When treatment failed, he made to return to Constantinople but was forced to take to his bed near Nicomedia. This grew out of his strategy for unifying his empire by creating a "catholic"—meaning universal —church that would blend elements from many religions into one. Constantine's reign as Roman emperor (A.D. 306-337) dramatically changed the direction of Christianity, though in ways far different from those portrayed in The Da Vinci Code. A product of this meeting has become known as the Edict of Milan, which extended toleration to the Christians and restored any personal and corporate property that had been confiscated during the persecution. Yet this was less an expression of religious megalomania than of Constantine’s literal conviction that he was the successor of the evangelists, having devoted his life and office to the spreading of Christianity. The emperor was an earnest student of his religion. Two common objections, or perhaps 'conspiracy theories' are raised about the origins of Christianity. He also initiated an extensive church building program. One of the first things Constantine did that changed Rome was create a new capital, Constantinople. As emperor, Constantine enacted many administrative, financial, social, and military reforms to strengthen the empire. Constantine had hoped to be baptized in the Jordan River, but perhaps because of the lack of opportunity to do so—together possibly with the reflection that his office necessarily involved responsibility for actions hardly compatible with the baptized state—he delayed the ceremony until the end of his life. Long after his supposed conversion he had coins minted with a portrait of himself on one side and a depiction of his "companion, the unconquered Sol [sun]" on the other. First, that the apostle Paul was responsible for changing the pristine religion preached by Jesus, and second that Constantine completed the process, notably by establishing the canon of Scripture. Play. Why Consider Constantine? Other such pronouncements, expressed in letters to imperial officials and to Christian clergy, demonstrate that Constantine’s commitment to Christianity was firmer and less ambiguous than some have suggested. Constantine funded church-building projects throughout his reign as a way to encourage Christianity’s growth. Throughout, Constantine had no doubt that to remove error and to propagate the true religion were both his personal duty and a proper use of the imperial position. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership. In 313 Constantine issued the "Edict of Milan," which granted official toleration of Christianity and other religions. She made pilgrimages to Bethlehem and Jerusalem and … © 1995–2021 All correspondence and questions should be sent to info@ucg.org. As he said in a letter of 313 to the proconsul of Africa, the Christian clergy should not be distracted by secular offices from their religious duties “…for when they are free to render supreme service to the Divinity, it is evident that they confer great benefit upon the affairs of state.” In another such letter, directed to the bishop of Carthage, Constantine mentioned the Spanish bishop Hosius, who was important later in the reign as his adviser and possibly—since he may well have been with Constantine in Gaul before the campaign against Maxentius—instrumental in the conversion of the emperor. You could argue, in fact, that Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as a state religion was an original sin from which Christianity has still not recovered. At the Council of Nicea, Constantine the Great settled . Its partisans were acting in defiance of the clemency of Christ, for which they might expect eternal damnation at the Last Judgment. The extant copies of this decree are actually those posted by Licinius in the eastern parts of the empire. Constantine’s refusal to take part in a pagan procession offended the Romans, and, when he left after a short visit, it was never to return. . But Constantine went far beyond the joint policy agreed upon at Mediolanum. Constantine changed the relationship of Christianity to the state. The "Christianity" Constantine endorsed was already considerably different from that practiced by Jesus Christ and the apostles. After winning the battle, Constantine felt he was chosen for Christianity and the empire would be the body for the teachings and work of Christ. Constantine did have a huge impact on the development of Christianity. How did Constantine convert Rome to Christianity? They . 1, pp. British historian Paul Johnson summarizes how Constantine's approach of merging religious practices produced a corrupted Christianity that meshed paganism with biblical elements: "Thus the followers of Isis adored a madonna nursing her holy child; the cult of Attis and Cybele celebrated a day of blood and fasting, followed by the Hilaria resurrection-feast . It was perhaps in some sense to atone for the family catastrophe of 326 that Constantine’s mother, Helena, embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Privacy Policy  Terms of Use. By adopting Christianity as the religion of the vast Roman Empire, he elevated a once illegal cult to the law of the land. Did Paul and Constantine invent Christianity? the elitist Mithraics, many of whom were senior army officers, ate a sacred meal ... "Many Christians did not make a clear distinction between this sun-cult [Mithraism] and their own. There, Constantine received baptism, putting off the imperial purple for the white robes of a neophyte; and he died in 337. Justinian I (left, holding a model of Hagia Sophia) and Constantine the Great (right, holding a model of the city of Constantinople) presenting gifts to the Virgin Mary and Christ Child (centre), mosaic, 10th century; in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. Constantine chooses Christianity. At first, Christians began to gather in private homes. Constantine and Christianity – His Sunday legacy. Constantine’s interest in church building was expressed also at Constantinople, particularly in churches of the Holy Wisdom (the original Hagia Sophia) and of the Apostles. This created considerable hardship on those Jews and true Christians who continued to keep the biblical Sabbath on the seventh day of the