Perhaps basic to all of it was a newly negative view of the Emperor Constantine I – ‘the Great’, as he had so long been called. It was a general conviction among radicals that over the previous millennium the Church had made a grave error in entering into alliance with the powerful, after a decisive wrong turn in Constantine’s alliance with Christianity.
McDiarmid sees the rejection of authority as stemming from theology. I have always seen the radicals as looking for theklogy ideas to explain the evils of authority they believe.
