Aproximaciones historiográficas al emperador Constantino en España durante el franquismo

Abstract

As with all movements leaning toward totalitarianism, Francoism too relied on history to justify its existence and form, focusing attention on, inter alia, Constantine the Great, given his doublé condition of victorious prince at war and pious man. Constantine’s image evolved with the succession of the so-called ‘families’ of the Franco regime. Thus, Eduardo Aunós sketched the emperor’s outline according to the ideals of Falangism in 1940. The growth of National-Catholicism further favoured the elaboration of new images of Constantine, and the most committed work under this movement was by Ramón Sarabia (1951). Finally, with the arrival of technocracy, purely academic studies assumed the mantle, such as Luis Gil Fernández’s Censure in the Ancient World (1960).