Note 24 — Chapter XVII · THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES
Reading edition
The question may be raised whether St. Augustine had not the case of Constantine in mind when, in his moral treatise “De Bono Conjugali,” he refuses to condemn a man who, having a barren wife, takes a concubine in addition, to provide a family. It is clear, at least, that early Christian opinion was not fixed. Gibbon again improves upon Christian writers by holding that Minervina was an earlier wife, not a concubine, of Constantine; but, as Professor Bury points out, the document on which he relies does not apply to that Emperor.