Chapter I: A Slap Too Far
"The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic." -George Bernard Shaw
"And you call yourself a Christian?!"
According to his hagiography, Athanasius of Alexandria said that he did not know why he shouted those words at Nicholas. Indeed, Athanasius once remarked that he felt as if "the words came from somewhere outside of me, from somewhere above".
After several seconds of stunned silence in the chamber, Nicholas reportedly scrunched up his face, furrowed his eyebrows, jabbed his finger in Athanasius' direction, and shouted back:
"I do not need a boy of half my years telling me what it means to be a Christian!"
The other clergy in the council room soon began to engage in further shouting matches and physical altercations - calls to order from the council president Hosius of Cordoba were drowned out amidst all of it - and the chaos only ended when Constantine ordered his guards to separate Arius' faction from the opposing group, led by Patriarch Alexander of Alexandria. Athanasius, however, was left in the empty space between the two parties. The young deacon had been one of Arius' most ardent detractors for most of the council, fighting against his fellow Alexandrian's heresy with rhetorical tooth and claw. And yet, he had just come into conflict with his own allies, albeit not over the theological issues that all of them had gathered there to handle. As the two opposing factions left the council room (in opposite directions, of course) it was reported that Athanasius remained after everyone had left, his face pensive and heavy as he stared up at the ceiling.
Once again according to his hagiography, Athanasius reportedly stayed up for most of the night in contemplative prayer, beseeching God for answers to his inner turmoil. When the deacon finally did get sleep, he said that he had a dream where he saw the Father begetting the Son, in time.
The next day, when the council reconvened, Athanasius walked to where Arius' faction was sitting, embraced the old Alexandrian presbyter, and sat down next to him. Curses rose from Patriarch Alexander's faction, but more than a few bishops arose out of seats near the Patriarch and crossed the floor to where Arius and now Athanasius were sitting. Among them included Caecilianus of Carthage, Theognis of Nicaea, Eusebius of Caesarea Maritima, Marcus of Calabria, Theophilus of the Goths, Domnus of Pannonia, Leontius of Caesarea Mazaca, Paul of Neocaesarea, Nicasius of Die, and Aristaces of Armenia. By the time that bishops were done defecting from Nicholas to Arius, approximately a third of bishops at the council were aligned with the Arians, and the other two-thirds aligned with the anti-Arians. While the Arians were still significantly in the minority, they were a much stronger force than they had been before, and notably contained virtually all of the western bishops among their number, as well as numerous bishops of areas outside of Roman control.
Hosius of Cordoba reportedly frowned at the events, but none-the-less gave a small, short nod to Athanasius once things had settled down. Whether or not the motion was intended as such, Patriarch Alexander' faction took the nod to mean that Hosius - who was supposed to be an impartial adjudicator of the proceedings - had thrown in his lot with the Arians. Nicholas of Myra reportedly stood up, pointed at Constantine - prompting the Emperor's guards to ready their weapons - before shouting that Hosius should be removed as council president and replaced with Patriarch Alexander. This once again ignited tensions, which only ended when the Arians - now accompanied by Hosius - left the council building entirely, chased by supporters of Patriarch Alexander the entire way; Nicholas, reportedly, pulled off his sandal and threw it at Athanasius, the piece of footwear striking the young deacon in the forehead, causing a slight bruise for several days after.
Once the Arians had been removed, Patriarch Alexander convinced Constantine to resume the council. The Emperor was, obviously, less than pleased at the events that had occurred, but acquiesced to Alexander's request either way. While the Arian issue had, after a fashion, been taken care of, there were still other matters at hand for the council to deal with, such as Paphnutius' wish that clerical celibacy be nullified. (It would not be.) The council would go on for another month before its creed was finalized.
The Nicene Creed of 325:
"We believe in one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son Almighty, Light of Light, very God of Very God, begotten of the Father, co-eternal and consubstantial with Him; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. Any who deny these statements, who attempt to divide the almighty God against Himself, they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church."
