Was his conversion a fluke? Or was Christianity always destined to become the dominate religion of the empire? And no one knows if he actually believed in it or if he did it for political reasons.
Was his conversion a fluke? Or was Christianity always destined to become the dominate religion of the empire?
If he was just faking it, he wouldn't go as far as to baptize himself and claim to have visions of Jesus Christ
Okay. I’ve speculated about this. The only reason it could possibly have been a fluke was that he saw that the advantages to converting Christianity, which is that he could confiscate rich pagan temples to meet outstanding expenses and that’s what he did.
Although I would say his conversion wasn’t a fluke just because of all Constantine’s sons seem to have been raised as devout Christians and that could only be so if their father ensured it was so.
I would say from third century onwards that Christianity became a strong possibility because military commanders no longer come from the traditional senatorial class, but from men who had climbed the social ladder, which made people sympathetic towards Christianity taking power a greater possibility.
It was fake, rome always worshipped babylonian gods and still does
his mother was a christian
Constantine’s biographer said that it was Constantine who converted his mother
> Constantine's biographer, bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, reports that she was converted to Christianity by her son. She received the title 'Most Noble Lady' (nobilissima femina) at latest in A.D. 318 and coins with her name and this title, and her portrait, were struck in modest quantities.
Would there be a reason to lie about this?
So why tf is she a saint?
She went on to Jerusalem and played at being an archaeologist "discovering" many Biblical sites, she also build many churches there.
Constantine’s family remains suspect. Constantine’s father (Constantius) gave one of his daughters an oddly Christian name (Anastasia) and he was known for his reluctance to persecute Christians. Constantine may have even lied about when he converted due to worries about Christians judging him for doing nothing during Diocletian’s persecutions. Christians who stood back and did as they were told were quite hated at the time.
> The third argument concerns Constantine's rather curious lies about his age. In 324, in his second letter to the eastern provincials, he described himself as just a child when the Great Persecution began.' He was in fact about thirty in 303. The misrepresentation must have been deliberate and of long standing, for the panegyrists of 307, 310, and 321 greatly understate his age. Furthermore, Eusebius' work on this is most peculiar. Although he was willing to give an elaborate, and presumably correct, statement of Constantine's age at death, he had earlier given Constantine's age in 301/2 as about fourteen (apparently) instead of about twenty-eight, and perhaps about sixteen in 303. Eusebius thus contradicts himself and Constantine. It is Constantine who is at the bottom of all this. It is quite futile to suggest that he did it in an effort to dissociate himself from the persecutors because he was embarrassed at having done nothing to protect or defend the Christians in 303. First, we do not know what he did in 303. If he argued against persecution, which was all that he could have done to protect Christians, he lost the argument.Second, in 324 his own testimony and his whole career were more than sufficient to dissociate him from the persecutors. Why should he have gone to the trouble of a public pretence, beginning as early as 307, which must often have produced laughter
> A very common reason for lying about one's age is to dissociate oneself from one's past. In Constantine's case it seems that some religious consideration was involved, because his concern was with the question of his age during the Persecution. Now, if he had been converted in 312 he could have dissociated himself from the persecutors simply by saying that he had seen the light, become a Christian, and worked to end the persecution. If he had become a Christian during the years 306-312 the same justification would have been available. He needed only to describe, as converts enjoy doing, his conversion.
> In 312 and thereafter, when he was trying to deal with the Donatists, it would have been very useful to be able to point to a conversion at any point after his departure from the court of Galerius in 306. He could have urged them not to worry about the lapsed, because their deliverer had himself only recently been a pagan, and an associate of the persecutors. The real job, he might have argued, was to make more converts like himself, and not waste time on a discussion which he himself had now rendered pointless. Such words would have come easily. They were never spoken. It is only if he had been a Christian during the persecution that he would have wanted to lie about his age. The problem of dealing with the lapsed arose as soon as toleration was proclaimed by Constantine and Maxentius in 306. At any time after that anyone could have raised embarrassing questions about a Christian's escape from the courts of Diocletian and Galerius….Constantine may have survived the persecution by means which rigorist Christians, notably the Donatists, would have found unsatisfactory….When the victory over Maxentius brought the Donatists under his rule, he probably hoped that the storm in North Africa would soon blow over, and that he could quietly go back to acting his age. The Donatists defeated and frustrated him. He did not want to tell them that his own behaviour had been similar to that which they ascribed to their hated opponents. As the horrible affair dragged on and on, he found himself stuck with a chronological problem and a need for reticence about a part of his life which has caused a great deal of trouble for scholars.
wasn't the christian population when constantine took power probably near 0% and almost all of it in the eastern orient where there were infinite amount of cults?
