Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance

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Summary: An Excellent Political History of 4th Century Christianity
Review: A book on the fourth century that cites Saul Alinsky and Richard Nixon is not a typical history! The reason is that "Constantine and the Bishops" is as much about political science as history. Using the usual traditional sources, Drake goes further and examines agendas; the people he reveals are refreshingly understandable. In fact, I kept finding myself thinking: "Of course!", and "That reminds me of [name]", and "That's the same kind of mistake I might have made", etc. Constantine comes across as a very believable person trying desperately to bring peace and order to an empire plagued by special interests and external challenges (so what else is new! ). For example, regards special interests, Drake points out that Constantine briefly transferred some legal functions to the bishops. The reason was corruption in the legal profession mirroring today's problems in the legal system (i.e. money buying favorable decisions). How contemporary! ----- In terms of history, this work excels because it offers reasonable perspectives within which events take place. Instead of a mountain of facts, Drake selects currents within which they make sense. The "Big Events" of this period were: The Great Persecution (303-313) by Emperor Diocletian , the reign of Constantine (324-337), the brief counter-revolution of Emperor Julian "the Apostate" (361-263), and the final conquest of power by the Christian bishops under Emperor Theodosius I (379-395). The history in this book is however very detailed. It reaches back to the decline of the Roman Senate under Augustus Caesar three centuries before, and looks ahead to the ratification of the Theodosian Code in 438. Even without much knowledge of the fourth century, a reader will finish with an excellent grounding in the period. Over 51 pages of footnotes, a list of 118 primary sources and 43 PAGES of secondary sources (!), are backed up by an excellent index. The enquiring reader will have no shortage of further reading to pursue! ----- One interesting thought that Drake comes back to repeatedly is that "the ancient state was built on the premise that organized human activity was needed to ensure that [divinity] remained benevolent to the community." He points out another fact that was brushed under the carpet in later times: many pagans were monotheists before the final victory of Christianity, and that Constantine may well have been a monotheist well before he accepted Christianity. Drake shows that the failure of the Great Persecution was due in part to the fact that pagan and Christian neighbors usually got along rather well, contrary to myth. Constantine had no desire to fail (as had Diocletian) by encouraging conflict; Constantine's challenge was to keep the Christian church from tearing itself apart. Within the church, a centralized bureaucracy had not yet emerged, and the bishops reined supreme. Some (not all!) were obsessed with a search for "heretics". Once Christianity "became popular" a flood of new converts, many with little religious motivation, threatened to swamp the church. For those who had suffered under Diocletion the stampede of opportunists was - at best - a mixed blessing! Constantine constantly came down against the exclusionists, favoring an inclusive approach. In fact the evolution of Christianity into an intolerant movement, Drake points out, was not inevitable: internal conflicts had more to do its intolerance (later projected outward) than anything else. Julian's brief counter-revolution just fed internal paranoia and strengthened the hand of the extremists within Christianity. (How familiar! Radicalization of a movement due to unsuccessful external persecution combined with internal "purges" of deviants!) This is an excellent volume. If I were to recommend a "first read" for those wanting to understand fourth century Christianity, this would be The Book!

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Summary: Reconsidering Constantine
Review: Drake has taken on and called into serious question some of the most deeply-entrenched notions current among scholars of late antiquity concerning not only the first Christian emperor, but also the very nature of early Christianity as a whole. Even as modern scholarship has moved away from the notion of a "life or death" struggle between pagans and Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., there has remained an assumption even among careful scholars that the religious intolerance which came to prevail in the later fourth and fifth centuries A.D. as the Roman empire became a Christian empire was in some sense native to Christianity as a faith system. It therefore follows from this dangerous assumption that outcroppings of intolerance and violence committed by members of the late antique Christian community need no further explanation than the faith of the perpetrators. Drake takes this assumption and its implications to task and argues that Christian intolerance in late antiquity has a specific historical and political basis, and that the Christianity Constantine envisioned upon his "conversion" was an inclusive one which was to have created a comparatively neutral public space with regard to religion, and which demanded only worship of a single benevolent creator, a notion very much in keeping with elite pagan religious and intellectual trends. This vision, however, was sublimated to a separate and distinct agenda advanced by such Christian hardliners as the historians and panegyrists Eusebius and Lactantius, for whom the history of the Christian community was an unceasing struggle against the "error" of paganism, and in whose eyes the defining traits of a "good Christian emperor" not only included all the traditional virtues of a Good Roman Emperor, but came to include also a militant advocacy of "orthodox Christianity," and an unwillingness to fully tolerate any other religious expression. Drake's book is an impressive pulling apart of time-worn and, as he frequently proves through careful consideration of primary source documentation, ill-founded ideological constructs upon which many modern notions of Constantine are based. Indeed, Constantine and the Bishops is a subtle, quietly profound study in subject formation and rhetorical determinacy which is nevertheless simply stated throughout and accessible to readers of every background.

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Summary: Fine Study on When Christianity Became a Political Power
Review: Drake's "Constantine and the Bishops" is a fine study of the politicial, sociological and theological currents at the time when Christianity became a political power within the Roman Empire. Focusing on the reign of Constantine, but ranging from the persecution of Diocletian to the time of Theodosius, it offers a much more complicated view of both Christianity and Constantine's efforts to integrate Christianity into the structure of the Roman Empire. In particular, the book appreciates the variety of Christian practices and beliefs that existed throughout the (huge) empire and the constant struggle among many Christian groups to define Christianity along their own beliefs. We tend to see that variety only through the very colored lens of heresy and its suppresion. Constantine comes out rather well in this book; he is a far more sympathetic, complex and impressive person than represented in the writings of Eusebius, where he frequently appears as little more than a puppet of God. Where the book is weakest is in Drake's argument on how official Christianity became more intolerant. It certainly did after Constantine, but whether a Constantine could have avoided this result is not proven in the book. Where the book is strongest is in demonstrating that Constantine, while he might be considered a "Christian" emperor (he didn't receive baptism until he was on his deathbed), he still saw and ruled the Roman Empire with a keen knowledge of the Classical heritage. The book is also provides an excellent counterbalance to the impressions we might get from the writings of Eusebius and Athanasius, the winners in the Christian theological wars of that period. Overall, the book is very well-written (if in a leisurely fashion) and has superb notes and bibliography (the notes are as interesting as the text). It is not light reading, but if you are interested in the late Classical period or in the foundations of Christianity, this book is well worth reading.