Constantine the Great

• 1. Introduction

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  Constantine the Great was born on the 27th of February 272 in Naissus, a provincial city in what is now Serbia, to a Roman army officer and a Greek woman of low birth. He died on the 22nd of May 337 as the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, baptised on his deathbed by an Arian bishop. In between those two dates, he fought his way from the cold frontier of northern Britain to the sun-baked plains outside Rome, built an entirely new capital city on the Bosphorus, and set in motion a religious transformation that would shape Western civilization for centuries.

  He is called the First Christian Emperor, yet he waited until the last hours of his life to receive baptism. He issued an edict of religious toleration and then ordered the execution of his own son and wife in the same year. He presided over the Council of Nicaea and commissioned the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, yet pagan gods still appeared on his coins. He introduced a gold currency that would outlast his dynasty by a thousand years.

  What drove this man? What did he actually believe? And how did a soldier's son from a provincial backwater come to reshape an empire and a faith? Those are the questions this documentary will explore.

• 2. A Soldier's Son

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  Flavius Constantius, the father Constantine barely knew, was a man who rose through the Roman military by sheer ability. He earned the governorship of Dalmatia from Emperor Diocletian in 284 or 285. When Diocletian restructured the empire into the Tetrarchy in 293, appointing two senior and two junior emperors, Constantius became one of the four rulers, assigned to govern the western provinces from capitals in Milan and Trier.

  Helena, Constantine's mother, was a Greek woman of low social standing, possibly from Drepanum in Bithynia. Whether she was legally married to Constantius or served as his concubine is uncertain; what is certain is that Constantius abandoned her around 288 or 289 to marry Maximian's stepdaughter Theodora, a political match that cemented his place in the imperial system. Constantine spoke Latin, and when attending church councils held in Greek, he needed translators.

  When Constantius became caesar, young Constantine was sent to the court of Emperor Diocletian in Nicomedia, a city whose cultural environment was open and socially mobile. There Constantine received a formal education in Latin literature, Greek, and philosophy. He may have attended lectures by Lactantius, a Christian scholar of Latin. But his status at court carried an edge: because Diocletian did not fully trust his colleagues, Constantine was held as something like a hostage to ensure his father's loyalty.

  He fought on the Danube against barbarians in 296, campaigned against the Persians in Syria in 297, and served under Galerius in Mesopotamia in 298-299. By 303, he was back in Nicomedia to witness what later generations would call the Great Persecution, the most severe suppression of Christians in Roman history. Constantine did nothing to stop it. In his later writings, he presented himself as an opponent of the persecuting edicts, but the sources indicate he never opposed Diocletian effectively at the time.

• 3. A Midnight Escape

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  On the 1st of May 305, Diocletian announced his resignation in a ceremony at Nicomedia. The writer Lactantius records that the crowd, right up until the last moment, believed Diocletian would name Constantine and Maxentius as his successors. Instead, two men aligned with the powerful Galerius were appointed. Constantine and Maxentius were passed over entirely.

  The months that followed were dangerous. Ancient sources describe plots Galerius supposedly made against Constantine's life, sending him to lead a cavalry charge through a swamp, arranging single combat with a lion, and manufacturing opportunities for him to die in hunts and wars. Constantine, the sources insist, survived every one. The lion emerged from the encounter in worse condition than the man.

  By late 305, the situation was clearly unsustainable. Constantine's father Constantius, now ruling in the West and campaigning in Britain, formally requested his son's release to help him in Britannia. Galerius, softened by a long evening of drinking, agreed. Constantine's later propaganda, coloured by the drama of retrospect, describes how he fled the court that very night before Galerius could change his mind, riding from post-house to post-house at high speed and hamstringing every horse he left behind so he could not be followed. By the time Galerius awoke, he was gone.

  Constantine rejoined his father at Bononia, modern Boulogne, before the summer of 305. They crossed the English Channel to Britain and made their way to Eboracum, modern York, capital of the province of Britannia Secunda and the site of a large military base. Father and son spent a year campaigning together against the Picts beyond Hadrian's Wall. It was the first and last extended time they shared. Constantius died in Eboracum on the 25th of July 306.

• 4. The Road to Rome

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  Constantine was proclaimed augustus by his troops at York the day his father died. The Alamannic king Chrocus, a barbarian who had served under Constantius, was among the first to acclaim him. Galerius, furious at the news, nearly set the portrait Constantine sent him on fire. His advisers talked him down, arguing that outright rejection would mean war. The compromise: Galerius granted Constantine the lesser title of caesar, not augustus, and sent the imperial purple robes himself to make it clear who held the authority to legitimise.

