Divine Institutes & On the Deaths of the Persecutors 2 part 3/4

By what vexation of the human race the exaction was carried out, especially in the matter of the grain-supply, who can worthily narrate? Soldiers, or rather executioners, of every department clung to individuals. Whom to satisfy first was uncertain; there was no pardon for those who could not pay. Manifold tortures had to be endured, unless what did not exist were produced at once. Fenced about by many guards, there was no chance of breathing, no rest at any time of the year, however slight. Frequent was the strife over these same men, whether between the judges themselves or the judges' soldiers. There was no threshing-floor without an exactor, no vintage without a guard, nothing left for the sustenance of the laborers.

Although these things are intolerable--that food sought by labor be snatched from men's mouths--yet they are in some way bearable, even by the hope of things to come. What of clothing of every kind? What of gold? What of silver? Is it not necessary that these be procured from the sale of crops? Whence then, O most demented tyrant, shall I furnish these, when you carry off all the crops, and violently snatch away everything that is born? Who therefore was not overthrown from his goods, so that the wealth which had been under his rule might be scraped together for a vow which he was not going to celebrate? Therefore, Licinius having been named emperor, Maximinus, angry, wished to be named neither Caesar nor in the third place. He therefore often sends envoys to him, begs him to obey, to preserve his arrangement;

to yield to age and to defer the honor to grey hairs. But he raises his horns more boldly and contends by the prescription of time: that he ought to be prior, who had first assumed the purple; he despised his prayers and commands. The beast grieves and bellows, that, although for this reason he had made him an ignoble Caesar--namely, that he should be obedient to him--he nevertheless, forgetful of so great a benefit, impiously resisted his will and prayers. Overcome by the other's obstinacy, he abolishes the name of the Caesars and calls himself and Licinius Augusti, and Maximinus and Constantine sons of the Augusti. Maximinus afterwards writes, as though announcing that, in the Campus Martius lately assembled, he had been proclaimed Augustus by the army. He (Galerius) received it sorrowing and grieving, and ordered all four to be named emperors.

Now the eighteenth year was passing, when God struck him with an incurable affliction. An evil ulcer is born to him in the lower part of his genitals and creeps more widely. The physicians cut and treat it. But when a scar had now formed, the wound is split open, and a burst vein lets blood flow even to the danger of death; yet with difficulty is the gore stanched. A new treatment from the beginning. At last it is brought to a scar. Again, by a slight movement of the body, it is wounded; more blood runs down than before. He himself turns pale and, his strength spent, grows thin; and then indeed the stream of gore is checked. The wound begins not to feel the medicine; the cancer invades each neighboring part, and the more it is cut around, the more widely it rages. The more it is treated, the more it grows. The masters gave up--

even Chiron the son of Phillyra and Melampus the son of Amythaon. Noble physicians are dragged in from everywhere; human hands accomplish nothing. Refuge is taken in idols: Apollo and Asclepius are entreated, a remedy is demanded. Apollo gives a cure; the evil is increased much worse. Now destruction was not far off and had seized all the lower parts. The bowels rot from without, and the whole seat dissolves into corruption. Yet the wretched physicians do not cease to foment and treat, even without hope of conquering the evil. The malady, beaten back from the marrow, recoils inward and lays hold of the inner parts; worms are bred within. The stench spreads not only through the palace but through the whole city. Nor is it any wonder, since by now the outlets of dung and urine had been confounded.

He is devoured by worms, and his body, with unbearable pains, dissolves into putrefaction. At the same time he raises horrendous cries to the stars, such as the bellowings when a wounded bull flees from the altar. To the flowing seat cooked and hot animals were applied, that the heat might draw out the little worms. When these were undone, an incalculable swarm teemed forth; and yet a far greater abundance the fertile destruction of his rotting bowels had generated. Now, by the diverse malady, the parts of his body had lost their shape. The upper part, up to the wound, had dried up, and the skin, livid with pitiable emaciation, had sunk far down between the bones; the lower part, without any form of feet, had swollen up like wineskins and become indistinguishable.

