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For a typical Roman soldier finding a goddess or god to worship was akin to Americans walking into a Baskin Robbins and choosing your favorite flavor. Jupiter, the king of gods; Bellona, the goddess of war and destruction; or maybe Mithras, the god of soldiers, could have been their selection.
In October of 312 AD, Constantine was seeking to become the sole ruler of the western half of the Roman Empire. He was preparing an attack on Rome against his rival Maxentius (he eventually would become the sole ruler of the entire Roman empire and move the capital city to Byzantium in 330 AD, which he would conveniently rename Constantinople after himself). Even though his mother Helena was a Christian, Constantine was like many of his fellow soldiers and worshipped as he wished. History does not tell us if he was loyal to any particular god.
On October 28th of 312, he lined up his troops, prepared to cross the Tiber River at the Milvian Bridge to meet Maxentius head-on (see our post from October 28th). But as the Christian writer Eusebius writes in his “Life of Constantine” around 337 AD, Constantine saw a vision in the sky before the battle. It was a vision of the cross along with the phrase: In hoc signo vinces – “In this sign, conquer.” This vision was all Constantine needed to change his god preference, and he had his soldiers paint the first two letters of Christ (chi and rho) on their shields (chi, which looks like an “X” in the US alphabet, and rho, which looks like a “P”).
Constantine won the battle and if we believe the ancient writer Eusebius and others, he became a Christian. Respected historian David Potter reminds us in his notes from his 2013 book on Constantine:
“There is perhaps no more robustly discussed issue connected with Constantine than the nature of the conversion and the nature of the visions connected with the conversion. The range of opinion is vast, extending from those who would prefer that Constantine actually saw something like what Eusebius says he saw to those who think the whole thing is an invention…” (Potter, David. Constantine the Emperor. Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 329. Note 17)
One issue that makes his conversion even more impactful is the timing of it because of Roman Emperor Diocletian’s “Edict Against the Christians” issued in 303 AD. This proclamation made Christianity illegal, and Christian persecution was rampant. After the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, and before he became sole emperor, Constantine and his eastern co-ruler, Licinius, issued the “Edict of Milan” in 313 AD that allowed for religious toleration of Christianity. They did not make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire (that would come later from Emperor Theodosius I in 380 AD).
Whether some agree that Constantine was actually converted or whether it was a political ploy is generally understood to be irrelevant. He supported and issued the decree for the very first church council (the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD), and he turned his mother loose to build churches and preserve religious sites throughout the Holy Land, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
– Nick Walters, Founder of the Center for Christian History; Adjunct history professor, Mississippi College, Clinton, MS
(Photo: “Room of Constantine, Vision of the Cross 03.” from Wikicommons)