Freeman says that Constantine’s “conversion” was a shrewd political act, basing this conclusion, he claims, on “recent research.” (Burckhardt is recent??) One sign of his shrewdness was his ability to satisfy both Christian and pagan: “Some very careful political manoeuvring was necessary if Constantine was to avoid offending either Christian or pagan.”
If this was his aim, he wasn’t so good at it. In a letter of 332, he complained that the ” oak of Mambre, where we find that Abraham dwelt, is defiled by certain of the slaves of superstition in every possible way.” Not so shrewd.
The next year, in a letter to Sapor of Persia, he wrote:
“This God I invoke with bended knees, and recoil with horror from the blood of sacrifices from their foul and detestable odors, and from every earth-born magic fire: for the profane and impious superstitions which are defiled by these rites have cast down and consigned to perdition many, nay, whole nations of the Gentile world.” Not so shrewd.
A decade earlier he had condemned polytheism in a letter to the eastern provinces, denouncing it as perversity, vice, and folly: “VICTOR CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to the people of the Eastern provinces. Whatever is comprehended under the sovereign laws of nature, seems to convey to all men an adequate idea of the forethought and intelligence of the divine order. Nor can any, whose minds are directed in the true path of knowledge to the attainment of that end, entertain a doubt that the just perceptions of sound l reason, as well as those of the natural vision itself, through the sole influence of genuine virtue, lead to the knowledge of God.Accordingly no wise man will ever be surprised when he sees the mass of mankind influenced by opposite sentiments. For the beauty of virtue would be useless and unperceived, did not vice display in contrast with it the course of perversity and folly. Hence it is that the one is crowned with reward, while the most high God is himself the administrator of judgment to the other. ”
Not so shrewd.
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