Toward the Council of Nicaea

Soon after Constantine established himself as the sole master of the oikoumene after defeating Licinius in September 324, he called for a congress of his Christian subjects, particularly those from the newly incorporated Greek east. This first universal council, originally planned to meet in Ancyra, eventually took place in the Bithynian city of Nicaea. Though it would be speculative to wonder whether Constantine anticipated the subsequent import of the council and its enduring reputation

as a touchstone of orthodoxy, it is easy to see that the emperor had more immediate concerns. He called for the council to meet in May 325, just two months prior to the celebrations of his own vicennalia , the twentieth year of his accession, which were scheduled to occur at nearby Nicomedia, the civic rival of Nicaea.^[1]

Many Christians journeyed to the council at public expense using the cursus publicus both to greet their new patron and to celebrate the good fortunes of church and state, as the council was to last until the end of July and overlap with the vicennalia .^[2] Though some rancor existed among the participants in the opening days of the council, a more festive mood soon prevailed when, at Constantine's promptings, most attempted to demonstrate goodwill in public. In an irenic gesture, Constantine publicly burned the libelli that many Christians had brought for the purpose of accusing each other before their sovereign.^[3]

Somber though the business of confronting Christian "heresy" was, it constituted only a portion of the council's agenda. Neither the Arian party of Eusebius of Nicomedia nor the partisans of Alexander of Alexandria dominated the council of more than three hundred bishops, the vast majority of whom, especially those from the Latin west, were not as well-schooled as these two camps and had no strong interest in the prevailing theological controversies. Further, this council, unlike later imperial councils with extant invitation lists, included not only bishops and priests but also those outside the ecclesiastical hierarchy, such as confessors bearing the stigmata of persecution and other lay Christians.^[4] It is conceivable that pagan philosophers such as Iamblichus' student Sopater (who visited the court of Constantine in 327) also attended the meeting. In the final tally, nonpartisans were a significant presence at the council.^[5]

[1] Eusebius, Vita Constantini 3.15-16; Socrates, Hist. eccl . 1.16; Sozomen, Hist. eccl . 1.25; Jerome, Chronicon 313F (Helm, ed., 231). See Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius , 219. On the rivalry between Nicomedia and Nicaea during the high empire, see L. Robert, "La titulature de Niche et de Nicomédie: la gloire et la haine," HSCP 81 (1977), 1-39.

[2] On Nicaea and imperial victory celebrations, see M. McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1986), 104-5.

[3] Socrates, Hist. eccl . 1.8; Sozomen, Hist. eccl . 1.17.

[4] C. Guarnieri, "Note sulla presenza dei laici ai concili fino al VI secolo," Vetera Christianorum 20 (1983): 77-91. Guarnieri argues that there was no general requirement for lay presence in councils in the second and third centuries.

In Constantine's imperial summons, the reason for the council was vague, perhaps deliberately so.^[6] The emperor indeed sought to reconcile the feuding parties in the so-called Arian dispute, but it is not dear how he thought the council could contribute to this goal. We can guess more confidently what the council was not supposed to do. In earlier attempts to mediate the controversy, the emperor had expressed deep dissatisfaction with philosophical dialectic as a sophistic technique that allowed the worse argument to prevail over the better one. From this we may reasonably deduce that he ruled out open dialectical debate on the contested issues from the councils program.^[7]

Perhaps confusion as to the aims of the council explains why no detailed stenographic records of the proceedings appear to have been kept, as was done at other important church synods.^[8] The precedents of previous ecclesiastical and secular proceedings, together with the dictates of practical wisdom, would have demanded that some record be maintained, even published, had the predominant goal of the council been to secure a formal refutation of a particular theological position.^[9] Thanks largely to the tireless and painstaking efforts of Otto Seeck, Hans Opitz, and other modem scholars engaged in the task of historical reconstruction, we now possess fuller and much more critically assessed knowledge about the Council of Nicaea than has been available since

[7] Oratio ad sanctos (originally dated 317 by Barnes, now dated 321 by him); see T. D. Barnes, "The Emperor Constantine's Good Friday Sermon," JTS n.s. 7 (1976): 414-23. R. Lane Fox has situated this sermon in Antioch on Good Friday of 325; see Pagans and Christians (New York, 1987), 627-35, esp. 634-35.

