Western Civilization

The Rise of Christianity    page 3 of 3

THE LEGALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY

5. Its Recognition AD 313

In a crucial battle to gain control of the Roman empire, Constantine used a Christian symbol as his banner and so gained the support of the Christians among the warriors drawn up to fight at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine won the battle and rewarded his supporters by decreeing that Christianity would henceforth be tolerated.

Constantine soon saw that it would be to the empire's advantage if it could harness the zeal of the Christians and turn it to support of the imperial government. After centuries in hiding, however, the Christians had developed various local forms of worship and belief. Constantine set about imposing some structure upon the faith and turning it from a movement into an institution. One could argue that Jesus may have founded the Christian Faith, but that Constantine founded the Christian Church.

In 325, Constantine called a council of all bishops for them to agree on a basic formula of the Christian faith. The result was the Nicene Creed. He then required them to regularize the practice of their faith according to this formulation. In 330, he established the eastern Roman capital at Constantinople, a new city without the pagan traditions of Rome. In the same year, he ordered the Christian leaders to decide which of their secret books were to be accepted as representing the true faith. The result of their work was the canon, the Bible in essentially its present form

Constantine died shortly after, and the legend is that he was baptized a Christian on his deathbed. Whether that is true or not, he had turned a disorganized and persecuted ghetto faith into a respected institution, had seen that it triumphed over its competitors, and had shaped it into an eminently Roman institution.

CONCLUSION

The common picture of Christianity as a persecuted sect was true only of the early empire, the Principate. In the late empire, the Dominate - sometimes called by historians "Late Antiquity - Christianity was the state religion and an official government agency. The medieval Church was simply a continuation of a part of the Roman government, and its political aspect had been made a part of its structure by Constantine and his successors.

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