Galerius’ Edict of Toleration Ends the Great Persecution

The Great Persecution had hammered the churches for eight hard years. Edicts were nailed to city walls; altars to the gods were set in fora; magistrates demanded sacrifice. Then, in 311, the voice of the empire changed. From Nicomedia, Galerius issued an edict that ended the persecution and permitted Christians to meet again—an imperial climbdown announced in carefully turned Latin [3].

Criers read the text in marketplaces from Thessalonica to Antioch; scribes posted copies on stone near the basilicas where justice was done. The sound was bureaucratic—measured, legal, persuasive. But Christian communities heard a reprieve. The edict did not embrace their faith; it merely stopped hunting them. It allowed assemblies and ordered that no one be “disturbed” on account of religion. The phrasing mattered, and so did its timing: Galerius was ill; the empire was fracturing [3].

In Milan and Sirmium, provincial officials scanned lines about toleration and thought of stability. In Carthage and Alexandria, bishops read the words aloud to congregations who had risked prison or death. The color of power remained purple, and temples still smoked with sacrifice, but the legal air shifted. For the first time in years, Christians could breathe without glancing at a magistrate’s lictors [3].

Constantine, already a player in the western college of emperors, saw opportunity. He could present himself as a guarantor of the new peace, then as its architect. Within two years, he and Licinius would issue a broader policy—often tagged the “Edict of Milan”—that restored confiscated properties and guaranteed free exercise across provinces [3]. The hinge between persecution and patronage creaked open in 311. He would oil it.

In Nicomedia, the edict’s authors probably hoped to calm a troubled empire. In Rome, where Maxentius ruled, it was just one more piece in a complicated game. But along the roads—at Salona on the Adriatic, at Aquileia on the upper Adriatic, and at Naissus itself—the legal words planted seeds of confidence. When banners later carried a new sign into battle, Christians would already be standing in public, not hiding underground [3].