BEFORE GOING WITH CONSTANTINE to Nicaea, now the city of Iznik in western Turkey, we must travel south to Alexandria in Egypt. Alexandria had long been one of the intellectual capitals of the Roman World. Founded by Alexander the Great in the 330s BC, the city had emerged as a major imperial capital in its own right in the decades after Alexander died in 323. It remained the capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which descended from one of Alexander’s generals, until the last Ptolemy, the (in)famous Queen Cleopatra VII, surrendered to the emperor Augustus and committed suicide in 30 BC. Located at the western end of the Nile Delta, the ancient city was a massively important cultural center. Visitors could still marvel at the great lighthouse on the island of Pharos—138 meters tall, it was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world—visit the tomb of Alexander the Great; admire the old royal palaces, decked out with statues “borrowed” from earlier Egyptian monuments much as the arch of Constantine had been adorned by material taken from earlier imperial monuments; or visit the great library, the Mousaion, founded as a center for the preservation and extension of Greek learning. It was a city famous for its art and for its lively intellectual life, one whose security was crucial for the economic well-being of the empire. Its harbor was the principal port through which the wealth of Egypt and luxuries imported from India passed into the Mediterranean. Home to many significant pagan thinkers, it was also the place of many of the most important Christian thinkers of the previous century. It was this heritage that would be the cause of great concern as Constantine entered the debate over the relationship between the elements of the Christian Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
A debate had arisen in the third century between those who believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three different expressions of a single being, a view known as monarchianism, and those who held that the three elements of the Trinity were three hypostaseis or substances of the same being. The point of the second position was that the three elements of the Trinity had separate but equal form. One of the most important representatives of the anti-monarchian view at Alexandria was Origen, who taught there, castrated himself there, and moved off to Caesarea in Palestine where he died as a result of ill treatment in the wake of Decius’ edict on sacrifices. Another supporter of this view and staunch opponent of extreme monarchian theology was Dionysius, a convert from paganism who was bishop for nearly thirty years from the 230s into the 260s.1
The anti-monarchian view, well articulated in Alexandria, was also important in Syria, where Antioch was a major cultural as well as administrative center. In Diocletian’s time, the most important thinker in the Syrian church had been a teacher named Lucian, a man of immense courage who spent the last years of his life in prison at Nicomedia, before Maximinus beheaded him in 312. Among his pupils was Eusebius—not the biographer of Constantine but a relative of one of Licinius’ most important officials—who served as bishop of Beirut in Lebanon (where there was a famous school of Roman law) before taking up the bishopric of Nicomedia. It was because he assumed this role that he had become close to Constantia and had been in a position to negotiate Licinius’ surrender to Constantine.
Although Eusebius of Nicomedia will often seem to be the key figure in the debate over the Trinity, more because of his influence than his theological acumen, the debate takes its name from a charismatic priest named Arius, who is said to have been a skillful debater and an active preacher who had responsibility for a group of 700 holy virgins as well as his own church.2 Arius had a background in Platonic philosophy and it seems that he had studied with Lucian at Antioch, where he may have made the acquaintance of Eusebius of Nicomedia, who would later support him in his struggles with the hierarchy at Alexandria.3 These struggles arose because Arius preached a strongly anti-monarchian theology, and monarchian theology had become dominant at Alexandria in Diocletian’s time.4
The controversy that would surround Arius’ teaching would focus on basic questions regarding what constituted a proper Christian life in addition to pinpointing God’s relationship to humanity. These were issues that bore on the question of what counted as martyrdom along with lifestyle choices that were becoming more prevalent among Christians in the sixty or so years before Diocletian issued his persecution edict in 303, when martyrdom had seemed more a theoretical than a real possibility. The lifestyle that Arius affected was the tip of an ascetic iceberg that was, even then, giving rise to a recognizably new form of Christian: the monk. Monastic self-mortification would replace the agony of martyrdom as a way of defining a place within the Christian hierarchy that lay outside the control of the bishops. The battle over Arius’ teaching would also become a struggle to control this increasingly important development within the church.5
The fabric of the ecclesiastical hierarchy at Alexandria had been frayed by another controversy. Like the Donatist conflict, the quarrel between Peter of Alexandria and Meletius of Lycopolis in northern Egypt was a direct consequence of Diocletian’s persecution edict. When news of the edict came, Peter fled the city, returning in 306 to take up his duties as the primate of Egypt and issue a decree setting out how to treat members of the faith who might be thought to have lapsed in some way. Not surprisingly, he thought that those Christians who had fled, as he had, had done the right thing. Those who, obeying the edict, had handed over scripture had done no wrong either. Only those who had publicly sacrificed were to be punished. Unfortunately for Peter, one person who fell into this latter category was allegedly Colluthus, who was replaced as bishop of Lycopolis by Meletius, in whose opinion those who had lapsed needed to seek forgiveness from those who had suffered; and if a priest had lapsed, he could never regain his position and would be readmitted to communion only after a period of penance.6
