The 4th century began with a period of tolerance towards Christianity, but was soon overshadowed by intense repression. However, it ended with a Christianized Empire. How did this process unfold? A historical summary on the 1,700th anniversary.
Icon of the Council of Nicaea I in the Greek monastery of Meteoro / Photo: [link]Jjensen[/link], World History Encyclopedia.
This year marks 1,700 years since the Council of Nicaea, a gathering convened by Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D., known as the first ecumenical Council of the Christian Church.
Let us look at the relationship between the Roman Empire and Christians of these first centuries to understand the event in all its historical dimensions.
Initially, Christians were not a dangerous social group for the Roman Empire. They were considered just another sect among the many others in Judaism, such as the Pharisees, Sadducees or Essenes.
Time passed, and Christians differentiated themselves from the Jews. Suetonius, a Roman historian who lived between the 1st and 2nd century, describes them as “a peculiar group of individuals who practiced a new and evil superstition”.
The negative view on Christianity was related to their rejection of the traditional Roman religion. This posed a threat to “the custom of the ancestors” (the so-called mos maiorum), as the followers of Jesus did not practice the traditional Roman cults.
Since the religious authority of the emperor was a vertebral element of the Roman political regime, its rejection by Christians transcended the religious and personal dimension.
[photo_footer]Emperor Augustus depicted as the Pontifex Maximus (Chief Priest) of the Roman religion. / Public Domain, Wikimedia.[/photo_footer]
The 3rd century was fraught with instability in Rome. The combination of political, social and economic crises created the perfect cocktail for a spiritual crisis in which the population wondered about a better life after death.
The agnostic philologist E. R. Dodds (1893-1979) examines this time of change on his book Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety.
Following the statements of Joseph Bidez (1867-1945), Dodds argues that, in the face of this uncertainty, people of that troubled time tended to “withdraw into themselves” [1]. In this context, salvific religions, such as Greco-Roman mystery cults and Christianity, gained relevance.
This is “the great century of persecutions” against Christians, which does not mean that there were no other persecutions against them (remember those during the rule of Nero, Domitian, Trajan or Marcus Aurelius).
On the contrary, what the historian Jesús María Nieto Ibáñez indicates is that “during the first two centuries there is no record of generalised persecutions”, as he points out in his book Historia Antigua del cristianismo (Ancient History of Christianity) [2].
The difference was that in third-century Christianity, the church was no longer a simple group of believers: it began to strengthen as a hierarchical institution. Among its members were people of great prestige and wealth who financed the construction of new church buildings.
As a result, Roman laws tried to make the church disappear and confiscate its properties, in an attempt to reduce the impact of the economic crisis.
Accused of illicit religion, superstition and magic —among others—, Christians were condemned due to the decrees of the emperors Decius (249), Valerian (257-258), Galerius and Diocletian (303).
Under death penalty, imprisonment or torture, the residents of the Empire were obliged to worship Roman gods and the emperor. With this, Roman authorities were seeking to put an end to this “parallel and powerful organization” that was the church. [3]
[photo_footer]Medieval miniature on the death of Pope Sixtus II during the Valerian persecution. / Creative Commons.[/photo_footer]
Although the consequences of these persecutions were obvious, the 3rd century also had certain periods of peace. In 260 A.D., the Edict of Toleration by Gallienus meant recognising for the first time the Church with capital letters, as an institution of its own, and returning to it the properties confiscated during the persecutions.
This edict lasted until 303, when Diocletian and Galerius began “the great persecution” [4]. This lasted until 313 A.D. on the eastern part of the empire.
Meanwhile, on the western part, the persecutions had practically disappeared by 305 A.D. In this light, the Edict of Toleration by Galerius was issued in 311 A.D., returning their properties to Christians and allowing them to practice their religion freely.
With the Edict of the year 311, Christians were fully integrated into the Empire and their religion became legal. But the most remembered event of this century, both for the transcendental nature of the experience and for its later consequences, is the conversion of Constantine and the Edict of Milan of 313 A.D.
To avoid political instability within the Empire, Diocletian had devised a system called “tetrarchy”. According to this model, two emperors, one on the West and one on the East, ruled under the title of “Augustus”, together with a “Caesar” who, after his death, would be the next emperor.
In Constantine's time, the tetrarchy was in crisis, so he sought to eliminate his rivals and control the Empire by himself. Maxentius was one of his opponents, a “usurper” who had taken over of the city of Rome since 306 A.D.
To confront him, Constantine had to reach Rome from the north, crossing the Milvian Bridge —which is why the decisive battle between the two of them in 312 is known as the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.
Before the battle began, Constantine had a vision. Eusebius of Caesarea, Christian bishop, advisor to the emperor and author of the Life of Constantine, narrates the event as follows:
“He began to invoke God in prayer, beseeching and imploring him to show him who He was, and to extend his right hand to help him in his plans. While he was making these fervent prayers and supplications, a most remarkable divine sign appeared to the Emperor. [...] About the time of the midday sun, when the day was just beginning to dawn, he said he saw with his own eyes, high in the sky and resting on the sun, a glowing sign in the form of a cross, and a text attached to it which read: 'With this sign you will conquer' (in hoc signo vinces)." [5]
[photo_footer]Medieval miniature depicting the vision of Constantine. / Bibliothèque Nationale de France.[/photo_footer]
This was not the first time something like this had happened to him. Two years earlier, Constantine had promoted the pagan cults of Apollo and the Sol Invictus (“Invincible Sun”), precisely because of a vision he had had also in war context [6]. But now, Constantine did not understand the meaning of that cross.
