Late Antique and Byzantine Text Seminar: Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine

Text, translations and commentaries

• Über das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin, ed. von F. Winkelmann, GCS, Eusebius Werke 1.1, 2nd edn, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1991.
• Eusebius von Caesarea, De Vita Constantini/Über das Leben Konstantins, ed. and tr. Horst Schneider, Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.
• Eusebius, Life of Constantine, tr. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1999.

Nota bene: Each participant in the Seminar is expected to read the whole Vita Constantini (in translation) as soon as possible, so that we can confidently discuss matters of content and context when reading excerpts of it in the original Greek.

Concerning its genre, questions of historicity, Eusebius as author etc. there is a number of good scholarly works also in English: take the above-mentioned Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. and commentated by Averil Cameron and Stuart Hall, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999 as a starting point. Cf. also Averil Cameron, “Eusebius’ Vita Constantini and the Construction of Constantine,” in: Portraits. Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire, ed. John Edwards and Simon Swain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 145-174 and Ead., “Form and Meaning. The Vita Constantini and the Vita Antonii”, in: Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. Tomas Hägg and Phillip Rousseau, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, 72–88. The classical monograph on Eusebius and his emperor is Timothy Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981. – Note that Cameron and Barnes have different takes on Eusebius and his portraying of Constantine.

A very thorough study is Harold A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops. The Politics of Intolerance, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 2000.
In recent years dozens of books on Constantine have appeared; the most up-to-date account in English is Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Unconquered Emperor, Christian Victor, London: Faber & Faber, 2009 – now available in the CEU/ELTE Medieval Library.

It is expected that you acquaint yourself to a certain extend with the scholarship on Constantine and Eusebius throughout the term.

Week 1: Introduction to Late Antique & Byzantine Hagiography

Week 2: Eusebius and the age of Constantine

It is assumed that most of you know something about Constantine and maybe Eusebius as well. The introductory meeting should therefore function as a means to level the knowledge on the reign of Constantine and Eusebius as author. The Vita Constantini is an unusual source about a Roman emperor and we will discuss its basic problems concerning genre, authenticity, objectivity etc.

Week 3: Vita Constantini, Book 1

VC 1.7–8

Here we meet the classical basilikos logos and will compare it to Menander’s handbook account on that (Menander Rhetor, ed. and tr. D.A. Russell and N.G. Wilson, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981, pp. 76-95).

Week 4: Vita Constantini, Book 1

VC I.26, I.33–34

Constantine’s opponent, Maxentius, is depicted as a tyrant and Eusebius “records” Maxentius’ misdeeds in Rom. Unfortunately, hardly any independent account survives on Maxentius so that the Eusebian model has often been taken over in modern scholarship. This image has changed now in recent studies (cf. Hartmut Leppin and Hauke Ziemssen, Maxentius: Der letzte Kaiser in Rom, Mainz: von Zabern, 2007).

Week 5: Vita Constantini, Book 1

VC I.28–29, I.31

The classical Eusebian account on Constantine’s dream and conversion to Christianity. Confer it also to account of Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 44. About Constantine’s “conversion” there is a good article by Raymond van Dam, “The many conversions of emperor Constantine”, in: Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Seeing and Believing, ed. Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton, Rochester, N.Y.: Rochester University Press, pp. 127–51.

For the “orthodox” Byzantine take on the issue, cf. Theophanes Confessor in the translation of C. Mango and R. Scott, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 32f and 54f.

Week 6: Vita Constantini, Book 1

VC I.38–39

The battle at the Milvian bridge, including OT parallels; see also VC I.10/20 and VC II.12 where Constantine is depicted as Moses; Constantine’s entrance to Rome; cf. the scholarly debate on why Constantine does not make the common sacrifices. For Eusebius’ account of Constantine and Christian warfare see also VC II.16–17: Eusebius depicts Constantine’s victory as a victory of the Christian God through Constantine – God’s tool – against Licinius and demons (Cf. also VC II, 4).

Week 7: Vita Constantini, Book 2 and 3

VC II.45–47 and VC III. 57–58

Constantine’s much debated rule against pagan sacrifices and the Constantinian church building program; for the question of the anti-pagan legislation see Scott Bradbury, “Constantine and the Problem of Anti-Pagan Legislation in the Fourth Century,” CPh 89 (1994), 120-139 and A.D. Lee, “Traditional Religions,” in: The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 159-179.

Week 8: Vita Constantini, Book 2

VC II.69–71

The beginning of the so-called “Arian controversy”: Eusebius preserves a letter by Constantine addressed to bishop Alexander of Alexandria and Arius requesting them to come to terms; for a quite exhaustive overview of over 900 pages on this controversy in the fourth century see R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God. The Arian Controversy, 318-381, London: T & T Clark 1988

Week 9: Vita Constantini, Book 3

VC III.6–11, III.15

Council of Nicaea: first ecumenical council of which the acts are not preserved. The council in 325 decided on the matter of Arius who was condemned but “Arianism” became nevertheless the ruling faith for most of the fourth century. III.15: Vicennalia of Constantine’s reign.

Week 10: Vita Constantini, Book 3

VC III.25–29

The Making of the “Holy Land”: under (and since) Constantine Palestine and especially the so-far rather unimportant Jerusalem enjoyed imperial attention as the OT and NT places of the Christian Heilsgeschichte could be found there. For Constantine’s mother, Helena, and the legend of the founding of the true cross cf. J.W. Drijvers, Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of her Finding of the True Cross, Leiden: Brill, 1992.

Week 11: Vita Constantini, Book 4

VC III.46–49

Death of Constantine’s mother Helena and the Christianisation of Constantine’s new capital Constantinople.

Week 12: Vita Constantini, Book 4

VC IV.15–18, 23–24, 27, 57 and 60

Eusebius recounts Constantine’s attempt to rule as a truly Christian emperor and Christianize the Imperium Romanum. He describes the public representations of Constantine on gold coins and interprets it; furthermore: Constantine and church service; Christian legislation and Constantine as episkopos. Finally, we end with Constantine building the Church of Holy Apostles in Constantinople.