After being evicted from the council, Arius' faction swiftly fled the city. Many of its members returned to their bishoprics, renewed in their fervor for Arian Christianity and dedicated to spreading it outside of the reach of Patriarch Alexander and his faction. Many more of Arius' supporters, however, sailed to Alexandria as swiftly as the winds could carry them. Given that Alexander would still be busy in Nicaea for the foreseeable future, some of Arius' faction - including Athanasius - convinced the presbyter to return to his home city, where they could proclaim him, rather than Alexander, as the Patriarch of Alexandria. Arius knew that such an outcome was unlikely, given the strength of Alexander's support in the city, but agreed to go to Alexandria with them if they ensured that a creed of their own would be written up and disseminated as soon as possible, hopefully outpacing that of Alexander's.
In the several days that it took the Arian faction to reach Alexandria by boat, most of their minor disagreements were hashed out, though there was still a split between the heterousians and the homoiousians, over whether the Son, begotten in time, was of like substance with the Father or of unlike substance. Much to Arius' relief, the intra-Arian factions agreed to put that matter aside until a time when they weren't living as fugitives. When all of Arius' supporters had reached Alexandria, a creed had already been finalized. Athanasius was the one who wrote it onto papyrus, and it was signed by all of the Arian bishops that remained with the presbyter.
The Alexandrian Creed of 325:
"We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, highest and above all else, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in Jesus Christ, the begotten son of the Father, Light of Light, very Holy of very Holy, eternally devoted servant of God; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven, lifted by His Father; from thence shall He come to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost, begotten by the Father, very Holy of very Holy, eternally devoted servant of God. Any who deny these statements, who attempt to deny the Almighty holy supremacy of God, they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church."
However, Arius' expectations that he would not be welcomed to Alexandria as Christ himself might have been were justified. Upon hearing that the Arians were in Alexandria and attempting to disseminate a creed of their own - and upon receiving word of what had transpired in Nicaea - the Patriarch's supporters alerted the local Roman authorities, who were similarly under orders from Constantine to support the Patriarch's Christians against their opponents. Arius was not in Alexandria a week before the Romans began searching the city for him and his supporters, and the presbyter soon made preparations to flee to the western portions of the empire, where Alexander's influence was sparse and where the Arians had many allies.
Unfortunately, Roman authorities captured Arius the night before he was to depart, stating that he would be held until Patriarch Alexander could return and hold a trial for the presbyter's heresy and insubordination to the mother Church. After much prayer and discussion, the remaining Arian bishops - lead now by Athanasius - agreed to leave Alexandria and head west, as had been the original plan. Athanasius and the rest of his group arrived in Massilia in September, and then quickly scattered in order to avoid easy capture.
By the end of 325 AD, Arius had been burnt at the stake as a heretic, becoming the first martyr of Alexandrian Christianity. The Kingdom of Armenia quickly arrested Aristaces and turned him over to the Romans, not wishing to jeopardize their relationship with their western benefactors, turning him also into a martyr shortly after Arius had been. Similarly, when Mirian III of Iberia was confronted with both a Nicaean and an Alexandrian preacher offering to baptize him into the Christian Church, he kept the Nicaean preacher in his court and sent the Alexandrian one to the Romans, preferring pragmatic geopolitics over theological minutiae.
Arian bishops in the western Empire and in the Danube basin, however, freely preached the supremacy of the Father away from the influence of the Nicaeans and away from Constantine's base of power in Anatolia. While the Christological differences between Nicene Christianity and Alexandrian Christianity were of little concern to anyone except members of the clergy themselves - subsistence farmers were too busy trying not to starve to care as to whether the god that they worship has a co-equal son or a subordinate son, after all - local power holders in those areas saw an opportunity in the Alexandrian creed to oppose the influence of Constantine, such acts being a perennial issue in the Empire at that time.
