Ancient Warfare Answers (266): Which account of the battle of the Milvian Bridge is the most convincing?

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I’m a bit late, but Murray mentions Constantine’s deathbed baptism as a basis for skepticism of the narrative of his conversion occurring immediately after the battle of the Milvian bridge. My understanding based on what I was told in both an undergraduate course on the subject, as well as my (non-historian) priest as I recall, is that deathbed baptisms were common practice even by fairly devout converts to Christianity in this period- essentially trying to get maximum value out of it by “saving” baptism until the last possible moment. I believe Bart Ehrman has written about this.

Richard Gates

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