Church History (Book 10, chapters 8–9)

Church History

continued

Chapter 8

The Subsequent Wickedness of Licinius, and His Death.

2 Such were the gifts that the divine and heavenly grace of our Saviour’s appearing gave us, and such was the abundance of good things that our peace brought to all people. So our own affairs were passing in joy and festival. But envy, which hates what is good, and the demon who loves evil, could not bear the sight of it. Nor were the fates of the tyrants already described enough to bring Licinius to his senses. His rule was prospering. He had been honored with the second place after the great emperor Constantine, and had been given the highest standing through marriage and family ties. Yet he abandoned the imitation of what is good, and set himself to copy the evil ways and wickedness of the godless tyrants. He had seen with his own eyes how their lives ended, but he chose to follow their way of thinking rather than to remain in friendship and goodwill with the better man.

4 Filled with envy against his benefactor, he launched a godless and terrible war against him. He spared nothing: not the laws of nature, not oaths, not blood relationship, and he gave no thought to treaties. For Constantine, as a thoroughly good emperor, had given him signs of real goodwill. He had not begrudged him kinship, and he had not refused him a splendid marriage with his sister. He had thought him worthy to share in his ancestral noble birth and his long-standing royal blood. He had granted him authority over the whole empire as a brother-in-law and fellow emperor, giving him the freedom to govern and manage a share of the Roman peoples no smaller than his own. 6 Licinius did the opposite. Every day he devised all sorts of schemes against his superior and thought up every kind of plot, to repay his benefactor with evil. At first he tried to hide his preparations and pretended to be a friend. He attacked with trickery and deceit many times, hoping to gain his goal very easily. But God was Constantine’s friend, his protector and guardian. God brought into the light the plots that were being hatched in secret and in darkness, and exposed them. So great is the power of godliness, that great weapon of virtue, both to ward off enemies and to guard one’s own safety. Protected by it, our emperor, so dear to God, escaped the many tangled plots of that man of ill repute.

8 When Licinius saw that his secret scheming was not going as he intended, because God was exposing every trick and piece of villainy to the emperor who loved him, he could no longer stay hidden and took up open war. Having decided to fight Constantine face to face, he now rushed to set himself in battle line even against the God of the universe, whom he knew Constantine worshiped. Then he began, gradually and quietly at first, to besiege the God-fearing people under his own rule, who had never done his government any harm at all. He did this because his inborn wickedness had forced him into terrible blindness. 10 Licinius kept before his eyes neither the memory of those who had persecuted the Christians before him, nor the fate of those whose destroyer and avenger he himself had become because of the impieties they had committed. He turned aside from sound reasoning and, plainly, went out of his mind. He resolved to make war on God himself, as Constantine’s helper, rather than on the man who was being helped. First he drove every Christian out of his household. In doing so the wretched man deprived himself of the prayer these people offer to God on his behalf, which they are taught by their fathers’ tradition to make for everyone. Then he ordered that the soldiers in each city be sorted out and stripped of their rank and honor unless they chose to sacrifice to the demons. Yet even these measures were small compared with the greater ones that followed.

11 Why should I go through all the details of what this hater of God did, or tell how this most lawless man devised lawless laws? He made a law that no one should show kindness to those suffering in the prisons by giving them food. No one was to pity those wasting away from hunger in chains. No one was to be good at all, or do any good deed, even though nature itself draws people to feel sympathy for their neighbors. This was an openly shameless and utterly harsh law, one that went beyond all gentle human nature. A penalty was attached to it: those who showed pity were to suffer the same as those who received it. Those who performed acts of kindness were to be shut up in chains and prisons and endure the same punishment as the people they were helping. 12 Such were the ordinances of Licinius. Why should I list his innovations about marriages, or his changes in the laws about those who die? In these he dared to set aside the ancient laws of the Romans, which had been well and wisely made, and brought in certain barbarous and savage laws in their place, laws that were truly lawless and criminal. He also dreamed up countless accusations against the subject peoples, all sorts of levies of gold and silver, and new surveys of land. He also demanded a ruinous profit from country people who were no longer living, who had died long before.

14 Why should I describe the kinds of banishments this hater of mankind devised besides these, against people who had done no wrong? Or the removal of men of noble family and high reputation, whose lawful wives he tore away and handed over to certain vile servants to be shamefully abused? Or how many married women and young virgins he assaulted to satisfy the unrestrained desire of his soul, though he himself was extremely old? Why should I drag these matters out, when the extreme character of his last acts shows his earlier ones to be small and as nothing? For in the end his madness turned against the bishops. He supposed that they, as servants of the God over all, were opposed to what he was doing. Out of fear of the One who was stronger, he did not yet act openly, but again secretly and treacherously. Through the plotting of the governors he put to death the most respected of them. And the manner of their murder was strange, such as had never been heard of before.

