Constantine the Great

The blood of the martyrs, as the early Christian writer Tertullian reportedly put it, watered the seat of the church.

Then came Constantine and everything changed.

In 312, on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine reportedly saw a vision, a cross of light in the sky, accompanied by the words, in this sign, conquer.

Whether he actually saw anything or simply made a calculated political decision is a question historians have debated for 17 centuries.

What's not debatable is what happened next.

That's a common misconception, but its effect would have a major impact on Roman paganism.

What it did was legalize Christianity and grant it equal status with other religions.

But Constantine went further than mere tolerance, and he poured imperial funds into church construction and granted clergy tax exemptions.

The time is 920.

Today in history, October 28, 312, Roman Emperor Constantine the Great defeated the superior forces of his rival, Maxentius, at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, securing his position as the sole ruler of the Western Roman Empire.

This was a game changer in the history of the Western world, as it was Constantine who would legalize and promote Christianity in the Empire.

In 1636, Harvard College, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1846, William Morton successfully demonstrated the use of ether as an anesthetic for surgery, revolutionizing the field of medicine.

They also proposed that this may have been a site where possible human sacrifices occurred and that the cultic activity here was really in the later roman imperial period so think 2nd century ce through 4th century ce and if you're trying to place this in big name roman emperors around the time of constantine of course constantine is more 4th century ce but 2nd century is really trajan hadrian can't forget marcus aurelius caracalla as well he's third century CE.

And then, of course, a hop, skip, and a jump later, we get Constantine I.

And to the scholars working here, not only was this cave used for possible necromantic purposes, but it may have also been viewed as a portal into the underworld, which is perfect because within the last few episodes, we've been talking about possible entry points into the underworld, not only with cave sites, but with ancient necromancy sites.

And these skulls and the other objects that were uncovered in excavations may have actually allowed the individuals who came into this cave to actually connect to the dead with this specific type of divination.

Little bit of a history lesson.

Several centuries later, an emperor called Constantine, for various reasons, took away all the criminal legal regulations against the Christians, and it resulted in Christianity becoming the populist religion of the day.

Now, there were many benefits to that.

Isn't it wonderful to live in a society where you don't have to look over your shoulder unless you're thrown into prison or thrown into, you know, the circus Maximus with the lions and you don't lose your head? That's all good.

But he soon realized that the Soviet process of institutionalization of the Marxist revolution made it a rather repressive system, which led him to leave again, this time to Western Germany and particularly to Tübingen, where he spent his last years of teaching.

So he experienced in his own lifetime the same phenomenon that he identified in the revolutionary process that characterized Christianity, that it is a process of institutionalization, which finds its symbolic turn in the 4th century and particularly in 313 CE, according to which Christian came from being opposed to the system of power to part of it, which was what actually happened with Constantinus I, emperor known for being Christian.

And from that perspective, only at that point, Christianity became religion in the Latin meaning of the term, which is religare, keeping together.

So becoming part of a system of power, participating in keeping a system of power alive, which, of course, does not exclude that revolutionary idea expressions of Christianity continued existing, and this is the case, for example, of the circumciliums, the movement in Northern Africa that I mentioned before, which happened actually after the Roman Empire became Christian, or maybe we could also say Christians became part of the Empire.

At least if you're a Christian, it's a biggie.

Roman Empire, Constantine the Great saw his vision.

Without this, he doesn't make Christianity, Catholicism, whatever, the religion of Rome, and the religion dies.

You're not Christian today without this vision.

I think it was in the fourth century.

It was Emperor Constantine put that, you know, where he put it.

It's the old story though, you know, if you've got a real site, you don't want the real site to be completely destroyed and trampled and, you know, stolen like, you know, Noah's grave was.

If you don't want that to happen, you just put the site somewhere else.

Cranky Coworkers Day, a lighthearted observance focused on managing workplace tension.

In 3.0.12, Emperor Constantine experienced his vision of the cross, which changed his outlook on the world.

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