namely, the downfall of paganism and the establishment of Christianity in the empire. But even if we waive the purely critical objections to the Eusebian narrative, the assumed connection, in this case, of the gentle Prince of peace with the god of battle, and the subserviency of the sacred symbol of redemption to military ambition, is repugnant to the genius of the gospel and to sound Christian feeling, unless we stretch the theory of divine accommodation to the spirit of the age and the passions and interests of individuals beyond the ordinary limits. We should suppose, moreover, that Christ, if he had really appeared to Constantine either in person (according to Eusebius) or through angels (as Rufinus and Sozomen modify it), would have exhorted him to repent and be baptized rather than to construct a military ensign for a bloody battle.(27) In no case can we ascribe to this occurrence, with Eusebius, Theodoret, and older writers, the character of a sudden and genuine conversion, as to Paul’s vision of Christ on the way to Damascus;(28) for, on the one hand, Constantine was never hostile to Christianity, but most probably friendly to it from his early youth, according to the example of his father; and, on the other, he put off his baptism quite five and twenty years, almost to the hour of his death.

The opposite hypothesis of a mere military stratagem or intentional fraud is still more objectionable, and would compel us either to impute to the first Christian emperor at a venerable age the double crime of falsehood and perjury, or, if Eusebius invented the story, to deny to the "father of church history" all claim to credibility and common respectability. Besides it should be remembered that the older testimony of Lactantius, or whoever was the author of the work on the Deaths of Persecutors, is quite independent of that of Eusebius, and derives additional force from the vague heathen rumors of the time. Finally the Hoc vince which has passed into proverbial significance as a most appropriate motto of the invincible religion of the cross, is too good to be traced to sheer falsehood. Some actual fact, therefore, must be supposed to underlie the tradition, and the question only is this, whether it was an external visible phenomenon or an internal experience.

The hypothesis of a natural formation of the clouds, which Constantine by an optical illusion mistook for a supernatural sign of the cross, besides smacking of the exploded rationalistic explanation of the New Testament miracles, and deriving an important event from a mere accident, leaves the figure of Christ and the Greek or Latin inscription: By this sign thou shalt conquer! altogether unexplained.

We are shut up therefore to the theory of a dream or vision, and an experience within the mind of Constantine. This is supported by the oldest testimony of Lactantius, as well as by the report of Rufinus and Sozomen, and we do not hesitate to regard the Eusebian cross in the skies as originally a part of the dream,(29) which only subsequently assumed the character of an outward objective apparition either in the imagination of Constantine, or by a mistake of the memory of the historian, but in either case without intentional fraud. That the vision was traced to supernatural origin, especially after the happy success, is quite natural and in perfect keeping with the prevailing ideas of the age.(30) Tertullian and other ante-Nicene and Nicene fathers attributed many conversions to nocturnal dreams and visions. Constantine and his friends referred the most important facts of his life, as the knowledge of the approach of hostile armies, the discovery of the holy sepulchre, the founding of Constantinople, to divine revelation through visions and dreams. Nor are we disposed in the least to deny the connection of the vision of the cross with the agency of divine Providence, which controlled this remarkable turning point of history. We may go farther and admit a special providence, or what the old divines call a providentia specialissima; but this does not necessarily imply a violation of the order of nature or an actual miracle in the shape of an objective personal appearance of the Saviour. We may refer to a somewhat similar, though far less important, vision in the life of the pious English Colonel James Gardiner.(31) The Bible itself sanctions the general theory of providential or prophetic dreams and nocturnal visions through which divine revelations and admonitions are communicated to men.(32)

The facts, therefore, may have been these. Before the battle Constantine, leaning already towards Christianity as probably the best and most hopeful of the various religions, seriously sought in prayer, as he related to Eusebius, the assistance of the God of the Christians, while his heathen antagonist Maxentius, according to Zosimus,(33) was consulting the sibylline books and offering sacrifice to the idols. Filled with mingled fears and hopes about the issue of the conflict, he fell asleep and saw in a dream the sign of the cross of Christ with a significant inscription and promise of victory. Being already familiar with the general use of this sign among the numerous Christians of the empire, many of whom no doubt were in his own army, he constructed the labarum,(34) or rather he changed the heathen labarum into a standard of the Christian cross with the Greek monogram of Christ,(35) which he had also put upon the shields of the soldiers. To this cross-standard, which now took the place of the Roman eagles, he attributed the decisive victory over the heathen Maxentius.

Accordingly, after his triumphal entrance into Rome, he had his statue erected upon the forum with the labarum in his right hand, and the inscription beneath: "By this saving sign, the true token of bravery, I have delivered your city from the yoke of the tyrant."(36) Three years afterwards the senate erected to him a triumphal arch of marble, which to this day, within sight of the sublime ruins of the pagan Colosseum, indicates at once the decay of ancient art, and the downfall of heathenism; as the neighboring arch of Titus commemorates the downfall of Judaism and the destruction of the temple. The inscription on this arch of Constantine, however, ascribes his victory over the hated tyrant, not only to his master mind, but indefinitely also to the impulse of Deity;(37) by which a Christian would naturally understand the true God, while a heathen, like the orator Nazarius, in his eulogy on Constantine, might take it for the celestial guardian power of the "urbs aeterna."

At all events the victory of Constantine over Maxentius was a military and political victory of Christianity over heathenism; the intellectual and moral victory having been already accomplished by the literature and life of the church in the preceding period. The emblem of ignominy and oppression(38) became thenceforward the badge of honor and dominion, and was invested in the emperor’s view, according to the spirit of the church of his day, with a magic virtue.(39) It now took the place of the eagle and other field-badges, under which the heathen Romans had conquered the world. It was stamped on the imperial coin, and on the standards, helmets, and shields of the soldiers. Above all military representations of the cross the original imperial labarum shone in the richest decorations of gold and gems; was intrusted to the truest and bravest fifty of the body guard; filled the Christians with the spirit of victory, and spread fear and terror among their enemies; until, under the weak successors of Theodosius II., it fell out of use, and was lodged as a venerable relic in the imperial palace at Constantinople.

After this victory at Rome (which occurred October 27, 312), Constantine, in conjunction with his eastern colleague, Licinius, published in January, 313, from Milan, an edict of religious toleration, which goes a step beyond the edict of the still anti-Christian Galerius in 311, and grants, in the spirit of religious eclecticism, full freedom to all existing forms of worship, with special reference to the Christian.(40) The edict of 313 not only recognized Christianity within existing limits, but allowed every subject of the Roman empire to choose whatever religion he preferred.(41) At the same time the church buildings and property confiscated in the Diocletian persecution were ordered to be restored, and private property-owners to be indemnified from the imperial treasury.

In this notable edict, however, we should look in vain for the modern Protestant and Anglo-American theory of religious liberty as one of the universal and inalienable rights of man. Sundry voices, it is true, in the Christian church itself, at that time, as before and after, declared against all compulsion in religion.(42) But the spirit of the Roman empire was too absolutistic to abandon the prerogative of a supervision of public worship. The Constantinian toleration was a temporary measure of state policy, which, as indeed the edict expressly states the motive, promised the greatest security to the public peace and the protection of all divine and heavenly powers, for emperor and empire. It was, as the result teaches, but the necessary transition step to a new order of things. It opened the door to the elevation of Christianity, and specifically of Catholic hierarchical Christianity, with its exclusiveness towards heretical and schismatic sects, to be the religion of the state. For, once put on equal footing with heathenism, it must soon, in spite of numerical minority, bear away the victory from a religion which had already inwardly outlived itself.

From this time Constantine decidedly favored the church, though without persecuting or forbidding the pagan religions. He always mentions the Christian church with reverence in his imperial edicts, and uniformly applies to it, as we have already observed, the predicate of catholic. For only as a catholic, thoroughly organized, firmly compacted, and conservative institution did it meet his rigid monarchical interest, and afford the splendid state and court dress he wished for his empire. So early as the year 313 we find the bishop Hosius of Cordova among his counsellors, and heathen writers ascribe to the bishop even a magical influence over the emperor. Lactantius, also, and Eusebius of Caesarea belonged to his confidential circle. He exempted the Christian clergy from military and municipal duty (March, 313); abolished various customs and ordinances offensive to the Christians (315); facilitated the emancipation of Christian slaves (before 316); legalized bequests to catholic churches (321); enjoined the civil observance of Sunday, though not as dies Domini, but as dies Solis, in conformity to his worship of Apollo, and in company with an ordinance for the regular consulting of the haruspex (321); contributed liberally to the building of churches and the support of the clergy; erased the heathen symbols of Jupiter and Apollo, Mars and Hercules from the imperial coins (323); and gave his sons a Christian education.

This mighty example was followed, as might be expected, by a general transition of those subjects, who were more influenced in their conduct by outward circumstances, than by inward conviction and principle. The story, that in one year (324) twelve thousand men, with women and children in proportion, were baptized in Rome, and that the emperor had promised to each convert a white garment and twenty pieces of gold, is at least in accordance with the spirit of that reign, though the fact itself, in all probability, is greatly exaggerated.(43)

Constantine came out with still greater decision, when, by his victory over his Eastern colleague and brother-in-law, Licinius, he became sole head of the whole Roman empire. To strengthen his position, Licinius had gradually placed himself at the head of the heathen party, still very numerous, and had vexed the Christians first with wanton ridicule(44) then with exclusion from civil and military office, with banishment, and in some instances perhaps even with bloody persecution. This gave the political strife for the monarchy between himself and Constantine the character also of a war of religions; and the defeat of Licinius in the battle of Adrianople in July, 324, and at Chalcedon in September, was a new triumph of the standard of the cross over the sacrifices of the gods; save that Constantine dishonored himself and his cause by the execution of Licinius and his son.

The emperor now issued a general exhortation to his subjects to embrace the Christian religion, still leaving them, however, to their own free conviction. In the year 325, as patron of the church, he summoned the council of Nice, and himself attended it; banished the Arians, though he afterwards recalled them; and, in his monarchical spirit of uniformity, showed great zeal for the settlement of all theological disputes, while he was blind to their deep significance. He first introduced the practice of subscription to the articles of a written creed and of the infliction of civil punishments for non-conformity. In the years 325–329, in connection with his mother, Helena, he erected magnificent churches on the sacred spots in Jerusalem.

As heathenism had still the preponderance in Rome, where it was hallowed by its great traditions, Constantine, by divine command as he supposed,(45) in the year 330, transferred the seat of his government to Byzantium, and thus fixed the policy, already initiated by Domitian, of orientalizing and dividing the empire. In the selection of the unrivalled locality he showed more taste and genius than the founders of Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or Washington. With incredible rapidity, and by all the means within reach of an absolute monarch, he turned this nobly situated town, connecting two seas and two continents, into a splendid residence and a new Christian Rome, "for which now," as Gregory of Nazianzen expresses it, "sea and land emulate each other, to load it with their treasures, and crown it queen of cities."(46) Here, instead of idol temples and altars, churches and crucifixes rose; though among them the statues of patron deities from all over Greece, mutilated by all sorts of tasteless adaptations, were also gathered in the new metropolis.(47) The main hall in the palace was adorned with representations of the crucifixion and other biblical scenes. The gladiatorial shows, so popular in Rome, were forbidden here, though theatres, amphitheatres, and hippodromes kept their place. It could nowhere be mistaken, that the new imperial residence was as to all outward appearance a Christian city. The smoke of heathen sacrifices never rose from the seven hills of New Rome except during the short reign of Julian the Apostate. It became the residence of a bishop who not only claimed the authority of the apostolic see of neighboring Ephesus, but soon outshone the patriarchate of Alexandria and rivalled for centuries the papal power in ancient Rome.

The emperor diligently attended divine worship, and is portrayed upon medals in the posture of prayer. He kept the Easter vigils with great devotion. He would stand during the longest sermons of his bishops, who always surrounded him, and unfortunately flattered him only too much. And he even himself composed and delivered discourses to his court, in the Latin language, from which they were translated into Greek by interpreters appointed for the purpose.(48) General invitations were issued, and the citizens flocked in great crowds to the palace to hear the imperial preacher, who would in vain try to prevent their loud applause by pointing to heaven as the source of his wisdom. He dwelt mainly on the truth of Christianity, the folly of idolatry, the unity and providence of God, the coming of Christ, and the judgment. At times he would severely rebuke the avarice and rapacity of his courtiers, who would loudly applaud him with their mouths, and belie his exhortation by their works.(49) One of these productions is still extant,(50) in which he recommends Christianity in a characteristic strain, and in proof of its divine origin cites especially the fulfilment of prophecy, including the Sibylline books and the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, with the contrast between his own happy and brilliant reign and the tragical fate of his persecuting predecessors and colleagues.

Nevertheless he continued in his later years true upon the whole to the toleration principles of the edict of 313, protected the pagan priests and temples in their privileges, and wisely abstained from all violent measures against heathenism, in the persuasion that it would in time die out. He retained many heathens at court and in public office, although he loved to promote Christians to honorable positions. In several cases, however, he prohibited idolatry, where it sanctioned scandalous immorality, as in the obscene worship of Venus in Phenicia; or in places which were specially sacred to the Christians, as the sepulchre of Christ and the grove of Mamre; and he caused a number of deserted temples and images to be destroyed or turned into Christian churches. Eusebius relates several such instances with evident approbation, and praises also his later edicts against various heretics and schismatics, but without mentioning the Arians. In his later years he seems, indeed, to have issued a general prohibition of idolatrous sacrifice; Eusebius speaks of it, and his sons in 341 refer to an edict to that effect; but the repetition of it by his successors proves, that, if issued, it was not carried into general execution under his reign.

With this shrewd, cautious, and moderate policy of Constantine, which contrasts well with the violent fanaticism of his sons, accords the postponement of his own baptism to his last sickness.(51) For this he had the further motives of a superstitious desire, which he himself expresses, to be baptized in the Jordan, whose waters had been sanctified by the Saviour’s baptism, and no doubt also a fear, that he might by relapse forfeit the sacramental remission of sins. He wished to secure all the benefit of baptism as a complete expiation of past sins, with as little risk as possible, and thus to make the best of both worlds. Deathbed baptisms then were to half Christians of that age what deathbed conversions and deathbed communions are now. Yet he presumed to preach the gospel, he called himself the bishop of bishops, he convened the first general council, and made Christianity the religion of the empire, long before his baptism! Strange as this inconsistency appears to us, what shall we think of the court bishops who, from false prudence, relaxed in his favor the otherwise strict discipline of the church, and admitted him, at least tacitly, to the enjoyment of nearly all the privileges of believers, before he had taken upon himself even a single obligation of a catechumen!

When, after a life of almost uninterrupted health, he felt the approach of death, he was received into the number of catechumens by laying on of hands, and then formally admitted by baptism into the full communion of the church in the year 337, the sixty-fifth year of his age, by the Arian (or properly Semi-Arian) bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, whom he had shortly before recalled from exile together with Arius.(52) His dying testimony then was, as to form, in favor of heretical rather than orthodox Christianity, but merely from accident, not from intention. He meant the Christian as against the heathen religion, and whatever of Arianism may have polluted his baptism, was for the Greek church fully wiped out by the orthodox canonization. After the solemn ceremony he promised to live thenceforth worthily of a disciple of Jesus; refused to wear again the imperial mantle of cunningly woven silk richly ornamented with gold; retained the white baptismal robe; and died a few days after, on Pentecost, May 22, 337, trusting in the mercy of God, and leaving a long, a fortunate, and a brilliant reign, such as none but Augustus, of all his predecessors, had enjoyed. "So passed away the first Christian Emperor, the first Defender of the Faith, the first Imperial patron of the Papal see, and of the whole Eastern Church, the first founder of the Holy Places, Pagan and Christian, orthodox and heretical, liberal and fanatical, not to be imitated or admired, but much to be remembered, and deeply to be studied."(53)

His remains were removed in a golden coffin by a procession of distinguished civilians and the whole army, from Nicomedia to Constantinople, and deposited, with the highest Christian honors, in the church of the Apostles,(54) while the Roman senate, after its ancient custom, proudly ignoring the great religious revolution of the age, enrolled him among the gods of the heathen Olympus. Soon after his death, Eusebius set him above the greatest princes of all times; from the fifth century he began to be recognized in the East as a saint; and the Greek and Russian church to this day celebrates his memory under the extravagant title of "Isapostolos," the "Equal of the apostles."(55) The Latin church, on the contrary, with truer tact, has never placed him among the saints, but has been content with naming him "the Great," in just and grateful remembrance of his services to the cause of Christianity and civilization.

§ 3. The Sons of Constantine. a.d. 337–361.

For the literature see § 2 and § 4.

With the death of Constantine the monarchy also came, for the present, to an end. The empire was divided among his three sons, Constantine II., Constans, and Constantius. Their accession was not in Christian style, but after the manner of genuine Turkish, oriental despotism; it trod upon the corpses of the numerous kindred of their father, excepting two nephews, Gallus and Julian, who were saved only by sickness and youth from the fury of the soldiers. Three years later followed a war of the brothers for the sole supremacy. Constantine II. was slain by Constans (340), who was in turn murdered by a barbarian field officer and rival, Magnentius (350). After the defeat and the suicide of Magnentius, Constantius, who had hitherto reigned in the East, became sole emperor, and maintained himself through many storms until his natural death (353–361).

The sons of Constantine did their Christian education little honor, and departed from their father’s wise policy of toleration. Constantius, a temperate and chaste, but jealous, vain, and weak prince, entirely under the control of eunuchs, women, and bishops, entered upon a violent suppression of the heathen religion, pillaged and destroyed many temples, gave the booty to the church, or to his eunuch, flatterers, and worthless favorites, and prohibited, under penalty of death, all sacrifices and worship of images in Rome, Alexandria, and Athens, though the prohibition could not be carried out. Hosts now came over to Christianity, though, of course, for the most part with the lips only, not with the heart. But this emperor proceeded with the same intolerance against the adherents of the Nicene orthodoxy, and punished them with confiscation and banishment. His brothers supported Athanasius, but he himself was a fanatical Arian. In fact, he meddled in all the affairs of the church, which was convulsed during his reign with doctrinal controversy. He summoned a multitude of councils, in Gaul, in Italy, in Illyricum, and in Asia; aspired to the renown of a theologian; and was fond of being called bishop of bishops, though, like his father, he postponed baptism till shortly before his death.

There were there, it is true, who justified this violent suppression of idolatry, by reference to the extermination of the Canaanites under Joshua.(56) But intelligent church teachers, like Athanasius, Hosius, and Hilary, gave their voice for toleration, though even they mean particularly toleration for orthodoxy, for the sake of which they themselves had been deposed and banished by the Arian power. Athanasius says, for example: "Satan, because there is no truth in him, breaks in with axe and sword. But the Saviour is gentle, and forces no one, to whom he comes, but knocks and speaks to the soul: Open to me, my sister?(57) If we open to him, he enters; but if we will not, he departs. For the truth is not preached by sword and dungeon, by the might of an army, but by persuasion and exhortation. How can there be persuasion where fear of the emperor is uppermost? How exhortation, where the contradicter has to expect banishment and death?" With equal truth Hilary confronts the emperor with the wrong of his course, in the words: "With the gold of the state thou burdenest the sanctuary of God, and what is torn from the temples, or gained by confiscation, or extorted by punishment, thou obtrudest upon God."

By the laws of history the forced Christianity of Constantius must provoke a reaction of heathenism. And such reaction in fact ensued, though only for a brief period immediately after this emperor’s death.

§ 4. Julian the Apostate, and the Reaction of Paganism. a.d. 361–363.

Sources.

These agree in all the principal facts, even to unimportant details, but differ entirely in spirit and in judgment; Julian himself exhibiting the vanity of self-praise, Libanius and Zosimus the extreme of passionate admiration, Gregory and Cyril the opposite extreme of hatred and abhorrence, Ammianus Marcellinus a mixture of praise and censure.

Heathen sources: Juliani imperatoris Opera, quae supersunt omnia, ed. by Petavius, Par. 1583; and more completely by Ezech. Spanhemius, Lips. 1696, 2 vols. fol. in one (Spanheim gives the Greek original with a good Latin version, and the Ten Books of Cyril of Alex. against Julian). We have from Julian: Misopogon (Misopwvgon, the Beard-hater, a defence of himself against the accusations of the Antiochians); Caesares (two satires on his predecessors); eight Orationes; sixty-five Epistolae (the latter separately and most completely edited, with shorter fragments, by Heyler, Mog. 1828); and Fragments of his three or seven Books kata; Cristianw'n in the Reply of Cyril. Libanius: jEpitavfio" ejp j jIoulianw'/ , in Lib. Opp. ed. Reiske, Altenb. 1791–97. 4 vols. Mamertinus: Gratiarum actio Juliano. The relevant passages in the heathen historians Ammianus Marcellinus (I.c. lib. xxi-xxv. 3), Zosimus and Eunapius.
Christian Sources (all in Greek): the early church historians, Socrates (l. iii.), Sozomen (I. v. and vi.), Theodoret (I. iii.). Gregory Naz.: Orationes invectivae in Jul. duae, written some six months after the death of Julian (Opp. tom. i.). Cyril of Alex.: Contra impium Jul. libri x. (in the Opp. Cyr., ed. J. Aubert, Par. 1638, tom. vi., and in Spanheim’s ed. of the works of Julian).

Literature.

Tillemont: Memoires, etc., vol. vii. p. 322–423 (Venice ed.), and Histoire des empereurs Rom. Par. 1690 sqq., vol. iv. 483–576. Abbé De la Bleterie: Vie de l’empereur Julien. Amst. 1735. 2 vols. The same in English, Lond. 1746. W. Warburton: Julian. Lond. 3d ed. 1763. Nath. Lardner: Works, ed. Dr. Kippis, vol. vii. p. 581 sqq. Gibbon: l.c. ch. xxii.–xxiv., particularly xxiii. Neander: Julian u. sein Zeitalter. Leipz. 1812 (his first historical production), and Allg. K. G., iii. (2d ed. 1846), p. 76–148. English ed. Torrey, ii. 37–67. Jondot (R.C.): Histoire de l’empereur Julien. 1817, 2 vols. C. H. Van Herwerden: De Juliano imper. religionis Christ. hoste, eodemque vindice. Lugd. Bat. 1827. G. F. Wiggers: Jul. der Abtrünnige. Leipz. 1837 (in Illgen’s Zeitschr. f. Hist. Theol.). H. Schulze: De philos. et moribus Jul. Strals. 1839. D. Fr. Strauss (author of the mythological "Leben Jesu"): Der Romantiker auf dem Thron der Caesaren, oder Julian der Abtr. Manh. 1847 (containing a clear survey of the various opinions concerning Julian from Libanius and Gregory to Gibbon, Schlosser, Neander, and Ullmann, but hiding a political aim against King Frederick William IV. of Prussia). J. E. Auer (R.C.): Kaiser Jul. der Abtr. im Kampf mit den Kirchenvaetern seiner Zeit. Wien, 1855. W. Mangold: Jul. der Abtr. Stuttg. 1862. C. Semisch: Jul. der Abtr. Bresl. 1862. F. Lübker: Julians Kampf u. Ende. Hamb. 1864.

