Pope Benedict II

To continue yesterday's post and talk about "re-orienting" wayward bishops with "wrong" ideas, we have to first look at there Bishop of Rome, Benedict. By Bishop of Rome (elected by the clergy) I mean he was the pope, of course.

He was born Benedict, son of John. (This was before it was common for popes to take regnal names. The first pope to do so was Mercurius, who was elected pope in 533 and felt it was improper for a Christian pope to be named for a Roman god, so he took the name John II. But many popes had names that they considered already suitable.) Benedict had been involved in the courts of Popes Agatho and Leo II, and was known for his knowledge of Scriptures from an early age.

His confirmation as pope at the time had to come from the emperor, and the emperor at the time for the Roman Empire (what there was of it) was Constantine IV. It took a year for the request to go to Constantinople and for the reply to come back to Rome. He tried to persuade Constantine that they could save time by allowing the Exarch in Ravenna (the Byzantine emperor's local administrator) to ratify papal elections. Constantine was interested in the idea, but request for papal confirmations continued to go to Constantinople.

One of Benedict's acts that connects to recent posts here was his confirmation of Pope Agatho's decree that Wilfrid should be returned to the See of York as archbishop.

Then, after the Sixth Ecumenical Council to determine once and for all the official stand on Monothelitism, bishops who adhered to Monothelitism were sent to Rome for re-education. Benedict did not want to simply condemn Macarius, who had been the Patriarch of Antioch: he wanted to convince him that Monothelitism was wrong and Macarius should relent. According to the notes of the Second Council of Nicaea, which addressed how to manage heretical bishops, Benedict spent 30 days trying to persuade Macarius.

A motive for not simply leaving Macarius deposed has been suggested: his successor at Antioch had just died, and Benedict might have wanted to reinstate Macarius. Macarius was not about to change his stance. He had told the emperor in the Sixth Ecumenical Council that he would rather be cut to pieces and thrown in the sea than admit the doctrine of two wills in Jesus.

So far as we know, Benedict's attempts failed. Macarius drops out of the historical record. As for Benedict, he was pope from 26 June 684 to 8 May 685.

The Second Council of Nicaea was also called the Seventh General Council; it was the last of seven general councils between both the Western Roman and Eastern Byzantine Churches. We'll look at its subjects tomorrow.

Monothelitism

The Western Roman Empire and Eastern Byzantine Empire had many differences over the centuries. Some of the biggest differences were religious. One such was the Filioque controversy: did the Holy Spirit proceed from the father, or the Father and the Son? Another was the question of Monothelitism.

Monothelitism ("one will") had come up in the 600s in opposition to dyothelitism ("dual wills"), the doctrine that Jesus had two "wills": a divine aspect and a human aspect. Monothelitism was the opinion that he had one will, a single "energy."

The debates over this had started generations earlier. The Church had determined that Jesus was the Son of God, but exactly how a human could also be God was still being argued. The First Council of Nicaea had decreed that Jesus was fully divine, and any other thought was heretical (this was to combat Arianism; this is the council where Nicholas of Myra reportedly slapped Arius). By declaring that God's Son became a man, they opened the door to discussion (and debate) over how two different natures could combine in a human being.

The debates could be fierce, and fights broke out over them. Emperor Heraclius (610 - 641) suggested monothelitism in order to establish one unifying doctrine. Patriarch of Constantinople Sergius I wrote to Pope Honorius, arguing that the idea of two wills in Jesus could lead to the argument that his human and divine wills were opposed to each other. (Consider the scene in Gethsemane when Jesus asks if fate can be taken away.) Sergius wanted Honorius to agree that divisive arguments should be suppressed. Honorius went along at first, but arguments arose that monothelitism was inconsistent with orthodoxy.

When Constans II came to power in 641, the debate in the Eastern Mediterranean was still raging. Constans tried to suppress it by decree, which did not endear him to either faction. This decree, called the Type of Constans, made it illegal to discuss whether Christ had one or two natures or energies and the matter was to be forgotten. He was 17 years old at the time, and did not care much about religion.

