Edict of Milan
Constantine and Licinius agreed at Milan in 313 that everyone in the Roman Empire could worship whatever they liked, and returned the property confiscated from Christians. It was not an edict and it was not issued at Milan. The two emperors met there in February to arrange a marriage and settle policy, and what survives are letters sent afterwards to provincial governors, the text preserved by Lactantius and Eusebius. It was also not the first toleration. Galerius, who had run the persecutions, had issued an edict from his deathbed in 311 admitting that they had not worked and permitting Christians to exist again. What Milan added was completeness and restitution: freedom of religion for all, explicitly, and the return of churches, cemeteries and corporate property at state expense where it had been sold on. The Great Persecution begun by Diocletian in 303 had been the most systematic yet — scriptures burned, churches demolished, clergy imprisoned, sacrifice required on pain of death — and it had been enforced unevenly and abandoned in the west relatively early. Constantine had won the Milvian Bridge the previous October under a Christian sign, and his subsequent favour to the church went far beyond toleration: tax exemptions, judicial powers for bishops, basilicas at public cost. Licinius fell out with him and resumed persecuting before losing the resulting war in 324. Christianity became the state religion under Theodosius in 380, and the empire began legislating against pagans within a lifetime of legislating for them. The letters themselves are strikingly non-committal in language, speaking of the supreme divinity in terms a pagan could accept, which is a fair description of Constantine's public position for most of the next decade. He was baptised on his deathbed in 337.
- Category: Cultural
