A Night Worth Celebrating

Seventeen centuries ago on this very night, the Roman Emperor Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus, in peril of his crown and his life, had a dream.

Constantine was fighting a civil war against his rival, the Emperor Maxentius. Constantine had marched his army of 40,000 men over the Alps and across Italy. Maxentius, who had already defeated two other rivals, sat confortably behind the walls of Rome with an army twice the size of Constantine’s.

According to the historian Eusebius, who claimed to have heard the story from the Emperor himself, earlier in the day Constantine had looked up into the sun and saw a peculiar symbol, with the words above it in Greek “En touto níka”, meaning “through this sign, you will conquer”.

The Emperor had no idea what this might mean. That night, he had the dream that explained it.

According to his adviser, the elderly scholar Lactantius, Constantine was commanded to “delineate the heavenly sign on the shields of his soldiers”. This he did, marking the shields with a sign “denoting Christ”.

Considering that Christianity was essentially an outlawed cult, subject to systemic and cruel persecution, Constantine’s actions were unfathomable.

Christians were stripped and flogged with whips, put on the rack, scraped with iron combs used to card wool, and had salt and vinegar poured over their fresh wounds; they were slowly roasted to death over fires individually or thrown on great piles to be burned alive en masse (an entire town in Phrygia—men, women, and children—was set on fire by soldiers); they were strangled or run through with swords; they were tied hand and foot, put into boats, and once pushed out to sea, drowned; they were jailed, and then led into the arena to be torn to pieces by panthers, bears, boars, and bulls; they had their skin torn bit by bit with pottery shards, or they were decapitated; women were stripped and hung upside down for public humiliation, and sometimes believers were hung this way over a fire so as to be choked by the smoke; Christians had their limbs tied to trees that were bent down and then let snap, tearing their legs or arms from their bodies; sharp reeds were driven under fingernails, molten lead was poured down backs, genitals horribly mutilated, eyes gouged out and cauterized with a hot iron, and the list goes on.

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The next day, for no apparent reason, Maxentius’ army marched out from safety of the city and offered open battle in front of the Milvian Bridge.

With their backs against the Tiber river, Maxentius’ army found it impossible to maneuver, and Constantine won a famous victory.

The bridge in his rear was broken down. At sight of that the battle grew hotter. The hand of the Lord prevailed, and the forces of Maxentius were routed. He fled towards the broken bridge; but the multitude pressing on him, he was driven headlong into the Tiber.

(On the Deaths of the Persecutors 44.5, Lactantius)

Constantine entered Rome in triumph the following day, 29 October 312. For the first time, an Imperial Triumph did not conclude with the traditional offerings at the temple of Jupiter.

Instead, in February of the following year, Constantine and his co-emperor Licinius promulgated the Edict of Milan, which proclaimed religious freedom throughout the Empire and ordered the imprisoned Christians to be released and the death sentences commuted.

In the words of one commentator,

If you think about what these Christians actually endured at the hands of the pagan state, you will realize with what jubilation, what extreme thankfulness to God, what declarations of it all being miraculous, Christians 1,700 years ago greeted the news of Constantine’s conversion.

And I do believe that is precisely the right attitude that Christians today should have in remembering—indeed, celebrating—the conversion of Constantine. Rarely has Divine Providence achieved so much in so short a time.

Indeed, a night worth celebrating.