The Emperor Is a Christian!

The Roman emperors kept on persecuting Christians until an emperor named Constantine came to the throne. Constantine was a fair man. He worshipped the Roman god Apollo, but he didn’t think it was right to put people in jail because of the god they worshipped.

Constantine himself went on worshipping Apollo—until something strange happened to him. Different ancient writers tell us different stories about Constantine. Some say he had a dream. Others say he had a vision. But whatever Constantine saw, everyone agrees about what happened next: The emperor himself became a Christian!

So what did Constantine see?

One Roman writer tells this story about Constantine’s vision:

onstantine was marching towards the most important battle of his life. He had fought the enemy for months now, and had not been able to triumph. The coming battle was his last hope. Would he win? Would the Roman Empire remain safe? Or would his soldiers be defeated, driven backwards by the enemy and forced to surrender? He would know tomorrow, when they met the enemy at the Milvian Bridge.

He looked behind him at his army. They had fought hard against invaders and won. But now they were so tired they could barely drag themselves along. Their feet hurt; their heels were blistered in their shoes, and their armor was heavy on their shoulders.

Constantine glanced up at the gray, cloudy sky. On top of everything else, he thought, it was going to rain on them. They would be tired, discouraged, and soaking wet. They would have to set up camp in the pouring rain, and no one would sleep well before the next morning’s battle.

“Look,” the soldier beside him said. “The sun is coming out.”

Constantine squinted at the sky.

“That’s not the sun,” he said. “What is it? It … it looks like a cross!”

Constantine and his soldiers stared with open mouths. Above them in the sky hovered a cross of light, growing larger and brighter by the moment. The golden light from the cross fell across their weary faces until they were forced to blink and shield their eyes with their hands. The grass around them glittered with light!

Underneath the cross, fiery letters burned themselves across the sky. Constantine read them out, one by one: By this sign you will be victor.

“It is the cross of Christ!” Constantine gasped.

“What does it mean?” the soldiers asked.

“It means that we must fight for God,” Constantine answered. “The God of the Christians!”

When they set up camp that night, Constantine sent out an order to his men. “Every soldier must have the sign of Christ on his shield!” he ordered. “Until that is done, we will not go into battle!”

So each soldier painted onto his shield the Greek letters standing for Christ’s name. When they went into battle, Constantine led the charge under a banner bearing the name of the Christian God. And Constantine’s army won the Battle of Milvian Bridge. When he stood victorious on the bridge, Constantine raised his sword to the sky. “The God of the Christians gave me this victory!” he announced. “From now on, I will always fight under his banner. And I will only worship him!”

After he won this battle, Constantine became a Christian. He claimed that the Christian God had helped him to beat the enemy. He made Sunday a holiday all over Rome, so that people could go to church. Soon, many more people in the Roman Empire became Christians, following the example of their emperor.

After he became a Christian, Constantine decided that the new center of the Roman Empire should no longer be in Rome. After all, Rome was an old city, beginning to look shabby and run-down. Constantine moved the capital of the empire to another city that he named after himself: Constantinople. From now on, Constantinople, not Rome, would be the center of Roman power.

But that power would not last long!

Note to Parent: Nero ruled from AD/CE 54–68. Constantine ruled from AD/CE 312–337. The emperors between Nero and Constantine had varying policies towards Christianity, but Christians were rarely tolerated for long.