In the course of entire human history, there have been good times, bad times, and just plain awful
times but the Medieval times give every other period a run for its money. There is a reason
that period is known as the “Dark Ages”. The world rarely saw any progress as art and science took a
nosedive. Religious hegemony became more powerful than the actual reagents and the economic divide
between feudal lords and serfs created a society where most of human life had no worth. Moreover,
diseases, torture, crusades, famine, plagues, and horrible standards of living regressed
humanity miles from the accomplishments that were achieved in the times of antiquity. But how did
this happen? Who was responsible for this huge leap backward in the advancement of humanity? The
answer might shock you. Welcome to Nutty History, and today let’s look at what history books do not
tell you about Constantine and how his rule over most of Europe led to the beginning of the Dark
Ages. Dark Ages is the name given to the terrible period between the fifth and fifteenth centuries.
Sandwiched between the fall of the Roman Empire and the start of the renaissance period,
the medieval period tends to be portrayed as a horrible era in human history in which nothing
good or innovative happened. It is hard to believe that life in Europe would drop so drastically
only two centuries after the establishment of Constantinople, a marvel of a city that ruled
the entirety of Europe until it was taken down by the Ottomans. Constantine’s rule in
Constantinople created the model that the rest of Europe would follow in the following years.
This very model would slowly degrade the quality of life on the entire continent.
Constantine had to spend more than generously to maintain his large army which could be justified
given he was ruling a huge empire all by himself and needed the manpower to maintain control.
Under Constantine, the army expanded out of all proportion, and the civil service became bloated,
growing to a size never known before. And this is how modern bureaucracy was born that we all detest
for being slow, inefficient, and regressive. Constantine also created the Roman Manorial
system that regressed the role of farmers in the Roman Empire. At one time, these farmers were the
soldiers, generals, senators, and most important part of the Roman society, even Julius Caesar was
a farmer, but Constantine pushed this class to the status of peasants. Who knows, maybe he saw them
as a threat to his reign or authority. The farmers or peasants in the new manorial system were
rendered dependent on their land and their lord. Its basic unit was the manor, a self-sufficient
landed estate, or fief that was under the control of a lord who enjoyed a variety of rights over it
and the peasants attached to it by the means of serfdom. Now if you are thinking, wait a second…,
doesn’t that sound like feudalism? The economic divide which was the most inherent feature of
the dark ages? You aren’t wrong. Because this is exactly what it was, Constantine’s Manorial System
was the precursor to feudalism and thus one of his major decisions would effectively create a class
of farmers known as ‘serfs.’ The lowest class of agrarians who were at the mercy of landlords and
their unconstrained high rents. Constantine also made other professions hereditary. All of these
reforms would lead to the fall of the Roman empire and plunge Europe into the dreaded era
of 900 years that will always be remembered as the Dark Ages. Constantine also created the precedent
for heavy taxation that would keep commoners in the Middle Ages from becoming self-dependent and
economically sufficient. To fund his giant army, bloated civil service, and keep the lords happy,
Constantine had to maintain the existing harsh taxation structures. He also imposed more taxes
on the cruel tax structures that were levied by his predecessors like Maxentius and Diocletian.
This is ironic because Constantine gained support during the Tetrarchy civil war by criticizing
these rulers’ taxation system. The worst weed in Constantine’s tax bouquet, which finally pushed
the tax system beyond any bounds of morality or justification, was the so-called “collatio
lustralis”. This was a gold and silver tax payable by all who came into contact with the metals,
including merchants, manufacturers, miners, jewelers, apprentice jewelers, and the estates
and households of these parties. For the first time, this tax applied not only to the rich but
also to really poor people simply because they were involved in the gold and silver trade.
Rebuilding the ancient Byzantium as a “New Rome,” a Christian Rome,
Constantine the Great laid the foundations for the noble Christian civilization of the
Byzantine or East Roman Empire that would survive for a millennium after the Empire in the West had
disintegrated. Earlier Constantine had eyes on the ancient city of Troy but Byzantium provided
him with a strategic location on the European side of the Strait of Bosporus , so traffic
could be controlled to and from the Black Sea. It also had an excellent harbor, the Golden Horn,
that could be easily defended. Constantine brought in artisans and resources from across the empire.
