The Saving Sign and the Churches He Built

And now we may well compare the present with the past, and look over these happy changes against the evils that are gone. We may note the elaborate care with which, in former times, porches and sacred enclosures, groves and temples, were prepared in every city for these false gods, and how their shrines were enriched with abundant offerings. The supreme rulers of those days did indeed have a high regard for the worship of the gods. The nations and peoples under their power also honored them with images, both in the countryside and in every city, and even in their houses and private rooms, following the religious practice of their fathers. But the fruit of this devotion was very different from the peaceful harmony we now see. It showed itself in wars, in battles, and in uprisings, which harassed them all their lives and flooded their countries with blood and civil slaughter. Again, the gods they worshiped could hold out to these rulers, with cunning flattery, the promise of prophecies and oracles and knowledge of the future. Yet they could not predict their own destruction, or warn themselves of the ruin that was coming. Surely this was the greatest and most convincing proof of their fraud.

Not one of those whose words were once heard with awe and wonder had announced the glorious coming of the Savior of humankind, or the new revelation of the knowledge of God that he came to give. Not Pythius himself, nor any of those mighty gods, could see their own desolation approaching, nor could their oracles point to the one who was to be their conqueror and destroyer. [a] What prophet or soothsayer could foretell that their rites would vanish at the coming of a new God into the world, and that the knowledge and worship of the Almighty Sovereign would be freely given to all humankind? Which of them foresaw the majestic and godly reign of our victorious emperor, or his triumphant conquests everywhere over the false demons, or the overthrow of their high places? Which of the heroes has announced that the lifeless statues would be melted down and changed from their useless shapes to serve people’s real needs? Which of the gods has ever yet had the power to speak of their own images being melted like this and contemptuously broken into pieces? Where were the protecting powers, that they did not step in to save their sacred monuments when men destroyed them like this? Where, I ask, are those who once kept up the strife of war, yet now see their conquerors living securely in the deepest peace? And where are those who held themselves up by a blind and foolish confidence, and trusted in these empty things as gods, but who, at the very height of their superstitious error, while they were waging a war without mercy against the champions of the truth, perished by a fate in proportion to their crimes?

Where is the race of giants whose weapons were turned against heaven itself? Where are the hissings of those serpents whose tongues were sharpened with ungodly words against the Almighty King? These adversaries of the Lord of all, confident in the help of a crowd of gods, advanced to the attack with a powerful array of military force, with certain images of the dead and lifeless statues carried before them for their defense. On the other side our emperor, secure in the armor of godliness, set against the numbers of the enemy the saving and life-giving Sign, at once a terror to the enemy and a protection against every harm. And he came home victorious at once over the enemy and over the demons they served. And then, with thanksgiving and praise, the tokens of a grateful spirit, to the Author of his victory, he proclaimed this triumphant Sign to all humankind, by monuments as well as by words. He set it up as a mighty trophy against every enemy in the middle of the imperial city, and expressly commanded everyone to acknowledge this imperishable sign of salvation as the safeguard of the power of Rome and of the empire of the world. [b] Such were the instructions he gave his subjects in general, but especially his soldiers. He warned them to put their confidence not in their weapons or armor or bodily strength, but to acknowledge the Supreme God as the giver of every good thing, and of victory itself. So the emperor himself, strange and incredible as it may seem, became the teacher of his army in their religious exercises. He taught them to offer godly prayers according to the divine commands, lifting their hands toward heaven and raising the eyes of their minds still higher, to the King of heaven, on whom they should call as the Author of victory, their preserver, guardian, and helper. He also commanded that one day should be kept as a special occasion for religious worship: I mean the day that is truly the first and chief of all, the day of our Lord and Savior, the day whose name is linked with light and life and immortality and every good thing. [d] He prescribed the same godly conduct for himself. He honored his Savior in the rooms of his palace, carrying out his devotions according to the divine commands and storing his mind with instruction by hearing the sacred word. The whole care of his household was entrusted to servants devoted to the service of God and marked by a serious life and every other virtue. And his trusted bodyguards, strong in affection and loyalty to his person, found in their emperor a teacher in the practice of a godly life.