  For several years Constantine consolidated his grip on Gaul, Britain, and Spain. He drove the Franks back across the Rhine in the winter of 306-307, capturing their kings Ascaric and Merogais, who were fed to the animals of the Trier Amphitheater during the arrival celebrations that followed. He built palaces, audience halls, and bathhouses at Trier. He repaired roads and sponsored building projects at Autun and Arles.

  The decisive confrontation came in 312. In the spring of that year, with his advisers and soothsayers urging caution, Constantine crossed the Cottian Alps with roughly 40,000 men. At Segusium, the first fortified town he encountered, he ordered the gates set alight. At Turin, his forces encircled Maxentius' heavily armed cavalry and dismounted them with iron-tipped clubs. At Verona, his general Ruricius Pompeianus attempted to break the siege with a larger relief force; he was killed, and his army destroyed. Aquileia, Modena, and Ravenna followed. The road to Rome lay open.

  Maxentius had prepared for a siege. He held Rome's Praetorian Guard, a solid supply of African grain, and the Aurelian Walls, among the most formidable fortifications in the ancient world. But his political support had collapsed. At chariot races on the 27th of October, the crowd openly jeered him, shouting that Constantine was invincible. The next day, the 28th of October 312, the sixth anniversary of his own acclamation, Maxentius consulted the Sibylline Books. The prophecy he received told him that "the enemy of the Romans" would die that day. He chose to interpret this in his favour.

• 5. The Sign at Milvian Bridge

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  Maxentius built a temporary boat bridge across the Tiber and marched north to meet Constantine in the open field. His forces still outnumbered Constantine's. He drew them up in long lines with the river at their backs.

  What happened the night before the battle became one of the most argued-over moments in Christian history. Lactantius wrote that Constantine was directed in a dream to mark his soldiers' shields with the heavenly sign, a letter chi with a perpendicular line turned at the top, the monogram of Christ. Eusebius described a vision at midday, a cross of light above the sun bearing the inscription "In this sign thou shalt conquer", followed by a dream in which Christ appeared with the same sign and commanded Constantine to use it as a military standard. The two accounts differ in detail and timing; Eusebius is vague about precisely when and where these events occurred.

  The symbol itself, the chi-rho, was not entirely novel. It had previously appeared on coins of Ptolemy III Euergetes in the 3rd century BC, where it served as an abbreviation of the Greek word for "good". But its use as a Christian military emblem was new, and its meaning was unmistakable. A medallion issued at Ticinum in 315 shows Constantine wearing a helmet emblazoned with the chi-rho.

  The battle itself was brief. Constantine's cavalry broke Maxentius' cavalry on the first charge. His infantry then drove Maxentius' foot soldiers back toward the river, where many were slaughtered or drowned. Maxentius rode with his retreating guards toward the boat bridge, was pushed into the Tiber by the press of his own fleeing soldiers, and drowned. Constantine entered Rome the following day, the 29th of October 312. Maxentius' body was recovered from the river, decapitated, and his head was paraded through the streets before being sent to Carthage.

• 6. A New Faith, A New Capital

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  In February 313, Constantine met Licinius in Milan and the two emperors agreed on what became known as the Edict of Milan, formally granting full tolerance to Christianity and all religions across the Roman Empire. The document returned confiscated church property, repealed penalties for practicing Christianity, and used deliberately general language to describe the divine, referring only to "Divinity" and "Supreme Divinity". A similar edict had been issued in 311 by Galerius, but it had not restored property.

  The decade that followed saw Constantine remove his last rival. Licinius and Constantine fought at Cibalae in 314 or 316, at Mardia in 317, and finally at Adrianople and Chrysopolis in 324. Constantine won the Battle of Chrysopolis on the 18th of September 324, and Licinius surrendered at Nicomedia under a promise that his life would be spared. The promise was broken: Licinius was eventually hanged, as was his subordinate Martinian, and Licinius' young son was killed in 326.