The emperor decided to consult the Christian priests available in his court. They told him that “the sign which had appeared was a sign of immortality, and a permanent trophy of the victory over death, which he [Jesus] had once won when he was present on earth” [7].
Convinced that this was the true God, he converted to Christianity and ordered his soldiers to inscribe on their shields a monogram of Jesus Christ —known as the Chi Rho or Chrismon— [8].
At least that is how Eusebius of Caesarea narrates this episode, and his story has been passed on and remembered by Christian tradition. But Zosimus, a pagan historian from the 5th century, portrays the emperor as an “unscrupulous, ambitious politician, who brought the Empire to ruin and converted to Christianity because it offered him the possibility of being forgiven for the outrages he had committed” [9].
This debate as to whether or not Constantine really converted to Christianity is today an unresolved issue. Either way, the truth is that Constantine finally defeated Maxentius in that battle and adopted the title of Western Augustus.
Since that time, his decisions were friendly towards Christians, starting with the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D., signed together with Licinius, emperor in the East.
In 324 A.D., Constantine defeated Licinius in the battles of Adrianople and Chrysopolis, leaving him as the sole emperor in both the West and the East. That same year, to celebrate his victory, he founded the city of Constantinople.
This city was meant to be the new capital of the empire, “a Christian capital of a Christian Empire, as opposed to the pagan Rome” [10].
Although the emperor declared himself a Christian, the Empire was not yet Christian. The Edict of Milan confirmed the tolerance and recognition of Christianity as a lawful religion, but did not impose it on the whole Empire.
However, the decisions of the first Christian emperor and his successors were clearly aimed to Christianize everything under Rome’s rule: tax exemptions for the Church, church buildings financed by the imperial family, a specific legal framework for ecclesiastic courts....
Among these decisions is the one that commemorates its 1,700th anniversary this year: the Council of Nicaea. This event responded to the need to unify the dogma on who Jesus was and his relationship with God the Father.
With its calling, the council sought to establish a formula that would dissipate the differences between the local churches and adapt the organisation of the Church to the organisation of the Empire. In the words of Nieto Ibáñez, Nicaea meant the establishment of “one God, one emperor, one empire and one faith” [11].
[photo_footer]Byzantine mosaic where Constantine (right) offers the city of Constantinople to Mary and Jesus. Emperor Justinian, 6th century (left), offers the Church of Hagia Sophia. / Georges Jansoone JoJan, Creative Commons.[/photo_footer]
After the Council of Nicaea, Christianity was increasingly promoted, except for emperor Julian, who returned to paganism. It was not until the reign of Theodosius that the Christian faith became the official religion of the Empire.
On February 27 of the year 380, Theodosius promulgated the edict Cunctos populos, known as the Edict of Thessalonica:
“We want all peoples governed by the administration of our clemency to profess the religion which the divine apostle Peter gave to the Romans [...]. That is, [...] the sole divinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit under the concept of one equal majesty and of the pious Trinity. [...] The others [...] will first be the object of divine vengeance, and then they will be punished by our own initiative, which we will adopt following the heavenly will" [12].
[photo_footer]Medieval icon depicting Constantine holding the Nicenoconstantinopolitan Creed./ Public Domain, Wikimedia.[/photo_footer]
Moreover, in 381 A.D., Theodosius summoned the Second Ecumenical Council, which was now held in the capital of the Empire. In this First Council of Constantinople, the concept of the Trinity was defined in what has been called the “Nicenoconstantinopolitan Creed”.
This is yet another symptom of the progressive union between the Church and the Empire. Christianity, from being a persecuted faith, had become a fundamental part of the Roman Empire, shaping its political and cultural structure.
The Edict of Thessalonica and the Council of Constantinople of 381, along with the legacy of the Council of Nicaea, marked the definitive triumph of a religion that, only a few centuries earlier, was viewed with suspicion and hostility.
This laid the foundations for a historical change that would have repercussions throughout Europe for centuries and about which even the Protestant Reformers were concerned: the relationship between Church and State.
1. Dodds, R. (1970), Paganas and Christians in a time of anxiety
2. Nieto Ibáñez, J. M. (2019), Historia Antigua del cristianismo, Editorial Síntesis, p. 74.
3. Ibid., p. 79.
4. Ibid., p. 81.
5. Eus.,VC, I, 28 (author translation).
6. Baker, S. (2006), Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire
7. Eus., VC, I, 32 (author translation).
8. Baker, S. (2006), Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire
9. Nieto Ibáñez, J. M. (2019), Historia Antigua del cristianismo, Editorial Síntesis, p. 86.
10. Íbid., p. 86.
11. Íbid., p. 112.
12. Íbid., p. 88.
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