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Updated: May 3, 2025
They counted on the protection of Constantia and her influence with the Emperor, but they were mistaken. Three months after the Council of Nicea, Eusebius and Theognis were deposed by Alexander and the Bishops of Egypt, who elected Catholic prelates in their stead. The Emperor supported the decision of the Church, pronouncing a sentence of banishment on the rebels.
The second Council of Nicea had authorized image-worship, but the good sense of Charlemagne was superior to such idolatry. He openly expressed his disapproval, and even dictated a work against it the Carolinian books.
Although they thought that they would be able to pass freely through the land surrounding Nicea, which they had seized earlier, the Turks, who had been placed there by the emperor once the city had been turned over to him to impede the Franks when the occasion arose, put up strenuous resistance to them.
A certain Meletian Bishop called Arsenius, whom Athanasius had deposed for refusing to obey the decrees of the Council of Nicea, was induced to hide himself away in the desert. The Meletians then gave out that he had been murdered by order of the Patriarch, who kept his withered hand for purposes of magic. A wooden box was even produced containing a hand which was said to be that of the dead man.
The emperor came to Nicea, in Asia Minor, in the year 325, and there met three hundred and eighteen bishops from every quarter, many of them still scarred by the injuries they had received in the persecutions, and many learned priests and deacons, among whom the most noted was Athanasius of Alexandria.
This city is also rebuilding, upon a far more enlarged plan, the gymnasium,39 which was burnt down before my arrival in the province. You, who are upon the spot, will best be able to consider and determine what is proper to be done concerning the theatre which the inhabitants of Nicea are building; as for myself, it will be sufficient if you let me know your determination.
The Emperor, who pretended to listen patiently to their complaints, had given secret orders to Modestus, the Prefect of the Pretorian Guard, to put them all to death. Modestus was as cruel as his master; but even in Nicomedia, where Arius and Eusebius had been so active in preaching heresy, the bulk of the people remained true to the Faith of Nicea.
Later they were sorely hurt by a surprise from a body of Saracens who had passed around the mountain and had attacked their rear. The grass was fired in front of the Christians by the sultan of Nicea, a fact which was near ruining the prospects of the Christians. Once again a prodigy is reported. A squadron descends from the mountains, led by three white horsemen.
In bringing on a much needed unity, it brought also a discipline enforced by the calamities whose evident cause was the lack of it. The spring brought the opportunity of battle to the Crusaders, and a strong foe met them in the person of the Turk David and his army. He had fortified Nicea, a city famous for two Councils and now the capital of David's kingdom.
In the second Council of Nicea, held in the year 787, the question of sacred pictures was discussed, and in the acts of the Council the following statement is found: 'It is not the invention of the painter which creates the picture, but an inviolable law, a tradition of the Church. It is not the painters, but the holy fathers, who have to invent and dictate.
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