In the Western world, it took centuries for power or sovereignty to be vested in the people and thus achieve some form of democracy–for a very long time the top power was where sovereignty often resided. In many early cases, such power was appropriated by a victorious general. However, this development, very often, entailed the invocation of supernatural powers, as was the case when Constantine became the Roman Emperor in 312 CE.
In that year he was the head of the Roman garrison at York in northern England, but the power in Rome was in the hands of his rival Maxentius. Constantine moved his troops in a few weeks from York to the outskirts of Rome, where he fought and won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge: he thus became the Roman Emperor.
But this story is far more significant because he shrewdly held that in order to motivate his army he needed to appeal to the faith of his soldiers who, like many of the dispossessed at the time, believed in the religion that gave hope to the poor: Christianity. So, in a very convenient dream, he ‘saw’ a cross in the sky. His announcement before the battle that from then on Christianity was to be the official religion of the Roman Empire did much to energise his troops and changed western society for ever.
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