peace and hai-mony his first object in the Donatist and Arian controversies, and applied the predicate "• catholic " to the church in all official documents. And as his predecessors were supreme pontiffs of the heathen religion of the empire, so he desired to be looked upon as a sort of bishop, as universal bishop of the external affairs of the church.' All this by no means from mere self-interest, but for the good of the empire, which, now shaken to its foundations and threatened by barbarians on every side, could only by some new bond of unity be consolidated and upheld until at least the seeds of Christianity and civilization should be planted ' 'ETriffKOTTor t u v e/cTos [irpayfj-aTwyJ, viz. : ttjs iKKKijalas, in distinction from the proper bishops, the iiriiTKoiroi tuv eiffu rris iKKXrjaias. Vid. Eus. : Vit, Const, iv. 24. Comp. § 24. 14 THEBD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590. among the barbarians themselves, the representatives of the future. His personal policy thus coincided with the interests of the state. Christianity appeared to him, as it proved in fact, the only efficient power for a political reformation of the empire, from which the ancient spirit of Rome was fast depart- ing, while internal, civil, and religious dissensions and the outward pressure of the barbarians threatened a gradual disso- lution of society. But with the political he united also a religious motive, not clear and deep, indeed, yet honest, and strongly infused with the superstitious disposition to judge of a religion by its out- ward success and to ascribe a magical virtue to signs and cere- monies. His whole family was swayed by religious sentiment, which manifested itself in very different forms, in the devout pilgrimages of Helena, the fanatical Arianism of Constantia, and Constantius, and the fanatical paganism of Julian. Con- stantino adopted Christianity first as a superstition, and put it by the side of his heathen superstition, till finally in his con- viction the Christian vanquished the pagan, tliough without itself developing into a pure and enlightened faith.' At first Constantino, like his father, in the spirit of the Neo-Platonic syncretism of dying heathendom, reverenced all the gods as mysterious powers ; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in the year 308 he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year 321 he enjoined regular consultation of the soothsayers ^ in public misfortunes, according to ancient heathen usage ; even later, he placed his new residence, By- zantium, under the protection of the God of the Martyrs and the * A similar view is substantially expressed by the great historian Niebuhr, Vor- trage tiber Riim. Geschichte, 1848. iii. 302. Mosheim, in his work on the First Three Centuries, p. 965 sqq. (Murdock's Transl. ii. 460 sqq.) labors to prove at length that Constantino was no hypocrite, but sincerely believed, during the greater part of his life, that the Christian religion was the only true religion. Burckhardt, the most recent biographer of Constantino, represents