When Pope Martin I wrote to him, telling him to condemn both monothelitism and his own decree, Constans had Martin arrested and brought to Constantinople for trial. Martin was exiled to Crimea. When Adrian of Canterbury—a monk and an acquaintance of Constans—was traveling through Gaul, he was detained by Frankish authorities (Ebroin, Mayor of the Palace) on suspicion of being there to create disruption. The only disruption I can imagine of which he might be accused is regarding monothelitism, which the Roman Catholic West opposed.

When Constans died, his son, Constantine IV, was asked to rule on the subject, but he refused, saying it should be determined by church synods. Several were held over the following years, and monothelitism was declared erroneous.

Before we leave Constans, however, I want to talk about the last years of his reign that did not have anything to do with religion, including his connections with China. See you next time.

Fourth Council of Constantinople

Technically, there were two of these synods, both held in Constantinople. One of them was called by Emperor Basil I, with the cooperation of Pope Adrian II, whose support Basil wanted after his recent coup (he had assassinated the previous emperor, Michael III).  So although it was held in Constantinople, it is considered a council of the Roman Catholic Church, not of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The catalyst for calling this council (October 869 - February 870) was to depose Patriarch Photios I, who was appointed inappropriately by Michael III, and to reinstate his predecessor, Ignatios. Clergy who were supporters of Photios were defrocked. Photios himself was incarcerated in a monastery.

There were over two dozen other decisions laid down as canons from this council that carried great weight doctrinally, even thought it was poorly attended; the first meeting had only 12 bishops, and the total in the few months it was held barely exceeded 100 clerics. The council was held in the Hagia Sophia (the illustration is a 16th century depiction by Cesare Nebbia). 

One of its statements was a re-affirmation of the Second Council of Nicaea's support of the use of icons and holy images. It even declared that an image of Jesus was to be venerated equally as the Gospel itself:

We decree that the sacred image of our Lord Jesus Christ, the liberator and Savior of all people, must be venerated with the same honor as is given the book of the holy Gospels. For as through the language of the words contained in this book all can reach salvation, so, due to the action which these images exercise by their colors, all wise and simple alike, can derive profit from them. For what speech conveys in words, pictures announce and bring out in colors.

It went further to declare that holy images of subjects other than Jesus were also considered worthy of veneration:

The image of his all-pure Mother and the images of the holy angels as well as the images of all the saints are equally the object of our homage and veneration.

The Roman Catholic popes were pleased to have the Eastern Orthodox Church looking to it for guidance, and Pope Adrian II got the credit, though he was not a particularly powerful pope, serving exactly five years. I'll tell you more about him tomorrow and his good luck with family connections and his bad luck with temporal authority.

The Armenian Church

According to tradition, the apostles Bartholomew and Jude Thaddeus (the double name was to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot and from stories of Jude the brother of Jesus) preached the Gospel in Judea, Samaria, Edom, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Libya. They were the first to bring Christianity to Armenia. Jude Thaddeus is said to have cured Abgar V of Edessa of leprosy by exposing him to the Image of Edessa.

There is also an "Apostle to the Armenians," Saint Gregory the Illuminator (pictured in a Constantinople mosaic), who converted the Armenian king in 301CE thereby stopping his persecutions of Christians. The king, Tiridates III, made Christianity the official state religion. This was not that radical a change, since Christianity had been growing steadily since the 1st century. Tiridates declared Gregory the Illuminator to be the first Catholicos, a term used to denote the head of a church in some of the Eastern Christian traditions.

In 325, at the First Council of Nicaea designed to create consensus among the Christian world (where Arianism was literally slapped down by Santa Claus), the Armenian Catholicos (Gregory's son Aristaces) attended. At that time, the Armenian Church was subordinate to the Bishop of Caesarea, where Tiridates had sent Gregory to be consecrated and where Gregory adopted the Byzantine rites. Over the following years, however, Armenia started adopting Antiocian/West Syriac rites, which blended with the Byzantine rites to create the Armenian Rite.

