One cannot pass by altogether without mention the story of Zosimus that the reason of Fausta’s implacable hatred of Crispus was not ambition for her own children, but a still more ungovernable and much less pardonable passion. Zosimus declares that Fausta was enamoured of her step-son, who rejected her overtures, and so fell a victim, like another Hippolytus, to the vengeance of this Roman Phædra. Most modern historians have rejected the story, as emanating from the lively imagination of a Greek at a loss for a plausible explanation of a mysterious crime, and we may, with tolerable certainty, acquit Fausta of so disgraceful a passion. If, as we suppose, she was the untiring enemy of Crispus, it is at once more charitable and more probable to suppose that the motive of her hate was her fierce ambition for her own sons. For the moment the Empress conquered. But her triumph did not last long. Eutropius tells us that soon afterwards—mox—a vague word equally applicable to a period of days, weeks, or even months—Fausta herself was put to death by Constantine. What was her offence? Philostorgius[[110]] declares that she was discovered in an intrigue with a groom of the stables—an amour worthy of Messalina herself. But the story stands suspect, especially when taken in conjunction with the legend of her passion for Crispus. The one seems invented to bolster up the other and add to its verisimilitude. The truth is that nothing is known for certain; and the whole episode was probably kept as a profound palace secret. One circumstance, however, mentioned by Aurelius Victor and by Zosimus, merits attention. Both declare that the Empress-mother, Helena, was furious at the murder of Crispus. Zosimus says that she was greatly distressed at her grandson’s suffering, and could hardly contain herself at the news of his death (ἀσχέτως τὴν ἀναίρεσιν τοῦ νέου φερούσης). Aurelius Victor adds that the aged Empress bitterly reproached her son for his cruelty (Cum eum mater Helena nimio dolore nepotis increparet). Evidently, Helena favoured Crispus, the son of Minervina—who, like herself, had been forced by the exigencies of State to quit her husband’s house, and make room for an Emperor’s daughter,—in preference to the children of Constantine and Fausta; evidently therefore, Helena and Fausta were rival influences at court, each striving for ascendency. If Crispus’s death betokened that Fausta had gained the upper hand, the death of Fausta shewed that Helena had succeeded in turning the tables. When Helena violently reproached her son for slaying Crispus, we may be sure that she was aiming her shafts through Constantine at Fausta, and that when she succeeded in rousing the Emperor to remorse she succeeded also in kindling his resentment against his wife. It is said that Fausta was suffocated in a hot bath, but every detail is open to challenge. Eusebius passes over the entire episode without a word. He is not only silent as to the death of Fausta but also as to the death of Crispus. The courtly Bishop refuses to turn even a single look towards the crime-stained Palatine, on whose gates some lampoon writer had set a paper with the bitter epigram:
Saturni aurea sæcula quis requiret?
Sunt hæc gemmea, sed Neroniana.
(“Who will care to seek the golden age of Saturn? Ours is the age of jewels, but jewels of Nero’s setting.”) If Constantine, like Saturn, had devoured his children and had lapsed for the moment into a savage tyrant of Nero’s pattern, it was not for Eusebius to judge him. He was writing for edification. Constantine had averred his willingness to cast his cloak over a sinning bishop lest scandal should arise; ought not an ecclesiastical historian to cast the cloak of charitable silence over the crimes of a most Christian Emperor? When, therefore, Eusebius describes[[111]] how, after the death of Licinius, men cast aside all their former fears, and dared to raise their long-downcast eyes and look up with a smile on their faces and brightness in their glance; how they honoured the Emperor in all the beauty of victory and “his most orderly sons and Heaven-beloved Cæsars”; and how they straightway forgot their old troubles and all unrighteousness, and gave themselves up to an enjoyment of their present good things and their hope of others to come; it is a healthy corrective to recall the murderous outbreak of ungovernable wrath which made Rome shudder as it listened to the whispered tale of what was taking place in the recesses of the Palatine. The entire subject is one on which it is as fascinating as it is easy to speculate. On the whole, it seems most likely that Constantine’s fears had been worked upon to such an extent that he believed himself surrounded by traitors in his own family, that the Empress Fausta had been the leading spirit in the plot to ruin Crispus, and that when the Emperor discovered his mistake he turned in fury upon his wife. It may be, as Eutropius suggests, that his mental balance had been upset by his extraordinary success, that his prosperity and the adulation of the world had been too much for him.[[112]] That is a charitable theory which, in default of a better, we, too, may as well adopt.
