Edict of Milan

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The Edict of Milan (313) declared that the Roman Empire would be neutral with regard to religious worship, officially ending all government-sanctioned persecution, especially of Christianity. The Edict, by two Augusti (senior tetrarchs) Constantine I and Licinius gave to Christianity and other religions a status of legitimacy alongside Paganism. It initiated the period known by Christian historians as the Peace of the Church. The document itself does not survive.

[edit] History

The Edict of Milan was issued in 313, in the names of the Roman Emperors Constantine I, who ruled the western parts of the Empire, and Licinius, who ruled the east. A previous edict of toleration had been recently issued from Nicomedia by the Emperor Galerius in 311. By its provisions, the Christians, who had "followed such a caprice and had fallen into such a folly that they would not obey the institutes of antiquity", were granted an indulgence.

Wherefore, for this our indulgence, they ought to pray to their God for our safety, for that of the republic, and for their own, that the commonwealth may continue uninjured on every side, and that they may be able to live securely in their homes.

By the Edict of Milan the meeting places and other properties which had been confiscated from the Christians and sold out of the government treasury were to be returned:

...the same shall be restored to the Christians without payment or any claim of recompense and without any kind of fraud or deception...

The actual edicts have not been retrieved inscribed upon stone. However, it is quoted at length in a historical work with a theme of divine retribution, Lactantius' De mortibus persecutionibus ("Deaths of the persecutors").