And these things happened over the course of a whole year, until at last, subdued by his sufferings, he was compelled to confess God. Amid the intervals of his fresh, pressing pain he cried out that he would restore the temple of God and would make full amends for his crime. And now, as he was failing, he issued an edict of this sort:

"Among the other measures which we always ordain for the advantage and benefit of the commonwealth, we had indeed formerly wished to set everything in order according to the ancient laws and public discipline of the Romans, and to provide that even the Christians, who had abandoned the sect of their forefathers, should return to a sound mind; 2 since by some reasoning so great a willfulness had seized those same Christians, and so great a folly had taken hold of them, that they did not follow those institutions of the ancients which perhaps their own forefathers had first established, but according to their own judgment and as it pleased them, they made for themselves the laws which they observed, and gathered together diverse peoples in various places.

3 Finally, when our command of this kind had been issued, that they should conform themselves to the institutions of the ancients, many were subjected to danger and many also were overthrown. 4 And since very many persisted in their resolve, and we saw that they neither rendered to the gods the worship and religious observance due to them nor honored the God of the Christians, in consideration of our most gentle clemency, and looking to our perpetual custom, by which we are accustomed to grant pardon to all men, we have believed that our most ready indulgence should be extended to these also: that they may once more be Christians and may reconstitute their meeting-places, provided that they do nothing contrary to public order. 5 By another letter, moreover, we shall make known to the judges what they ought to observe.

Wherefore, in accordance with this indulgence of ours, they will be bound to pray to their God for our welfare and for that of the commonwealth and their own, that on every side the commonwealth may be kept unharmed, and that they may be able to live secure in their own dwellings." This edict was published at Nicomedia on the day before the Kalends of May, in the eighth consulship of himself and the second of Maximinus. 2 Then, when the prisons were opened, dearest Donatus, you were set free from custody along with the other confessors, after the prison had served you as a dwelling for six years. 3 Yet not even by this deed did he obtain pardon for his crime from God; but after a few days, having commended his wife and son to Licinius and delivered them into his hands, while all the members of his body were already wasting away, he was consumed by a horrible putrefaction.

4 This became known at Nicomedia in the middle of that same month, when the celebration of his twentieth anniversary was to fall on the impending Kalends of March. On hearing this news, Maximinus, having arranged relays of couriers from the East, sped onward to seize the provinces, and, while Licinius delayed, to claim for himself everything as far as the Chalcedonian strait. Entering Bithynia, in order to win favor for himself for the present, he abolished the tax to the great joy of all. 2 There was discord between the two emperors, and almost war. They held the opposite banks under arms, but on fixed conditions peace and friendship were arranged, and on the very strait a treaty was made and right hands were joined. 3 He returned untroubled and became such as he had been in Syria and in Egypt.

First of all he annulled the indulgence granted to the Christians by a general decree; for he suborned embassies from the cities to petition that it should not be permitted for the Christians to erect meeting-places within their cities, so that he might appear to be doing under persuasion and compulsion what he was about to do of his own accord. 4 Granting their request, by a new fashion he appointed throughout the several cities high priests, one in each, chosen from the leading men, who should both offer sacrifices daily to all their gods and, supported by the ministry of the old priests, take care that the Christians should neither build meeting-places nor assemble publicly or privately, but should seize and by their own authority either compel them to sacrifice or hand them over to the judges.

5 And this was too little, unless he should also set over the provinces individual officials, as it were pontiffs, from a higher rank of dignity, and he ordered both these classes to go about adorned with white cloaks. 6 He was, moreover, preparing to do the things he had already long since done in the regions of the East. For while he professed clemency in outward show only, he forbade the servants of God to be put to death and ordered them to be maimed. 7 Therefore the eyes of the confessors were dug out, hands were cut off, feet were lopped, noses or ears were sliced away. While he was contriving these things he was deterred by a letter from Constantine; he therefore dissembled, and yet, if anyone fell into his hands, they were secretly drowned in the sea. He also did not interrupt his custom of having sacrifice offered in the palace every single day.

