d The Oxford Dictionary of Popes states regarding Sylvester I: “Although pope for almost twenty-two years of the reign of Constantine the Great (306-37), an epoch of dramatic developments for the church, he seems to have played an insignificant part in the great events that were taking place. . . . There were certainly bishops whom Constantine made his confidants, and with whom he concerted his ecclesiastical policies; but [Sylvester] was not one of them.”