{"id":70500,"date":"2021-12-10T03:00:30","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T08:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=70500"},"modified":"2022-04-07T09:59:49","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:59:49","slug":"was-constantines-conversion-a-form-of-reaction-to-societal-decadence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2021\/12\/10\/was-constantines-conversion-a-form-of-reaction-to-societal-decadence\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Constantine’s conversion a form of reaction to societal decadence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At his new place, Severian<\/a> makes a case for Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity being a reaction to (and attempted cure for) civilizational decadence:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Vision of Constantine the Great<\/em> by Stylianos Stavrakis (1709-1786). “The emperor, depicted mounting and dressed in decorated military uniform, appears to gaze at the Inscription \u0395\u039d \u03a4\u039f\u03a5\u03a4\u03a9 \u039d\u0399\u039a\u0391 \u039a\u03a9\u039d\u03a3\u03a4\u0391\u039d\u03a4\u0399\u039d\u0395\/ In hoc signo vinces<\/em>, that is written around a cycle of stars enclosing a cross. The scene is set in front of the harbour of a town, probably Constantinople, with low hills and pine slopes.”
Byzantine Museum via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

The legend says that as Constantine the Great was preparing to fight the Battle of Milvian Bridge, he saw a cross in the sky and the words “In Hoc Signo Vinces<\/em>” \u2014 “in this sign you shall conquer”. He converted to Christianity on the spot, won the battle, and made Christianity the official religion of the now-reunified Roman Empire.<\/p>\n

If any of that is true is, of course, impossible to know. He’d been at least favorable to Christianity for some time, helping to promulgate the Edict of Milan<\/a> that extended toleration to Christianity across the parts of the Empire where his writ ran. However it happened, Constantine’s conversion story \u2014 the myth that has come down to us \u2014 carries a lesson we Dissidents should study.<\/p>\n

Constantine came up at the tail end of the Crisis of the Third Century<\/a>, in which the Roman Empire all but collapsed. It’s traditional to say that the CTC “ended” with Diocletian (r. 284-305), but obviously the ructions continued, as the Battle of Milvian Bridge was one of several in a new round of civil wars. I’m no scholar of Late Antiquity, but I can boil down all the many overlapping causes of the CTC to a word: Decadence.<\/p>\n

The Roman Empire after Aurelius was simply too decadent<\/em> to go on. Your Marxist would point to serious and irreparable class divisions within the Empire, and he’d be right. Other Marxist-flavored historians would point out the collapse of the currency, the rudimentary and laughably flawed taxation system, and so forth, and they’d be right, too. Military historians would say that the Empire simply lacked sufficient manpower, or at least, sufficient high-quality manpower, for the tasks at hand, exacerbated by the other stuff we just discussed … and they, too, would be right. Let’s not forget the Antonine Plagues<\/a>, of course, which older historians argued were horrible but, as I understand it, a new generation of bio-archaeologists are proving were far worse than we suspected …<\/p>\n

All that played its part, but above all, the Empire was just tired<\/em>. Bored. Worn out. Overstuffed. Made sick by its own excesses. In a word, decadent.<\/p>\n

That’s where Constantine’s conversion comes in. Marcus Aurelius, the last good Emperor, was the world’s most famous Stoic, then as now. Stoicism is indeed proof against decadence … but Stoicism is a harsh, cold philosophy. It’s not just “suppressing your emotions and acting like a hardass all the time,” as so many young men on the internet seem to think \u2014 far, far from that \u2014 but the Stoic lives by reason<\/em>. His whole goal in life is to live “in conformity to nature,” and on the Stoic view, “Reason” and “Nature” are one and the same.<\/p>\n

For all Stoic discipline seems to focus on the body, then, it’s really in the mind where true Stoics are made. If it’s a religion \u2013 and I’d argue that it is, but that’s irrelevant \u2014 then it’s the most cerebral creed ever devised. You don’t have to be a brainiac to be a Stoic \u2014 no less a Stoic than Marcus frequently upbraids himself for being a bit slow on the uptake \u2014 but you do have to live, and have an overwhelming desire<\/em> to live, entirely inside your own head.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At his new place, Severian makes a case for Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity being a reaction to (and attempted cure for) civilizational decadence: The legend says that as Constantine the Great was preparing to fight the Battle of Milvian Bridge, he saw a cross in the sky and the words “In Hoc Signo Vinces” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,7,11],"tags":[360,576,912,1343,1462,1353,315],"class_list":["post-70500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-history","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-philosophy","tag-privilege","tag-romanempire","tag-severian","tag-stoicism","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-il6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70500"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70503,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70500\/revisions\/70503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}