2 And this he was the first to devise, that all the animals on which he fed should be slaughtered not by cooks but by priests at the altars, and that absolutely nothing should be set upon his table unless it had been first offered, or sacrificed, or sprinkled with unmixed wine, so that whoever had been invited to dinner would go away from there defiled and impure. 3 In other matters too he was like his master; for if anything had been left over by either Diocles or Maximian, this man scraped it away, carrying off everything without any shame. 4 And so the storehouses of private men were locked up, the warehouses were sealed, debts were exacted in advance against future years. Hence came famine, though the fields were yielding their produce; hence an unheard-of dearth.

5 Herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were carried off from the fields for the daily sacrifices, by which he had so corrupted his own men that they disdained the ordinary grain ration. And he poured out money everywhere without discrimination, without measure, when he was paying off all his attendants—whose number was enormous—with costly garments and gold coins, giving silver to common soldiers and recruits, and honoring the barbarians with every kind of largesse. 6 For as to the fact that he either took away the goods of the living or gave them as a gift to his own followers, as each had asked for what belonged to another—I do not know whether I should think thanks were due to him, that, after the manner of merciful brigands, he stripped off his spoils without bloodshed. But this indeed was a capital offense, and beyond all who ever were: his lust for corrupting!

I do not know what to call it except blind and unbridled; and yet the matter cannot be expressed in these words according to the indignation it deserves: the magnitude of the wickedness has overcome the function of the tongue. 2 Eunuchs, those lions, scrutinized everything. Wherever there was a more attractive face, fathers and husbands had to withdraw. The garments were stripped from noble women and likewise from maidens, and they were inspected limb by limb, lest any part of the body should be unworthy of the royal couch. If any had refused, she was put to death in water, as though chastity under that adulterer were a crime of treason. 3 Some men, when their wives had been violated—wives whom they held most dear for their chastity and fidelity—being unable to bear the grief, even killed themselves as well.

Under this monster the integrity of chastity was nowhere safe, except where conspicuous ugliness warded off his barbarous lust. 4 At last he had introduced this custom, that no one should take a wife without his permission, so that he himself might be the foretaster at every wedding. 5 He gave freeborn maidens, after they had been deflowered, to his slaves as wives. But his companions too, under such a prince, imitated his debaucheries and violated with impunity the marriage-beds of their hosts: for who would avenge it? He carried off the daughters of men of middling rank, just as he pleased. Daughters of the first families, who could not be carried off, were demanded as favors, nor was it permitted to refuse when the emperor countersigned, but one had either to perish or to have some barbarian as a son-in-law.

6 For there was scarcely any guard at his side except from the nation of those who, having been driven from their lands by the Goths in the year of the twentieth anniversary, had surrendered themselves to Maximian—to the ruin of the human race—so that they, fleeing barbarian servitude, might lord it over the Romans. 7 Girded with these attendants and protectors, he made the East an object of mockery. Finally, when he had given his lusts this law, that he should think lawful whatever he had coveted, he could not restrain himself even from the Augusta, whom he had recently styled his mother. 2 After the death of Maximian, Valeria had come to him, thinking she would dwell more safely in his territory, especially because he had a wife. 3 But the abominable creature was at once inflamed.

The woman was still in black garments, the time of mourning not yet fulfilled, when he sent envoys ahead and demanded her in marriage, intending to cast out his wife. If he obtained his request—she answered freely, she who alone could do so—4 first, that she could not treat of marriage in that funereal dress while the ashes of her husband, his own father, were still warm; next, that he would be acting impiously in repudiating a faithful wife, since he would surely do the same to her also; finally, that it was unlawful for a woman of that name and station, without precedent, without example, to try a second husband. 5 It was reported to the man what she had dared. His lust was turned into wrath and madness.

