All this led to friction and misunderstanding and friction and misunderstanding led to persecution and once more Roman jails were filled with Christian prisoners and Roman executioners added to the number of Christian martyrs and a great deal of blood was shed and nothing was accomplished and finally Diocletian, in utter despair, went back to his home town of Salonae on the Dalmatian coast, retired from the business of ruling and devoted himself exclusively to the even more exciting pastime of raising great big cabbages in his back yard. His successor did not continue the policy of repression. On the contrary, since he could not hope to eradicate the Christian evil by force, he decided to make the best of a bad bargain and gain the good will of his enemies by offering them some special favors. This happened in the year 313 and the honor of having been the first to “recognize” the Christian church officially belongs to a man by the name of Constantine. Some day we shall possess an International Board of Revisioning Historians before whom all emperors, kings, pontiffs, presidents and mayors who now enjoy the title of the “great” shall have to submit their claims for this specific qualification. One of the candidates who will have to be watched very carefully when he appears before this tribunal is the aforementioned Emperor Constantine. This wild Serbian who had wielded a spear on every battle field of Europe, from York in England to Byzantium on the shores of the Bosphorus, was among other things the murderer of his wife, the murderer of his brother-in-law, the murderer of his nephew (a boy of seven) and the executioner of several other relatives of minor degree and importance. Nevertheless and notwithstanding, because in a moment of panic just before he marched against his most dangerous rival, Maxentius, he had made a bold bid for Christian support, he gained great fame as the “second Moses” and was ultimately elevated to sainthood both by the Armenian and by the Russian churches. That he lived and died a barbarian who had outwardly accepted Christianity, yet until the end of his days tried to read the riddle of the future from the steaming entrails of sacrificial sheep, all this was most considerately overlooked in view of the famous Edict of Tolerance by which the Emperor guaranteed unto his beloved Christian subjects the right to “freely profess their private opinions and to assemble in their meeting place without fear of molestation.”