stephan huller

Another important thing that has to be noted. The Martyrdom of Peter I has to fit in this discussion too. In that story Peter I is executed in late November of 311 CE. But the dating is problematic because there should have been peace at that time between the state and the Church. I have extensively reviewed the various traditions related to this event and there is a clear murmur of popular resistance against Peter at the Church of St Mark in Boucolis. This became an 'Arian' stronghold in the fourth century - the city of Alexandria being mostly devoted to the greater Church and the regions outside of the large Greek speaking population to the traditional Egyptian Church.

The story goes that Peter had run away during the Great Persecution and then only come back after peace had been established . The natives were also upset that Peter did not sit on the throne of St Mark. He sat in front of it not on the throne. When he is slaughtered the religious services continue and he is basically stuffed into the chair. The Pope that immediately follows Peter is Achillas who is identified as an 'Arian' before Arius. On the death of Achillas, Alexander - a Catholic - as St. Peter had predicted, was made bishop.

The story continues that Arius contested the appointment, and the strict integrity of the proceedings was impugned by the Arians. The point here is that there seems to have been a struggle in Egypt already in the fourth century which continued to the arrival of the Arab conquerors. The Copts here, like the Samaritans and Jews of Palestine, welcomed the armies of Mohammed as liberators from the tyranny of the Byzantines.

stephan huller

It has always puzzled me that there were no strong roots of Arianism in Egypt after Nicaea. Even the various Arian 'Popes' come from Cappadocia and regions outside of Egypt. Yes many may have been slaughtered. But surely it couldn't have been a mass holocaust. My guess is that there is something else going on here. The Arians weren't Copts. They weren't proto-Jacobites. They seem instead to have been a world-wide tradition which had an interest in Egypt and the Church of St Mark in particular - even if there weren't that many Greek speaking 'Arians' (or whatever you want to call them) in Egypt.

The obvious question is - since the Popes were selected by the priests in Egypt why were George and the other 'Arian' Popes selected to sit in the throne of St Mark instead of native Egyptian candidates? Why were the elections so rigged that outsiders had to be brought in to oppose the Orthodox?

mountainman

It's reasonable to expect that the real disturbance was Constantine's Christian agenda and that this was at the basis of the controversy. The Roman Empire had never before seen the implementation of a centralised monotheistic state religion based on a holy writ.

Such an agenda (enforced by the army) was bound to create all sorts of controversial responses.




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

Maybe Constantine thought of himself and his followers as "The Good Guys" or by the name of "Chrestians" in the Greek?

He did publish the "Good News" ....






εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

There is also the following short letter from Constantine to Arius.



Arius! Arius! Were are you Arius?
Come to me Arius. Come to my court by beloved friend.
Catch a chariot and I will pay the driver when you get here.
Come to me at once Dear Arius.
I need to execute you slowly.








εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

According to the history of Ammianus "numbers without end" were slaughtered on religious grounds under a tribunal established by Constantius at Skythopolis. See BOOK XIX, Chapter XII, 1-18.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

stephan huller

If we are going to think about the events preceding Nicaea the question has to be raised - how did Eusebius of Nicomedia manage to hold on to his job in the Emperor's backyard (and indeed in the Imperial household) if Constantine was really out to spread orthodoxy? Once again the evidence seems to suggest that Constantine was working from a position of relative weakness. He wanted some sort of ecumenical agreement in Christianity but he couldn't get his side (= Eusebius of Nicomedia) to control the outcome. Indeed we should be surprised that the orthodox don't openly celebrate its triumph over the Emperor. Constantius was just tying up loose ends.

mountainman

One possibility is maybe everyone was Arian to some extent.


Jerome wrote that "the world groaned to find itself Arian".

He could have written, but did not write "the world groaned to find itself Christian".

This may be quite significant.


But he did publish fifty bibles with a specific set of books in them (maybe Vaticanus etc) , and his actions at Nicaea on the surface correspond to someone who wanted to have his own specific set of books canonised. We know he failed at this, if we accept that someone else in the later 4th or even 5th century got rid of "The Shepherd of Hermas".




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

stephan huller

But the texts of the Bible were already agreed upon by both sides in the debate. There is never any reporting of disagreement there between the two parties.

mountainman

That is what the victors of the debate tell us.
They may have been lying through their teeth.
We don't know. We have insufficient evidence.



No. All of a sudden all the official news channels are broadcasting about the massive Arian controversy.
A great deal of stuff must be unreported if we have a massive black hole of primary literary evidence between 325 and 352 CE.

The second most significant event in all of Christian history: Nicaea in 325 CE.

Um sorry, says the victors, we lost the original histories of 325-352 CE ... this explanation wont cut butter.

It's suspicious, and represents negative evidence which IMO needs an explanation.

It does not appear to be a natural distribution of evidence.
It looks like a Zen garden after monks have raked it clean.
Someone did not want to have us see evidence from this epoch.
The Vatican has jumped on all manuscript discoveries (325 to c.1960 CE) including the DSS.
They are a very thorough and utterly corrupt organisation.

The Arian controversy can not be what on the surface it seems to be.

It may also be related to the preservation of many non canonical books.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia