The Edict of Milan

In 311 the emperor Galerius had ended the persecution with an edict that allowed Christians to exist again and to rebuild their meeting places (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 34–35). After his victory at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine went to Milan that winter. Licinius, who ruled in Illyricum, came there to marry Constantine’s sister Constantia (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 45) (Origo Constantini 5.13).

While the wedding was being celebrated, Maximinus Daia, who ruled the lands beyond the Bosphorus, marched out of Syria and invaded Licinius’s territory (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 45). Licinius marched to meet him and defeated him on the last day of April 313 (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 46–47). He then crossed into Bithynia, entered Nicomedia, and on 13 June ordered a letter addressed to the governor to be posted there (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 48).

The letter speaks in the names of both emperors. It says that when they met at Milan they resolved to grant to Christians and to everyone else the freedom to follow whatever religion each person chose, so that whatever divinity there is in heaven might be favourable to them and to their subjects. Earlier restrictions on Christians are cancelled. Places of assembly that had been confiscated are to be handed back without payment, whether they had since been bought or received as gifts, and the present holders may apply for compensation from the emperors’ bounty. Other property that belonged to the churches as corporate bodies is to be returned in the same way (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 48).

This is the text commonly called the Edict of Milan. In form it is a letter to a provincial governor, and the copy that Lactantius gives, in Latin, is the one Licinius had posted at Nicomedia (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 48). Eusebius gives the letter in a Greek translation, with an opening passage that Lactantius does not have (Eusebius, Church History 10.5.2–14). Neither writer gives a law issued at Milan itself. Eusebius also preserves a letter of Constantine to the proconsul of Africa ordering that property of the churches be restored (Eusebius, Church History 10.5.15–17).

The letter went beyond what Galerius had allowed: it granted the same freedom of worship to Christians and to all others, and gave the churches back what they had lost (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 34–35) (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 48). It did not make Christianity the religion of the empire. Licinius later turned against the Christians in his own territory, according to Eusebius (Eusebius, Church History 10.8.8–19), and Constantine defeated him and became sole emperor (Origo Constantini 5.23–29).