How Constantine Became a Christian

Diocletian and Maximian, surnamed Herculius, by mutual agreement laid aside the imperial office and retired into private life. Then Maximian, surnamed Galerius, who had shared the government with them, came into Italy and appointed two Caesars: Maximin in the eastern part of the empire, and Severus in the Italian. In Britain, however, Constantine was proclaimed emperor in place of his father Constantius, who died in the first year of the two hundred and seventy-first Olympiad, on the twenty-fifth of July. And at Rome Maxentius, the son of Maximian Herculius, was raised up by the praetorian soldiers to be a tyrant rather than an emperor. Things standing so, Herculius, driven by a desire to win back the sovereignty, tried to destroy his son Maxentius; but the soldiers kept him from doing it, and soon afterward he died at Tarsus in Cilicia. At the same time Severus Caesar was sent to Rome by Galerius Maximian to seize Maxentius, and he was killed, betrayed by his own soldiers. At length Galerius Maximian, who had held the chief authority, also died, having first appointed as his successor his old friend and comrade in arms Licinius, a Dacian by birth. [a]

Meanwhile Maxentius cruelly oppressed the Roman people, treating them as a tyrant rather than as a king: he shamelessly violated the wives of the nobles, put many innocent people to death, and committed other atrocities like these. When the emperor Constantine was told of this, he set himself to free the Romans from their slavery under Maxentius, and at once began to consider how he might overthrow the tyrant. While his mind was taken up with this great undertaking, he debated which divinity’s help he should call on in conducting the war. He began to see that Diocletian’s party had gained nothing at all from the pagan gods they had tried to appease, while his own father Constantius, who had renounced the various religions of the Greeks, had passed through life far more prosperously.

While he was in this uncertainty, marching at the head of his troops, a supernatural vision beyond all description appeared to him. At about the time of day when the sun, having passed its midday height, begins to sink toward the west, he saw in the sky a pillar of light in the form of a cross, with these words written on it: “By this, conquer.” The sight of this sign struck the emperor with amazement. Scarcely believing his own eyes, he asked those around him whether they saw the same sight, and when they all declared that they did, the emperor’s mind was strengthened by this divine and marvelous appearance. The following night, in his sleep, he saw Christ, who told him to make a standard on the pattern of the sign he had seen, and to use it against his enemies as a sure trophy of victory. Obeying this divine message, he had a standard made in the form of a cross, and it is kept in the palace to this day. Then, pressing on with greater energy, he attacked the enemy and defeated him before the gates of Rome, near the Milvian Bridge; Maxentius himself was drowned in the river. This victory was won in the seventh year of the conqueror’s reign.

After this, while Licinius, who shared the government with him and was his brother-in-law, having married his sister Constantia, was living in the East, the emperor Constantine, mindful of the great blessing he had received, offered grateful thanks to God as his benefactor. His thanks took this form: he freed the Christians from persecution, recalled those who were in exile, released those who were in prison, and had their confiscated property given back to those who had been outlawed. He also rebuilt the churches, and he did all these things with the greatest eagerness. About this time Diocletian, who had given up the imperial power, died at Salona in Dalmatia.