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The Life of Constantine (Vita Constantini or On the Life according to God of the Blessed Emperor Constantine, the title prefixed to chapter headings in the manuscript) is a work by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea on the life of Roman Emperor Constantine I. It was written in the interlude between Constantine's death on 22 May 337 and Eusebius' own death on 30 May 339. The genre of the work has been contested; as it survives, it has been judged an unhappy combination of biography and panegyric, with similarities to saints' lives. Modern scholars, following G. Pasquali's research in the 1960s, hold that this results from the structure of the component works. Eusebius, on this line of argument, did not write the Life in its present format, but two separate works, a continuation of his Ecclesiastical History and a eulogy on the death of Constantine. These two works were combined by an editor after Eusebius death (most likely the subsequent bishop of Caesarea, Acacius). Eusebius' authorship was once a matter of scholarly dispute, most notably by the scholar Henri Grégoire, for whom a supposed pseudo-Eusebius wrote the accounts of Constantine's vision and conversion. The authorship of these passages is no longer contentious, though multiple revisions of the text by Eusebius himself, and final editorial revisions after his death by his episcopal successor Acacius, have been detected.

The most famous passage in the Life concerns Constantine's celestial vision and conversion before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on 28 October 312. Eusebius assures the reader that the emperor communicated the vision to him in person, but much modern scholarship assumes that the passage is either a fabrication, a retrospective reconstruction (either by Eusebius or by Constantine himself), or a convenient misinterpretation of the facts. It is usually read in parallel with Lactantius' account of the battle in his On the Deaths of the Persecutors of 315, which describes a vision that shares few similarities with Eusebius'. Discrepancies between the Life and Eusebius' own Ecclesiastical History (which saw multiple revisions between ca. 300 and 325/6) have also been noted.

Organization

The Life may be summarized as follows:

Location	Content
1.1–11	Introduction
1.12–19	Constantine at the court of Diocletian
1.20–25	Proclamation as emperor
1.26–38	War against Maxentius
1.39–48	Constantine's entry into and residence in Rome
1.49–2.18	War against Licinius [wars of 316–17 and 324, conflated into a single campaign]
2.19–60	Religious impact of Constantine's victory over Licinius
2.61–3.23	Arian controversy and the Council of Nicaea, with a brief excursus comparing Constantine with Licinius (3.1–3)
3.24–66	Constantine's ecclesiastical program
4.1–13	Constantine's character (1–6), fame in foreign lands (7), and correspondence with the Persian king (8–13)
4.14–39	Constantine's personal Christianity and Christian legislation
4.40–52	Last years of Constantine, introduced with a reference to his tricennalia (40)
4.53–73	Death and burial
4.74–75	Epilogue

In the manuscript editions of the Life, Constantine's Speech to the Assembly of the Saints, Eusebius' Panegyric to Constantine and Treatise on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre follow the epilogue.

Constantinian documents

The Life contains fifteen Constantinian letters and edicts excerpted in full:

Order	Location	Date	Content
1	2.24–42	October 324	To the provincials of Palestine rescinding Licinius' legislation
2	2.46	Shortly after October 324	To Eusebius, urging him to build churches
3	2.48–60	325 or 326	To the Eastern provincials
4	2.64–72	Winter of 324/5	To Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, and Arius, demanding that they reconcile with the Church
5	3.17–20	June or July 325	Circular to all churches concerning the date of Easter
6	3.30–32	326 or soon after	To Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, ordering him to build the church of the Holy Sepulchre
7	3.52–53	ca. 328	To Macarius and the other bishops of Palestine, ordering them to suppress traditional cultic rites at the oak of Mamre
8	3.60	328	To the church of Antioch, on the succession to the city's see
9	3.61	328	To Eusebius, on the succession to the see of Antioch
10	3.62	328	To the bishops assembled in Antioch, on the succession to the city's see
11	3.64–65	Before 25 September 326	The text of an edict, sent to heretics, denying them the legal privileges afforded to the Catholic Church
12	4.9–13	ca. 325	To Shapur II, declaring Constantine's concern for the Christians of Persia
13	4.35	November 335	To Eusebius, thanking him for his treatise on the date of Easter
14	4.36	Unknown	To Eusebius, requesting copies of the Bible for the churches of Constantinople
15	4.42	August 335	To the Council of Tyre

The origin of most of these letters is simple and uncontroversial. Nos. 1 and 11 were meant for public distribution, as the text of the documents indicates. Eusebius must have copied them down after they were posted in Caesarea. Nos. 2, 9, 13, and 14 are addressed to Eusebius personally, and the text of no. 9 implies that he was sent additional copies of nos. 8 and 10. He was a member of the groups addressed in nos. 5, 7, and 15. Eusebius obtained a copy of no. 4 while it was in circulation among pro-Arian bishops, while Macarius (no. 6) probably advertised his imperial commission to the general public. Constantine's letter to Shapur (no. 12), however, is more problematic.

