ty
years, first in command of Rome, and then in command of
Constantinople, there were left three sons, Constantine, and
Constantius, and Constans, which had war and contentions among
themselves, and one of them, to wit, Constantine, was a Christian, and
the next, Constantius, was a heretic, and persecuted the Christians by
reason of his heresy, which was begun in Constantinople by one named
Arius, and this heresy was called Arian, after his name, which spread
much error throughout all the world, and throughout the Church of God.
These sons of Constantine by their dissensions greatly laid waste the
Empire of Rome, and in a sense abandoned it, and henceforward it
always seemed as if it were declining, and its sovereignty becoming
less; and there began to be two and three emperors at one time, and
one would be reigning in Constantinople, and another in the Empire of
Rome, and one would be Christian, and another an Arian heretic,
persecuting the Christians and the Church, and this endured long time,
so that all Italy was infected thereby. Of the other emperors before
and after, we shall make no ordered record, save of those which
pertain to our subject; but he who desires to find them in order
should read the Martinian Chronicle, and therein he will find the
emperors and the popes which were in those times set forth in order.

Sec. 60.--_How the Christian faith first came to Florence._

[Sidenote: Par. xvi. 47, 145, 146.]

[Sidenote: Inf. xiii. 143-150.]

[Sidenote: Par. xvi. 25, 47.]

[Sidenote: Par. xvi. 42.]

[Sidenote: Inf. xix. 17-20. Par. xv. 134, 135.]

At the time that the said great Constantine became a Christian, and
gave freedom and sovereignty to the Church, and S. Sylvester, the
Pope, was openly established in the papacy in Rome, there spread
through Tuscany, and throughout Italy, and afterwards through all the
world, the true faith and belief of Jesus Christ. And in our city of
Florence, the true faith began to be adopted, and paganism to be
abolished, in the time of * * * * who was made bishop of Florence by
Pope Sylvester; and from the noble and beautiful temple of the
Florentines, of which mention has been made above, the Florentines
removed their idol, which they called the god Mars, and placed it upon
a high tower, by the river Arno, and would not break or destroy it,
because in their ancient records they found that the said idol of Mars
had been consecrated under the ascendant of such a planet