ABSTRACT
Despite what its title may suggest, this chapter is not about environmentalism, although it is in a way about a renewable resource. Its aim is to evaluate the role of the sun god in the religious development of the emperor Constantine-an exercise that may also prove useful for reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the positivist approach to history. The long-standing question concerning Constantine’s conversion has been reinvigorated by the work of the German scholar Peter Weiss.1 With meticulous scholarship, Weiss has convincingly connected textual and numismatic evidence for Constantine’s famous vision of the cross to a celestial event known as a “solar halo phenomenon.” Simply put, these events occur when sunlight is refracted through ice crystals in the high atmosphere. They take a number of forms, including “light pillars,” single-ring (or 22°) haloes and, in their most spectacular form, double-ring (46°) haloes.2 Weiss has carefully analyzed a passage in the Latin panegyric of 310 in which Constantine is said to have made a detour on his route from the battlefield to a temple of Apollo, probably that of Apollo Granus in Vosges, and there to have seen a vision of the god Apollo-the so-called “pagan vision.” Weiss demonstrated how the orator could well have been referring to a vision seen before Constantine had entered that temple, and argued that this vision was, in fact, the cause of that detour.3 Combining this analysis with the fact that halo phenomena occur most often in late winter or spring and connecting this with the timing of Constantine’s march, Weiss concluded that this vision was the only one that Constantine ever had, that it occurred in 310, and that it was, in fact, a solar halo phenomenon.
