Dr. Dafydd Daniel
speaker
99 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Dafydd Daniel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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So the Council of Nicaea was a church council called by the Emperor Constantine in 325. It's the first ecumenical council, so worldwide council. In fact, the word ecumenical was coined by Eusebius of Caesarea, one of the early church historians who was there to describe this council worldwide. It's significant because it decides really –
two of the most fundamental doctrines in Christianity that we've all heard about, the Trinity and the Incarnation. But also because through that, it really is the beginning of, well, one of two things, depending on your point of view.
It's either the beginning of modern Christianity, Christianity as a public, visible religion, civic religion, or it's the beginning of the corruption of Christianity because it involves this decision of what is orthodox and therefore what is heretical and involves the state's action in that.
Yes. This is where the church council produces this Nicene Creed, something still read out today. This is a foundational text. Now, it certainly is trying to clearly decide a distinction between orthodoxy and heresy. One of the interesting things is that it's not necessarily entirely clear what Nicaea has decided.
These obscure phrases, homoousion, which I'm sure we'll get to, what does that really mean? Is that heretical itself, which was one perspective at the time? And then even though Nicaea, the council, makes this decision, In the immediate aftermath, really, the opposing side, who are the Aryans, seem to come to the fore a bit more than the Nicenes.
So it's part of a very vibrant struggle or discussion, depending on how you want to phrase it, through this period.
Yeah, it's striking because we don't really. I suppose that's the interesting thing because I think now we'd, certainly I would think of something like a church council of any kind would have all sorts of minutes taken and there'd be all these records and everything else. But that's not the case here. I mean, it goes on for decades. a couple of months, it seems.
Maybe it starts on the 20th of May, ends in July in Nicaea 325. Even that's not that clear. Our main sources for it are Eusebius of Caesarea, who was there, and also Athanasius of Alexandria. Obviously, they have their own particular point of view and perspective, which may well interfere with their account and recognition of what's gone on. But it's in their book's
that we have their account of what went on, but also extracts from some of Constantine's letters, which follow the council, which go out to the church to tell them, tell the church what the decisions that have been made. And of course, other records of, for example, the writings of Arius.
And, you know, part of the build up to the controversy is sort of hundreds of letters being exchanged all over the place between these various bishops, theologians, and versions of those recorded in those historic accounts, as well as others later on. So there's Theodoret of Cyrus,
and a couple of other sort of historians more in the fifth century who also had some sort of access to documents that don't seem to survive and only survive in those histories. Constantine also wrote other letters to try and prevent the council happening, to try and stop everyone arguing and everyone to calm down.
Again, we've got sort of versions of those letters, whether how accurate they are is open to debate.
In the empire itself, so we're coming out of the so-called crisis of the third century, sort of unsettled period in Roman history, right? So, you know, we've had the plagues, like Plague of Cyprian, which has wiped out 50% of Alexandria and things like that. And all these barbarian tribes attacking in the third century lead to unsettled situation.
Various people declaring themselves Caesar all the time, right? You know, they win a battle and they're the new emperor. So the crisis of the third century has led to, at the end of that period, the Tetrarchy. The Tetrarchy system of government has been established by Diocletian, which has seemed to work fairly well.
You've got two Augusti, two senior emperors, East and West, then these junior Caesars beneath them. And that, of course, means you've got more imperial people closer to the action across the empire, to the troubled areas. And that seemed to work fairly well until 306, when the Augustus at that point, the who is Constantine's father, dies.
And that then leads really to set off to civil war in the empire between these rival Augusti and Caesar, as they all start fighting each other. Not least Constantine, of course, but another chap, Maxentius, who was one of the original Augusti, but he's been left out of the equation.
And then this other fellow, Licinius, who'd been promoted above both Maxentius and Constantine, much to their consternation. And so they've all been fighting with each other. Maxentius is significant because it leads us to the Battle of Milvian Bridge, which I'm sure we'll come to. That's 312. That's where Constantine gets rid of him, his half-brother.
And then later on, Constantine gets rid of his other half-brother, Licinius, in the Battle of Chrysopolis in 324. So a period of civil war and settlement. Now we've got this single man. Constantine has become the sole emperor. So a period of settlement has emerged there through periods of unrest. That's the empire at large.
The church, well, the church has also come through really its main periods of persecution. So there's only two really empire-wide persecutions of the church. One of them is Decius in 250s. It's not aimed at Christianity as such. Decius wants a return to the worship of the ancient gods as that gathers the Christians up into it.
As part of the tetrarchy, however, Diocletian and Galerius do have a concentrated persecution against Christians. This is called the Great Persecution. And that has continued until softly in 311 when Galerius releases an edict of toleration. But finally, with the edict of Milan, which comes out of Constantine and Licinius before they separate.
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