Cast in Stone

Constantine in York: 'By this sign I conquer'

Kelley Reesman-Tackett

The 1997 Annual Report of the York Civic Trust notes "a dearth of great men" in the city’s statuary. This Report counts only two statues of men raised in York across the twentieth century, those of William Etty and George Leeman. In an effort to increase this number before the city reached the new millennium, the Trust unveiled a resin-and-bronze-dust statue of the Roman emperor Constantine on July 25, 1998. Constantine lounges at the foot of York Minster’s south transept steps, across the pedestrian walkway from a restored Roman column and with his back to the Minster yard. As described in the 1997 Report, he holds "the sword of a defeated enemy at arm’s length and muses on the distinctive crucifix form of its design". The statue sits at 1.5x scale and peers out over passersby from an additional four-foot pedestal, itself inscribed with "Constantine the Great (AD 274-337) Proclaimed Roman Emperor in York AD 306".

Constantine in York

Constantine was proclaimed Roman emperor from York after his father's unexpected death during a military campaign in the area. However, it was the soldiers stationed at York who made this declaration, as it was not official and did not bear any authority from Rome. The empire at the time had four emperors, and Constantine's succession following his father's death was not inevitable. When the soldiers stationed in York made this declaration, they were recognizing Constantine as one among these four existing Roman emperors. He then spent the following decades killing any peers who could make a claim for succession, including two brothers-in-law. He went on to become the sole emperor of Rome, and is remembered primarily for his legalization of Christian practices within the empire and relocation of its capital to Byzantium (later Constantinople, presently Istanbul). Despite this limited connection to York, the city's 1909 pageant (involving up to 2,500 performers) celebrated Constantine's entrance to the city as the foundation of Christianity in Britain and emphasized a mythologized lineage depicting his mother, St. Helena, as a Briton. The performers' excitement at being ruled by "one of their own kind..." presents an interesting backdrop for discussions of Constantine's legacy in York through the twentieth century, particularly given that St. Helena was born in what is now Turkey and never visited Britain, as well as the Trust's anxiety regarding York's Christianity in the new millennium.

The Yorkshire Museum holds a Roman-era bust of Constantine excavated from York's city center, which the Trust cites as a contributing factor to the contemporary statue's placement: the bust likely would have occupied part of the Roman military fort, which was potentially located where the contemporary Constantine statue sits. Despite the pedestal's brief epithet connecting the emperor to Eboracum, or Roman York, the significance of this statue and the questions it raises are complex and embedded in the city's contemporary context. Why raise a statue of Constantine in one of York's most prominent pedestrian thoroughfares, and why choose this memorial in 1998? What is the role of the York Civic Trust in shaping the city's public space, and how does this statue change or challenge York's visual identity?

I will consider these questions, placing Constantine in the wider context of York's heritage landscape as well as within ongoing conversations about its future. In examining the Constantine statue, I will also consider the never-realized statue of St. Helena, Constantine’s mother, which the Trust proposed in 1999.

Commissioning Constantine

The York Civic Trust was created in 1946 in response to the post-war "spirit of renewal" which its four founding members understood as a threat to York's cultural heritage. These founders intended for the Trust to support preservation efforts in the city, but also to provide and improve various amenities; the import of this dual focus is evidenced by the organization's slogan, "Preserve Heritage -- Shape Tomorrow".

The Trust commissioned Philip Jackson to design and sculpt its 1998 Constantine statue. Jackson has completed dozens of works throughout England and internationally, including the Windsor “Equestrian statue of HM the Queen" and Parliament Square's “Mahatma Gandhi Memorial”. York's Constantine statue is not a replica of any surviving ancient depiction of Constantine, nor is it based on any Roman-era statue. Instead, Jackson undertook research trips to ICCOM in Rome, the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, and the York Archaeological Trust to prepare his designs.

Jackson was commissioned a second time in 1999 for the Trust’s proposed statue of St. Helena; he created the maquette later displayed for public comment. In a February 1999 letter to the Trust, Jackson expressed his excitement for the project, and wrote that he found it “fitting and right that the great ecclesiastical City of York should mark the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of Christianity in an appropriate manner; London is welcome to its Dome”. Indeed, York would have statues of Constantine and St. Helena.

York in the new millennium

A concern for York’s legacy moving into the new millennium appears consistently throughout Trust meeting notes in the late 1990s, alongside anxiety regarding the city’s future direction as a center for heritage, science, or some mixture of both. Both of the Trust’s statue proposals in 1998 and 1999 attempt to confront this concern, and to answer this consternation through explicit intervention in York’s built and ideological environment. These two larger-than-life statues with overt Christian imagery and epithets in major pedestrian spaces in the city center would inevitably shape how visitors and residents perceive the city’s values. They also highlight aspects of its history those with power choose to invest in and memorialize, especially given the acknowledged lack of other statuary. Jackson’s words go beyond the connection between these statues and York’s Christian heritage to position the statues as part of a narrative shift in future imaginings and physical renderings of York itself. 