[8] Besides the symbol, we possess the twenty canons and the synodal decree that were produced by this first Christian imperial council. On the products of Nicaea, see A. Wickenhauser, "Beitrage zur Geschichte der Stenographie auf den Synoden des vierten Jahrhunderts nach Christus," Archiv für Stenographie 59 (1908): 4-9, 33-39; idem, "Zur Frage nach der Existenz von nicaenischen Synodalprotokollen," in F. Dölger, ed., Konstantin der Grosse und seine Zeit (Freiburg, 1913), 122-43; P. Batiffol, "Les sources de l'histoire du concile de Nicée," Échos d'Orient 24 (1925): 385-402.

[9] Constantius later recorded his private audiences with "troublesome" bishops, whom he tried to persuade with threats and cajoling; see the literature cited in T. D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 276n. 56.

the mid- to late-fourth century.^[10] Yet even now the exact procedure at Nicaea remains a vexed, and seemingly insoluble, question.^[11]

It was certainly not for lack of interest that contemporaries neglected to consult and pass on the records of this council. Many factors contributed to the fact that the meetings proceedings quickly became obscure even as its outcomes proved (historically and juridically, if not theologically) important.

Though Arius' position and a handful of lesser bishops were condemned, there were few clear winners at Nicaea.^[12] Afterward, the dissatisfied parties gave their own conflicting interpretations of the council to promote their own interests.^[13] Much of this partisan literature was too deeply invested with immediate polemics and apologetics to be relevant to posterity.^[14]

Because the council arose from the failure of discussion, persuasion, and the normative exercise of authority to achieve peaceful resolutions to disputes in a number of important eastern congregations,^[15] subsequent overemphasis on unity rendered a set of acta unnecessary and undesirable. By contrast, the "products" of the council, the canons even more so than the symbol, were seen by some (especially those who championed a consensual process of decision making) as infinitely more important than the precise processes that led to them because they stood for unity and order.^[16]

Even so, the Nicene symbol,^[17] which subsequently became the cornerstone of orthodox definition, was not fully crystallized until the

[10] O. Seeck, "Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des nicänischen Konzils," ZKG 17 (1897): 1-71, 319-62; Opitz, Urkunden .

[11] See R. E. Person, The Mode of Theological Decision Making at the Early Ecumenical Councils: An Inquiry into the Function of Scripture and Tradition at the Councils of Nicaea and Ephesus (Basel, 1978), 44. A possible second session is discussed in C. Luibhéid, "The Alleged Second Session of the Council of Nicaea," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 34 (1983): 165-74. Generally, it is wise to observe the caution of Hanson, in Search for the Christian Doctrine of God , 172: "The evidence available does not admit of our forming ingenious, elaborate and highly nuanced theories about the Council of Nicaea. Reconstructing the course of the Council is an interesting but rather futile pastime."

[12] The deposed bishops were Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonas of Marmarike, both subsequently recalled by Constantine; see Philostorgius, Hist. eccl . 1.10.

[13] See Socrates, Hist. eccl . 1.1; Sozomen, Hist. eccl . 1.1.

[14] See, e.g., W. D. Hauschild, "Die antinizänische Synodalaktensammlung des Sabinus von Heraklea," VChr 24 (1970): 105-26, on Sabinus' Syntagma as a homoiousian reaction against Athanasius' De synodis (circa 363-67) and the latter's views about the significance of the Council of Nicaea.

[15] See Theodoret, Hist. eccl . 1.5-6.

[16] See Sozomen, Hist. eccl . 1.20.

[17] In Opitz, ed., Urkunden 22:4-6 and 24 (Athanasius Werke III , 43 and 51-52). The texts of the two creeds vary greatly.

Council of Constantinople in 381.^[18] Furthermore, the reaffirmation of the Nicene formulation as a criterion for orthodoxy in 381, after the promulgation of more than a dozen anti-Nicene creeds between 341 and 360,^[19] obscured the less edifying aspects of the first general council (the effects of which were effectively annulled after Constantine's death in 337) by focusing on Nicaea's product rather than on its context and process. The reinterpretation of Nicaea 325 in light of Constantinople 381 was echoed by the recasting of Constantine, the patron of the first general council, into the image of Theodosius I, the patron of the second council.^[20] Because of this dialectical relationship, the history of the early fourth century can only be seen through the refracting lens of the late fourth.

