Northern Dispatch
6 MIN READ
By RUDY D. LIPORADA
www.nordis.net
“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred, and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.” – Vladimir Lenin
Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, a topic of reverence and veneration among Christians, is not without its controversies. Over the years, various interpretations of facts, some deemed true and others false, have emerged, casting doubt on the veracity of his conversion. Some argue that he may have strategically aligned himself with Christians, even going so far as to declare Rome a Christian city, in a bid to quell potential uprisings.
Whatever the original circumstances in Constantine’s life, the following are veritable facts right before, during, and after his reign.
1. The Christians have grown in number, exerting influence on various levels of Roman society including the military.
2. The Christians thrived among whom they referred to as pagans who were worshipping Roman and Greek gods.
3. Aside from differences among Christians due to the conflicting precepts of Paul and persistent beliefs of the followers of Jesus from their Judaism roots, there were conflicts with those who believed in pagan Gods.
4. For the sake of the Roman Empire, Rome needed to consolidate to achieve a higher kind of unity.
5. Somebody has to come forward to banner the unification. Constantine became the banner.
- His adopted mother, Helena, was a Christian, who could have inculcated some Christian beliefs in him.
- However, he grew up believing in Apollo, the Roman sun god, and Mithra, who is associated with Sol Invictus, the Roman god of the sun.
- His writer, Eusebius, claimed that Constantine tried to convert his mother to his religion.
6. Most of what was chronicled to be the life of Constantine was written by Eusebius, whose writings, following the dictum that conquerors write history or order the writing of history, should be circumspect.
Constantine becomes Emperor
It has to be noted at this point that Constantine had an academician who chronicled his exploits. Eusebius wrote The Life of Constantine. Divided into four books, it begins with the declaration that Constantine is immortal, which sets a general glorification and deification of the emperor and his works on earth. It is claimed that “The work progresses into Constantine’s time under the Emperor Diocletian. Constantine is contrasted with the tyrannical Diocletian, whose persecution of Christians and oppressive rule accentuates the presentation of Constantine as a strong Christian and a just man. This section also established the overreaching metaphor in the work, as Eusebius likens Constantine to Moses. Eusebius suggests that it was God’s will to raise Constantine to become emperor, as a reliever of the Christian torment in the Empire.”
It is chronicled that after his father’s death in 306, Constantine was acclaimed as emperor by his army at Eboracum or York in England. He became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire when he toppled emperors Maxentius and Licinius in civil wars. It is said that coming from England, there could have been a sizable number of Christians among his troops.
It was at the battle of Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312, that Constantine emerged victorious against Maxentius. Although greatly outnumbered and should have been annihilated, Constantine won. It is chronicled that before the battle, he and his army saw a cross of light in the sky above the sun with words in Greek that are generally translated into Latin as ‘In hoc signo vinces’ – ‘In this sign conquer.’ That night, Constantine had a dream in which Christ told him he should use the cross sign against his enemies. He had the Christian symbol marked on his soldiers’ shields. After the battle, he attributed the overwhelming victory to the god of the Christians.
The only issue with this mystical narrative is that Eusebius said, “he had the story from the emperor himself as the ‘conqueror.” Moreover, Lactantius, also an advisor of Constantine, does not mention a vision in the sky, although he describes a revelatory dream on the eve of battle. Eusebius, in his Church History, also does not mention any of the vision nor mentions the vision in his first chronicle, the battle at Milvian Bridge. The Arch of Constantine, constructed in AD 315, neither depicts a vision nor any Christian insignia in its depiction of the battle. In his posthumous biography of Constantine, Eusebius agrees with Lactantius that Constantine received instructions in a dream to apply a Christian symbol as a device to his soldiers’ shields, but unlike Lactantius and subsequent Christian tradition, Eusebius does not date the events to October 312 and does not connect Constantine’s vision and dream-vision with the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.
Did Constantine make up the vision and instruct his subject, Eusebius, who had to obey, that as a conqueror, the story should be told his way?