Notwithstanding this great conversion of the government and of public sentiment, the pagan religion still had many adherents, and retained an important influence through habit and superstition over the rude peasantry, and through literature and learned schools of philosophy and rhetoric at Alexandria, Athens, &c., over the educated classes. And now, under the lead of one of the most talented, energetic, and notable Roman emperors, it once more made a systematic and vigorous effort to recover its ascendency in the Roman empire. But in the entire failure of this effort heathenism itself gave the strongest proof that it had outlived itself forever. It now became evident during the brief, but interesting and instructive episode of Julian’s reign, that the policy of Constantine was entirely judicious and consistent with the course of history itself, and that Christianity really carried all the moral vigor of the present and all the hopes of the future. At the same time this temporary persecution was a just punishment and wholesome discipline for a secularized church and clergy.(58)

Julian, surnamed the Apostate (Apostata), a nephew of Constantine the Great and cousin of Constantius, was born in the year 331, and was therefore only six years old when his uncle died. The general slaughter of his kindred, not excepting his father, at the change of the throne, could beget neither love for Constantius nor respect for his court Christianity. He afterwards ascribed his escape to the special favor of the old gods. He was systematically spoiled by false education and made the enemy of that very religion which pedantic teachers attempted to force upon his free and independent mind, and which they so poorly recommended by their lives. We have a striking parallel in more recent history in the case of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Julian was jealously watched by the emperor, and kept in rural retirement almost like a prisoner. With his step-brother Gallus, he received a nominally Christian training under the direction of the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia and several eunuchs; he was baptized; even educated for the clerical order, and ordained a Lector.(59) He prayed, fasted, celebrated the memory of the martyrs, paid the usual reverence to the bishops, besought the blessing of hermits, and read the Scriptures in the church of Nicomedia. Even his plays must wear the hue of devotion. But this despotic and mechanical force-work of a repulsively austere and fiercely polemic type of Christianity roused the intelligent, wakeful, and vigorous spirit of Julian to rebellion, and drove him over towards the heathen side. The Arian pseudo-Christianity of Constantius produced the heathen anti-Christianity of Julian; and the latter was a well-deserved punishment of the former. With enthusiasm and with untiring diligence the young prince studied Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the Neo-Platonists. The partial prohibition of such reading gave it double zest. He secretly obtained the lectures of the celebrated rhetorician Libanius, afterwards his eulogist, whose productions, however, represent the degeneracy of the heathen literature in that day, covering emptiness with a pompous and tawdry style, attractive only to a vitiated taste. He became acquainted by degrees with the most eminent representatives of heathenism, particularly the Neo-Platonic philosophers, rhetoricians, and priests, like Libanius, Aedesius, Maximus, and Chrysanthius. These confirmed him in his superstitions by sophistries and sorceries of every kind. He gradually became the secret head of the heathen party. Through the favor and mediation of the empress Eusebia he visited for some months the schools of Athens (a.d. 355), where he was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and thus completed his transition to the Grecian idolatry.

This heathenism, however, was not a simple, spontaneous growth; it was all an artificial and morbid production. It was the heathenism of the Neo-Platonic, pantheistic eclecticism, a strange mixture of philosophy, poesy, and superstition, and, in Julian at least, in great part an imitation or caricature of Christianity. It sought to spiritualize and revive the old mythology by uniting with it oriental theosophemes and a few Christian ideas; taught a higher, abstract unity above the multiplicity of the national gods, genii, heroes, and natural powers; believed in immediate communications and revelations of the gods through dreams, visions, oracles, entrails of sacrifices, prodigies; and stood in league with all kinds of magical and theurgic arts.(60) Julian himself, with all his philosophical intelligence, credited the most insipid legends of the gods, or gave them a deeper, mystic meaning by the most arbitrary allegorical interpretation. He was in intimate personal intercourse with Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo, Hercules, who paid their nocturnal visits to his heated fancy, and assured him of their special protection. And he practised the art of divination as a master.(61) Among the various divinities he worshipped with peculiar devotion the great king Helios, or the god of the sun, whose servant he called himself, and whose ethereal light attracted him even in tender childhood with magic force. He regarded him as the centre of the universe, from which light, life, and salvation proceed upon all creatures.(62) In this view of a supreme divinity he made an approach to the Christian monotheism, but substituted an airy myth and pantheistic fancy for the only true and living God and the personal historical Christ.

His moral character corresponds with the preposterous nature of this system. With all his brilliant talents and stoical virtues, he wanted the genuine simplicity and naturalness, which are the foundation of all true greatness of mind and character. As his worship of Helios was a shadowy reflection of the Christian monotheism, and so far an involuntary tribute to the religion he opposed, so in his artificial and ostentatious asceticism we can only see a caricature of the ecclesiastical monasticism of the age which he so deeply despised for its humility and spirituality. He was full of affectation, vanity, sophistry, loquacity, and a master in the art of dissimulation. Everything he said or wrote was studied and calculated for effect. Instead of discerning the spirit of the age and putting himself at the head of the current of true progress, he identified himself with a party of no vigor nor promise, and thus fell into a false and untenable position, at variance with the mission of a ruler. Great minds, indeed, are always more or less at war with their age, as we may see in the reformers, in the apostles, nay, in Christ himself. But their antagonism proceeds from a clear knowledge of the real wants and a sincere devotion to the best interests of the age; it is all progressive and reformatory, and at last carries the deeper spirit of the age with itself, and raises it to a higher level. The antagonism of Julian, starting with a radical misconception of the tendency of history and animated by selfish ambition, was one of retrogression and reaction, and in addition, was devoted to a bad cause. He had all the faults, and therefore deserved the tragic fate, of a fanatical reactionist.

His apostasy from Christianity, to which he was probably never at heart committed, Julian himself dates as early as his twentieth year, a.d. 351. But while Constantius lived, he concealed his pagan sympathies with consummate hypocrisy, publicly observed Christian ceremonies, while secretly sacrificing to Jupiter and Helios, kept the feast of Epiphany in the church at Vienne so late as January, 361, and praised the emperor in the most extravagant style, though he thoroughly hated him, and after his death all the more bitterly mocked him.(63) For ten years he kept the mask. After December, 355, the student of books astonished the world with brilliant military and executive powers as Caesar in Gaul, which was at that time heavily threatened by the German barbarians; he won the enthusiastic love of the soldiers, and received from them the dignity of Augustus. Then he raised the standard of rebellion against his suspicious and envious imperial cousin and brother-in-law, and in 361 openly declared himself a friend of the gods. By the sudden death of Constantius in the same year he became sole head of the Roman empire, and in December, as the only remaining heir of the house of Constantine,(64) made his entry into Constantinople amidst universal applause and rejoicing over escape from civil war.

He immediately gave himself, with the utmost zeal, to the duties of his high station, unweariedly active as prince, general, judge, orator, high-priest, correspondent, and author. He sought to unite the fame of an Alexander, a Marcus Aurelius, a Plato, and a Diogenes in himself. His only recreation was a change of labor. He would use at once his hand in writing, his ear in hearing, and his voice in speaking. He considered his whole time due to his empire and the culture of his own mind. The eighteen short months of his reign Dec. 361-June 363) comprehend the plans of a life-long administration and most of his literary works. He practised the strictest economy in the public affairs, banished all useless luxury from his court, and dismissed with one decree whole hosts of barbers, cup-bearers, cooks, masters of ceremonies, and other superfluous officers, with whom the palace swarmed, but surrounded himself instead with equally useless pagan mystics, sophists, jugglers, theurgists, soothsayers, babblers, and scoffers, who now streamed from all quarters to the court. In striking contrast with his predecessors, he maintained the simplicity of a philosopher and an ascetic in his manner of life, and gratified his pride and vanity with contempt of the pomp and pleasures of the imperial purple. He lived chiefly on vegetable diet, abstaining now from this food, now from that, according to the taste of the god or goddess to whom the day was consecrated. He wore common clothing, usually slept on the floor, let his beard and nails grow, and, like the strict anachorets of Egypt, neglected the laws of decency and cleanliness.(65) This cynic eccentricity and vain ostentation certainly spoiled his reputation for simplicity and self-denial, and made him ridiculous. It evinced, also, not so much the boldness and wisdom of a reformer, as the pedantry and folly of a reactionist. In military and executive talent and personal bravery he was not inferior to Constantine; while in mind and literary culture he far excelled him, as well as in energy and moral self-control; and, doubtless to his own credit, he closed his public career at the age at which his uncle’s began; but he entirely lacked the clear, sound common sense of his great predecessor, and that practical statesmanship, which discerns the wants of the age, and acts according to them. He had more uncommon sense than common sense, and the latter is often even more important than the former, and indispensable to a good practical statesman. But his greatest fault as a ruler was his utterly false position towards the paramount question of his time: that of religion. This was the cause of that complete failure which made his reign as trackless as a meteor.

The ruling passion of Julian, and the soul of his short but most active, remarkable, and in its negative results instructive reign, was fanatical love of the pagan religion and bitter hatred of the Christian, at a time when the former had already forever given up to the latter the reins of government in the world. He considered it the great mission of his life to restore the worship of the gods, and to reduce the religion of Jesus first to a contemptible sect, and at last, if possible, to utter extinction from the earth. To this he believed himself called by the gods themselves, and in this faith he was confirmed by theurgic arts, visions, and dreams. To this end all the means, which talent, zeal, and power could command, were applied; and the failure must be attributed solely to the intrinsic folly and impracticability of the end itself.

I. To look, first, at the positive side of his plan, the restoration and reformation of heathenism:

He reinstated, in its ancient splendor, the worship of the gods at the public expense; called forth hosts of priests from concealment; conferred upon them all their former privileges, and showed them every honor; enjoined upon the soldiers and civil officers attendance at the forsaken temples and altars; forgot no god or goddess, though himself specially devoted to the worship of Apollo, or the sun; and notwithstanding his parsimony in other respects, caused the rarest birds and whole herds of bulls and lambs to be sacrificed, until the continuance of the species became a subject of concern.(66) He removed the cross and the monogram of Christ from the coins and standards, and replaced the former pagan symbols. He surrounded the statues and portraits of the emperors with the signs of idolatry, that every one might be compelled to bow before the gods, who would pay the emperors due respect. He advocated images of the gods on the same grounds on which afterwards the Christian iconolaters defended the images of the saints. If you love the emperor, if you love your father, says he, you like to see his portrait; so the friend of the gods loves to look upon their images, by which he is pervaded with reverence for the invisible gods, who are looking down upon him.

Julian led the way himself with a complete example. He discovered on every occasion the utmost zeal for the heathen religion, and performed, with the most scrupulous devotion, the offices of a pontifex maximus, which had been altogether neglected, although not formally abolished, under his two predecessors. Every morning and evening he sacrificed to the rising and setting sun, or the supreme light-god; every night, to the moon and the stars; every day, to some other divinity. Says Libanius, his heathen admirer: "He received the rising sun with blood, and attended him again with blood at his setting." As he could not go abroad so often as he would, he turned his palace into a temple and erected altars in his garden, which was kept purer than most chapels. "Wherever there was a temple," says the same writer, "whether in the city or on the hill or the mountain top, no matter how rough, or difficult of access, he ran to it." He prostrated himself devoutly before the altars and the images, not allowing the most violent storm to prevent him. Several times in a day, surrounded by priests and dancing women, he sacrificed a hundred bulls, himself furnishing the wood and kindling the flames. He used the knife himself, and as haruspex searched with his own hand the secrets of the future in the reeking entrails.

But his zeal found no echo, and only made him ridiculous in the eyes of cultivated heathens themselves. He complains repeatedly of the indifference of his party, and accuses one of his priests of a secret league with Christian bishops. The spectators at his sacrifices came not from devotion, but from curiosity, and grieved the devout emperor by their rounds of applause, as if he were simply a theatrical actor of religion. Often there were no spectators at all. When he endeavored to restore the oracle of Apollo Daphneus in the famous cypress grove at Antioch, and arranged for a magnificent procession, with libation, dances, and incense, he found in the temple one solitary old priest, and this priest ominously offered in sacrifice—a goose.(67)

At the same time, however, Julian sought to renovate and transform heathenism by incorporating with it the morals of Christianity; vainly thinking thus to bring it back to its original purity. In this he himself unwittingly and unwillingly bore witness to the poverty of the heathen religion, and paid the highest tribute to the Christian; and the Christians for this reason not inaptly called him an "ape of Christianity."

In the first place, he proposed to improve the irreclaimable priesthood after the model of the Christian clergy. The priests, as true mediators between the gods and men, should be constantly in the temples, should occupy themselves with holy things, should study no immoral or skeptical books of the school of Epicurus and Pyrrho, but the works of Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Chrysippus, and Zeno; they should visit no taverns nor theatres, should pursue no dishonorable trade, should give alms, practise hospitality, live in strict chastity and temperance, wear simple clothing, but in their official functions always appear in the costliest garments and most imposing dignity. He borrowed almost every feature of the then prevalent idea of the Christian priesthood, and applied it to the polytheistic religion.(68) Then, he borrowed from the constitution and worship of the church a hierarchical system of orders, and a sort of penitential discipline, with excommunication, absolution, and restoration, besides a fixed ritual embracing didactic and musical elements. Mitred priests in purple were to edify the people regularly with sermons; that is, with allegorical expositions and practical applications of tasteless and immoral mythological stories! Every temple was to have a well arranged choir, and the congregation its responses. And finally, Julian established in different provinces monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals for the sick, for orphans, and for foreigners without distinction of religion, appropriated to them considerable sums from the public treasury, and at the same time, though fruitlessly, invited voluntary contributions. He made the noteworthy concession, that the heathens did not help even their own brethren in faith; while the Jews never begged, and "the godless Galileans," as he malignantly styled the Christians, supplied not only their own, but even the heathen poor, and thus aided the worst of causes by a good practice.

But of course all these attempts to regenerate heathenism by foreign elements were utterly futile. They were like galvanizing a decaying corpse, or grafting fresh scions on a dead trunk, sowing good seed on a rock, or pouring new wine into old bottles, bursting the bottles and wasting the wine.

The negative side of Julian’s plan was the suppression and final extinction of Christianity.

In this he proceeded with extraordinary sagacity. He abstained from bloody persecution, because he would not forego the credit of philosophical toleration, nor give the church the glory of a new martyrdom. A history of three centuries also had proved that violent measures were fruitless. According to Libanius it was a principle with him, that fire and sword cannot change a man’s faith, and that persecution only begets hypocrites and martyrs. Finally, he doubtless perceived that the Christians were too numerous to be assailed by a general persecution without danger of a bloody civil war. Hence he oppressed the church "gently,"(69) under show of equity and universal toleration. He persecuted not so much the Christians as Christianity, by endeavoring to draw off its confessors. He thought to gain the result of persecution without incurring the personal reproach and the public danger of persecution itself. His disappointments, however, increased his bitterness, and had he returned victorious from the Persian war, he would probably have resorted to open violence. In fact, Gregory Nazianzen and Sozomen, and some heathen writers also, tell of local persecutions in the provinces, particularly at Anthusa and Alexandria, with which the emperor is, at least indirectly, to be charged. His officials acted in those cases, not under public orders indeed, but according to the secret wish of Julian, who ignored their illegal proceedings as long as he could, and then discovered his real views by lenient censure and substantial acquittal of the offending magistrates.

He first, therefore, employed against the Christians of all parties and sects the policy of toleration, in hope of their destroying each other by internal controversies. He permitted the orthodox bishops and all other clergy, who had been banished under Constantius, to return to their dioceses, and left Arians, Apollinarians, Novatians, Macedonians, Donatists, and so on, to themselves. He affected compassion for the "poor, blind, deluded Galileans, who forsook the most glorious privilege of man, the worship of the immortal gods, and instead of them worshipped dead men and dead men’s bones." He once even suffered himself to be insulted by a blind bishop, Maris of Chalcedon, who, when reminded by him, that the Galilean God could not restore his eyesight, answered: "I thank my God for my blindness, which spares me the painful sight of such an impious Apostate as thou." He afterwards, however, caused the bishop to be severely punished.(70) So in Antioch, also, he bore with philosophic equanimity the ridicule of the Christian populace, but avenged himself on the inhabitants of the city by unsparing satire in the Misopogon. His whole bearing towards the Christians was instinct with bitter hatred and accompanied with sarcastic mockery.(71) This betrays itself even in the contemptuous term, Galileans, which he constantly applies to them after the fashion of the Jews, and which he probably also commanded to be given them by others.(72) He considered them a sect of fanatics contemptible to men and hateful to the gods, and as atheists in open war with all that was sacred and divine in the world.(73) He sometimes had representatives of different parties dispute in his presence, and then exclaimed: "No wild beasts are so fierce and irreconcilable as the Galilean sectarians." When he found that toleration was rather profitable than hurtful to the church, and tended to soften the vehemence of doctrinal controversies, he proceeded, for example, to banish Athanasius, who was particularly offensive to him, from Alexandria, and even from Egypt, calling this greatest man of his age an insignificant manikin,(74) and reviling him with vulgar language, because through his influence many prominent heathens, especially heathen women, passed over to Christianity. His toleration, therefore, was neither that of genuine humanity, nor that of religious indifferentism, but a hypocritical mask for a fanatical love of heathenism and a bitter hatred of Christianity.

This appears in his open partiality and injustice against the Christians. His liberal patronage of heathenism was in itself an injury to Christianity. Nothing gave him greater joy than an apostasy, and he held out the temptation of splendid reward; thus himself employing the impure means of proselyting, for which he reproached the Christians. Once he even advocated conversion by violent measures. While he called heathens to all the higher offices, and, in case of their palpable disobedience, inflicted very mild punishment, if any at all, the Christians came to be everywhere disregarded, and their complaints dismissed from the tribunal with a mocking reference to their Master’s precept, to give their enemy their cloak also with their coat, and turn the other cheek to his blows.(75) They were removed from military and civil office, deprived of all their former privileges, oppressed with taxes, and compelled to restore without indemnity the temple property, with all their own improvements on it, and to contribute to the support of the public idolatry. Upon occasion of a controversy between the Arians and the orthodox at Edessa, Julian confiscated the church property and distributed it among his soldiers, under the sarcastic pretence of facilitating the Christians’ entrance into the kingdom of heaven, from which, according to the doctrine of their religion (comp. Matt. xix. 23, 24), riches might exclude them.

Equally unjust and tyrannical was the law, which placed all the state schools under the direction of heathens, and prohibited the Christians teaching the sciences and the arts.(76) Julian would thus deny Christian youth the advantages of education, and compel them either to sink in ignorance and barbarism, or to imbibe with the study of the classics in the heathen schools the principles of idolatry. In his view the Hellenic writings, especially the works of the poets, were not only literary, but also religious documents to which the heathens had an exclusive claim, and he regarded Christianity irreconcilable with genuine human culture. The Galileans, says he in ridicule, should content themselves with expounding Matthew and Luke in their churches, instead of profaning the glorious Greek authors. For it is preposterous and ungrateful, that they should study the writings of the classics, and yet despise the gods, whom the authors revered; since the gods were in fact the authors and guides of the minds of a Homer, a Hesiod, a Demosthenes, a Thucydides, an Isocrates, and a Lysias, and these writers consecrated their works to Mercury or the muses.(77) Hence he hated especially the learned church teachers, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzen, Apollinaris of Laodicea, who applied the classical culture to the refutation of heathenism and the defence of Christianity. To evade his interdict, the two Apollinaris produced with all haste Christian imitations of Homer, Pindar, Euripides, and Menander, which were considered by Sozomen equal to the originals, but soon passed into oblivion. Gregory also wrote the tragedy of "The Suffering Christ," and several hymns, which still exist. Thus these fathers bore witness to the indispensableness of classical literature for a higher Christian education, and the church has ever since maintained the same view.(78)

Julian further sought to promote his cause by literary assaults upon the Christian religion; himself writing, shortly before his death, and in the midst of his preparations for the Persian campaign, a bitter work against it, of which we shall speak more fully in a subsequent section.(79)

To the same hostile design against Christianity is to be referred the favor of Julian to its old hereditary enemy, Judaism.

The emperor, in an official document affected reverence for that ancient popular religion, and sympathy with its adherents, praised their firmness under misfortune, and condemned their oppressors. He exempted the Jews from burdensome taxation, and encouraged them even to return to the holy land and to rebuild the temple on Moriah in its original splendor. He appropriated considerable sums to this object from the public treasury, intrusted his accomplished minister Alypius with the supervision of the building, and promised, if he should return victorious from the Persian war, to honor with his own presence the solemnities of reconsecration and the restoration of the Mosaic sacrificial worship.(80)

His real purpose in this undertaking was certainly not to advance the Jewish religion; for in his work against the Christians he speaks with great contempt of the Old Testament, and ranks Moses and Solomon far below the pagan lawgivers and philosophers. His object in the rebuilding of the temple was rather, in the first place, to enhance the splendor of his reign, and thus gratify his personal vanity; and then most probably to put to shame the prophecy of Jesus respecting the destruction of the temple (which, however, was actually fulfilled three hundred years before once for all), to deprive the Christians of their most popular argument against the Jews, and to break the power of the new religion in Jerusalem.(81)

The Jews now poured from east and west into the holy city of their fathers, which from the time of Hadrian they had been forbidden to visit, and entered with fanatical zeal upon the great national religious work, in hope of the speedy irruption of the Messianic reign and the fulfilment of all the prophecies. Women, we are told, brought their costly ornaments, turned them into silver shovels and spades, and carried even the earth and stones of the holy spot in their silken aprons. But the united power of heathen emperor and Jewish nation was insufficient to restore a work which had been overthrown by the judgment of God. Repeated attempts at the building were utterly frustrated, as even a contemporary heathen historian of conceded credibility relates, by fiery eruptions from on subterranean vaults;(82) and, perhaps, as Christian writers add, by a violent whirlwind, lightning, earthquake, and miraculous signs, especially a luminous cross, in the heavens,(83) so that the workmen either perished in the flames, or fled from the devoted spot in terror and despair. Thus, instead of depriving the Christians of a support of their faith, Julian only furnished them a new argument in the ruins of this fruitless labor.

