I remember a small claim being made on the sincerity of Constantine's conversion into the Christian faith and seeing as it is Easter I find it fitting to ask.
From what I remember it was because he had somehow killed his wife and son (I think it was his wife and son) and somewhere down the line he felt a painstaking need to repent his actions; though the pagan Roman faith at the time was fervently against anything like that ever being forgiven, so, he turned to Christianity.
We have all heard of the story of how in a dream before battle he saw the rising cross in the sky, uttering that famous latin line, flinging him off his horse by the power of the divine and yadda yadda hahaha. Really flamboyant story.
But was it all just a big bag of hot air to cover up his ulterior motives? I am incredibly interested to hear a reply... Just the gravity surrounding it is incredibly heavy. Is Christianity only around today because Constantine decided to off his family?
I'm off to work, but I am very interested to hear replies. Have a great day guys.
Since the execution of Fausta, his wife, and Crispus, his eldest son, took place in 326, several years after his apparent conversion in 313, this can hardly be proposed as the reason for his conversion.
That is the very short answer - effect cannot precede cause. There are all sorts of issues relating to our sources about Constantine killing his Fausta and Crispus, it's very difficult to be confident about the why and how of it. Zosimus is probably the best source. Eusebius is almost useless for us on the issue, having expunged almost all mention.
You're probably right to be suspicious of narratives that tell you Constantine woke up some day and suddenly considered himself a christian. The real process of his conversion must have been much more gradual. The story about the sign in the sky before the battle against Maxentius is based on two different accounts by the christian authors Lactantius and Eusebius, who tried to make sense out of what had happened years after the fact and fit it into their own views on Constantine.
That the murder of Fausta and Crispus would be the real reason for the conversion of Constantine on the other hand was first proposed by the pagan author Zosimus in a polemical context. The problem with this view is that Constantine had both of them killed on the way to the city of Rome in 326. By then Constantine had already carried out several acts that showed him to be highly sympathetic to the christian cause like donating several churches or presiding over the coucil of Nicaea.
Most modern historians would probably agree that we simply can't know why Constantine began his turn to Christianity. It is impossible to know if his faith was genuine or if he acted on purely pragmatic reasons.