Constantine and the Cross

In an old eastern city, around AD 326, a line of workers pushed wheelbarrows away from a construction site. The barrows were full of dirt — tons of dark foundation soil dug from beneath a torn-down Roman temple. The workers were not saving that soil to reuse. They were carting it off and dumping it, treating the very ground as stained and unfit to stand on. They dug down to bare limestone bedrock, and they would build only after the old earth was gone.

Key Terms

Diocletian’s Great Persecution: The AD 303 crackdown that ordered churches torn down, scriptures burned, and believers stripped of the right to own property or testify in court.
Edict of Serdica: The order signed in AD 311 by the dying, exhausted emperor Galerius that finally let Christians worship in the open again.
Summit at Mediolanum: The AD 313 meeting in the city now called Milan where Constantine and co-ruler Licinius agreed to allow Christianity and return all seized church property.
Religio Licita: The Latin phrase for a religion the Roman government officially permitted, standing equal beside the old gods.
Battle of the Milvian Bridge: The clash just outside Rome on October 28, AD 312, won by Constantine’s army under a Christian battle standard for the first time.
In Hoc Signo Vinces: Latin words meaning "In this sign, you will conquer," remembered as the promise Constantine received before his fight for Rome.
Chi-Rho: A symbol formed from the first two Greek letters in the name of Christ, painted on soldiers’ shields before a battle for Rome.
Lactantius: The ancient writer who recorded that Constantine’s sign came to him in a dream the night before his battle for Rome.
Eusebius: The ancient writer who described a cross of light that Constantine’s whole army saw in the daytime sky on an earlier march.
Maxentius: Constantine’s rival for control of the western empire, who drowned in the Tiber River after his defeat at the Milvian Bridge.
Arch of Constantine: A Roman victory monument about 69 feet tall, roughly the height of a 6-floor building, whose inscription credits "the inspiration of the divinity."
Helena: Constantine’s mother, who traveled in old age to the province of Syria-Palaestina with the full treasury of Rome behind her to fund church building.
Temple of Venus in Jerusalem: A pagan temple built deliberately over ground believers held sacred, torn out down to bare bedrock so a church could rise instead.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre: The church marking the location of Jesus’ tomb, consecrated in September AD 335 after Helena had workers clear the old foundation soil to solid rock.
Basilica of the Nativity: The church built in Bethlehem with Helena’s wealth and her title of Augusta behind it, honoring the town where local believers said Christ was born.
Constantinople: The old Greek town of Byzantium, refounded in AD 324 and dedicated as "New Rome" in AD 330, a capital away from Rome’s old Senate.
Bordeaux Itinerary: A pilgrim’s logbook from AD 333–334 recording the stops along the road from Gaul all the way to Jerusalem.
Serpent Column: Bronze cast 479 BC from melted Persian weapons for 31 Greek city-states, about 26 feet tall at Delphi before Constantine moved it to his racetrack.
Council of Nicaea: The AD 325 meeting called to settle whether Christ was of the same substance as God or only a similar one, producing one agreed creed.
Edict of Thessalonica: The order issued on February 27, AD 380, that made Christianity the empire’s official, exclusive religion and outlawed the old worship.