The providential frustration of this project is a symbol of the whole reign of Julian, which soon afterward sank into an early grave. As Caesar he had conquered the barbarian enemies of the Roman empire in the West; and now he proposed, as ruler of the world, to humble its enemies in the East, and by the conquest of Persia to win the renown of a second Alexander. He proudly rejected all proposals of peace; crossed the Tigris at the head of an army of sixty-five thousand men, after wintering in Antioch, and after solemn consultation of the oracle; took several fortified towns in Mesopotamia; exposed himself to every hardship and peril of war; restored at the same time, wherever he could, the worship of the heathen gods; but brought the army into a most critical position, and, in an unimportant nocturnal skirmish, received from a hostile arrow a mortal wound. He died soon after, on the 27th of June, 363, in the thirty-second year of his life; according to heathen testimony, in the proud repose and dignity of a Stoic philosopher, conversing of the glory of the soul (the immortality of which, however, he considered at best an uncertain opinion);(84) but according to later and somewhat doubtful Christian accounts, with the hopeless exclamation: "Galilean, thou hast conquered!"(85) The parting address to his friends, which Ammianus puts into his mouth, is altogether characteristic. It reminds one of the last hours of Socrates, without the natural simplicity of the original, and with a strong admixture of self-complacence and theatrical affectation. His body was taken, at his own direction, to Tarsus, the birthplace of the apostle Paul, whom he hated more than any other apostle, and a monument was erected to him there, with a simple inscription, which calls him a good ruler and a brave warrior, but says nothing of his religion.

So died, in the prime of life, a prince, who darkened his brilliant military, executive, and literary talents, and a rare energy, by fanatical zeal for a false religion and opposition to the true; perverted them to a useless and wicked end; and earned, instead of immortal honor, the shame of an unsuccessful Apostate. Had he lived longer, he would probably have plunged the empire into the sad distraction of a religious civil war. The Christians were generally expecting a bloody persecution in case of his successful return from the Persian war. We need, therefore, the less wonder that they abhorred his memory. At Antioch they celebrated his death by festal dancings in the churches and theatres.(86) Even the celebrated divine and orator, Gregory Nazianzen, compared him to Pharaoh, Ahab, and Nebuchadnezzar.(87) It has been reserved for the more impartial historiography of modern times to do justice to his nobler qualities, and to endeavor to excuse, or at least to account for his utterly false position toward Christianity, by his perverted education, the despotism of his predecessor, and the imperfections of the church in his day.

With Julian himself fell also his artificial, galvanized heathenism, "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leaving no wreck behind," save the great doctrine, that it is impossible to swim against the stream of history or to stop the progress of Christianity. The heathen philosophers and soothsayers, who had basked in his favor, fell back into obscurity. In the dispersion of their dream they found no comfort from their superstition. Libanius charges the guilt upon his own gods, who suffered Constantius to reign twenty years, and Julian hardly twenty months. But the Christians could learn from it, what Gregory Nazianzen had said in the beginning of this reign, that the church had far more to fear from enemies within, than from without.

§ 5. From Jovian to Theodosius. a.d. 363–392.

I. The heathen sources here, besides Ammianus Marcellinus (who unfortunately breaks off at the death of Valens), Zosimus and Eunapius (who are very partial), are: Libanius: JUpe;r tw'n iJerw'n, or Oratio pro templis (first complete ed. by L. de Sinner, in Novus Patrum Grace. saec. iv. delectus, Par. 1842). Symmachus: Epist. x. 61 (ed. Pareus, Frcf. 1642). On the Christian side: Ambrose: Epist. xvii. and xviii. ad Valentinian. II. Prudentius: Adv. Symmachum. Augustin: De civitate Dei, l. v. c. 24–26 (on the emperors from Jovinian to Theodosius, especially the latter, whom he greatly glorifies). Socr.: l. iii. c. 22 sqq. Sozom.: l. vi. c. 3 sqq. Theodor.: l. iv. c. 1 sqq. Cod. Theodos.: l. ix.–xvi.

De la Bleterie: Histoire de l’empereur Jovien. Amsterd. 1740, 2 vols. Gibbon: chap. xxv–xxviii. Schröckh: vii. p. 213 sqq. Stuffken: De Theodosii M. in rem christianam meritis. Lugd. Batav. 1828

From this time heathenism approached, with slow but steady step, its inevitable dissolution, until it found an inglorious grave amid the storms of the great migration and the ruins of the empire of the Caesars, and in its death proclaimed the victory of Christianity. Emperors, bishops, and monks committed indeed manifold injustice in destroying temples and confiscating property; but that injustice was nothing compared with the bloody persecution of Christianity for three hundred years. The heathenism of ancient Greece and Rome died of internal decay, which no human power could prevent.

After Julian, the succession of Christian emperors continued unbroken. On the day of his death, which was also the extinction of the Constantinian family, the general Jovian, a Christian (363–364), was chosen emperor by the army. He concluded with the Persians a disadvantageous but necessary peace, replaced the cross in the labarum, and restored to the church her privileges, but, beyond this, declared universal toleration in the spirit of Constantine. Under the circumstances, this was plainly the wisest policy. Like Constantine, also, he abstained from all interference with the internal affairs of the church, though for himself holding the Nicene faith and warmly favorable to Athanasius. He died in the thirty-third year of his age, after a brief reign of eight months. Augustin says, God took him away sooner than Julian, that no emperor might become a Christian for the sake of Constantine’s good fortune, but only for the sake of eternal life.

His successor, Valentinian I. (died 375), though generally inclined to despotic measures, declared likewise for the policy of religious freedom,(88) and, though personally an adherent of the Nicene orthodoxy, kept aloof from the doctrinal controversies; while his brother and co-emperor, Valens, who reigned in the East till 378, favored the Arians and persecuted the Catholics. Both, however, prohibited bloody sacrifices(89) and divination. Maximin, the representative of Valentinian at Rome, proceeded with savage cruelty against all who were found guilty of the crime of magic, especially the Roman aristocracy. Soothsayers were burnt alive, while their meaner accomplices were beaten to death by straps loaded with lead. In almost every case recorded the magical arts can be traced to pagan religious usages.

Under this reign heathenism was for the first time officially designated as paganismus, that is, peasant-religion; because it had almost entirely died out in the cities, and maintained only a decrepit and obscure existence in retired villages.(90) What an inversion of the state of things in the second century, when Celsus contemptuously called Christianity a religion of mechanics and slaves! Of course large exceptions must in both cases be made. Especially in Rome, many of the oldest and most respectable families for a long time still adhered to the heathen traditions, and the city appears to have preserved until the latter part of the fourth century a hundred and fifty-two temples and a hundred and eighty-three smaller chapels and altars of patron deities.(91) But advocates of the old religion—a Themistius, a Libanius, and a Symmachus—limited themselves to the claim of toleration, and thus, in their oppressed condition, became, as formerly the Christians were, and as the persecuted sects in the Catholic church and the Protestant state churches since have been, advocates of religious freedom.

The same toleration continued under Gratian, son and successor of Valentinian (375–383). After a time, however; under the influence of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, this emperor went a step further. He laid aside the title and dignity of Pontifex Maximus, confiscated the temple property, abolished most of the privileges of the priests and vestal virgins, and withdrew, at least in part, the appropriation from the public treasury for their support.(92) By this step heathenism became, like Christianity before Constantine and now in the American republic, dependent on the voluntary system, while, unlike Christianity, it had no spirit of self-sacrifice, no energy of self-preservation. The withdrawal of the public support cut its lifestring, and left it still to exist for a time by vis inertiae alone. Gratian also, in spite of the protest of the heathen party, removed in 382 the statue and the altar of Victoria, the goddess of victory, in the senate building at Rome, where once the senators used to take their oath, scatter incense, and offer sacrifice; though he was obliged still to tolerate there the elsewhere forbidden sacrifices and the public support of some heathen festivities. Inspired by Ambrose with great zeal for the Catholic faith, he refused freedom to heretics, and prohibited the public assemblies of the Eunomians, Photinians, and Manichaeans.

His brother, Valentinian II. (383–392), rejected the renewed petition of the Romans for the restoration of the altar of Victoria (384). The eloquent and truly venerable prefect Symmachus, who, as princeps senatus and first Pontifex in Rome, was now the spokesman of the heathen party, prayed the emperor in a dignified and elegant address, but in the tone of apologetic diffidence, to make a distinction between his private religion and the religio urbis, to respect the authority of antiquity and the rights of the venerable city, which had attained the dominion of the world under the worship of the gods. But Ambrose of Milan represented to the emperor, in the firm tone of episcopal dignity and conscious success, that the granting of the petition would be a sanctioning of heathenism and a renunciation of his Christian convictions; denied, that the greatness of Rome was due to idolatry, to which indeed her subjugated enemies were likewise addicted; and contrasted the power of Christianity, which had greatly increased under persecution and had produced whole hosts of consecrated virgins and ascetics, with the weakness of heathenism, which, with all its privileges, could hardly maintain the number of its seven vestals, and could show no works of benevolence and mercy for the oppressed. The same petition was renewed in 389 to Theodosius, but again through the influence of Ambrose rejected. The last national sanctuary of the Romans had hopelessly fallen. The triumph, which the heathen party gained under the usurper Eugenius (392–394), lasted but a couple of years; and after his defeat by Theodosius, six hundred of the most distinguished patrician families, the Annii, Probi, Anicii, Olybii, Paulini, Bassi, Gracchi, &c., are said by Prudentius to have gone over at once to the Christian religion.

§ 6. Theodosius the Great and his Successors. a.d. 392–550.

J. R. Stuffken: Diss. de Theod. M. in rem. Christ. meritis. Leyden, 1828. M. Fléchier: Histoire de Theodose le Grand. Par. 1860.

The final suppression of heathenism is usually, though not quite justly, ascribed to the emperor Theodosius I., who, on this account, as well as for his victories over the Goths, his wise legislation, and other services to the empire, bears the distinction of the Great, and deserves, for his personal virtues, to be counted among the best emperors of Rome.(93) A native of Spain, son of a very worthy general of the same name, he was called by Gratian to be co-emperor in the East in a time of great danger from the threatening barbarians (379), and after the death of Valentinian, he rose to the head of the empire (392–395). He labored for the unity, of the state and the supremacy of the Catholic religion. He was a decided adherent of the Nicene orthodoxy, procured it the victory at the second ecumenical council (381), gave it all the privileges of the state religion, and issued a series of rigid laws against all heretics and schismatics. In his treatment of heathenism, for a time he only enforced the existing prohibition of sacrifice for purposes of magic and divination (385), but gradually extended it to the whole sacrificial worship. In the year 391 he prohibited, under heavy fine, the visiting of a heathen temple for a religious purpose; in the following year, even the private performance of libations and other pagan rites. The practice of idolatry was therefore henceforth a political offence, as Constantius had already, though prematurely, declared it to be, and was subjected to the severest penalties.(94)

Yet Theodosius by no means pressed the execution of these laws in places where the heathen party retained considerable strength; he did not exclude heathens from public office, and allowed them at least full liberty of thought and speech. His countryman, the Christian poet Prudentius, states with approbation, that in the distribution of the secular offices, he looked not at religion, but at merit and talent, and raised the heathen Symmachus to the dignity of consul.(95) The emperor likewise appointed the heathen rhetorician, Themistius, prefect of Constantinople, and even intrusted him with the education of his son Arcadius. He acknowledged personal friendship toward Libanius, who addressed to him his celebrated plea for the temples in 384 or 390; though it is doubtful whether he actually delivered it in the imperial presence. In short this emperor stood in such favor with the heathens, that after his death he was enrolled by the Senate, according to ancient custom, among the gods.(96)

Theodosius issued no law for the destruction of temples. He only continued Gratian’s policy of confiscating the temple property and withdrawing entirely the public contribution to the support of idolatry. But in many places, especially in the East, the fanaticism of the monks and the Christian populace broke out in a rage for destruction, which Libanius bitterly laments. He calls these iconoclastic monks "men in black clothes, as voracious as elephants, and insatiably thirsty, but concealing their sensuality under an artificial paleness." The belief of the Christians, that the heathen gods were living beings, demons,(97) and dwelt in the temples, was the leading influence here, and overshadowed all artistic and archaeological considerations. In Alexandria, a chief seat of the Neo-Platonic mysticism, there arose, at the instigation of the violent and unspiritual bishop Theophilus,(98) a bloody conflict between heathens and Christians, in which the colossal statue and the magnificent temple of Serapis, next to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome the proudest monument of heathen architecture,(99) was destroyed, without verifying the current expectation that upon its destruction the heavens would fall (391). The power of superstition once broken by this decisive blow, the other temples in Egypt soon met a similar fate; though the eloquent ruins of the works of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Roman emperors in the valley of the Nile still stand and cast their twilight into the mysterious darkness of antiquity. Marcellus, bishop of Apamea in Syria, accompanied by an armed band of soldiers and gladiators, proceeded with the same zeal against the monuments and vital centres of heathen worship in his diocese, but was burnt alive for it by the enraged heathens, who went unpunished for the murder. In Gaul, St. Martin of Tours, between the years 375 and 400, destroyed a multitude of temples and images, and built churches and cloisters in their stead.

But we also hear important protests from the church against this pious vandalism. Says Chrysostom at Antioch in the beginning of this reign, in his beautiful tract on the martyr Babylas: "Christians are not to destroy error by force and violence, but should work the salvation of men by persuasion, instruction, and love." In the same spirit says Augustin, though not quite consistently: "Let us first obliterate the idols in the hearts of the heathen, and once they become Christians they will either themselves invite us to the execution of so good a work [the destruction of the idols], or anticipate us in it. Now we must pray for them, and not exasperate them." Yet he commended the severe laws of the emperors against idolatry.

In the west the work of destruction was not systematically carried on, and the many ruined temples of Greece and Italy at this day prove that even then reason and taste sometimes prevailed over the rude caprice of fanaticism, and that the maxim, It is easier to tear down than to build up, has its exceptions.

With the death of Theodosius the empire again fell into two parts, which were never afterward reunited. The weak sons and successors of this prince, Arcadius in the east (395–408) and Honorius in the west (395–423), and likewise Theodosius II., or the younger (son of Arcadius, 408–450), and Valentinian III. (423–455), repeated and in some cases added to the laws of the previous reign against the heathen. In the year 408, Honorius even issued an edict excluding heathens from civil and military office;(100) and in 423 appeared another edict, which questioned the existence of heathens.(101) But in the first place, such laws, in the then critical condition of the empire amidst the confusion of the great migration, especially in the West, could be but imperfectly enforced; and in the next place, the frequent repetition of them itself proves that heathenism still had its votaries. This fact is witnessed also by various heathen writers. Zosimus wrote his "New History," down to the year 410, under the reign and at the court of the younger Theodosius (appearing in the high office of comes and advocatus fisci, as he styles himself), in bitter prejudice against the Christian emperors. In many places the Christians, in their work of demolishing the idols, were murdered by the infuriated pagans.

Meantime, however, there was cruelty also on the Christian side. One of the last instances of it was the terrible tragedy of Hypatia. This lady, a teacher of the Neo-Platonic philosophy in Alexandria, distinguished for her beauty, her intelligence, her learning, and her virtue, and esteemed both by Christians and by heathens, was seized in the open street by the Christian populace and fanatical monks, perhaps not without the connivance of the violent bishop Cyril, thrust out from her carriage, dragged to the cathedral, completely stripped, barbarously murdered with shells before the altar, and then torn to pieces and burnt, a.d. 415.(102) Socrates, who relates this, adds: "It brought great censure both on Cyril and on the Alexandrian church."

§ 7. The Downfall of Heathenism.

The final dissolution of heathenism in the eastern empire may be dated from the middle of the fifth century. In the year 435 Theodosius II. commanded the temples to be destroyed or turned into churches. There still appear some heathens in civil office and at court so late as the beginning of the reign of Justinian I. (527–567). But this despotic emperor prohibited heathenism as a form of worship in the empire on pain of death, and in 529 abolished the last intellectual seminary of it, the philosophical school of Athens, which had stood nine hundred years. At that time just seven philosophers were teaching in that school,(103) the shades of the ancient seven sages of Greece,—a striking play of history, like the name of the last west-Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, or, in contemptuous diminutive, Augustulus, combining the names of the founder of the city and the founder of the empire.

In the West, heathenism maintained itself until near the middle of the sixth century, and even later, partly as a private religious conviction among many cultivated and aristocratic families in Rome, partly even in the full form of worship in the remote provinces and on the mountains of Sicily, Sardinia,(104) and Corsica, and partly in heathen customs and popular usages like the gladiatorial shows still extant in Rome in 404, and the wanton Lupercalia, a sort of heathen carnival, the feast of Lupercus, the god of herds, still celebrated with all its excesses in February, 495. But, in general, it may be said that the Graeco-Roman heathenism, as a system of worship, was buried under the ruins of the western empire, which sunk under the storms of the great migration. It is remarkable that the northern barbarians labored with the same zeal in the destruction of idolatry as in the destruction of the empire, and really promoted the victory of the Christian religion. The Gothic king Alaric, on entering Rome, expressly ordered that the churches of the apostles Peter and Paul should be spared, as inviolable sanctuaries; and he showed a humanity, which Augustin justly attributes to the influence of Christianity (even perverted Arian Christianity) on these barbarous people. The Christian name, he says, which the heathen blaspheme, has effected not the destruction, but the salvation of the city.(105) Odoacer, who put an end to the western Roman empire in 476, was incited to his expedition into Italy by St. Severin, and, though himself an Arian, showed great regard to the catholic bishops. The same is true of his conqueror and successor, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who was recognized by the east-Roman emperor Anastasius as king of Italy (a.d. 500), and was likewise an Arian. Thus between the barbarians and the Romans, as between the Romans and the Greeks and in a measure also the Jews, the conquered gave laws to the conquerors. Christianity triumphed over both.

This is the end of Graeco-Roman heathenism, with its wisdom, and beauty. It fell a victim to a slow but steady process of incurable consumption. Its downfall is a sublime tragedy which, with all our abhorrence of idolatry, we cannot witness without a certain sadness. At the first appearance of Christianity it comprised all the wisdom, literature, art, and political power of the civilized world, and led all into the field against the weaponless religion of the crucified Nazarene. After a conflict of four or five centuries it lay prostrate in the dust without hope of resurrection. With the outward protection of the state, it lost all power, and had not even the courage of martyrdom; while the Christian church showed countless hosts of confessors and blood-witnesses, and Judaism lives to-day in spite of all persecution. The expectation, that Christianity would fall about the year 398, after an existence of three hundred and sixty-five years,(106) turned out in the fulfilment to relate to heathenism itself. The last glimmer of life in the old religion was its pitiable prayer for toleration and its lamentation over the ruin of the empire. Its best elements took refuge in the church and became converted, or at least took Christian names. Now the gods were dethroned, oracles and prodigies ceased, sibylline books were burned, temples were destroyed, or transformed into churches, or still stand as memorials of the victory of Christianity.(107)

But although ancient Greece and Rome have fallen forever, the spirit of Graeco-Roman paganism is not extinct. It still lives in the natural heart of man, which at this day as much as ever needs regeneration by the spirit of God. It lives also in many idolatrous and superstitious usages of the Greek and Roman churches, against which the pure spirit of Christianity has instinctively protested from the beginning, and will protest, till all remains of gross and refined idolatry shall be outwardly as well as inwardly overcome, and baptized and sanctified not only with water, but also with the spirit and fire of the gospel.

Finally the better genius of ancient Greece and Rome still lives in the immortal productions of their poets, philosophers, historians, and orators,—yet no longer an enemy, but a friend and servant of Christ. What is truly great, and noble, and beautiful can never perish. The classic literature had prepared the way for the gospel, in the sphere of natural culture, and was to be turned thenceforth into a weapon for its defence. It passed, like the Old Testament, as a rightful inheritance, into the possession of the Christian church, which saved those precious works of genius through the ravages of the migration of nations and the darkness of the middle ages, and used them as material in the rearing of the temple of modern civilization. The word of the great apostle of the Gentiles was here fulfilled: "All things are yours." The ancient classics, delivered from the demoniacal possession of idolatry, have come into the service of the only true and living God, once "unknown" to them, but now everywhere revealed, and are thus enabled to fulfil their true mission as the preparatory tutors of youth for Christian learning and culture. This is the noblest, the most worthy, and most complete victory of Christianity, transforming the enemy into friend and ally.

Original Footnotes

(1; original 1): Comp. vol. i. § 57. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting and terrible disease (morbus pedicularis), described with great minuteness by Eusebius, H. E. viii. 16, and Lactantius, De mort. persec. c. 33."His body," says Gibbon, ch. xiv. "swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which have given their name to a most loathsome disease." Diocletian had withdrawn from the throne in 305, and in 313 put an end to his embittered life by suicide. In his retirement he found more pleasure in raising cabbage than he had found in ruling the empire; a confession we may readily believe. (President Lincoln of the United States, during the dark days of the civil war in Dec. 1862, declared that he would gladly exchange his position with any common soldier in the tented field.) Maximin, who kept up the persecution in the East, even after the toleration edict, as long as he could, died likewise a violent death by poison, in 313. In this tragical end of their last three imperial persecutors the Christians saw a palpable judgment of God.

(2; original 2): His full name in Latin is Caius Flavius Valerius Aurelius Claudius Constantinus Magnus.

(3; original 3): jEpivskopo" tw'n ejkto" [pragmavtwn], viz.: th'" ejkklhsiva", in distinction from the proper bishops, the ejpivskopoi tw'n ei[sw th'" ejkklhsiva". Vid. Eus.: Vit Const. iv. 24. Comp. § 24.

(4; original 4): A similar view is substantially expressed by the great historian Niebuhr, Vorträge über Röm. Geschichte, 1848. iii. 302. Mosheim, in his work on the First Three Centuries, p. 965 sqq. (Murdock’s Transl. ii. 460 sqq.) labors to prove at length that Constantine was no hypocrite, but sincerely believed, during the greater part of his life, that the Christian religion was the only true religion. Burckhardt, the most recent biographer of Constantine, represents him as a great politician of decided genius, but destitute of moral principle and religious interest. So also Dr. Baur.

(5; original 5): The haruspices, or interpreters of sacrifices, who foretold future events from the entrails of victims.

