ABSTRACT
When Constantine made his historic alliance between the Roman state and the Christian church he had hoped, among other things, that this new, energetic and disciplined religion would buttress his unified empire with a unified faith.1 He was frustrated and disappointed. With the lifting of the persecutions and the gracious entry of the church into an earthly establishment, deep disagreements of doctrine and organisation all came into their own. The very tenacity that, a few years earlier, had resisted all attempts by Diocletian, Galerius and Maximinus to break the church by force was now active in its internal disputes.2 The leaders of any successful revolution soon split into factions, each convinced that they alone embodied the true spirit of all that has been fought for, against the others who have diluted or betrayed that spirit. Bishops who had faced prison, torture and death rather than make the near-conventional gesture of offering a pinch of incense to the genius of the emperor were not now going to compromise their principles in a fudged unity simply because the emperor demanded it. Constantine had encountered as an ally what Diocletian before him had encountered as an enemy: the extraordinary stubbornness of this religion which set doctrinal purity above all considerations of state policy or civic harmony. He too only half-appreciated how radically different this religion was.3
