The Conversion of Constantine and the Political Message Within

The conversion of Constantine is one of the more memorable and exciting stories about any of the early conversions to Christianity. As the biographer of Constantine, Eusebius of Caesarea, wrote:

A most marvelous sign appeared to him from heaven…bearing the inscription, CONQUER BY THIS…then in his sleep the Christ of God appeared to him with the same sign which he had seen in the heavens, and commanded him to make a likeness of that sign which he had seen in the heavens, and to use it as a safeguard in all engagements with his enemies.

The information from Eusebius makes it clear that the Christian God came to Constantine and told him that victory could be won through homage to the Christian God alone. Constantine used the vision to give himself a mental and spiritual advantage in his victory over Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge. The question remains, however, as to whether or not Constantine ever truly converted to Christianity before his well-publicized deathbed conversion. Constantine’s conversion after the vision appears to be more symbolic than literal, based on his power relations within the empire, which was allowed by the fluidity in structure of the early Christian church and the shifting manners of paganism in the Roman world.

Historians are given a small amount of primary sources that deal directly with the incidents, but they have still managed to come up with a variety of different interpretations for the vision and the dream of Constantine and his use of them. Scholars before the 1970’s tended to see the issue with polarity, either Constantine was fully converted, or he used Christianity as a political tool to get what he wanted. In 1971, however, an article by Rudolph Storch turned scholarship around into viewing Constantine as a much more detailed and deep individual in which politics and religion could not necessarily be divided. The fusion of politics and religion in the Roman world has driven more recent scholars to focusing on the intricacies of Constantine’s rule and how his “Christianity” affected it. Different scholars interpret Constantine’s conversion completely differently, and thus it is important to look at different parts of Constantine’s career and determine the religiosity of his decisions and policies.

Though the vision and dream that are commonly associated with Constantine’s conversion occurred during his campaign against Maxentius in Italy, it is necessary to begin with a look into Constantine before the campaign, when he was in Britain and Gaul. T.G. Elliot claims that Constantine’s father, Constantius, was a devout Christian, and that Constantine thus favored Christianity from the beginning of his rule, including maintaining the prevention of Christian persecution, even if he was not a true believer. Elliot and other scholars see his early connection to Christianity before the visions as potentially providential for Constantine’s