First Council of Nicaea burning Arian books, illustration from a compendium of
canon law, In 321, Arius was denounced by a
synod at Alexandria for teaching a heterodox view of the relationship of Jesus to God the Father. Because Arius and his followers had great influence in the schools of Alexandria—counterparts to modern universities or seminaries—their theological views spread, especially in the eastern Mediterranean. By 325, the controversy had become significant enough that the Emperor
Constantine called an assembly of bishops, the
First Council of Nicaea, which condemned Arius's doctrine and formulated the original
Nicene Creed of 325. The Nicene Creed's central term, used to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son, is
Homoousios (), or
Consubstantiality, meaning "of the same substance" or "of one being". The
Athanasian Creed is less often used but is a more overtly anti-Arian statement on the Trinity. The focus of the Council of Nicaea was the nature of the Son of God and his precise relationship to God the Father. (See
Paul of Samosata and the
Synods of Antioch.) Arius taught that Jesus Christ was divine or holy and was sent to Earth for the salvation of mankind, Constantine is believed to have exiled those who refused to accept the Nicaean Creed—Arius himself, the deacon Euzoios, and the Libyan bishops Theonas of Marmarica and
Secundus of Ptolemais, along with the bishops who signed the creed but refused to join in condemnation of Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia and
Theognis of Nicaea. The emperor also ordered all copies of the
Thalia, the book in which Arius had expressed his teachings, to be
burned. However, there is no evidence that his son and ultimate successor,
Constantius II, a Semi-Arian Christian, was exiled. Although he was committed to maintaining what the
Great Church had defined at Nicaea, Constantine was also bent on pacifying the situation and eventually became more lenient toward those condemned and exiled at the council. First, he allowed Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was a protégé of his sister, and Theognis to return once they had signed an ambiguous statement of faith. The two, and other friends of Arius, worked for Arius's rehabilitation. At the
First Synod of Tyre in AD 335, they brought accusations against
Athanasius, now bishop of Alexandria, the primary opponent of Arius. After this, Constantine had Athanasius banished since he considered him an impediment to reconciliation. In the same year, the Synod of Jerusalem under Constantine's direction readmitted
Arius to communion in 336. Arius died on the way to this event in Constantinople. Some scholars suggest that Arius may have been poisoned by his opponents. Eusebius and Theognis remained in the Emperor's favor; when Constantine -who had been a
catechumen much of his adult life- accepted
baptism on his deathbed, it was from Eusebius of Nicomedia. All the bishops who were there were in agreement with the major theological points of the
proto-orthodoxy, since at that time all other forms of Christianity "had by this time already been displaced, suppressed, reformed, or destroyed". Although the proto-orthodox won the previous disputes, due to the more precise defining of
orthodoxy, they were vanquished with their own weapons, ultimately being declared heretics, not because they would have fought against ideas regarded as theologically correct, but because their positions lacked the precision and refinement needed by the fusion of several contradictory theses accepted at the same time by later orthodox theologians. Of the roughly 300 bishops in attendance at the
Council of Nicaea, two bishops did not sign the
Nicene Creed that condemned Arianism. Constantine the Great also ordered a penalty of death for those who refused to surrender the Arian writings: Ten years after the Council of Nicaea,
Constantine the Great, who was himself later baptized by the Arian bishop
Eusebius of Nicomedia in 337 AD, Athanasius eventually returned to Alexandria in 346, after the deaths of both Arius and Constantine. Though Arianism had spread, Athanasius and other
Nicene Christian church leaders crusaded against Arian theology, and Arius was
anathemised and condemned as a heretic once more at the ecumenical
First Council of Constantinople of 381, attended by 150 bishops. His advisor in these affairs was Eusebius of Nicomedia, who had already at the Council of Nicaea been the head of the Arian party, and was made the bishop of Constantinople. Constantius used his power to exile bishops adhering to the Nicene Creed, especially St
Athanasius of Alexandria, who fled to Rome. In 355 Constantius became the sole Roman emperor and extended his pro-Arian policy toward the western provinces, frequently using force to push through his creed, even exiling
Pope Liberius and installing
Antipope Felix II. The