There were wide avenues with statues of Alexander, Caesar, Augustus, Diocletian, and of course,
Constantine. He rebuilt the walls, built cisterns, Christian churches such as Hagia Irene,
and pagan temples. It was a Christian capital that remained classical at the same time.
Sounds like a wonderful harmony where everybody had their own space to live, doesn't it? On paper,
the idea of a more tolerant empire towards other religions like Christianity sounds wonderful
but Constantine didn’t stop there. He laid the foundation for the flight of stairs that Vatican
clergy would climb in the following years to become equal and in some cases more powerful than
the European governments themselves. In his effort to unify Christianity and Paganism, Constantine
didn’t just fuse the architecture of the new religion and old Rome, he also promoted mingling
the rites of the two religions. The Roman pantheon of gods was slowly assimilated into Christianity.
Peter became a substitute for Jupiter, the King of the gods and the Roman counterpart of the Grecian
Zeus. The worship of saints became a substitute for pagan polytheism with each saint becoming a
working model of one of the Greco-Roman pantheons of gods. Pagan holidays were mingled with
Christian beliefs, for example, the celebration of Easter and Christmas, both originally set apart
for the worship of pagan deities, were assimilated and rebranded to reflect Christian themes.
Constantine’s aggressive move to mingle the two religions became one of the best marketing and PR
campaigns in history. For the church, it was a day of reckoning. She had been battered by brutal and
persistent persecution for almost three centuries. The most recent barrage, under Diocletian,
had left her tired and worn down. Constantine had not only blown new life into the religion,
but he had also set up the path that would help Christianity to become the most dominant religion
in history. Fifty years after Constantine, Emperor Theodosius would outlaw paganism entirely,
and with no other religion to compete with, the Church would grow to be an ever-powerful entity
due to the reforms initiated by Constantine. The idea of divination of reagents and rulers was
in practice for thousands of years in not only Rome but Egypt, Greece, and many other ancient
civilizations and empires as well. But thanks to Constantine, the Church became powerful,
authoritative, and controlling. Soon the wars of the Empire became holy wars;
church leaders looked for civil sanctions to back up their apostolic judgments. And yet,
Constantine, despite adhering to the monotheistic ideas of Christianity wasn’t above the hypocrisy
and vanity of self-deification. His statues in new Constantinople showed him dressed in the
garb of Apollo with a scepter in one hand and a globe in the other. Constantine was the first
truly autocratic ruler of what was called the Dominate of the Roman Empire. According to Gibbon,
this absolute power and corruption started with Diocletian, but it was under Constantine
that it reached its apogee. He enjoyed the riches and trappings of a god-like figure,
and this could be seen in his prose, architecture, costume, coinage, and the manners at his court.
As he was the paladin of Christianity during his rule, he set such precedence for following
Popes to enjoy immense power and authority as the kingmakers of Europe in the medieval ages.
October 27th, 312. On the eve of his battle with Maxentius, which is now known as The
Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine was asleep in his tent. In his dream,
some accounts say, an angel descended from the night sky,
holding a glowing golden crucifix. Other accounts mentioned that it was Jesus himself
who told Constantine in his dream to use the Christian cross in the battle tomorrow.
The future of the entire Roman Empire was resting on the outcome of this battle. After a long,
excruciating, confusing, and unstable period of civil war between the Roman Tetrarchy, Maxentius
and Constantine were two of the last three standing challengers in the arena of “Who Wants to
Be a Roman Emperor?” Constantine made his soldiers go into the battle with the sign of Chi-Rho, the
first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek and he made a promise that if successful in battle,
he would adopt Christianity. Eusebius, a Christian friend of Constantine described this moment:
“He saw with his own eyes in the heavens a trophy of the cross arising from the light of the sun,
carrying the message, In Hoc Signo Vinces or ''with this sign, you will conquer.” Despite
being outnumbered two to one, Constantine’s forces were decisively victorious in the battle
the next morning. Constantine wasted no time to enter Rome the next day. Not long after setting
his foot inside Rome, Constantine embarked on a lengthy propaganda campaign to legitimize his
rule and portray himself as a liberator over the tyrant Maxentius. According to chroniclers, such
as Eusebius of Caesarea and Lactantius, the battle marked the beginning of Constantine’s conversion
to Christianity. Following the battle, Constantine ignored the altars to the gods prepared on the
Capitoline and did not carry out the customary sacrifices to celebrate a general’s victorious
entry into Rome, instead heading directly to the imperial palace. Next year, in 313,
he signed the Edict of Milan with Licinius. The edict between Constantine and Licinius legalized
Christianity and allowed freedom of worship. This edict was often ignored, but it was still an
important moment with the principle of tolerating Christianity accepted within the Roman empire.
