Who was Constantine?

Question

Can anyone tell me who he was and what effect he had on Christianity?

Answer 1

The emperor of Rome who converted to Christianity and allowed Christianity to live without persecution.

Answer 2

The Constantine, aside from the comic book character, that had the most to do with the Bible was a Roman Emperor who gathered together the Christians in the Roman empire and became their leader. Constantine worked with the Biblical scholars of the time, around 300AD, to put together the Bible from the large number of biblical texts that were being passed around.

It is said that Constantine painted the shields of his army with the symbol Chi-Rho, an X with a P bisecting the center. This became a popular symbol of Christianity, replacing the previously used fish symbol. Chi-Rho are the first two letters of the word Christ in Greek.

Constantine also worked with this group of Biblical scholars to consolidate the church into one group under a central leadership instead of the separate loosely consolidated groups they had previously been. Constantine was the first real Pope of the newly consolidated church.

There is a lot of stuff written about Constantine on the web, and some of it is worth reading. There is also a lot of trash.

Answer 3

Constantine is commonly held to be the first Emperor of Rome to have converted to Christianity, though there's some argument on the point. What is certain though, is that he's the man responsible for Christianity in its modern form.

Rome after the 200's was chaotic to the point of being ungovernable, one of the main reasons for this being a huge number of competing faiths that had replaced the old Roman Gods. The Emperor Diocletian split the Empire in two, with the Western Roman Empire ruled from Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire ruled from Byzantium (Constantinople, in modern Turkey)

Constantine, the Eastern Emperor, realized that Christianity would be a good tool with which to unify his empire, because it was a primarily urban religion with many nobles and influential business-people being followers. So he converted, immediately gaining himself a whole bunch of noble supporters, each with their own little army. We now know that he never took the religion itself seriously though - he continued to adhere to his older pagan beliefs until he died.

The problem was that Christianity was not just one, but a whole bunch of competing religions at the time. Some believed in Jesus as the son of God, some in the Trinity, some in Mary Magdelene as Jesus' wife, etc. and they were willing to kill each other for it.

Constantine got all the leaders of the various Christian factions together in an event known as the Council of Nicea, and forced them to decide on a single doctrine that would be Christianity. This was basically the birth of the Catholic Church. Hundreds of texts about Jesus were then destroyed - pretty much anything that didn't fit the dogma the Council had decided on. Amongst other things, Jesus' purported teachings on reincarnation, the whole Mary Magdelene affair - all of it was swept under the rug, with anybody who didn't let it go thrown to the lions.

Basically, just as Jesus was the founder of the Christian faith, Constantine was the father of the Christian church.

Answer 4

Roman Emperor who declared that Christianity would be the official religion of the Roman Empire. He didn't convert himself until his deathbed. He moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Answer 5

Roman Emperor. He brought Christianity to Rome.

Answer 6

He was the Roman dictator that converted Rome from Paganism to Christianity. He committed genocide in the process and was subsequently named a saint.

Answer 7

He was a (eastern) Roman emperor who figured out that Christianity was just the hierarchical belief structure to control the people in his empire, since their existing belief systems left them more aware of their own thoughts and power.

Answer 8

im getting a national geographic documentar on constantine. its very very interesting.

Answer 9

Go to the site below and it will answer your question

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