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ce, but believing the co-operating power of Deity invincible and not to be shaken” (Ch27). It means that he sought for support of his political power from religion and obviously he wanted to be an emperor by the God’s will.
Actually, this idea may be traced in the work of Michael Grants “Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times”, where he states that “it was by the will of God that Constantine became possessed by the Empire” (1999:211). So, it may be an evidence of Constantine’s intention to be close to the almighty God. But it was only one of the reasons why the emperor decided to convert to Christianity not only himself but the whole empire.
Naturally, there were other reasons that were probably even more important for Constantine and his empire. It is necessary to say that at that epoch Roman empire was on its way to decline and civil wars were normal part of the life of the empire. Consequently, ideologically, the population of Roman empire was so diverse that it was vitally important to find a unifying force that would be able to unite all members of Roman society, all the population of this huge country despite nationality, social status, political views, etc.
Christianity with its particular philosophy was probably the best solution of the problem for Constantine, especially if take into consideration the growing popularity of Christianity despite all prohibitions that were quite ordinary in pre-Constantine epochs.
During the reign of Constantine, Christianity prospered. All his deeds were accompanied by God’s will and divine visions that the emperor saw from time to time. Even his conversion to Christianity was predetermined by his vision that happened during the war with his co-emperor Maxentius. As Eusebius describes it, before the crucial battle of Milvian Bridge, the emperor, being convinced that he needed a divine assistance, prayed for it and got a vision of a cross of light at midday, bearing the inscription of ‘in this sign you will be victorious’.
However, the latter fact is nowadays traditionally explained by optic illusion if not the invention of Constantine but still it symbolize what attention he paid to Christianity that should bring him victory in his struggle for power.
Thus, his conversion to Christianity had a dubious effect. For him, it should become a state religion able to unite all peoples and nations by one common idea, philosophy and naturally religion. At the same time, conversion to Christianity of the whole Roman empire had a much more serious and far going consequences for all European civilization in the next epoch that changed ancient world, i.e. the Middle Ages and even further epochs.
However, religion was not the only sphere in which Constantine I the Great produced a great impact on further development of European civilization. He, possessing such a huge empire as Roman, understood that Rome itself could not remain anymore the center of the empire because it was too far in the west and it was extremely difficult to control the whole empire from this city. As a result he decided to create a new center of empire that would unite it in a solid country, and that would lead to the realization of dreams, which Alexander the Great once had attempted to realize, dreams about the uniting of West and East.

On changing several cities as potential centers of his empire he decided to build a new city Constantinople on the basis of Greek settle本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。