Constantine the Great

Early life and background

Constantine was born around AD 272 at Naissus in the Balkans, the son of Constantius Chlorus, a senior officer, and Helena, a woman of humble origins. He grew up in the court of Diocletian, served in the army and witnessed the Tetrarchy's attempts to divide and stabilize the empire. When Constantius died at York in 306, the troops proclaimed Constantine emperor, beginning a series of civil wars that lasted nearly two decades. He defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in 312 and Licinius in 324, becoming sole emperor. The traditional story of his vision of the cross before the battle is a later Christian account, but his turn toward Christianity was real and politically consequential.

Career and power

Constantine's career was a sequence of wars and reforms. He defeated Maxentius in 312, issued the Edict of Milan with Licinius in 313 to grant Christians toleration, and turned on Licinius when the eastern colleague persecuted Christians and challenged his authority. The defeat of Licinius in 324 made him sole ruler. In 325 he convened the Council of Nicaea to settle the Arian dispute, and in 330 he founded Constantinople on the site of Byzantium, a new capital on the Bosphorus. He reformed the coinage by introducing the solidus, reorganized the army and the bureaucracy, and spent his last years campaigning on the Danube and preparing a war against Persia. He died at Nicomedia in 337, baptized on his deathbed.

Ideas and works

Constantine's statecraft joined imperial power to a new religious order. He did not make Christianity the sole official religion, but he favored Christians in the army and administration, exempted clergy from some civic duties, and used church councils as instruments of imperial unity. The Council of Nicaea produced a creed and a common date for Easter, though the Arian controversy continued. Constantinople was designed as a Christian capital with churches, forums and a new senate, and the solidus gave the empire a stable gold coin for centuries. His reforms also included tighter taxation, a larger bureaucracy and a mobile field army. The result was a more centralized, more Christian and more eastern empire.

Times and rivals

Constantine lived through the crisis of the third century's aftermath and the Tetrarchy's failure. The empire was too large for one court, the frontier too long for the old army, and the old civic religion too weak to bind the elite. Diocletian had tried to solve this with divided rule and persecution; Constantine solved it with a single dynasty, a new capital and a favored church. His conversion was also a political calculation: Christians were numerous in the cities and the army, and the church offered an organized network of bishops. His rivalry with Licinius was framed as a conflict between Christian and pagan rule, and his victory gave the church imperial patronage.

Legacy and assessment

Constantine redirected Roman history. Constantinople survived as the capital of the Eastern Empire for more than a thousand years, and the city gave its name to the Byzantine world. Christianity moved from a persecuted minority to the empire's favored religion, and the Nicene Creed became the basis of orthodox doctrine. The solidus anchored the economy, and the separation of civil and military careers shaped the later empire. His reputation is contested: a sincere convert or a cynical politician, a unifier or a man who split the empire's religious peace. But the direction is clear: after Constantine, the Roman Empire was Christian, eastern and centered on the Bosphorus.