Peter’s position, to judge from the canons of the Council of Ancyra (probably convened in 314), was more closely aligned with mainstream thought in the church:
Priests who sacrificed, and then renewed the fight, not through some deceit, but in truth, neither arranging in advance or with deliberate purpose or persuading (some official) so that they should appear to be subjected to torture, which is applied in appearance and form, shall partake of the honor of their position, but they shall neither make the offering, or preach, or perform any of the functions of priestly offices.7
In other words, those who offered sacrifice under duress, having tried unsuccessfully to flee, should have no action taken against them. People who were not priests when they sacrificed under such circumstances could be “be ordained as having committed no fault in the persecution.”8 The key factor here was intent: if the individual had been distraught when participating in a sacrifice, then he would be treated leniently, but if he had participated willingly he would suffer penance.9 The aim of the bishops in using intent in determining guilt was plainly to defuse controversies such as Meletius had inflamed. Unfortunately for those who thought this way, the issue could not simply be shoved under the ecclesiastical carpet. In Egypt particularly, strict enforcement of Diocletian’s edict aggravated the division between the two camps.10
When Galerius issued his edict of persecution in 306, the recently returned Peter fled again and remained in hiding for some time. Meletius took the opportunity offered by Peter’s departure to assume his duties as primate of Alexandria. An outraged Peter wrote his congregation ordering them to have nothing to do with Meletius until he could return and examine him, which he did—and determined that he should be excommunicated, a decision that couldn’t have surprised anyone and was made all the easier to enforce by the fact that Meletius had been arrested and was at that moment incarcerated in a mine in Palestine.11 Some of Peter’s own supporters may well have regarded his conduct as equivocal, and this may be reflected in a later story according to which the schism between Peter and Meletius arose when the two of them were in prison together, separated only by a curtain hung across the middle of the cell!12 Fiction though this may be, its existence pinpoints a perceived weakness in Peter’s case, at least until the time that he himself could gain the authority of a martyr for his doctrines. And become a martyr he did, when he was arrested and killed on the evening of November 25–26, 311. Peter’s death took some of the wind out of Meletius’ sails; one tradition has it that Arius had broken with Peter over his treatment of Meletius and had asked forgiveness of Peter’s successor Achillas. Achillas died shortly after his accession and was succeeded in turn by Alexander, who may have defeated Arius in the election to the episcopal seat.13
Alexander tried to reconcile the different Christian groups, arriving at what seems to have been a watchful truce with the Meletians, permitting debate over doctrine.14 Alexander himself may, at least at the beginning, have been willing to countenance a range of discussion at the seminars that he held on the nature of the Christian God. In doing so Alexander took a strong monarchian line in advocating that the Father and the Son were homoousios, “consubstantial.” He might have had reasons for doing this that had nothing to do with Meletius; the monarchian position answered pagan claims that Christ was a person not unlike Apollonius of Tyana, the great pagan wonder worker of the first century, and thus in no way exceptional. Unfortunately for Alexander, the extreme position flew in the face of earlier teachings—including those of the revered Dionysius—and an effort to silence voices that had long had a place in discussions was bound to arouse antipathy, which is exactly what happened.15 Still these seminars seem to have allowed for open discussion until the Meletians complained that Alexander was harboring a heretic in Arius. It was at this point that Alexander tried to silence his rival, and Arius looked for help from abroad.16 This would be forthcoming, for even if there were differences of opinion among anti-monarchians as to how the Trinity should be understood—Eusebius of Nicomedia did not see eye-to-eye with Arius on all matters—most of the opposition could agree that the use of the word homoousios was obnoxious because to them it implied that the uncreated Father suffered bodily diminution in the creation of the Son.17
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the dispute between Arius and Alexander in 322 is that there was so little about it that was new. At least at the outset, it is arguable that the controversy between the two men had more to do with local autonomy and the structure of the church in Alexandria than with doctrine, since anyone licensed to preach in an Alexandrian church was allowed free rein on questions of doctrine. According to Alexander, the debate gathered strength when Arius urged a number of priests to see things his way and took advantage of his following among the virgins of Alexandria.18 This version emphasized that the dispute was internal to the Alexandrian church and that Arius was doctrinally eccentric.
