Demoting the Emperor

Van Dam ( Roman Revolution of Constantine ) suggests that Eusebius’s Life was simultaneously a political tract celebrating the elevation of a Christian emperor and a theological apology promoting Eusebius’s Christological subordinationism. The afterlife of Eusebius’s treatise, though, put the emperors in their place.

Rufinus’s translation/paraphrase of Eusebius’s Church History includes material from the Life but presents Constantine as a devoutly Christian emperor from the beginning of his reign and emphasizes, in contrast to Eusebius’s tendency to conflate Jesus and Constantine, the emperor’s respect for bishops and his refusal to present himself as an equal of bishops. At the same time, Rufinus also promotes Nicene orthodoxy.

Socrates likewise downplays the parallels between Christ and emperor that Eusebius works into his account of the council of Nicea. He leaves out Eusebius’s description of Constantine’s arrival at the council “like a heavenly angel of God” and the comparison of the emperor’s feast to “an image of Christ’s kingdom.” All he leaves from Eusebius is, van Dam says, “the emperor’s respectful reluctance to sit until the bishops had assented.”