Constantine the Great

“History teaches us that religion and patriotism have always gone hand in hand.” — General Douglas MacArthur HDT WHAT? INDEX

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

274 CE

Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantius was born, the eldest bastard of Constantius Chlorus with his first mistress Helena (a tavern-keeper from Bithynia), at Naissus in upper Moesia. CONSTANTINE

In this year there was yet another altercation involving our favorite pushy people, the Romans: at Campi Catalaunii the legions of Aurelian defeated the legions of Tetricus, disrupting the Pax Romana.

In a stinging renunciation of the Gnostics’ Buddhist-influenced descriptions of reincarnation, the Christian bishop of Lyons decreed that human souls go immediately to heaven, hell, or purgatory (get this: such an acknowledgment of an afterlife was something new for most Christians, because previously they had been imagining death as a kind of permanent sleep).

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285 CE

March: Yet another battle involving our favorite pushy people, the Romans: during a battle in the Margum Valley of Moesia, the legions of Diocletian defeated the legions of Carinus, disrupting the Pax Romana.

Carinus would likely have won had not one of his own generals offed him for seducing his wife — whereupon Diocletian became the undisputed emperor of the empire. Diocletian would divide and re-organize the Empire into Western and Eastern portions. After his abdication in 305 CE a fresh series of civil wars and confusion would ensue. Constantine the Great, the first “Christian” emperor, would re-unite the empire in 324 CE.

300 CE

Constantine the Great called the first ecumenical council. He recognized three bishops as leading, those of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. Arius was exiled and then submitted from exile an acceptable creed to Constantine, and was released from exile. When Arius and his ilk regained power, they anathematized Athanasius. Arius died. The Emperor Constantine died and his empire was divided among three sons, Constantius, Constantine II, and Constans Eusebius.

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312 CE

October 28: Our favorite pushy people, the Romans, met at Augusta Taurinorum in northern Italy some even pushier people, to wit the legions of Constantine the Great — and the outcome of this would be an entirely new Pax Romana. While about to do battle against the legions of Maxentius which outnumbered his own 4 to 1, Constantine had a vision in which he saw a compound symbol (chi and rho , the beginning of ) appearing in the cloudy heavens,1 and heard “Under this sign you will be victorious.” He placed the symbol on his helmet and on the shields of his soldiers, and Maxentius’s horse threw him into the water at Milvan (Mulvian) Bridge and the Roman commander was drowned (what more could one ask God for?).

1. In a timeframe in which no real distinction was being made between astrology and astronomy, you will note, seeing a sign like this in the heavens may be classed as astronomy quite as readily as it may be classed as astrology. Also, in a timeframe in which no real distinction was being made between God being on your side and you being on God’s side, having this sort of belief system may be classed as theology quite as readily as it may be classed as superstition.

According to an account written by an Orthodox bishop named Eusebius during the 330s, the Eastern Roman Caesar Constantinus I converted to Christianity, his goal being to obtain magical power over his enemies. However, this account by Eusebius is of questionable veracity. The cross he describes sounds more like a Mithraic labarum than a Christian cross. Also, Constantinus did not ever convert the Roman Empire to Christianity but instead merely ended its persecution of heterodox religious cults. Subsequent churchly agitprop notwithstanding, Constantinus would not become a Christian before his deathbed in 337 — and then his conversion would be to Arian or Alexandrian Christianity rather than to what we would regard as orthodox Roman Catholicism.

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“History teaches us that religion and patriotism have always gone hand in hand.” — General Douglas MacArthur

Thus began nominal Christianity, something that has been with us ever since. The back of this coin depicts two soldiers beside their standard — which utilizes the battle symbol in question.

Constantine, who had been born a bastard, would be able to enter Rome in triumph as the new Emperor. Sylvester I, who would be the Papa of Rome from 314 CE to 335 CE, would have no difficulty with the concept of a warrior coming to the Christian faith by slaughtering his enemies. So was to begin the fatal alliance between Caesar and Papa. Throne and Altar would become part of the orthodoxy of the Roman church establishment. As Emperor, Constantine would retain his other title, Pontifex Maximus, which is to say, head of the pagan state cult. However, confident that his victory at the bridge meant the Christian God was on his side, in Milan in the following year he would proclaim religious tolerance for everyone without distinction, thereby allowing the Christian Church and the Jewish Church to come out of the gloom of the catacombs into the full light of day. The tragedy is that this fundamental principle of religious tolerance would not be accepted by the Roman Catholic Church until the late 20th Century. He would opinion that even he himself had become something of a Christian (although this wouldn’t prevent him from offing his second wife). Constantine allegedly would be baptized by a heretical Arian Papas named Eusebius just prior to his death. He saw the church merely as an instrument of political and cultural cohesion, a pillar of the Imperial structure he was building. The Emperor’s actions represent the Roman obsession with order rather than any religious conviction. He would call the first Ecumenical Council in 325. He established the idea of a council of all Christian communities as the only way to formulate the faith incontestably and forever. It would be he who

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would order that the Roman citizen Paul’s letters and other manuscripts be compiled together into one book. It is noteworthy that some have considered this man to be “the thirtieth Apostle.”