The real problem, especially as the powerful Eusebius took Arius’ side, was that the dispute raised serious questions about Alexander’s own qualification to be bishop, and this was intolerable when he still had to tread carefully around Meletians, who thought the same thing because he represented the party of Peter.19 To defend his position, Alexander summoned a council of Egyptian bishops to condemn Arius and reassert his control in the eyes of the Christian community as a whole. The letter he sent to the churches of the east after the council voted to excommunicate Arius in 322 gives some sense of the two dimensions, personal and doctrinal, that the struggle had assumed. Indeed, Alexander opened with an attack not on Arius but on Eusebius of Nicomedia, who “thinks that the affairs of the Church are under his control because he deserted his charge at Beirut and cast longing glances at the church at Nicomedia (and he did this with impunity).” This is an interesting statement because Alexander is suggesting that Eusebius is using his position as bishop at the imperial capital to assert authority over his fellow Christians. If Alexander could think such a thing, it is highly unlikely that Licinius had been as hostile to the church as Eusebius of Caesarea would later claim. If an ambitious and well-connected man like Eusebius of Nicomedia had thought that Nicomedia was a potential lions’ den, it is most unlikely that he would have left Beirut to go there. Indeed, Alexander said that Eusebius began to play the role of a prince of the church, putting “himself at the head of these apostates… daring even to send commendatory letters in all directions concerning them, if by any means he might inveigle some of the ignorant into this most base heresy which is hostile to Christ.”20 There is a sense here that by moving to Nicomedia, Eusebius was claiming primacy over other bishops, and Arius’ doctrine was perhaps less urgent an issue than how one might deal with a court bishop as Eusebius may now have seemed to the Alexandrians.
Alexander’s hostility to Eusebius was not entirely without justification. Eusebius had sent a letter supporting Arius’ position to the bishops of the east, and the first thing that Arius appears to have done when the council was over was to write to Eusebius asking for his help.21 And Eusebius was not Alexander’s only problem. He complained, for instance, of numerous preachers in Alexandria and elsewhere being won over by Arius’ eloquence.22 In one letter, he lists prelates, including the bishops of Libya, who asserted the distinction between the Father and Son that was central to Arius’ teaching, claiming (falsely) that it was a heresy of their own devising.23
Arius then wrote to Alexander and the clerics who supported him in 322 characterizing Alexander as being, among other things, a Manichaean—a member of the faith originating in Persia, to which Diocletian had so strongly objected as well. Arius even went so far as to claim that Alexander’s doctrine tracked that of Mani, who had grown up as a member of a Jewish-Christian splinter group in what is now Iraq. Mani, so Arius said, held that the Son was a homoousios meros tou patros (consubstantial part of the Father).24 This underscored the crucial theological point, for Arius held that the Son was created after the Father, and subordinate to him; and created so that he could mediate between his Father and the created world. In this formulation, the Father was the “true God” and the Son was entitled to divinity because he participated in the Father’s “substance.” If the Son was a creation of the Father, he could not be homoousios.25
Having returned to his church, Arius wrote to Eusebius and others asking for their support.26 Since Eusebius maintained that the members of the Trinity were three essences of God, he clearly thought that Arius’ teachings were closer to his own than Alexander’s belief in a single essence comprising three Persons.27
Neither side gained the decisive advantage in Alexandria itself even though Arius tried to support his view by explaining in a poem entitled the Thalia, which clarified his claims to authority. It opened with the statement:
According to the faith of the chosen of God and of those knowledgeable of God, of the holy children, of those who expound the word God correctly, receiving the Holy Spirit, I have learned these things from the participants of wisdom, from those who are pleasing [to God], and from those who are divinely taught in all things. I follow in their footsteps, the famous one, proceeding with correct learning, suffering much for the glory of God, learning from God, I know wisdom and knowledge.
Arius thus combines in his person the role of the inspired prophet and overtones of persecution.28 The words just quoted reveal another layer of Arius’ thought having to do with what is to us the still murky realm of popular culture, where ideas fused to be reshaped by teachers on street corners as well as in churches. Arius’ ability to catch a different tone helped him withstand the assaults of the Alexandrian establishment and reach out to other leaders of the church.
And while he resisted his opponents in the streets, he also responded bitterly to the attacks on his thinking that reverberated in the higher echelons of the church. In a letter to Eusebius in 322 he complained that the bishops who supported him—including Eusebius of Caesarea, the biographer of Constantine—had been excommunicated by their rivals, while others, who were “heretics and uncatechized” in his view, were retained in communion despite “saying that the Son is a belch, or that he is a projection, or that he is unbegotten.”29 Indeed, by this point the situation was so polarized that without recourse to direct imperial intervention—not Licinius’ style in matters of the mind—there was no real way to resolve the dispute. This was the situation when Constantine emerged victorious from the final struggle with Licinius.