The Church of the Holy Sepulchre (New Version)

It's generally accepted that this church is one of the most important building projects of Constantine the Great.*

He became emperor of the Roman Empire in 312 following the death of Diocletian, who had persecuted Christians very severely for not paying homage to the emperor as God and so weaken the unity of the Empire..Many Romans had adopted Christianity and had stopped making offerings in honour of the Emperor in the temples.

Constantine clearly saw that his predecesor's policy of persecuting Christians was not solving the problem of disunity in the Empire. On the contrary, the more they were persecuted the more loyal they became to their religion and the number of Christians in the empire was simply increasing. Persecution was only making more enemies of the empire. Persecution was just making the empire more divided and Constantine sought to unify it.

Constantine decided to use the Christian ability to attract members for the purpose of bringing unity to the Roman Empire.

Instead of persecuting the Christians in 324 he issued the decree of Milan, whereby Christians were permitted to worship Jesus as all the other Roman gods. Later, at the end of the 4^th century, Theodosius, Constantine's successor declared Jesus as the main God of the Roman Empire. Jesus had become the State God.

With this act Constantine achieved great success. Christians praised and sanctified the emperor and began to visit the place where Jesus rose from the dead in their thousands. Constantine sanctified this place with the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

By his action Christians suddenly became loyal Roman citizens. Worshipping at the church which Constantine had built became the way to show loyalty to the emperor and the empire.

Constantine had succeeded in using the Christian religion to unify the Roman Empire.

Seeing that Christianity had it's roots in Judaism and was similar to it in many respects and seeing that the Jews were loyal Roman citizens the Christians naturally expected that Jews would be attracted to Christianity, something that hadn't happened before and that disappointed Christians.

This didn't happen, Jews weren't attracted to Christianity, despite the official approval of the emperor. As a result Christians began accusing the Jews of being "Misanthropists" (people who hate other human beings".

As the ties between Christianity and the state became stronger so Jews were evermore looked down upon and as their loyalty to the state became questionable because of their refusal to worship Jesus they came to be regarded as second class citizens and the seeds of anti-semitism were sown.

* According to Gregory Armstrong, Constantine's Church, an article in Gesta Vol 6 of 1967 at least 23 churches were built according to Consta