In military matters, the Roman army was reorganized to consist of mobile field units and garrison soldiers capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians—even resettling territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century. The medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue, while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype, a point of reference, and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity.
Eusebius of Caesarea, and other Christian sources, record that Constantine experienced a dramatic event in at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, after which Constantine claimed the emperorship in the west, and converted to Christianity. It takes its name from the Milvian Bridge, an important route over the Tiber. Constantine won the battle and started on the path that led him to end the tetrarchy and become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire.
Maxentius drowned in the Tiber during the battle, and his body was later taken from the river and decapitated. Once supreme in the West, Constantine met Licinius, the ruler of the Balkan provinces, and issued the famous Edict of Milan that gave Christians freedom of worship and directed the governors to restore all the property seized during the severe Diocletian persecution.
Eusebius in his Church History recorded the Christian jubilation: "The whole human race was freed from the oppression of the tyrants. We especially, who had fixed our hopes upon the Christ of God, had gladness unspeakable. Constantine's faith was still imprecise, but few questioned its authenticity.
In Constantine sent a message to the assembled bishops at the Council of Arles. He wrote about how God does not allow people "to wander in the shadows" but reveals to them salvation: "I have experienced this in others and in myself, for I walked not in the way of righteousness.
For a decade, though, he wavered. For example, on the Arch of Constantine, which celebrates his Milvian Bridge victory, pagan sacrifices usually depicted on Roman monuments are absent.
Then again, there are still no Christian symbols, and Victory and the Sun God are honored. He had no desire to impose his newfound faith as a state religion. Only through the years did his Christian convictions grow.
In Constantine triumphed over Licinius and became the sole ruler of the Roman world. The victory enabled Constantine to move the seat of government permanently to the East, to the ancient Greek city of Byzantium now Istanbul.
He enlarged and enriched the city at enormous expense and built magnificent churches throughout the East. The new capital was dedicated as New Rome, but everyone soon called the city Constantinople. Christians were more populous and vocal in the East than they were in Rome, so during the last 14 years of his reign, "Bullneck" could openly proclaim himself a Christian. He proceeded to create the conditions we call "state-church" and bequeathed the ideal to Christians for over a thousand years.
While he failed to regain all of Dacia, he succeeded to the extent that the modern country is called Romania, and the native language is recognisably Latin-based. Constantine also planned a major campaign against the Persians. Though his sickness and death led to the cancellation of this attack, knowledge of the preparations kept the Persians carefully non-provocative. His mother was a saint. Saint Helena of Constantinople embarked on a highly publicised pilgrimage to the Holy Land, founding churches as she went along.
One such church was — according to a nearcontemporary writer Socrates Scholasticus — founded on the site of the Holy Sepulchre, leading to the discovery of the True Cross, on which Jesus was crucified. Helena died in AD and her magnificent sarcophagus is now in the Vatican museum. Crispus was the son of Constantine and the otherwise unknown Minervina, who was either his first wife or a concubine.
The subsequent relationship between Crispus and his later stepmother Fausta has, ever since, been the subject of lurid speculation. Crispus fought with great distinction in the war against Licinius, and was widely assumed to be heir-apparent to the empire. Yet in AD , when Constantine was on his way to Rome to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his accession, Crispus was suddenly arrested on unspecified charges and promptly executed.
All official record of Crispus was destroyed. In gratitude for being cured of leprosy by Pope Sylvester I, Constantine gave to the papacy Rome, Italy and all the western provinces.
In his generosity, the emperor also handed the Pope estates elsewhere in the empire, and sovereignty over other sees dioceses of the Church in Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch. Were the pair illicit lovers? Did the two plot a coup together? Both theories have been proposed. It is notable that, in later years when they became emperors, the sons of Fausta never retracted the official condemnation of their mother.
In AD , Constantine founded a new, Christian capital for the empire. After considerable deliberation, he chose the existing city of Byzantium, a Greek colony founded in BC.
Unlike Rome, Byzantium was well situated strategically, being located near the military danger zones of the Danube and Syria. After the fall of the Roman west, Byzantium — or Constantinople, as it became known — was the centre of imperial government for the next thousand years. In the spring of AD , Constantine fell gravely ill. He had put off baptism until then, perhaps because being baptised in one form of Christianity would alienate followers of the others.
In the end Constantine was baptised by a pro-Arian bishop; that is, one who believed that Jesus was separate from the Father and not part of a single Trinitarian being. Constantine first wished to be baptised in the River Jordan.
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