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Here are also two caps from the fourth-century church, fragments of mosaic pavement found in mediæval tombs, and a good many pieces of eighth and ninth-century carving. The survival of the Constantinian plan is explained by the slight alterations made by Euphrasius. The walled-up doors in the baptistery show that it was not an isolated building.
The distinctive features of the Constantinian empire as compared with that of Diocletian, or of the tetrarchy of which he was the head, were not evolved from earlier political principles, but stood out in bold contrast and even in direct opposition to the very fundamentals of antique statesmanship, and so new in politics that even Constantine permitted them to slip away from his grasp long before the sunset of his life had come.
There is no doubt possible as to the existence of Christianity here at the end of the third century. There were churches in the time of Constantine, and a baptistery as early as 270, in the days of Aurelian. In Constantinian times it was a centre of Catholic life.
The second basilica was probably Constantinian. The present one coincides with it, except that the apse is polygonal and projects towards the east, and that the lines of the walls bend a little to the left from a line drawn across between the modern chapels. The floor of this basilica is about 2 ft. 9 in. below that of the present one.
The Constantinian Age brings in new styles. Much salmon-coloured hard pottery, mainly platters and flat dishes. Brown amphorae soft and smaller, with narrow ribbing. No glaze. Much very thin glass. Coins: little thin flat copper, as in rest of Empire, ending about 450. No Egyptian coinage, except a very few rough lumps from Justinian to Heraclius, I+B on back.
Despite the ill name that attaches to the third and fourth centuries, they were perhaps for Britain, as for parts of Gaul, a period of progressive prosperity. Certainly, the number of British country-houses and farms inhabited during the years A.D. 280-350 must have been very large. Prosperity culminated, perhaps, in the Constantinian Age.
Between the two pavement levels several unfinished caps and columns of limestone were found, and also two pedestals and one base among the foundations of the present nave arcade. Beneath the presbytery is a choir and presbytery of the form used in the most ancient Constantinian basilicas.
"I believe, mother, it is merely a title. The count purchased an island in the Tuscan archipelago, and, as he told you to-day, has founded a commandery. You know the same thing was done for Saint Stephen of Florence, Saint George, Constantinian of Parma, and even for the Order of Malta.
But the spirit of the Roman empire was too absolutistic to abandon the prerogative of a supervision of public worship. The Constantinian toleration was a temporary measure of state policy, which, as indeed the edict expressly states the motive, promised the greatest security to the public peace and the protection of all divine and heavenly powers, for emperor and empire.
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