At once he proscribed the woman, seized her goods, took away her attendants, put her eunuchs to death under torture, banished her herself together with her mother into exile—and not to a fixed place, but drove her headlong hither and thither with mockery, and condemned her female friends on a charge of fabricated adultery. There was a most distinguished lady, who already had grandchildren by her grown sons. Valeria loved this woman as a second mother; he suspected that it was by her counsel the marriage had been refused him. He gave the task to Eratineus the governor, that he should put her to death with disgrace. 2 Two others, equally noble, were joined to her, one of whom had left at Rome a daughter who was a Vestal virgin, then a secret intimate of Valeria; the other had a husband who was a senator, not too closely related to the Augusta.

But both were being put to death on account of the exceptional beauty of their bodies and their chastity. 3 The women were suddenly snatched away, not to a trial but to a brigand's deed; for no accuser came forward. A certain Jew was found, a defendant on account of other crimes, who, led on by the hope of impunity, would give false testimony against the innocent. A fair and careful judge brought him outside the city under guard, lest he be overwhelmed with stones. This tragedy was being enacted at Nicaea. 4 Tortures were applied to the Jew; he said what he had been ordered to say; the women, lest they should answer back, were restrained with blows by the torturers. The innocent were ordered to be led away. There was weeping and lamentation, not only from that husband who was present at the death of his well-deserving wife, but from all whom this unworthy and unheard-of affair had drawn together.

5 And lest they should be snatched from the hands of the executioners by an onrush of the people, soldiers in military array were brought forward; mailed cavalry and archers escorted them. Thus, in the midst, between the wedges of armed men, they were led off to execution. 6 And they would have lain unburied, their household servants having turned to flight, had not the stealthy compassion of their friends buried them. Nor was the impunity promised to the adulterer paid out; but, fastened to the gibbet, he disclosed the whole mystery, and under his last breath he testified to all who were watching that the innocent had been slain. The Augusta, however, banished into certain deserted wastes of Syria, made known her calamity to her father Diocletian through secret messengers. 2 He sent envoys and asked that he send his daughter back to him; he accomplished nothing.

Again and yet more often he entreated; she was not sent back. 3 Finally he dispatched a certain kinsman of his, a military and powerful man, to entreat him, reminding him of his benefits. He too reported back unavailing prayers, his embassy unaccomplished. And at that same time, by Constantine's order, the statues of the aged Maximian were being torn down, and his images, wherever he had been painted, were being taken away. And because the two old men had for the most part been painted together, the images of both were being taken down together. 2 And so Diocletian, when he saw, while still alive, what had befallen none of the emperors ever, smitten with a twofold sickness, resolved that he must die. He tossed himself this way and that, his soul seething with grief, taking neither sleep nor food.

Sighs and groans, frequent tears, the continual rolling of his body, now on the bed, now on the ground. 3 Thus the most fortunate emperor of twenty years, cast down by God to a humble life and trampled upon by injuries and brought into hatred of life, was at last finished off by starvation and anguish. Now there remained but one of the adversaries of God, Maximinus, whose end and ruin I shall now append. When he had a rivalry against Licinius, because Licinius had been preferred to him by Maximian, although he had recently confirmed a friendship with him—yet, when he heard that Constantine's sister had been betrothed to Licinius, he supposed that the kinship of those two emperors was being joined together against himself. 3 And he himself secretly sent envoys to the city to seek the alliance and friendship of Maxentius.

He also wrote in friendly terms. The envoys were kindly received; a friendship was formed, the images of both were set up together. 4 Maxentius gladly embraced it as though it were divine aid; for he had already declared war on Constantine, as if to avenge the death of his own father. 5 Hence a suspicion had arisen that that pernicious old man had feigned discord with his son, in order to make a way for himself toward cutting down the others, so that, when all these had been removed, he might claim for himself and his son the empire of the whole world. 6 But that was false. For he had this as his purpose: that, his son and the rest having been extinguished, he might restore himself and Diocletian to the throne. Already civil arms had been set in motion between them.

