The tone of the edict is what makes it remarkable. It is not a grant of toleration in any modern sense and it does not pretend to approve of what it permits. Galerius begins by rehearsing the policy: the Christians who had abandoned the practice of their ancestors were to be brought back to sound reason, and legislation was issued to that end. He then concedes that it did not work. Very many persisted, many were subjected to danger, and the result was that a great number now worship nothing at all, having been driven from the old rites and prevented from keeping their own.
From that admission the operative clause follows. In consideration of the emperor's customary clemency, the Christians may exist again and may reassemble their meeting places, provided they do nothing contrary to good order. And in return for this indulgence they are to pray to their own god for the emperor's safety, for the state and for their own, so that the commonwealth may continue unharmed on every side.
The edict was posted at Nicomedia on 30 April 311. Galerius, who had been the most determined of the persecuting emperors and had pressed Diocletian into the policy in 303, was by then gravely ill and died within days. Lactantius, who preserved the Latin text, was writing as a partisan and reports the illness in terms designed to read as divine judgement.