1890-91.] CHRISTIANITY ON LEGISLATION. 163 



and finally devastated by the tyranny of Maxentius, Parents were im- 

 pelled by poverty to sell their infants or to destroy them. 



Constantine the Great was the first Christian emperor. He was pro- 

 claimed at York, A.D. 306, He defeated Maxentius at the Milvian 

 Bridge, and thus acquired the control of Italy in 312, and his conversion 

 dates from this time. The edict of Milan, granting toleration to the 

 Christians was issued in 313. His character has been the subject of 

 much difference of opinion. By one class of writers he has been 

 represented as a sanguinary hypocrite, stained with the worst crimes, and 

 only at the point of death becoming a member of the church by baptism, 

 so as to make the best of both worlds. Others speak of him in terms of 

 adulation. In truth he had a difficult part to play. The greater number 

 of his subjects must have been Pagans. To have forced his own belief 

 on them might have led to rebellion. It was the part of a wise statesman 

 to hasten slowly, and not by undue precipitance to embitter the majority 

 of his subjects, but to modify by degrees the defects in their manners and 

 customs. He was also probably not entirely free himself from the preju- 

 dices of early education. But the best evidence of his character is to be 

 found in his laws, and these form a lasting monument to his fame. 



Three years after defeating Maxentius he enacted a law, and amended 

 it seven years later, (315-322), with the view of deterring parents from 

 destroying their offspring. It authorized poor parents, suffering for 

 want of food and clothing and unable through poverty to rear their 

 children, to procure food and clothing and necessaries from the public 

 funds and from the private fortune of the Emperor without distinction. 

 Enabled thus to escape the sufferings of extreme poverty, they might 

 gratify parental affection by keeping their children at home without the 

 hazard of seeing them die of hunger. This law as well as several others 

 promulgated the same year, are usually supposed to have been suggested 

 by Lactantius, a christian of great eminence for his learning and elo- 

 quence, and then the tutor of Crispus the son of the Emperor. 



A custom prevailed extensively in Constantine's time of exposing, 

 killing, selling, and pledging nezv born infants, and with the view of 

 protecting them, if their father chose to exercise his paternal power, and 

 not to seek the assistance he might obtain for the support of his 

 children under the provisions of the constitution of 315, Constantine in 

 318 enacted that he who killed a parent or a son should be guilty of 

 parricide. This put an end to any legal exercise of the most odious 

 part of the paternal authority. A parent could no longer claim the right 

 to avenge his wounded affections or honor by the infliction of the last 

 punishment on an offending son or relative under his power. And a 



