WI in Battle of Milvian Bridge both Constantine I and Maxentius die?

In 28 October 312 AD Constantine's and Maxentius's armies clashed near Milvian Bridge in Rome, Constantine emerged victorious. Already known as a skillful general, Constantine began to push Maxentius' army back toward the Tiber, Maxentius decided to retreat and make another stand at Rome itself. But there was only one escape route, via the bridge, Constantine's men inflicted heavy losses on the retreating army. Finally, the provisional bridge set up alongside the Milvian Bridge, over which many of the troops were escaping, collapsed, and those men stranded on the north bank of the Tiber were either taken prisoner or killed. Maxentius was among the dead, having drowned in the river while trying to swim across it in a desperate bid to escape...
WI Constantine who just had won the battle was killed too along with Maxentius that day? How is this altering History?
Any thoughts?
 
If Constantine dies in that battle, then I hope that plans to christianize the Roman Empire die with him. Other than that, I think the Imperium Romanorum would need a strong and capable Emperor to hold everything together.
 
That 'In hoc signo' ploy of Consantine would hamper Christian missionary efforts a bit. Possibly Christianity could fall out of favor and be replaced by another mystery religion- Mithras or Sol Invictus come to mind, as the old Roman polytheism was already dying. Those were more tolerant in their attitudes and less likely to slaughter each other over doctrinal issues, thus would not tear Roman society apart to the extent Christianity did, and would not try to destroy as much of the learning of Antiquity as they could. What was preserved in the Christian west wasn't preserved out of love for learning, but to teach classical Latin (and Greek), which at that time was already quite different in common usage- as far as 15th century English is from the modern language.
 
Perhaps the creation of an administrative office, similar in purpose to the later Christian Churches, could have preserved the Roman and Provincial traditions.
 
Christianity would have continued to develop as a counter-cultural, agent of change movement and flourished through the faith and faithfulness of its adherants to the New Testament message. The Roman Empire would have continued to deteriorate and decline as per OTL.
 
I don't think so. The Empire was already grossly over-administrated and over-regulated. While it might be created given the mindset of the dominate, it would be seen as a sinecure and staffed with the most useless cretins of the nobility.
I'll modify my former statements. Long-term, I think Augustinian Christianity will still win out. It's just too useful a tool, with its rigid structure and no moral agenda this side of the afterlife and is already far too widespread to vanish. It will take a few years more, but some Emperor is going to do what Constantine did, make the Church his bitch, and the ride will be bumpier. There is the possibility that the Empire might collapse before the last heathens are gone, who might survive as a minority. Also some of the Germanic groups might be less impressed with the war-winnig power of Christ, and remain heathen, further weakening the total power OTLs church had over Europe's spiritual life.
 
Nah, Christianity accelerated the decay of the Empire. A lot. With Caesaropapism- and no Emperor will tolerate an independent church- the regular civil wars got a religious dimension and became much bloodier. Before the advent of Christianity as state religion, unsuccessful usurpers were usually quickly murdered by their own men and the whole mess swept under the carpet. But with the Emperor as God's chosen ruler, the troops supporting an usurper were basically heretics. In an Empire where hereditary succession was almost an anomaly that was a recipe for desaster.
And Christianity never was an agent of change in any form, on the contrary. Earthly matters were seen as irrelevant in the face of the near Second Coming. That's why it was seen as so useful for the Empire. The dominate sought to preserve stability in all matters, for example forcing men to take up their fathers' trade, regulated prices, etc. The Imperium Romanum Christianum gave every department of its bloated government the nimbus of sancticity, its ordinaces were holy writ. Even a church that is not a creature of the Imperium will not advocate change. Wordly life is fleeting and all that matters is the afterlife.
 