The coinage of the subsequent emperors would increasingly rely on this symbolism that had been pioneered by Constantine, and elaborate on it with IN HOC SIGNO VINCES — in the same devout spirit as during our civil war Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase would order that we engrave In God We Trust on our sacred gold half-eagle, eagle, and double-eagle coins, and on our sacred silver dollar, half-dollar, and quarter-dollar, and on our sacred nickel five-cent piece.2 (No one whose opinion matters ever considers this sort of thing to be an act of cynicism — with the signal exception of President Theodore Roosevelt, whose opinion in the matter we have utterly ignored!)

“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.” — Lily Tomlin

During this year at some point, the founder of the Exegetical School in Antioch, Lucian, who had revised the LXX, would be martyred.

2. Such bumper-sticker philosophy won’t fit on our dime or penny coins, because they are too small to hold so many words.

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CONSTANTINE THE GREAT CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

314 CE

The Council of Arles was called by Constantine, against the Donatist schism of Donatus.

People with not enough to do were creating the Pax Romana as indicated: the Romans at Cibalae, legions of

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Constantine, defeated the legions of Licinius.

(The usual sort of thing. However, when he became a “soldier of Christ,” Martin of Tours, a Roman army officer, renounced violence.) CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

318 CE

Constantine the Great outlawed infanticide.

I need your babies.

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CONSTANTINE THE GREAT CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

321 CE

The Emperor Constantine decreed that the day of the sun was going to be the official Roman-Christian day of rest. (The sun was big, the sun was powerful, his Roman Empire was big, his Roman Empire was powerful ... this Constantine guy, you see, wasn’t up to making much of a distinction between worshiping the Sun-God and worshiping the Son of God: “I’m the Decider!”)

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325 CE

August 25:The ending of the 1st General Council of Nicaea.

Bishop Nicholas of Myra in Lycia, imprisoned during the emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians, had been released by Constantine.

He had been one of the 318 Christian bishops in attendance at the council, which had with difficulty agreed on the proper date upon which to observe the church’s celebration of Easter (at this early point, Saint Nick had nothing whatever to do with Christmas). Nicholas had had the wisdom to vote on the winning side, pro the Holy Trinity (the “Arians,” voting con, of course made themselves heretics).

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http://stnicholas.kids.us/Brix?pageID=458

326 CE

The emperor Constantine the Great banned gladiatorial games, although due to their popularity this would continue illegally in some regions (much as dog-fighting continues in our own era).

COLOSSEUM

332 CE

The emperor Constantine the Great ensuring continued cultivation of land that might otherwise be abandoned by enacting a measure that bound tenants to country parcels. Which is to say, at one fell gesture the great emperor created serfdom.3

3. This has been a perennial temptation. For instance, the ecological writer Fukuoka has recently proposed that Japan’s green problems might be solved by making country parcels inalienable, and binding the peasantry to reside permanently upon these parcels — and has been roundly praised by American greens for his sagacity. PLANTS

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CONSTANTINE THE GREAT CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

335 CE

On the far side of the earth, cloves were delivered to Constantine — this is the first record of this spice having reached so far. The source, flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, had of course been known for centuries in the civilized world, for in the Han court etiquette demanded that a person being received by the Chinese emperor hold a clove in his mouth to sweeten the breath.4

PLANTS

336 CE

February:There are records of a “broom star” that appeared in the western sky, in the constellation of Andromeda. Later it would be recorded, in the West, that a “hairy star of unusual size” had presaged the May 337 death of the Emperor Constantine, and it is likely that this Occidental “hairy star” was in fact this Oriental “broom star.” ASTRONOMY CHINA COMET

4. History is silent as to whether these people began to put a clove in their mouth before approaching their Emperor Constantine.

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1306

In 1147 CE Gerard of Poehlde, believing that the millennium of Christ had begun when the emperor Constantine came to power, had announced that Satan was going to become unbound at the end of the thousand-year period and would then destroy the Church. Constantine having risen to power in 306 CE, the predicted escape of Satan from his bonds would come in this year.

“The nice thing about apocalyptic panics is that all you need for a feel-good moment is the earth not coming to an end.” — Gail Collins, March 15, 2013.

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CONSTANTINE THE GREAT CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

1844

March 7, Thursday: The Reverend Theodore Parker was impressed by the structure in which he supposed the emperor Constantine the Great’s 384 bishops had 1st assembled upon the surrender of the Roman empire to the universal church.5

Christ Jesus works for me or vice versa.

“History teaches us that religion and patriotism have always gone hand in hand.” — General Douglas MacArthur

As soon as Benjamin Robert Haydon had succeeded in selling one of his paintings, his practice was to set about generating more copies of the same thing for sale. He had sold one of his paintings of Napoleon musing in the sunset on the cliff at St. Helena to the King of Hanover, so he entered in his diary: I have painted nineteen Napoleons. Thirteen Musings at S. Helena, and six other Musings. By heavens! how many more?

5. (It seems that the Reverend Parker was crediting a now-exposed 8th-Century forgery — but that’s not the point here.)

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: December 4, 2013

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.