Translation of the Bible into Armenian in the early 400s helped Christianity spread faster. Over time, however, differences arose between what was being practiced/believed in Armenia and the West. The biggest difference was over monophysitism; that is, the divine nature of Jesus. Eastern Orthodox churches professed monophysitism, the idea that Christ had a single nature, that of the divine. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 approved that Christ had two inseparable natures: human and divine. The Armenian Church severed ties with Rome in 610 over this difference.

It was Pope Innocent II who tried to reconcile Rome and Armenia. To do that, he knew he could not simply order the Armenian Church to fall in line; he had to work with his contemporary, the Catholicos Grigor III Pahlavuni. We'll talk about that process tomorrow.

Charles' Books

The Opus Caroli regis contra synodum ("The work of King Charles against the Synod"), also known as Libri Carolini ("Charles' Books"), was a series commissioned by Charlemagne to counter the work of the Second Council of Nicaea. It was specifically written to argue against the Council's decrees about icons.

Held in 787, this Council reversed Emperor Leo III's decree decades earlier that religious images were forbidden. The Council decided that religious images were not only allowed, but the reverence and prayers aimed at them actually transferred to the saint or member of the Trinity which they represented. In fact, every altar should have in it a saint's relic.

Charlemagne, a devout Christian, had a different approach to the subject of religious icons, and decided it should be made known. In the 790s (prior to him being named Holy Roman Emperor in 800), he ordered an elaborate statement on the subject. 

The opening statement is rather strong:

In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ beginneth the work of the most illustrious and glorious man Charles, by the will of God, king of the Franks, Gauls, Germany, Italy, neighboring provinces, with the assistance of the king, against the Synod which in Greek parts firmly and proudly decreed in favour of adoring images recklessly and arrogantly, ...

The argument was a compromise between Leo III's strict iconoclasm and the Council's "reckless and arrogant" acceptance of honoring images. Charlemagne believed in religious images, but not treating them as anything more than images: do not burn incense before them, or votive candles. Do not pray to them, but to the figure they represent.

Was this document necessary? What was Charles' reason for arguing against the Council? The iconoclasm debate was considered a Byzantine issue; Nicaea was deep into the "Greek parts," as far from Gaul as one could get. It is possible that Charlemagne was partially motivated by the desire to oppose what he considered decisions coming out of the Eastern Empire, since it had offended him over the rejection of his daughter's marriage to its emperor and its decision to support his rival in Lombardy.

Charles did not have this statement sent to the pope after all; it is assumed that he decided not to antagonize the Church by arguing that Nicaea was wrong in its conclusions. The document did not disappear, however, and was found and published centuries later, in 1549. Calvin and the Protestant reformation found in it support for their beliefs. Christian churches these days almost all contain some images.

So who was the author? To whom did Charlemagne turn for this important work? Some assume Alcuin had a hand in it, but there is a better candidate. Some of the Latin language matches the style of Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, one of Charlemagne's "puzzle masters." Clearly, he was good at more than acrostics, and we'll talk about him next time.

Edict of Thessalonica

Although Constantine had called the 1st Council of Nicaea to make sure there was an established orthodoxy for Christianity throughout the empire, the resulting Nicene Creed did not accurately express the beliefs of all Christians. There were still many Arians who viewed Christ's nature as subordinate to God the Father. Constantine's son in the east, Constantius, was an Arian, and even exiled some Nicene bishops. His successor, Julian, rejected Christianity personally, and supported all religions. Julian's successor, the Christian Jovian, reigned for eight months before being succeeded by another Arian, Valens. By 379, when Valens was succeeded by Theodosius I, Arianism was the dominant form of Christianity in the Eastern Empire, while Nicene Christianity was dominant in the West.

Like Constantine, Theodosius wanted to establish a single Christian orthodoxy for the empire, and he issued an edict:

It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We order the followers of this law to embrace the name of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will of Heaven we shall decide to inflict.

Note the term "Catholic Christians." "Catholic" means "universal," and was an attempt to stress that everyone should have the exact same beliefs. (Of course, threatening heretics was also supposed to be a powerful motivator.) This edict was released on 27 February 380, and was followed in 381 by the first Council of Constantinople, which slightly revised the Nicene Creed.

