The truth was that Constantine outwardly supported the new religion but still worshiped the sun and pagan symbols. Whether he wanted to foster renewed religious violence (this time, by Christians against pagans) is another matter. They talk endlessly about scripture and tradition. His public actions and policies, however, were not entirely without ambiguity. Constantine believed that Rome would prosper once more through Christianity. Wrote this for my World Religions class – it’s my first-ever attempt at historical analysis. CONSTANTINE AND THE GLORIFICATION OF THE CLERGY. Afonso I: the Constantine of the Congo. (Public Domain) A Christian who Worshiped the Sun? By patronizing the Church, Constantine had wished to gain the support of the God of the Christians. Abstract [site under construction] Full Text: PDF. Constantine: The Pagan Christian.

Duke UniversityLibrary. Posted on May 4, 2018 May 8, 2018 by LauGoo0813. The Baptism of Constantine, as imagined by students of Raphael. The unexpected conversion of Constantine in 312, and his subsequent support of the Church, seemed to be a triumphant vindication of this militant view of the world. GRBS home | Duke University Libraries. Constantine would sporadically prohibit public sacrifice and close pagan temples; very little pressure, however, was put on individual pagans, and there were no pagan martyrs. Constantine and the Pagans. Constantine, like emperors Decius and Diocletian before him, sought to recapture the former glories of the Roman Empire; but unlike them, he did not choose to do so in honor of the pagan deities. On June 4th, in the year of Our Lord 1491, a Congolese Prince named Nzinga Mbemba was baptized by Portuguese missionaries, taking the name of Afonso. To be a Christian under Constantine's reign was no longer a handicap. Constantine's son Constantius II, who was a staunch opponent of paganism, ordered the closing of all pagan temples, forbade pagan sacrifices under pain of death, and removed the traditional Altar of Victory from the Senate. Certainly Constantine’s fruits of paganism cannot be denied. Also, I was running on only four hours of sleep on this, so this piece is rather disjointed. By 1509, his father the King of Kongo had died, touching off a war for succession that fractured the kingdom along a religious fault line. Just as the good things he did for the church were tremendous in setting the foundation for Christianity to become the world’s foremost religion, so the pagan mixture he cured into that foundation was equally as devastating, and the ripples are still felt today.

It was an advantage.