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| Death of Constantine the Great; he died after Baptism and was buried in the Temple of the Holy Apostles.
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Chapter XXXIV.—Death
of Constantine the Great; he died after Baptism and was buried in the
Temple of the Holy Apostles.
The emperor had already divided
the empire among his sons, who were styled Cæsars.1207
| 1207Eus. V. C. iv. 61–75; Ruf. H. E.
i. 11; Soc. i. 38–40; cf. Philost. ii. 16, 17. Cf. Eutrop.
Brev. hist. Rom. x. 7, 8.
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To Constantine and Constans he awarded the western regions; and to
Constantius, the eastern; and as he was indisposed, and required to
have recourse to bathing, he repaired for that purpose to Helenopolis,
a city of Bithynia. His malady, however, increased, and he went to
Nicomedia, and was initiated into holy baptism in one of the suburbs of
that city. After the ceremony he was filled with joy, and returned
thanks to God. He then confirmed the division of the empire among his
sons, according to his former allotment, and bestowed certain
privileges on old Rome and on the city named after himself. He placed
his testament in the hands of the presbyter who constantly extolled
Arius, and who had been recommended to him as a man of virtuous life by
his sister Constantia in her last moments, and commanded him with an
added oath to deliver it to Constantius on his return, for neither
Constantius nor the other Cæsars were with their dying father.
After making these arrangements, Constantine survived but a few days;
he died in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and the thirty-first of his
reign. He was a powerful protector of the Christian religion, and was
the first of the emperors who began to be zealous for the Church, and
to bestow upon her high benefactions. He was more successful than any
other sovereign in all his undertakings; for he formed no design, I am
convinced, without God. He was victorious in his wars against the Goths
and Sarmatians, and, indeed, in all his military enterprises; and he
changed the form of government according to his own mind with so much
ease, that he created another senate and another imperial city, to
which he gave his own name. He assailed the pagan religion, and in a
little while subverted it, although it had prevailed for ages among the
princes and the people.
After the death of Constantine, his body was placed in a
golden coffin, conveyed to Constantinople, and deposited on a certain
platform in the palace; the same honor and ceremonial were observed, by
those who were in the palace, as were accorded to him while living. On
hearing of his father’s death, Constantius, who was then in the
East, hastened to Constantinople, and interred the royal remains with
the utmost magnificence, and deposited them in the tomb which had been
constructed by order of the deceased in the Church of the Apostles.
From this period it became the custom to deposit the remains of
subsequent Christian emperors in the same place of interment; and here
bishops, likewise, were buried, for the hierarchical dignity is not
only equal in honor to imperial power, but, in sacred places, even
takes the ascendancy. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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