Seventeen hundred years ago, more than 300 bishops and officials participated in the first ecumenical council of the Christian church. It met between May and August 325, in the Byzantine city of Nicea (now İznik, northwestern Turkey), hence its traditional name—the First Council of Nicea. The council was convoked by Emperor Constantine I (r. 306–337) to address the Arian controversy that threatened the unity of the early church. For Constantine, the church was a unifying force within his vast empire, and doctrinal disputes threatened to undermine that unity as well as his secular authority. The council rejected Arius’s teaching about […]