Except Constantine lived in the east during the great persecutions. In fact, Constantine lived in the court of Galerius and Diocletian when the persecutions were at their greatest height.
> The Christian rhetor Lactantius records that, at Antioch some time in 299, the emperors were engaged in sacrifice and divination in an attempt to predict the future. The haruspices, diviners of omens from sacrificed animals, were unable to read the sacrificed animals and failed to do so after repeated trials. The master haruspex eventually declared that this failure was the result of interruptions in the process caused by profane men. Certain Christians in the imperial household had been observed making the sign of the cross during the ceremonies and were alleged to have disrupted the haruspices' divination. Diocletian, enraged by this turn of events, declared that all members of the court must make a sacrifice themselves. Diocletian and Galerius also sent letters to the military command, demanding that the entire army perform the sacrifices or else face discharge.
> Eusebius of Caesarea, a contemporary ecclesiastical historian, tells a similar story: commanders were told to give their troops the choice of sacrifice or loss of rank. These terms were strong—a soldier would lose his career in the military, his state pension and his personal savings—but not fatal. Eusebius also attributes the initiative for the purge to Galerius, rather than Diocletian.[100]. Lactantius and Constantine each allege that Galerius was the prime impetus for the military purge, and its prime beneficiary. Diocletian, for all his religious conservatism,[106] still had tendencies towards religious tolerance. Galerius, by contrast, was a devoted and passionate pagan.
Also to be fair on Constantine, it really seems he didn’t like Galerius at all.
> Constantine appears to have remained with Galerius as the Caesar first took steps to assert Roman rule in the newly-conquered provinces ceded by the Persians. It may be at this time that the antagonism between Galerius and Constantine first became evident. It has sometimes been assumed that even at this early date Constantine was sympathetic towards Christianity and that as Galerius was very anti-Christian this was the cause of their animosity. This may be accurate, and at least in part could account for the hostility between the two men…. In this context the fact that Constantius then failed to implement the Persecution to the full in the west and may have had Christian sympathies, plus that Constantine also distanced himself from the Persecution, further alienated Galerius and Constantine. In fact, Aurelius Victor specifically states that one of the reasons for the antagonism between the two men was “religious considerations”
I my personal experience, it's very hard to argue that Constantine's conversion wasn't genuine without sounding conspiratorial, all the evidence points that he was for real, the real question though was whether or not his embrace of the Christian god also meant an explicit repudiation of the pagan gods, he never antagonized or suppressed paganism, he simply favored Christianity and worked to elevate it above all other cults.
Like all great dictator's Constantine was a total mummy's boy, once she was Christian it was over.
Guys I’m seeing a pattern here…everyone in Ancient Rome was a mummy’s boy
> Christian historians have long described the events of 302-311 as the “persecution of Diocletian,” but in fact it was instigated by Galerius. His mother, a pagan priestess, loathed the Christians for avoiding her festivals and passed on those sentiments to her son. He instituted the persecution of Christians in the territory he ruled and urged the same throughout the empire
Was the entirety of the middle east, Anatolia, North Africa, Constantinople, Thrace, Albania, Bosnia destined to be Muslim?
Was Islam simply a natural periodical evolution of the Christian religion?
What would Constantine the great think of the capital of the Roman Empire being Muslim?
The capital of Christ?
>Was the entirety of the middle east, Anatolia, North Africa, Constantinople, Thrace, Albania, Bosnia destined to be Muslim?
No.
>Was Islam simply a natural periodical evolution of the Christian religion?
As "natural" as any other religion spreading I guess.
>What would Constantine the great think of the capital of the Roman Empire being Muslim?
So you're simply ignoring Rome?
>The capital of Christ?
Who the frick ever thought that? Pretty sure Catholics or Protestants never did.
>Protestants never did
invented in 16th century
>Catholics
invented in 8th-9th century with Rome as being a capital of Christianity.
>t. orthodog
orthodoxy was invented in the 7th century when islam swept through the byzantines before that it was Catholicism and Constantinople as the capital of God.
>Or was Christianity always destined to become the dominate religion of the empire?
Islam is the true religion of the Romans and Constantinople the capital of the kingdom of God is Muslim.
Pretty sure that's Rome mate, also Turkey is increasingly becoming more and more secular, the Turkish youth doesn't give a shit about Islam, Erdogan turning the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque is just one last desperate gasp for air of the Islamists, Ataturk cucked you all forever.