And although Maxentius kept himself within Rome, because he had received an oracle that he would perish if he went outside the gates of the city, nevertheless the war was being waged through suitable generals. 2 Maxentius had more strength, because he had both received his father's army from Severus and had recently raised his own from the Moors and Gaetulians. 3 Battle was joined, and the soldiers of Maxentius were prevailing, until afterward Constantine, with his courage strengthened and ready for either outcome, moved all his forces nearer to the city and encamped in the region of the Milvian Bridge. 4 The day was approaching on which Maxentius had taken up his rule, which is the sixth before the Kalends of November, and his fifth-anniversary celebrations were drawing to a close.

5 Constantine was admonished in sleep to mark the heavenly sign of God upon the shields and so to join battle. He did as he was bidden, and with the letter X turned crosswise, its top bent round, he marked Christ upon the shields. Armed with this sign, the army took up the sword. The enemy advanced to meet them without their emperor and crossed the bridge; the battle lines clashed with even front, and on both sides the fighting was carried on with the utmost violence: flight was known neither to these nor to those. 7 A sedition arose in the city, and the leader was rebuked as a deserter of the public safety; and when he was being watched, suddenly the people—for he was giving circus games on his birthday—with one voice cried out that Constantine could not be conquered.

8 Dismayed by this cry, he rushed off and, summoning certain senators, ordered the Sibylline books to be examined, in which it was found that on that day the enemy of the Romans would perish. 9 Led by this response into the hope of victory, he advanced and came into the battle line. The bridge behind him was broken down. At this sight the fight grew fierce, and the hand of God was over the battle line. The army of Maxentius was thoroughly terrified; he himself, turned to flight, hastened to the bridge, which had been broken, and, pressed by the multitude of those fleeing, was thrust down into the Tiber. 10 When this most bitter war was at last finished, the emperor Constantine, received with great joy by the senate and people of Rome, came to know the treachery of Maximinus, intercepted his letters, and found his statues and images.

11 The senate decreed to Constantine, on account of his valor, the title of the first name, which Maximinus claimed for himself; and when the victory of the liberated city had been reported to him, he received it no otherwise than if he himself had been conquered. 12 Then, on learning of the senate's decree, he so burned with grief that he openly professed enmity, and uttered abuse mixed with jests against the supreme emperor. Constantine, his affairs in the city settled, withdrew the following winter to Milan. To the same place Licinius came, to receive his wife. 2 When Maximinus understood that they were occupied with the solemnities of the wedding, he moved his army out of Syria in winter, which was then raging most fiercely, and, with stages doubled, rushed into Bithynia with his column exhausted.

3 For by the heaviest rains and snows and mud and cold and toil, beasts of burden of every kind were lost, whose pitiable carnage along the way already foretold to the soldiers the appearance of the war to come and a like destruction. 4 Nor did he himself tarry within his own borders, but, the strait being immediately crossed, he came armed to the gates of Byzantium. There were garrison soldiers there, stationed by Licinius for occurrences of this kind. These he first tried to entice with gifts and promises, afterward to terrify with force and assault; yet neither force nor promises availed anything. 5 Already eleven days had been consumed, during which there was time for sending messengers and letters to the emperor, when the soldiers, distrusting not their loyalty but their small numbers, surrendered themselves.

From here he advanced to Heraclea and, detained there by the same procedure, lost the space of several days. 6 And by now Licinius, by a hastened march, had come with a few men to Hadrianople, when the other, having received also the surrender of Perinthus, after delaying a little, advanced to a halting-station eighteen miles off; for he could go no further, since Licinius was now holding the second station, distant by the same number of miles. 7 He, having gathered from nearby as many soldiers as he could, was pressing on to meet Maximinus, more in order to delay him than with the design of fighting or in the hope of victory, since the other was leading an army of seventy thousand armed men, while he himself had with difficulty collected a number of barely thirty thousand.

