Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/133

 THE ROMAN EMPIRE 121 issued an edict which not only sanctioned the practice of the Christian religion, but promised it Imperial protection. The east passed for a time to Licinius. It was Con- Christianity stantine's intention to reconcile Christianity and in favour. Paganism ; but now that Christianity met with official favour and encouragement, he found it difficult enough to produce harmony among the Christians themselves. But before long Licinius declared against Christianity. A sharp struggle arose, in which Constantine appeared decisively as the champion of Christianity; Licinius was crushed, and in a.d. 323 Constantine became sole emperor. From this time Christianity must be regarded as the established religion of an empire in which Paganism was tolerated. From this time also the emperor himself becomes more constanti- like an oriental despot and less like a Roman nople. emperor. Moreover, a new oriental Rome took the place of the old Italian Rome as the Imperial headquarters. Rome in- deed had long ceased to occupy that position definitely, but no other city had taken its place. Diocletian had generally treated as his own capital Nicomedia on the Sea of Marmora; Con- stantine made the old Greek colony of Byzantium into his new Rome which he called Constantinople, the city of Constantine. Rome herself was to acquire a new significance as the seat of the pontiff, who claimed to be the supreme spiritual head of all Christendom. But Constantinople was from henceforth the political capital of the empire. The western regions were provinces over which it exercised less and less control. Although on the death of Constantine the empire was for a short time divided among his three sons, it was reunited under one of them, Constantius, and it continued to recog- west and nise one emperor until the death of Theodosius East - in a.d. 395. Through the greater part of the next century there was one emperor of the east and another of the west. Then the western emperors disappeared, but the real dominion had passed to the conquering barbarians. A little more than four centuries after the death of Theodosius another emperor was to be crowned at Rome as the successor of the Caesars, but he was already the lord of the nations which had grown up in the