Constantine the Great

Constantine I (Gaius Flavius Valerius Constantinus, 27 February 272 – 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, or known mononymously as Constantine, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a pivotal role in elevating the status of Christianity in Rome, the Edict of Milan decriminalising Christian practice and ceasing Christian persecution. This was a turning point in the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. He founded the city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) and made it the capital of the Empire, which it remained for over a millennium. Born in Naissus, a city located in the province of Moesia Superior (now Niš, Serbia), Constantine was the son of Flavius Constantius, a Roman army officer from Moesia Superior, who would become one of the four emperors of the Tetrarchy. His mother, Helena, was a woman of low birth, probably from Bithynia. Later canonised as a saint, she is credited for the conversion of her son in some traditions, though others believe that Constantine converted her. He served with distinction under emperors Diocletian and Galerius. He began his career by campaigning in the eastern provinces against the Persians, before being recalled to the west in AD 305 to fight with his father in the province of Britannia. After his father's death in 306, Constantine was proclaimed as augustus (emperor) by his army at Eboracum (York, England). He eventually emerged victorious in Civil wars of the Tetrarchy against the emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire by 324. Upon his accession, Constantine enacted many reforms to strengthen the empire. He restructured the government, separating civil and military authorities. To combat inflation, he introduced the solidus, a new gold coin that became the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. The Roman army was reorganised to consist of mobile units (comitatenses), often around the emperor, to serve on campaigns against external enemies or Roman rebels, and frontier-garrison troops (limitanei) which were capable of countering barbarian raids, but less and less capable of countering full-scale barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—such as the Franks, the Alemanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians—and resettled territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century with citizens of Roman society. Although Constantine lived much of his life as a pagan, he later became a catechumen, as he began to favour Christianity in 312, finally being baptised by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian bishop. He played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire. He convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which produced the Christian statement of belief known as the Nicene Creed. On his orders, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built at the site claimed to be the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem and was deemed the holiest place in Christendom. He has historically been referred to as the "First Christian Emperor" but while he did favour the Christian Church, some modern scholars debate his beliefs and even his comprehension of Christianity. He is venerated as a saint in Eastern Christianity, and he did much to push Christianity towards the mainstream of Roman culture. The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire and a pivotal moment in the evolution from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages. He built a new imperial residence in the city of Byzantium, which was officially renamed New Rome, while also taking on the name Constantinople in his honour. It subsequently served as the capital of the empire for more than a thousand years—with the Eastern Roman Empire for most of that period commonly referred to retrospectively as the Byzantine Empire in English. In leaving the empire to his sons and other members of the Constantinian dynasty, Constantine's immediate political legacy was the replacement of Diocletian's Tetrarchy with the principle of dynastic succession. His memory was held in high regard during the lifetime of his children and for centuries after his reign. The medieval church held him up as a paragon of virtue, while secular rulers invoked him as a symbol of imperial legitimacy. The rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources in the early Renaissance engendered more critical appraisals of his reign, with modern and contemporary scholarship often seeking to balance the extremes of earlier accounts.