* Pseudo-Constantine Diogenes, an impostor who assumed the identity of another of Romanos ’ sons, Constantine Diogenes.

He defeated his brother Constantine II in 340, but anger in the army over his personal life and preference for his barbarian bodyguards saw the general Magnentius rebel, resulting in Constans ’ assassination in 350.

With Constantine ’ s death in 337, Constans and his two brothers, Constantine II and Constantius II divided the Roman world between themselves, after first deposing of virtually all of the relatives of their father who could possibly have a claim on the throne.

Constans managed to extract the prefecture of Illyricum and the diocese of Thrace, provinces that were originally part of what was meant to be ruled by his cousin Dalmatius as per Constantine I ’ s proposed division of the Empire after his death.

Constans ’ brother, Constantine II, soon complained that he had not received the amount of territory that was his due, stemming from his position as the eldest of Constantine ’ s sons.

Constantine was eventually trapped at Aquileia, where he died, leaving Constans to inherit all of his brother ’ s former territories – Hispania, Britannia and Gaul.

This arrangement barely survived Constantine I ’ s death, with the sons of Constantine arranging the slaughter of most of the family of Constantine I at the hands of the army.

Constantine soon complained that he had not received the amount of territory that was his due, stemming from his position as the eldest of Constantine ’ s sons.

For example in the mid 350 ’ s the city of Jerusalem was hit with drastic food shortages at which point church historians Sozomen and Theodoret reported “ Cyril secretly sold sacramental ornaments of the church and a valuable holy robe, fashioned with gold thread that the emperor Constantine had once donated for the bishop to wear when he performed the rite of Baptism ”.

When Constantine converted to Christianity the majority of his subjects were still pagans and the Roman Imperial cult of the divinity of the emperor, expressed through the traditional burning of candles and the offering of incense to the emperor ’ s image, was tolerated for a period because it would have been politically dangerous to attempt to suppress it.

During the pontificate of Pope Constantine Gregory was made a papal secretary, and accompanied him to Constantinople in 711 to deal with the issues raised by Rome ’ s rejection of the canons of the Quinisext Council.

After Constantine ’ s death on 9 April 715, Gregory was elected pope, and was consecrated as Bishop of Rome on 19 May 715.

At this point, supporters of the pope-elect Stephen began to brutally attack key members of Constantine ’ s regime, including Constantine himself, who was hounded through the streets of Rome, with heavy weights attached to his feet.

Bishop Theodore, Constantine ’ s Vice-dominus was blinded and had his tongue cut out, while Constantine ’ s brother, Passivus, was also blinded.

* Lieu, S. N. C and Montserrat, D. ( Ed. s ) ( 1996 ), From Constantine to Julian, London.

With Constantine ’ s supporters largely dealt with, Stephen wrote to the Frankish king, Pepin the Short, notifying him of his election, and asking for a number of bishops to participate in a council he was seeking to hold to discuss the recent confusion.

Constantine I | Emperor Constantine and bishop s with the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed | Creed of 381.

" Under the persistence of the brethren who told him, " Emperor Constantine loves the church ," he accepted to write him a letter blessing him, and praying for the peace and safety of the empire and the church.

The wall was beginning to collapse when Constantine sent a letter to the pope asking for help.

* Averil Cameron ( professor at King's College and Oxford ) and Stuart Hall ( historian and theologian ), in their recent translation of the Life of Constantine, point out that writers such as Burckhardt found it necessary to attack Eusebius in order to undermine the ideological legitimacy of the Habsburg empire, which based itself on the idea of Christian empire derived from Constantine, and that the most controversial letter in the Life has since been found among the papyri of Egypt.

Along with the letter to Augustine, the missionaries brought a letter for Æthelberht, urging the King to act like the Roman Emperor Constantine I and force the conversion of his followers to Christianity.

The council began when Emperor Constantine IV, wanting to heal the schism that separated the two sides, wrote to Pope Donus suggesting a conference on the matter, but Donus was dead by the time the letter arrived.

This armillary sphere was also described by Gerbert in a letter to his colleague Constantine.

That fact has been confirmed explicitly by the papal letter Industriae tuae ( 880 ) approving the use of Old Church Slavonic, which says that the alphabet was " invented by Constantine the Philosopher ".

His citing of the Donation of Constantine in a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople brought about the Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Leo IX sent a letter to Michael Cærularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, in 1054, that cited a large portion of the Donation of Constantine, believing it genuine.

The official status of this letter is acknowledged in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 5, entry on Donation of Constantine, page 120:

He also delivered a combative letter from Pope Leo II to Constantine IV in 682.

In one extant inscription ( CIL III. 12132, from Arycanda ), the cities of Lycia and Pamphylia asking for the interdiction of the Christian cult, Maximinus, in another inscription, replied by expressing his hope that " may those [...] who, after being freed from [...] those by-ways [...] rejoice snatched from a grave illness ". After the victory of Constantine over Maxentius, however, Maximinus, according to Eusebius, directed a letter to the Praetorian Prefect Sabinus, in which he expressed the view that it was better to " recall our provincials to the worship of the gods rather by exhortations and flatteries ".

This is a letter of Pope Constantine ( 708-715 ), in which he grants privileges to a monastery at Vermundesei, then in the hands of the abbot of Medeshamstede, as Peterborough was known at the time.

From his letter that survives, Constantine shows frustration that the church cannot come to a good conclusion and he calls for a larger council, what is now known as the Council of Arles in 314.

In an open letter to the " catholics " Constantine asked the bishops to show moderation and patience to the Donatists.

Curiously enough Melanchthon's letter introducing Sozzini to Maximilian II invokes as an historic parallel the hospitable reception rendered by the Emperor Constantine to Athanasius when he fled from Egypt to Trèves.

In mid 2007, Constantine spoke about how she received a letter from St Mary's School, inviting her to come back to the school to talk about her career and success to current pupils.

Constantine immediately declined the offer with a four-letter refusal and wrote " No fucking way " on the letter she had received.

Three surviving letters attributed to Arius are his letter to Alexander of Alexandria, his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, and his confession to Constantine.

The Edict of Milan ( Edictum Mediolanense ) was a letter signed by emperors Constantine I and Licinius that proclaimed religious freedom in the Roman Empire.

He finally asserts this Byzantine ancestry based on a letter by Patriarch Nicholas I Mystikos discovered by byzantinists, in which he testifies that Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium, father of Constantine VII, had united his daughter to a Frank Prince, a cousin of Berta ( of Tuscia ), to whom came later a great misfortune.

It has been suggested that an early draft of the Donation of Constantine was made shortly after the middle of the 8th century, in order to assist Pope Stephen II in his negotiations with Pepin the Short, the Frankish Mayor of the Palace.

Pepin solidified his position in 754 by entering into an alliance with Pope Stephen II, who presented the king of the Franks a copy of the forged " Donation of Constantine " at Paris and in a magnificent ceremony at Saint-Denis anointed the king and his family and declared him patricius Romanorum (" protector of the Romans ").

One of Constantine ’ s first acts was to give notice to the Frankish King, Pepin the Short of his election, to secure the king ’ s approval of his actions.

Pepin ignored this letter, forcing Constantine to write another one, in which he declared that it was only due to the actions of the people which had forced him to take on the burdensome office of pope.

In it, it described their support of the veneration of Icons, and their opposition to the iconoclasm being enforced by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine V. Constantine had the letter read before the Roman people, after which he forwarded it to King Pepin.