Christianity and the Late Roman Empire

[Valerian Pertinax]

I wonder if Constantine's endorsement of Christianity wasn't a Caesar-esque move to appeal to the lower classes? He would have needed a way to sell himself as not just another general waging a civil war to claim the throne (a depressingly common occurance by that time) but as a true liberator fighting for the people. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken, but Christianity was more appealing to the downtrodden with it's promise of resurrection and eternal life (though the details were still being hammered out), and he would have the advantage of being something of an innovator by being the first Emperor to publically align himself with the new faith.

I also have a hard time accepting the notion that the Roman Catholic Church provided a way to unite Europe under a single faith even after the collapse of the Western Empire. True, the church provided a template for a commonish faith across western Europe, but it wasn't strong enough to prevent the fractiousness of feudalism, or the entire old eastern empire gradually become what we call the Orthodox Christian Church. It certainly wasn't enough to even present a consistent version of itself throughout Europe. A few years ago, I read a book titled Lost Christianities, and was taken aback by the sheer diversity of religious opinion in the early days of the Christian church. It seems as though the early church spent much intellectual capital attempting to "correct" dissenting beliefs umungst its flock, even as the Western Empire kept shrinking.