The visions spoken of here weren’t even his first, his first vision was of Apollo, who gave him 30 wreaths as a symbol that he’d run the Empire for 30 years. He pretty much went with whatever seemed like a good idea at the time to achieve whatever political end.
The visions spoken of here weren’t even his first, his first vision was of Apollo, who gave him 30 wreaths as a symbol that he’d run the Empire for 30 years. He pretty much went with whatever seemed like a good idea at the time to achieve whatever political end.
You're correct. In one of his panegyrics, a claim is put forward that Constantine saw a vision of Apollo. However, that event took place years before his vision of the Cross. It's also curious that when describing Constantine's Christian theophany, Eusebius mentions that the emperor was confused by what he saw and wondered who this God was who had appeared to him. This wasn't clarified for him until he had a dream in which Christ spoke to him, and afterwards, the import of these visions was explained to him by Christian clerics.
Constantine's Vision of the Cross ~ Early Accounts and Backstory
The theory that Constantine chose Christianity for political reasons holds no water for me because it would have been a very foolish decision seeing that Christians were about 15% of the population of the Empire at the time and were an historically despised group.