The vast majority of scholarship dealing with the reign of Constantine has been concerned with the rise of Christianity in the empire and Constantine's personal commitment to the faith. The difficulties inherent in the contemporary written sources have produced a scholarship plagued by the criticism of the reliability of the church fathers as historians. The close association between the emperor and such writers as Eusebius and Lactantius has led many scholars to denounce their histories as works of Christian and imperial propaganda and unreliable for the hard facts of Constantine's reign. / The problem associated with this argument is that it is too narrowly focused and passes over the obvious fact that a ruler's propaganda can be an excellent index to his policies at a given time. In addition, an analysis of the written sources in isolation ignores the fact that they were only a small part of Constantine's overall propaganda effort. Of greater importance were the examples of sculpture, coinage and architecture that influenced the public every day and did much to fashion the desired image of the emperor. / This dissertation is concerned with examining Constantine's image as it evolved in imperial art during the thirty-one years of his reign. When appropriate, references to the written sources have been made to point out similarities and differences. The dissertation is divided into four chapters. The first introduces the use of imperial art as propaganda in the empire prior to the reign of Constantine. The second chapter presents the emerging Constantinian style prior to the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 313. The third chapter analyzes the mature imperial style of Constantine after his accession to the office of Augustus in the Western half of the empire. The fourth chapter concentrates on Constantine's imperial Christian art and the implications it had for imperial policy in the last decade of his rule. Special emphasis in this chapter will be given to the synthesis of imperial and Christian art that occurred in the empire after the founding of Constantinople. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-09, Section: A, page: 2851. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75177 |
| Contributors | WALKER, JAMES EDWARD., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 176 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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