at battle of Saxa Rubra, which took place a little distance off.
Visitors to the Vatican will remember the spirited representation of
this battle on the walls of Raphael's Stanze, designed by the
immortal master, and executed by Giulio Romano, the largest historical
subject ever painted. By the tragic details of this battle, men and
horses being entangled in the eddies of the river, the Christians were
reminded of the destruction of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea,
and the consequent deliverance of Israel. The victory on the side of
Constantine led to the total overthrow of paganism, and put an end to
the age of religious persecution. On this memorable day the
seven-branched golden candlestick which Titus had taken from the
temple of Jerusalem, according to tradition, was thrown into the
Tiber, where it lies under a vast accumulation of mud in the bed of
the river. It would thus seem as if the Jewish religion, too, of which
the golden candlestick was the most expressive symbol, had come
finally to an end in this triumph of Christianity. Of the monuments by
which the great battle was commemorated one still survives near the
Colosseum, the well-known triumphal arch of Constantine, which is at
once a satire upon the decay of art at the time, and the halting of
the new emperor between the two religions, containing, as it does,
pagan figures and inscriptions mixed up incongruously with Christian
ones.

We gaze with deep interest upon the serene violet sky which broods
over the Milvian Bridge, and which still seems to the fancy to glow
with the consciousness of the ancient legend, when we remember that it
was in that sky, while on his march to the battle, Constantine saw,
surmounting and outshining the noonday sun, the wondrous vision of the
flaming cross, with the words "In this conquer," which assured him not
only of victory in the approaching engagement, but of the subsequent
universal ascendancy of Christianity throughout the world. This
vision, which in all probability was only a parhelion, exaggerated by
a superstitious and excited imagination, produced a crisis in the life
of Constantine. He adopted the Christian faith immediately
afterwards, and introduced the cross as the standard of his army; and
in the faith of the visionary cross he marched from victory to
victory, until at last he reigned alone as head of the Church and
Emperor of the world, and brought about relations between Church and
State which seemed t