1-8. The Council of Nicaea
We need not closely analyse the imposing list of bishops present from almost every province of the Empire, with a few from beyond its frontiers in the far East and North. Legend made them 318, the holy number of the cross of Jesus. We have lists in sundry languages, none of them giving more than 221 names; but these are known to be incomplete. The actual number may have been near 300.
All the thirteen great dioceses of the Empire were represented except Britain and Illyricum, though only single bishops came from Africa, Spain, Gaul and Dacia. Only one came in person from Italy, though two presbyters appeared for the bishop of Rome. So the vast majority came from the Eastern provinces of the Empire. The outsiders were four or five — Theophilus bishop of the Goths beyond the Danube, Cathirius (the name is corrupt) of the Crimean Bosphorus, John the Persian, and Bestaces the Armenian, the son of Gregory the Illuminator, with perhaps another Armenian bishop. Eusebius is full of enthusiasm over his majestic roll of churches far and near, from the extremity of Europe to the furthest ends of Asia. It was a day of victory for both the Empire and the Church. The Empire had not only made peace with the stubbornest of its enemies, but been accepted as its protector and guide. The Church had won the greatest of all its victories when Galerius issued his edict of toleration: but its mission to the whole world has never been so vividly embodied as by that august assembly.
We miss half the meaning of the Council if we overlook the tremulous hope and joy of those first years of worldwide victory. Athanasitis shows it even more than Eusebius. One thing at least was clear. The new world faced the old, and the spell of the Holy Roman Empire had already begun to work.
Constantine took up at once the position of a moderator. He began by burning unread the budget of complaints against each other which the bishops had presented to him. He then preached them a sermon on unity; and unity was his text all through. He was much more anxious to make the decisions unanimous than to influence them one way or another. His one object was to make an end of division in the churches. So whatever pleased the bishops pleased the emperor too.
Easter was fixed according to the custom of Rome and Alexandria for the Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. It is the rule we have now, and though it did not produce complete unity till the lunar cycle was quite settled, it secured that Easter should come after the Passover, for, said Constantine, How can we who are Christians keep the same day as those ungodly Jews? The Meletian schism was peacefully settled — to the disgust of Athanasius in later years — by giving the Meletian clergy a status next to the orthodox, with a right of succession if found worthy. So far well: but the condemnation of Arianism may have been something of a trial to Constantine, who could not quite see why they thought it worth while to be so hot on such a trifling question as the deity of Christ.
However that may be, Arianism was politically impossible. He must have known already from Hosius that the West would not accept it, and the first act of the Council meant its almost unanimous rejection by the East. As soon as there was no doubt what the decision would be, he did his best to make it quite unanimous. All the arts of imperial persuasion were tried on the waverers, till in the end only two stubborn recusants remained to be sent into exile.
To some wider aspects of the Council we shall return hereafter. For the moment it may be enough to say that Constantine had won a great success. He had not only got his questions settled, but had himself taken a conspicuous part in settling them. More than this, he had established formal relations, no longer with bishops or groups of bishops, but with a great confederacy of churches. The churches had long been tending to organise themselves on the lines of the Empire, as we see in Cyprian's theories; and now Constantine made the Church an alter ego of the State, and gave it a concrete unity of the political sort which it never had before. Henceforth the holy Catholic Church of the creed was more and more limited to the confederation of churches recognised by the State, so that it only remained to compel all men to come into those, and prevent the formation of any other religious communities.
In this way the Church became much more useful to the State, and also perhaps fitter to resist the shock of the barbarian conquests which followed; but surely something was lost in freedom and spirituality, and therefore also in practical morality.
The Nicene Creed
The First Council of Nicaea, 325 Anno Domini
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
By whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth;
Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man;
He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
And in the Holy Ghost.
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