General Notes

[Direct Linage1.FTW]

[666866.ged]

1  NOTE first Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, annexed Britain,founded Constantinople

Reigned BET. 306 - 337
Note:

{kahn-stan'-shee-uhs}

Flavius Valerius Constantinus, better known as Constantine the Great, was the first Roman emperor to adopt Christianity. He was born at Naissus (modern Nis, Serbia) about AD 280, the son of CONSTANTIUS I, who became (293) a caesar in the tetrarchy established by DIOCLETIAN. Constantine was educated in the imperial court and seemed destined to succeed his father. In 305, Constantius became senior emperor (augustus) in the West. However, when he died at York in 306 and the British troops proclaimed Constantine augustus in his place, the Eastern emperor GeorgiaLERIUS refused to recognize the claim, offering Constantine the lesser rank of caesar.

Constantine survived the civil war that disrupted the western half of the empire during the next 5 years and by 312 was in a position to challenge Maxentius, the self-appointed caesar who controlled Italy and Africa. Constantine's defeat of Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge outside Rome (Oct. 28, 312) not only removed a dangerous rival but secured his share in the new government formed by LICINIUS, whom Galerius had appointed augustus of the West in 308. The arch commissioned by the Senate in Rome to mark his victory bears an inscription that attributes Constantine's success to the "prompting of a deity." The Senate undoubtedly had in mind a pagan deity, but later Christian writers credited the victory to the intervention of the Christian God, who (they asserted) had declared his support of Constantine in a vision.

The nature of Constantine's conversion to Christianity has long been a matter of dispute--primarily because the sources, all of them Christian, offer conflicting testimony. The outlines of his religious development, however, are clear enough. Before 312, Constantine seems to have been a tolerant pagan, willing to accumulate heavenly patrons but not committed to any one deity. Between 312 and 324, however, he gradually adopted the Christian God as his protector and on several occasions granted special privileges to individual churches and bishops. His alliance with Christianity was strengthened by the political quarrel with Licinius. The death of Galerius in 311--and that of his successor in the East, Maximinus Daia, in 313--left Constantine and Licinius in control of both halves of the empire. The two rulers were soon at odds. In the ensuing civil war, politics and religion became so entangled that contemporaries described Constantine's conflict with Licinius (a pagan) as a crusade against paganism. Soon after his victory over Licinius at Chrysopolis (Sept. 18, 324), Constantine openly embraced Christianity and became more directly involved in the affairs of the church.

The following year, Constantine assembled the bishops in a council at Nicaea to debate the doctrines of Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria in Egypt, who argued that Christ was a created being and therefore not divine. Although this was not Constantine's first attempt to reconcile orthodox and heretical factions in Christianity, it was the first time he had used the imperial office to impose a settlement. Following a lengthy and heated debate, the bishops condemned ARIANISM and adopted a CREED (the Nicene Creed) that affirmed the divinity of Christ. Heresies such as Arianism were not so easily dismissed, however, and they continued to claim the attention of later church councils.

More important to the pagan majority in the empire, whose beliefs Constantine had rejected but continued to tolerate, were the secular problems that required new and vigorous solutions. Meeting the invasions of the GOTHS and other tribal groups along the western frontiers; the attempt to secure the provinces by dividing the army, increasingly recruited from the barbarian population of the empire, into stationary frontier units and a more mobile reserve; the reform of the coinage to prevent further inflation; the expansion of the bureaucracy to meet the real or imagined needs of an increasingly centralized government--in his own day Constantine's reputation rested more on his handling of these issues than on his arbitration of Christian disputes. In historical terms, though, these actions were less influential than his unexpected, and largely unexplainable, adoption of Christianity. Even the founding in 324 of Constantinople (modern ISTANBUL), the "new Rome" that survived the collapse of the Western empire, was a less important innovation. Embellished with monuments pirated from pagan sanctuaries, Constantinople itself was not only the new capital of the empire but the symbol of the Christian triumph.

The civil war following Constantine's death on May 22, 337, did not destroy the new order he had created. The victor in the struggle, his son CONSTANTIUS II, was an Arian, but he was no less committed to the Christianization of the empire than his father. Paganism survived, but only during the short reign (360-63) of Julian the Apostate was it again represented on the imperial throne.