Constantine the Great favoured Christianity. He built important Christian churches: the original Basilica of St Peter's in Rome, the St John Lateran's Basilica (the city of Rome's first Cathedral and the original residence of the Popes), the Church of the Holy Apostles and the Hagia Eirene in Constantinople and Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem. He promoted Christians to high offices in the imperial bureaucracy. He introduced some laws which favoured the Christians He also tried to arbitrate theological disputes between the mainstream Christian doctrine and dissident Christian doctrines..

Christianity was not united religion .There were competing doctrines and mainstream Christianity was keen on suppressing dissident sects. Constantine attempts to mediate the disputes between competing Christian doctrines begun in 314 when he held the Council of Arles to respond to the appeal which Donatus, the leader of the Donatist sect in Africa, had made to him against the decision of Pope Miltiades to declare this sect schismatic. The result was that Donatus was excommunicated. In 317 Constantine issued an edict which sent the Donatist clergy into exile and confiscated their property. In 317 Constantine issued an edict which sent the Donatist clergy into exile and confiscated their property. In 325 Constantine called the First Council of Nicaea to deal, among other things, with a theological dispute between the Patriarch of Alexandria and the dissident Arian Christians, followers of Arius, and the suppression schism of the Meletians, a breakaway Christian sect. The council produced the Nicene Creed which became the official doctrine of mainstream Christianity, but did not resolve the conflict with the Arian Christians, which continued. It is thought that Constantine exiled Arian priests and priests who refused to condemn Arianism. However, he then tried to diffuse the situation and became lenient. He ended the exile of two bishops who refused to condemn Arianism. In 335 he exiled the Patriarch of Alexandria, the chief opponent of Arianism when accusations were levied against him by the Arians. In 336 he readmitted Arius to communion.

Whilst Constantine's support for Christianity is well known, the fact that he straddled Christianity and paganism is less well known. The majority of people in the Roman Empire were pagans.

In 310 at a time when Constantine was making a bid for power and before he started supporting Christianity, he adopted the Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun) a pagan god who was also conventionally associated with the god Apollo. He did so to dissociate himself from the gods Jupiter and Hercules, who were the gods of the tetrarchy (rule by four) system of co-emperorship of that time (there were two senior emperors and two junior emperors). At that time Constantine was a junior emperor and wanted to become a senior one. He decided that needed to make his bid for power independently from the tetrarchy. An oration made on Constantine's behalf claimed he had a vision of Apollo who granted him the laurel wreath of health and a long reign. In this vision Constantine recognised himself as a saviour who was granted the rule the world. This claim served to legitimise Constantine's bid for power and to strengthen his popularity among the people the Gaul, who were his power base. The cult of Sol Invictus had been established by a previous emperor (Aurelian) who had tried to turn it into a unifying cult for the empire.

Constantine continued to promote the worship of Sol Invictus after his purported conversion to Christianity either in 312 or shortly before that. Statuettes of Sol Invictus carried by the standard-bearers appear in three places in reliefs on the triumphal arch he erected in Rome in 315 (the Arch of Constantine). The arch was also positioned to align with a colossal statue of Sol by the Colosseum, so that this god was the dominant backdrop from the main approach to the arch. In 321 he instructed all the citizens of the empire (Christians and pagans) to unite in observing the venerable day of the sun, which he established as a day of rest in the cities (all the workshops closed). His coins continued to bear images of Sol Invictus until 325/6 some of which had the legend INVICTUS CONSTANTINUS. In 330, when dedicated Constantinople, the new capital, Constantine wore the sun-rayed diadem of Apollo and did not use any Christian symbols.

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