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Home  »  Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men  »  Constantine the Great

S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.

Constantine the Great

  • [The first Christian emperor of Rome, born 272 A.D.; proclaimed emperor at York, 306; defeated Maximian and Maxentius, 312, and became supreme in the West; by the defeat of Licinius near Byzantium, was sole emperor; assembled the Council of Nicæa, 325, which condemned Arianism, and adopted the Nicene creed; transferred his court to Byzantium, 328; died at Nicomedia, 337, being baptized just before his death.]
  • In hoc signo vinces (Conquer by this sign).

  • In his march towards Rome, either at Autun in Gaul, or near Andernach on the Rhine, he is said to have seen in the sky the luminous cross surmounted by the words which he placed upon the Labarum, or standard of Rome, over the monogram of Christ, after his defeat of Maxentius, at Saxa Rubra, near Rome, Oct. 27, 312.
  • Feeling of his head, when urged to punish the Arians, who had broken his statues because he would not declare for them, he said, “I feel no wound.”