Good day Worthy Knights

In this part 3, you will find the Labarum Standard and the Arch of Constantine.      (Wikipedia)

The labarum does not appear on any of several standards depicted on the Arch of Constantine, which was erected just three years after the battle.

If Eusebius’ oath-confirmed account of Constantine’s vision and the role it played in his victory and conversion can be trusted, then a grand opportunity for the kind of political propaganda that the Arch was built to present was missed.

Many historians have argued that in the early years after the battle, the Emperor had not yet decided to give clear public support to Christianity, whether from a lack of personal faith or because of fear of religious friction.

The Arch’s inscription does say that the Emperor had saved the Res Publica (public issue or matter) Instinctu Divinitatis Mentis Magnitudine (“by greatness of mind and by instinct [or impulse] of divinity”).

Continuing the iconography of his predecessors, Constantine’s coinage at the time was inscribed with solar symbolism, interpreted as representing Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), Helios, Apollo, or Mithras, but in 325 and thereafter the coinage ceases to be explicitly pagan, and Sol Invictus disappears. 

And although Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiae further reports that Constantine had a statue of himself “holding the sign of the Saviour [the cross] in his right hand” erected after his victorious entry into Rome, there are no other reports to confirm such a monument.

Historians still dispute whether Constantine was the first Christian Emperor to support a peaceful transition to Christianity during his rule, or an undecided pagan believer until middle age, and also how strongly influenced he was in his political-religious decisions by his Christian mother St. Helena.

Sincere words of thanks to Bro. Anthony Wilson and Bro. Les Woodbridge, for their outstanding contributions and for providing their own presentations.

(Golden Harvest Lodge 9234 EC)