(6; original 6): According to Eusebius (Vit. Const. l. iii. c. 48) he dedicated Constantinople to "the God of the martyrs," but, according to Zosimus (Hist. ii. c. 31), to two female deities, probably Mary and Fortuna. Subsequently the city stood under the special protection of the Virgin Mary.

(7; original 7): His successors also did the same, down to Gratian, 375, who renounced the title, then become quite empty.

(8; original 8): Euseb. Laud. Const. c. 5.

(9; original 9): All Christian accounts speak of his continence, but Julian insinuates the contrary, and charges him with the old Roman vice of voracious gluttony (Caes. 329, 335).

(10; original 10): Eusebius justifies this procedure towards an enemy of the Christians by the laws of war. But what becomes of the breach of a solemn pledge? The murder of Crispus and Fausta he passes over in prudent silence, in violation of the highest duty of the historian to relate the truth and the whole truth.

(11; original 11): Zosimus, certainly in heathen prejudice and slanderous extravagance, ascribes to Constantine under the instigation of his mother Helena, who was furious at the loss of her favorite grandson, the death of two women, the innocent Fausta and an adulteress, the supposed mother of his three successors; Philostorgius, on the contrary, declares Fausta guilty (H. E. ii. 4; only fragmentary). Then again, older witnesses indirectly contradict this whole view; two orations, namely, of the next following reign, which imply, that Fausta survived the death of her son, the younger Constantine, who outlived his father by three years. Comp. Julian. Orat. i., and Monod. in Const. Jun. c. 4, ad Calcem Eutrop., cited by Gibbon, ch. xviii., notes 25 and 26. Evagrius denies both the murder of Crispus and of Fausta, though only on account of the silence of Eusebius, whose extreme partiality for his imperial friend seriously impairs the value of his narrative. Gibbon and still more decidedly Niebuhr (Vorträge über Röm. Geschichte, iii. 302) are inclined to acquit Constantine of all guilt in the death of Fausta. The latest biographer, Burckhardt (l.c. p. 375) charges him with it rather hastily, without even mentioning the critical difficulties in the way. So also Stanley (l.c. p. 300).

(12; original 12): The heathen historians extol the earlier part of his reign, and depreciate the later. Thus Eutropius, x. 6: "In primo imperii tempore optimis principibus, ultimo mediis comparandus." With this judgment Gibbon agrees (ch. xviii.), presenting in Constantine an inverted Augustus: "In the life of Augustus we behold the tyrant of the republic, converted, almost by imperceptible degrees, into the father of his country and of human kind. In that of Constantine, we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his subjects with love, and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation." But this theory of progressive degeneracy, adopted also by F. C. Schlosser in his Weltgeschichte, by Stanley, l.c. p. 297, and many others, is as untenable as the opposite view of a progressive improvement, held by Eusebius, Mosheim, and other ecclesiastical historians. For, on the one hand, the earlier life of Constantine has such features of cruelty as the surrender of the conquered barbarian kings to the wild beasts in the ampitheatre at Treves in 310 or 311, for which he was lauded by a heathen orator; the ungenerous conduct toward Herculius, his father-in-law; the murder of the infant son of Maxentius; and the triumphal exhibition of the head of Maxentius on his entrance into Rome in 312. On the other hand his most humane laws, such as the abolition of the gladiatorial shows and of licentious and cruel rites, date from his later reign.

(13; original 13): According to Baronius (Ann. 306, n. 16) and others he was born in Britain, because an ancient panegyric of 307 says that Constantine ennobled Britain by his birth (tu Britannias nobiles oriendo fecisti); but this may be understood of his royal as well as of his natural birth, since he was there proclaimed Caesar by the soldiers. The other opinion rests also on ancient testimonies, and is held by Pagi, Tillemont, and most of the recent historians.

(14; original 14): Ambrose (De obitu Theodos.) calls her stabulariam, when Constantius made her acquaintance.

(15; original 15): This is the more probable view, and rests on good authority. Zosimus and even the Paschal Chronicle call Helena the concubine of Constantius, and Constantine illegitimate. But in this case it would be difficult to understand that he was so well treated at the court of Diocletian and elected Caesar without opposition, since Constantius had three sons and three daughters by a legal wife, Theodora. It is possible, however, that Helena was first a concubine and afterwards legally married. Constantine, when emperor, took good care of her position and bestowed upon her the title of Augusta and empress with appropriate honors.

(16; original 16): Even Zosimus gives the most unfavorable account of him.

(17; original 17): "It was," says Milman (Hist. of Christianity, p. 288, N. York ed.), "the first advance to the military Christianity of the Middle Ages; a modification of the pure religion of the Gospel, if directly opposed to its genuine principles, still apparently indispensable to the social progress of man; through which the Roman empire and the barbarous nations, which were blended together in the vast European and Christian system, must necessarily have passed before they could arrive at a higher civilization and a purer Christianity."

(18; original 18): De mortibus persecutorum, c. 44 (ed. Lips. II. 278 sq.): "Commonitus est in quiete Constantinus, ut coeleste signum Dei notaret in scutis, atque ita proelium committeret. Fecit ut jussus est, et transverse X litera, summo capite circumflexo Christum in scutis notat [i.e., he ordered the name of Christ or the two first letters X and P to be put on the shields of his soldiers]. Quo signo armatus exercitus capit ferrum."—This work is indeed by Burckhardt and others denied to Lactantius, but was at all events composed soon after the event, about 314 or 315, while Constantine was as yet on good terms with Licinius, to whom the author, c. 46, ascribes a similar vision of an angel, who is said to have taught him a form of prayer on his expedition against the heathen tyrant Maximin.

(19; original 19): In his Vita Constant. i. 27-30, composed about 338, a work more panegyrical than historical, and abounding in vague declamation and circumlocution. But in his Church History, written before 326, though he has good occasion (l. ix. c. 8, 9), Eusebius says nothing of the occurrence, whether through oversight or ignorance, or of purpose, it is hard to decide. In any case the silence casts suspicion on the details of his subsequent story, and has been urged against it not only by Gibbon, but also by Lardner and others.

(20; original 20): This is probably a mistake or an exaggeration. For if a whole army consisting of many thousand soldiers of every nation had seen the vision of the cross, Eusebius might have cited a number of living witnesses, and Constantine might have dispensed with a solemn oath. But on the other hand the two heathen witnesses (see below) extend the vision likewise to the soldiers.

(21; original 21): touvtw/ [tw'/ shmeivw/]nivka_ Hac, or Hoc [sc. signo] vince, or vinces. Eusebius leaves the impression that the inscription was in Greek. But Nicephorus and Zonaras say that it was in Latin.

(22; original 22): Hist. Eccl. ix, 9. Comp. the similar account of Sozomenus, H. E. i. 3.

(23; original 23): Nazar. Paneg. in Const. c. 14: "In ore denique est omnium Galliarum [this would seem to indicate a pretty general rumor of some supernatural assistance], exercitus visos, qui se divinitus missos prae se ferebant," etc. Comp. Baronius, Annal. ad ann. 312, n. 11. This historian adduces also (n. 14) another and still older pagan testimony from an anonymous panegyrical orator, who, in 313, speaks of a certain undefined omen which filled the soldiers of Constantine with misgivings and fears, while it emboldened him to the combat. Baronius and J. H. Newman (in his "Essay on Miracles") plausibly suppose this omen to have been the cross.

(24; original 24): This is the view of the older historians, Protestant as well as Catholic. Among more modern writers on the subject it has hardly any advocates of note, except Döllinger (R.C.), J. H.Newman (in his "Essay on Miracles," published in 1842, before his transition to Romanism, and prefixed to the first volume of his translation of Fleury), and Guericke (Lutheran). Comp. also De Broglie, i. 219 and 442.

(25; original 25): So more or less distinctly Hoornebeck (of Leyden), Thomasius, Arnold, Lardner, Gibbon, and Waddington. The last writer (Hist. of the Church, vol. i. 171) disposes of it too summarily by the remark that "this flattering fable may very safely be consigned to contempt and oblivion." Burckhardt, the most recent biographer of Constantine, is of the same opinion. He considers the story as a joint fabrication of Eusebius and the emperor, and of no historical value whatever (Die Zeit Constantins des Gr. 1853, pp. 394 and 395). Lardner saddles the lie exclusively upon the emperor (although he admits him otherwise to have been a sincere Christian), and tries to prove that Eusebius himself hardly believed it.

(26; original 26): This is substantially the theory of J. A. Fabricius (in a special dissertation), Schröckh (vol. v. 83), Manso, Heinichen (in the first Excursus to his ed. of Euseb), Gieseler, Neander, Milman, Robertson, and Stanley. Gieseler (vol. i. § 56, note 29) mentions similar cross-like clouds which appeared in Germany, Dec. 1517 and 1552, and were mistaken by contemporary Lutherans for supernatural signs. Stanley (Lectures on the Eastern Church, p. 288) refers to the natural phenomenon known by the name of "parhelion," which in an afternoon sky not unfrequently assumes almost the form of the cross. He also brings in, as a new illustration, the Aurora Borealis which appeared in November, 1848, and was variously interpreted, in France as forming the letters L. N., in view of the approaching election of Louis Napoleon, in Rome as the blood of the murdered Rossi crying for vengeance from heaven against his assassins. Mosheim, after a lengthy discussion of the subject in his large work on the ante-Nicene age, comes to no definite conclusion, but favors the hypothesis of a mere dream or a psychological illusion. Neander and Robertson connect with the supposition of a natural phenomenon in the skies a dream of Constantine which reflected the optical vision of the day. Keim, the latest writer on the subject, l.c. p. 89, admits the dream, but denies the cross in the clouds. So Mosheim.

(27; original 27): Dr. Murdock (notes to his translation of Mosheim) raises the additional objection, which has some force from his Puritan standpoint: "If the miracle of the luminous cross was a reality, has not God himself sanctioned the use of the cross as the appointed symbol of our religion? so that there is no superstition in the use of it, but the Catholics are correct and the Protestants in an error on this subject?"

(28; original 28): Theodoret says that Constantine was called not of men or by men (oujk ajp j ajnqrwvpou, oujde; di j ajnqrwvpou, Gal. i. 1), but from heaven, as the divine apostle Paul was (oujranovqen kata; to;n qei'on ajpovstolon). Hist. Eccl. l. i. c. 2.

(29; original 29): So Sozomenus, H. E. lib. i. cap. 3, expressly represents it: o{nar eito; tou' staurou' shmei'on selagivzonetc. Afterwards he gives, it is true, the fuller report of Eusebius in his own words. Comp. Rufin. ix. 9; Euseb. Vit. Const. i. 29; Lact. De mort. persec. 44, and the allusions of the heathen panegyrists.

(30; original 30): Licinius before the battle with Maximin had a vision of an angel who taught him a prayer for victory (Lactant. De mort. persec. c. 46). Julian the Apostate was even more superstitious in this respect than his Christian uncle, and fully addicted to the whole train of omens, presages, prodigies, spectres, dreams, visions, auguries, and oracles (Comp. below, § 4). On his expedition against the Persians he was supposed by Libanius to have been surrounded by a whole army of gods, which, however, in the view of Gregory of Nazianzen, was a host of demons. See Ullmann, Gregory of Naz., p. 100.

(31; original 31): According to the account of his friend, Dr. Philip Doddridge, who learned the facts from Gardiner, as Eusebius from Constantine. When engaged in serious meditation on a Sabbath night in July, 1719, Gardiner "suddenly thought he saw an unusual blaze of light fall on the book while he was reading, which he at first imagined might have happened by some accident in the candle. But lifting up his eyes, he apprehended, to his extreme amazement, that there was before him, as it were suspended in the air, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, surrounded with a glory; and was impressed as if a voice, or something equivalent to a voice, had come to him, to this effect: ’O sinner, did I suffer this for thee, and are these the returns?’ " After this event he changed from a dissolute worldling to an earnest and godly man. But the whole apparition was probably, after all, merely an inward one. For the report adds as to the voice: "Whether this were an audible voice, or only a strong impression on his mind, equally striking, he did not seem confident, though he judged it to be the former. He thought he was awake. But everybody knows how easy it is towards midnight to fall into a doze over a dull or even a good book. It is very probable then that this apparition resolves itself into a significant dream which marked an epoch in his life. No reflecting person will on that account doubt the seriousness of Gardiner’s conversion, which was amply proved by his whole subsequent life, even far more than Constantine’s was.

(32; original 32): Numbers xii. 6: "I the Lord will make myself known in a vision, and will speak in a dream." Job xxxiii. 15, 16: "In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, then he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction." For actual facts see Gen. xxxi. 10, 24; xxxvii. 5; 1 Kings iii. 5; Dan. ii. 4, 36; vii. 1; Matt. i. 20; ii. 12, 13, 19, 22; Acts x. 17; xxii. 17, 18.

(33; original 33): Histor. ii. 16.

(34; original 34): Lavbwron, also lavbouron; derived not from labor, nor from lavfuron, i.e. praeda, nor from labei'n, but probably from a barbarian root, otherwise unknown, and introduced into the Roman terminology, long before Constantine, by the Celtic or Germanic recruits. Comp. Du Cange, Glossar., and Suicer, Thesaur. s. h. v. The labarum, as described by Eusebius, who saw it himself (Vita Const. i. 30), consisted of a long spear overlaid with gold, and a crosspiece of wood, from which hung a square flag of purple cloth embroidered and covered with precious stones. On the of top of the shaft was a crown composed of gold and precious stones, and containing the monogram of Christ (see next note), and just under this crown was a likeness the emperor and his sons in gold. The emperor told Eusebius (I. ii. c. 7) some incredible things about this labarum, e.g. that none of its bearers was ever hurt by the darts of the enemy.

(35; original 35): X and P, the first two letters of the name of Christ, so written upon one another as to make the form of the cross: P with x (Rho with Chi on the lower part) or P with—(Rho with a dash on the lower part to make a cross), or aPw (i.e. Christos—Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end with a chi on the stem to make the cross), and similar forms, of which Münter (Sinnbilder der alten Christen, p. 36 sqq.) has collected from ancient coins, vessels, and tombstones more than twenty. The monogram, as well as the sign of the cross, was in use among the Christians Iong before Constantine, probably as early as the Antonines and Hadrian. Yea, the standards and trophies of victory generally had the appearance of a cross, as Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Justin, and other apologists of the second century told the heathens. According to Killen (Ancient Church, p. 317, note), who quotes Aringhus, Roma subterranea, ii. p. 567, as his authority, the famous monogram (of course in a different sense) is found even before Christ on coins of the Ptolemies. The only thing new, therefore, was the union of this symbol, in its Christian sense and application, with the Roman military standard.

(36; original 36): Eus., H. E. ix. 9: Touvtw/ tw'/ swthriwvdei (salutari, not singulari, as Rufinus has it)shmeivw/, tw' ajlhqinw'/ ejlevgcw/ tw'" ajndriva" , thvn povlin uJmw'n ajpo; zugou' tou' turavnnou diaswqei'san ejleuqevrwsa, k. t. l. Gibbon, however thinks it more probable, that at least the labarum and the inscription date only from the second or third visit of Constantine to Rome.

(37; original 37): "Instinctu Divinitatis et mentis magnitudine." Divinitas may be taken as an ambiguous word like Providence, "which veils Constantine’s passage from Paganism to Christianity."

(38; original 38): Cicero says, pro Raberio, c. 5: "Nomen ipsum crucis absit non modo a corpore civium Romanorum, sed etiam a cogitatione, oculis, auribus." With other ancient heathens, however, the Egyptians, the Buddhists, and even the aborigines of Mexico, the cross seems to have been in use as a religious symbol. Socrates relates (H. E. v. 17) that at the destruction of the temple of Serapis, among the hieroglyphic inscriptions forms of crosses were found, which pagans and Christians alike referred to their respective religions. Some of the heathen converts conversant with hieroglyphic characters interpreted the form of the cross to mean the Life to come. According to Prescott (Conquest of Mexico, iii. 338-340) the Spaniards found the cross among the objects of worship in the idol temples of Anahnac.

(39; original 39): Even church teachers long before Constantine, Justin, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, in downright opposition to this pagan antipathy, had found the sign of the cross everywhere on the face of nature and of human life; in the military banners and trophies of victory, in the ship with swelling sails and extended oars, in the plow in the flying bird, in man swimming or praying, in the features of the face and the form of the body with outstretched arms. Hence the daily use of the of the cross by the early Christians. Comp. vol. ii. § 77 (p. 269 sqq.).

(40; original 40): This in the second edict of toleration, not the third, as was formerly supposed. An edict of 312 does not exist and rests on a mistake. See vol. ii. § 25, p. 72.

(41; original 41): "Haec ordinanda esse credidimus ... ut daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potestatem sequendi religionem, quamquisque voluisset ... ut nulli omnino facultatem obnegandam putaremus, qui vel observationi Christianorum, vel ei religioni mentem suam dederet, quam ipse sibi aptissimam esse sentiret ... ut, amotis omnibus ominino conditionibus [by which are meant, no doubt, the restrictions of toleration in the edict of 311], nunc libere ac simpliciter unusquisque eorum qui eandem observandae religioni Christianorum gerunt voluntatem, citra ullam inquietudinem et molestiam sui id ipsum observare contendant." Lact., De mort, persec. c. 48 (ii. p. 282, ed. Fritzsche). Eusebius gives the edict in a stiff andobscure Greek translation, with some variations, H. E. x. 5. Comp. Niceph. H. E. vii. 41. Also a special essay on the edicts of toleration, by Theod. Keim in the Tübinger Theolog. Jahrbücher for 1852, and Mason, persecution of Diocletian, pp. 299 and 326.

(42; original 42): Compare the remarkable passages of Tertullian, cited in vol. ii. § 13, p. 35. Lactantius likewise, in the beginning of the fourth century, says, Instit. div. l. v. c. 19 (i. p. 267 sq. ed. Lips.): "Non est opus vi et injuria, quia religio cogi non potest; verbis potius, quam verberibus res agenda est, ut sit voluntas .... Defendenda religio est, non occidendo, sed moriendo; non saevitia, sed patientia; non scelere, sed fide .... Nam si sanguine, si tormentis, si malo religionem defendere velis, jam non defendetur illa, sed polluetur atque violabitur. Nihil est enim tam voluntarium, quam religio, in qua si animus sacrificantis aversus est, jam sublata, jam nulla est." Comp. c. 20.

(43; original 43): For the Acta St. Silvestri and the H. Eccl. of Nicephorus Callist. vii. 34 (in Baronius, ad ann. 324) are of course not reliable authority on this point.

(44; original 44): He commanded the Christians, for example, to hold their large assemblies in open fields instead of in the churches, because the fresh air was more wholesome for them than the close atmosphere in a building!

(45; original 45): "Jubente Deo," says he in one of his laws. Cod. Theodos. l. xiii. tit. v. leg. 7. Later writers ascribe the founding of Constantinople to a nocturnal vision of the emperor, and an injunction of the Virgin Mary, who was revered as patroness, one might almost suppose as goddess, of the city.

(46; original 46): The Turks still call it emphatically the city. For Stambul is a corruption of Istambul, which means: eij" th;n povlin.

(47; original 47): The most offensive of these is the colossal bronze statue of Apollo, pretended to be the work of Phidias, which Constantine set up in the middle of the Forum on a pillar of porphyry, a hundred and twenty feet high, and which, at least according to later interpretations, served to represent the emperor himself with the attributes of Christ and the god of the sun! So says the author of Antiquit. Constant. in Banduri, and J. v. Hammer: Constantinopolis u. der Bosphorus, i. 162 (cited in Milman’s notes to Gibbon). Nothing now remains of the pillar but a mutilated piece.

(48; original 48): Euseb. V. C. iv. 29-33. Burckhardt, l.c. p. 400, gives little credit to this whole account of Eusebius, and thus intimates the charge of deliberate falsehood.

(49; original 49): Euseb. Vit. Const. iv. 29 ad finem.

(50; original 50): Const. Oratio ad Sanctorum coetum, was preserved in Greek translation by Eusebius as an appendix to his biography of the emperor.

(51; original 51): The pretended baptism of Constantine by the Roman bishop Sylvester in 324, and his bestowment of lands on the pope in connection with it, is a mediaeval fiction, still unblushingly defended indeed by Baronius (ad ann. 324, No. 43-49), but long since given up by other Roman Catholic historians, such as Noris, Tillemont, and Valesius. It is sufficiently refuted by the contemporary testimony of Eusebius alone (Vit. Const. iv. 61, 62), who places the baptism of Constantine at the end of his life, and minutely describes it; and Socrates, Sozomen, Ambrose, and Jerome coincide with him.

(52; original 52): Hence Jerome says, Constantine was baptized into Arianism. And Dr. Newman, the ex-Tractarian, remarks, that in conferring his benefaction on the church he burdened it with the bequest of an heresy, which outlived his age by many centuries, and still exists in its effects in the divisions of the East (The Arians of the 4th Century, 1854, p. 138). But Eusebius (not the church historian) was probably the nearest bishop, and acted here not as a party leader. Constantine, too, in spite of the influence which the Arians had over him in his later years, considered himself constantly a true adherent of the Nicene faith, and he is reported by Theodoret (H. E. I. 32) to have ordered the recall of Athanasius from exile on his deathbed, in spite of the opposition of the Arian Eusebius. He was in these matters frequently misled by misrepresentations, and cared more for peace than for truth. The deeper significance of the dogmatic controversy was entirely beyond his sphere. Gibbon is right in this matter: "The credulous monarch, unskilled in the stratagems of theological warfare, might be deceived by the modest and specious professions of the heretics, whose sentiments he never perfectly understood; and while he protected Arius, and persecuted Athanasius, he still considered the council of Nice as the bulwark of the Christian faith, and the peculiar glory of his own reign." Ch. xxi.

(53; original 53): Stanley, l.c. p. 320.

(54; original 54): This church became the burial place of the Byzantine emperors, till in the fourth crusade the coffins were rifled and the bodies cast out. Mahomet II. destroyed the church and built in its place the magnificent mosque which bears his name. See von Hammer, i. 390.

(55; original 55): Comp the Acta Sact. ad 21 Maii, p. 13 sq. Niebuhr justly remarks: "When certain oriental writers call Constantine " equal to the Apostles,’ they do not know what they are saying; and to speak of him as a ’saint’ is a profanation of the word."

(56; original 56): So Julius Firmicus Maternus, author of a tract De errore profanarum religionum, written about 348 and dedicated to the emperors Constantius and Constans.

(57; original 57): Song of Sol. v. 2.

