Constantine's Conversion to Christianity: Opportunism or a Sincere Gesture?

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2019

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

History Channel documentaries and pop historians have argued that when Constantine converted to Christianity in the fourth century, he was merely following the religious demographic trends of the Roman Empire and thought paganism to be a political dead end. The idea makes sense at first glance. But the story of Constantine's conversion—and later the entire empire's—goes far beyond political opportunism (although there is plenty of that).

Constantine did not choose his new religion to chase after changing demographics in the Empire; Christianity was a lower-class religion disfavored by the pagans who overwhelmingly made up the Roman army and cavalry—the exact people that an emperor really needed to appease to hold onto power. Plus, recent studies on Constantine argue that Christianity would have spread regardless of the emperor's choice, although it would have happened at a later date.

The Roman Catholic Church did drape itself in Roman symbolism and forged fictional lines of continuity between itself and the empire, but only after the sixth century, when the Western Roman Empire had completely collapsed and become a ghost that haunted Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Any resemblance between the empire and the church came after the former collapse and was largely coincidental.

Transcript

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0:05.0	Cateriona. Strength and conditioning is not just for the praise, it's for everyone.
0:09.1	Jack Northover. You cook me an hour for your fine rock show and all the way through, just
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0:19.9	Who's your real football number one? Nominate them today as they could with a money car buy
0:24.9	experience with Skybett Pride Drop. Skybett, the UK's number one betting up.
0:29.9	The history of the Popes of Rome and Christianity reaches into nearly every aspect of history.
0:36.3	In the history of the Papacy Podcast, we step over the rope. We dive into, discover more
0:42.2	about the people events and background that define the influence of the Popes of Rome
0:46.8	and church not only on the West, but the world. To start listening now, go to
0:52.1	ParthenonPodcast.com or search for History of the Papacy on your favorite podcast platform.
0:59.8	Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast. The unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes,
1:09.5	Mythbust's historical lies and rediscover the forgotten stories that changed our world.
1:16.1	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
1:18.1	Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode. I'm going to be tackling an enormous question
1:25.5	on basically how do the beliefs of a huge group of people, whether an empire or a nation
1:33.0	change over time? Is it something that's top down or is it bottom up? Specifically, the
1:38.7	theme of this episode comes from a question by listener Rob Matlock who says, when I was
1:43.5	in college, I wrote this paper on how the papacy is just an extension of the Roman Empire.
1:48.7	We'd be interesting to get your take on that in a podcast episode. Well, thanks for
1:53.4	the question, Rob. And what I said right at the top doesn't completely match up with Rob's
	...

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