Junius Bassus, the praetorian prefect of Gaul (composing Gaul proper, Britannia, and Spain) offered Athanasius a safe haven at his manor, before also asking the young priest to baptize him; Junius would later build a church in Augusta Treverorum for Athanasius, and convinced the young man to take the title of Bishop of Treverorum. Junius also coerced Aemilianus, the praetorian prefect of Italy (composing Italy proper, west northern Africa, Pannonia, Dacia, and Macedonia), into allowing free passage of Alexandrian preachers throughout the Italian prefecture. The Emperor - who had solidly thrown his lot in with the Nicaeans - wrote stern letters to Junius and Aemilianus regarding the "Arian heresy", but the matter was meager enough in a geopolitical sense that he simply opted to let his prefects act as they wished on matters of religion, albeit also putting more agents in Gaul and Italy to keep an eye on them.
In the city of Pula on the Istrian coast, however, a young man by the name of Flavius Julius Crispus sees a servant of his suddenly fall over dead, displaying symptoms of poisoning... And right after having stolen a sip of wine newly gifted to Crispus as a peace offering from his father, Emperor Constantine I. Crispus' mind runs wild for several minutes, before settling on thoughts of Gaul, and the safe haven offered there.
OOC:
Hey there, folks! I hope that you enjoyed this first chapter. I've been wanting to do something on a more-successful Arian Christianity for a while now, and have finally gotten around to it.
The slap that Ol' Saint Nick gave to Arian seems to be historical. Athanasius' change of heart, of course, is the PoD. Faith is a weird, fuzzy, and fickle thing - as I can say from my own experience as a person of faith - so I decided that it wouldn't be too far-fetched for a deeply religious man to have a spontaneous, radical change like that given a shocking enough event, such as a respected bishop engaging in basic violence against an elderly man.
I am, unfortunately, not as learned on 4th century Christianity and 4th century Rome as I would like to be. Much of the information used for this post has been freshly gathered, but I hope that all or most of it is accurate.
For reference, my aim here isn't an Arius-wank or a Nicaea-bash. I obviously have my own personal opinions on the First Council of Nicaea, but I'm more interested in playing out how an "early schism" of sorts in the Christian church might go.
As people have frequently noted, most people don't really care about the sort of theological minutaie debated at ecumenical councils. After all, Constantine called the First Council of Nicaea not out of a desire to watch the rhetorical sparring of Christian holy men, but to try to consolidate and homogenize the faith that he was adopting at the time; it wouldn't do any good for the Empire's new most popular religion to be deeply divided against itself.
That being said, I believe that the best way to make an "early schism" in the Christian church interesting is to play up the geopolitics that often follow religion. For example, while there were genuine matters of faith at stake during the Protestant Reformation - you would not have fanatic Calvinists burning images and tearing down statues if there wasn't some degree of true belief there, after all - many and more Christian rulers threw off the Roman Catholic Church not out of religious zeal, but rather out of pragmatic function; while Henry VIII is the most famous example of this, there were countless more Christian sovereigns that followed in his footsteps for even more relatively minor reasons than just matters of divorce. A simple fact of history is that at least as many powerful people use faith as a tool, as instead consider faith a purpose and a goal in its own right.
Thus, I've decided to try to set things up so that ambitious people in the Roman Empire - no shortage of those! - would use Arianism to further their own geopolitical goals at the expense of the now-Nicaean Emperor. Again, I'm no expert on Roman history, but my vague understanding of it is that wherever the Emperor is situated at the time, it is within the furthest reaches of the Empire that ambitious opponents will gather, grow, and scheme. Given that Constantine is in the process of shifting the seat of Roman power from the city of Rome itself to his new capital on the Bosphorus, it seems reasonable that the Gallic provinces are most ripe for intrigue and dissent.
Also, butterflies happened and kept Crispus from dying. There are incredibly sparse details on the specifics of his death, but most people seem to agree that he died from poison in some fashion or another - whether it was murder or suicide appears to be up in the air - so I went with that.
