liate the bishops by the donation of large sums of money for the
restoration of their churches and other purposes, and to exert himself,
often by objectionable means, for destroying that which they who were
around him considered to be heresy. A better motive, perhaps, led him to
restore those Christians who had been degraded; to surrender to the
legal heirs the confiscated estates of martyrs, or, if no heirs were to
be found, to convey them to the Church; to set at liberty those who had
been condemned to the mines; to recall those who had been banished. If,
as a tribute to the Christians, who had sustained him politically, he
made the imperial treasury responsible for many of their losses; if he
caused costly churches to be built not only in the great cities, but
even in the Holy Land; if he vindicated the triumphant position of his
supporters by forbidding any Jew to have a Christian slave; if he
undertook to enforce the decisions of councils by means of the power of
the state; if he forbade all schism in the Church, himself determining
the degrees of heresy under the inspirations of his ecclesiastical
entourage, his vacillations show how little he was guided by principle,
how much by policy. After the case of the Donatists had been settled by
repeated councils, he spontaneously recalled them from banishment; after
he had denounced Arius as "the very image of the Devil," he, through the
influence of court females, received him again into favour; after the
temple of Aesculapius at Aegae had been demolished, and the doors and
roofs of others removed, the pagans were half conciliated by perceiving
that no steady care was taken to enforce the obnoxious decrees, and that,
after all, the Christians would have to accept the declarations of the
emperor for deeds.

[Sidenote: Consequences of building a new metropolis.]

In a double respect the removal of the seat of empire was important to
Christianity. It rendered possible the assumption of power by the
bishops of Rome, who were thereby secluded from imperial observation and
inspection, and whose position, feeble at first, under such singularly
auspicious circumstances was at last developed into papal supremacy. In
Constantinople, also, there were no pagan recollections and interests to
contend with. At first the new city was essentially Roman, and its
language Latin; but this was soon changed for Greek, and thus the
transference of the seat of government tended in the end to