For the soldiers had been scattered through various regions, and the narrowness of the time did not allow them all to be assembled. As the armies therefore drew near, it now seemed that a battle would take place within a few days. 2 Then Maximinus vowed to Jupiter a vow of this sort: that, if he should win the victory, he would extinguish the name of the Christians and utterly destroy it. 3 Then, on the next night, an angel of God stood by Licinius as he slept, warning him to rise quickly and to pray to the supreme God with his whole army; the victory would be his, if he did so. 4 After these words, when he seemed to himself to rise, and the very one who had warned him stood by, then he taught him how and with what words he ought to pray. 5 Then, his sleep shaken off, he ordered a secretary to be summoned and, just as he had heard, dictated these words:

"Most high God, we beseech Thee; holy God, we beseech Thee. We commend all justice to Thee, we commend our welfare to Thee, we commend our empire to Thee. Through Thee we live, through Thee we are victorious and prosperous. Most high, holy God, hear our prayers; we stretch out our arms to Thee; hear, O holy, most high God." 7 These words were written out on many leaflets and sent through the prefects and tribunes, so that each might teach them to his own soldiers. The courage of all increased, as they believed that victory had been announced to them from heaven. 8 The emperor fixed the battle for the day of the Kalends of May, which completed the eighth year of his proclamation, so that he might be conquered on his very own anniversary, just as the other had been conquered at Rome.

9 Maximinus wished to anticipate the time more quickly; on the day before, in the morning, he drew up his battle line, so that he might celebrate his anniversary the next day as victor. It was reported that Maximinus had moved into camp. The soldiers seized their arms and advanced to meet him. Between them lay a barren and bare plain, which they call Ergenus. 10 Both battle lines were now in sight. The men of Licinius laid down their shields, loosened their helmets, and stretched out their hands to heaven, with their prefects leading the way, and said the prayer on behalf of the emperor. The army that was about to perish heard the murmur of those praying. 11 They, the prayer having been said three times, now full of courage, replaced their helmets on their heads and took up their shields. The emperors advanced to a parley. 12 Maximinus could not be brought to peace:

for he despised Licinius and supposed that he would be deserted by his soldiers, because the latter was tight-fisted in giving, while he himself was lavish; and with this design he had set the war in motion, so that, having received Licinius's army without a contest, he might at once march against Constantine with his forces doubled. So they drew nearer, the trumpets sounded, the standards advanced. The men of Licinius, making a charge, attacked their adversaries. But those, thoroughly terrified, were able neither to draw their swords nor to hurl their weapons. 2 Maximinus went around the battle line and solicited the soldiers of Licinius, now with entreaties, now with gifts. In no place was he heard. An onset was made against him, and he fled back to his own men. His battle line was cut down with impunity, and so great a number of legions, so great a force of soldiers, was mowed down by a few.

3 No one was mindful of his name, no one of his valor, no one of his old rewards; as if they had come to a death to which they were doomed, not to a battle, so did the supreme God subject them to be slaughtered by their enemies. Already an immense multitude lay strewn. 4 Maximinus saw that the matter was being conducted otherwise than he had thought. He threw off his purple and, having put on a servile garment, fled and crossed the strait. But in his army half were laid low, while half were either surrendered or turned to flight; for the deserter emperor had taken away the shame of deserting. 5 But he, on the Kalends of May—that is, in one night and one day ***—reached Nicomedia on the next night, when the place of battle was a hundred and sixty miles distant; and, having seized his children and wife and a few companions from the palace, he made for the East.

6 But in Cappadocia he halted, having collected soldiers from the flight and from the East. So he resumed his garb. Licinius, however, having received and distributed a part of the army, transported his army into Bithynia a few days after the battle, and, entering Nicomedia, rendered thanks to God by whose aid he had conquered; and on the day of the Ides of June, in the third consulship of Constantine and himself, he ordered to be published a letter of this kind, addressed to the governor, concerning the restoration of the church:

2 "When both I, Constantine Augustus, and I, Licinius Augustus, had happily met at Milan, and were considering in deliberation all matters that pertained to the advantage and security of the public, we believed that among the other things which we saw would be of profit to most men, those above all ought to be ordained by which reverence for the Divinity was maintained: namely, that we should give both to the Christians and to all men free power of following whatever religion each one wished, so that whatever there is of Divinity in the heavenly seat may be appeased and propitious toward us and toward all who are placed under our authority.