Crispus
Gaius Flavius Julius Valerius Crispus (* probably 305, † 326 ), short Crispus , the eldest son of was Roman Emperor Constantine I . This raised him to Caesar (lower emperor) in 317 , but had him killed in 326 for unexplained reasons.
Life
Crispus was the son of Constantine the Great and Minervina . It is difficult to reconstruct today whether she was only in a relationship with Constantine or also married; in the former case, Crispus would be an illegitimate son. His year of birth is generally estimated to be 305 in modern research. It seems certain that he was born before 307, since Constantine married Fausta , the daughter of Emperor Maximian , in that year ; Whether Crispus' mother was already dead or was abandoned can no longer be said. Crispus was born in the east of the empire and later brought to Gaul as a child . The Christian scholar Lactantius raised him in Trier ( Augusta Treverorum ) . The education by Lactantius probably began before 317. In 321 the speaker Nazarius gave a panegyricus in honor of Crispus and Constantine (presumably in Rome). Before 322, Crispus married a woman named Helena, who bore him a son in October 322.
On March 1, 317, Constantine appointed new Caesares for the empire in Serdica, now Sofia . For the West, these were Crispus and his half-brother Constantine II , Constantine's first son from his second wife Fausta. In the following years, Crispus was appointed consul three times : 318, 321 and 324.
In 320 he had his first military success to report: Even in his youth he defeated the Franks and Alamanni . Meanwhile, the relationship between Constantine, who ruled the west of the empire with his Caesares, and Licinius , the emperor of the east, became increasingly difficult. Eventually, in 324, the conflict escalated and civil war broke out. While Constantine defeated the army of Licinius at Adrianople, Crispus led the fleet in front of the Dardanelles and won the sea battle at Kallipolis against 200 ships of Licinius under their commanding Abantus .
On the orders of his father, Crispus was killed in 326. The exact reason for this is unknown, because the sources only report rumors: Constantine's wife Fausta is said to have accused her stepson Crispus of chasing after her, whereupon the emperor had his son killed. When he discovered that the accusation was false, he also had Fausta, the perpetrator of the intrigue, killed. According to other sources, Crispus and Fausta actually had a relationship. The historian Zosimos , who was not very fond of Constantine as a heathen and is not particularly reliable, passed down the rumor around 500 in his New History that Constantine is said to have viewed these acts as such a grave sin that he believed that he could only find forgiveness in baptism can. This explanation does not apply, of course, since Constantine had already clearly expressed his preference for Christianity beforehand.
Some researchers suggest that Fausta wanted to eliminate Crispus in favor of her own children, but that would not explain her own execution. Other historians assume that Crispus was accused of a high treason in which Fausta was also involved and which thus resulted in the deaths of both: According to the rules of the Diocletian tetrarchy, Caesar Crispus would have been entitled to rise to Augustus in early 327 ; perhaps he wanted to force his father, who had been emperor for 20 years, to abdicate. Ultimately, however, the true background can hardly be fully explained using the available sources.
literature
Crispus is also dealt with in the relevant biographies of Constantine, which are not listed separately here (see Constantine the Great # literature ).
- Bruno Bleckmann : Crispus [1]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 3, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01473-8 , Col. 223 f.
- Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John Robert Martindale, John Morris : Fl. Iulius Crispus 4. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-07233-6 , p. 233 ( online version ).
- Dietmar Kienast , Werner Eck , Matthäus Heil : Roman imperial table. Basic features of a Roman imperial chronology . 6th, completely revised and updated edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2017, ISBN 978-3-534-26724-8 , pp. 293-294 .
- Hans Pohlsander: Crispus: Brilliant Career and Tragic End . In: Historia . tape 33 , 1984, pp. 79-106 .
- Otto Seeck : Crispus 9) . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 2, Stuttgart 1901, Sp. 1722-1724.
Web links
- Hans Pohlsander: Short biography (English) at De Imperatoribus Romanis (with references).
Remarks
- ↑ On this, for example, Timothy D. Barnes , The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine , Harvard University Press, Cambridge / London 1982, pp. 42f.
- ↑ On Helena cf. Otto Seeck : Helena 3) . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VII, 2, Stuttgart 1912, Col. 2822.
- ↑ Klaus Rosen, Constantine the Great: Emperor between power politics and religion , Klett-Cotta Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, p. 310.
- ↑ see e.g. B. Klaus Rosen , Constantine the Great: Emperor Between Power Politics and Religion , Klett-Cotta Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, Chapter 18. Willingness is fatal , pp. 309-317.
- ↑ Cf. on this current Elisabeth Herrmann-Otto , Konstantin der Große , Darmstadt 2007, pp. 141–146, and Oliver Schmitt, Constantin der Große , Stuttgart 2007, pp. 221–229, with a discussion of the difficult source situation and various research positions.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Crispus |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Crispus, Flavius Julius Valerius; Crispus, Flavius Iulius Valerius |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | eldest son of Emperor Constantine I. |
| DATE OF BIRTH | uncertain: 305 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 326 |