(58; original 58): So Gregory of Naz. regarded it, and Tillemont justly remarks, Mem. vii. 322: "Le grand nombre de pechez dont beaucoup de Chrétiens estoient coupables, fut cause que Dieu donna a ce prince la puissance imperials pour les punir; et sa malice fut comme une verge entre les mains de Dieu pour les corriger."

(59; original 59): Jul. ad Athen. p. 271; Socr. iii. 1; Sozom. v. 2; Theod. iii. 2.

(60; original 60): Comp. vol. i. § 61.

(61; original 61): Libanius says of him, Epit. p. 582: ... mantevwn te toi'" arivstoi" crwvmeno", aujtov" te w[n oujdamw'n ejn th'/ tevcnh/ deuvtero". Ammanius Marcellinus calls him, xxv. 4, praesagiorum sciscitationi nimiae deditus, superstitiosus magis quam sacrorum legitimus observator. Comp. Sozom. v. 2.

(62; original 62): Comp. his fourth Oratio, which is devoted to the praise of Helios.

(63; original 63): Comp. Jul. Orat. i. in Constantii laudes; Epist. ad Athenienses, p. 270; Caesares, p. 335 sq. Even heathen authors concede his dissimulation, as Ammianus Marc. xxi. 2, comp. xxii. 5, and Libanius, who excuses him with the plea of regard to his security, Opp. p. 528, ed. Reiske.

(64; original 64): His older brother, Gallus, for some time emperor at Antioch, had already been justly deposed by Constantius in 854, and beheaded, for his entire incapacity and his merciless cruelty.

(65; original 65): In the Misopogon (from misevw and pwvgwn, the beard-hater, i.e. hater of bearded philosophers), his witty apology to the refined Antiochians for his philosophical beard, p. 338 sq., he boasts of this cynic coarseness, and describes, with great complacence, his long nails, his ink-stained hands, his rough, uncombed beard, inhabited (horribile dictu) by certain qhriva. It should not be forgotten, however, that contemporary writers give him the credit of a strict chastity, which raises him far above most heathen princes, and which furnishes another proof to the involuntary influence of Christian asceticism upon his life. Libanius asserts in his panegyric, that Julian, before his brief married life, and after the death of his wife, a sister of Constantius, never knew a woman; and Namertinus calls his lectulus, "Vestalium toris purior." Add to this the testimony of the honest Ammianus Marcellinus, and the silence of Christian antagonists. Comp. Gibbon, c. xxii. note 50; and Carwithen and Lyall: Hist. of the Chr. Ch., etc. p. 54. On the other hand, the Christians accused him of all sorts of secret crimes; for instance, the butchering of boys and girls (Gregor. Orat. iii. p. 91, and Theodor. iii. 26, 27), which was probably an unfounded inference from his fanatical zeal for bloody sacrifices and divinations.

(66; original 66): Ammianus Marc. xxv. 4 ... innumeras sine parsimonia pecudes mactans ut aestemaretur, si revertisset de Parthis, boves jam defuturos.

(67; original 67): Misopog. p. 362 sq., where Julian himself relates this ludicrous scene, and vents his anger at the Antiochians for squandering the rich incomes of the temple upon Christianity and worldly pleasures. Dr. Baur, l.c. p. 17, justly remarks on Julian’s zeal for idolatry: "Seine ganze persönliche Erscheinung, der Mangel an innerer Haltung in seinem Benehmen gegen Heiden und Christen, die stete Unruhe und schwärmerische Aufregung, in welcher er sich befand, wenn er von Tempel zu Tempel eilte, auf allen Altären opferte und nichts unversucht liess, um den heidnischen Cultus, dessen höchstes Vorbild er selbst als Pontifex maximum sein wollte, in seinem vollen Glanz und Gepränge, mit alten seinen Ceremonien und Mysterien wieder herzustellen, macht einen Eindruck, der es kaum verkennen lässt, wie wenig er sich selbst das Unnatürliche und Erfolglose eines solchen Strebens verbergen konnte."

(68; original 68): Julian’s views on the heathen priests are laid down especially in his 49th Epistle to Ursacius, the highpriest of Gaul, p. 429, and in the fragment of an oration, p. 300 sqq., ed. Spanh. Ullmann, in his work on Gregory of Nazianzen, p. 527 sqq., draws an interesting parallel between Gregory’s and Julian’s ideal of a priest.

(69; original 69): jEpieikw'" ejbiav zeto, as Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. iv., expresses it.

(70; original 70): Socrates: H. E. iii. 12.

(71; original 71): Gibbon well says, ch. xxiii.: "He affected to pity the unhappy Christians, but his pity was degraded by contempt, his contempt was embittered by hatred; and the sentiments of Julian were expressed in a style of sarcastic wit, which inflicts a deep and deadly wound whenever it issues from the mouth of a sovereign."

(72; original 72): Perhaps there lay at the bottom of this also a secret fear of the name of Christ, as Warburton (p. 35) suggests; since the Neo-Platonists believed in the mysterious virtue of names.

(73; original 73): jAsebei'", dussebei'" , a[qeoi.. Their religion he calls a mwriva or ajpovnoia. Comp. Ep. 7 (ap. Heyler, p. 190).

(74; original 74): j vAqrwpivsko" eujtelhv".

(75; original 75): Matt. v. 89, 40.

(76; original 76): Gregory of Naz., Orat. iv., censures the emperor bitterly for forbidding the Christians what was the common property of all rational men, as if it were the exclusive possession of the Greeks. Even the heathen Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 10, condemns this measure: "Illud autem erat inclemens, obruendum perenni silentio, quod arcebat docere magistros rhetoricos et grammaticos, ritus Christiani cultores." Gibbon is equally decided. Directly, Julian forbade the Christians only to teach, but indirectly also to learn, the classical literature; as they were of course unwilling to go to heathen schools.

(77; original 77): Epist. 42.

(78; original 78): Dr. Baur (l.c. p. 42) unjustly charges the fathers with the contradiction of making use of the classics as necessary means of education, and yet of condemning heathenism as a work of Satan. But this was only the one side, which has its element of truth, especially as applied to the heathen religion; while on the other side they acknowledged, with Justin M., Clement and Origen, the working of the divine Logos in the Hellenic philosophy and poetry preparing the way for Christianity. The indiscriminate condemnation of classical literature dates from a later period, from Gregory I.

(79; original 79): See below, § 9.

(80; original 80): Jul. Epist. 25, which is addressed to the Jews, and is mentioned also by Sozomen, v. 22.

(81; original 81): Gibbon, ch. xxiii.: "The restoration of the Jewish temple was secretly connected with the ruin of the Christian church."

(82; original 82): Julian himself seems to admit the failure of the work, but, more prudently, is silent as to the cause, in a fragment of an epistle or oration, p. 295, ed. Spanh., according to the usual interpretation of this passage. He here asks: Tiv peri; tou' new; fuvsousi, tou' par j aujtoi'", trivton ajnatrapevnto" , ejgeiromevnou de; oujde; nu'n:: "What will they [i.e., the Jewish prophets] say of their own temple, which has been three times destroyed, and is not even now restored?" "This I have said (he continues) with no wish to reproach them, for I myself, at so late a day, had intended to rebuild it for the honor of him who was worshipped there." He probably saw in the event a sign of the divine displeasure with the religion of the Jews, or an accidental misfortune, but intended, after his return from the Persian war, to attempt the work anew. It is by no means certain, however, that the threefold destruction of the temple here spoken of refers to Julian’s own reign. He may have meant, and probably did mean, the destruction by the Assyrians and the destruction by the Romans; and as to the third destruction, it may be a mere exaggeration, or may refer to the profanation of the temple by Antiochus, or to his own reign. (Comp. Warburton and Lardner on this point.) The impartial Ammianus Marcellinus, himself a professed pagan, a friend of Julian and his companion in arms, tells us more particularly, lib. xxiii. 1, that Julian, being desirous of perpetuating the memory of his reign by some great work, resolved to rebuild at vast expense the magnificent temple at Jerusalem, and committed the conduct of this enterprise to Alypius at Antioch, and then continues: "Quum itaque rei fortiter instaret Alypius, juvaretque provinciae rector, metuendi globi flammarum prope fundamenta crebris assultibus erumpentes fecere locum exustis aliquoties operantibus inaccessum; hocque modo clemento destinatius repellente, cessavit inceptum." ("Alypius, therefore, set himself vigorously to the work, and was assisted by the governor of the province, when fearful balls of fire broke out near the foundations, and continued their attacks until they made the place inaccessible to the workmen, after repeated scorchings; and thus, the fierce element obstinately repelling them, he gave up his attempt.") Michaelis, Lardner (who, however, is disposed to doubt the whole story), Gibbon, Guizot, Milman (note on Gibbon), Gieseler, and others, endeavor to explain this as a natural phenomenon, resulting from the bituminous nature of the soil and the subterranean vaults and reservoirs of the temple hill, of which Josephus and Tacitus speak. When Herod, in building the temple, wished to penetrate into the tomb of David, to obtain its treasures, fire likewise broke out and consumed the workmen, according to Joseph. Antiqu. Jud. xvi. 7, § 1. But when Titus undermined the temple, a.d. 70, when Hadrian built there the Aelia Capitolina, in 135, and when Omar built a Turkish mosque in 644, no such destructive phenomena occurred as far as we know. We must therefore believe, that Providence itself, by these natural causes, prevented the rebuilding of the national sanctuary of the Jews.

(83; original 83): Gregory Nazianzen, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Philostorgius, Rufinus, Ambrose, Chrysostom; all of whom regard the event as supernatural, although they differ somewhat in detail. Theodoret speaks first of a violent whirlwind, which scattered about vast quantities of lime, sand, and other building materials, and was followed by a storm of thunder and lightning; Socrates mentions fire from heaven, which melted the workmen’s tools, spades, axes, and saws; both add an earthquake, which threw up the stones of the old foundations, filled up the excavation, and, as Rufinus has it, threw down the neighboring buildings. At length a calm succeeded the commotion, and according to Gregory a luminous cross surrounded by a circle appeared in the sky, nay, crosses were impressed upon the bodies of the persons present, which were shining by night (Rufinus), and would not wash out (Socrates). Of these writers however, Gregory alone is strictly a contemporary witness, relating the event in the year of its occurrence, 363, and that with the assurance that even the heathens did not call it in question. (Orat. iv. p. 110-113). Next to him come Ambrose, and Chrysostom, who speaks of this event several times. The Greek and Roman church historians, and Warburton, Mosheim, Schröckh, Neander, Guericke, Kurtz, Newman, Robertson, and others, of the Protestant, vindicate the miraculous, or at least providential, character of the remarkable event. Comp. also J. H. Newman (since gone over to Romanism): "Essay on the Miracles recorded in ecclesiastical history," prefixed to the Oxford Tractarian translation of Fleury’s Eccles. Hist. from 381-400 (Oxford, 1842) I. p. clxxv.–clxxxv. Warburton and Newman defend even the crosses, and refer to similar cases, for instance one in England in 1610, where marks of a cross of a phosphoric nature and resembling meteoric phenomena appeared in connection with lightning and produced by electricity. In Julian’s case they assumed that the immediate cause which set all these various physical agents in motion, as in the case of the destruction of Sodom, was supernatural.

(84; original 84): Ammianus, l. xxv. 3. He was himself in the campaign, and served in the body guard of the emperor; thus having the best opportunity for observation.

(85; original 85): Sozomen, vi. 2; Theodoret, iii. 25 (Nenivkhka" Galilai'e ); then, somewhat differing, Philostorgius, vii. 15. Gregory Nazianzen, on the contrary, who elsewhere presents Julian in the worst light, knows nothing of this exclamation, to which one may apply the Italian maxim: "Se non è vero, è ben trovato." The above-named historians mention also other incidents of the death, not very credible; e.g. that he threw toward heaven a handful of blood from his wound; that he blasphemed the heathen gods; that Christ appeared to him, &c. Sozomen quotes also the groundless assertion of Libanius, that the mortal wound was inflicted not by a Persian, but by a Christian, and was not ashamed to add, that he can hardly be blamed who had done this " noble deed for God and his religion" (dia; qeo;n kai; qrhskeivan h}n ejphv/nesen)!This is, so far as I know, the first instance, within the Christian church, of the vindication of tyrannicide ad majorem Dei gloriam.

(86; original 86): Theodor. H. E. iii. 27.

(87; original 87): The Christian poet, Prudentius, forms an exception, in his well known just estimate of Julian (Apotheos. 450 sqq.), which Gibbon also cites:

——"Ductor fortissimus armis;

Conditor et legum celeberrimus; ore manuque

Consultor patriae; sed non consultor habendae

Religionis; amans tercentûm millia Divûm.

Perfidus ille Deo, sed non et perfidus orbi."

(88; original 88): Cod. Theodos. l. ix. tit. 16, I. 9 (of the year 371): Testes sunt leges a me in exordio imperii mei datae, quibus unicuique, quod animo imbibisset, colendi libera facultas tributa est. This is confirmed by Ammian. Marc. l. xxx. c. 9.

(89; original 89): Libanius, l.c. (ed. Reiske, ii. 163): to; quvein iJerei'a —ejkwluvqh para; toi'n ajdelfoin, ajllj j ouj to; lianwtovn. No such law, however, has come down to us.

(90; original 90): The word pagani (from pagus), properly villagers, peasantry, then equivalent to rude, simple, ignorant, ijdiwvth", a[frwn, first occurs in the religious sense in a law of Valentinian, of 368 (Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit 2, I. 18), and came into general use under Theodosius, instead of the earlier terms: gentes, gentiles, nationes, Graeci, cultores simulacrorum, etc. The English heathen and heathenism (from heath), and the German Heiden and Heidenthum (from Heide), have a similar meaning, and are probably imitations of the Latin paganismus in its later usage.

(91; original 91): According to the Descriptiones Urbis of Publicus Victor and Sextus Rufus Festus, which cannot have been composed before, nor long after, the reign of Valentinian. Comp. Beugnot, l.c. i. 266, and Robertson, l.c. p. 260.

(92; original 92): Cod. Theos. xii. 1, 75; xvi. 10, 20. Symmach. Ep. x. 61. Ambrose, Ep. xvii.

(93; original 93): Gibbon gives a very favorable estimate of his character, and justly charges the heathen Zosimus with gross prejudice against Theodosius. Schlosser and Milman also extol him.

(94; original 94): Cod. Theos. xvi. 10, 12.

(95; original 95): Prudent. in Symrnachum (written A-D. 403), l. i. v. 617 sqq.:

"Denique pro meritis terrestribus aequa rependens

Munera sacricolis summos impertit honores

Dux bonus, et certare sinit cum laud e suorum,

Nec pago implicitos [i.e. paganos, heathen] per debita culmina mundi

Ire viros prohibet: quoniam coelestia nunquam

Terrenis solitum per iter gradientibus obstant.

Ipse magistratum tibi consulis, ipse tribunal

Contulit."

(96; original 96): Claudian, who at this period roused pagan poetry from its long sleep and derived his inspiration from the glory of Theodosius and his family, represents his death as an ascension to the gods. De tertio consulatu Honorii, v. 162 sqq.

(97; original 97): Ambrose, Resp. ad Symmachum: "Dii enim gentium daemonia, ut Scriptura docet." Comp. Ps. xcvi. 5, Septuag.: Pavnte" oiJ qeoi; tw'n ejqnw'n daimovnia. On this principle especially St. Martin of Tours proceeded in his zeal against the idol temples of Gaul. He asserted that the devil himself frequently assumed the visible form of Jupiter and Mercury, of Minerva and Venus, to protect their sinking sanctuaries. See Sulpit. Severna: Vita B. Martini, c. 4 and 6.

(98; original 98): Gibbon styles him, unfortunately not without reason, "a bold, bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood."

(99; original 99): See an extended description of the Serapeion in Gibbon, and especially in Milman: Hist. of Christianity, &c., book iii. c. 8 (p. 377 sqq. N. York ed.).

(100; original 100): Cod. Theodos. xvi. 5, 42: "Eos qui Catholicae sectae sunt inimici, intra palatium militare prohibemus. Nullus nobis sit aliqua ratione conjunctus, qui a nobis fide et religione discordat." According to the somewhat doubtful but usually admitted testimony of Zosimus, l. v. c. 46, this edict was revoked, in consequence of the threatened resignation of a pagan general, Generid, whom Honorius could not dispense with. But Theodosius issued similar laws in the east from 410 to 439. See Gibbon, Milman, Schröckh, and Neander, l.c. The latter erroneously places the edict of Honorius in the year 416, instead of 408.

(101; original 101): Theodos. II. in Cod. Theodos. xvi. 10, 22: "Paganos, qui supersunt, quamquam jam nullos esse credamus, promulgatarum legum jamdudum praescripta compescant." But between 321 and 426 appeared no less than eight laws against apostasy to heathenism; showing that many nominal Christians changed their religion according to circumstances.

(102; original 102): Socrat. vii. 15 (who considers Cyril guilty); the letters of Synesius, a pupil of Hypatia; and Philostorg. viii. 9. Comp. also Schröckh, vii. 45 sqq. and Wernsdorf: De Hypatia, philosopha Alex. diss. iv. Viteb. 1748. The "Hypatia" of Charles Kingsley is a historical didactic romance, with a polemical aim against the Puseyite overvaluation of patristic Christianity.

(103; original 103): Damascius of Syria, Simplicius of Cilicia (the most celebrated), Eulalius of Phrygia, Priscianus of Lydia, Isidore of Gaza, Hermias, and Diogenes. They had the courage to prefer exile to the renunciation of their convictions, and found with King Chosroes of Persia a welcome reception, but afterwards returned into the Roman empire under promise of toleration. Comp. Schröckh, xvi. p. 74 sqq.

(104; original 104): On these remains of heathenism in the West comp. the citations of Gieseler, i. §79, not. 22 and 23 (i. 2. p. 38-40. Engl. ed. of N. York, i. p. 219 sq.).

(105; original 105): Aug.: De Civit. Dei, l. i. c. 1-6.

(106; original 106): Augustin mentions this story, De Civit. Dei, xviii. 53. Gieseler (vol. i. § 79, not. 17) derives it from a heathen perversion of the Christian (heretical) expectation of the second coming of Christ and the end of the world; referring to Philastr. haer. 106: "Alia est haeresis de anno annunciato ambigens, quod ait propheta Esaias: Annuntiare annum Dei acceptabilem et diem retributionis. Putant ergo quidam, quod ex quo venit Dominus usque ad consummationem saeculi non plus nec minus fieri annorum numerum, nisi CCCLXV usque ad Christi Domini iterum de coelo divinam praesentiam."

(107; original 107): Comp. August.: Epist. 232, where he thus eloquently addresses the heathen: Videtis simulacrorum templa partim sine reparatione collapsa, partim diruta, partim clausa, partim in usus alienos commutata; ipsaque simulacra vel confringi, vel incendi, vel includi, vel destrui; atque ipsas huius saeculi potestates quae aliquando pro simulacris populum Christianum persequebantur, victas et domitas, non a repugnantibus sed a morientibus Christianis, et contra eadem simulacra, pro quibus Christianos occidebant, impetus suos legesque vertisse et imperii nobilissimi eminentissimum culmen ad sepulcrum piscatoris Petri submisso diademate supplicare."

