When examining the life of Constantine, one must first consider his life before he professed any affinity or allegiance to the Christian faith or Church. Constantine was a military man who was battling for control of the Roman Empire. The empire was divided between Constantine and Maxentius. The latter was content in maintaining the persecution of Christians, as Diocletian had done before him, while the former hoped for more religious tolerance to both Pagans and Christians alike.1 In the fall of 312 A. D., Constantine began to look for guidance from the God above all others, the God whom his own father had believed in. As Eusebius later related, he looked to the sky and saw a vision of a trophy of the cross emanating from the light of the sun and the message “conquer by this”.
The Gregorian Reform’s most forceful advocate, Pope Gregory VII, is known as one of the great reformer popes and was a driving force in the eleventh-century religious reform movement. He initiated a series of reforms that dealt with the independence and moral integrity of the clergy; he was the first pope in several centuries that rigorously enforced the Church's ancient policy of celibacy for the Catholic clergy, attacked the practice of simony, and defended the papal authority in the Investiture Controversy. The Gregorian Reform’s main concerns were the moral integrity and independence of the clergy but it also had a large and lasting impact on the authority of the pope in the western world. Before the Gregorian Reform there were many corruptions in the church: the most detrimental being non-celibate priests along with simony. Gregory VII saw these offenses, how they were tearing away at the church as a whole, and wanted to abolish these practices.
It is a possibility that Contantine had Christian family members with his half sister being called Anastasia, meaning resurrection and he would have encountered Christians within Diocletian's courts. Although Christianity was not marked as the official state religion, Contantine began to introduce various legislations after the Edict of Milan which not only benefited the Church numerically, but economically aswell. As Chadwick stated “the conversion of Constantine marks a turning point in the history of the Church”. The conversion of Constantine is greatly linked to the
Christianity in the Roman Empire The rise of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire is one of the main contributing factors to its destruction circa 500 C.E. The teachings and morals portrayed in the letters of Paul of Tarsus (135-136) contradicted the Roman culture by preaching to follow the laws set forth by Christ rather than those set forth by the Roman Senate (136). The difference in belief caused tension between the Roman government and its citizens as more and more converted to Christianity and rebelled against Roman persecution. Paul of Tarsus was a very influential character in the story of Christianity. Thirteen letters are attributed to him in the writings that came to comprise the New Testament (134).
Christianity in the Roman Empire The rise of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire is one of the main contributing factors to its destruction circa 500 C.E. The teachings and morals portrayed in the letters of Paul of Tarsus (135-136) contradicted the Roman culture by preaching to follow the laws set forth by Christ rather than those set forth by the Roman Senate (136). The difference in belief caused tension between the Roman government and its citizens as more and more converted to Christianity and rebelled against Roman persecution. Paul of Tarsus was a very influential character in the story of Christianity. Thirteen letters are attributed to him in the writings that came to comprise the New Testament (134).
In doing this Diocletian had essentially given himself complete control over Eastern Rome. At the time of Diocletian’s rule Rome’s religious policy was to believe in whatever gods one wanted to, however it was required to throw incense on a shrine to reverence Diocletian. It is believed around 298 CE soothsayers consulted Diocletian saying that they could not read the livers of sacrifices because some of the officials present were Christian; with this
A primary cause of the Crusades was religious differences between the Muslims and the Christians. Christians made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and when they saw that their Holy Land was owned by Muslims, they felt that they had a religious obligation to take back this land. Muslims felt that the land belonged to them, and that what the Christians were trying to do was unmerited. This is an example of the external pressures both cultures experienced in relation to the ownership of their Holy Land. Christians were promised that if they joined the war, they would be forgiven of sins and guaranteed a place in heaven, which was irresistible to many people.
They had just emerged from the so-called ‘Great Persecution’ under the emperor Diocletian at the end of the third century. The moment of Constantine’s conversion was tied by two Christian storytellers to a military movement against a political rival, Maxentius. The conversion was the result of either a vision or a dream in which Christ directed him to fight under Christian standards, and his victory apparently guaranteed Constantine in his faith in a new god. Constantine is counted as one of the most important of the later Roman Emperors because of Christianity. Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to support Christianity and become a Christian.
There are many reasons for why the Roman Empire has fallen. One of the reasons is due to a new religion that had come about in the Roman Empire; Christianity. The beliefs of Christianity were so different from the Roman beliefs and values that people were being persecuted until Roman Emperor Constantine put a stop to it, and eventually legalized the religion in his empire. It caused many problems due to the drastic differences between Rome’s original religion, Paganism, which believed in many gods, and Christianity, which believed in only one god. Most Romans had considered their emperor to be a god, but the Romans who had converted to Christianity only believed in their own one god, and no longer respected, or even listened to their emperor.
By examining the various primary sources, lecture notes, and textbook, I conclude that the Roman world was transformed by the way people understood the relationship between religion and the state during this period because each leader believed in a different way to bring success and dominance over Western Europe causing Christianity to evolve in the Roman Empire. From 284 to 305 CE, Diocletian ruled as emperor of the Eastern Empire. Diocletian “appointed three men to share his rule” creating a tetrarchy government to provide more effectual governance over the empire by balancing authority and territory. He convened for Lactantius, master of Latin rhetoric, to teach rhetoric at the imperial government and to manage the “Latinity of the imperial court’s official documents;” thus making Lactantius an important eyewitness to Diocletian’s reign. According to Lactantius’s On the Deaths of the Persecutors, in February 303 CE, Diocletian launched the last persecution of Christians which denied Christians of all legal rights.