By the last quarter of the fourth century, the ranks of the antagonists of the earlier controversies and those who attended Nicaea had been considerably thinned by old age and sickness. The death of Athanasius, who attended the council as a young priest at the side of his bishop Alexander, marked the advent of the post-Nicene age. With all eyewitnesses dead, legends about Nicaea began to emerge.

At the time of the death of Theodosius I in 395, a new generation of Christians born after 325 had already grown to a ripe old age in an empire largely tolerant, if not always decidedly supportive, of the Christian cause. Local traditions, sacramental and liturgical practices, and theological tracts probably kept alive fragmented memories of this past, but there existed no coherent account like Eusebius' Historia ecclesiastica to detail the perceived triumph of Christianity under the reign of Constantine.^[21]

After Eusebius brought his grand processional narrative to a dose with Licinius' defeat by Constantine in 324, the genre of ecclesiastical

[18] See R. M. Grant, "Religion and Politics at the Council of Nicaea," Journal of Religion 55 (1975): 1-12; F. E. Sciuto, "Dalla Nicea a Costantinopoli: osservazioni sulla prima fase della stabilizzazione teologico-politica cristiana (325-381)," in La trasformazioni della cultura nella tarda antichità (Rome, 1985), 1:479-90; A. d'Alès, "Nicée, Constantinople: les premiers symboles de foi," RSR 26 (1936): 85-92; A. de Halleux, "La réception du symbole oecuménique, de Nicée à Chalcédoine," Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 61 (1985): 5-47. For the creeds subsequent import, see Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl . 3.14, on Zeno's henotikon letter of 482.

[19] See A. Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der alten Kirche (Breslau, 1897; 3d ed., Hildesheim, 1962), 183-209; Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius , 229-32 (app. 10, "Creeds and Councils 337-361").

[20] See J. Taylor, "The First Council of Constantinople (381)," Prudentia 13 (1981): 47-54, 91-97.

[21] On the rehearsal of past events as part of the process of creating a community and its historical memories, see B. Lewis, History Remembered, Recovered, Invented (Princeton, 1975).

history was left largely untended for two to three generations.^[22] Then, from the end of the fourth century into the fifth, a blossoming of historical writings interweaved the story of the Christian church with affairs of state and the formerly fallow field yielded an abundant harvest.

The obvious point of departure for these new histories was the reign of Constantine, the Augustus who had done so much to end official persecution against Christians and to promote their interests. Eusebius, having somewhat compromised himself with questionable theological views and by his involvement in the proceedings at Nicaea, had prudently stopped short of the early Arian disputes in his Historia ecclesiastica . Thus to others fell the task of explaining why, as the Christian church approached its moment of triumph, bitter divisions arose within its ranks, with the consequences that remained dear to any casual observer in the fifth century.

One of the first of this new generation of histories was Gelasius of Caesarea's Historia ecclesiastica , composed circa 386-400. It is no longer extant, but fragments have been gleaned from later works.^[23] Gelasius' history quickly became the basis for a number of other works, notably the tenth and eleventh books of Rufinus of Aquileia's Historia ecclesiastica , which augmented his translation into Latin of Eusebius' history. Other works soon followed.

Because Nicaea was where Christian leaders from throughout the newly united empire met their patron and self-proclaimed koinos episkopos ,^[24] the council naturally became a focal point for later Christians attempting to understand their past. These legends about Nicaea are inherently interesting to the modem historian, not because accurate information can be mined from them but because they tell us much about the period in which they arose and circulated.

In the following pages, I examine the multiform story of an encounter between a confessor and a philosopher at Nicaea. In the four major versions of the story contained in the later histories (dating from the late

[22] See G. F. Chestnut, The First Christian Histories: Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret and Evagrius (Paris, 1977); A. Momigliano, "Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D.," in idem, ed., The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1963), 79-99; G. Downey, "The Perspective of the Early Church Historians," GRBS 6 (1965): 57-70; F. J. Foakes-Jackson, A History of Church History: Studies of Some Historians of the Christian Church (Cambridge, 1939), 71-86; L. Cracco Ruggini, "The Ecclesiastical Histories and the Pagan Historiography: Providence and Miracles," Athenaeum n.s. 55 (1977): 107-26.

