HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

132 THOMAS J. HEFFERNANbrought new problems and solutions. A singular question the Christiansnow faced was what new structures could substitute as an appropriatemodel for those pious Christians who saw suffering and martyrdomas the greatest test of faith. Eusebius suggests in his Orationon the Tricennalia of Constantine that the change from martyrdom to anew form of witness was inevitable and providential, a positionConstantine himself avowed. 41 Eusebius argued that the dictates ofGod’s plan were evident in Constantine’s life. He proposed that Godordained the demise of the martyrs coincident with the emergenceof a new and triumphant Christian State. Constantine was his meansof effecting this change. 42 Living the Christian life was to substitutefor dying the Christian death. As Wilson aptly put it, “Ideal livesrather than ideal deaths were called for”. 43 The change had far reachingimplications for the construction of a new ethos governing sanctityand its literary representation. Where most of the Acta Martyrumhad been focused on the testimony, passion, and death of the subject,the new freedom afforded the Church radically widened thepossible focus of Christian biography. If the martyr followed the hallowedarchetype of Christ’s death, the saints of the fourth centuryhad the entire fabric of Christ’s life as their model. Suddenly theopportunity presented itself for priests, monks, bishops, lay men andwomen, virgins, and soldiers to seek sanctity through their living andnot through their death. For example, notable female figures—suchas Macrina, ancillae Domini like Paula the Elder and her daughterEustochium, and Melania the Elder and Younger—began to taketheir place in sacred history. 44Emergence of the Charismatic AsceticThe desert was made a city by monks, whose citizenship was that ofheaven. (Athanasius, Life of St. Anthony)Christian biographies from the second half of the fourth centurywere no longer limited to a narrative summary of a martyr’s suffering41Lieu (1998), 142.42Binns (1994), 39.43Lieu (1998), 108.44Petersen (1996), 89–279.