Millenium Read Online Free PDF Page B

perspective entirely lacking in Holy Scripture. St Paul — although martyred, as St Peter had been, in Rome - had advised the Church there, before his execution, that the structures of governance, even those of the very pagan empire itself, had been 'instituted by God'. 8 Indeed, it struck many students of the apostle that the Caesars had a more than incidental role to play in his vision of the end of days. Whereas St John had portrayed Rome as complicit with the Beast, that demon in human form who was des­tined, just before Christ's return, to establish a tyranny of universal evil, seducing men and women everywhere by means of spectacular miracles, chilling their souls and dimming the Church beneath a tide of blood, Paul, it seemed, had cast the empire as precisely the opposite: the one bulwark capable of 'restraining' Antichrist. 9 Yet such an inter­pretation did not entirely clear up the ambivalence with which most Christians still regarded Rome, and the prospect of her fall: for if the reign of Antichrist was self-evidently to be dreaded, then so also might it be welcomed, as heralding Christ's return. 'But of that or that hour,' as Jesus Himself had admonished His disciples, 'no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.' 10 That being so, many Church fathers concluded, it could hardly be reckoned a sin to hold Rome's empire in their prayers.
    For redeemed though they hoped to be, even the devoutest Christians were sinners still, fallen and fashioned out of dust. Until a new heaven and a new earth had been established upon the ruins of the old, and a new Jerusalem descended 'out of heaven from God'," the Church had no choice but to accommodate itself to the rule of a worldly power. Laws still had to be administered, cities governed, order preserved. Enemies of that order, lurking in dank and distant forests, or amid the sands of pitiless deserts, still had to be kept at bay. As the fourth century of the Christian era dawned, followers of the Prince of Peace were to be found even among the ranks of Caesar's soldiers. 12 Later ages would preserve the memory of Maurice, an Egyptian general stationed at the small town of Agaunum, in the Alps, who had commanded a legion entirely comprising of the faith­ful. Ordered to put to the sword a village of innocent fellow Christians, he had refused. And yet, as Maurice himself had made perfectly clear to the infuriated emperor, he would have found in an order to attack pagan enemies no cause for mutiny. 'We are your sol­diers, yes,' he was said to have explained, 'but we are also the soldiers of God. To you, we owe the dues of military service—but to Him the purity of our souls.' 13
    The emperor, however, had remained toweringly unimpressed. He had ordered the mutineers' execution. And so it was that Maurice and the entire legion under his command had won their martyrs' crowns.
    Ultimately, it seemed, obedience to both Christ and Caesar could not be reconciled.
    A New Rome
    But what if Caesar himself were a servant of Christ? Barely a decade after Maurice's martyrdom, and even as persecution of the Church rose to fresh heights of ferocity, the hand of God was preparing to manifest itself in a wholly unexpected way. In ad 312 a pretender to the imperial title by the name of Constantine marched from Gaul — what is now France - across the Alps, and on towards Rome. The odds seemed stacked against him. Not only was he heavily outnumbered, but his enemies had already taken possession of the capital. One noon, however, looking to the heavens for inspiration, Constantine saw there the blazing of a cross, visible to his whole army, and inscribed with the words, 'By this sign, conquer.' That night, in his tent, he was visited by Christ Himself. Again came the instruction: 'By this sign, conquer.' Constantine, waking at dawn, obeyed. He gave orders for the 'heavenly sign of God' to be inscribed upon his soldiers' shields. When battle was finally joined