Chapter I: A Slap Too Far
The sound of the palm of Nicholas of Myra hitting the cheek of Arius of Alexandria echoed through the council chamber at Nicaea, followed shortly-thereafter by gasps of shock and exclamations of outrage; even Constantine himself had gone wide-eyed, not expecting holy men to engage in such base violence against one another. Over that din, though, one relatively youthful voice was louder and more forceful than the rest, and let its own fury be known:
"And you call yourself a Christian?!"
According to his hagiography, Athanasius of Alexandria said that he did not know why he shouted those words at Nicholas. Indeed, Athanasius once remarked that he felt as if "the words came from somewhere outside of me, from somewhere above".
After several seconds of stunned silence in the chamber, Nicholas reportedly scrunched up his face, furrowed his eyebrows, jabbed his finger in Athanasius' direction, and shouted back:
"I do not need a boy of half my years telling me what it means to be a Christian!"
The other clergy in the council room soon began to engage in further shouting matches and physical altercations - calls to order from the council president Hosius of Cordoba were drowned out amidst all of it - and the chaos only ended when Constantine ordered his guards to separate Arius' faction from the opposing group, led by Patriarch Alexander of Alexandria. Athanasius, however, was left in the empty space between the two parties. The young deacon had been one of Arius' most ardent detractors for most of the council, fighting against his fellow Alexandrian's heresy with rhetorical tooth and claw. And yet, he had just come into conflict with his own allies, albeit not over the theological issues that all of them had gathered there to handle. As the two opposing factions left the council room (in opposite directions, of course) it was reported that Athanasius remained after everyone had left, his face pensive and heavy as he stared up at the ceiling.
Once again according to his hagiography, Athanasius reportedly stayed up for most of the night in contemplative prayer, beseeching God for answers to his inner turmoil. When the deacon finally did get sleep, he said that he had a dream where he saw the Father begetting the Son, in time.
The next day, when the council reconvened, Athanasius walked to where Arius' faction was sitting, embraced the old Alexandrian presbyter, and sat down next to him. Curses rose from Patriarch Alexander's faction, but more than a few bishops arose out of seats near the Patriarch and crossed the floor to where Arius and now Athanasius were sitting. Among them included Caecilianus of Carthage, Theognis of Nicaea, Eusebius of Caesarea Maritima, Marcus of Calabria, Theophilus of the Goths, Domnus of Pannonia, Leontius of Caesarea Mazaca, Paul of Neocaesarea, Nicasius of Die, and Aristaces of Armenia. By the time that bishops were done defecting from Nicholas to Arius, approximately a third of bishops at the council were aligned with the Arians, and the other two-thirds aligned with the anti-Arians. While the Arians were still significantly in the minority, they were a much stronger force than they had been before, and notably contained virtually all of the western bishops among their number, as well as numerous bishops of areas outside of Roman control.
Hosius of Cordoba reportedly frowned at the events, but none-the-less gave a small, short nod to Athanasius once things had settled down. Whether or not the motion was intended as such, Patriarch Alexander' faction took the nod to mean that Hosius - who was supposed to be an impartial adjudicator of the proceedings - had thrown in his lot with the Arians. Nicholas of Myra reportedly stood up, pointed at Constantine - prompting the Emperor's guards to ready their weapons - before shouting that Hosius should be removed as council president and replaced with Patriarch Alexander. This once again ignited tensions, which only ended when the Arians - now accompanied by Hosius - left the council building entirely, chased by supporters of Patriarch Alexander the entire way; Nicholas, reportedly, pulled off his sandal and threw it at Athanasius, the piece of footwear striking the young deacon in the forehead, causing a slight bruise for several days after.
Once the Arians had been removed, Patriarch Alexander convinced Constantine to resume the council. The Emperor was, obviously, less than pleased at the events that had occurred, but acquiesced to Alexander's request either way. While the Arian issue had, after a fashion, been taken care of, there were still other matters at hand for the council to deal with, such as Paphnutius' wish that clerical celibacy be nullified. (It would not be.) The council would go on for another month before its creed was finalized.
