World history · Christian Rome
Constantine Convenes the Council at Nicaea
AD 325
Barely a decade after the Edict of Milan, Constantine summons bishops from across the empire to Nicaea to settle the Arian controversy — the empire that once fed Christians to lions now hosting the church's first ecumenical council.
The event
Barely a decade after Christians won the right simply to worship openly, the newly-favored church found itself torn by an internal crisis every bit as serious as the persecutions it had just survived: an Alexandrian presbyter named Arius was teaching that the Son of God, though exalted far above ordinary creatures, was nonetheless a created being who had not always existed. The controversy split congregations and provinces across the eastern empire, and Constantine, eager for unity within the church he had just embraced, summoned bishops from across the Christian world to the city of Nicaea, near Constantinople, in AD 325.
It is a fitting place to close this chapter of Rome's history: the same empire that once crucified Jesus's messengers and fed His followers to lions in its arenas now gathered its bishops, under an emperor's own patronage, to guard and confess the truth of who Christ is. For the council itself — the debate with Arius, the creed's 'of one substance (homoousios)' language, and what Nicaea did and didn't decide — see The Council of Nicaea.
Other witnesses
- Eusebius, Life of Constantine, Book 3
Further reading
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