[23] See the discussions of Gelasius of Cyzicus' Syntagma and Georgius Monachus' Chronicon below.

[24] See J. Straub, "Constantine as KOINOS EP IS KOP OS : Tradition and Innovation in the Representation of the First Christian Emperor's Majesty," DOP 21 (1967): 37-55.

fourth to the fifth century), a "debate" occurs either during or before the formal session of the council. Discounting slight variations for the moment, I can summarize the story as follows: There came to pass a hotly contested debate between a polytheistic philosopher and the assembled bishops at Nicaea. The philosopher was extremely adept at dialectical disputation, and none of the bishops was able to gain advantage over him. After a long series of exchanges, the precise nature or content of which is not given in any of the sources, the stalemate was finally ended when an unlearned and elderly confessor stepped forward to confront the philosopher with a terse credal formula, and simply asked his stunned opponent whether he believed the statement or not. The philosopher assented to the truth of the old man's words, admitted defeat, and (in some versions) accepted baptism at the confessor's hands.

The story appears for the first time in an extant source in Rufinus' Historia ecclesiastica , but is conspicuously absent from more contemporary accounts such as the writings of Eustathius of Antioch,^[25] Eusebius' Vita Constantini and Letter to His Community about the Council of Nicaea,^[26] and Athanasius' slightly later Epistula de decretis Nicaenae synodi.^[27] Thus, when we approach this episode in Rufinus, and later in the writings of Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, and Gelasius of Cyzicus, we are faced with a complicated historiographical and historical problem.

The story is almost certainly spurious—our first extant attestation is a Latin source composed seventy years after Nicaea—yet it is significant because it crystallized and foregrounded a profound bias against the adoption of public dialectical disputation as a means of settling Christian theological differences. Socrates Scholasticus, whose version departs most significantly from the others', blamed the public discussion of theology for the divisions within the church of his time.^[28] Though I do not rule out the stated arguments against debate in these various accounts, I propose that the polemic must be read in light of such post-Nicene developments as the Anomoean controversy and the social and urban conditions of the late fourth (Rufinus), mid-fifth (Socrates, Sozomen), and late-fifth (Gelasius of Cyzicus) centuries.

I will show that, partly because of its placement within the larger works and partly because of the elevation of certain forms of authority

[25] In Theodoret, Hist. eccl . 1.8.1-5 (Parmentier and Scheidweiler, eds., 33-34). Eustathius' work was composed circa 329; see Batiffol, "Les sources de l'histoire du concile de Nicée," 390-92.

[26] In Opitz, ed., Urkunden 22 (Athanasius Werke III , 42-47).

[27] Text in Opitz, ed., Athanasius Werke II , 1-45. Dated to 352-53 by Barnes in Athanasius and Constantius , 198-99 (app. 4).

[28] For example, Socrates, Hist. eccl . 2.2, 2.30; more on this point below.

at the expense of others, the story functioned to valorize particular social processes tied to particular social structures and assumptions about power. The story expressed the decisive rejection of a certain form of social contact with religious outsiders, and the preference for the irenic ideology of the mia ekklesia , the unified church of Christ, where disputes were alien and diabolical intrusions.^[29]

My examination of how this debate was narrated by the four writers secures a framework for discussing the way this bias operated in the larger context of their histories. Most of the fifth-century histories picked Up the thread of the story where Eusebius' Historia ecclesiastica left off, and the opening narratives of the council effectively framed the rest of the accounts. By weaving the story of this debate into their reports of a council where many charismatic Christian heroes and bishops came together to express Christian unity (), the authors used the triumph of the simple confessor over the philosopher to drive home a point of deeper import than the mere defeat of arrogance by Christian simplicity.

The only previous study of this episode that examines all the variants is E. Jugie's eight-page article, "La dispute des philosophes païens avec les pères de Niche," published in 1925.^[30] As the title implies, Jugie is primarily interested in the account in Gelasius of Cyzicus' Syntagma (see later in this chapter) and describes the other versions only in passing. This is unfortunate, for the shifting shape of the multiform story reveals much about how fifth-century people in different stations of life used the context of Nicaea, around which a tradition had already grown up,^[31] to discuss their reception of public dialectical disputation in a Christian culture.