Talk:Constantine the Great

Illyrian or Dacian?
Copy/paste from my talk page:









Note: they got indeffed. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:23, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Wording issues w/ summary paragraph and 'later rule' subsection on religion
Both the third paragraph of the article summary and the "religious policy" section under "later rule" are, well, a bit of a mess.

Summary paragraph: the use of 'catechumen' is weird and confusing here - it's listed along with paganism as if it were a second non-Christian religion Constantine followed for a time before converting. Tacked onto the same sentence is an undated clause about his eventual baptism, which fails to mention that it was a deathbed conversion (being squeezed between clauses about events from 312 and 313 doesn't help clarify that chronology, either). Seems like this would be a good place in the article to clearly explain the basic sequence of events here: Constantine was openly supportive of Christianity and made clear his intent to eventually be baptized, but that baptism didn't occur until the 330s when he was on his deathbed.

Later rule subsection: ...oof. I'm gonna go with bullet points so I don't spend an hour nitpicking a few paragraphs of text I am probably not qualified to rewrite: Solistus (talk) 22:01, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Why is this even in the later rule section? most of it is about things that happened in the first half of his reign. The subsections before and after are mid 320s-early 330s, the religious policies section is mostly about the first half of his reign.
 * Suddenly there's scholastic debate over whether Constantine had been Christian all along or only decided to convert c. ~312? This seems to flatly contradict the summary paragraph about religion (which states as fact that he lived much of his life a pagan) and even the very first sentence of the article (which declares him the first Emperor to convert to Christianity - a term generally reserved for people who practiced some other religion previously and not children adopting the beliefs a parent taught them). Idk, maybe I'm nitpicking, but it seems like this should either be elaborated on or conclude with some clear statement to the effect of 'but the scholars who say he was a later convert have more evidence on their side' to explain why the rest of the article is written as if no such debate exists.
 * Why do we need to defer to 'Christian writers' for a simple factual claim like when Constantine publicly declared himself a Christian, and why is it worded confusingly as "According to [group] he was over 40?" The dates are right there in the paragraph above, 312-313 depending on what you treat as sufficiently public and declarative. This seems to be just a worse, less clear restatement of the first paragraph
 * Also, was the bit about this "ma[king] clear" that his successes were due to God's favor or whatever said by Constantine or by the cited Christian writer(s), and in either case why is it just reinserted here like it's a verified factual claim? If Big C said it at the time then 1. maybe cite the thing he said or at least a rough date for when he said it? and 2. maybe the article should make clear that it's telling you what he said and not repeating that claim and asserting its veracity. If it's the unnamed source author(s) adding that bit of theological commentary in, those 2 points still apply but also 3. who cares and how is that relevant to the historical figure? There are already like 8 separate articles about Constantine and religion.
 * The last half of this para is interesting, would be nice if it cited a source though. And maybe it's interesting enough to have its own paragraph? Doesn't really make sense for it to be crammed into this paragraph when the next one is a direct followup on the same topic that would make more sense to combine - or simply have as two back-to-back paragraphs instead of the back half of a franken-paragraph and a new para referring back to the discussion that starts halfway through the previous one.
 * 99% sure this subsection was organized by someone who is bullying me personally by shuffling things out of chronological order for no clear reason
 * turns out bullet points don't help me get to the point any quicker, oops.

"She was a saint"
The lead contains the following sentence about Helena: "She was a saint and is attributed with the conversion of her son". What is "she was a saint" supposed to mean? Surely it should be something like "she is considered a saint by ..." or "she was canonized by ...". Aterbiou (talk) 13:34, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Changed. Johnbod (talk) 14:08, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

augustus or Augustus
In the "In the West" section there is a bit of an inconsistency as to whether the title A/augustus  should be capitalised. The text says " support for raising Constantine to the rank of full augustus" and later "proclaimed Constantine as augustus" as well as one further useage. However the caption of the image next to this text says of the statue in York it is "near the spot where he was proclaimed Augustus in 306". Thus should these be standardised to either Augustus or augustus? Dunarc (talk) 22:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Peter Heather
I'm no late antiquity scholar, but I'm curious if Peter Heather's interpretation of Constantine expressed in his recent Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300–1300 would be due a mention in the article. Essentially, Heather sees it most likely that Constantine had always been a Christian (or at least had been well before 312) and what we see in the timeline of events is his "coming out" as a Christian in stages as it became politically safe for him to do so in an overwhelmingly pagan empire. Personally, I find this significantly more compelling than the notion that he simply wasn't bright enough to realize he couldn't be both at once for nearly a decade—but I don't know how well-trodden this interpretation is, or how fringe it seems. Heather points to the later narrative of Julian converting the other way and practising in secret for an extended period to illustrate why this is plausible. Remsense 诉  09:33, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Heather is an RS so it would be OK to cover his views. However, there was nothing unusual about practising both Christianity and paganism. Syncretism was normal in the Roman world and it is wrong to describe it as stupid because it is condemned by Christian theologians. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:35, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Of course; my understanding is there was always a broad gamut of syncretism in late antiquity—however, I've tried to remind myself there has always been exclusivist backbone to Christian theology at least among the social elite—that is to say, of course people at all levels of society run the gamut, but the weighting is such that it strains credulity a hair for me to think that a person in Constantine's position would not have found it rather egregious to freely juxtapose Christ, Sol Invictus, and Apollo.
 * Of course nobody knows for sure, but that's what I like so much about Heather's argument: it feels fresh and common sense without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'll see what I can do about writing up a quick sentence or two: I don't want to further stuff this article, it's already probably a bit long. Remsense  诉  13:43, 30 March 2024 (UTC)