The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade by Susan Wise Bauer Read Free Book Online

blessed with a “great reward,” while the Persian persecutors would “come to scorn and contempt.” 7
    To the west, Constantine was plotting to make those words come true. He was preparing an invasion, but this invasion would be a crusade; his justification was that the Christians of Persia needed his help. He planned to take with him a portable tabernacle, a tent in which bishops (who would accompany the army) would lead regular worship, and he announced that he would be baptized (something he hadn’t yet gotten around to) in the river Jordan as soon as he reached it. It was the first time that a ruler had planned to wield the cross against an outside enemy. 8
    But before he could depart on his crusade, he grew sick; and on May 22, 337, Constantine the Great died.
    The name of his city was changed from Byzantium to Constantinople, in his honor, and he was buried there in a mausoleum he had prepared at the Church of the Holy Apostles. The mausoleum had twelve symbolic coffins for the twelve apostles in it, with Constantine’s as the thirteenth. Later historians called this an act of massive hubris, but the burial had its own logic: Constantine, like the apostles, was a founder of the faith. “He alone of all the Roman emperors has honoured God the All-sovereign,” Eusebius concludes, “…[H]e alone has honoured his Church as no other since time began…. [H]is like has never been recorded from the beginning of time until our day.” He had married Christianity and state politics, and in doing so had changed both forever. 9
     
     
    A S SOON AS NEWS of Constantine’s death spread eastward, Shapur invaded Armenia again. This time he succeeded; Armenia’s Christian king, Khosrov the Short, was forced to run for his life towards the Roman border. Shapur installed a Persian puppet in his place. The buffer kingdom was, at least temporarily, his. 10
    The Roman response was not immediate because Constantine’s heirs were busy trying to kill each other in Constantinople. Constantine, canny politician in life, had made no definite arrangements for the succession; it was almost as though he expected to live forever. Instead, he left behind three sons and a nephew who had all been given the title of Caesar, who had all ruled for him in various parts of the empire, and who could all claim the right to the throne.
    No impartial historian records exactly what happened in the weeks after Constantine’s death, but by the time the bloodshed ceased, Constantine’s nephew, both of his brothers-in-law, and a handful of high court officials had been murdered. Constantine’s three sons—Constantine II (twenty-one), Constantius (seventeen), and Constans (fourteen)—had come to some sort of family agreement that left the three of them alive and all possible competitors or naysayers dead. 11 The only exception was their five-year-old cousin Julian, who was being raised in a castle in Asia Minor, well away from the purge.

     
    4.1: The Romans and Persians
     
    In September, the three sons had themselves acclaimed as co-emperors in Constantinople. The empire was again divided, this time into three parts (or prefectures). Constantine II took the Prefecture of Gaul; Constans took the Prefecture of Italy, which included not only Rome but also North Africa; and Constantius took the entire Prefecture of the East along with the region of Thracia, which meant that he got Constantinople. Almost at once, Constantius reinvaded Armenia and put Khosrov the Short back on his throne.
    Fourteen-year-old Constans, despite his age, soon showed that he was not to be trifled with. In 340, his brother Constantine II tried to take Italy from him; Constans went to war against his older brother, ambushed him in the north of Italy, and killed him. Now the empire was again divided into two, between Constans in the west and Constantius in the east.
    Constans was a staunch supporter of the Christian church; nevertheless, he was unpopular with everyone. His