Sources

It was once believed by most scholars that Eusebius held a privileged position in the court of Constantine, and that he was the emperor's confessor and counsel—this is, indeed, how Eusebius presented himself in the Life. This misapprehension was used by Jacob Burckhardt in service of a history, the Die Zeit Constantins des Großen (The Age of Constantine the Great; 1853, rev. 1880), that made Constantine out to be a sort of fourth-century Napoleon Bonaparte—an irreligious, amoral politician. It was only because of Eusebius' deliberate falsification and "contemptible invention", Burckhardt declared, that posterity had made Constantine a Christian saint. H. Grégoire took a similar stance, calling the bishop "a good courtier", and arguing, therefore, that he cannot have been responsible for the errors of fact Grégoire saw in the Life.

Recent scholarship emphasizes the rarity of contact between emperor and biographer. Most of Eusebius' time was spent administering his diocese, the see of Caesarea, and in his scholarly work; he did not have many opportunities to visit Constantine. Moreover, Eusebius residence was many days' travel from Constantine's palaces in Constantinople and Nicomedia. They did not often meet. In 1981, historian Timothy David Barnes concluded that Eusebius only met and spoke with Emperor Constantine on four occasions: first in June–July 325, during the Council of Nicaea; second, in December 327, during the Council of Nicomedia that readmitted Arius to the Church (Eusebius' attendance at this Council is only probable, not certain); third, in November 335, when Eusebius and five other bishops came from Tyre to Constantinople to accuse Athanasius of treason, and caused Athanasius' exile; and fourth, in July 336, from Eusebius' reading of his Panegyric to Constantine to the convocation of the Council of Constantinople that condemned Marcellus of Ancyra later in the summer. He also saw Constantine in 301 or 302, when the prince was traveling through Syria with the imperial army en route to Egypt, but in that instance Eusebius was only a spectator among a crowd of thousands (Life 1.19).

When he arrived at the Council of Nicaea, Eusebius was under a provisional ban of excommunication. Constantine helped the bishop prove his orthodoxy before the council, and Eusebius was reinstated. Barnes assumes that it was during this council that Constantine related the details of his conversion to Eusebius (Life 1.228ff.)—not necessarily to Eusebius alone, but perhaps to Eusebius along with other bishops. During the third meeting, Eusebius remained in Constantinople after Athanasius' exile, and delivered a speech on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which he had helped dedicate in September. To demonstrate his respect, Constantine insisted on standing throughout the speech. The speech does not survive, but it is partially excerpted and summarized in the Life (3.33ff.).

The documents cited throughout the Ecclesiastical History and Life were those Eusebius might have come across in his duties as bishop and citizen; only Constantine's letter to Shapur (Life 4.9–13) seems out of place. Eusebius notes that he had access to more documents than he includes in the Life, and has omitted them to preserve narrative flow:

...his writings are very numerous on kindred subjects, and he was the author of a multitude of letters, some to the bishops, in which he laid injunctions on them tending to the advantage of the churches of God; and sometimes the thrice blessed one addressed the people of the churches generally, calling them his own brethren and fellow-servants. But perhaps we may hereafter find leisure to collect these dispatches in a separate form, in order that the integrity of our present history may not be impaired by their insertion.

Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.24, tr. E. C. Richardson

Given the context of Eusebius' remarks, the scholar B. H. Warmington suggests that Eusebius' omitted documents concern Church affairs. H. A. Drake suggests instead that the documents cover secular affairs, as the existence and preservation of a substantial body of secular Constantinian documents into the fifth and sixth centuries is independently attested by Socrates of Constantinople and John Lydus.

In the nineteenth century the genuineness of the documents in the Life was a matter of heated debate. The debate cooled in the early twentieth century—though scholar of historiography Arnaldo Momigliano was able to describe it as "the object of lively controversy" as late as May 1953—and ended with the publication of A. H. M. Jones and T. C. Skeat's "Notes of the Genuineness of the Constantinian Documents in Eusebius' Life of Constantine" in 1954. Jones, following a suggestion from C. E. Stevens, demonstrated that the most seemingly dubious of the documents in the Life, the letter to Eastern provincials at 2.24–42, was also preserved in an independent and contemporary papyrus collection (Papyri London 878), and was dated paleographically to between ca. 320 and ca. 340. He had presented the same findings at the First International Patristic Conference in Oxford in 1951.

Intent

See also: Panegyric to Constantine

The scholar H. A. Drake traces the beginnings of Eusebius' intent to write a biography of Constantine to the speech appended to the manuscript of his Panegyric to Constantine (Laudes Constantini). The greater portion of that document (Laudes 1–11) is a transcript of the speech Eusebius delivered before the emperor on the thirtieth anniversary of his accession, 25 July 336. The last eight chapters of the Panegyric (11–18) are another speech, on Christ's Incarnation and the Holy Sepulchre. If this is the same speech Eusebius refers to at Vita Constantini 4.33, then it was also delivered before the emperor, although not on the thirtieth anniversary of his reign. The speech reflects a defensive and pro-Constantinian posture: Eusebius is explicitly defending the emperor from those who challenged his views on the importance of the Sepulcher.

