Conversion to Christianity

Originally posted by Tobodai well I believe by the time Constantine came to power the Christian poulation was approaching the halfway mark.  Perhaps he made a shrewd and wise decision to pre-empt the tides of popular thought.  Also Christians of that time tended not to regard the emperor as legitimate, if indeed they were becomng a larger constituency this way he gets at least their support. And of course, things like this often have to do with the desire to clean out some people or positions in government using radical change.

The pagan population was in the majority after Constantine.  What happend was that in "official" terms since Christians were favoured in offices the pagan population was left alone to practice at home, but not in public.  Therefore, the illusion of Christian majority developed by the Roman government over decades became official state policy due to the fact that if forceful conversions had been attempted the stability of the state would have been undermined even more, not to mention the powerful aristocartic class had remained largerly pagan. Basically what happened after legalization and the eventual institutionalization of Christianty as the state religion was that the state applied a dont ask dont tell policy and "assumed" that all were Christian.