§ 119. THE AEUN CONTKOVEEST. 621
Alexandria, agitated his doctrine in PaJestine and Niconiedia and diffused it in an entertaining work, half poetry, half prose: The Banquet {@dXeia\ of which a few fragments are preserved in Athanasins. Several bishops, especially Eusebius of Nico> media and Eusebius of Caesarea, who either shared his view or at least considered it innocent, defended him. Alexander issued a number of circular letters to all the bishops against tlie apostates and Exukontians.' Bishop rose against bishop, and province against province. The controversy soon involved, through the importance of the subject and the zeal of the parties, the entire church, and transformed the whole Christian East into a theological battle-field.
Constantine, the first emperor who mingled in the religious affairs of Christendom, and wiio did this from a political, monarcliical interest for the unity of the empire and of religion, was at first inclined to consider the contest a futile logomachy, and endeavored to reconcile the parties in diplomatic style by letters and by the personal mission of the aged bishop Hosius of Spain ; but >vithout effect. Questions of theological and religious principle are not to be adjusted, like political measures, by compromise, but must be fought through to their last results, and the truth must either conquer or (for the time) succumb. Then, in pursuance, as he thought, of a "divine inspiration," and probably also with the advice of bishops who were in friendship with him," he summoned the first universal council, to represent the whole cliurch of the empire, and to give a final decision upon the relation of Clirist to God, and upon some minor questions of discipline, the time of Easter, and the Meletian schism in Egypt.
' Ol e'l ovK ovTuiu. So he named the Arians, for their assertion that the Son of God was made e| ovk ovtwv, out of nothing.
' At least Rufiuus says, H. E. i. 1 : " Ex sacerdotum sententia." Probablj Rosius and Eusebius of CtEsarea had d lost influence with the emperor in this matter, as in others. But of any cooperation of the pope i' the summoning of tte council oi Nicsea the earliest documents know nothing.
TnreD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
§ 120. The Council of Nica^a, 325.
SOUECES.
(1) The twenty Canones, the doctrinal Symbol, and a Decree of the CoiTNOiL OF Nic^A, aud several Letters of bishop Alexander of Alexandria and the emperor Constantine (all collected in Greek and Latin in Mansi: Collect, sacrorum Conciliorum, torn. ii. fol. 635-704). Official minutes of the transactions themselves were not at that time made; only the decrees as adopted were set down in writing and subscribed by all (comp. Euseb. Vita Const, iii. 14). All later accounts of voluminous acts of the council are sheer fabrications (comp. Hefele, i. p. 249 sqq.)
(S) Accounts of eye-witnesses, especially Eusebius, Vita Const, iii. 4r-24 (superticial, ratiier Arianizing, and a panegyric of the emperor Constantine). The Church History of Eusebius, which should have closed with the council of Nice, comes down only to tlie year 324. Atha- NAsius: De dccretis Synodi Nic. ; Orationes iv contra Arianos; Epist. ad Afros, and other historical and anti- Arian tracts in torn. i. and ii. of his Opera, ed. Bened. and the more important of them also in the first vol. of Thilo's Bibliotheca Patrum Grsec. dogmat. Lips. 1853. (Engl, transl. in the Oxford Library of the Fathers.)
(8) The later accounts of EpipnANixis: Hajr. C9; Socrates: H. E. i. 8 sqq.; Sozomen: H. E. i. 17 sqq. ; Tiieodoret: H. E. i. 1-13; Eufinus: H. E. i. 1-6 (or lib. x., if his transl. of Eusebius be counted in). Gelasitjs Oyzicenus (about 476) : Coramentarius actorum Concilii Nicaeni (Greek and Latin in Mansi., tom. ii. fol. 759 sqq. ; it professes to be founded on an old MS., but is filled with imaginary speeches). Comp. also the four Coptic fragments in Pitra : Spicilegium Solesniense, Par. 1852, vol. i. p. 509 sqq., and the Syrinc fragments in Analocta Nica^na. Fragments relating to the Council of Nicasa. The Syriac text from am ancient MS. by H. Cowper, Lond. 1857-
LITERATURE. Of the historians cited at § 119 must be here especially mentioned Tille- MONT (R. C), Waloh, ScnRooKH, Gibbon, Hefele (i. pp. 249-426), A. DE Broglie (vol. ii. ch. iv. pp. 3-70), and Stanley. Besides them, Ittig: Historia concilii Nica^ni, Lips. 1712. Is. Boyle: A historical View of the Council of Nice, with a translation of Documents, New York, 1856 (in Crus6's ed. of Euseb.'s Chnrcli History). Comp. also §§ 05 and 60 above, where this in connection with tlie other ecumenical councils has already been spoken of
NicfEa, the very n<une of -whicli speaks of victory, was the 6econd city of Bitliynia, only twenty English miles from tlic