Constantine declared his own will equivalent to a canon of the Church. According to Justinian, the Roman people had formally transferred to the emperors the entire plenitude of its authority, and, therefore, the emperor’s pleasure, expressed by edict or by letter, had force of law. Even in the fervent age of its conversion the empire employed its refined civilization, the accumulated wisdom of ancient sages, the reasonableness and subtlety of Roman law, and the entire inheritance of the Jewish, the pagan, and the Christian world, to make the Church serve as a gilded crutch of absolutism.
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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, in The History of Freedom in Christianity (28 May 1877)Constantine the Great
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Constantine declared his own will equivalent to a canon of the Church. According to Justinian, the Roman people had formally transferred to the emperors the entire plenitude of its authority, and, therefore, the emperor’s pleasure, expressed by edict or by letter, had force of law. Even in the fervent age of its conversion the empire employed its refined civilization, the accumulated wisdom of ancient sages, the reasonableness and subtlety of Roman law, and the entire inheritance of the Jewish, the pagan, and the Christian world, to make the Church serve as a gilded crutch of absolutism. Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience — a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth. This vital element, which many centuries of warfare, of anarchy, of oppression, had extinguished in the countries that were still draped in the pomp of ancient civilization, was deposited on the soil of Christendom by the fertilising stream of migration that overthrew the empire of the West.
John (Lord Acton) Acton
In principle he (Constantine) treated religion as a matter of choice and conscience, an arena free of state meddling...Liberis mentibus — "With Free minds" — all are to worship their Gods. It is a remarkable policy, an unexpected one, since it would have been natural for a ruler after his conversion to Christianity to shift all the previous relations. … Most of the apologists who defended the Church in the early centuries advocated freedom of religion...the latin rhetor Lactantius developed a theological arguement for religious freedom. Lactantius was close enough to Constantine later to serve as tutor to the emperor's sons, and his influence is evident in many ways in Constantine's own writings...He (Lactantius) asked those who believed in compulsion of religion: "What good can you do, then, if you defile the body but cannot break the will?" It is a surprisingly modern statement, arguing, that religious freedom is the "first freedom", rooted in the very nature of religious life as an exercise of free will...Under Constantine's policy of concord, the Church was flooded with new converts, not through coercion but by force of Imperial example...Eventually, Christian Emperors abandoned Constantinian religious policy...Constantine favoured the Church but gave serious attention to protecting the rights of non-Christians. One cannot help but muse how European history would have been different if Christians had had the patience to let Constantine's original settlement alone.
Constantine the Great
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
Thomas Paine
In his poems about the relations between Christians and Pagans in the age of Constantine, Cavafy takes no sides. Roman Paganism was worldly in the sense that the aim of its ritual practices was to secure prosperity and peace for the state and its citizens. ... after Constantine, it was the Christian who had a better chance than the Pagan of getting on in the world, and the Pagan, even if not persecuted, who became the object of social ridicule.
Constantine P. Cavafy
In the first ages of the Christian religion the Christians of every city were governed by a Council of Presbyters, and the President of the Council was the Bishop of the city. The Bishop and Presbyters of one city meddled not with the affairs of another city, except by admonitory letters or messages. Nor did the Bishops of several cities meet together in Council before the time of the Emperor Commodus: for they could not meet together without the leave of the Roman governors of the Provinces. But in the days of that Emperor they began to meet in Provincial Councils, by the leave of the governors; first in Asia, in opposition to the Cataphrygian Heresy, and soon after in other places and upon other occasions. The Bishop of the chief city, or Metropolis of the Roman Province, was usually made President of the Council; and hence came the authority of Metropolitan Bishops above that of other Bishops within the same Province. Hence also it was that the Bishop of Rome in Cyprian's days called himself the Bishop of Bishops. As soon as the Empire became Christian, the Roman Emperors began to call general Councils out of all the Provinces of the Empire; and by prescribing to them what points they should consider, and influencing them by their interest and power, they set up what party they pleased. Hereby the Greek Empire, upon the division of the Roman Empire into the Greek and Latin Empires, became the King who, in matters of religion, did according to his will; and, in legislature, exalted and magnified himself above every God: and at length, by the seventh general Council, established the worship of the images and souls of dead men, here called Mahuzzims.
Isaac Newton
Constantine the Great
Constantine, Learie
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