THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE IMPERIAL MARRIAGE IN MILAN or WHAT DID CONSTANTINE AND LICINIUS DISCUSS IN MILAN
Abstract
Since 1973 I have consistently argued that there was no ‘Edict of Milan’ in the conventional sense, since what the emperors Constantine and Licinius decided in regard to Christianity when they conferred in Milan in February 313 was that Licinius would extend to his territory the restitution of Christian property confiscated during the Diocletianic persecution which had already occurred in the West. Here Constantine had ordered such restitution in Britain, Gaul and Spain in the summer of 306 very soon after he had been acclaimed Augustus by his father Constantius’ army at York, while in 311 Maxentius had followed suit in Italy and Africa. Imperial policy towards Christians and the Christian church was not the most important topic which the two emperors discussed. Their conference in Milan was a “summit conference” which was as important for history as the wartime conference of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in Yalta during the Second World War. On both occasions the main business of the conference was to decide the political future of territory which the allies did not yet control, but which they expected to win by military conquest in the near future. In January 1945, with the defeat of Germany looming, the leaders of Britain, the United States of America and the Soviet Union met to discuss the political shape of post-war Europe. In February 313, Constantine had fought and won his war against Maxentius, but both he and Licinius knew that Maximinus was about to invade the territory of Licinius from the East. Just as the decisions taken at Yalta in February 1945 determined the political history of Eastern Europe for the next two generations, so too, it may be argued, those taken in Milan in February 313 set the eastern Roman Empire on a new political and religious course for centuries.
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