What does it take to change a mind? Often the transition between one set of beliefs to another doesn’t happen radically — even if it seems so. The place of Christianity in the mind of the Emperor Constantine (d. 337) is a case in point. He and his contemporary biographers might have imagined a swift conversion, but, as the American playwrite Lillian Hellman once quipped “nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did”.
Here you see a coin minted by Rome’s first Christian emperor. Constantine appears on one side, and on the reverse is a figure of the pagan deity “Sol” — a sun God. Notably, Constantine continued to have such coins minted after his famous conversion experience, when, according to the emperor’s biographers, he had a vision of the Christian Chi-rho symbol for Christ and after won a crucial military victory — a moment that brought about Constantine’s conversion.
Constantine after his victory built a triumphal arch that he deliberately aligned with a nearby massive statue of the deity Sol. His biographer Eusebius constantly uses imagery of “light” to talk about Constantine’s religiosity.
So what gives? It’s a question my students love debating. Perhaps Constantine initially conflated two religions because they seemed similar to him — worship of a powerful life-giving deity who came from the heavens matched descriptions of both the Christian God and Sol. Maybe Constantine used Sol imagery because Romans had been familiar and comfortable with that God, whereas many Romans, especially rich ones, were not in favor of Christianity in the early fourth century. Just how sincere the Emperor was in his newfound belief, or how pragmatic he was, may have changed over time, and even Constantine might not have been fully conscious of what specific beliefs he had at different points in his past.
