ABSTRACT
By the beginning of the year 312, the surviving members of the Galerian tetrarchy and the Herculian usurper of the imperial capital had separated into two political alliances and were making preparations for civil wars. Over the next eighteen months, Constantine and Maxentius would battle for control of the western half, and Licinius and Maximin would fight for control of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Although political ambitions inspired these conflicts, religious positions inflamed them as well. Constantine was the senior partner in his alliance with Licinius, and he had early broken from the tetrarchic policy of persecution and instead adopted a position of toleration in his domains. Maximin was the senior partner in his pact with Maxentius, and he had early followed the Galerian policy of persecution and lately intensified the program to revive paganism. Subjects of the empire might have expected that victories for Constantine and Licinius would result in an end to the Christian persecution and a return to religious toleration. They got more than that. On the march to Rome, Constantine experienced what he thought were revelations from the God of the Christians; he adopted this Deity as his divine patron and defeated his rival behind the sacred talismanic symbols of the Christian religion. His victory over Maxentius in the west and that of Licinius over Maximin in the east resulted in the ending of the “Great Persecution” of Christianity, and the beginning of a partnership between the Christian Church and the Roman state.1