脚注

Best guess 对照表

正文及中文脚注中带上标 * 的外文为 best guess，尚未逐项核实；原始字串保留如下。

原字串	Best guess	语言	出现位置	说明
Eij" tovn bivon tou' makarivou Kwnstantivnou tou' basilevw"	Εἰς τὸν βίον τοῦ μακαρίου Κωνσταντίνου τοῦ βασιλέως	Greek	正文第 5 段	据旧字体编码推复书名及重音。
Jistoriva neva	Ἱστορία νέα	Greek	正文第 6 段	推复佐西穆斯书名；J 表示粗气符。
Misopwvgon	Μισοπώγων	Greek	正文第 55 段	按编码推复《厌须者》希腊文题名。
kata; Cristianw'n	κατὰ Χριστιανῶν	Greek	正文第 55 段	按编码推复，保留原题名措辞。
jEpitavfio" ejp j jIoulianw'/	Ἐπιτάφιος ἐπ’ Ἰουλιανῷ	Greek	正文第 55 段	推复题名、省音符及与格下标。
JUpe;r tw'n iJerw'n	Ὑπὲρ τῶν ἱερῶν	Greek	正文第 87 段	据编码及拉丁文题名推复。
ejkklhsiva	ἐκκλησία	Greek	脚注 3	仅推复给定片段；属格末尾 ς 的编码落在条目之外。
ejkklhsiva	ἐκκλησία	Greek	脚注 3	仅推复给定片段；上下文末尾另有表示 ς 的引号。
jEpivskopo" tw'n ejkto" [pragmavtwn]	Ἐπίσκοπος τῶν ἐκτὸς [πραγμάτων]	Greek	脚注 3	按编码推复；ἐκτός 的重音据连贯语境处理。
th'"	τῆς	Greek	脚注 3	旧字体中的撇号、引号分别对应扬抑符与末尾 ς。
ejpivskopoi tw'n ei[sw th'"	ἐπίσκοποι τῶν εἴσω τῆς	Greek	脚注 3	按编码推复，保留原片段边界。
touvtw/ [tw'/ shmeivw/]nivka_	τούτῳ [τῷ σημείῳ] νίκα	Greek	脚注 21	推复与格下标及词间空格；末尾下划线疑为排版残留。
oujk ajp j ajnqrwvpou, oujde; di j ajnqrwvpou	οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπου, οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου	Greek	脚注 28	按编码推复；不据经文另改原引文单复数。
oujranovqen kata; to;n qei'on ajpovstolon	οὐρανόθεν κατὰ τὸν θεῖον ἀπόστολον	Greek	脚注 28	按旧字体编码推复气符和重音。
shmei'on	σημεῖον	Greek	脚注 29	按编码推复扬抑重音。
o{nar ei\de to; tou' staurou'	ὄναρ εἶδε τὸ τοῦ σταυροῦ	Greek	脚注 29	按编码推复；保留原文 εἶδε 形式。
selagivzon	σελαγίζον	Greek	脚注 29	按编码推复，与后接英文 etc. 分开。
Lavbwron	Λάβωρον	Greek	脚注 34	按编码保留原文 ω 拼写，不改成其他常见形式。
lavbouron	λάβουρον	Greek	脚注 34	按编码保留作者列出的 ου 异体。
lavfuron	λάφυρον	Greek	脚注 34	按编码推复，与 praeda 的释义相合。
labei'n	λαβεῖν	Greek	脚注 34	按编码推复不定式及扬抑符。
aPw	α☧ω	Greek	脚注 35	据释文推测为两侧 α、ω 夹基督字母合体；原组合的精确布局不确定。
Touvtw/ tw'/ swthriwvdei	Τούτῳ τῷ σωτηριώδει	Greek	脚注 36	按编码推复与格形式及下标。
shmeivw/, tw' ajlhqinw'/ ejlevgcw/ tw'" ajndriva" , thvn povlin uJmw'n ajpo; zugou' tou' turavnnou diaswqei'san ejleuqevrwsa, k. t. l.	σημείῳ, τῷ ἀληθινῷ ἐλέγχῳ τῆς ἀνδρίας, τὴν πόλιν ὑμῶν ἀπὸ ζυγοῦ τοῦ τυράννου διασωθεῖσαν ἐλευθέρωσα, κ. τ. λ.	Greek	脚注 36	据句法推复冠词 τῷ、τῆς；原编码两处疑有损坏，保留 ἀνδρίας 拼写。
eij" th;n povlin	εἰς τὴν πόλιν	Greek	脚注 46	按旧字体编码推复。
mantevwn te toi'" arivstoi" crwvmeno", aujtov" te w[n oujdamw'n ejn th'/ tevcnh/ deuvtero"	μάντεων τε τοῖς ἀρίστοις χρώμενος, αὐτός τε ὢν οὐδαμῶν ἐν τῇ τέχνῃ δεύτερος	Greek	脚注 61	推复气符重音；保留原串 οὐδαμῶν，不擅改异读。
misevw	μισέω	Greek	脚注 65	按编码推复，保留未缩合动词形式。
pwvgwn	πώγων	Greek	脚注 65	按编码推复名词及重音。
qhriva	θηρία	Greek	脚注 65	按编码推复中性复数词形。
jEpieikw'" ejbiav zeto	Ἐπιεικῶς ἐβιάζετο	Greek	脚注 69	推复编码并合并动词内部误空格。
jAsebei'", dussebei'" , a[qeoi	Ἀσεβεῖς, δυσσεβεῖς, ἄθεοι	Greek	脚注 73	按编码推复三个称谓，保留 δυσσεβεῖς 拼写。
mwriva	μωρία	Greek	脚注 73	按旧字体编码推复。
ajpovnoia	ἀπόνοια	Greek	脚注 73	按旧字体编码推复。
j vAqrwpivsko" eujtelhv"	Ἀνθρωπίσκος εὐτελής	Greek	脚注 74	据词形推测原串漏 n；首部空格及重音编码亦有错位。
Tiv peri; tou' new; fuvsousi, tou' par j aujtoi'", trivton ajnatrapevnto" , ejgeiromevnou de; oujde; nu'n	Τί περὶ τοῦ νεὼ φήσουσι, τοῦ παρ’ αὐτοῖς, τρίτον ἀνατραπέντος, ἐγειρομένου δὲ οὐδὲ νῦν	Greek	脚注 82	据释义推测 fuvsousi 为 φήσουσι 的误码；保留原 νεὼ 形式。
Nenivkhka" Galilai'e	Νενίκηκας Γαλιλαῖε	Greek	脚注 85	按编码推复，保留原文标点范围。
dia; qeo;n kai; qrhskeivan h}n ejphv/nesen	διὰ θεὸν καὶ θρησκείαν ἣν ἐπῄνεσεν	Greek	脚注 85	按编码推复气符、重音及下标。
to; quvein iJerei'a —ejkwluvqh para; toi'n ajdelfoin, ajllj j ouj to; lianwtovn	τὸ θύειν ἱερεῖα — ἐκωλύθη παρὰ τοῖν ἀδελφοῖν, ἀλλ’ οὐ τὸ λιβανωτόν	Greek	脚注 89	据双数搭配补末尾重音；末词疑漏 β，省音处亦有重复编码。
ijdiwvth"	ἰδιώτης	Greek	脚注 90	按编码推复，末尾引号对应 ς。
a[frwn	ἄφρων	Greek	脚注 90	按编码推复气符和重音。
Pavnte" oiJ qeoi; tw'n ejqnw'n daimovnia	Πάντες οἱ θεοὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν δαιμόνια	Greek	脚注 97	按编码推复，保留原引文措辞。

