The edict that ended the killing

In February of 313 AD, Constantine and his co-emperor Licinius meet in Milan and issue what will be called the Edict of Milan — though it is technically a letter to provincial governors rather than a formal edict. The content is brief. The consequences are not.

All persecution of Christians is to stop immediately. All property confiscated from Christian communities during the persecutions is to be returned — and if the property has already been sold or given away, the current holders will be compensated from the imperial treasury. The logic of the document is striking: Christians deserve their property back not because they have earned favor but because it is right.

The edict also extends tolerance to all religions. Constantine and Licinius are careful — or perhaps strategic — to frame this as universal religious freedom rather than Christian favoritism. Every person, the document says, shall have the liberty to follow the religion of his choice.

In some of the cities of the empire, there are Christians who have been in prison for years. In others, communities have been meeting in secret for a decade, never sure when the knock on the door would come. Bishops emerge from hiding. Communities gather openly for the first time in living memory.

The oldest members of those congregations have never known a church that was legal. They have lived their entire lives in the shadow of potential arrest.

Now they stand in the street in the light.

Ten years later, Constantine will call every bishop in the empire to a council in a city called Nicaea. The church that had no legal existence will be asked to define its faith by an emperor who will listen to every word.

The generations who had lived under persecution did not live to see the Edict of Milan as a problem. For them it was simply deliverance — the answer to prayers prayed over the bodies of their dead.

Later generations would learn the complications. Power and proximity to power do things to the church that persecution cannot. The most dangerous moment for any movement is often not its darkest hour but its brightest one.

But we do not have to spoil the moment to learn from it. Sometimes God simply restores what was taken. Sometimes the prison doors open and it is not a trap.

And the right response is the one Psalm 126 suggests: we were like those who dream. First wonder. Then work.