People such as St. Anthony of Egypt and St. Syncletica of Alexandria rejected wealth, power, and prestige; gave everything they had to the poor; and protested the compromise with their lifestyle of communal prayer, poverty, and simplicity in the desert. This article also appears in the August issue of U. Catholic Vol. Click here to subscribe to the magazine. About the author.
Kevin P. Considine Kevin P. Considine holds a Ph. You may also like. Was the first Thanksgiving Catholic? Damian Costello. Licinius, however, began persecuting the Christians. Constantine fought and defeated him in , and thus became monarch over the West and the East.
Under the rule of Constantine, all persecutions against the Church ceased. After three centuries of suffering, Christianity triumphed through its witness of martyrdom and love, and proclamation of the Good News of Christ.
In , Constantine laid the foundations of a new capital on the ruins of Byzantium, and named it after himself, Constantinople. Since the throne of the imperial rule was transferred from Rome, it was named New Rome, the inhabitants of its domain were called Romans, and it was considered the continuation of the Roman Empire.
Right before his death in , Constantine was baptized and received the Holy Mysteries. He was 65, and had ruled for 31 years. In her zeal to glorify Christ, she erected churches at the sites of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, in Bethlehem at the cave where our Savior was born, on the Mount of Olives whence Jesus ascended into Heaven, and many others sights throughout the Holy Land. Crispus was 21 years old at his death and had the title of Caesar, being appointed the titular ruler of Gaul.
In July , Constantine had his wife, the Empress Fausta, killed at the behest of his mother, Helena. Fausta was left to die in an over-heated bath. At the time of the executions of Crispus and Fausta, it was commonly believed that the Empress Fausta was either in an illicit relationship with Crispus or was spreading rumors to that effect.
The Byzantine Empire considered Constantine its founder and the Holy Roman Empire reckoned him among the venerable figures of its tradition. He was divorced and remarried, having divorced his first wife Minervina to marry his second wife Fausta. Constantine spent his early life held captive in the East away from his father in the West by the senior emperor Augustus Diocletian a great persecutor of Christians.
Constantine escaped the Eastern emperors by night and fled to his father. It is said that he hamstrung every horse along the way so that he would not be caught! Constantine joined his father Constantius in York in Britain.
But Constantine needed to prove his title. Eusebius records that it happened during the day at noon and that all the troops saw it. Either way, Constantine is said to have placed the sign of the cross or a Chi Rho on the shields of his men. Constantine legalized Christianity with the Edict of Milan in AD , but he began to remove pagan symbols from imperial coins beginning around the year AD His conversion seems gradual and is in full display after about years of rule. The demographics were against him.
Give me that old school Roman religion. In AD , he called the first Catholic and Ecumenical Council of Nicea , which condemned the heresy of Arius who falsely teaching that the Son of God was created and not eternally begotten of the Father. Constantius II Semi-Arian.
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