I'm not so sure that any of Constantine's contemporaries saw Christianity in the same light as him. As far as they were concerned, Christians were the least patriotic of people ( case in point being St Augustine of Hippo). I was thinking that while playing on the spiritual beliefs of the people might have increased loyalty to the state, that doesn't mean that people needed a new religion. Not everyone worships or cares about Jesus, Sol Invictus, Mithras and Isis. What could have helped would be to introduce a new bureaucracy that preserved and promoted and regulated both the state religion, local traditions and newer cults. Even after the fall of the Empire, the Germannic conquerers might well adopt this bureaucracy, with its universal polytheist values and beliefs, to run their newly won kingdoms, much as the they did with with the Catholic and Arian churches IOTL for the very same reasons. Thats why Christianity was gradually adopted by the "Barbarians", not because it made sense to them, but because the literate priests and monks were willing to act as civil servants on their behalf. With a more Polytheist Church, it could cause future European culture and religion to resemble Hinduism in it's multiferious philosophies and disciplines.
 
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With both of them dead Empire is left with only Licinius and Maximinus Daia as Emperors... And since these 2 were strongly pagans they would have reestablished harsher Christian persecutions...
 
With both of them dead Empire is left with only Licinius and Maximinus Daia as Emperors... And since these 2 were strongly pagans they would have reestablished harsher Christian persecutions...
I agree that Licinius and Maximinus Daia are unlikely to embrace Christianity. But I'm not sure about renewed or increased persecutions. Licinius did play around with the idea OTL during his co-emperorship with Constantine, but I suspect that much of that was done to present himself in opposition to Constantine. With Constantine gone before he ever really had a chance to make his favor for Christianity known, there may not be much impetus to persecute.

I certainly don't think Christianization is inevitable. Far from it, actually. I ascribe to the school of thought that has Constantine's conversion as much of a personal act as a political one, and I tend to think that it was Constantine (and his heirs) successes as emperor that made Christianity the dominant religion of the empire, and not vice versa. I'm also not convinced that classical paganism is doomed to die out. Cults like those dedicated to Mithras or Sol Invictus were not new to Rome, and had quite easily coexisted with the Olympic dieties for centuries. Christianity was fairly unique in its monotheism, after all. I suspect that the division of personal and civic faith would continue apace: soldiers might follow Mithras on their own, but Jupiter et al. would continue to hold an important place in the public sphere.

That said, I also don't think Christianity was a major factor in the decline of the empire. I find it a downright ludicrous to think that the number of severity of civil wars increased following Constantine's conversion: the third-century crisis tops anything post-Constantine, and none of the major players there were Christian. The late Roman world and the Byzantine world had plenty of military coups and usurpers, and very few of these conflicts were played out as holy war. Even in the handful of exceptions (like the iconoclasm controversy), religious justifications tended to be little more than overlays in place of more traditional social and political rifts. The army supported iconoclasm not out of deep-seated ideological belief, but because iconoclastic emperors were successful on the battlefield, and the social divisions between Rome and Constantinople would have existed regardless of whether or not they found a convenient exemplar in the veneration of idols.

I think the ultimate fall of Rome (in the west, at least) had much, much more to do with long-term demographic changes, like the gradual decline in population of the western half of the empire, the increased number and sophistication of Germanic groups outside of the Rhine and Danube borders, the emergence of more deadly diseases, and a resurgent empire in Persia, than any purely religious factor. If anything, I think Constantine's reign bought the empire more time than it would have had otherwise. Diocletian's reforms were a start, but before Constantine the empire was already beginning to slide back into the pattern of civil war and external invasion that had characterized the third century. True, not all, or even most, of this is due to Christianity, but if you get rid of Constantine, it's hard to see a long future for Rome.

The one thing Christianity did provide was a mechanism for some aspects of Roman culture to persist following the political collapse of the empire. Without it, Europe is likely to drift apart much more noticably than it did OTL. Barbarian successor states probably still seek to emulate as much of Roman culture as they can, but over the centuries they evolve down much different paths without the long shadow of either Rome or Constantinople to unite them in spirit, if not in fact.
 
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