Event · AD 313 · Milan · the empire
The Edict of Milan, AD 313
Edict of Milan — Christianity legalized
**The instrument the archive treats as the hinge of its whole chronology**, and the record is careful about what it was.
Constantine and **Licinius**, meeting at Milan in 313, agreed a policy of religious liberty, and the text — in fact a rescript circulated to provincial governors — survives in Lactantius and Eusebius.
## What it grants, and what is unusual in it
**Liberty is granted to everyone, not only to Christians.** The text states that freedom of worship is to be denied to no one, and that each may follow the religion he chooses — which is a broader instrument than a Christian charter, and the record says so.
**The property clauses are the practical substance**, and they are what makes the document evidence rather than rhetoric. Places of worship and other property confiscated from the churches are to be **restored without payment and without delay**. And then the clause the archive singles out: **those who had bought or been given such property are themselves to petition for compensation from the imperial treasury.**
**That clause presupposes a functioning market in confiscated church property**, and it is the plainest proof in the archive of how much the churches had owned before 303 — enough to have been sold on, to identifiable buyers, whose losses now needed indemnifying.
## Three cautions the record states
**It is not called the Edict of Milan in the sources**, and it is not strictly an edict; the surviving texts are the rescript issued afterwards, in Licinius's name for the East.
**It did not make Christianity the state religion.** That comes with the **Edict of Thessalonica** in 380, which the archive holds as its own event sixty-seven years later.
**And it did not last as a partnership.** Licinius turned against the Christians within a decade and was defeated by Constantine in 324. **The toleration survived; the alliance that issued it did not.**
The sources for this event
Every source the record rests on, with what it says and what it cannot carry.
Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors 48
c. AD 315[The rescript. **Liberty is granted to all, not to Christians alone** — that no one be denied the opportunity to give his heart to the observance of the Christian religion, or of any other he chooses. Then the property clauses, which are the practical substance: places of worship and other property to be **restored to the churches without payment and without delay**, and — the clause the archive singles out — **those who had purchased or received such property are to petition the imperial treasury for compensation.** **That presupposes a functioning market in confiscated church property**, and is the plainest proof in the archive of how much the churches owned before 303.]
Lactantius, *On the Deaths of the Persecutors* — **held in this library**. Written c. AD 315; English in Ante-Nicene Fathers 7, public domain. This is the fuller of the two surviving texts of the settlement.
Read the source text →Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History X.5
c. AD 325[Eusebius gives a Greek version of the rescript in his tenth book. ⚠ **Three cautions the record states.** It is **not called the Edict of Milan in the sources** and is not strictly an edict — the surviving texts are the rescript circulated afterwards. It **did not make Christianity the state religion**; that is the Edict of Thessalonica of 380, which the archive holds as its own event. And **the partnership did not hold** — Licinius turned against the Christians within a decade and was defeated in 324. The toleration survived; the alliance that issued it did not.]
Eusebius, *Ecclesiastical History* — held in this library. English: A. C. McGiffert, NPNF 2nd ser. 1 (1890), public domain.
Read the source text →The Edict of Milan (the Milan settlement)
c. AD 313[Linked because the property clauses are the substance, and one of them is the find: confiscated property is to be restored without payment, **and those who had bought or been given such property are to petition the treasury for compensation.** That clause presupposes a functioning market in confiscated church property — the plainest evidence in the archive of how much the churches had owned before 303. ⚠ Liberty is granted to everyone, not only to Christians, and the instrument did not make Christianity the state religion; that is the Edict of Thessalonica of 380, held here as its own event and its own text.]
*The Edict of Milan (the Milan settlement)* — **held in this library** as its own text record. ⚠ It is not called the Edict of Milan in the sources and is not strictly an edict: what survives is the rescript circulated afterwards, in two transmissions.
Read the source text →Figures in this event (5)
Scholarship
- Constantine and the Christian EmpireCharles Matson Odahl, 2nd edn 2010On the Milan agreement, the rescript, and the property provisions.