In hoc signo vinces
Constantine's vision before Milvian Bridge
Constantine is marching on Rome. He is one of four men claiming the title of emperor in the chaos that has followed Diocletian's abdication, and he is moving south from Gaul with an army to face Maxentius, who holds the city and its resources.
The night before the battle, or perhaps in the days leading up to it — Lactantius and Eusebius give slightly different accounts, written years apart — Constantine has a vision. He sees the Christian symbol in the sky. Some accounts say it is the chi-rho, the first two letters of Christ in Greek, overlapping. Some say it is a cross. Above it, or alongside it, the words: In this sign, conquer.
He orders the symbol painted on his soldiers' shields.
The Battle of Milvian Bridge is not a close contest. Maxentius's forces are routed. Maxentius himself drowns in the Tiber, weighed down by his armor. Constantine enters Rome in triumph.
What Constantine believed, and why — whether his conversion was genuine or strategic, whether he understood the faith he was now promoting or simply found it useful — historians have argued for seventeen centuries and will probably argue for seventeen more.
What is not arguable is what happened next. The man who just won the empire on a Christian symbol will issue the Edict of Milan. He will fund the building of churches. He will summon the Council of Nicaea. He will make Christianity not merely legal but favored.
The church that had been burned and scattered and fed to lions for three hundred years suddenly finds itself in the palace.
Nothing will ever be quite the same again.
“In this sign, conquer.”
— The vision of Constantine, 312 AD, as reported by Eusebius and Lactantius
“The king's heart is in the LORD's hand like the watercourses. He turns it wherever he desires.”
The church spent three centuries praying for emperors who were trying to kill them. Then God answered those prayers in the most unexpected way imaginable — by converting one.
But the answer to prayer came with enormous complications attached. Power is a different kind of danger than persecution. The lion's den at least clarified things. The palace did not.
For three hundred years the church had known exactly what it was and exactly who the enemy was. Now it wasn't sure which it was more afraid of — the emperors who hated it or the emperor who loved it.
God's answers to our prayers are not always uncomplicated. What do you do when what you asked for arrives with costs you didn't anticipate?