Constantine the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, reputation and impact of Constantine I, known as Constantine the Great (c280s -337AD). Born in modern day Serbia and proclaimed Emperor by his army in York in 306AD, Constantine became the first Roman Emperor to profess Christianity. He legalised Christianity and its followers achieved privileges that became lost to traditional religions, leading to the steady Christianisation of the Empire. He built a new palace in Byzantium, renaming it Constantinople, as part of the decentralisation of the Empire, an Eastern shift that saw Roman power endure another thousand years there, long after the collapse of the empire in the West.
Guests
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Christopher Kelly No other episodes
Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Cambridge - Lucy Grig
2 episodes
Senior Lecturer in Roman History at the University of Edinburgh - Greg Woolf
8 episodes
Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London
Reading list
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Constantine and Eusebius
T. D. Barnes (Harvard University Press, 1981) Google Books → -
Eusebius: Life of Constantine
Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (Clarendon Press, 1999) Google Books → -
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H. A. Drake (John Hopkins University Press, 2002) Google Books → -
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine
Noel Lenski (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Google Books → -
Constantine the Emperor
David Potter (Oxford University Press, 2013) Google Books → -
The Roman Revolution of Constantine
Raymond van Dam (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b096gjw0
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096gjw0
Auto-category: 937 (Roman Empire)