The edict also established Sunday as a day of worship and created provisions for confiscated
property to be returned to the church. Whilst the Edict of Milan supported tolerance of Christians,
there was no mention of Jews, and as Christianity became the dominant religion in Rome,
there was a development of greater persecutions against the old Jewish populations defeating the
purpose of the edict to give everybody freedom of religion. Another critical moment in the history
of early Christianity was in 325 when he summoned the Council of Nicaea. This was to resolve the
conflict between the two Christian theologians Arius and Athanasius. The Council of Nicaea led
to the Nicene Creed, which was the most important tract in formalizing what Christianity was.
The Nicene Creed asserted the view of Saint Paul that Christ was divine,
and made other versions of Christianity, such as Gnosticism and Arianism, heretical.
The motivation of Constantine may have been the desire to create a single unified religion,
which was easier to use as a tool for the empire. A strategy that would entangle European politics
and religion for more than a millennium and dawn the dreaded era now known as the Dark Ages.
Was Constantine really a Christian sympathizer? Not all historians believe that. The argument that
Constantine used Christianity for his political gains stems from his earlier days in servitude to
the then Roman Emperor Diocletian. Constantine’s mother Helena was a devout Christian.
For political reasons, she was renounced by her husband when he became an Augustus. But when
Constantine was pronounced as the new Augustus by his army men after the death of Constantius,
he restored her status as Empress dowager. Later credited with the discovery of the True Cross and
graced with the title of Saint, Saint Helena was a big influence on Constantine’s life.
However, there is the matter of Nicomedian Persecution of Christians. Remember, earlier
we mentioned Constantine wasn’t happy with being ignored by Diocletian while choosing new Caesars?
Well, there is a big story behind why Constantine was disappointed. Before Diocletian abdicated the
throne, he had launched the most violent and systematic persecutions of Christians.
Diocletian’s persecutions, which occurred around 302-303 CE, were in full swing when
Constantine was in his thirties. Constantine, who was lobbying for a prestigious position in
the court of Diocletian, would not have dared to disobey Augustus despite his religious affinity.
Moreover, Constantine was promoted to the rank of the tribune of the first order in early 305 AD.
This promotion came immediately after Diocletian’s “Great Persecution” of the Christians
in Nicomedia, where Constantine was posted as well. It’s hard to imagine that Constantine
was able to keep his hands clean in the whole affair and defy Augustus’ order. Yet, somehow,
he still managed to be promoted? Sounds fishy, isn’t it? Interestingly, not only was he promoted
but Constantine was expecting to be the Caesar-in-line. Though this is a speculation,
there is no denying that Constantine the Great was a master of misinformation and distraction,
despite not a lot of people knowing that today. This is perhaps one of the earliest
examples of how shrewd a politician Constantine could be. In his successful bid to gain the
support of the Christian population of Rome, Constantine later claimed that he was younger
than he actually was and separated himself from Diocletian’s policies of persecution.
Not to mention he left no stone unturned in exaggerating the abuses of Christians by
his rivals, such as Maxentius, Licinius, Maximinus, and others. All of them used
brutality and oppression of Christians to gain political ground among pagans. Moreover, all the
praise Constantine gets for being the paladin of Christianity comes from a single source,
Eusebius. One cannot ignore the fact that Eusebius was also a close friend of Constantine and most
possibly had a biased perspective. For example, he did his best to paint Constantine’s conflict
with Licinius in religious terms, Christianity vs Paganism when it was purely political. Eusebius
also attempted to omit the events of Constantine ordering the executions of his own son and nephew,
persecution of Jews, destruction and plundering of temples, and many other wrongs. Tell us in
the comments what do you think? Was Constantine guilty of descending Europe into the dark ages?
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