A letter from 313 shows his first action: Christians, it said, were exempt from civic public duties such as serving as jurors, overseeing the collection of taxes, or organizing building projects, festivals and games. Previously such exemptions had been given to those whose profession benefited the state in other ways, such as doctors and teachers. Now Constantine declared that Christians were just as deserving. Being able to devote more time to worship of the Christian God, said Constantine, would make ‘an immense contribution to the welfare of the community’.30 Christianity, the imperial message made plain, was essential to the good of the empire. In addition, he granted payments to the clergy, and also made Christians of privileged and propertied rank exempt from paying taxes. Indeed, bishops were not only taking on administrative roles at court, but also across the empire: Christians engaged in civil lawsuits were granted the legal right to refer their dispute from a secular magistrate to a bishop. But these utterly unprecedented changes did not just take the form of benefits in rank and privileges. They had a physical manifestation too.
Constantine gave generously from the imperial treasury so that churches across the western empire could be built or improved, or sumptuously decorated. The legacy of his munificence can be seen today in Rome, where he paid for no fewer than five or six churches. The greatest of these was the enormous Basilica of St John Lateran. Although the cathedral that stands there today is a later construction, the proportions of the original building are known. It was no less than 100 metres (330 feet) in length and 54 metres (180 feet) wide. The design of this and other churches was innovative. Although the word ‘basilica’ is used today to mean a religious building, at the time of Constantine a basilica was simply a secular, public building, normally thought of by Romans as a law court or a marketplace or a venue for public assembly. Under Constantine, this hall-like design now became the structure for the principal church of Rome – and the template for Christian churches in the future.31
Normally churches in Rome were built outside the city walls on sites associated with the veneration of apostles and martyrs. The Basilica of St John Lateran, in the heart of Rome, was an exception because it was founded on a plot of land adjacent to an old imperial palace, a residence which Constantine duly donated to the bishop of Rome (namely, the Pope). The Basilica of St Peter’s, another church endowed by Constantine, venerated an early Christian cult. On the side of the Vatican Hill, the site of the cult centre of St Peter, a huge terrace was created. The clearing of the ground revealed an ancient pagan and Christian burial ground and it was on top of this that the massive basilica of the first St Peter’s was built. In the modern sixteenth-century St Peter’s, constructed on the site of Constantine’s original church, it is still possible to access the cemetery below.
The new churches not only looked different from pagan temples – they served a different function. The temples had simply housed the deity; the Christian churches, by contrast, were not only houses of God, but places in which His followers could congregate. Here on Sundays, the day that Constantine would later make holy (in 321), Roman soldiers would be seen, for the emperor gave them leave to attend church. When in the house of God, slaves too were given a radical new privilege: they were temporarily free. The sheer physical presence and majesty of these buildings spelt a revolution: Christianity was important and Christians were special.32
However, there was one action at this time that above all else revealed the importance of Christianity to Constantine as the glue unifying his and Licinius’s new empire. In 313 news reached the emperor that an argument had broken out in the Christian Church of North Africa. It centred on who was the rightful bishop of the province: Caecilian or Donatus. The dispute had arisen because one group believed that Caecilian should not be recognized. He had been ordained, they said, by a bishop who had colluded in the persecutions of Diocletian by handing over holy scriptures to the Roman authorities. As a result, the rival bishop, Donatus, was consecrated. To previous emperors, such a dispute would have been a parochial matter of absolutely no importance. But not to Constantine.
I consider it absolutely contrary to the divine law that we should overlook such quarrels and contentions, whereby the Highest Divinity may perhaps be roused not only against the human race but also against myself, to whose care He had by His celestial will committed the government of all earthly things.33
The message was clear: whereas in the past emperors were accustomed to arbitrate petitions or cases of a civil or legal nature brought to them by provincials, Constantine’s authority as ruler of the Roman empire was defined as much by his ability to adjudicate disputes within the Church.34 Dissension among Christians was dissension against the unity of the empire, and in the new regime that was not allowed. Since the persecutions under Diocletian, Constantine had always known that the practice of worshipping one Christian God to the exclusion of all others made imperial unity impossible to achieve. If he were now to break cover and throw in his lot with the Christians, there could be no political advantage if he and his fellow Christians were not themselves united. When the North African dispute rumbled on into the winter of 315–16 the emperor wrote to those involved. He threatened to visit them in person and bash their heads together. By that time, however, there were other, far more pressing matters on Constantine’s mind.
The summer of 315 saw the city of Rome in the throes of hosting a grand party. The emperor of the west had left his imperial seat at Trier and, accompanied by an entourage of his family, bishops and court officials, had returned in person to the city he had liberated three years earlier. By way of entertainment, circus races and public games were in full swing. The festival was being held to mark Constantine’s decennalia – his tenth anniversary of becoming emperor – and now, looking back, there was much to celebrate. He had campaigned against the Germans and secured the Rhine frontier. He had restored peace and stability to an empire that had been falling apart at the seams but was now prospering. The Senate in Rome was once again industrious, a partner in government. Indeed, Constantine had addressed the fear of senators that they, and hence Rome, were no longer important: he increased their number, bestowing the rank of senator on people who were not required to live in Rome or to attend meetings of the Senate. Membership thus became empire-wide rather than local.35
The new Christian élite also had cause for celebration. They could now boast a privileged position of influence in Constantine’s court, and the emperor himself, in conversation or in study with Lactantius and Bishop Ossius, was perhaps gaining greater knowledge of his divine protector. His faith was, at least ostensibly, being confirmed. The extent of Christian influence on Constantine can perhaps be gauged in specially minted, commemorative medallions produced in the same year. On them Constantine is depicted wearing the cipher of Christ, the chi-rho, and they were ceremoniously handed out to prominent court officials. Priests, believers and upholders of the traditional Roman religions, however, were not excluded from this prosperity. In the new spirit of toleration their cults too were flourishing. Indeed now, at the festival, a fitting tribute to the emperor’s discretion was unveiled and dedicated.
The Arch of Constantine still stands today in the Forum. This major monument marks the transition from classical to a new style known as ‘late antique’. In this style reliefs are sculpted depicting Constantine’s liberation of Italy: here is a scene describing the defeat of Maxentius, there the drowning of the tyrant’s soldiers and in another Constantine’s entry into Rome. There is, however, not one Christian symbol to be seen anywhere on it. Quite the opposite was true. Some of the sculptures dated to the reign of Hadrian. They were recycled and remodelled to show Constantine and Licinius, and not the classical emperor, hunting and sacrificing to the Roman gods. This was to be the last time that an emperor would be portrayed performing such pagan activities. For all the strides taken towards favouring Christianity, the reality was that the western emperor could still not yet declare his hand.