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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. In the Arian controversy threatened to split the newly united empire. To settle the matter, Constantine called together a council of the bishops at Nicea, a city near the capital.
He ran the meeting himself. Presiding at the council, Constantine was magnificent: arranging elaborate ceremony, dramatic entrances and processions, and splendid services. He was also a gifted mediator, now bringing his skill in public relations to the management of church affairs. Unfortunately he could not follow abstract arguments or subtle issues and often found himself at a great disadvantage at these councils.
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See how people have imagined life on Mars through history. See More. As the first Roman emperor to claim conversion to Christianity, Constantine played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in , which decreed tolerance for Christianity in the empire.
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. The Roman coins minted up to eight years after the battle still bore the images of Roman gods. The monuments he first commissioned, such as the Arch of Constantine, contained no reference to Christianity.
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