参见第i卷，§ 57。伽列里乌斯 (Galerius) 不久便死于一种令人厌恶的可怕疾病，即虱病 (morbus pedicularis)；优西比乌 (Eusebius) 在《教会史》(H. E.) viii. 16，以及拉克坦提乌斯 (Lactantius) 在《逼迫者之死》(De mort. persec.) 第33章，都对此作了极为详尽的描述。吉本 (Gibbon) 在第xiv章说：“他的身体因生活无度而肥胖不堪，行动不便，浑身溃疡，无数成群的虫子啃噬着他；一种最令人厌恶的疾病，正是以这种虫子命名的。”戴克里先 (Diocletian) 于305年退位，313年自杀，结束了他苦恼的生命。他在退隐生活中发现，种白菜比统治帝国更有乐趣；这样的自白，我们很容易相信。（美国总统林肯 (Lincoln) 在1862年12月内战的黑暗日子里曾说，他很愿意与军营里的任何一名普通士兵交换处境。）马克西米努斯 (Maximin) 即使在宽容敕令颁布以后，仍在东方尽其所能继续逼迫，也于313年中毒惨死。基督徒在最后这三位逼迫他们的皇帝的悲惨结局中，看见了上帝显明的审判。↩︎
他的拉丁文全名是 Caius Flavius Valerius Aurelius Claudius Constantinus Magnus（盖乌斯·弗拉维乌斯·瓦莱里乌斯·奥勒利乌斯·克劳狄乌斯·君士坦丁大帝）。↩︎
Ἐπίσκοπος τῶν ἐκτὸς [πραγμάτων]^*，即：τῆς^* ἐκκλησία^*"，意为教会外部事务的监督，以区别于本义上的主教，即 ἐπίσκοποι τῶν εἴσω τῆς^* ἐκκλησία^*"（教会内部事务的监督）。见优西比乌 (Eus.)：《君士坦丁传》(Vit Const.) iv. 24。参见 § 24。↩︎
伟大的历史学家尼布尔 (Niebuhr) 在《罗马史讲演》(Vorträge über Röm. Geschichte)，1848年，iii. 302中，所表达的看法实质上与此相近。莫斯海姆 (Mosheim) 在其论《最初三个世纪》(First Three Centuries) 的著作，第965页及后（默多克译本〔Murdock’s Transl.〕ii. 460及后）中，用了很长篇幅竭力证明：君士坦丁并非伪善者，而是在其一生的大部分时间里，真诚地相信基督教是唯一真实的宗教。最近为君士坦丁作传的布克哈特 (Burckhardt)，则将他描绘为一位极具天才的伟大政治家，却毫无道德原则和宗教兴趣。鲍尔 (Baur) 博士也持同样看法。↩︎
即肠卜祭司 (haruspices)，或解释祭牲之兆的人；他们从祭牲的内脏预言未来的事件。↩︎
据优西比乌 (Eusebius)（《君士坦丁传》〔Vit. Const.〕第iii卷，第48章）说，他将君士坦丁堡 (Constantinople) 奉献给“殉道者的上帝”；但据佐西穆斯 (Zosimus)（《历史》〔Hist.〕第ii卷，第31章）说，他将此城奉献给了两位女神，可能是马利亚和福尔图娜 (Fortuna)。后来，这座城受到童贞女马利亚的特别保护。↩︎
他的继承者也同样如此，直到375年的格拉提安 (Gratian)；后者放弃了这个当时已完全空洞的称号。↩︎
优西比乌 (Euseb.)：《君士坦丁颂》(Laud. Const.)，第5章。↩︎
所有基督徒的记载都谈到他的节制，但尤利安 (Julian) 却暗示情况恰好相反，并指责他犯有古罗马人贪食无厌的恶习（《凯撒诸帝》〔Caes.〕329、335）。↩︎
优西比乌以战争法为依据，为这种对待基督徒之敌的做法辩护。但违背庄严誓约一事，又该如何解释呢？对于克里斯普斯 (Crispus) 和法乌斯塔 (Fausta) 被杀之事，他却审慎地保持沉默，违背了历史学家叙述真相、而且是全部真相的最高职责。↩︎
佐西穆斯 (Zosimus) 声称，君士坦丁在母亲海伦娜 (Helena) 的唆使下，杀害了两个女人：无辜的法乌斯塔，以及一个淫妇，后者据说是他三位继承人的母亲；海伦娜则因失去最宠爱的孙子而怒不可遏。这种说法无疑出于异教偏见和肆意诽谤。与此相反，菲洛斯托尔吉乌斯 (Philostorgius) 却宣称法乌斯塔有罪（《教会史》〔H. E.〕ii. 4；仅存残篇）。然而，更早的见证又间接否定了这整个说法，即紧接着的下一朝统治期间所作的两篇演说；它们暗示，法乌斯塔在其子小君士坦丁死后仍然在世，而小君士坦丁比其父晚死三年。参见尤利安：《演说》(Orat.) i.，以及《小君士坦丁哀辞》(Monod. in Const. Jun.) 第4章，附于欧特罗庇乌斯 (Eutrop.) 书末；吉本第xviii章注25及26曾加以引用。埃瓦格里乌斯 (Evagrius) 否认克里斯普斯和法乌斯塔被杀，但其依据仅仅是优西比乌对此保持沉默；而优西比乌对其皇帝朋友的极度偏袒，严重损害了其叙述的价值。吉本倾向于认为君士坦丁对于法乌斯塔之死全无罪责，尼布尔 (Niebuhr)（《罗马史讲演》〔Vorträge über Röm. Geschichte〕iii. 302）的态度更为坚决。最新的传记作者布克哈特 (Burckhardt)（前引书，第375页）却相当轻率地将此罪归于君士坦丁，甚至没有提及这一说法在考证上存在的困难。斯坦利 (Stanley) 也是如此（前引书，第300页）。↩︎
异教历史学家赞扬他统治的早期，贬斥其晚期。例如欧特罗庇乌斯 (Eutropius)，x. 6：“In primo imperii tempore optimis principibus, ultimo mediis comparandus.”（他统治初期可与最优秀的君主相比，末期则只可与平庸的君主相比。）吉本同意这一判断（第xviii章），将君士坦丁描绘成一位发展轨迹与奥古斯都相反的人物：“在奥古斯都的一生中，我们看见共和国的暴君，几乎以难以察觉的渐进方式，转变为祖国和人类之父。在君士坦丁的一生中，我们却可以看到一位长久以来使臣民爱戴、使敌人恐惧的英雄，堕落成残酷而放荡的君主；他或者被好运所腐化，或者因征服而高踞于无须再作掩饰的地位。”F. C. 施洛塞尔 (F. C. Schlosser) 在其《世界史》(Weltgeschichte) 中，斯坦利（前引书，第297页），以及其他许多人，也采纳了这种逐渐堕落的理论；然而，它与优西比乌、莫斯海姆及其他教会历史学家所持的相反观点，即逐渐改善之说，同样站不住脚。因为一方面，君士坦丁早年的生活中已有种种残酷的表现，例如310或311年，他将战败的蛮族诸王交给特里尔 (Treves) 圆形竞技场中的野兽，为此还受到一位异教演说家的赞颂；又如他对岳父赫尔库利乌斯 (Herculius) 的卑劣行径；杀害马克森提乌斯 (Maxentius) 尚在襁褓中的儿子；以及312年进入罗马时，将马克森提乌斯的首级展示于凯旋行列之中。另一方面，他最富人道精神的法律，例如废除角斗表演，以及淫荡而残酷的仪式，却出自他统治的晚期。↩︎
据巴罗尼乌斯 (Baronius)（《编年史》〔Ann.〕306年，第16项）及其他人说，他出生于不列颠 (Britain)，因为307年的一篇古代颂辞说，君士坦丁以自己的诞生使不列颠增添了荣耀（tu Britannias nobiles oriendo fecisti）；但这既可理解为他肉身的诞生，也可理解为他王权的诞生，因为他是在那里由士兵拥立为凯撒的。另一种意见也有古代见证为依据，帕吉 (Pagi)、蒂耶蒙 (Tillemont) 以及近代大多数历史学家都持此说。↩︎
安布罗斯 (Ambrose)（《悼狄奥多西》〔De obitu Theodos.〕）称她在君士坦提乌斯 (Constantius) 与她相识时，是一名 stabulariam（客店女侍）。↩︎
这是较为可信的看法，而且有可靠的史料依据。佐西穆斯 (Zosimus)，甚至《逾越节编年史》(Paschal Chronicle)，都称海伦娜 (Helena) 为君士坦提乌斯 (Constantius) 的妾，称君士坦丁为私生子。但若果真如此，就很难理解，为何他在戴克里先 (Diocletian) 的宫廷中受到如此优待，又毫无异议地被拥立为凯撒，因为君士坦提乌斯与合法妻子狄奥多拉 (Theodora) 育有三子三女。不过，也有可能海伦娜起初是妾，后来才正式成婚。君士坦丁称帝后，十分维护她的地位，授予她奥古斯塔和皇太后的称号，并给予相应的尊荣。↩︎
就连佐西穆斯，对他的叙述也极为不利。↩︎
米尔曼 (Milman) 说（《基督教史》〔Hist. of Christianity〕，纽约版，第288页）：“这是迈向中世纪军事化基督教的第一步；它改变了福音纯正的宗教，虽与其真正原则直接相悖，却似乎仍是人类社会进步所不可或缺的；罗马帝国与各蛮族民族，后来融合于庞大的欧洲与基督教体系之中，在达到更高的文明和更纯正的基督教以前，都必然要经历这一阶段。”↩︎
《逼迫者之死》(De mortibus persecutorum)，第44章（莱比锡版，II. 278及下页）：“Commonitus est in quiete Constantinus, ut coeleste signum Dei notaret in scutis, atque ita proelium committeret. Fecit ut jussus est, et transverse X litera, summo capite circumflexo Christum in scutis notat [即他命人将基督的名字，或其开头的两个字母 X 和 P，绘在士兵的盾牌上]. Quo signo armatus exercitus capit ferrum.”（君士坦丁在睡梦中得到指示，要将上帝属天的记号绘在盾牌上，然后交战。他遵命而行，以横置的 X 字母，上端弯曲，在盾牌上标示基督。军队以此记号为装备，拿起武器。）——布克哈特 (Burckhardt) 等人固然否认此书出自拉克坦提乌斯 (Lactantius)，但无论如何，它写于事件发生后不久，约314或315年；当时君士坦丁与李锡尼 (Licinius) 尚且交好。作者在第46章也将类似的天使异象归于李锡尼，据说那天使在他出征讨伐异教暴君马克西明 (Maximin) 时，教给他一篇祷文。↩︎
见其约于338年写成的《君士坦丁传》(Vita Constant.) i. 27–30；这部作品与其说是史书，不如说是颂辞，充斥着空泛的铺陈和迂回的措辞。但在326年以前写成的《教会史》中，优西比乌 (Eusebius) 虽有很好的机会提及此事（第ix卷，第8、9章），却对此只字未提；究竟是出于疏忽、无知，还是有意如此，难以断定。无论如何，这种沉默使他后来所述故事的细节受到怀疑；不仅吉本 (Gibbon)，连拉德纳 (Lardner) 等人也曾以此反驳他的记载。↩︎
这很可能是误传或夸张。因为，倘若一支由各民族数千名士兵组成的全军都曾看见十字架的异象，优西比乌本可援引许多尚在人世的见证人，君士坦丁也不必郑重起誓。但另一方面，两位异教见证人（见下文）也都说士兵们看见了异象。↩︎
τούτῳ [τῷ σημείῳ] νίκα^* Hac, or Hoc [sc. signo] vince, or vinces.（靠此〔记号〕得胜，或：你必靠此得胜。）优西比乌的叙述给人的印象是，铭文用的是希腊文。但尼基弗鲁斯 (Nicephorus) 和佐纳拉斯 (Zonaras) 却说，铭文用的是拉丁文。↩︎
《教会史》(Hist. Eccl.) ix, 9。参见索佐门 (Sozomenus) 的类似记载，《教会史》(H. E.) i. 3。↩︎
纳扎里乌斯 (Nazar.)：《君士坦丁颂辞》(Paneg. in Const.)，第14章：“In ore denique est omnium Galliarum [这似乎表明，某种超自然援助的传闻流传颇广], exercitus visos, qui se divinitus missos prae se ferebant,” 等（总之，整个高卢都传说，有人看见军队显现，自称奉神差遣）。参见巴罗尼乌斯 (Baronius)：《编年史》(Annal.)，312年，第11项。这位历史学家还引述了另一则更早的异教见证（第14项），出自一位匿名的颂辞演说家；此人于313年谈到某种未加说明的兆象，它使君士坦丁的士兵心怀疑惧，却使他本人更有勇气投入战斗。巴罗尼乌斯和 J. H. 纽曼 (J. H. Newman)（在其《神迹论》〔Essay on Miracles〕中）认为，这一 omen（兆象）就是十字架，这一推断颇有道理。↩︎
这是较早的历史学家的看法，新教和天主教的历史学家皆然。在近代论述这一问题的作者中，除德林格 (Döllinger，罗马天主教徒)、J. H. 纽曼（其《神迹论》〔Essay on Miracles〕发表于1842年，在他转入罗马天主教以前，冠于其所译弗勒里〔Fleury〕著作第一卷之首）以及盖里克 (Guericke，路德宗信徒) 以外，几乎没有著名的支持者。另参见德·布罗意 (De Broglie)，i. 219及442。↩︎
莱顿 (Leyden) 的霍恩贝克 (Hoornebeck)、托马西乌斯 (Thomasius)、阿诺德 (Arnold)、拉德纳、吉本和沃丁顿 (Waddington)，都多少明确地持这种看法。最后一位作者（《教会史》〔Hist. of the Church〕，第i卷，第171页）只说“这则谄媚的寓言大可任其受人鄙弃、湮没无闻”，便将此事打发过去，未免过于草率。最新的君士坦丁传记作者布克哈特也持同样意见。他认为，这故事是优西比乌和皇帝共同编造的，毫无历史价值（《君士坦丁大帝的时代》〔Die Zeit Constantins des Gr.〕，1853年，第394及395页）。拉德纳将说谎的罪责全归于皇帝（尽管他承认皇帝在其他方面是个真诚的基督徒），并力图证明，优西比乌本人也几乎不相信这件事。↩︎
这基本上是 J. A. 法布里修斯 (J. A. Fabricius，在一篇专题论文中)、施勒克 (Schröckh，第v卷，第83页)、曼索 (Manso)、海尼兴 (Heinichen，在其优西比乌著作版本的第一篇附论中)、吉泽勒 (Gieseler)、尼安德 (Neander)、米尔曼、罗伯逊 (Robertson) 和斯坦利 (Stanley) 的理论。吉泽勒（第i卷，§ 56，注29）提到，1517年12月及1552年，德国曾出现类似的十字架形云彩，当时的路德宗信徒误以为是超自然的记号。斯坦利（《东方教会讲演录》〔Lectures on the Eastern Church〕，第288页）提到一种称为“幻日”（parhelion）的自然现象，它在午后的天空中往往呈现近乎十字架的形状。他还提出一个新的例证，即1848年11月出现的北极光；人们对此有种种解释：在法国，因路易·拿破仑 (Louis Napoleon) 即将参加选举，人们认为极光构成了 L. N. 两个字母；在罗马，则认为那是被杀的罗西 (Rossi) 之血，向天呼求，要向凶手复仇。莫斯海姆 (Mosheim) 在其论尼西亚会议以前时期的大部著作中，对这一问题作了长篇讨论，却未得出明确结论，不过倾向于认为这不过是一场梦或一种心理幻觉。尼安德和罗伯逊在假定天空中出现自然现象的同时，又认为君士坦丁作了一个梦，反映了白日所见的景象。最近论述此事的作者凯姆 (Keim)，前引书，第89页，承认有梦，却否认云中有十字架。莫斯海姆也是如此。↩︎
默多克博士 (Dr. Murdock，在其莫斯海姆著作译本的注释中) 又提出一项反对理由；从他的清教徒立场来看，这颇有分量：“倘若发光十字架的神迹确有其事，岂不是上帝亲自认可用十字架作为我们宗教所指定的象征吗？如此说来，使用十字架就不是迷信，而在这个问题上，天主教徒才是正确的，新教徒却错了吗？”↩︎
狄奥多雷 (Theodoret) 说，君士坦丁蒙召，不是由于人，也不是借着人（οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπου, οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου^*，《加拉太书》i. 1），而是像神圣的使徒保罗一样，从天上蒙召（οὐρανόθεν κατὰ τὸν θεῖον ἀπόστολον^*）。《教会史》(Hist. Eccl.)，第i卷，第2章。↩︎
索佐门在《教会史》(H. E.) 第i卷，第3章中，明确如此叙述：ὄναρ εἶδε τὸ τοῦ σταυροῦ^* σημεῖον^* σελαγίζον^* 等。诚然，他随后又用自己的话复述了优西比乌较为详尽的记载。参见鲁菲努斯 (Rufin.) ix. 9；优西比乌：《君士坦丁传》(Vit. Const.) i. 29；拉克坦提乌斯：《逼迫者之死》(De mort. persec.) 44，以及异教颂辞作者们的影射。↩︎
李锡尼在与马克西明交战之前，曾见一位天使显现，教给他一篇求胜的祷文（拉克坦提乌斯：《逼迫者之死》〔De mort. persec.〕，第46章）。背道者尤利安 (Julian the Apostate) 在这方面甚至比他信奉基督教的伯父更加迷信，完全沉迷于兆象、预兆、奇事、鬼影、梦境、异象、占卜和神谕的整套事物（参见下文§ 4）。据利巴尼乌斯 (Libanius) 认为，他出征波斯人时，有一整支神明大军环绕着他；然而，在纳齐安祖的贵格利 (Gregory of Nazianzen) 看来，那却是一群邪灵。见乌尔曼 (Ullmann)：《纳齐安祖的贵格利》(Gregory of Naz.)，第100页。↩︎
这是根据他的朋友菲利普·多德里奇博士 (Dr. Philip Doddridge) 的记载；多德里奇从加德纳 (Gardiner) 本人口中得知这些事实，正如优西比乌从君士坦丁口中得知一样。1719年7月的一个安息日夜晚，加德纳正在郑重默想，“读书时，忽然觉得看见一道异乎寻常的强光落在书上；起初，他以为也许是蜡烛偶然出了什么状况。但他抬眼一看，便惊异万分地觉察到，眼前仿佛悬在半空中，显现着主耶稣基督钉在十字架上的形象，四周有荣光环绕；他又觉得仿佛有声音，或类似声音的东西，向他说道：‘罪人啊，我为你受了这样的苦，你竟这样报答我吗？’”此事以后，他从一个放荡的世俗之徒，变成了一个认真而敬虔的人。然而，这整个显现终究很可能只是内心的景象。因为记载谈到那声音时又补充说：“究竟那是耳朵可以听见的声音，还是仅仅在他心中产生了强烈的印象，其震撼同样强烈，他似乎并无把握，虽然他认为是前者。”他以为自己当时是清醒的。但人人都知道，临近午夜时，读一本枯燥的书，甚至读一本好书，都很容易打起盹来。因此，这次显现很可能归根到底是一场意义深远的梦，标志着他人生的一个转折。任何有思想的人，都不会因此怀疑加德纳归信的真诚；他此后的全部生活已充分证明这一点，甚至远比君士坦丁的生活所能提供的证明更加充分。↩︎
《民数记》xii. 6：“我耶和华必在异象中使他认识我，在梦中与他说话。”《约伯记》xxxiii. 15、16：“人在床上沉睡的时候，在梦中，在夜间的异象中，他就开通人的耳朵，将训诲封印在他们心上。”实际的事例见《创世记》xxxi. 10、24；xxxvii. 5；《列王纪上》iii. 5；《但以理书》ii. 4、36；vii. 1；《马太福音》i. 20；ii. 12、13、19、22；《使徒行传》x. 17；xxii. 17、18。↩︎
《历史》(Histor.) ii. 16。↩︎
Λάβωρον^*，亦作 λάβουρον^*；它并非源自 labor（劳作），也非源自 λάφυρον^*，即 praeda（战利品），或源自 λαβεῖν^*，而很可能出自一个此外不见记载的蛮族词根，早在君士坦丁以前很久，便由凯尔特或日耳曼新兵引入罗马军语。参见杜康热 (Du Cange)：《词汇集》(Glossar.)，以及苏伊策 (Suicer)：《词库》(Thesaur.)，该词条。据亲眼见过它的优西比乌描述（《君士坦丁传》〔Vita Const.〕i. 30），拉巴伦旗 (labarum) 由一根包金的长矛和一根横木组成，横木上悬着一面方形紫布旗，绣有花纹，缀满宝石。矛杆顶端有一顶以黄金和宝石制成的冠，其中嵌着基督名字的字母组合（见下一注）；冠的正下方，则有皇帝及其诸子的金像。皇帝曾向优西比乌讲述一些有关这面拉巴伦旗的难以置信之事（第ii卷，第7章），例如，所有执旗者都未曾被敌人的投矢所伤。↩︎
X 和 P，即基督名字的头两个字母，彼此叠写，构成十字架的形状：P 与 x 相叠（Rho 下部叠加 Chi），或 P 与—相叠（Rho 下部加一横，构成十字架），或 α☧ω^*（即 Christos——Alpha 和 Omega，起初与末后，在竖干上加一个 chi，构成十字架），以及其他类似形式；明特 (Münter) 已从古代钱币、器皿和墓碑中搜集了二十余种（《古代基督徒的象征》〔Sinnbilder der alten Christen〕，第36页及后）。这种字母组合和十字架记号，在君士坦丁以前很久就已为基督徒所用，很可能早在安敦尼诸帝 (Antonines) 和哈德良 (Hadrian) 时代便已如此。不仅如此，军旗和胜利纪念标通常也有十字架的外形，正如米努修斯·费利克斯 (Minucius Felix)、德尔图良 (Tertullian)、游斯丁 (Justin) 及其他二世纪护教士向异教徒指出的那样。据基伦 (Killen) 说（《古代教会》〔Ancient Church〕，第317页，注），这一著名的字母组合，甚至在基督以前就已见于托勒密诸王 (Ptolemies) 的钱币上，当然意义不同；他所引的依据是阿林古斯 (Aringhus)：《地下罗马》(Roma subterranea)，ii. 第567页。因此，唯一的新事物，乃是将这一具有基督教意义和用途的象征，与罗马的军旗相结合。↩︎
优西比乌 (Eusebius)：《教会史》(H. E.) ix. 9：“Τούτῳ τῷ σωτηριώδει^*”（salutari，意为“施行拯救的”，而非鲁菲努斯〔Rufinus〕所译的 singulari，即“独特的”）“σημείῳ, τῷ ἀληθινῷ ἐλέγχῳ τῆς ἀνδρίας, τὴν πόλιν ὑμῶν ἀπὸ ζυγοῦ τοῦ τυράννου διασωθεῖσαν ἐλευθέρωσα, κ. τ. λ.^*”，等等。意即：“我凭这施行拯救的记号，这勇武的真实凭证，将你们的城从暴君的轭下救出，使之获得自由。”然而，吉本 (Gibbon) 认为，更可能的是，至少拉巴伦旗 (labarum) 和这篇铭文，都是君士坦丁第二次或第三次访问罗马时才出现的。↩︎
“Instinctu Divinitatis et mentis magnitudine.”（“凭着神明的感召和心志的伟大。”）Divinitas（神明）可以看作一个像“天意”那样含义模糊的词，“它掩饰了君士坦丁从异教转向基督教的过程”。↩︎
西塞罗 (Cicero) 在《为拉比里乌斯辩护》(pro Raberio) 第5章说：“Nomen ipsum crucis absit non modo a corpore civium Romanorum, sed etiam a cogitatione, oculis, auribus.”（“不但要使罗马公民的身体远离十字架，甚至连十字架这个名称，也要使之远离他们的思想、眼睛和耳朵。”）然而，在其他古代异教民族中，如埃及人、佛教徒，甚至墨西哥的土著，似乎都曾把十字架用作宗教象征。苏格拉底 (Socrates) 记载（《教会史》〔H. E.〕v. 17），塞拉皮斯 (Serapis) 神庙被毁时，人们在象形文字铭文中发现了十字架的形状，异教徒和基督徒都把它解释为与各自宗教有关。有些熟悉象形文字、从异教归信的人，将十字架的形状解释为来世的生命。据普雷斯科特 (Prescott) 说（《征服墨西哥》〔Conquest of Mexico〕iii. 338–340），西班牙人在阿纳瓦克 (Anahnac) 的偶像神庙中，发现十字架也是受崇拜之物。↩︎
早在君士坦丁以前很久，教会教师游斯丁 (Justin)、德尔图良 (Tertullian)、米努修斯·费利克斯 (Minucius Felix)，便与异教徒的这种憎恶针锋相对，认为自然界和人类生活处处可见十字架的记号：在军旗和胜利纪念标上，在风帆鼓起、船桨伸展的船上，在犁上，在飞鸟身上，在游泳或祈祷的人身上，在人的面部特征以及双臂伸展的身体形态中，皆是如此。因此，早期基督徒每日都使用十字架记号。参见第ii卷，§ 77（第269页及后）。↩︎
这是第二道宽容敕令，并非从前所认为的第三道。所谓312年的敕令并不存在，乃是出于误解。见第ii卷，§ 25，第72页。↩︎
“Haec ordinanda esse credidimus ... ut daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potestatem sequendi religionem, quamquisque voluisset ... ut nulli omnino facultatem obnegandam putaremus, qui vel observationi Christianorum, vel ei religioni mentem suam dederet, quam ipse sibi aptissimam esse sentiret ... ut, amotis omnibus ominino conditionibus［这里无疑是指311年敕令对宽容所加的限制］, nunc libere ac simpliciter unusquisque eorum qui eandem observandae religioni Christianorum gerunt voluntatem, citra ullam inquietudinem et molestiam sui id ipsum observare contendant.”（“我们认为应当作出这些规定……使基督徒及所有人都有自由的权利，信奉各自所愿信奉的宗教……我们认为，不论一个人倾心于基督徒的信仰，还是倾心于他自己认为最适合自己的宗教，都绝不可剥夺他的这种权利……因此，撤除一切条件之后，如今凡愿遵行基督教信仰的人，都可自由而不受任何附加限制地遵行，不遭受任何滋扰或困扰。”）拉克坦提乌斯 (Lactantius)：《逼迫者之死》(De mort, persec.)，第48章（弗里切〔Fritzsche〕编，第ii卷，第282页）。优西比乌在《教会史》(H. E.) x. 5中载有这道敕令的希腊文译文，文字生硬晦涩，并有若干出入。参见尼基弗鲁斯 (Niceph.)：《教会史》(H. E.) vii. 41。又参见特奥德·凯姆 (Theod. Keim) 载于1852年《图宾根神学年鉴》(Tübinger Theolog. Jahrbücher) 的宽容敕令专题论文，以及梅森 (Mason)：《戴克里先的逼迫》(persecution of Diocletian)，第299、326页。↩︎
参见第ii卷，§ 13，第35页所引德尔图良的精彩论述。拉克坦提乌斯在四世纪初也说，见《神圣教义》(Instit. div.) 第v卷，第19章（莱比锡版〔ed. Lips.〕，第i卷，第267页及下页）：“Non est opus vi et injuria, quia religio cogi non potest; verbis potius, quam verberibus res agenda est, ut sit voluntas .... Defendenda religio est, non occidendo, sed moriendo; non saevitia, sed patientia; non scelere, sed fide .... Nam si sanguine, si tormentis, si malo religionem defendere velis, jam non defendetur illa, sed polluetur atque violabitur. Nihil est enim tam voluntarium, quam religio, in qua si animus sacrificantis aversus est, jam sublata, jam nulla est.”（“不需要暴力和伤害，因为宗教不能强迫；行事应当用言语，而非鞭打，使人出于自愿……捍卫宗教，不是靠杀人，而是靠舍命；不是靠残暴，而是靠忍耐；不是靠罪行，而是靠信心……因为，若你想用流血、酷刑和祸害来捍卫宗教，那就不再是捍卫它，而是在玷污并亵渎它。没有什么比宗教更出于自愿；如果献祭者的心与之相背，宗教便已被废除，已不复存在。”）参见第20章。↩︎
因为《圣西尔维斯特行传》(Acta St. Silvestri) 和尼基弗鲁斯·卡利斯图斯 (Nicephorus Callist.) 的《教会史》(H. Eccl.) vii. 34（载于巴罗尼乌斯〔Baronius〕，324年条），在这一点上当然不是可靠的史料。↩︎
例如，他命令基督徒不要在教堂里，而要到旷野中举行大型聚会，因为新鲜空气比建筑物内的闷浊空气更有益于他们的健康！↩︎
他在一道法律中说：“Jubente Deo”（“奉上帝之命”）。见《狄奥多西法典》(Cod. Theodos.) 第xiii卷，第v题，第7条法律。后世作者把君士坦丁堡 (Constantinople) 的建立归因于皇帝夜间所见的一次异象，以及童贞女马利亚的命令；她被尊为这座城市的女保护者，人们几乎可以说，是被尊为女神。↩︎
土耳其人至今仍特意称它为那城。因为斯坦布尔 (Stambul) 是伊斯坦布尔 (Istambul) 的讹变，而后者意为：εἰς τὴν πόλιν^*（到那城去）。↩︎
其中最令人反感的，是一尊阿波罗 (Apollo) 的巨型铜像，据称出自菲狄亚斯 (Phidias) 之手；君士坦丁将它立在广场中央一根高一百二十英尺的斑岩柱上。至少按后世的解释，这尊像是用基督和太阳神的特征来表现皇帝本人！班杜里 (Banduri) 所收《君士坦丁堡古迹》(Antiquit. Constant.) 的作者，以及J. 冯·哈默 (J. v. Hammer) 的《君士坦丁堡与博斯普鲁斯》(Constantinopolis u. der Bosphorus) i. 162，都是这样说的（转引自米尔曼〔Milman〕为吉本所作的注释）。如今这根柱子只剩下一段残缺的遗迹。↩︎
优西比乌：《君士坦丁传》(V. C.) iv. 29–33。布克哈特 (Burckhardt)，前引书，第400页，对优西比乌的整段记述很少采信，因而暗示他是在蓄意作假。↩︎
优西比乌：《君士坦丁传》(Vit. Const.) iv. 29，末尾。↩︎
君士坦丁的《致圣徒会众演说》(Oratio ad Sanctorum coetum)，由优西比乌以希腊文译本保存下来，作为他所撰皇帝传记的附录。↩︎
所谓君士坦丁于324年由罗马主教西尔维斯特 (Sylvester) 施洗，并因此向教皇赠予土地的故事，乃是中世纪的虚构。巴罗尼乌斯（324年条，第43–49号）固然仍毫不知羞地为之辩护，但诺里斯 (Noris)、蒂耶蒙 (Tillemont) 和瓦莱修斯 (Valesius) 等其他罗马天主教历史学家，早已将它摒弃。单凭同时代的优西比乌所作的见证（《君士坦丁传》〔Vit. Const.〕iv. 61、62），便足以驳倒此说；他将君士坦丁受洗的时间置于其生命末期，并作了详细描述。苏格拉底、索佐门 (Sozomen)、安布罗斯 (Ambrose) 和哲罗姆 (Jerome) 的记载也与他一致。↩︎
因此，哲罗姆说，君士坦丁是受洗归入阿里乌派 (Arianism) 的。曾属《时代论丛》派 (Tractarian) 的纽曼 (Newman) 博士评论说，君士坦丁在赐福于教会的同时，也将一种异端作为遗产留给教会，成为它的重担；这异端在他死后延续了许多世纪，其影响至今仍存在于东方的分裂之中（《四世纪的阿里乌派》〔The Arians of the 4th Century〕，1854年，第138页）。但优西比乌（并非那位教会史家）可能只是当时离他最近的主教，在此并非以党派领袖的身份行事。君士坦丁虽在晚年受到阿里乌派的影响，却也始终认为自己是尼西亚信仰 (Nicene faith) 的真正拥护者；据狄奥多勒 (Theodoret) 记载（《教会史》〔H. E.〕I. 32），他在临终病榻上，还不顾阿里乌派优西比乌的反对，命令召回被放逐的亚他那修 (Athanasius)。在这些事情上，他屡次受歪曲事实的陈述所误导，而且他关心和平过于真理。教义争论的深层意义，完全超出了他的理解范围。吉本在这件事上说得对：“这位轻信的君王，不熟悉神学战争的计谋，很可能受异端分子谦逊而似是而非的表白所欺骗；他们的见解，他从未完全理解。他虽保护阿里乌 (Arius)，逼迫亚他那修，却仍把尼西亚会议看作基督教信仰的堡垒，以及自己统治时期特有的荣耀。”第xxi章。↩︎
斯坦利 (Stanley)，前引书，第320页。↩︎
这座教堂成为拜占庭诸帝的安葬之所，直到第四次十字军东征时，棺木遭到劫掠，遗体被抛出。穆罕默德二世 (Mahomet II.) 毁掉了这座教堂，在原址建起一座以他名字命名的宏伟清真寺。见冯·哈默 (von Hammer)，i. 390。↩︎
参见《圣徒行传》(Acta Sact.)，5月21日条，第13页及下页。尼布尔 (Niebuhr) 中肯地评论道：“某些东方作者称君士坦丁‘与使徒同等’，他们并不知道自己在说什么；而称他为‘圣徒’，则是亵渎了这个词。”↩︎
尤利乌斯·菲尔米库斯·马特尔努斯 (Julius Firmicus Maternus) 即如此；他写了一篇《论异教宗教的谬误》(De errore profanarum religionum)，约作于348年，献给皇帝君士坦提乌斯 (Constantius) 和君士坦斯 (Constans)。↩︎
《雅歌》v. 2。↩︎
纳齐安的贵格利 (Gregory of Naz.) 就是这样看的；蒂耶蒙在《回忆录》(Mem.) vii. 322中中肯地评论道：“Le grand nombre de pechez dont beaucoup de Chrétiens estoient coupables, fut cause que Dieu donna a ce prince la puissance imperials pour les punir; et sa malice fut comme une verge entre les mains de Dieu pour les corriger.”（“许多基督徒所犯的累累罪恶，促使上帝将帝权交给这位君王，以惩罚他们；他的恶意就像上帝手中的一根杖，用来管教他们。”）↩︎
尤利安 (Jul.)：《致雅典人书》(ad Athen.)，第271页；苏格拉底 (Socr.)，iii. 1；索佐门 (Sozom.)，v. 2；狄奥多勒 (Theod.)，iii. 2。↩︎
参见第i卷，§ 61。↩︎
利巴尼乌斯 (Libanius) 论到他说，见《悼词》(Epit.)，第582页：“……μάντεων τε τοῖς ἀρίστοις χρώμενος, αὐτός τε ὢν οὐδαμῶν ἐν τῇ τέχνῃ δεύτερος^*。”意即：“他不仅求助于最优秀的占卜者，而且自己在这门技艺上也不逊于任何人。”阿米安努斯·马尔切利努斯 (Ammanius Marcellinus) 在xxv. 4中称他为：“praesagiorum sciscitationi nimiae deditus, superstitiosus magis quam sacrorum legitimus observator.”（“过分沉迷于探问预兆，与其说是按正当规矩遵行祭礼的人，不如说是个迷信者。”）参见索佐门，v. 2。↩︎
参见他的第四篇《演说》(Oratio)，专为颂赞赫利俄斯 (Helios) 而作。↩︎
参见尤利安：《颂君士坦提乌斯演说》(Orat. i. in Constantii laudes)；《致雅典人书》(Epist. ad Athenienses)，第270页；《诸凯撒》(Caesares)，第335页及下页。连异教作者也承认他的伪装，例如阿米安努斯·马尔切利努斯 (Ammianus Marc.) xxi. 2，参见xxii. 5；还有利巴尼乌斯，他以顾及自身安全为由替他开脱，见《著作集》(Opp.)，赖斯克 (Reiske) 编，第528页。↩︎
他的兄长加卢斯 (Gallus) 曾一度在安提阿 (Antioch) 为帝；由于他完全无能且残酷无情，君士坦提乌斯已于854年将他废黜并斩首，这是正当的处置。↩︎
在《厌须者》(Misopogon，源自 μισέω^* 和 πώγων^*，意为厌恶胡须的人，即厌恶蓄须哲学家的人）第338页及下页中，他为自己那哲学家的胡须向文雅的安提阿人作了诙谐的辩解。他夸耀这种犬儒式的粗鄙，并洋洋自得地描述自己的长指甲、染满墨迹的双手，以及粗硬而未经梳理、竟有某些 θηρία^*（小兽）寄居其中的胡须——horribile dictu（说来可怕）。然而，不应忘记，同时代作者都称许他严守贞洁，这使他远高于大多数异教君王，也再一次证明，基督教的禁欲主义在他不自觉的情况下影响了他的生活。利巴尼乌斯在颂词中断言，尤利安在短暂的婚姻生活以前，以及妻子——君士坦提乌斯的妹妹——死后，都未曾亲近女人；纳默尔提努斯 (Namertinus) 则称他的 lectulus（小床）为“Vestalium toris purior”（“比维斯塔贞女的床榻还要纯洁”）。此外，还有诚实的阿米安努斯·马尔切利努斯的见证，以及基督徒敌手对此保持的沉默。参见吉本，第xxii章，注50；以及卡威森 (Carwithen) 和莱尔 (Lyall)：《基督教会史》等（Hist. of the Chr. Ch., etc.），第54页。另一方面，基督徒指控他犯有种种秘密罪行，例如屠杀男童女童（贵格利〔Gregor.〕：《演说》〔Orat.〕iii.，第91页；以及狄奥多勒〔Theodor.〕iii. 26、27）；这很可能只是根据他对血祭和占卜的狂热而作出的无根据推断。↩︎
阿米安努斯·马尔切利努斯 (Ammianus Marc.)，xxv. 4：“……innumeras sine parsimonia pecudes mactans ut aestemaretur, si revertisset de Parthis, boves jam defuturos.”（“……毫不节制地宰杀无数牲畜，以致人们认为，如果他从帕提亚人那里归来，牛就要被杀尽了。”）↩︎
《厌须者》(Misopog.)，第362页及下页；尤利安本人在这里叙述了这一可笑场面，并对安提阿人大发雷霆，因为他们将神庙的丰厚收入挥霍在基督教和世俗享乐上。鲍尔 (Baur) 博士在前引书第17页，就尤利安对偶像崇拜的热忱，中肯地评论道：“Seine ganze persönliche Erscheinung, der Mangel an innerer Haltung in seinem Benehmen gegen Heiden und Christen, die stete Unruhe und schwärmerische Aufregung, in welcher er sich befand, wenn er von Tempel zu Tempel eilte, auf allen Altären opferte und nichts unversucht liess, um den heidnischen Cultus, dessen höchstes Vorbild er selbst als Pontifex maximum sein wollte, in seinem vollen Glanz und Gepränge, mit alten seinen Ceremonien und Mysterien wieder herzustellen, macht einen Eindruck, der es kaum verkennen lässt, wie wenig er sich selbst das Unnatürliche und Erfolglose eines solchen Strebens verbergen konnte.”（“他的整个个人形象，他对待异教徒和基督徒时所显出的缺乏内在镇定，以及他奔走于各神庙之间、在每一座祭坛上献祭时所表现出的持续不安和狂热激动，都给人留下这样一种印象，使人几乎无法不看出：他自己也很难掩饰这种努力的反常与徒劳。他竭尽一切手段，要恢复异教崇拜全部的光辉和盛况，以及一切仪式和秘仪，而他自己则要以最高祭司的身份，成为这一崇拜的最高典范。”）↩︎
尤利安关于异教祭司的看法，主要见于他致高卢大祭司乌尔萨基乌斯 (Ursacius) 的第49封书信，第429页，以及一篇演说的残篇，第300页及后，斯潘海姆 (Spanh.) 编。乌尔曼 (Ullmann) 在其论纳齐安的贵格利的著作中，第527页及后，将贵格利与尤利安各自理想中的祭司作了颇有意味的对比。↩︎
正如纳齐安的贵格利 (Gregory Nazianzen) 在《演说》(Orat.) iv. 中所说：Ἐπιεικῶς ἐβιάζετο^*。↩︎
苏格拉底 (Socrates)：《教会史》(H. E.) iii. 12。↩︎
吉本 (Gibbon) 在第xxiii章说得好：“他装作怜悯那些不幸的基督徒，但他的怜悯因轻蔑而卑下，他的轻蔑又因仇恨而愈加刻毒；尤利安的这些情感，以讥诮机锋的笔调表达出来，而这种话语一旦出自君王之口，就会造成深重而致命的创伤。”↩︎
也许，正如沃伯顿 (Warburton，第35页) 所提示的，这背后还潜藏着对基督之名的畏惧；因为新柏拉图主义者相信，名字具有神秘的力量。↩︎
Ἀσεβεῖς, δυσσεβεῖς, ἄθεοι^*。他称他们的宗教为 μωρία^* 或 ἀπόνοια^*。参见《书信》(Ep.) 7（载于海勒〔Heyler〕，第190页）。↩︎
卑贱的小人（Ἀνθρωπίσκος εὐτελής^*）.↩︎
《马太福音》v. 89、40。↩︎
纳齐安的贵格利在《演说》(Orat.) iv. 中，严厉谴责皇帝禁止基督徒享有一切有理性之人所共有的财富，仿佛它只是希腊人的专有财产。就连异教徒阿米安努斯·马尔切利努斯 (Ammianus Marcellinus)，xxii. 10，也谴责这一措施：“Illud autem erat inclemens, obruendum perenni silentio, quod arcebat docere magistros rhetoricos et grammaticos, ritus Christiani cultores.”（“然而，他禁止信奉基督教的修辞学和文法教师授课，这实属残酷之举，应当永远缄口不提。”）吉本的态度同样坚决。尤利安直接禁止的，只是基督徒教授古典文学，但间接也禁止了他们学习古典文学；因为他们自然不愿进入异教学校。↩︎
《书信》(Epist.) 42。↩︎
鲍尔 (Baur) 博士（前引书，第42页）指责教父们一面采用古典著作为必要的教育手段，一面又把异教斥为撒但的工作，认为他们自相矛盾；这种指责并不公允。这只是问题的一面，其中自有真实的成分，尤其就异教的宗教而言；而在另一方面，他们又与殉道者游斯丁 (Justin M.)、革利免 (Clement) 和俄利根 (Origen) 一同承认，神圣的道在希腊哲学和诗歌中运行，为基督教预备道路。对古典文学不加区别的谴责，始于较晚时期，即贵格利一世 (Gregory I.) 的时代。↩︎
见下文§ 9。↩︎
尤利安 (Jul.)：《书信》(Epist.) 25，致犹太人的信；索佐门 (Sozomen)，v. 22，也提到此信。↩︎
吉本，第xxiii章：“重建犹太圣殿，与毁灭基督教会之间有着隐秘的联系。”↩︎
按照通常对这段文字的解释，尤利安本人在一封书信或一篇演说的残篇中（斯潘海姆〔Spanh.〕编，第295页），似乎也承认工程失败了，但较为审慎地没有提及原因。他在这里问道：Τί περὶ τοῦ νεὼ φήσουσι, τοῦ παρ’ αὐτοῖς, τρίτον ἀνατραπέντος, ἐγειρομένου δὲ οὐδὲ νῦν^*：“他们〔即犹太先知〕对于自己的圣殿将说些什么呢？这殿已被毁过三次，而今仍未重建起来。”“我说这话，”他接着说，“并非有意责备他们，因为就是我自己，直到这么晚的时候，还曾打算重建它，以尊崇在那里受敬拜的那一位。”他很可能把这件事看作神明不悦于犹太宗教的征兆，或一次偶然的不幸，却打算在波斯战争归来之后重新尝试。然而，这里所说圣殿三次被毁，是否涉及尤利安本人的统治时期，远非确定。他可能指的是，而且很可能确实指的是，亚述人造成的毁灭和罗马人造成的毁灭；至于第三次毁灭，则可能只是夸大之词，也可能指安条克 (Antiochus) 对圣殿的亵渎，或他自己的统治时期。（关于这一点，参见沃伯顿和拉德纳〔Lardner〕。）公允的阿米安努斯·马尔切利努斯，本人公开信奉异教，又是尤利安的朋友和战友，在第xxiii卷第1章中，更详细地告诉我们：尤利安希望以某项伟大工程使自己的统治永垂不朽，遂决定耗费巨资重建耶路撒冷宏伟的圣殿，并将主持此事的任务交给在安提阿的阿吕皮乌斯 (Alypius)。他接着说：“Quum itaque rei fortiter instaret Alypius, juvaretque provinciae rector, metuendi globi flammarum prope fundamenta crebris assultibus erumpentes fecere locum exustis aliquoties operantibus inaccessum; hocque modo clemento destinatius repellente, cessavit inceptum.”（“于是，阿吕皮乌斯奋力推进工程，并得到行省总督的协助；这时，可怕的火球在地基附近接连迸发，屡次烧伤工人，终于使这地方无法接近；烈火如此顽强地阻挡他们，他便放弃了这项尝试。”）米夏埃利斯 (Michaelis)、拉德纳（不过，他倾向于怀疑整个故事）、吉本、基佐 (Guizot)、米尔曼 (Milman，吉本著作的注释)、吉泽勒 (Gieseler) 等人，力图将此解释为自然现象，认为起因在于土壤的沥青性质，以及圣殿山的地下拱室和蓄水池；约瑟夫斯和塔西佗都曾提到这些。希律建造圣殿时，想进入大卫的坟墓以取得其中的财宝，据约瑟夫斯《犹太古史》(Antiqu. Jud.) xvi. 7，§ 1所载，也曾有火突然冒出，烧死工人。然而，提图斯于公元70年掘毁圣殿时，哈德良 (Hadrian) 于135年在那里建造埃利亚·卡皮托利纳 (Aelia Capitolina) 时，以及欧麦尔 (Omar) 于644年建造土耳其清真寺时，据我们所知，都没有发生这种毁灭性的现象。因此，我们必须相信，是上帝的护理本身借着这些自然原因，阻止了犹太人民族圣所的重建。↩︎
纳齐安的贵格利、苏格拉底、索佐门、狄奥多勒 (Theodoret)、菲洛斯托尔吉乌斯 (Philostorgius)、鲁菲努斯 (Rufinus)、安布罗斯 (Ambrose)、金口约翰 (Chrysostom)；他们都认为此事是超自然的，虽然在细节上略有出入。狄奥多勒首先说起一阵猛烈的旋风，将大量石灰、沙土和其他建筑材料吹散四处，随后又有雷电交加的暴风雨；苏格拉底提到天火降下，熔化了工人的工具、铲子、斧头和锯子；二人又都提到地震，震起旧地基的石头，填平挖掘的坑穴，并且据鲁菲努斯所说，震倒了附近的建筑。骚动终于归于平静；据贵格利所说，天空出现了一个发光的十字架，外围有一个圆圈；不仅如此，在场众人的身上还印上了十字架，夜间发光（鲁菲努斯），而且洗不掉（苏格拉底）。不过，在这些作者中，严格说来，只有贵格利是同时代的见证人，他在事件发生的363年便记述此事，并断言连异教徒也不曾质疑。（《演说》〔Orat.〕iv.，第110–113页。）其次是安布罗斯和金口约翰，后者曾数次谈到此事。希腊教会和罗马教会的历史学家，以及新教历史学家中的沃伯顿、莫斯海姆 (Mosheim)、施勒克 (Schröckh)、尼安德 (Neander)、格里克 (Guericke)、库尔茨 (Kurtz)、纽曼 (Newman)、罗伯逊 (Robertson) 等人，都为这一非凡事件的神迹性质，或至少为其中上帝护理的性质辩护。另参见J. H. 纽曼 (J. H. Newman，此后已转入罗马天主教)：《论教会史所载的神迹》(Essay on the Miracles recorded in ecclesiastical history)，冠于牛津牛津运动派所译弗勒里 (Fleury)《教会史》(Eccles. Hist.) 381–400年部分之前（牛津，1842年），I.，第clxxv.–clxxxv.页。沃伯顿和纽曼甚至为十字架的记载辩护，并引述类似事例，例如1610年英国的一件事：雷电发生时，出现了带有磷光性质、类似流星现象的十字形印记，由电所造成。至于尤利安这件事，他们认为，正如所多玛被毁一样，使这些不同的自然力量一齐发动的直接原因，是超自然的。↩︎
阿米安努斯 (Ammianus)，第xxv卷第3章。他本人参加了这次战役，并在皇帝的近卫队中服役，因而有最好的观察机会。↩︎
索佐门，vi. 2；狄奥多勒，iii. 25（Νενίκηκας Γαλιλαῖε^*）；其次，菲洛斯托尔吉乌斯，vii. 15，所述略有不同。相反，纳齐安的贵格利虽在别处极力丑化尤利安，却全然不知道这声呼喊；对此，人们可以套用意大利格言：“Se non è vero, è ben trovato.”（“即使不是真的，也编得巧妙。”）上述历史学家还提到他死时的其他一些情节，都不大可信；例如，他从伤口抓了一把血，朝天抛去；他咒骂异教诸神；基督向他显现，等等。索佐门还引述利巴尼乌斯 (Libanius) 毫无根据的断言，说那致命伤不是波斯人，而是一个基督徒造成的；他竟不以为耻地补充说，那位“为上帝和他的宗教作出这件高贵之举”的人，实在很难受到责备（διὰ θεὸν καὶ θρησκείαν ἣν ἐπῄνεσεν^*）！据我所知，这是基督教会内部第一次以 ad majorem Dei gloriam（为了上帝更大的荣耀）为理由，为弑杀暴君辩护。↩︎
狄奥多勒 (Theodor.)：《教会史》(H. E.) iii. 27。↩︎
基督教诗人普鲁登修斯 (Prudentius) 是一个例外；他对尤利安所作的公允评价颇为著名（《神性颂》〔Apotheos.〕450及后），吉本也曾引述：

