The Edict of Milan is the name traditionally given to the agreement reached in February 313 by the Roman emperors Constantine I and Licinius, meeting at Milan, to grant Christians and followers of every other religion the freedom to worship as they chose. It ordered the return of property seized from Christians and completed the end of the Diocletianic Persecution. It did not make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, but it gave the church secure legal standing and opened what became known as the Peace of the Church.
From persecution to toleration
Roman religion embraced many gods and readily absorbed those of conquered peoples. Christians, who rejected all gods but their own and refused to honour the emperor's divinity, did not fit this system and faced periodic persecution, most severely from 303 under Diocletian and his colleagues. By 311 the policy had clearly failed. That April the emperor Galerius, then dying, issued an edict from Serdica granting Christians an indulgence to meet and worship, provided they prayed for the emperor and the state. It did nothing, however, to restore their confiscated property, and in the eastern provinces his successor Maximinus Daza soon renewed the persecution, encouraging cities to petition against the Christians.
The meeting at Milan
In February 313 Constantine, who ruled the West, met Licinius, who controlled the Balkans, at Milan. Among other business they agreed on a common religious policy. Later that year Licinius defeated Maximinus and took over the eastern provinces. On 13 June 313 he had the terms posted at Nicomedia in a letter to the governor of Bithynia, and a copy also appeared in Palestine later that year.
Not quite an edict
No original document survives. The text is known from two Christian writers, Lactantius, who gives a Latin version, and Eusebius of Caesarea, who translated it into Greek, and their versions differ noticeably. The surviving text is not formally an edict at all, but a letter issued by Licinius to his governors, and most scholars now reject the traditional picture of a single imperial edict proclaimed at Milan. In his later life of Constantine, Eusebius left Licinius out of the story altogether, presenting Constantine as the sole hero.
What it granted
The letter declares that Christians and everyone else should be free to follow the religion of their choice, so that every divine power might look kindly on the empire, and that no religion should lose any of its standing. It went further than Galerius's edict by ordering that churches and other property taken from Christians be handed back at once, without payment, with the state compensating anyone who had acquired them. For the first time Christians could celebrate their liturgy openly and in full.
Faith or policy?
Because Licinius, a pagan, drafted the text, its wording reflects a policy of general toleration rather than Constantine's own preferences. Historians have debated whether the agreement was an act of genuine faith on Constantine's part or a pragmatic step to secure stability and the favour of a powerful god. Most believe his conversion was sincere, pointing to the support he gave the church for the rest of his reign, in which he tolerated other religions but actively promoted Christianity.
Afterwards
The edict brought legal status, not establishment. Christianity became the state religion only in 380, when the Edict of Thessalonica gave Nicene Christianity official standing.
On our maps
Our 300 map shows the Roman Empire shortly before the agreement, when Milan in northern Italy was one of the imperial residences, and our 400 map shows the empire after Christianity's rise.