medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The exact status of "Constantinus Magnus" in the approved pantheon of saints is not entirely clear. Ordering the execution of your wife and oldest son is bad form, as is officiating as the "pontifex maximus" of Rome's pagan cults, although presumably these and other black marks were expunged by a death-bed baptism (whose validity would have been unimpaired despite its administration by a semi-Arian cleric). The Greek churches have generally acclaimed St. Constantine. The traditional Latin compromise was to celebrate his mother, St. Helena (whose gigantic baroque statue still graces St. Peter's in Rome). One sees this ambivalent attitude, for example, in the _Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina_ (1898-1901) where Helena is included but Constantine omitted; he does get a belated inclusion in the 1986 update. The attitude of liberal historians such as Jakob Burckhardt and of many evangelical Christians has been even less charitable.
The Western Church's hesitation about promoting this cult does not fit too well with the often-cited claims that the medieval papacy strove to establish its power on the basis of the inauthentic "donation of Constantine."
--John Howe, Texas Tech University
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