Why did he allowed Christianity?

both personal and practical reasons.

1. though not 100% confirmed, sources very likely prove that he was a Christian himself, especially in his later life.

2. Roman politics was always complicated when religion got involved. Sacrifices/rites were paid to certain gods, causing friction/clashes with the believers of other deities, and it only got worse as Rome expanded and other cultures were Romanized, but the old traditional druid gods/Baal/etc were still worshiped by people's of Rome's further provinces.

There was something to be gained out of one universal monotheistic religion to unite people under a stronger identity than just the Roman citizenship, late Roman politicians looked to Christianity as a possible tool to help keep Roman subjects across the empire united under a common faith, rather than the Gauls still worshiping the tree spirits and the Latins still paying rites to Sol Invictus.

In the end it does pan out that a common faith is a powerful force to keep a people and culture unified, but for Rome it was too late to successfully convert everyone, which was continued on through the Roman Catholic Church.

Why would he need to lie about that?

Shapur II only made Zoroastrianism the state religion of the Sassanid Empire AFTER Constantine did the same for Christianity in the Roman Empire. So nah.

Zurvanism was popular long before that.

Zurvanism is not orthodox Zoroastrianism.

Because it sounds better than "I believe in Christianity out of political expediency"

The story that perpetuates this myth comes from Eusebius, who notably come up with it only after Constantine's death. In writings before his death there was no mention of a cross in the sky.

Secondly, the chi-rho was already a Greek symbol for good luck at the time, even before Constantine was born and at the time most of his troops were already Christian anyway.

In actuality he probably had them paint good luck signs on their shields to prepare for battle and told them god was with them for morale. Then he won and much prettier stories of divine dreams and signs in the sky are created to make it sound better than It actually was.

Not that this is unique to Christianity, this shit was done with Roman emperors prior to Constantine. But this story of dreams and signs in the sky were never from him but writers who fancied it up towards the end of his reign and after his death.

>Converted to Christianity
>Moved the capital to Byzantium
Just fuck my empire up

>Because it sounds better than "I believe in Christianity out of political expediency"
What exactly is politically expedient about it?

Biggest case of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" in history.

Literally already covered in this thread.

He did win the battle against overwhelming odds.

Sure sounds like divine favor to me.

cause he saw a sign in the sky

The battle of the Milvian bridge? Hardly. Tactics won that battle.

Constantine The Great: Warlord of Rome by Elizabeth James is a decent read on it if you'd like.

>Secondly, the chi-rho was already a Greek symbol for good luck at the time
A very interesting, albeit baseless, conjecture.

This is based upon the entire army being Christian (no basis for this claim, and patently unlikely).

Christianity was in way more sectarian conflict than pagans were. Constantine only ended up uniting them by forcing the bishops to come together for a council.

On a micro-level tactics win every battle, numbnuts.

At the very least you'll concede that Constantine was tremendously (((lucky))) that Maxentius choose to meet him in open battle rather than forcing a siege.

He was lucky that Maxentius made a dumb decision but that's hardly enough to claim divine favor, unless you seriously want to claim every general that's ever benefited from their opponents rushing into a loss being aided by god.

Maxentius had little actual military experience and kept beating his rivals by buying their armies out from under them. Perhaps he felt he couldn't do that with Constantine's forces. Or he feared that sitting in Rome he would lose support and be murdered in his sleep. Or he wanted a big show piece battle that he could flaunt and solidify his rule.

But it's hardly the first time a general has made a dumb decision and lost, even with numerical superiority.

Nice trips but the chi-rho was already being minted extensively and was used by the Greeks to denote something good in the early third century.

Its existence predates Constantine's inspiration, that much is fact.

A very interesting, albeit baseless, conjecture.

Is this a new meme or something?

Maxentius had successfully endured two sieges in Rome already and is said to have abandoned this battle tested strategy on the advice of an oracle which predicted that "on October 28 an enemy of the Romans would perish."

Maxentius interpreted this enemy to be Constantine and therefore choose to meet him in battle on that fated day.

The outcome was as the oracle had predicted.

You think Constantine had 600 year old coins lying around?

That's a reconstructed coin.

Here is what we have of the original

>600 years
Mm, no, are you being silly?

Do you think nobody had ever heard, seen, or used the chi rho before or after?

Sure this symbol that predates Christ was used once and then fucking disappeared forever until it appeared to Constantine in a dream and he decided to paint it.

I guess God must've shown it to Eugenes as an epic teaser for his friends.

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This is now a coin collector thread

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