  With the empire reunified for the first time in decades, Constantine moved to establish a new eastern capital. He had reportedly toyed with Serdica, present-day Sofia, reportedly saying "Serdica is my Rome". He also considered Sirmium and Thessalonica. He settled finally on Byzantium, a city already rebuilt on Roman urban patterns by Septimius Severus and Caracalla, positioned to control both the Bosphorus shipping lanes and the approaches to Asia and Egypt. The city was formally founded in 324, dedicated on the 11th of May 330, and renamed Constantinopolis. Special commemorative coins were struck that year to mark the event.

  In 325 Constantine had summoned the First Council of Nicaea, which produced the Nicene Creed, the foundational Christian statement of belief. He enforced the council's ruling against celebrating the Lord's Supper on the eve of the Jewish Passover, marking a formal break of Christianity from Jewish liturgical tradition. He ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built at the site claimed to be Christ's tomb in Jerusalem. He gave Christians exemptions from certain taxes, promoted them to high office, and poured funds into basilica construction, including Old St. Peter's Basilica, whose construction on the hill where St. Peter rested proved so challenging that the full project took more than thirty years from the date he ordered it.

• 7. The Gold Coin and the Iron Fist

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  The gold solidus, introduced by Constantine, became the economic bedrock of both Byzantine and later European commerce for more than a thousand years. Seventy-two of these coins made a pound of gold. The Roman economy of the 3rd century had been hollowed out by fiat money and inflation; Diocletian had failed to stabilise the silver currency. Constantine chose not to restore silver as the monetary anchor. Instead he concentrated on minting enormous quantities of the solidus, funding it in part by confiscating gold, silver, and bronze statues from pagan temples between 331 and 336. Two imperial commissioners in every province directed the melting of the statues, with a selection of bronze pieces reserved to serve as public monuments in Constantinople.

  The writer of De Rebus Bellicis observed that this monetary policy deepened the divide between rich and poor. Those wealthy enough to hold gold benefited from its stable purchasing power. The poor were left with bronze coins that were progressively debased. Later emperors, including Julian the Apostate, would demand reliable mintings of bronze to address the problem.

  Constantine also reshaped the structures of power around him without sentiment. He disbanded the Praetorian Guard, which had backed Maxentius, scattering its members to frontier duty on the Rhine. The tombstones of the Imperial Horse Guard were ground up and used as building material for a basilica on the Via Labicana; their former barracks were cleared and the Lateran Basilica was established in their place on the 9th of November 312, barely two weeks after Constantine took Rome.

  In 326, the year of his stunning victories in administration and faith, he had his eldest son Crispus seized and put to death by what the sources describe as "cold poison" at Pola, modern Pula in Croatia, sometime between the 15th of May and the 17th of June. Weeks later, in July, his wife Empress Fausta was killed in an overheated bath. Both names were erased from public inscriptions and the literary record. Eusebius edited praise of Crispus out of later copies of his own earlier work. No contemporary source is willing to explain why.

• 8. Death and Memory

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  Constantine died at a suburban villa called Achyron on the 22nd of May 337, the last day of the fifty-day Pentecost festival following Easter. He had fallen ill in the spring, left Constantinople for the hot baths near Helenopolis, and eventually made his way to the suburbs of Nicomedia to be baptised. He had long planned to be baptised in the Jordan River, where Christ was baptised, but accepted that this would not be possible. The bishop he chose to perform the rite was Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian, whose theological position stood in tension with the Nicene Creed Constantine himself had enforced.

  He had already prepared his tomb inside the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. His body was transferred there and buried in a porphyry sarcophagus. It survived the sacking of the city during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 but was destroyed at some unknown point afterwards. A fragment believed to be from that sarcophagus is now displayed at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums.

  His three sons by Fausta, Constantine II, Constantius II, and Constans, inherited the empire. Almost immediately, followers of Constantius killed a number of relatives, notably the caesars Dalmatius and Hannibalianus, to simplify what was already a complicated succession. The pattern of dynastic inheritance that replaced Diocletian's Tetrarchy did not produce the stability Constantine had sought.

  The church of the Middle Ages held Constantine up as a paragon of virtue. Secular rulers invoked him as proof of imperial legitimacy. Eastern Christianity venerates him as a saint. The rediscovery of sources critical of his reign in the early Renaissance opened a long debate that continues to this day. Modern scholars weigh his genuine religious commitments against his use of Christian identity as political capital, and his administrative genius against the executions of Crispus and Fausta. What is not debated is the scale of what he built: a new monetary standard, a new capital, and a new relationship between the Roman state and the Christian church, all of which outlasted the empire itself by centuries.