Quotes About Constantine

There was a greedy extravagance about her that was a little overdone for an afternoon at the pictures.

Did Constantine actually just say that? Hell would be freezing over if the Thunderhead weren't controlling its weather.

And so it gave Ayn the opportunity to observe. To let it play out, and allow Goddard a few moments of fear and shock, before she gleaned the intruder. Because as Constantine suggested, she could mold Goddard's actions—but only when he was reeling, and his fury was whipped into stiff but malleable peaks.

One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.

The gospels are radical pacifist material. When the emperor Constantine adopted Christianity he shifted it. He shifted Christianity from a radical pacifist religion to the religion of the Roman empire. So the cross, which was symbol of the suffering of the poor was put on the shield of roman soldiers. Since that time the church has been pretty much the church of the rich and the powerful.

But Christianity did not become successful through Constantine giving it imperial approval. Instead, Constantine adopted Christianity likely because it had already become so successful despite earlier efforts to destroy the movement.

Constantine wanted to establish a world or universal religion, with himself at the head. During this council, he declared his divinity by stating that the God of Christians was his personal sponsor. He then replaced certain Christian religious practices of the time with familiar Roman Empire practices of sun worship along with other Pagan teachings from Syria and Persia.

Prominent Christians in Constantine's time waited to be baptized until their deathbeds lest they commit a "major"sin that couldn't be forgiven of those already baptized. Others felt anyone who did anything to avoid martyrdom were apostates had no valid subsequent ministry.

Can we say as much for what is termed "the religion of Christ?" No! this religion has had the aid of the sword and firebrand, the rack and the thumb-screw. "Persecution," is to be seen written on the pages of ecclesiastical history, from the time of Constantine even to the present day. [444:1] This Christian emperor and saint was the first to check free-thought.

The moment we crossed over the threshold, the moment when our veins and cells and organs went blip, I closed my eyes And illusioned. It wasn't like any illusion I'd created before. It flowed from me like a song, an orchestra of interweaving threads and melodies, painting themselves into a picture around us. [Everything] ... disappeared, and only Constantine, Queen Honoria and I stood in the nothing between two worlds.

Originally," Langdon said, "Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagan's veneration day of the sun." He paused, grinning. "To this day, most churchgoers attend services on Sunday morning with no idea that they are there on account of the pagan sun god's weekly tribute—Sunday.

The Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea at his summer palace and invited the bishops to attend, all expenses paid. As an added lure, he even mentioned "the excellent temperature of the air." Constantine had his own agenda. He wanted to get this unsettled problem of Jesus' identity straightened out so that Christianity could better serve as cement for his sprawling empire. He

The followers of Arius (born c. 250) believed that Christ, being the most perfect creature in the material world, had been adopted by God as a son. And the view had been spread by Arius' popular poetic work, Thalia (Banquet), which led to Arius' condemnation by the bishops as a heretic, and his exile from his post as priest in Alexandria. Constantine betrayed his own theological innocence when he called this dispute a fight over trifling and foolish verbal differences.

called the Council of Hiereia to condemn image veneration. A few such images in churches seem to have been destroyed and replaced by crosses, which were for Constantine fully acceptable, because symbolic, objects of veneration. (Most holy portraits were not destroyed, however, as far as we can tell today.)

In 313, issuing a proclamation that for the first time gave a legal standing to Christianity, he coyly refused to name 'the divinity who sits in heaven'.54 The vagueness was deliberate. Christ or Apollo, Constantine wished to leave the choice of whom his subjects identified as 'the supreme divinity'55 to them. Where there were divisions, he aimed to blur.

The largest and most important was St Peter's, the great basilica built by Constantine the Great

in 934, the king set out to discipline Constantine by invading his territory.

The most radical views of church–state relations in sixteenth-century Europe were held by the Anabaptists, who rejected almost all of the links between the sacred and the secular that had been built up in Europe since the age of Constantine.

the city of Rome, the best indication of the changed world is the arch erected in 315 CE in honour of the emperor Constantine's victory over one of his internal rivals. It still stands, preserved because it was once built into a Renaissance fortress, between the old Roman

The "Donation" further alleged that Constantine, for the first time, had declared the bishop of Rome to be "Vicar of Christ" and offered him the status of emperor.

then transferred all Italy to be the property of the pope and removed to his city of Constantinople, leaving the manuscript recording his donation on the embalmed body of Saint Peter. "Alas, Constantine, how much evil didst thou mother!" exclaimed Dante. This is unfair to Constantine; the evil was mothered by some ingenious clerical zealot, who contrived probably the most momentous forgery in history.

Constantine, it must be remembered, was not a well-educated man. In his anxiety before the battle of the Milvian Bridge he actually thought he could strike a bargain with God. This gamble on Christianity apparently led to his victory