We need not doubt the sincerity of his repentance. Zosimus depicts the Emperor remorsefully begging the priests of the old religion to purify him from his crime, and says that when they sternly refused, Constantine turned to accept the soothing offices of a wandering Egyptian from Spain. Another account, current among pagans, was that he applied for comfort to the philosopher, Sopater, who would have nothing to say to so heinous a sinner, and that he then fell in with certain Christian bishops, who promised him full forgiveness at the price of repentance and baptism. The motive of these legends is as obvious as their falsity. The pagans, in defiance of chronology, sought to explain the Emperor’s conversion to Christianity as a result of the murders that lay heavy upon his soul, murders so revolting as only to admit of pardon in the eyes of Christians. Among the late legends of the Byzantine writer Codinus, we find the story that Constantine raised to the memory of Crispus a golden statue, which bore the inscription, “To the son whom I unjustly condemned,” and that he fasted and refused the comforts of life for forty days. Of even greater interest is the legend that Constantine was baptised by Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome, and, in gratitude for the promise of pardon, bestowed upon the see of Rome the damnosa hæreditas of the Temporal Power.
There is no necessity to discuss at length the once famous, but now simply notorious, Donation of Constantine. The legend is so grotesque that one wonders it ever imposed on the credulity even of the most ignorant. For it represented Constantine as being smitten with leprosy for having persecuted the Church and for having driven the good Pope Sylvester into exile. The Emperor consulted soothsayers, priests, and physicians in turn, and was at last informed that his only chance of cure lay in bathing in the blood of little children. Forthwith, a number of children were collected for this dreadful purpose, but their cries awoke the pity of Constantine and he gave them respite. Then, as he slept, Peter and Paul appeared to him in a dream and bade him let the children go free, recall Sylvester from exile, and submit at his hands to the rite of baptism. This was done; the baptism was administered; Constantine was cured of the leprosy, and in return he made over to Sylvester and his successors full temporal dominion over the city of Rome, the greater part of Italy, and certain other provinces. Such is the story, which was long accepted without demur and confidently appealed to as the origin of the Temporal Power. It is now universally admitted that the whole legend is a fraud and the letter of Constantine to Sylvester announcing the Donation a forgery of the eighth century. Constantine never persecuted the Church; he never had leprosy; he never contemplated bathing in infants’ blood; he did not receive the rite of baptism until he was on his death-bed, and he did not hand over to the Pope the fee simple and title deeds of Rome and Italy. The Donation of Constantine belongs to the museum of historical forgeries.[[113]]
THE DONATION OF CONSTANTINE.
FROM THE PAINTING BY RAPHAEL IN THE VATICAN. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALINARI.
But if the repentance of Constantine did not take the form of stupendous endowments for the Bishop of Rome, we may be tolerably sure that it did manifest itself in the increased zeal of the Emperor for the building of churches, and especially in his munificence to the Christians of Rome. It is tempting, also, to connect with Constantine’s remorse and his mother’s sorrow for the murder of her grandson the pilgrimage of Helena to Palestine and Jerusalem, which followed almost immediately. Around that visit there clustered many legends which, as time went on, multiplied amazingly. Of these the most famous is that which is known as the Invention of the Cross. This, in its fullest form many centuries after the event, ran something as follows: When Helena reached Jerusalem she asked to be shown the Holy Sepulchre. But no one could tell her where the exact spot was. Buildings had been erected upon Mount Calvary and the adjoining land; a temple of Venus was still standing near the place where the body of Christ must have been laid. Helena instituted a careful search, and the authority of the Emperor’s mother would be warrant sufficient for the disturbance of the occupiers. At first their toil met with no success. Then a very clever Jew came forward with a story that he had heard of an old tradition that the site of the Sepulchre lay in such and such a spot; the direction of the excavation was entrusted to him; and the searchers were soon rewarded by finding not only the cave where Christ had lain, but also three crosses. These, it was at once determined, must have been the crosses on which Christ and the two malefactors had suffered. But which had borne the Saviour? There was nothing to show, but so sacred an object was sure to be invested with wonder-working powers, and the test was, therefore, easy. So they brought to the spot a dying woman—according to one version, she was already dead—and touched her with the wood of the three crosses. At contact with the first two no change was visible; but the touch of the third recalled her to sensibility and perfect health, and the true Cross stood at once revealed to the adoring worship of all believers. In the wood were two nails. Helena had them carefully sent to Constantine, and he, we are told, had one of them inserted—as something far more precious than rubies—in the Imperial crown, while from the other he fashioned a bit for his horse.
