The Arian Controversy

The fiftieth year from the great council came and went, and brought no relief to the calamities of the churches. Meletius and Cyril were still in exile, East and West were still...

Julian's reign seems at first sight no more than a sudden storm which clears up and leaves everything much as it was before. Far from restoring heathenism, he could not even ser...

Meanwhile new troubles were gathering in the West. While the Eastern churches were distracted with the crimes or wrongs of Marcellus and Athanasius, Europe remained at peace fro...

For nearly twenty years after the middle of the third century, the Roman Empire seemed given over to destruction. It is hard to say whether the provinces suffered more from the...

At first sight the reaction which followed the Nicene council is one of the strangest scenes in history. The decision was clear and all but unanimous. Arianism seemed crushed fo...

Constantine's work on earth was done. When the hand of death was on him, he laid aside the purple, and the ambiguous position of a Christian Cæsar with it, and passed away in th...

Arianism is extinct only in the sense that it has long ceased to furnish party names. It sprang from permanent tendencies of human nature, and raised questions whose interest ca...

Flavius Claudius Julianus was the son of Constantine's half-brother, Julius Constantius, by his second wife, Basilina, a lady of the great Anician family. He was born in 331, an...

*Athanasius, especially _De Incarnatione Verbi Dei_, _De Decretis Synodi Nicænæ_, _Orationes contra Arianos_, _De Synodis_, _Ad Antiochenos_, _Ad Afros_. Convenient editions of...