February 3, AD 313

Edict of Milan

Constantine and Licinius’s Milan conference on religious policy

The document called the Edict of Milan survives as a letter posted three months later and hundreds of kilometres away, at Nicomedia.

The date on this entry is not attested

Neither 3 February nor 13 February 313 is securely established by the ancient evidence. Scholarly references normally place the conference only in February or early 313, and one detailed study states that its exact date cannot be ascertained.

No surviving document proves that a formal edict was promulgated at Milan at all. The extant Latin text is Licinius’s later letter implementing the agreement in his own territory, published at Nicomedia on 13 June 313 — and it survives only because the Christian polemicist Lactantius quoted it in On the Deaths of the Persecutors.

What the emperors agreed

At Mediolanum, Constantine and Licinius agreed that Christians and adherents of other religions should be free to choose and practise their worship openly. The text invokes an unspecified heavenly divinity while extending that freedom generally.

The property clauses are where it gets specific. Corporate property confiscated from Christian communities, meeting places included, was to be returned immediately and without payment by those communities; whoever held it had to give it back and could then apply to the imperial government for indemnity.

One conference, two entries

This entry and the separate February 313 entry describe the same Milan meeting, not two edicts issued on different days. That conference settled a dynastic alliance alongside the religious policy, and the emperors separated afterwards, Licinius to face Maximinus Daia in the east.

What the policy did not do is also documented. It did not make Christianity Rome’s official religion: Christian worship had already received legal toleration under Galerius on 30 April 311, and the Nicene faith became the state religion only with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. What Milan added to Galerius was the removal of remaining restrictions and comprehensive restitution of property.

A marriage, a policy, and no signed text: what survives of Milan is a copy of the instructions one of the two emperors sent to his own provinces, months later and far to the east.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes, 1 issue open Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0313-02.

What the sources leave uncertain

Neither 3 February nor 13 February is securely established by the ancient evidence. Scholarly references normally place the conference only in February or early 313; one detailed study states that its exact date cannot be ascertained.
Scholars dispute whether an actual Edict of Milan ever existed in the conventional sense. The surviving text is an implementing letter or rescript published by Licinius at Nicomedia.
The February conference, Licinius’s June publication and the broader policy traditionally called the Edict of Milan are related but should not be collapsed into a single securely dated act.