Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
Can we start a new thread for interminable discussion about whether or not Constantine was a ninny? It's totally drowned out the topic, interesting as it is.
I found it interesting how the emperors abandoned their links to Augustus and Pericles, and claimed Constantine and Justinian instead. Their view on empire was heavily informed by Christianity. The emperor, starting with Constantine, was viewed in quasi-religious terms. The empire itself was viewed as heaven on earth, perfect and unchangeable.
Even supposing that you are right about the Byzantine Empire being non-Roman, and I don't even agree that this is true, surely you can admit that the Byzantine Empire, the legacy of Constantine, was a success. I simply don't see how you can say that Constantine was a failure, when clearly all of the evidence shows that he was wildly successful.
In your initial post you said he was an art thief, how on earth does his stealing of art make him into a failure? He used it to build up one of the most important cities in the world. A city which holds vast cultural and religious importance to this day.
You claimed that he was a bad theologian, I fail to see what was bad about it, Orthodox Christianity persists to this day, and the trinity is the foundation stone of all modern Christianity. By holding that council, Constantine insured the survival of Christianity, a religion which has helped shaped the world. This makes him one of the more successful and influential figures in history, hardly a failure.
I think it turned out to be a tremendous failure for Christianity, in addition to being a failure for mankind. Orthodoxy (with a lower-case "o"; not the particular Eastern Christian religion) or religious beliefs enforced by a state is a mad, lethal and toxic concept that we haven't fully recovered from yet, either in the West or in the Islamic world.![]()
I don't see how you can say that religious orthodoxy is so "lethal," considering that both Christianity and Islam have been extraordinarily successful religions.
Well, yeah, these days, state-defined orthodoxy for a given religion is bad.
But hindsight is 20/20; Constantine had no way of knowing that his successors would take it too far. His implementation of it was entirely to settle a violent dispute among Christians in his empire; it intended as a temporary measure to prevent civil unrest.
Invading Greece was NOT that easy, because of the mountainousness and many places where a few could hold up many, and large area not being too rocky and rough and not suitable for cavalry. Same as in the Greek War of Independence in the 1920's.