Proclaimed emperor in York, Constantine needed interpreters at his own church councils
Constantine, the emperor who steered Christianity into the Roman mainstream, was acclaimed by his troops not in Rome but at Eboracum, today's York, in 306. He spoke Latin, so when he addressed church councils conducted in Greek he relied on translators. And the bishop who finally baptised him held Arian views that Nicene orthodoxy rejected.
He was born on 27 February, probably in 272, at Naissus, now Niš in Serbia. His father Constantius was an army officer who rose to become one of the four co-emperors of Diocletian's Tetrarchy. His mother Helena was a Greek woman of humble origins, possibly never legally married to Constantius, who left her around 288 to marry the stepdaughter of the emperor Maximian. Constantine grew up at Diocletian's court as a kind of heir in waiting, studying Latin literature, Greek and philosophy.
After campaigning against the Persians, he joined his father in Britain in 305, and when Constantius died the following year the army proclaimed him emperor. Civil wars against rival emperors followed, and by 324 he ruled the whole empire alone. He separated civil from military command, disbanded the Praetorian Guard that had backed his rival Maxentius, and introduced the solidus, a gold coin that anchored Byzantine and European money for over a thousand years.
He began favouring Christianity in 312, helped bring about the Edict of Milan in 313, which legalised it, and in 325 summoned the Council of Nicaea, source of the Nicene Creed. He also ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built in Jerusalem. Yet he lived much of his life as a pagan, and some modern scholars question how deeply he believed or understood the faith. He rebuilt Byzantium as a new imperial seat that took his name, Constantinople, today's Istanbul, and it remained the capital for more than a millennium.
Knowing him is hard. No contemporary biography survives, and the closest, by Eusebius, is closer to praise than history. He died on 22 May 337, having replaced the Tetrarchy with rule passed down through his own family.
Source: Constantine the Great