Of course, enforcement of the edict was going to be necessary. In 381 there was an edict that forbade heretics from settling in cities, followed in 392 and 394 by laws forbidding heretics from living in Constantinople. In 383, Theodosius ordered all non-Nicene sects to submit written creeds to him for review. He declared them all invalid (Arian, Macedonian, Anomoean), except for the Novatian Creed (their big difference was that they claimed no lapsed Christian who had performed a pagan sacrifice should be allowed back into Christianity; what distinguished them from the Donatists was that Novatians did not submit to Rome, whereas Donatists followed Rome, but felt that some of their fellow clergy were traditors. Also, Donatists were willing to welcome traditors back into the fold with a baptism, whereas Novatians did not believe in second chances. Novatians were declared schismatics, and eventually also labeled heretics and persecuted. They survived until the 8th century.

The illustration on the pages is a painting by Rubens of Theodosius being refused entry to the church in Milan by St. Ambrose. Why this was the case, why Milan was important, and what this has to do with the decline of the Empire, will be next.

The Date of Easter

Easter is the "floatiest" of floating holidays in the Western calendar. The 7th century saw a very serious debate over how the date should be determined. The debate was between the Ionan and the Roman traditions. The Ionan tradition is so-called because it was promoted by the Irish monks on the Isle of Iona.

According to John 19:14, Pilate presents Jesus to the Jews on the "day of the preparation of Passover."  Early Christianity probably celebrated Easter based on Passover, which is always the 14th of the lunar month of Nisan. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed that Easter should be divorced from the Jewish calendar and celebrated on a Sunday. An 84-year lunar-solar cycle was used to calculate the date for awhile.

Developing an accurate calendar based on the actual length of the year was an ongoing problem until the Gregorian Calendar, and the date of Easter was calculated in several different ways for centuries, resulting in different dates being used by different Christian factions. There was a time in Northumbria when the king and queen actually celebrated Easter separately.

Eventually, the differences became too important an issue to allow to exist, and the Synod of Whitby was conferred in 664 to resolve the issues. The strongest voice for the Roman tradition was Wilfrid, who argued:

1. it was the practice in Rome, where the apostles SS. Peter and Paul had "lived, taught, suffered, and are buried";
2. it was the universal practice of the Church, even as far as Egypt;
3. the customs of the apostle John were particular to the needs of his community and his age and, since then, the Council of Nicaea had established a different practice;
4. Columba had done the best he could considering his knowledge, and thus his irregular practice is excusable, the Ionan monks at present did not have the excuse of ignorance; and
5. whatever the case, no one has authority over Peter (and thus his successors, the Bishops of Rome).

Both sides agreed that Jesus had "given Peter the keys"; after that, both sides had to agree that Rome should lead the way.

How exactly do we calculate Easter? It's simple: Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. If the equinox takes place on 21 March, and is a full moon and a Saturday, then Sunday the 22nd is Easter. This actually happened in 1818, but won't happen again until 2285. If the full moon falls on the day prior to a March 22nd vernal equinox, and 28 days later the full moon falls on Sunday, then Easter is the following Sunday. In 1943, this happened, and Easter happened at its latest possible date, 25 April. This will happen again in 2038.

The Second Council of Nicaea

We have talked about the Council of Nicaea before, but always the First Council in 325. There were several ecumenical councils. The seventh was the second to be held in Nicaea, and was called to deal with the subject of iconoclasm.

I addressed iconoclasm before: the idea that images of religious figures should be forbidden came from Moses' third commandment about not making "graven images."  In 787, the Second Council met to deal with the subject (they hoped) once and for all.

Arguments for included invoking various lines from the Old Testament:

• Genesis 31:34 : "Now Rachel had taken the images, and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them. And Laban searched all the tent, but found them not."
• Exodus 25:19, regarding the fashioning of the Ark of the Covenant: "And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end."
• Ezekiel 41:18: And it was made with cherubims and palm trees, so that a palm tree was between a cherub and a cherub; and every cherub had two faces

...and others.

