www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Emperor Constantine on the Papacy

No. But instead of retreading a path already taken, I offer soemthing of interest to your Coptic past. It is from the "Life of Shenoute" by his disciple St. Besa. St. Shenoute's writings were the examplar of Coptic literature, but his chief claim to fame was cracking his staff over Nestorius' head at the Council of Ephesus. In one episode, "One day," Besa says, "our father Shenoute and our Lord Jesus were sitting down talking together" (a very common occurance according to the Vita) and the Bishop of Shmin came wishing to meet the abbot. When Shenoute sent word that he was too busy to come to the bishop, the bishop got angry and threatened to excommunicate him for disobedience:

Besa, Life of Shenoute 70-72 (trans. Bell). On the context of this story see Behlmer 1998, esp. pp. 353-354. Gaddis, There is No Crime for those who have Christ, p. 296
http://books.google.com/books?id=JGEibDA8el4C

Now this dates not only before the schism of East-West, and the Schism of Chalcedon, but nearly the Schism of Ephesus. Now Shmin is just a town in southern Egypt, and the bishop there just a suffragan of Alexandria. So it would seem to be odd: if the Vatican's interpretation of Matthew 16:19 were the ancient one, why this would be applied to a bishop far from Rome, in a land where St. Peter never founded any Church. But it makes perfect sense from the Orthodox interpretation of Matthew 16:19, and indeed, according to "the Catholic Encyclopedia," the overwhelming consensus of the Fathers.

And the Orthodox interpretation of St. Cyprian.

The locus classicus treating this question is the article of Francis Dvornik, "Emperors, Popes, and General Councils," *Dumbarton Oaks Papers* 6 (1951): 1-23. Dvornik was among the first to debunk the idea that the emperor--whether Constantine or any other--had power to dictate doctrine. Dvornik began to demonstrate, and many others have since done so to such an extent that the question is now beyond dispute, that the idea of "caseropapism" was tendentious and pejorative bunk.

But he could influence doctrine and knock heads and he did do that. Byzantine sources (Sozomen, Socrates, Theodoretus, John Zonaras) and late greek sources (the Vita Constantini of Eusebius of Caesarea) make this clear; he also did not like the hair splitting that some of the Greek fathers were prone to. The best thing he ever did was exiling that ecclesiastical gangster Athanasius (Timothy Barnes' name for the man and, frankly, I think Barnes was too easy on him)to Trier to keep him from making trouble in Alexandria as he was very prone to.

It's not too much to describe Athanasius as an ecclesiastical gangster. Alexandria was that kind of city, and if anything, Athanasius' fifth century successor, St. Cyril of Alexandria, brought the "Godfather" model of Church governance to perfection, using mobs of militant monks to suppress and terrorize his opponents. Both men may have been theological geniuses, and both are venerated as saints, but their methods left a lot to be desired.

You are correct!

This is true. Robert Taft has said there's no getting around the fact that Cyril was a "thug."

Frankly, both these thugs and Constantine are questionable saints. If the RCC struck St. Christopher from the roles, why does the EOC and the RCC strike these 3 from the roles!!! Now i head for my fox hole after making this suggestion!!! I submit theology should not be enough to make some one a saint, character and behavior applies also. This also goes for Constantine too. BTW I am a member of the EOC. (Rome correctly removed Constantine from the roles back in the early '50s).

Well, you'll never get the Oriental Orthodox to condemn St. Cyril--he may have been a thug, but he was their thug! As for Athanasius, we can always ascribe his vitriolic streak to an excess of zeal, and as for Constantine, well, the Holy Spirit passeth where He willeth, and useth such tools as come to hand. For what it's worth, Constantine stood for religious tolerance far more--and more consistently--than either Athanasius or Cyril. As the head of an Empire that was both multi-cultural and multi-religious (Christians only accounted for some 10% of the population at his death in 337), he desired above all else that his subjects live in harmony. He favored the Church, because he saw it as offering the best way of bringing unity to his fractious people, and therefore he found disputes within the Church to be both (a) distasteful and (b) a threat to the peace of the realm, which is why he interjected himself into doctrinal and ecclesiastical disputes. And let's face it--the bishops loved it, because they knew they couldn't solve their problems without him.

At the end of the day, I think Constantine was a sincere Christian who did his best to reconcile his faith with the demands of his office, and succeeded surprisingly well. That he was baptized on his deathbed was no big deal--lots of people did in those days (when they weren't undergoing multiple baptisms), and that he was baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an "arian", is also no big deal, since the whole matter of the Trinity would not be resolved for more than half a century, and in the spectrum of belief from Athanasius to Arius, Eusebius was a muddy middle sort of guy. Only with the hindsight of 17 centuries is it easy to say who was right and who was wrong. And, for what it's worth, Athanasius wasn't deemed entirely right, either--it took the Cappodocian Fathers to put the Arian heresy to bed once and for all.