St. Helena's statue

Despite describing the Constantine statue’s unveiling as its "greatest success", the Trust’s proposal for a statue of St. Helena drew broad criticism from the York public as well as other heritage organizations in the city. St. Helena is recognized within Christianity for locating the true cross in her old age and preserving a splinter. Unlike Constantine, Helena never visited York and has no connection with the city beyond her son’s visit as a young man. The Trust proposed that the statue occupy the central St. Helen’s square (no connection to St. Helena), with steps leading up to the pedestal and new lighting attached to surrounding buildings to illuminate the 5.33 meter statue at night. 

Jackson’s maquette commissioned by the Trust depicts Helena as a young woman, barefoot, standing on top of a human skull and holding the cross above her head. The first vehement criticism of this statue came from within the Trust, with one member writing that “if you want (as you should) to go to Heaven, John [Trust director],  the maquette must be approved WITHOUT THE SKULL” (emphasis original).

This critique was followed by 72 letters from the York public rejecting the proposal, delivered to the City Centre Management Committee as part of the municipal process for planning permission. Only two letters in favor of this statue were recorded. 

The Committee organized the public’s concerns into 26 categories, among them:

• Statue has no stylistic unity with the Square, is wrong in scale, irrelevant, and would be an embarrassment to York in the future
• St Helena has a very dubious connection to York and she is not a figure for the approaching Millennium
• This is a limp piece of work which amounts to an empty cleverness
• The statue has a kitsch, neo-gothic design which is more appropriate to a gift shop
• St Helena was old when she found the cross, the statue is an insult to older women
• It is arrogant of the Trust to consider themselves the arbiters of taste for a public square, no effort has been made to ask the people of York what they want
• The city art strategy should encourage a range of work by different artists 
• The statue is ugly, bad taste and looks like Victorian cemetery art
• It would be insensitive to erect further statues with Christian significance when many people today are non-believers or of non-Christian faith
• There are better people to commemorate eg Etty, Thomas Fairfax, Robinson Crusoe
• St Helena persecuted Jews, York has an unhappy record with Jews and this statue should not be encouraged; any Statue of St Helena should be in a place of worship

Local heritage organizations contributed their dissent to the Committee’s report. The York Georgian Society expressed “anxiety about the change of emphasis in the important visual architectural aspects of the Square” while the Neighborhood Planning Commission felt the statue would be “out of character, out of scale, and symboliz[ing] a single faith in a multi-faith society” and the Royal Fine Art commission, despite sympathizing with the “aspiration to mark the millennium in York in a way that recognizes its Christian significance”, felt the statue as proposed would be “an unsatisfactory oddity”.

The Committee ultimately denied permission for this statue on the grounds that its artificial lighting might be a hazard to motorists, and its size could impede pedestrian pursuits in the square. Though St. Helena’s statue was never realized, its proposal and the public nature of the criticisms against it provide valuable context for understanding both the 1998 design and intent of the Constantine statue and its impact on York at the turn of the century.

Contextualizing Constantine

The choice to commission a statue of Constantine at the turn of the century in York, mired in Christian symbolism and positioned outside the Minster, reflects the Trust’s contribution to an ongoing, wider conversation about the city’s future development. Constantine was not the only Roman emperor to visit York, nor was he the only historic figure with whom York is associated. The city’s heritage attractions tend to emphasize its Viking and medieval pasts, and every evening the streets are filled with ghost tours sharing the city’s more contemporary (and grisly) history. 

Following the purported success of Constantine’s statue with a statue of his mother elucidates the Trust’s aspirations with Constantine, emphasizing not the Roman founding of York but the presence and perpetuation of Christianity therein. Roman-style statues are plentiful throughout England, usually designed to locate and maintain power within a respective environment. I have written previously on the role of Roman-style statues in upholding and perpetuating British colonial power (and its legacies today). For centuries British colonial officials depicted themselves in Roman garb and as Roman leaders in statues, decorating both Classically-inspired colonial administration buildings and public spaces. Colonial, Roman-style statues and architecture helped set British colonial aspirations within broader European colonial traditions, and sought to depict the British empire as a continuation of Roman imperial power. These Roman-style statues remain plentiful throughout England, usually designed to locate and maintain power within a respective environment. Constantine exemplifies this practice as an expression of the values those with power over York’s built environment hope to carry into the new millennium, and as an actor within the city’s public landscape. For the Constantine statue, this value is Christianity, which the statue emphasizes at the expense of other connections to York’s Roman past.

