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>> bishops become important people in the local community. if people have disputes with each other, they are as likely to go to a bishop to get it sorted out. >> you had to go to him to get the food supply. that made him enormously wealthy and influential. >> constantine gives romans a political and financial incentive to convert to christianity. he gives christians tax breaks and makes churches tax exempt. >> constantine is the reason why churches are now in the u.s. tax free spiti entities. >> from the time of constantine, the church had been the sxwral l -- ally of the emperor. there was no...

>> this is the big one. for the first time, a roman emperor decided to ally with the church. that meant the whole of the known world was at the disposal of the church. >> as constantine moves christianity from outlaw to exalted, church and state become intertwined. >> he saw in christianity a way to unite the empire. a new ideology that would give everybody the same god, the same moral values. >> constantine, by legalizing christianity, opened up a space where the bishop of rome could become a permanent fixture on the spiritual and political scene. >> what constantine did is take the bishops w...

Somebody to be over that. >> christians were trying to sep up an organized community, so people would recognize who the members oh of that church were. a model of the roman army. >> bishop of means the most senior church in that particular city. >> because rome is the capital and the center of the empire, the bishop of rome becomes the leader of the other bishops. a position that will eventually become known as pope. the 200 years after peter's crucifixion, bishops and their followers continued to be persecuted and executed by roman emperors. until an unlikely hero emerges. >> constantine was ...

But now with constantinople acting as a capital, there's a second bishop that believes he should be in charge. >> there were disputes. each saw himself as a very powerful leader, and each one was competing with the others for authority. >> despite constantine's best efforts to unify his empire under one church, the east and west remain at odds. seven years after the council of nicea, constantine dies, leaving the church still divided and rome without a strong military leader. for over 100 years following constantine's death, rome is under attack from pagan barbarians to the north.

>> with the church unified after nicea, constantine looks to further stabilize the foundation of his empire. he establishes a second hub of church power in the east and names the new capital after himself, and calls it constantinople. >> there's a back and forth between rome and constantinople. >> the christians in the east look at the christians in the west as barbarians. they would say that christians in the west baptized their children in wolf saliva. christians in the west looked at christians in the east as not strong. >> the hierarchy of bishops had been working well.