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

given freedom to worship and the right to have their property returned. As we
have already seen, the Edict also reaffirmed the right of all to follow their own
religion.
Few moments in history have been more endlessly discussed. There is no
evidence that Constantine became any more pious or less brutal in either his
public or private life after his victory, so was this a genuine conversion, and if so
what did Constantine mean by it? How did his adoption of Christianity affect his
relationship with the other gods he had shown allegiance to? The ambiguity
became clear when a new triumphal arch decreed by the Roman Senate in
Constantine’s honour was unveiled in 315; in its surmounting inscription, it
attributed the victory of the Milvian Bridge to ‘divine inspiration’ and to
Constantine’s ‘own great spirit’. Alongside a relief of Constantine entering
Rome in triumph after his victory is a roundel showing the sun god Sol
ascending to heaven in a four-horse chariot. In public monuments in such a
sensitive arena as the ancient ceremonial centre of Rome, Constantine had little
option but to sustain pagan symbols; it may even be that he was unaware that his
commitment to Christianity required that he reject other gods. It was quite
acceptable in the pagan world to hold a variety of spiritual allegiances
simultaneously or in succession, so it is difficult to know the extent to which,
behind this façade, he was personally committed to his new faith.
The one consistent theme in Constantine’s policy towards Christians is that he,
rather than the Church, defined the relationship. He was, after all, offering a
persecuted minority full membership of Roman society and he knew it would be
dependent on him. More than this, he proclaimed that the clergy would now be
exempt from taxation and civic duties so that ‘they shall not be drawn away by
any deviation and sacrifice from worship due to the divinity ... for it seems that,
rendering the greatest possible service to the deity, they most benefit the state’.
This is Constantine not so much humbling himself before God, as using the
power of the Church to sustain his own rule. ‘The primary duty of the [Christian]
clergy’, noted the scholar J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, ‘always was to maintain the
divine cult [of the emperor], and by their prayers to ensure that God would
support the emperor and his subjects.’ 11 Constantine fostered the process by
granting immense patronage to the Church in the shape of buildings, in Rome
with the church of Christ the Redeemer (later St John Lateran), Santa Croce
delle Gerusaleme (named after the titulus, name board, of Christ’s cross brought
from Jerusalem by Constantine’s mother Helena) and the first basilica of St
Peter’s over the supposed burial place of the martyred apostle on the Vatican