The power statues present in public landscapes, and the power inherent to Constantine’s design, is evidenced by the Trust’s 1998 Annual Report noting, “our fears that the statue would be dwarfed by the Minster have interestingly enough proved quite unfounded”. The statue is not overshadowed by the Minster, but rather exists as an extension of it, acting at a level understood by passersby and the public. The Minster scaffolding behind the statue holds a glowing white four-pointed star along the roof, positioned behind and above Constantine. At the statue’s feet, over the pedestal, the words “Constantine by this sign I conquer” are inscribed, linking the statue, the Christian narrative of Constantine seeing a cross in the sky over a battlefield, and the lighted cross hanging from the Minster. Thus the statue is not only referential to Constantine’s legalization of Christianity within the Roman empire, but is embedded in this story, and goes on to reenact it. 

Discussion of an additional plaque contextualizing the Constantine statue first surfaced in Trust meeting notes a year following its unveiling. The plaque fixed to the fencing behind the statue today highlights how Constantine’s “recognition of civil liberties of his Christian subjects, and his own conversion to the Faith, established the religious foundations of Western Christendom”. York has a well-documented Roman history, but the plaque, pedestal, statue, and surroundings emphasize instead Constantine as a link to Christianity, and by extension, positioning York as foundational to the development and spread of Christianity writ large. Constantine is both a mechanism to increase the number of statues of “great men” within York, and to ascribe to the city a prominent and fundamental role in the history of Christianity. Discussing the need for a Helena statue in the new millennium, the Trust's 1998-99 Annual Report goes so far as to note that "What we had hoped to do in providing a statue was to leave some permanent reminder of the Millennium and all that the Millennium means, -- 2,000 years of Christianity and the transition from BC to AD -- otherwise it will all be forgotten after the year 2000. The intent to follow Constantine with a statue of his mother, whose connection to York is purely through a perceived religious entanglement, further demonstrates the Trust’s efforts to bend York’s trajectory in the new millennium in favor of its Christian heritage. 

Constantine's Coloniality?

On June 29, 2020, The Daily Telegraph published an article claiming that York Minster's statue of Constantine was being 'looked at' following alleged complaints that the Roman Emperor had supported slavery. However, York Minister denied that they had received any such complaints, with a spokesperson stating that "Contrary to what has been reported, we have not received a single complaint about Emperor Constantine’s statue” and “We are not removing Emperor Constantine’s statue. Nothing is happening: there is no discussion, action, intention or even thoughts about it".

This brief dispute may indeed have been an imaginary episode of culture wars wishfully imagined by the right-wing British press. It may also have been a whiff of awareness among some people in York that the Romanesque statues, including of Roman emperors, especially of Roman emperors deliberately associated with the imposition of Christian faith, could appear colonial, racist or exclusionary to some people. Perhaps we shall never know the truth about the exchange, between the journalist and an unknown member of the York Minster.

However, the exchange makes sense, given that the association between Roman-style statues and Christian conquest in England is long-standing. The connection between York’s Constantine and British colonialism goes beyond Christian symbolism and battle dress; the Roman emperor has remained recognizable for centuries as a figurehead of empire. In 1735 James Macrae (then-Governor of Madras) commissioned an equestrian statue of William of Orange depicted as Constantine, linking himself and by extension the broader colonial project to both the legacy of Roman imperialism and championing Christianity. Macrae demonstrates the accessibility of Constantine toward these ends. York’s Constantine should be understood within this context, as claims of coloniality are not only tied to the Roman emperor’s actions, but to the contemporary action of financing and plinthing the statue itself in York, 1998 -- which in turn empowers the officials or organization behind it in public perception and political life.

Conclusion

York’s statue of Constantine forms part of a wider array of Roman-style statues and their legacies in England . It clearly exemplifies how statues have power in public spaces as part of a city’s built environment. Beyond showing where power lies -- and with whom -- York’s Constantine statue articulates the values of those seeking to shape the city, entombing them (and their artificial patina) in resin and bronze dust. Rather than memorializing a famous visitor to York two thousand years ago, both statues proposed by the Trust seek to orient York as a foundational part of Western Christendom and depict the city as overtly and inexorably Christian at the turn of a new millennium. Constantine was thus a vehicle to assuage this particular anxiety regarding York’s trajectory. Even if we ignore the ghostly culture war, discussed above, the public response to the Trust’s second statue proposal made it is clear that York residents understand what is at stake when there are changes to the city’s public space and monuments; they clearly refused to further the message of Christian triumphalism. It will be interesting to see how the Constantine statue and its contexts continue to change and be challenged as York progresses into the twenty-first century.

Further readings

Lyra Monteiro, “Power Structures: White Columns, White Marble, White Supremacy”. Intersectionist-Medium. October 27. 2020

Robert Bevan, "Introduction," in his Monumental Lies: Culture Wars and the Truth About the Past (London: Verso Press, 2022) [Limited preview on Google Books]

Thomas Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and the British Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)

Phiroze Vasunia, The Classics and Colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Chapter 4, pp. 156-191

The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain