EDIT OF MILAN
After Constantine’s victory over Maxentius in 312, the emperors Constantine and Licinius met in Milan in the early months of 313. Their good understanding was further strengthened by a marital alliance, Licinius marrying Constantia, Constantine’s sister. Among the liberal and generous measures adopted at that meeting there were certainly some concerning the Christian question. Eusebius (Hist. eccl., X, 5) and Lactantius (De mort. persec., 48) report, with slight variations, a letter from Licinius to the governors of the provinces under his authority, written in the name of both emperors, and which modern writers have very inappropriately called the Edict of Milan, whereas at most it presupposes and explains a legislative act. The essential passages of the document are these:
> “While we, Constantine Augustus, and we, Licinius Augustus, were happily gathered in Milan and were discussing together all that concerns the interest and security of the State, among the matters which seemed to us useful for the multitude we believed we ought to assign first place to the provision that reverence be accorded to the Divinity, so that the Divine favour might be bestowed on us and on all who live under our authority. We therefore decided to grant both to the Christians and to all others the free permission to follow the religion which each one wished, in order that the Divine Majesty, to which we render our own devotion, might be appeased and be propitious to us. It seemed to us, moreover, that it would be unworthy to refuse to any one the opportunity to give his heart to the Christian religion, which is known to be most reasonable. Therefore, with regard to the Christians, we have decided that the places where they used to assemble, which we have learned have been sold or donated by others to our treasury or to anyone else, shall be restored to them without payment or any demand for price, and without any pretext or controversy. And if any have purchased them, they shall restore them as soon as possible to the Christians. Moreover, those who have obtained them as a gift shall likewise restore them to the Christians. And if any demand compensation from our benevolence, let them apply to the vicar, so that by our clemency they may obtain what they ask. All this shall be restored to the Christian community without delay…”
The document, therefore, is not a profession of Christian faith, nor does it grant Christians a privileged position; rather, it grants to them, as to the followers of any other religion, freedom of worship. The State no longer considers it necessary to demand homage to the gods of the official religion; the great conquest of religious freedom of thought is achieved, and consequently the previous policy of persecution is repudiated and condemned. This is a great advance over Galerius’s edict of toleration of 311; whereas he reproved and condemned those who had abandoned the religion of their fathers to follow the teaching of Christ, and only for reasons of expediency, as he says, and of clemency, he put an end to the persecutions, the document from Milan renounces the entire persecuting policy of its predecessors. Once the principle is established that following the Christian religion is no longer a crime against the State, the restitution of confiscated goods to the Christians follows as a legitimate consequence.
Noteworthy, moreover, is the fact that the restitutions are made to the communities (conventiculis, says the text of Lactantius), so that Christian communities are recognized as entities capable of holding property.
Given the fame of the imperial document, to which Christian writers attributed a greater significance than it actually possesses, thus overshadowing both Galerius’s edict and Licinius’s role in conferring upon Constantine alone the credit for the favourable provisions concerning Christians, it is understandable that among critics in the last fifty years there has been a reaction. Some have gone so far as to impugn the document as a Christian forgery; this cannot be, because the two writers who report it were contemporary with the events, and if they had invented an act of the imperial chancery, their writings would have been exposed to immediate refutation. Others, less radical, are closer to the truth: O. Seeck has demonstrated that the text preserved cannot be called an edict; H. Grégoire has added the proof that the act was not promulgated in Milan but in Nicomedia in June, not February, of 313, and has drawn the conclusion that it is due not to Constantine but solely to Licinius, to whom priority in the favourable dispositions toward Christianity should be granted. This may be going too far, and it has been refuted by J.-B. Palanque.
EDMUND, Saint, Martyr, King of East Anglia
Born at Nuremberg in 840, died 20 November 876. Of ancient Saxon royal stock, he professed Christianity from childhood; at the age of thirteen he began to reign in East Anglia, of which he was the last king. About the year 866–67 the Danes invaded the eastern provinces of England, and none of the princes could resist them. Edmund, refusing to submit, was captured and, after the torture of arrows, beheaded.