e assigned in
every city an allowance of corn in behalf of charities to the poor. He
confirmed the clergy in the right of being tried in their own courts and
by their peers, when accused of crime,--a great privilege in the fourth
century, but a great abuse in the fourteenth. The arbitration of bishops
had the force of positive law, and judges were instructed to execute the
episcopal decrees. He transferred to the churches the privilege of
sanctuary granted to those fleeing from justice in the Mosaic
legislation. He ordained that Sunday should be set apart for religious
observances in all the towns and cities of the Empire. He abolished
crucifixion as a punishment. He prohibited gladiatorial games. He
discouraged slavery, infanticide, and easy divorces. He allowed the
people to choose their own ministers, nor did he interfere in the
election of bishops. He exempted the clergy from all services to the
State, from all personal taxes, and all municipal duties. He seems to
have stood in awe of bishops, and to have treated them with great
veneration and respect, giving to them lands and privileges, enriching
their churches with ornaments, and securing to the clergy an ample
support. So prosperous was the Church under his beneficence, that the
average individual income of the eighteen hundred bishops of the Empire
has been estimated by Gibbon at three thousand dollars a year, when
money was much more valuable than it is in our times.

In addition to his munificent patronage of the clergy, Constantine was
himself deeply interested in all theological affairs and discussions. He
convened and presided over the celebrated Council of Nicaea, or Nice, as
it is usually called, composed of three hundred and eighteen bishops,
and of two thousand and forty-eight ecclesiastics of lesser note,
listening to their debates and following their suggestions. The
Christian world never saw a more imposing spectacle than this great
council, which was convened to settle the creed of the Church. It met in
a spacious basilica, where the emperor, arrayed in his purple and silk
robes, with a diadem of precious jewels on his head, and a voice of
gentleness and softness, and an air of supreme majesty, exhorted the
assembled theologians to unity and concord.

The vital question discussed by this magnificent and august assembly
was metaphysical as well as religious; yet it was the question of the
age, on which everybody talked, in public and in private, an