The Death and Burial of Constantine

The emperor had already divided the empire among his sons, who were given the title of Caesars. To Constantine and Constans he assigned the western regions, and to Constantius the eastern. Since he was unwell and needed to take the baths, he went for that purpose to Helenopolis, a city of Bithynia. But his illness grew worse, and he went on to Nicomedia, where he was initiated into holy baptism in one of the suburbs of that city. After the ceremony he was filled with joy and gave thanks to God. He then confirmed the division of the empire among his sons as he had assigned it before, and granted certain privileges to old Rome and to the city named after himself. He placed his will in the hands of the presbyter who was always praising Arius, the one his sister Constantia had commended to him in her last moments as a man of virtuous life. He ordered him, binding him with an oath besides, to deliver it to Constantius when he returned; for neither Constantius nor the other Caesars were with their dying father. After making these arrangements, Constantine lived only a few days more. He died in the sixty-fifth year of his age and the thirty-first of his reign. [a]

He was a powerful protector of the Christian religion, and the first of the emperors to be zealous for the church and to give her great gifts. He was more successful in all he undertook than any other ruler, for he made no plan, I am convinced, without God. He was victorious in his wars against the Goths and the Sarmatians, and indeed in all his military campaigns. He changed the form of government to suit his own mind so easily that he created a second senate and a second imperial city, to which he gave his own name. He attacked the pagan religion and in a short time overturned it, although it had held sway for ages among rulers and people alike.

After Constantine’s death, his body was placed in a golden coffin, carried to Constantinople, and laid on a raised platform in the palace. Those in the palace kept up the same honors and ceremony toward him as when he was alive. When Constantius, who was then in the East, heard of his father’s death, he hurried to Constantinople. He buried the royal remains with the greatest magnificence and laid them in the tomb that had been built by the dead emperor’s order in the Church of the Apostles. From that time it became the custom to lay the remains of later Christian emperors in the same burial place. Bishops were buried there too, for the rank of the priesthood is not only equal in honor to the imperial power, but in holy places even takes precedence over it. [d]