——“Ductor fortissimus armis;

Conditor et legum celeberrimus; ore manuque

Consultor patriae; sed non consultor habendae

Religionis; amans tercentûm millia Divûm.

Perfidus ille Deo, sed non et perfidus orbi.”

“他是武功卓绝的统帅，

也是声名显赫的立法者；以言语和行动

谋求祖国的福祉，却不善于选择

当持守的宗教；他爱着三十万神明。

他背弃了上帝，却未曾背弃世界。”↩︎
《狄奥多西法典》(Cod. Theodos.)，第ix卷，第16题，第9条（371年）：“Testes sunt leges a me in exordio imperii mei datae, quibus unicuique, quod animo imbibisset, colendi libera facultas tributa est.”（“我即位之初颁布的法律可以作证：这些法律赋予每个人自由敬拜自己心中所信奉者的权利。”）阿米安努斯·马尔切利努斯 (Ammian. Marc.)，第xxx卷第9章，也证实了这一点。↩︎
利巴尼乌斯，前引书（赖斯克〔Reiske〕编，ii. 163）：τὸ θύειν ἱερεῖα — ἐκωλύθη παρὰ τοῖν ἀδελφοῖν, ἀλλ’ οὐ τὸ λιβανωτόν^*. 不过，没有这样的法律流传给我们。↩︎
pagani 一词（源自 pagus），本义为村民、乡民，继而相当于粗野、质朴、无知的人，ἰδιώτης^*、ἄφρων^*；它首次以宗教意义出现，是在瓦伦提尼安 (Valentinian) 于368年颁布的一项法律中（《狄奥多西法典》〔Cod. Theodos.〕，第xvi卷，第2题，第18条），到狄奥多西 (Theodosius) 时期便普遍使用，取代了较早的称呼：gentes, gentiles, nationes, Graeci, cultores simulacrorum（诸族、外邦人、列邦、希腊人、偶像崇拜者）等。英语的 heathen 和 heathenism（源自 heath，荒野），以及德语的 Heiden 和 Heidenthum（源自 Heide，荒野），含义相近，很可能是仿照拉丁语 paganismus 的后期用法而来。↩︎
根据普布利库斯·维克托 (Publicus Victor) 和塞克斯图斯·鲁福斯·费斯图斯 (Sextus Rufus Festus) 的《罗马城记》(Descriptiones Urbis)；这些著作不可能成书于瓦伦提尼安统治以前，也不会晚于其后很久。参见伯尼奥 (Beugnot)，前引书，i. 266；以及罗伯逊，前引书，第260页。↩︎
《狄奥多西法典》(Cod. Theos.) xii. 1, 75；xvi. 10, 20。辛马库斯 (Symmach.)：《书信》(Ep.) x. 61。安布罗斯：《书信》(Ep.) xvii。↩︎
吉本对他的品格评价极高，并公允地指责异教徒佐西穆斯 (Zosimus) 对狄奥多西怀有严重偏见。施洛塞尔 (Schlosser) 和米尔曼也颂扬他。↩︎
《狄奥多西法典》(Cod. Theos.) xvi. 10, 12。↩︎
普鲁登修斯 (Prudent.)：《驳辛马库斯》(in Symrnachum，写于公元403年)，第i卷，第617行及后：

“Denique pro meritis terrestribus aequa rependens

Munera sacricolis summos impertit honores

Dux bonus, et certare sinit cum laud e suorum,

Nec pago implicitos〔即 paganos，异教徒〕per debita culmina mundi

Ire viros prohibet: quoniam coelestia nunquam

Terrenis solitum per iter gradientibus obstant.

Ipse magistratum tibi consulis, ipse tribunal

Contulit.”

“最后，这位贤明的君王按世上的功绩，

公平酬报，赐予奉祀诸神者最高的荣衔，

容许他们与自己人争荣；

也不阻止那些身陷异教的人，登上世间应得的高位；

因为属天之事从不阻挡

循着常途前行于世间的人。

正是他将执政官的职分，正是他将审判的权位，

授予了你。”↩︎
克劳狄安 (Claudian) 在这一时期唤醒了沉睡已久的异教诗歌，并从狄奥多西及其家族的荣耀中汲取灵感；他将狄奥多西之死描绘为升天进入诸神之列。见《论洪诺留第三次任执政官》(De tertio consulatu Honorii)，第162行及后。↩︎
安布罗斯：《答辛马库斯》(Resp. ad Symmachum)：“Dii enim gentium daemonia, ut Scriptura docet.”（“因为列国的神都是鬼魔，正如圣经所教导的。”）参见《诗篇》xcvi. 5，七十士译本：Πάντες οἱ θεοὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν δαιμόνια^*。图尔的圣马丁 (St. Martin of Tours) 热心反对高卢的偶像神庙，尤其依据这一原则行事。他断言，魔鬼本人常常以朱庇特 (Jupiter) 和墨丘利 (Mercury)、密涅瓦 (Minerva) 和维纳斯 (Venus) 的可见形体出现，以保护它们日渐衰败的圣所。见苏尔皮基乌斯·塞韦鲁斯 (Sulpit. Severna)：《圣马丁传》(Vita B. Martini)，第4、6章。↩︎
吉本称他为“一个大胆的恶人，双手交替地被黄金和鲜血玷污”；遗憾的是，这话并非毫无根据。↩︎
关于塞拉皮斯神庙 (Serapeion) 的详细描述，见吉本，尤其见米尔曼：《基督教史》等（Hist. of Christianity, &c.），第iii卷第8章（纽约版，第377页及后）。↩︎
《狄奥多西法典》(Cod. Theodos.)，xvi. 5, 42：“Eos qui Catholicae sectae sunt inimici, intra palatium militare prohibemus. Nullus nobis sit aliqua ratione conjunctus, qui a nobis fide et religione discordat.”（“凡与大公教会为敌者，我们禁止他们在宫廷中任职。凡在信仰和宗教上与我们不合者，不得以任何方式与我们有关系。”）据佐西穆斯 (Zosimus)，第v卷第46章那略有疑问、但通常被接受的记载，这道敕令后来被撤销了，因为异教将领格内里德 (Generid) 扬言辞职，而洪诺留 (Honorius) 又不能没有他。然而，狄奥多西 (Theodosius) 从410年至439年在东方颁布了类似的法律。见吉本 (Gibbon)、米尔曼 (Milman)、施勒克 (Schröckh) 和尼安德 (Neander)，前引处。最后一位误将洪诺留这道敕令的年份定为416年，而非408年。↩︎
狄奥多西二世 (Theodos. II.)，见《狄奥多西法典》(Cod. Theodos.)，xvi. 10, 22：“Paganos, qui supersunt, quamquam jam nullos esse credamus, promulgatarum legum jamdudum praescripta compescant.”（“对于尚存的异教徒，尽管我们相信如今已无此等人，仍须以早已颁布的法律条文加以约束。”）然而，321年至426年间，针对背教转奉异教的法律竟颁布了不少于八道；这表明，许多名义上的基督徒随环境而改变自己的宗教。↩︎
苏格拉底 (Socrat.)，vii. 15（他认为区利罗有罪）；希帕提娅 (Hypatia) 的学生叙内修斯 (Synesius) 的书信；以及菲洛斯托尔吉乌斯 (Philostorg.)，viii. 9。亦参施勒克 (Schröckh)，vii. 45及后；韦恩斯多夫 (Wernsdorf)：《论亚历山大的女哲学家希帕提娅》(De Hypatia, philosopha Alex.)，论文四篇，维滕贝格 (Viteb.)，1748年。查尔斯·金斯利 (Charles Kingsley) 的《希帕提娅》(Hypatia) 是一部具有教诲性质的历史小说，其论战目的在于反对蒲西派 (Puseyite) 对教父时期基督教的过高评价。↩︎
叙利亚的达马斯基乌斯 (Damascius)、基利家的辛普利基乌斯 (Simplicius，诸人中最著名者)、弗里吉亚的欧拉利乌斯 (Eulalius)、吕底亚的普里斯基安努斯 (Priscianus)、迦萨的伊西多尔 (Isidore)、赫尔米亚斯 (Hermias) 和第欧根尼 (Diogenes)。他们有勇气宁愿流亡，也不放弃自己的信念，并受到波斯王霍斯劳 (Chosroes) 的欢迎；但后来在获得宽容的许诺之后，又返回了罗马帝国。参施勒克 (Schröckh)，xvi. 第74页及后。↩︎
关于西方这些异教遗迹，参吉泽勒 (Gieseler) 所引文献，i. §79，注22、23（i. 2. 第38—40页；纽约英文版，i. 第219页及下页）。↩︎
奥古斯丁 (Aug.)：《上帝之城》(De Civit. Dei)，第i卷第1—6章。↩︎
奥古斯丁在《上帝之城》(De Civit. Dei)，xviii. 53，提到这个故事。吉泽勒 (Gieseler，第i卷，§79，注17) 认为，它源于异教徒对基督徒（异端派）关于基督再来与世界末日之盼望的歪曲；他引证菲拉斯特里乌斯 (Philastr.)《论异端》(haer.)，106：“Alia est haeresis de anno annunciato ambigens, quod ait propheta Esaias: Annuntiare annum Dei acceptabilem et diem retributionis. Putant ergo quidam, quod ex quo venit Dominus usque ad consummationem saeculi non plus nec minus fieri annorum numerum, nisi CCCLXV usque ad Christi Domini iterum de coelo divinam praesentiam.”（“另有一种异端，对先知以赛亚所宣告的年数存有疑惑；先知说：宣告上帝悦纳人的恩年和报应的日子。 因此，有些人认为，从主降临直到世界的终结，也就是直到主基督再次从天上神圣地显现，年数不多不少，恰为三百六十五年。”）↩︎
参奥古斯丁 (August.)：《书信》(Epist.)，232；他在其中如此雄辩地对异教徒说：“Videtis simulacrorum templa partim sine reparatione collapsa, partim diruta, partim clausa, partim in usus alienos commutata; ipsaque simulacra vel confringi, vel incendi, vel includi, vel destrui; atque ipsas huius saeculi potestates quae aliquando pro simulacris populum Christianum persequebantur, victas et domitas, non a repugnantibus sed a morientibus Christianis, et contra eadem simulacra, pro quibus Christianos occidebant, impetus suos legesque vertisse et imperii nobilissimi eminentissimum culmen ad sepulcrum piscatoris Petri submisso diademate supplicare.”（“你们看见，供奉偶像的庙宇，有的年久失修而坍塌，有的被拆毁，有的被关闭，有的被改作别用；偶像本身，或被打碎，或被焚烧，或被封存，或被毁灭；而那些从前为偶像逼迫基督徒的世上掌权者，也已被战胜、被降服，不是被奋起抵抗的基督徒，而是被赴死的基督徒所征服。他们如今反倒以自己的力量和法律，攻击那些他们从前为之杀害基督徒的偶像；这最尊贵帝国中至高无上的君主，也在渔夫彼得的坟前低下冠冕，俯伏祈求。”）↩︎

《基督教会史》·第三卷·第一章罗马帝国中异教的衰亡与基督教的胜利

第一章罗马帝国中异教的衰亡与基督教的胜利

目录

一般参考文献

§ 2. 君士坦丁大帝：公元306–337年

§ 3. 君士坦丁的诸子，公元337—361年

§ 4. 背教者尤利安与异教的反动，公元361—363年

史料

参考文献

§ 5. 从约维安到狄奥多西：公元363—392年

§ 6. 狄奥多西大帝及其继承者，公元392—550年

§ 7. 异教的衰亡

Original Text

CHAPTER I. DOWNFALL OF HEATHENISM AND VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

General Literature.

§ 2. Constantine The Great. a.d. 306–337.

§ 3. The Sons of Constantine. a.d. 337–361.

§ 4. Julian the Apostate, and the Reaction of Paganism. a.d. 361–363.

Sources.

Literature.

§ 5. From Jovian to Theodosius. a.d. 363–392.

§ 6. Theodosius the Great and his Successors. a.d. 392–550.

§ 7. The Downfall of Heathenism.

Original Footnotes

脚注

Best guess 对照表

第一章 罗马帝国中异教的衰亡与基督教的胜利

目录

一般参考文献

§ 2. 君士坦丁大帝：公元306–337年

§ 3. 君士坦丁的诸子，公元337—361年

§ 4. 背教者尤利安与异教的反动，公元361—363年

史料

参考文献

§ 5. 从约维安到狄奥多西：公元363—392年

§ 6. 狄奥多西大帝及其继承者，公元392—550年

§ 7. 异教的衰亡

Original Text

CHAPTER I. DOWNFALL OF HEATHENISM AND VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

General Literature.

§ 2. Constantine The Great. a.d. 306–337.

§ 3. The Sons of Constantine. a.d. 337–361.

§ 4. Julian the Apostate, and the Reaction of Paganism. a.d. 361–363.

Sources.

Literature.

§ 5. From Jovian to Theodosius. a.d. 363–392.

§ 6. Theodosius the Great and his Successors. a.d. 392–550.

§ 7. The Downfall of Heathenism.

Original Footnotes

脚注

Best guess 对照表

第一章罗马帝国中异教的衰亡与基督教的胜利