His Feast for the Bishops at His Twentieth Anniversary

About this time he completed the twentieth year of his reign. To mark it, the people of the provinces everywhere held public festivals, but the emperor himself invited and feasted with those ministers of God whom he had reconciled, and so offered through them, as it were, a fitting sacrifice to God. Not one of the bishops was missing from the imperial banquet, and the scene was splendid beyond description. Detachments of the bodyguard and other troops surrounded the entrance of the palace with drawn swords, and through the middle of them the men of God passed without fear into the innermost of the imperial rooms. There some were the emperor’s own companions at table, while others reclined on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought it a picture of Christ’s kingdom foreshadowed, and a dream rather than reality. [a]