week. Although he didn't completely leave his pagan roots and wasn't baptized until A.D. 337 on this deathbed, he did much to further the growth of the church. After decades of supporting Christianity, he appeared as a statue of the sun god in the forum. Her journey was attended by almsgiving and pious works and was distinguished by her church foundations at Jerusalem and at Bethlehem. After his defeat of Licinius he had renamed Byzantium as Constantinople, and immediately upon his return from the West he began to rebuild the city on a greatly enlarged pattern as his permanent capital and the “second Rome.” The dedication of Constantinople (May 330) confirmed the divorce, which had been in the making for more than a century, between the emperors and Rome. For example, at the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325), church authorities essentially replaced the biblical Passover with Easter, a popular holiday rooted in ancient springtime fertility celebrations. One of the things that we need to say is that Constantine’s conversion also had a powerful impact on Christian worship. These events set the course of the last phase of the reign of Constantine. In the intervening years he had his wife and eldest son murdered, and from all appearances he continued as a worshipper of the sun god. (A century later the Council of Laodicea would essentially outlaw Sabbath-keeping and Christian observance of the biblical Holy Days.). By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. The column became the center of the Forum of Constantine, nowadays known as Cemberlitas Square in Istanbul. It was Constantine who officially established Sunday observance through his edict of 321. Constantine consolidated his gains and secured the support of the church within the Roman empire. He did much for the early Christian church from 306 to 337 while he was the Roman Emperor. In some ways, Rome of the 300s did -- in conjunction with Paul's words -- make Jesus into a Roman Messiah to subjugate peoples. Constantine As Using Christianity To Subjugate People, Relying Upon Paul's Words Robert Atwill recently wrote Caesar's Messia h to portray Jesus as the product of the Roman state. He established the new capital of Rome at the old Greek town of Byzantium, which he renamed … Send inquiries regarding the operation of this Web site to webmaster@ucg.org. Shortly after the defeat of Maxentius, Constantine met Licinius at Mediolanum (modern Milan) to confirm a number of political and dynastic arrangements. GN, United Church of God is a 501(c)3 organization. The emperor accelerated the change by his own hatred of Jews and religious practices he considered Jewish. In later years he commissioned new copies of the Bible for the growing congregations at Constantinople. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. He was buried at Constantinople in his church of the Apostles, whose memorials, six on each side, flanked his tomb. After his father's death, Constantine fought to take power. Constantine was also the … The Donatists maintained that those priests and bishops who had once lapsed from the Christian faith could not be readmitted to the church. It’s important to note that Constantine did not declare himself a Christian until the day he died, but that didn’t stop him from using the power of the idea of Christianity. Indeed, for more than 40 years after the death of Constantine, Arianism was actually the official orthodoxy of the Eastern Empire. Meanwhile, churches at Trier, Aquileia, Cirta in Numidia, Nicomedia, Antioch, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere owed their development, directly or indirectly, to Constantine’s interest. 67-69). The Council of Nicaea, which opened in the early summer of 325 with an address by the emperor, had already been preceded by a letter to the chief protagonist, Arius of Alexandria, in which Constantine stated his opinion that the dispute was fostered only by excessive leisure and academic contention, that the point at issue was trivial and could be resolved without difficulty. It was now to be left in splendid isolation, as an enormously wealthy and prestigious city—still the emotional focus of the empire—but of limited political importance. He composed a special prayer for his troops and went on campaigns with a mobile chapel in a tent. . The discovery was taken up with enthusiasm by Constantine, who instigated the building of a great new basilica at the spot, offering unlimited help with labour and materials and suggestions as to design and decoration. By the initiative of Eutropia, Constantine’s mother-in-law, a church was also built at Mamre, where, according to an interpretation of the Book of Genesis shared by Constantine and Eusebius, Christ had first shown himself to humanity in God’s appearance to the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, but the most famous of these foundations followed the sensational discovery of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The Orthodox Church regards Constantine as Saint Constantine the Great. Even before the defeat of Licinius, he had summoned to Trier the theologian and polemicist Lactantius to be the tutor of Crispus. He gave bishops the privilege of adjudicating disputes, and their decisions had the same status as decisions by civil judges. Constantine changed Rome by establishing a new capital, which lead to the fall of Rome, and changing the way people reacted to and perceived Christianity. The relationship between the Christian Church and the state, how the church was to be governed, the calculating of the Easter day in the calendar were all affected by Constantine. Empire, or do you think of the founding of formalized Christianity? In the cities in the East that Constantine travelled, Christianity was a major issue of public policy — and some of his family members may have been Christians. 