the time he had finished, nearly all the pro-Arians - including both Bishops Eusebius -had agreed, albeit reluctantly, to sign the final document; only seventeen maintained their opposition - a number that the threat of exile and possible excommunication subsequently reduced to two. 2 The Council had delivered its verdict: Arius, with his remaining adherents, was formally condemned, his writings placed under anathema and ordered to be burnt. He was also forbidden to return to Alexandria. His exile to
1 De Vita Comtantini, iii, 10.
2 According to later legend, a number of bishops with Arian sympathies inserted the letter i - the Greek iota - into the controversial word in the copy of the declaration that each was obliged to sign, so that it read homoiousios, meaning 'of like substance’ . This would, however, have been taking a considerable risk and there is no evidence that it was actually done.
Ill yricum, however, did not last long; thanks to persistent appeals by the Arian bishops, he was soon back in Nicomedia, where events were to prove that his stormy career was by no means over.
Having dealt satisfactorily, as it imagined, with the Arian question, the Council turned its attention to other matters, including the proper date for Easter. In most of the oriental churches this was still calculated according to the Jewish calendar, without regard for the day of the week; in Alexandria and the West, on the other hand, the feast was always fixed on a Sunday - that following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. At Nicaea, it was probably the Emperor's passionate hatred of the Jews that decided the issue: he himself made it clear, in the circular letter that he addressed to the various churches after the Council, 1 that the very thought of celebrating the Resurrection of Christ on the same day as the Passover filled him with horror. In any case the Council finally agreed that all Christendom should thenceforth adopt the western system, the correct date to be calculated each year at Alexandria and communicated to Rome for onward transmission to the churches. 2
And so the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church was brought to its end, a month less a day after it began. For Constantine it had been a triumph. He had succeeded in getting every major issue settled in the way he had wished; still more important from his point of view, the voting had been almost unanimous. He had established not only a great confederacy of both the eastern and the western churches but also his own moral supremacy over it, binding Church and State together with bonds that were to remain unbroken for a thousand years. He had, in short, good reason to congratulate himself; and the bishops too, whom he pressed to stay on another few weeks in Bithynia so that they could attend his vic ennalia the celebration of his twenty years on the throne - with the magnificent banquet that he proposed to give in their honour. Eusebius of Caesarea - who, like his namesake of Nicomedia, had somehow come to terms with his conscience over the Arian question - was naturally present, and describes the occasion with rapture:
Not one of the bishops was absent from the imperial banquet, the circumstances of which were splendid beyond description. Detachments of the Emperor's personal guard and other troops surrounded the entrance to the palace with
De Vita Constantini, III, 18.
This decision was observed for twelve and a half centuries; it was only after the correction of the calendar by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 that the Eastern and Western calendars got out of alignment once again.
3 26
drawn swords, and through the midst of them the men of God proceeded without fear into the innermost of the imperial apartments, in which some were the Emperor's own companions at table, while others reclined on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought that a picture of Christ's kingdom was thus foreshadowed, and that the scene was less like reality than
1 De Vita Comtantini, iii, 10.
2 According to later legend, a number of bishops with Arian sympathies inserted the letter i - the Greek iota - into the controversial word in the copy of the declaration that each was obliged to sign, so that it read homoiousios, meaning 'of like substance’ . This would, however, have been taking a considerable risk and there is no evidence that it was actually done.
Ill yricum, however, did not last long; thanks to persistent appeals by the Arian bishops, he was soon back in Nicomedia, where events were to prove that his stormy career was by no means over.
Having dealt satisfactorily, as it imagined, with the Arian question, the Council turned its attention to other matters, including the proper date for Easter. In most of the oriental churches this was still calculated according to the Jewish calendar, without regard for the day of the week; in Alexandria and the West, on the other hand, the feast was always fixed on a Sunday - that following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. At Nicaea, it was probably the Emperor's passionate hatred of the Jews that decided the issue: he himself made it clear, in the circular letter that he addressed to the various churches after the Council, 1 that the very thought of celebrating the Resurrection of Christ on the same day as the Passover filled him with horror. In any case the Council finally agreed that all Christendom should thenceforth adopt the western system, the correct date to be calculated each year at Alexandria and communicated to Rome for onward transmission to the churches. 2
And so the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church was brought to its end, a month less a day after it began. For Constantine it had been a triumph. He had succeeded in getting every major issue settled in the way he had wished; still more important from his point of view, the voting had been almost unanimous. He had established not only a great confederacy of both the eastern and the western churches but also his own moral supremacy over it, binding Church and State together with bonds that were to remain unbroken for a thousand years. He had, in short, good reason to congratulate himself; and the bishops too, whom he pressed to stay on another few weeks in Bithynia so that they could attend his vic ennalia the celebration of his twenty years on the throne - with the magnificent banquet that he proposed to give in their honour. Eusebius of Caesarea - who, like his namesake of Nicomedia, had somehow come to terms with his conscience over the Arian question - was naturally present, and describes the occasion with rapture:
Not one of the bishops was absent from the imperial banquet, the circumstances of which were splendid beyond description. Detachments of the Emperor's personal guard and other troops surrounded the entrance to the palace with
De Vita Constantini, III, 18.
This decision was observed for twelve and a half centuries; it was only after the correction of the calendar by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 that the Eastern and Western calendars got out of alignment once again.
3 26
drawn swords, and through the midst of them the men of God proceeded without fear into the innermost of the imperial apartments, in which some were the Emperor's own companions at table, while others reclined on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought that a picture of Christ's kingdom was thus foreshadowed, and that the scene was less like reality than
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