twelve years after it. His great work as a Christian emperor was to
unite the Church with the State. He did not elevate the Church above the
State; that was the work of the Mediaeval Popes. But he gave external
dignity to the clergy, of whom he was as great a patron as Charlemagne.
He himself was a sort of imperial Pope, attending to things spiritual as
well as to things temporal. His generosity to the Church made him an
object of universal admiration to prelates and abbots and ecclesiastical
writers. In this munificent patronage he doubtless secularized the
Church, and gave to the clergy privileges they afterwards abused,
especially in the ecclesiastical courts. But when the condition of the
Teutonic races in barbaric times is considered, his policy may have
proved beneficent. Most historians consider that the elevation of the
clergy to an equality with barons promoted order and law, especially in
the absence of central governments. If Constantine made a mistake in
enriching and exalting the clergy, it was endorsed by Charlemagne
and Alfred.

After a prosperous and brilliant reign of thirty-one years, the emperor
died in the year 337, in the suburbs of Nicomedia, which Diocletian had
selected as the capital of the East. In great pomp, and amid expressions
of universal grief, his body was transferred to the city he had built
and called by his name; it was adorned with every symbol of grandeur and
power, deposited on a golden bed, and buried in a consecrated church,
which was made the sepulchre of the Greek emperors until the city was
taken by the Turks. The sacred rite of baptism by which Constantine was
united with the visible Church, strange to say, was not administered
until within a few days before his death.

No emperor has received more praises than Constantine. He was fortunate
in his biographers, who saw nothing to condemn in a prince who made