Constantine the Great
c. 272 – 337 · Naissus
Feast: 21 May (Orthodox)
Constantine is the hinge. Before him, Christianity was illegal and intermittently bloodied. After him, it was an imperial religion with property, councils, and emperors weighing in on theology. He didn't make it the state religion (Theodosius did, in 380) but he legalised it in 313, summoned the Council of Nicaea in 325, and built Constantinople as a Christian capital. He was baptised on his deathbed by Eusebius. Whether you think the Constantinian shift saved the church or corrupted it, every later Christian relationship to political power — Byzantine, medieval, Reformation, modern — is an argument about what Constantine did.
Primary source for this figure.
— Eusebius, Vita Constantini 1-4
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