Establishing the Divinity of Jesus or Constantine’s Divinity
Following the Milvian Bridge triumph and in consonance with the Edict of Tolerance, Emperors Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan on February 313. It granted religious liberty to those who practiced Christianity and other faiths.
While apparently leaning more toward Christians, Constantine also had to appease those who believed in Roman gods centered primarily on Apollo, the sun god, and Mithras, the god of the sun. He found a way.
It is said that the conversion of Constantine was divinely inspired. A documentary on Christian Secrets discussing Emperor Constantine posed corollary questions: Did ‘divine inspired’ mean that Constantine was inspired by Jesus or by the Roman pagan gods? Did Constantine really convert to Christianity, or did he convert Christians to Roman pagan beliefs? Did he impose Christianity on the Roman people, or did he impose the pagan gods hidden in Christ on the Christians?
Simcha Jacobovici’s Documentary on Constantine merged Jesus with pagan Gods
Simcha Jacobovici hosted a documentary on changing the divinity of Jesus. Jacobovici is a Canadian-Israeli journalist, documentary filmmaker, and a New York Times best-selling author. In his narrative, apart from debunking the mystical narrative of the Milvian Bridge battle as inspired by a cross, Simcha’s investigations led to a high probability that Roman gods Apollo and Mithras were superimposed on the image and likeness of Jesus. The pagan sun gods were crowned with rays of the sun, and a halo was also projected on the crown of Jesus’s thorns. Mithraism practices were also incorporated into the Christian traditions. Mithras, based on pagan beliefs, was born on December 25, when magi kings brought gift offerings for the deity, and celebrations were marked with profuse exchanging of gifts. Mithraism also believes in resurrection, which, with the concept of the resurrection of Jesus, Roman soldiers were emboldened to conscript and fight for the empire because, should they die, they would be resurrected with all the glory of those who served. Mithras followers were also marked on their foreheads, in no unspecified manner, akin to Catholics being marked on their foreheads with the cross on Ash Wednesdays. Furthermore, Christian churches were constructed over former Mithras ceremonial grounds.
This merging of divinities to make it appear that Jesus was no different from Apollo and Mithras, if not physically, subliminally made Christianity and paganism acceptable to the Romans and the Gentiles and for them to embrace Roman Catholicism, the universal religion of the empire. After all, the word Catholic is derived from the Greek adjective katholikos, which means “universal,” and from the adverbial phrase kath’ holou, which means “on the whole.”
Jacobovici goes as far as to theorize that Constantine actually elevated himself into the images of Jesus, Apollo, and Mithras rolled into one. In a painting depicting the Milvian Bridge battle, Constantine wears a crown that depicts the sun with its rays, which is also superimposed on the haloed crown of Jesus’s thorns. Sculptures of his face resembled that of Apollo. A sixth-century Italian mosaic depicting Jesus carrying a cross as a Roman commander also exists.
The mosaic would be the supreme irony where Jesus, who sought to be killed by those he criticized, captured, flogged, and crucified by the Romans as a subversive – would turn to be a Roman commander of those who have tortured him and ended his life on earth.
Nonetheless, whether or not Jacobovici’s theories are true, the chronicles of Eusebius should be circumspect because they were written from the perspective and narrative of a conqueror. Nonetheless, too, he did it, whether for his glory or not; Constantine was able to consolidate the Roman empire during his time because he believed in a belief called Christianity, pagan or not.
In this regard, one could consider Constantine brilliant. He was able to persecute the followers of Jesus without harming them physically. He was able to pacify them by identifying himself with Jesus, and through Jesus, Constantine was able to impose Roman pagan beliefs right under the noses of supposed followers of Jesus.
After all, Paul had already initiated the Christians to be submissive to authority. Among the passages of Paul along the same lines, in his letter to the Colossians 3:22, it is stated, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. It should be noted that Jesus, as a Torah-believing Jew, and his Israelite ancestors abhorred slavery for which they liberated themselves from Egypt.
Paul would be for another story.
But no. Constantine did not convert to Christianity. He converted the Christians to paganism. # nordis.net
