What Roman emperor promoted Christianity?

Answer 1

By the beginning of the reign of Emperor Constantine, it is estimated that Christianity had around ten percent of the population of the Roman Empire. Constantine gave the Christian Church state patronage, but did not make it the state religion. He gave the Christians the right to distribute state food supplies to the poor, enabling them to proselytise to the recipients. Moreover, during his reign it became politically and socially desirable for some of the more prosperous citizens to be associated with Christianity. Christianity finally became the state religion of the Roman Empire under Emperor Theodosius I, at the end of the fourth century.

Answer 2

The earliest emperor who might have been Christian was Philip, emperor from 244 to 249.

Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) tells us that the early emperors did not even consider Christianity as deserving of their time - as far as possible they just ignored it. The correspondence between Pliny and Emperor Trajan (98-117) indicates that there were no general laws or decrees of the senate in force against the Christians and that neither Trajan nor any of his predecessors had publicly declared their intentions concerning the new sect. The favourite concubine of Emperor Commodus (180-192) was a Christian and declared herself the patroness of the Christians, so that Christianity was already clearly acceptable for the Romans.

By the third century, the Church was permitted to erect and consecrate convenient edifices for religious worship, to purchase lands (even at Rome itself) for the use of the Christian community, and to conduct the elections of their ecclesiastical ministers in public.

There were short periods of widespread, official persecution of Christians, believed to total around twelve years out of the almost three hundred years before Emperor Constantine.

Emperor Galerius, although himself a pagan, issued toe Edict of Toleration that meant that henceforth Christianity would be free from persecution.

Constantine, believed to have been a Christian, went further than Galerius and issued a proclamation that gave specific advantages to the official Christian Church. He provided generously for the Church and began the long persecution of paganism. Soon, it was not only acceptable to be Christian, but desirable to be Christian if one were ambitious. Theodosius (378-395), also a Christian emperor, made Christianity the official religion of the empire and began the process that made Christianity not just acceptable but mandatory throughout the empire.

Answer 3

More than anyone before him, Emperor Constantine spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. True, Christianity was already well established, especially in the Greek-speaking east, long before the fourth century, but Constantine gave the religion state patronage, offered career preferment to those who claimed to be Christians, and began the long persecution of the pagan temples. From this time, and with this impetus, Christianity spread quickly in the Roman Empire.