ABSTRACT
It is undeniably true, as Fergus Millar has recently reminded us, that the conversion of Constantine in 312 was not ‘the moment when Christianity became “the officials religion of the Roman Empire”’.1 But it is misleading to assume, as many including Norman Baynes have done, that ‘for the student of the religious policy pursued by Constantine the crucial period is that which lies between the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and the Battle of Chrysopolis’ in 324.2 Such an exclusive concentration on the conversion of Constantine in 312 and its immediate consequences leads directly to the erroneous inference that at no point in his reign did Constantine do more than make Christianity ‘the religion of successive emperors other than Julian’.3
