if it helped consolidate his power as emperor. The real thing that kept him in power was his military and control of currency.
Upon his ascension in 324,
Constantine enacted numerous reforms to strengthen the empire. He restructured the government, separating civil and military authorities.
Although Constantine lived much of his life as a pagan and later as a catechumen, he began to favour Christianity beginning in 312, finally becoming a Christian and being baptised by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian bishop, although the Catholic Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church maintain that he was baptised by Pope Sylvester I.
He played an influential role in the proclamation of the
Edict of Milan in 313, which declared tolerance for Christianity in the Roman Empire.
He convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325 which produced the statement of Christian belief known as the Nicene Creed.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built on his orders at the purported site of Jesus' tomb in Jerusalem and was deemed the holiest place in all of Christendom. The papal claim to temporal power in the High Middle Ages was based on the fabricated Donation of Constantine. 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.
Nevertheless, 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 transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages...The edict is popularly thought to concern only Christianity and even to make it the official religion of the Empire (which did not occur until the Edict of Thessalonica in 380). Indeed, the edict expressly grants religious liberty to Christians, who had been the object of special persecution, but also goes even further and grants liberty to all other religions:
When you see that this has been granted to [Christians] by us, your Worship will know that we have also conceded to other religions the right of open and free observance of their worship for the sake of the peace of our times, that each one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases; this regulation is made that we may not seem to detract from any dignity of any religion.
— "Edict of Milan", Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors (De Mortibus Persecutorum), ch. 48. opera, ed. 0. F. Fritzsche, II, p 288 sq. (Bibl Patr. Ecc. Lat. XI).[15]
Since Licinius composed the edict with the intent of publishing it in the east[16] upon his hoped-for victory over Maximinus, it expresses the religious policy accepted by Licinius, a pagan, rather than that of Constantine,[16] who was already a Christian. Constantine's own policy went beyond merely tolerating Christianity. He tolerated paganism and other religions but actively promoted Christianity....
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