Constantine and the Cross
By the third century, the Roman Empire–the most powerful and wealthy empire the world had ever seen–was in a state of chaos.
Civil wars, invasions, and disease were rampant. Things were so bad, in fact, that historians would later refer to this period as “the Crisis of the Third Century.” Emperor Diocletian tried to bring order by distributing power to a four-ruler tetrarchy that would govern the four quarters of the empire.
His plan failed.
When one of these tetrarchs, Constantine I, died in A.D. 306, local troops decreed his son, also known as Constantine, to be emperor–not just of one quarter of the Roman Empire, but of all of it. He would spend the next 18 years battling his rivals to make this so.
One particular battle, however, would not just change Constantine’s life; it would change the world.
In October 312, Constantine’s forces met with those of his brother-in-law’s, Maxentius, near the Milvian Bridge, which spanned the Tiber River. According to Constantine’s biographer Eusebius, on October 27, the night before battle, Constantine and his forces saw a cross of light in the sky, along with the Greek words for “In this sign conquer.” That night, Constantine had a dream in which Christ reinforced the message, telling him to use the sign against his enemies. At this time, Christianity was still a fringe religion, frowned up at best, persecuted at worst. Yet Constantine relented to the vision, marking the Christian symbol of the cross on his soldiers’ shields. When he triumphed at Milvian Bridge, not only did he secure undisputed control of the western half of the Roman Empire, he attributed the victory to the god of the Christians…and things would never be the same.
A few months later, in A.D. 313, Constantine met with Licinius, the eastern emperor, and together they issued the Edict of Milan, which gave Christianity legal status and a reprieve from persecution. Though it did not make Christianity the state religion (that would come later, in A.D. 380), the edict–and Constantine’s conversion–caused viewpoints surrounding this new religion to change. Numbers of Christ followers swelled as Christianity marched across the continent, no longer suppressed by fear of Roman overlords.
Roman non-Christians, however, were less than thrilled with this change. Although Constantine assumed sole control over the empire in A.D. 324, tensions in Rome remained high between the city’s pagans and the Christian emperor. He left Rome for good and established Constantinople as his new capital in A.D. 330.
Though the Roman Empire fell in A.D. 476, the legacy of Christianity in Rome started by Constantine could not be contained by government boundaries. Though historians today now debate whether “the first Christian emperor” was a Christian at all (some think him an unprincipled power seeker or maintain that what religion he had, many argue, was at best a blend of paganism and Christianity for purely political purpose), one cannot deny the mark left on the church by his reign.
