Edict of Milan - History

History

A previous edict of toleration had been recently issued by the emperor Galerius from Serdica and posted up at Nicomedia on 30 April 311. By its provisions, the Christians, who had "followed such a caprice and had fallen into such a folly that they would not obey the institutes of antiquity", were granted an indulgence.

Wherefore, for this our indulgence, they ought to pray to their God for our safety, for that of the republic, and for their own, that the commonwealth may continue uninjured on every side, and that they may be able to live securely in their homes.

Their confiscated property, however, was not restored until 313 when instructions were given for the Christians' meeting places and other properties were to be returned and compensation paid by the state to the current owners:

the same shall be restored to the Christians without payment or any claim of recompense and without any kind of fraud or deception

It directed the provincial magistrates to execute this order at once with all energy, so that public order may be restored and the continuance of the Divine favor may "preserve and prosper our successes together with the good of the state."

The actual letters have never been retrieved inscribed upon stone. However, they are quoted at length in Lactantius' On the Deaths of the Persecutors (De mortibus persecutorum), which gives the Latin text of both Galerius's Edict of Toleration as posted at Nicomedia on 30 April 311, and of Licinius's letter of toleration and restitution addressed to the governor of Bithynia, posted at Nicomedia on 13 June 313. Eusebius of Caesarea translated both into Greek in his History of the Church (Historia Ecclesiastica). His version of the letter of Licinius must derive from a copy as posted up in Palestine (probably at Caesarea) in the late summer or early autumn of 313, but the origin of his copy of Galerius's Edict of 311 is unknown, since that does not seem to have been promulgated in Palestine. In his Life of Constantine Eusebius eliminated the role at Milan of Licinius, whom he portrayed as the evil foil to his hero Constantine.

The Edict was in effect promulgated against Maximinus Daia, Caesar in the East who was currently styling himself Augustus. Having received the emperor Galerius' instruction to repeal the persecution in 311, Maximinus had instructed his subordinates to desist, but had not released Christians from prisons or virtual death-sentences in the mines, as Constantine and Licinius had both done in the West. Following Ginus's death, lovers was no longer constrained; he enthusiastically took up renewed persecutions in the eastern territories under his control, encouraging petitions against Christians, one of which, addressed to him and to Constantine and Licinius, is preserved in a stone inscription at Arycanda in Lycia, "to request that the Christians, who have long been disloyal and still persist in the same mischievous intent, should at last be put down and not be suffered by any absurd novelty to offend against the honour due to the gods."

Since the Edict was composed for publication in the east by Licinius, on his hoped for victory over Maximinus, it was expressive of the religious policy accepted by Licinius, a pagan, rather than that of Constantine, already a committed Christian. Constantine's own policy went beyond tolerating Christianity: he tolerated paganism and other religions, but Christianity he actively promoted.