6. Prior to Constantine, the church had implemented several changes. Shortly after the defeat of Maxentius, Constantine met Licinius at Mediolanum (modern Milan) to confirm a number of political and dynastic arrangements. Endorsing this change, Constantine announced: "It appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast [Easter] we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul . Council of Nicaea in 325, depicted in a Byzantine fresco in the Basilica of St. Nicholas in modern Demre, Turkey. Was Constantine good, bad, a mixture? During his absence from the East, and for reasons that remain obscure, Constantine had his eldest son, the deputy emperor Crispus, and his own wife Fausta, Crispus’s stepmother, slain. The Roman Emperor Constantine (c 280 - 337 A.D.) was one of the most influential personages in ancient history. Andrew:. ( A History of Christianity, 1976, pp. In so doing they would be imitating Christ, and their patience would be rewarded in lieu of martyrdom—for actual martyrdom was no longer open to Christians in a time of peace for the church. ... Did the empire surrender to Christianity, or did Christianity prostitute itself to the empire?" Schism, in Constantine’s view, was inspired by Satan. Constantine took the ownership of getting all the Christians together who were suffering for believing in god for around 2 centuries. . The Council of Nicea in 325 CE marked a bad day for the Jews under Roman rule.Constantine, emperor and honorary bishop (though there's some disagreement as to whether he ever actually became a Christian), declared Christianity to be the official religion of Rome. Until Constantine’s time, Christian worship had been relatively simple. Eusebius confirmed what Constantine himself believed: that he had a special and personal relationship with the Christian God. Throughout his lifetime, Constantine favored Christians and the role of Christianity in the empire. Constantine took control of the Roman Empire and began to carve out areas for Christianity in Rome, converting pagan temples into churches. This is a sad truth. Then, they began to gather in cemeteries, such as the Roman catacombs. When we consider the vast differences between the mainstream Christianity of today and the original Christianity of Jesus Christ and the apostles, we can trace much of that change to Constantine and the religious system he put in power. Constantine gave Helena the honor due a "queen mother" and she became known as a devout Christian and took upon herself the task of finding and restoring historical sites sacred to Christianity. He issued numerous laws relating to Christian practice and susceptibilities: for instance, abolishing the penalty of crucifixion and the practice of branding certain criminals; enjoining the observance of Sunday and saints’ days; and extending privileges to the clergy while suppressing at least some offensive pagan practices. 524-525). Constantine's reign as Roman emperor (A.D. 306-337) dramatically changed the direction of Christianity, though in ways far different from those portrayed in The Da Vinci Code. Constantine's affection for sun worship had earlier led him to endorse Sunday, the first day of the week and a day dedicated to honoring the sun, as a weekly day of rest in the Roman empire . There’s evidence for each position. It was while preparing for a campaign against Persia that he fell ill at Helenopolis. To Constantine, Christianity was simply a way to control how the slaves thought, so they would think they were doing the work of their God as opposed to following the commands of the emperor. 27. But Constantine’s visit to the West in 326, to repeat the celebrations at Rome, brought the greatest political crisis of the reign. He became the Western emperor in 312 and the sole Roman emperor in 324. At Rome, the great church of St. Peter was begun in the later 320s and lavishly endowed by Constantine with plate and property. The Council of Nicaea coincided almost exactly with the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the reign of Constantine, at which, returning the compliment paid by the emperor’s attendance at their council, the bishops were honoured participants. His optimism was not justified: neither this letter nor the Council of Nicaea itself nor the second letter, in which Constantine urged acceptance of its conclusions, was adequate to solve a dispute in which the participants were as intransigent as the theological issues were subtle. Constantine —also known as Emperor Constantine I or Constantine the Great—decreed tolerance for Christians in the Edict of Milan, convened an ecumenical council to discuss Christian dogma and heresy, and constructed Christian edifices in his new capital city (Byzantium/ Constantinople, now Istanbul) Was Constantine a Christian? Constantine’s chief concern was that a divided church would offend the Christian God and so bring divine vengeance upon the Roman Empire and Constantine himself. Constantine’s personal “theology” emerges with particular clarity from a remarkable series of letters, extending from 313 to the early 320s, concerning the Donatist schism in North Africa. Constantine also contributed to new ideas regarding Jesus and early canon law. Which side benefited most from this unseemly marriage between Church and State? Was there a conscious bargain? Commitment to Christianity. Constantine’s second involvement in an ecclesiastical issue followed the defeat of Licinius, but the controversy over Arianism, with its intricate explorations of the precise nature of the Trinity that were couched in difficult Greek, was as remote from Constantine’s educational background as it was from his impatient, urgent temperament. By 313 he had already donated to the bishop of Rome the imperial property of the Lateran, where a new cathedral, the Basilica Constantiniana (now San Giovanni in Laterano), soon rose. Either as a means to unify his empire, or to make converting to Christianity easier, Constantine sought to blend Christian and pagan traditions. The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire, both for founding Byzantium in the east, as well as his adoption of Christianity as a state religion. While Constantine supposedly converted to Christianity in 312, he wasn't baptized until on his deathbed 25 years later. Constantine changed the headquarters from Jerusalem to Rome or Constantinople. The church of St. Sebastian was also probably begun at this time, and it was in these early years of his reign that Constantine began issuing laws conveying upon the church and its clergy fiscal and legal privileges and immunities from civic burdens. 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