Third Council of Sirmium in 357 was the high point of Arianism. The Seventh Arian Confession (Second Sirmium Confession) held that both
homoousios (of one substance) and
homoiousios (of similar substance) were unbiblical and that the Father is greater than the Son. This confession was later known as the Blasphemy of Sirmium. But since many persons are disturbed by questions concerning what is called in Latin
substantia, but in Greek
ousia, that is, to make it understood more exactly, as to 'coessential,' or what is called, 'like-in-essence,' there ought to be no mention of any of these at all, nor exposition of them in the Church, for this reason and for this consideration, that in divine Scripture nothing is written about them, and that they are above men's knowledge and above men's understanding; As debates raged in an attempt to come up with a new formula, three camps evolved among the opponents of the Nicene Creed. The first group mainly opposed the Nicene terminology and preferred the term
homoiousios (alike in substance) to the Nicene
homoousios, while they rejected Arius and his teaching and accepted the equality and co-eternality of the persons of the Trinity. Because of this centrist position, and despite their rejection of Arius, they were called "Semi-Arians" by their opponents. The second group also avoided invoking the name of Arius, but in large part followed Arius's teachings and, in another attempted compromise wording, described the Son as being like (
homoios) the Father. A third group explicitly called upon Arius and described the Son as unlike (
anhomoios) the Father. Constantius wavered in his support between the first and the second party, while harshly persecuting the third.
Epiphanius of Salamis labeled the party of
Basil of Ancyra in 358 "
Semi-Arianism". This is considered unfair by Kelly who states that some members of the group were virtually orthodox from the start but disliked the adjective
homoousios while others had moved in that direction after the out-and-out Arians had come into the open. The debates among these groups resulted in numerous synods, among them the
Council of Serdica in 343, the
Fourth Council of Sirmium in 358 and the double
Council of Rimini and Seleucia in 359, and no fewer than fourteen further creed formulas between 340 and 360. This led the pagan observer
Ammianus Marcellinus to comment sarcastically: "The highways were covered with galloping bishops." None of these attempts was acceptable to the defenders of Nicene orthodoxy. Writing about the latter councils, Saint
Jerome remarked that the world "awoke with a groan to find itself Arian." After Constantius's death in 361, his successor
Julian, a devotee of
Rome's pagan gods, declared that he would no longer attempt to favor one church faction over another, and allowed all exiled bishops to return. This increased dissension among Nicene Christians. The emperor
Valens, however, revived Constantius's policy and supported the "Homoian" party, exiling bishops and often using force. During this persecution many bishops were exiled to the other ends of the Roman Empire, e.g., Saint
Hilary of Poitiers to the eastern provinces. These contacts and their common plight led to a rapprochement between the western supporters of the Nicene Creed and the
homoousios and the eastern Semi-Arians.
Council of Constantinople It was not until the co-reigns of Gratian and Theodosius that Arianism was effectively wiped out among the ruling class and elite of the Eastern Empire. Valens died in the
Battle of Adrianople in 378 and was succeeded by
Theodosius I, who adhered to the Nicene Creed. This allowed for settling the dispute. Theodosius's wife St
Flacilla was instrumental in his campaign to end Arianism. Two days after Theodosius arrived in Constantinople, 24 November 380, he expelled the
Arian bishop,
Demophilus of Constantinople, and surrendered the churches of that city to
Gregory of Nazianzus, the
Homoiousian leader of the rather small Nicene community there, an act which provoked rioting. Theodosius had just been baptized, by bishop Acholius of Thessalonica, during a severe illness, as was common in the early Christian world. In February he and
Gratian had published an edict that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith), or be handed over for punishment for not doing so. Although much of the church hierarchy in the East had opposed the Nicene Creed in the decades leading up to Theodosius's accession, he managed to achieve unity on the basis of the Nicene Creed. In 381, at the
Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, a group of mainly Eastern bishops assembled and accepted the
Nicene Creed of 381, which was supplemented in regard to the
Holy Spirit, as well as some other changes: see
Comparison of Nicene Creeds of 325 and 381. This is generally considered the end of the dispute about the Trinity and the end of Arianism among the Roman, non-Germanic peoples. ==Among medieval Germanic tribes==