Again, the honor he gives the victorious Sign rests on his own experience of its divine power. Before it the armies of his enemies have vanished. By it the powers of the unseen spirits have been put to flight. Through it the proud boasts of God’s adversaries have come to nothing, and the tongues of the profane and blasphemous have been silenced. By this Sign the barbarian tribes were conquered. Through it the rites of superstitious fraud received a just rebuke. By it our emperor, paying as it were a sacred debt, has done the crowning good of all: he has set up triumphant memorials of its worth in every part of the world, raising temples and churches at royal expense, and commanding everyone to join in building the sacred houses of prayer. So these striking proofs of our emperor’s generosity at once appeared in the provinces and cities of the empire, and soon shone out in every land. They were convincing memorials of the rebuke and overthrow of those ungodly tyrants who only a little while before had madly dared to fight against God. Raging like savage dogs, they had poured out on lifeless buildings the fury they could not aim at him. They had thrown the houses of prayer to the ground and torn up their very foundations, making them look like a city captured and abandoned to the enemy. That was how they displayed the wicked spirit with which they tried, as it were, to attack God himself. But they soon felt the result of their own madness and folly. Only a little time passed before a single blast of the storm of heaven’s displeasure swept them utterly away, leaving neither relatives nor children nor any memorial of their existence among men. All of them, many as they were, vanished as in a moment under the stroke of God’s vengeance.

Such, then, was the fate that awaited these furious adversaries of God. But he who alone opposed them, armed with the saving Trophy, or rather not alone, but helped by the presence and power of the one who alone is Sovereign, has rebuilt the ruined buildings on a greater scale, and made the second far finer than the first. For example, besides putting up various churches to the honor of God in the city that bears his name, and adorning the capital of Bithynia with another on the grandest and most splendid scale, he has distinguished the chief cities of the other provinces with buildings of the same kind. [e] Above all, he has chosen two places in the eastern part of the empire. One is in Palestine, since from there the life-giving stream has flowed as from a fountain for the blessing of all nations. The other is in that chief city of the East which takes its name from Antiochus. There, as in the head of that part of the empire, he has dedicated to the service of God a church of unequaled size and beauty. The whole building is surrounded by an enclosure of great extent, within which the church itself rises to a vast height. It is eight-sided, surrounded on every side by many rooms and courts, and decorated with ornaments of the richest kind. [f] Such was his work there. Again, in the province of Palestine, in the city that was once the seat of the Hebrew kingdom, on the very site of the Lord’s tomb, he has raised a church of noble size. He has adorned a temple sacred to the saving Cross with rich and lavish magnificence, honoring that everlasting monument, and the trophies of the Savior’s victory over the power of death, with a splendor no language can describe. [g] In the same country he discovered three places held in reverence as the sites of three sacred caves, and these too he adorned with costly buildings. He paid fitting honor to the place where the Savior first appeared among us. At the second cave he hallowed the memory of his final ascension from the mountaintop. And at the third he celebrated his mighty struggle and the victory that crowned it. Our emperor adorned all these places in this way in the hope of proclaiming the sign of redemption to all humankind: [h] that Cross which has indeed repaid his godly zeal. Through it his house and his throne alike have prospered, his reign has been confirmed for a long series of years, and the rewards of virtue have been given to his noble sons, his relatives, and their descendants.

And surely it is a mighty proof of the power of the God he serves that he has held the scales of justice with an even hand and given each side its due reward. As for the destroyers of the houses of prayer, the penalty for their ungodly conduct followed hard on their heels. At once they were swept away, and left behind neither race nor house nor family. On the other hand, the one whose godly devotion to his Lord is plain in every act, who raises royal temples in his honor and proclaims his name to his subjects by sacred offerings throughout the world, he, I say, has rightly found God to be the preserver and defender of his imperial house and family. So clearly have God’s dealings been shown, and this through the sacred power of the saving Sign.