ON THE MIDDLE OR DAKK AGES. 



335 



This extraordinary event having preceded his determination to build a 

 new metropolis, he expressly dedicated the city, as I have already ob- 

 served, when on the point of being completed, to the service of the reli- 

 gion he had so lately embraced : solemnly consecratmg it, m conformity with 

 the custom of the times, to the Virgm Mary, according to Cedrenus, but 

 according to Eusebius, to the God of Martyrs. 



Upon his death-bed Constantino divided the empire into five parts ; his 

 three sons and two of his nephews being allowed to share the injperial 

 domains between them. The building of Constantinople was a severe 

 blow to the splendour and Opulence of Rome ; and this partition of the 

 imperial authority was an equal blow to the extent and integrity of the 

 empire at large. The tributary nations of every quarter, as soon as they 

 found that the consolidated force of the empire was thus frittered away, 

 were in arms, with a view of regaining their liberty or of enlarging their 

 boundaries. The Franks and other German tribes broke into Gaul ; the 

 Sarmatians into Pannonia, or what is now called Hungary ; the Picts, 

 Scots, and Saxons, into Britain ; and the Austrians into Africa. 



To oppose this general ravage, the imperial dominions were once more 

 consolidated, and not long afterward,' in the reign of Valentinian, who 

 admitted his brother Valens to an equal participation in the purple with 

 himself, regularly divided into two distinct empires, under the names of the 

 Eastern, or Greek, and the Western, or Latin empire ; the former com- 

 prehending Illyrium and Pannonia, or Sclavonia and Hungary as they are 

 now denominated, Thrace, Macedon, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, 

 Palestine, and all the eastern provinces, having Constantinople for its me- 

 tropolis : and the latter embracing Gaul, Italy, Africa, Spain, and Britain, 

 its metropohs being ancient Rome. 



The greater degree of energy manifested by the successors to the 

 eastern empire preserved its boundaries for a considerable period of time 

 free from much mutilation ; but the empire of the west, in which Rome, 

 though once more encouraged by the presence and patronage of a splen- 

 did court, was never able to recover from the blow it had received by the 

 building of Constantinople, continued to droop from its first estabhshment. 

 Its successes were few and trivial, and such as rather tended to invite new 



general honesty and intelligence, to give them no higher character. Secondly, Constantine 

 declares that the vision of the cross and of the pillar of light, were beheld by the whole 

 army as well as by himself. Thirdly, Eusebius affirms that he gave an account of the whole 

 to the artists for whom he immediately sent, on the morning alter his explanatory dream, 

 to construct a standard ornamented with a copy o* the golden cross he had beheld, and en- 

 riched with jewels, according t » the direction he gave them. Fourthly, he tells us that 

 Constantine narrated the same statement to the bishops whom he had assembled to give him 

 spiritual advice on the occasion. And fifthly, that he afterwards gave the whole history of 

 it, in like manner, in his own person, to Eusebius himself; and confirmed the narration with 

 an oath. 



All this may, indeed, be said to be nothing more than the declaration of Eusebius alone ; 

 but when we add to these remarks, sixthly, that Eusebius published his account in the gene- 

 ral face of those to whom he asserts that the emperor communicated it at the time, and in 

 the face of hundreds, perhaps of thousands of the army, who he also asserts beheld the glo- 

 Mous vision, the cross and its motto, as well as the emperor ; and that not an individual ven- 

 tured to step forward and contradict him : and when, lastly, we take into consideration 

 the undisputed fact, that the figure of the cross portrayed in the pillar of light, was copied, 

 together with its motto, and placed on every banner of the imperial army from this time 

 forth ; and that all the branches of the imperial family became converts to Christianity 

 from the same period j when all these points are taken into consideration, a case is made out, 

 not only that sufficiently vindicates the veracity of Eusebius, but that probably demands a 

 more miraculous power to shut the heart against its admission, than that of the miracle 

 y^hkh is its subject-matter.— See Euseb, Tit. Const, lib. i. cap. xxyii— xxxi. p. 421—423, 



