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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Codera, post: 24860942, member: 70631&quot;]I think Constantine was an intelligent, savvy politician who rode the wave of Christian discontent towards the then-recent Great Persecution while also going out of his way to ensure he wasn&#039;t stepping on the toes of pagans on his way to the top of the imperial food chain. It&#039;s kind of a difficult balancing act which is why his conversion to Christianity is so enigmatic and mysterious today, seeing as how there&#039;s no Christian symbols on his triumphal arch in Rome but still plenty of pagan symbols on both that monument and the coins he minted, with its prominent depictions of Sol Invictus, for a good chunk of his imperial tenure at least until he became sole ruler in 324 after his final defeat of Licinius.</p><p><br /></p><p>After that point he almost certainly became more biased in favor of the Christians since there were no longer any rivals for power to get in the way of him making his mark on the religious life of the empire, holding the first ecumenical council in Nicaea, building grand new churches like the original St. Peter&#039;s in Rome, the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, etc. Even then though there&#039;s still a bit of mystery since even after he became sole ruler there&#039;s still not a whole lot of coins with Christian imagery on them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Pagan gods have stopped appearing on his coins right around this time (unless you count his commemorative coins showing the goddesses of Rome and Constantinople, which I mostly lump in with how we view the Statue of Liberty or Uncle Sam today) but he mostly employs standard military imagery from this point on instead of overtly Christian themes. There are depictions of the labarum with the Chi-Ro symbol on some of his coins and medallions but they&#039;re pretty rare and the Chi-Ro used to be a fairly innocuous good luck charm up until Constantine appropriated it for his own use and his successors would set it in stone as a distinctly Christian emblem. Even the Council of Nicaea and his building of new churches could just be him trying to make sure that his staunchest defenders are happy and continue supporting his right to rule. Then again, we do hear of him pilfering from and demolishing some old pagan temples and neglecting the rest in favor of those new Christian constructions so there&#039;s that.</p><p><br /></p><p>Overall I believe Constantine was definitely sincere in his Christian leanings but had to navigate a very complicated political and religious landscape where there are several rivals for power competing within the remnants of Diocletian&#039;s Tetrarchy who all continued to uphold classical polytheism with its vast scores of gods and goddesses. He had to make his moves very carefully and play the game in order to succeed and he clearly did. His unchallenged sole rule of 13 years gave his successors the breathing room to adopt more overtly Christian regimes moving forward, with Julian being the one exception to try and revert back to traditional polytheism. Without Constantine having to put in the hard work and effort within a classical polytheistic world at the beginning of the 4th century, there wouldn&#039;t be a Theodosius to easily make Nicene Christianity the empire&#039;s official religion at the end of it. I&#039;m not even Christian myself, I just think this era is a fascinating period of cultural transition.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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