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Constantine I's relationship with the four Bishops of Rome during his reign is an important component of the history of the Papacy, and more generally the history of the Catholic Church. The legend surrounding Constantine I's victory in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312) relates his vision of the Chi Rho (☧) and the text ''in hoc signo vinces'' in the sky and his reproducing this symbol on the shields of his troops. The following year Constantine and Licinius proclaimed the toleration of Christianity with the Edict of Milan, and in 325 Constantine convened and presided over the First Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council. None of this, however, has particularly much to do with the popes, who did not even attend the Council; in fact, the first bishop of Rome to be contemporaneously referred to as "Pope" (πάππας, or ''pappas'') is Damasus I (366-384).〔Baumgartner, 2003, p. 6.〕 Moreover, between 324 and 330, he built Constantinople as a new capital for the empire, and—with no apologies to the Roman community of Christians—relocated key Roman families and translated many Christian relics to the new churches. The "Donation of Constantine", an 8th-century forgery used to enhance the prestige and authority of popes, places the pope more centrally in the narrative of Constantinian Christianity. The legend of the Donation claims that Constantine offered his crown to Sylvester I (314-335), and even that Sylvester baptized Constantine. In reality, Constantine was baptized (nearing his death in May 337) by Eusebius of Nicomedia, who, unlike the pope, was an Arian bishop. Sylvester was succeeded by Mark (336) and Julius I (337-352) during the life of Constantine. Although the "Donation" never occurred, Constantine did hand over the Lateran Palace to the bishop of Rome, and begin the construction of Old Saint Peter's Basilica (the "Constantinian Basilica"). The gift of the Lateran probably occurred during the reign of Miltiades (311-314), Sylvester I's predecessor, who began using it as his residence. Old St. Peter's was begun between 326 and 330 and would have taken three decades to complete, long after the death of Constantine. Constantine's legalization of Christianity, combined with the donation of these properties, gave the bishop of Rome an unprecedented level of temporal power, for the first time creating an incentive for secular leaders to interfere with papal succession. ==Background== In spite of the Diocletian Persecution, Christians constituted approximately one-tenth of the population of the Roman Empire at the time of Constantine's rise to power. Christianity was legalized by Galerius, who was the first emperor to issue an edict of toleration for all religious creeds including Christianity in April 311.〔De Mortibus Persecutorum ("On the Deaths of the Persecutors", chapters 34, 35)〕 Eamon Duffy characterizes the church before Constantine as "not one congregation, but a loose constellation of churches based in private houses or, as time went on and the community grew, meeting in rented halls in markets and public baths. It was without any single dominant ruling officer, its elders or leaders sharing responsibility, but distributing tasks, like that of foreign correspondent. By the eve of the conversion of Constantine, there were more than two dozen of these religious community-centers or ''tituli''.〔Duffy, 2006, p. 11.〕 The Roman church was a small community, and its bishop exercised little influence outside its members in the time of Constantine. That there could only be one bishop per city would be defined into church law by the First Council of Nicaea in 325.〔Baumgartner, 2003, p. 5.〕 Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to embrace Christianity, although he likely continued in his pre-Christian beliefs. He and co-Emperor Licinius bestowed imperial favor on Christianity through the Edict of Milan promulgated in 313. After the Edict of Milan, the church adopted the same governmental structure as the Empire: geographical provinces ruled by bishops. These bishops of important cities (Metropolitan bishops) therefore rose in power over the bishops of lesser cities (later called Suffragan bishops). Whatever his personal beliefs, Constantine's political interest in Christianity was as a unifying force and his policy of "the imposition of unity on the churches at all costs" soon set him on a "collision course with the popes."〔Duffy, 2006, p. 27.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bishops of Rome under Constantine I」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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