(Wikimedia Commons/)
Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the year 380 by order of Emperor Theodosius I, who took action in a law known as the Edict of Thessalonica. Before that, Christians were, for a long time, unpopular in Rome because they did not worship the emperor, but another type of king – Jesus -, which was seen as a subversive act. Even generating antipathies – and even persecution, as in the reign of Nero between the years 54 and 68 – they were tolerated in the first centuries of the life of their religion. With the decay of the empire at the end of the 2nd century and the threat of barbarian invasions, another period of harsh persecution of Christians began, who refused to serve in the Roman army. But even that didn’t stop Christianity from gaining followers, soon becoming the most popular belief in the empire. Realizing the growing strength of religion, Emperor Constantine I resolved to use it politically to strengthen his own power and confront Roman decay.
Under the inspiration of the motto “a God in Heaven, an Emperor on Earth”, Constantine proclaimed in 313 the Edict of Milan, a law that guaranteed freedom to worship any god, which would be fundamental for the future total conversion of the empire to religion. “In practice, the Edict of Milan represented the real turning point. Teodósio only sealed a process that lasted a few decades, consolidating the trend inaugurated by Constantine”, says theologian Pedro Vasconcellos, from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP).
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