universally represented as a cruel, dissolute tyrant, liated by heathens and Christians alike.' Called by the Eoman people to their aid, Constantino marched from Gaul across the Alps with an army of ninety-eight thousand soldiers of every na- tionality, and defeated Maxentius in three battles ; the last in October, 312, at the Milvian bridge, near Rome, where Maxen- tius found a disgraceful death in the waters of the Tiber. Here belongs the familiar story of the miraculous cross. The precise day and place cannot be fixed, but tlie event must liave occurred shortly before the final victory over Maxentius in the neighborhood of Eome. As this vision is one of the most noted miracles in church history, and has a representative significance, it deserves a closer examination. It marks for us * Even Zosimus gives the most unfavorable account of bim. § 2. CONSTANTTNE THE GREAT. 21 on the one hand the victory of Christianity over paganism in the Roman empii'e, and on the other the ominous admixture of foreign, political, and military interests with it.' We need not be surprised that in the Nicene age so great a revolution and transition should have been clothed with a supernatui'al character. The occuri'ence is variously described and is not without serious difficulties. Lactantius, the earliest witness, some three years after the battle, speaks only of a dream by night, in which the emperor was directed (it is not stated by whom, whether by Christ, or by an angel) to stamp on the shields of his soldiers " the heavenly sign of God," that is, the cross with the name of Christ, and thus to go forth against his enemy.'' Eusebius, on the contrary, gives a more minute account on the authority of a subsequent private communication of the aged Constantino himself under oath — not, however, till the year 338, a year after the death of the emperor, his only witness, and twenty-six years after the event. ^ On his march fi'om Gaul to ' "It was," says Milman (Hist, of Christianity, p. 288, X. York ed.), "the first advance to the military Christianity of the Middle Ages ; a modification of the pure religion of the Gospel, if directly opposed to its genuine principles, still apparently indispensable to the social progress of man ; through which the Roman empire and the barbarous nations, which were blended together in the vast European and Christian system, must necessarily have passed before they could arrive at a higher civilization and a purer Christianity." ^ De mortibus persecutorum, c. 44 (ed. Lips. 11. 2Y8 sq.): " Commonitus est in quiete Constantinus, ut coeleste signum Dei notaret in scutis, atque ita proelium committeret. Fecit ut jussus est, et transversa X litera, siunmo capite circumflexo Christum in scutis notat [i. e., he ordered the name of Christ or the two first letters X and P to be put on the shields of his soldiers]. Quo signo armatus exercitus capit ferrum." — This work is indeed