 These later accounts were more willing to present Constantine as a genuine convert to Christianity . Beginning with Norman H. Baynes ' Constantine the Great and the Christian Church ( 1929 ) and reinforced by Andreas <unk> 's The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome ( 1948 ) , a historiographic tradition developed which presented Constantine as a committed Christian . T. D. Barnes 's seminal Constantine and Eusebius ( 1981 ) represents the culmination of this trend . Barnes ' Constantine experienced a radical conversion , which drove him on a personal crusade to convert his empire . Charles Matson <unk> 's recent Constantine and the Christian Empire ( 2004 ) takes much the same tack . In spite of Barnes ' work , arguments over the strength and depth of Constantine 's religious conversion continue . Certain themes in this school reached new extremes in T.G. Elliott 's The Christianity of Constantine the Great ( 1996 ) , which presented Constantine as a committed Christian from early childhood . A similar view of Constantine is held in Paul <unk> 's recent ( 2007 ) work , Quand notre monde est <unk> <unk> , which does not speculate on the origins of Constantine 's Christian motivation , but presents him , in his role as Emperor , as a religious revolutionary who fervently believed himself meant " to play a providential role in the <unk> economy of the salvation of humanity " . 
