ABSTRACT
The conversion of Constantine, though it did not immediately mean the adoption of Christianity as a state religion, had an incalculable effect on its future. A more secure legal status, exemption from some forms of taxation, and, not least, substantial gifts of money, gave it advantages over its competitor religious movements which it was not slow to exploit.1 The less tangible gain in status it received through association with the emperor’s household was equally significant in winning converts among the ruling class. The social relations from which the category of Christian spirituality had been derived, or for which it could have any immediate meaning, comprised a tiny minority of the empire. The more successful it became, therefore the more urgent was the need to translate the unfamiliar ethnography of Faith into a set of universally valid Beliefs. The transcending Happiness promised in Christianity became present in an orthodox creed conceived as an external and abbreviated form of its inner, omnipresent truth.