The Nicene Creed of 325:
"We believe in one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son Almighty, Light of Light, very God of Very God, begotten of the Father, co-eternal and consubstantial with Him; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. Any who deny these statements, who attempt to divide the almighty God against Himself, they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church."
After being evicted from the council, Arius' faction swiftly fled the city. Many of its members returned to their bishoprics, renewed in their fervor for Arian Christianity and dedicated to spreading it outside of the reach of Patriarch Alexander and his faction. Many more of Arius' supporters, however, sailed to Alexandria as swiftly as the winds could carry them. Given that Alexander would still be busy in Nicaea for the foreseeable future, some of Arius' faction - including Athanasius - convinced the presbyter to return to his home city, where they could proclaim him, rather than Alexander, as the Patriarch of Alexandria. Arius knew that such an outcome was unlikely, given the strength of Alexander's support in the city, but agreed to go to Alexandria with them if they ensured that a creed of their own would be written up and disseminated as soon as possible, hopefully outpacing that of Alexander's.
In the several days that it took the Arian faction to reach Alexandria by boat, most of their minor disagreements were hashed out, though there was still a split between the heterousians and the homoiousians, over whether the Son, begotten in time, was of like substance with the Father or of unlike substance. Much to Arius' relief, the intra-Arian factions agreed to put that matter aside until a time when they weren't living as fugitives. When all of Arius' supporters had reached Alexandria, a creed had already been finalized. Athanasius was the one who wrote it onto papyrus, and it was signed by all of the Arian bishops that remained with the presbyter.
The Alexandrian Creed of 325:
"We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, highest and above all else, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in Jesus Christ, the begotten son of the Father, Light of Light, very Holy of very Holy, eternally devoted servant of God; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven, lifted by His Father; from thence shall He come to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost, begotten by the Father, very Holy of very Holy, eternally devoted servant of God. Any who deny these statements, who attempt to deny the Almighty holy supremacy of God, they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church."
However, Arius' expectations that he would not be welcomed to Alexandria as Christ himself might have been were justified. Upon hearing that the Arians were in Alexandria and attempting to disseminate a creed of their own - and upon receiving word of what had transpired in Nicaea - the Patriarch's supporters alerted the local Roman authorities, who were similarly under orders from Constantine to support the Patriarch's Christians against their opponents. Arius was not in Alexandria a week before the Romans began searching the city for him and his supporters, and the presbyter soon made preparations to flee to the western portions of the empire, where Alexander's influence was sparse and where the Arians had many allies.
Unfortunately, Roman authorities captured Arius the night before he was to depart, stating that he would be held until Patriarch Alexander could return and hold a trial for the presbyter's heresy and insubordination to the mother Church. After much prayer and discussion, the remaining Arian bishops - lead now by Athanasius - agreed to leave Alexandria and head west, as had been the original plan. Athanasius and the rest of his group arrived in Massilia in September, and then quickly scattered in order to avoid easy capture.
By the end of 325 AD, Arius had been burnt at the stake as a heretic, becoming the first martyr of Alexandrian Christianity. The Kingdom of Armenia quickly arrested Aristaces and turned him over to the Romans, not wishing to jeopardize their relationship with their western benefactors, turning him also into a martyr shortly after Arius had been. Similarly, when Mirian III of Iberia was confronted with both a Nicaean and an Alexandrian preacher offering to baptize him into the Christian Church, he kept the Nicaean preacher in his court and sent the Alexandrian one to the Romans, preferring pragmatic geopolitics over theological minutiae.
Arian bishops in the western Empire and in the Danube basin, however, freely preached the supremacy of the Father away from the influence of the Nicaeans and away from Constantine's base of power in Anatolia. While the Christological differences between Nicene Christianity and Alexandrian Christianity were of little concern to anyone except members of the clergy themselves - subsistence farmers were too busy trying not to starve to care as to whether the god that they worship has a co-equal son or a subordinate son, after all - local power holders in those areas saw an opportunity in the Alexandrian creed to oppose the influence of Constantine, such acts being a perennial issue in the Empire at that time.
