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Few figures from the Late Antique period have received as much scholarly scrutiny as Constantine the Great. Who might rival him? In the field of early Christian studies, St. Augustine certainly has received ample treatment, and the... more
Few figures from the Late Antique period have received as much scholarly scrutiny as Constantine the Great. Who might rival him? In the field of early Christian studies, St. Augustine certainly has received ample treatment, and the bibliography on him is enormous. Yet those who study the bishop of Hippo do so primarily from one angle: the power of his ideas, whether philosophical or theological. To be sure, he is “set against his background,” yet it is not mainly Roman historians but patristic scholars who find Augustine interesting. Constantine, on the other hand, did not just live within history; he made it. More than any of the Church fathers (as influential as they often were), the “first Christian emperor” was in a position to change the course of human affairs. As such, he has been the object of intense scholarly investigation, not only by theologians, but also classicists, numismatists, and historians of antiquity, art, and warfare—people who usually care very little about th...