16 What was done around Amaseia and the other cities of Pontus surpassed every extreme of cruelty. There some of the churches of God were again torn down from the top to the ground, and others were shut up, so that none of the usual worshipers could gather and render to God the worship owed him. For Licinius did not suppose that prayers were being made for himself; he judged this by his own bad conscience. He was convinced that we did everything for the emperor beloved of God and that we were pleading with God for him. This was why he rushed to pour out his anger on us. 18 Then the flattering governors, convinced that they were doing what pleased the impious man, subjected some of the bishops to the usual punishments of criminals. Men who had done no wrong were led off and punished without any excuse, just like murderers. Some now suffered a newer kind of death: their bodies were hacked with the sword into many pieces, and after this savage and most dreadful sight they were thrown into the depths of the sea as food for the fish. So the godly men fled again, and again the fields, the deserts, the woods and the mountains received the servants of Christ. When these measures succeeded in this way for the impious man, he finally resolved to stir up a persecution against everyone.

19 He was master of his purpose, and nothing stood in the way of carrying it out, except that God, the champion of the souls that are his own, saw what was coming and acted at once. As in deep darkness and the gloomiest night, he suddenly made a great light shine out, a savior for all. He led his servant Constantine by the hand with a lofty arm to these regions.

Chapter 9

The Victory of Constantine, and the Blessings Which Under Him Accrued to the Subjects of the Roman Empire.

2 So God gave Constantine, from heaven above, a reward worthy of his piety: the trophies of victory over the godless. The guilty Licinius, together with all his counselors and friends, God threw down flat on his face at Constantine’s feet. For when Licinius drove his madness to the extreme, the emperor, the friend of God, concluded that it could no longer be borne. He gathered his sound judgment, tempered the firm character of justice with kindness, and gladly decided to come to the aid of those suffering under the tyrant. He set out to rescue the greater part of the human race by removing a few destroyers. 4 Earlier Constantine had dealt with Licinius only with kindness, showing mercy to a man who did not deserve sympathy. It did no good. Licinius did not turn from his wickedness but only increased his rage against the nations under his control, and those who were mistreated had no hope of rescue, ground down as they were by a terrible beast. So the helper of the good, who combined a hatred of evil with a love of what is good, came forward with his son Crispus, a most kindly emperor, and held out a saving right hand to all who were perishing. They had God, the King of all, as their guide, and God’s Son, the Savior of all, as their leader and ally. Father and son together spread their forces in a circle around the ranks of those God hated, and they won an easy victory. God made everything in the battle go as they wished.

5 Suddenly, and faster than words can tell, those who only yesterday and the day before were breathing out death and threats were no more. They were not remembered even by name. Their inscriptions and honors received the shame they deserved. Licinius suffered the same things he had seen with his own eyes happen to the earlier godless tyrants. He had not accepted instruction, nor was he taught sense by the beatings his neighbors received. He followed the same road of ungodliness as they had, and he was justly sent tumbling over the same cliff. [Acts 9:1] 7 So Licinius lay fallen in this way. But Constantine, the greatest of victors, outstanding in every virtue of godliness, together with his son Crispus, an emperor most beloved of God and in every way like his father, took back their own East. They made the Roman empire one again, as in the old days, and brought everything under their peace: the whole circle of the world from the rising sun, north and south alike, to the farthest edge of the declining day. All fear of those who had once oppressed them was removed from people, and they held splendid festival days. Everything was full of light. Those who had been downcast looked at one another with smiling faces and bright eyes. They had dances and hymns in cities and in the countryside. First of all they honored God, the King of all, because this is what they had been taught, and then the godly emperor together with his God-beloved sons.

9 The old evils were forgotten, and so was every kind of ungodliness. People enjoyed the good things of the present and looked forward to those still to come. The victorious emperor’s decrees, full of kindness, spread to every place, and his laws showed generosity and marks of true godliness. So, with every tyranny swept away, the kingdom that rightly belonged to them was kept secure and free from envy for Constantine and his sons alone. They cleansed life of the hatred of God that had marked their predecessors. They were aware of the good things God had arranged for them, and they showed their love of virtue and love of God, their reverence and thankfulness toward the divine, by the deeds they set before the eyes of all people.