Last we left off, Constantine had just called together a council of Christian
bishops from around the known world. They were to resolve all the challenges of
the Church so that he, Constantine, could get back to uniting the empire under Christianity.
The council was set to tackle issues ranging from what day to
celebrate Easter, to how to heal the Meletian schism; a sect like the
Donatists, who are concerned with the re-admittance of lapsed priests into the
Church. This council was also going to formalize how the liturgy was given,
provide rules for the structure of the Church, and set down some guidelines for
being a priest. No living in the houses of young women, no self-castration, no
engaging in usury - you know that sort of thing. But above all they were there to
deal with the one thing: the Arian Heresy. This was the main topic; the
front-and-center issue that everybody had come to discuss. It was tearing
apart the Christian world, and it was time it came to an end.
So 318 bishops assembled in one late Spring 325 CE, in the coastal Anatolian
town of Nicea, to settle this once and for all. The conference center
was arrayed in splendor by the Emperor; the bishops and all their aides and
advisors were guests of the Empire, housed, fed and cared for at Imperial
expense. But more than that, the Emperor himself would be in attendance.
That's just how important this was to Constantine. Constantine set the tone for
the meeting,
walking in, not surrounded by guards, as was the norm for the person of the
Emperor, but rather entering surrounded only by a few friends. This wasn't a
battle - it was a time to come together. And so it began. The debate was vigorous,
using all the rhetorical art the Roman world was famous for. Laity and
clerics both engaged in arguing the merits of each side, while the Emperor
sat there,
gently reminding everyone that they were all Christians here, and that they needn't
treat each other like enemies of the faith. And for weeks the discussions
went on, contentious, impassioned, on at least one occasion breaking out into a
brawl, but for all this the truth was that most of the bishops were relatively
moderate, looking to come to the correct answer but believing that an answer
could be found that both sides had agree to - and the Emperor himself was
happy to embrace anything that would just get all these guys to agree. So the
discussions really resolved down to the point of view of two men: Arius, the
namesake of Arianism, whose unbending views had caused the council to be summoned in
the first place, and a man named Athanasius.
Athanasius was a deacon of Alexandria, where the whole Arian Schism began. He
was an ardent anti-Arian, and he intended to do everything in his power to make
sure that no compromise with the Arians was reached. And so time rolled forward
with the council split - no overwhelming majority willing to come down on either side.
Debate continued on how to achieve a compromised position, but the discussion
wound in circles as these two men: Athanasius and Arius, dominated the
discussion and kept any chance of truly finding a middle ground at bay. Still,
time and again the Emperor reminded them all that they were here to heal the
Church - that, as Romans and as Christians, they were more alike than
different, and that they should be able to find a way to work such esoteric
theological differences out. But Constantine, powerful, intelligent and
adroit as he was, was not the type of subtle theologian that Athanasius turned
out to be, because as the debate moved on Athanasius began to introduce the
term 'homoousian' into the discussion. And this was a throw of the dice because
'homoousian' means 'of the same substance', which made many of the bishops a little
uneasy, as it had been used in other heretical context before to claim that
there was no difference between God the Son and God the Father. But Athanasius
knew that this was a term that Arius had objected to in the past, and that he
would never agree to any compromise that involved using the term 'homoousian'.
So, Athanasius started to appear to be the reasonable one. He could look as if he
were slightly willing to bend, knowing that no compromise he ever offered would
be accepted so long as it could be worded talking about Christ as homoousian.
And here's where the debate really began to get rowdy, because now
people had to polarize. You had to agree with this term or not, as no one was
going to compromise around it
There was one last attempt at bringing everyone together, though, trying to get
people to meet in the middle and say that Christ was 'homoiousian', or, 'of similar
nature to God', but by now this was thoroughly rejected by all those who
had declared themselves firmly on one side or another. And even as this
compromise was being discussed, Athanasius was secretly pulling people
over to his side. While the great debate was happening in public, the anti-Arian
faction was making deals and persuading people in private.
Slowly, bishop by bishop, they assembled a majority coalition, and soon that
majority was threatening damnation and excommunication for anybody who followed
the heretical Arian formulation. And so those less firm in their Arian beliefs began
to switch sides as well; not wanting to risk their immortal souls, or perhaps
their positions in the church, almost every delegate signed onto the homoousian
idea of Christ. Only Arius himself, one deacon and two other bishops refused to
sign what would become known as the Nicene Creed, cementing the Trinitarian
view of Christ. And thus, Arianism was declared heresy, its teachings anathema,
and its preaching an exilable offense. And so the Emperor got up, dusted off his
chlamys, and thought to himself
"Job well done!" I mean, after all, he had brought all the priests together, they
had basically all agreed on... something, and he could now exile those few who
had disagreed, unity would be restored and he could get back to ruling the
Empire. But it's not quite that simple because a few months later,
Constantine found he also had to exile a man named Eusebius - a prelate who had
signed the Creed but who continued to refuse to condemn Arius. This may seem
like a small thing - one man being exiled over taking a half-hearted stand not
condemning his friend - but Eusebius was actually a distant relative of
Constantine's, and unlike Arius, who is principally known in Egypt and the
ecclesiastical circles of the East, Eusebius was a member of Constantine's
court. In fact that's why he had to exile him; because he kept pushing for Arius in
Constantine's inner circle long after Constantine was good and done with this
whole heresy thing. But, Constantine's sister liked Eusebius, and soon he was
recalled from exile. But if there was any doubt which side Eusebius was on, his
exile cemented him as a firm Arian and so he worked at court, day by day to
soften the Emperor's views on Arianism. And, as even exiling its principal
supporters and declaring the belief heretical hadn't actually stamped out
the Arian beliefs, Constantine began to be receptive to the idea of a softer
rapprochement than he had previously been. A kind of 'coexistence'. After all, he wanted
harmony in his empire. But harmony was not on Eusebius' mind. He schemed
against Athanasius, never publicly putting himself in opposition to him, but
getting other groups to accuse Athanasius of a myriad of crimes. At last,
through a rigged trial, he was able to get Athanasius convicted, and he
convinced the Emperor that it was actually Athanasius who is now
preventing the rift in the Christian Church to heal, with his diehard refusal
to readmit schismatics into the Church,
and that he should be exiled. Meanwhile Eusebius had also succeeded in getting
Arius recalled. So with Athanasius exiled and Arius recalled, the Arian
doctrine began to gain strength in the Empire again.
Constantine himself would, at the very end of his life, be baptized by Eusebius.
And his son? His son would be a diehard Arian throughout his rule. And, though
after hundreds of years the Nicene Creed would eventually win out, this reprieve
for Arianism allowed it to spread and slip out of the Empire, for Eusebius ordained
a Goth named Ulfilas to go on a mission to the Gothic tribes, and he was
successful,
converting many and cementing Arian Christianity as the Christianity of the
northern tribes. And this is one of the reasons that the Gothic tribes never
really integrated into the Roman Empire. It's one of the reasons that, rather than
become assimilated like so many other groups, they remained separate; integral
to the empire but never really being part of it. And in the end, it's part of
why they tore the Empire apart. Join us next time as we jump a few hundred years
ahead, for the Monophysite Heresy, which plagued Justinian and destroyed the
unity of Eastern Rome.