“He is Human, Too”

Abstract

The paper analyses the passage from Athanasius’ Vita Antonii, where Antony is corresponding with Constantine, Constantius and Constans, contrasting it with a very different portrayal of Constantine in Eusebius’ Vita Constantini. While Eusebius, in a famous statement, presented the emperor as a sort of a bishop, the Greek Vita Antonii tried to present a very different model, one that seems to be sceptical of the imperial power and perhaps of earthly society as such. The point was not lost on those who later developed the genre, as can be seen in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, the author of Vita Martini, written at the end of the fourth century, where the three emperors from Vita Antonii are paralleled with three different emperors, in a much sharper relief, subverting secular power and underlining the superiority of its spiritual alternative.