Just six years after Constantine the Great bowed his knee to the God of the Christians, he enlisted the church’s leadership to serve the Roman empire. In AD 318, bishops were still reeling from the vicious Diocletian persecution, with fresh memories of the torture and execution of their fellow believers. Under a new law, they now gained the power to rule on legal disputes, with their judgments backed by imperial authority and unappealable to civil tribunals. It was a breathtaking reversal of fortune.
