tion of hands—a ceremony then in use previous to baptism, and practised with every catechumen. He was then carried to a castle, called Aquirion, a little distant from Nicomedia, and, having summoned the bishops, he received baptism with the greatest devotion. "Now," said he, "I feel myself truly happy." His officers then came to him, and, with tears in their eyes, expressed the wish they had for his restoration to health and long life; but he said, "I have now received the true life, and I have no other wish but to go and enjoy God." St. Jerome, in his Chronicle, says that he lapsed into Arian errors, but his festival is commemorated in the Greek Menalogy, according to Noel Alexander, on the 21st of May, and the same author wrote a dissertation to prove that he died a good Catholic, and all the ancients, he says, agree in that opinion with St. Athanasius, St. Hilary, St. Epiphanius, and St. Ambrose; and we have, likewise, the authority of the Council of Rimini, in the synodal epistle written to the Emperor Constantius, and quoted by Socrates, Theodoret, Sozymen, and St. Athanasius. Cardinal Orsi remarks that the baptism of Constantine, by Eusebius, ought not to render his faith suspected, and that this is no proof of a leaning to Arianism, as St. Jerome suspects, since we see how strenuously he defended the Council and doctrine of Nice, and especially since he recalled St. Athanasius from exile immediately after his baptism, notwithstanding the opposition of Eusebius of Nicomedia. Sozymen says that the Emperor left this order in his will, and that Constantine the Younger, when he sent back St. Athanasius to his see, declared that, in doing so, he was fulfilling the will of his father; and St. Athanasius attests that, at the same time, all the other Catholic bishops were reinstated in their sees[1].
29. Constantine died on the feast of Pentecost, the 23rd of May, 337, and divided the empire among his children and nephews. To Constantius the Elder he left all that was possessed by his father, Constans, and Gaul, Spain, and Britain besides; to Constantius the Second, Asia, Assyria, and Egypt; and to Constantius the Youngest, Africa, Italy, and Illyria; and to his nephews, Dalmatius and Hannibalianus, some provinces of less note. It was the will of the Almighty, however, that Constantine the Younger and Constans died, so the whole empire fell into the sway of Constantius, a great misfortune for the Church, for he was a violent persecutor, and Constantine and Constans were its friends[2].
