Constantine the Great: Emperor, Christianity, and Rome

Introduction: Who Was Constantine?

Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus, born February 27, 272, is commonly known as Constantine I or Constantine the Great. He was proclaimed Augustus by his troops on July 25, 306, and ruled an ever-growing portion of the Roman Empire until his death. Constantine is famous for his rebuilding of Byzantium as Nova Roma (New Rome), which was always popularly called "Constantine's City" (Constantinopolis, or Constantinople). With the Edict of Milan in 313, Constantine and his co-Emperor Licinius removed all legal burden from Christianity. By personally convening the Council of Nicaea in 325, Constantine began the Roman Empire's unofficial sponsorship of Christianity — a major factor in that religion's spread. His reputation as the "first Christian Emperor" was promoted by Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea, and gained ground in succeeding generations.

He was born at Naissus (today's Niš, in Serbia) in Upper Moesia, to Constantius I Chlorus, who was of Greek descent, and Flavia Iulia Helena, an innkeeper's daughter who was only about sixteen years old at the time. Helena "may not have been married to Constantius I Chlorus — who, as a high officer, could have found it difficult to marry a non-Roman wife — although some modern authorities refuse to accept this view, out of a pious determination to regard Constantine as legitimate."

His father left his mother in 292 to marry Flavia Maximiana Theodora, daughter or stepdaughter of Western Roman Emperor Maximian. Theodora would give birth to six of Constantine's half-siblings, including Julius Constantius. Family influence is thought to account for his personal embrace of Christianity: Helena is said to have probably been born a Christian, though virtually nothing is known of her background except that her mother was an innkeeper's daughter and her father a successful soldier — a career that excluded overt Christians. Certainly Helena demonstrated extreme piety later in life during her trip to Palestine, where she reportedly discovered the True Cross and established basilicas.

Rise to Power and Military Campaigns

Constantine was well educated and served at the court of Diocletian in Nicomedia, essentially as a hostage, after his father was appointed one of the two caesares, or junior emperors, in the Tetrarchy in 293. In 305, the Augustus Maximian abdicated, and Constantius succeeded to that position. However, Constantius fell ill during an expedition against the Picts and Scots of Caledonia and died on July 25, 306. Constantine managed to be at his deathbed in Eboracum (York) in Roman Britain, where loyal troops — led by the general Stephanos Tolberius, a North African — proclaimed him Augustus in honor of his father's memory.

For the next eighteen years, Constantine fought a series of battles and wars that made him first the Western Roman Emperor in co-rule with an Eastern co-emperor, and eventually the supreme ruler of the entire Roman Empire. His victory in 312 AD over Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge resulted in his becoming Western Augustus, or ruler of the entire Western Roman Empire. He gradually consolidated his military superiority over his rivals in the crumbling Tetrarchy.

In 320, Licinius, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, reneged on the religious freedom promised by the Edict of Milan and resumed persecution of Christians — a puzzling inconsistency, since Constantia, Constantine's half-sister and Licinius's wife, was herself an influential Christian. This became a direct challenge to Constantine in the west, culminating in the great civil war of 324. The armies assembled were so large that comparable forces would not be seen again until at least the fourteenth century. Characteristic of the age, it was cast as a great cosmic battle: Licinius, aided by Gothic mercenaries, represented the past and the ancient faith of paganism, while Constantine and his Franks marched under the Christian standard of the labarum. The new religion confronted the old gods. Though reportedly outnumbered, Constantine's army emerged victorious, and he became sole emperor of the entire Roman Empire.

Constantine and Christianity

Constantine is perhaps best known for being the first Roman Emperor to freely permit Christianity. This is traditionally presented as the result of a divine omen — a chi-rho symbol in the sky, accompanied by the inscription "By this sign shalt thou conquer." This vision reportedly occurred before his victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312, when Constantine is said to have instituted the labarum as the new standard to be carried into battle. Some scholars, however, have questioned this account: "There was no vision… The Emperor himself never seems to have spoken of it… even on occasions when he might have been expected to do so… There can be little doubt, on the other hand, that at a certain moment before the battle the Emperor underwent some profound spiritual experience."

Christian historians ever since Lactantius have held that Constantine "adopted" Christianity as a kind of replacement for official Roman paganism. Though the document known as the "Donation of Constantine" was eventually proved a forgery — not until the fifteenth century, by which time stories of his conversion were long-established "facts" — it was cited for centuries as documenting the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. Even Christian skeptics have accepted this general formulation, though they tend to view Constantine's policy as a political one aimed at unifying and strengthening the Empire, rather than as a genuine spiritual transformation.

Under Constantine's rule, Christians were for the first time free to compete with pagan Romans for high government positions through the traditional cursus honorum. Constantine granted various special privileges, and churches such as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem were constructed. Christian bishops began taking aggressive public stances that had been unknown among other religious leaders, even among the Jews. Proselytism had to be publicly outlawed simply to maintain public order.