A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

important provinces of Egypt and Syria to his Caesar, Maximinus, and over
Pannonia, the vital Balkans area, to Licinius. When Galerius died in agony from
bowel cancer in May 311—Lactantius is recorded as saying that it was the
retribution of God for his persecutions - Maximinus emerged as Augustus in the
far eastern provinces of the empire but claimed that he should be emperor of the
whole east. Licinius, however, hung on to the European provinces of the eastern
empire, notably those in the Balkans. Far from the ordered transferral of power
that Diocletian had hoped and planned for, each part of the empire was now in
contention, between Constantine and Maxentius in the west and between
Licinius and Maximinus in the east.
Constantine was ambitious and ruthless: he was after absolute power in the
empire. There was no pretence that he owed his position to Diocletian’s system.
Rather he proclaimed that his father Constantius was the descendant of an earlier
emperor, Claudius Gothicus (268-270), so he, Constantine, was emperor through
legitimate descent. The court panegyrists were ordered to embellish the myth
that the heavens were opened to Constantius on his death and Jupiter, father of
the gods, stood there holding out his right hand to the ascending emperor. The
support of the gods was always essential, and Constantine himself told of a
vision of Apollo who, accompanied by the goddess Victoria, promised him a
reign of thirty years. Apollo was represented by images of the sun, and this
underpinned Constantine’s association with the cult of Sol Invictus, the
Unconquered Sun. On a coin minted in 313, Constantine is shown alongside
Apollo with the latter wearing a solar wreath.
If Constantine was to fulfil the destiny that he claimed the gods had predicted
for him, a showdown with Maxentius was inevitable. It came in 312 after
Constantine had marched into Italy. Maxentius left Rome and met him where the
Via Flaminia, the ancient road that led north from the city, crossed the Tiber. The
Milvian Bridge there had been cut and replaced by a bridge of boats that
Maxentius and his men crossed to meet Constantine. The battle was nasty and
decisive. When Maxentius’ men were forced to retreat back over the provisional
bridge, it broke up and thousands, including Maxentius, were drowned. Later
Constantine told of the cross he had seen in the sky and claimed the support of
the Christian God for his success. A separate account told how he had had a
dream in which he was commanded to put a sign of Christ on his soldiers’
shields. The next year, after a meeting with Licinius in Milan at which Licinius
married one of Constantine’s half-sisters, Constantia, the two emperors issued
the so-called Edict of Milan, or Edict of Toleration, in which Christians were