Eusebius declares near the beginning of the Life (1.21) that he will focus on Constantine's pious activities.

Eusebius also declares, in the second book of the Life (2.23.2), his intent to write an honest and reliable account of his own times.

Genre and format

As presented in the manuscripts, the Life of Constantine is a compilation of three separate works: the Life proper, in four books; the Greek translation of Constantine's Speech to the Assembly of the Saints, which is often treated in the manuscripts as the fifth book of the Life; and two speeches by Eusebius, the Panegyric to Constantine and his Treatise on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

A group of scholars, following G. Pasquali, argue that the Life itself is a conflation of three different parts: an imperial panegyric or basilikos logos, a continuation of the Historia Ecclesiastica (or an account of Constantine's religion, illustrated by extensive quotation from original documents), and the additions of the editor. The work contains repetitions and inconsistencies which reflect, for these scholars, a work that was still unfinished when its author died. Barnes argued that the imperial panegyric was Eusebius' original plan for the work, but was steadily revised into something more closely resembling a biography in later drafts.

The work is arranged in part chronologically, and in part thematically. The first part of the Life, a narration of Constantine's rise to power, follows a traditional chronological scheme (Vita Constantini 1.19ff.).

Influence

There is little evidence that the Vita Constantini was widely read in the fourth and fifth centuries, except among ecclesiastical historians.

Some, like Libanian scholar Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, have argued that Eusebius' wording and metaphor were the template for the later fourth century orator Libanius of Antioch's early praise of Constantine. The latter's panegyric to the emperor's sons, Constans and Constantius, delivered in Singara in 344/45, provides several examples of re-used Eusebian material. Libanius calls Constantine "the great emperor" and "the most divine", as Eusebius had in the Life. Other celebrated aspects of Constantine's character—his justice, success in war, energy, etc.—have parallels in both works. Others, like J. Moreau, have argued that Libanius' source was instead Praxagoras of Athens, a pagan historian of the early fourth century whose work survives only as fragments. Barnes argued that all three writers are independent representatives of Constantinian propaganda.

References

Ancient sources

• Eusebius of Caesarea.

• Historia Ecclesiastica (Church History) first seven books ca. 300, eighth and ninth book ca. 313, tenth book ca. 315, epilogue ca. 325.

• Migne, J.P., ed. Eusebiou tou Pamphilou, episkopou tes en Palaistine Kaisareias ta euriskomena panta (in Greek). Patrologia Graeca 19–24. Paris, 1857. Online at Khazar Skeptik and Documenta Catholica Omnia. Accessed 4 November 2009.
• McGiffert, Arthur Cushman, trans. Church History. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 1. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. Online at New Advent and CCEL. Accessed 28 September 2009.
• Williamson, G.A., trans. Church History. London: Penguin, 1989.

• Laudes Constantini (In Praise of Constantine) 335.

• Migne, J.P., ed. Eusebiou tou Pamphilou, episkopou tes en Palaistine Kaisareias ta euriskomena panta (in Greek). Patrologia Graeca 19–24. Paris, 1857. Online at Khazar Skeptik. Accessed 4 November 2009.
• Richardson, Ernest Cushing, trans. Oration in Praise of Constantine. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 1. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. Online at New Advent and CCEL. Accessed 19 October 2009.

• Vita Constantini (The Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine) ca. 336–39.

• Migne, J.P., ed. Eusebiou tou Pamphilou, episkopou tes en Palaistine Kaisareias ta euriskomena panta (in Greek). Patrologia Graeca 19–24. Paris, 1857. Online at Khazar Skeptik. Accessed 4 November 2009.
• Richardson, Ernest Cushing, trans. Life of Constantine. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 1. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. Online at New Advent and CCEL. Accessed 9 June 2009.

• Papyri London.

• Greek Papyri in the British Museum (in Greek). Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri. Online at Perseus and the Duke Data Bank. Accessed 17 November 2009.

Modern sources

• Barnes, Timothy D. Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. [esp. pp. 265–71]
• Barnes, Timothy D. "Eusebius of Caesarea". The Expository Times 121:1 (2009): 1–14.
• Burckhardt, Jacob. The Age of Constantine the Great. Translated by Moses Hadas. New York: Vintage, 1967. [See also: Jacob Burckhardt, Die Zeit Constantins des Großen (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1890), online at the Google Books. Accessed 29 November 2009.]
• Drake, H. A. "What Eusebius Knew: The Genesis of the Vita Constantini". Classical Philology 83:1 (1988): 20–38.
• Fowden, Garth. Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of monotheism in late antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. [esp. pp. 85–99]
• Wiemer, Hans-Ulrich. "Libanius on Constantine". The Classical Quarterly 44:2 (1994): 511–24.