Junius Bassus, the praetorian prefect of Gaul (composing Gaul proper, Britannia, and Spain) offered Athanasius a safe haven at his manor, before also asking the young priest to baptize him; Junius would later build a church in Augusta Treverorum for Athanasius, and convinced the young man to take the title of Bishop of Treverorum. Junius also coerced Aemilianus, the praetorian prefect of Italy (composing Italy proper, west northern Africa, Pannonia, Dacia, and Macedonia), into allowing free passage of Alexandrian preachers throughout the Italian prefecture. The Emperor - who had solidly thrown his lot in with the Nicaeans - wrote stern letters to Junius and Aemilianus regarding the "Arian heresy", but the matter was meager enough in a geopolitical sense that he simply opted to let his prefects act as they wished on matters of religion, albeit also putting more agents in Gaul and Italy to keep an eye on them.
In the city of Pula on the Istrian coast, however, a young man by the name of Flavius Julius Crispus sees a servant of his suddenly fall over dead, displaying symptoms of poisoning... And right after having stolen a sip of wine newly gifted to Crispus as a peace offering from his father, Emperor Constantine I. Crispus' mind runs wild for several minutes, before settling on thoughts of Gaul, and the safe haven offered there.
OOC:
Hey there, folks! I hope that you enjoyed this first chapter. I've been wanting to do something on a more-successful Arian Christianity for a while now, and have finally gotten around to it.
The slap that Ol' Saint Nick gave to Arian seems to be historical. Athanasius' change of heart, of course, is the PoD. Faith is a weird, fuzzy, and fickle thing - as I can say from my own experience as a person of faith - so I decided that it wouldn't be too far-fetched for a deeply religious man to have a spontaneous, radical change like that given a shocking enough event, such as a respected bishop engaging in basic violence against an elderly man.
I am, unfortunately, not as learned on 4th century Christianity and 4th century Rome as I would like to be. Much of the information used for this post has been freshly gathered, but I hope that all or most of it is accurate.
For reference, my aim here isn't an Arius-wank or a Nicaea-bash. I obviously have my own personal opinions on the First Council of Nicaea, but I'm more interested in playing out how an "early schism" of sorts in the Christian church might go.
As people have frequently noted, most people don't really care about the sort of theological minutaie debated at ecumenical councils. After all, Constantine called the First Council of Nicaea not out of a desire to watch the rhetorical sparring of Christian holy men, but to try to consolidate and homogenize the faith that he was adopting at the time; it wouldn't do any good for the Empire's new most popular religion to be deeply divided against itself.
That being said, I believe that the best way to make an "early schism" in the Christian church interesting is to play up the geopolitics that often follow religion. For example, while there were genuine matters of faith at stake during the Protestant Reformation - you would not have fanatic Calvinists burning images and tearing down statues if there wasn't some degree of true belief there, after all - many and more Christian rulers threw off the Roman Catholic Church not out of religious zeal, but rather out of pragmatic function; while Henry VIII is the most famous example of this, there were countless more Christian sovereigns that followed in his footsteps for even more relatively minor reasons than just matters of divorce. A simple fact of history is that at least as many powerful people use faith as a tool, as instead consider faith a purpose and a goal in its own right.
Thus, I've decided to try to set things up so that ambitious people in the Roman Empire - no shortage of those! - would use Arianism to further their own geopolitical goals at the expense of the now-Nicaean Emperor. Again, I'm no expert on Roman history, but my vague understanding of it is that wherever the Emperor is situated at the time, it is within the furthest reaches of the Empire that ambitious opponents will gather, grow, and scheme. Given that Constantine is in the process of shifting the seat of Roman power from the city of Rome itself to his new capital on the Bosphorus, it seems reasonable that the Gallic provinces are most ripe for intrigue and dissent.
Also, butterflies happened and kept Crispus from dying. There are incredibly sparse details on the specifics of his death, but most people seem to agree that he died from poison in some fashion or another - whether it was murder or suicide appears to be up in the air - so I went with that.
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