Why Rome Fell

4 The Christian Empire

As shown in Chapter 3, Constantine’s impact on the long-term future of the Roman Empire and beyond was essentially threefold:

• Christianity: Though Constantine’s true religious beliefs remain a subject of debate, the favors he showered on the Church and his deathbed baptism created a firm foundation for the declaration of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire in 380 and the banning of all pagan worship in 391. The creation of a Christian Empire, leading to a post-Roman Christian Europe, was Constantine’s chief legacy.
• Aristocratic appointments: Constantine’s reversal of Diocletian by bringing members of the senatorial aristocracy back into high office in the West proved long-lasting.
• Constantinople: The establishment of a new Eastern capital, leading eventually to a permanent split between East and West.

Constantine’s Christian Legacy

At the accession of Diocletian in 284 the traditional polytheistic Roman civic religion had been in existence for about a thousand years. Since Caracalla’s Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, all free male inhabitants of the Empire were Roman citizens. And all Romans were automatically members of this traditional Roman religion, which, however, did not preclude their adherence to other cults or religions at the same time. Among the most popular of these were the cults of Mithras, Isis, and Cybele (or Magna Mater, “the Great Mother”).

Communal and Creed Religions

Christianity is a creed religion, while the traditional ...