Showing results for "Constantine" in Ancient

This year Christians worldwide will celebrate the 1700th anniversary of Constantine's conversion and victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. No Roman emperor had a greater impact on the modern world than did Constantine. The reason is not simply that he converted to Christianity but that he did so in a way that brought his subjects along after him. Indeed, this major new biography argues that Constantine's conversion is but one feature of a unique administrative style that enabled him to take control of an empire beset by internal rebellions and external threats by Persians and Goths.

Step back to Christianity's first three centuries to see how it transitioned from the religion of Jesus to a religion about Jesus. How did a single group from among many win the struggle for dominance to establish the beliefs central to the faith, rewrite the history of Christianity's internal conflicts, and produce a canon of sacred texts – the New Testament – that supported its own views?

By the end of Diocletian's reign in the opening years of the fourth century, the pagan world had collapsed into the arms of a multicultural religious movement which had spread from the eastern Mediterranean. These were the "mystery religions" which had been in competition with one another for a century. By the time of Constantine, they had spread everywhere within the empire. But one of these religions, Christianity, was chosen by the young emperor.