Over the course of three weeks (24 September to 13 October), presentations were made followed by debate. At the end, the use of religious images was allowed, reversing the edict against them made by Byzantine Emperor Leo III decades earlier. The official statement made declared that veneration offered to the image was actually passed to the subject of the image, and was therefore a good thing.

This Council also declared that every altar should contain a saint's relic. Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches still adhere to this practice.

Quartodecimans & Easter

This blog has touched on the debate over the date of Easter in the past, but the truth is that the early Church went through different phases before settling on the date of Easter.

Because the Last Supper was a seder, commemorating Passover, early celebrations of Easter coincided with that date. Passover took place on the 14th of the month. The early Church historian Eusebius tells us that the dioceses of Asia at the time of Pope Victor (pope from 189-199) celebrated Easter on the 14th day of the moon, regardless of the day of the week on which it fell.

This bothered some ecclesiastics and Christian scholars. Synods were held (Eusebius says) that agreed and decreed that the Easter celebration should be held on the Lord's Day, a Sunday. Some, however, refused to give up the tradition of celebrating on the 14th. They were called Quartodecimans [fourteenth-ers]. St. Polycarp (69-155), for example, came to Rome to discuss his preference for the date that he believed had been established by St. John the Apostle; he refused the command of Pope Anicetus (pope c.153-168) to change to Sunday.

Quartodecimans were tolerated for awhile,  by popes like Anicetus at least. Pope Victor excommunicated the Asiatic dioceses, an action that got him criticism for unnecessary harshness from St. Irenæus.

Agreeing that Easter should be celebrated on a Sunday did not settle any debate; which Sunday was crucial. The Council of Nicaea (already mentioned several times in DM) tackled this issue. Syrian Christians always celebrated Easter on the Sunday following the 14th of the month, but other Christian dioceses calculated the date in their own ways. Antioch, for instance, based their date on the local Jewish observances, but had let slide a guideline that the 14th should be the month after the vernal equinox. Alexandria, however, demanded Easter Sunday be after the equinox—March 21st at the time.

Most native English speakers, if they know about the controversy of the Easter date debate, have heard of the Synod of Whitby in 664, at which Roman Christianity and Celtic/Irish Christianity fought it out over topics such as the date of Easter and the style of monastic tonsures. Whitby established for the English-speaking world that Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon (the 14th of the lunar month) after the vernal equinox. If the full moon is a Sunday, Easter takes place on the following Sunday. Easter can be as early as March 22 or as late as April 25.

The Eastern Orthodox Church calculates differently. They had been using March 21st as their starting point, but followed a guideline that prevented Easter from ever falling on or preceding the same day as Passover. Orthodox Easter can fall between April 5 and May 8. In the 21st century, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches tried to reconcile their different dates using more recent astronomical data for their calculations. They still calculate in different ways, but there is greater chance that the dates will coincide, such as in 2001 when April 15th was Easter for both Churches.

There. That was easy.

He Who Would Be Santa

15th century woodcut of Nicholas

In the introduction to Arian Christianity I mentioned how discussion at the Council of Nicaea in 325 became so heated that Bishop Nicholas of Myra slapped Arius' face. Much of what we think we know about Nicholas is difficult to substantiate, but this has not stopped historians from talking about him. In fact, it is the least-documented information we have that has developed his reputation the most.

Nicholas (c.270-6 December 343) was born at Patara, in Asia Minor. As a young man he made a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine; upon his return he was made Bishop of Myra, not far from his city of birth. During the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, Nicholas was imprisoned, but freed once the Christian Emperor Constantine came to power.

He attended the first ecumenical council of the new Catholic Church in 325, which was called by Constantine in order to determine the (in)validity of Arianism (see the link above). Nicholas is counted among the numerous men who assembled there, and (as mentioned) became passionate about the debate.

Well, that's the story anyway. There are some lists of participants on which his name is not found, casting doubt on his presence at Nicaea. But his importance to legend is unquestioned. His popularity as a saint in Greece and Russia began early. Emperor Justinian I (483-565) built a church to Nicholas at Constantinople. He was revered in Germany during the reign of Emperor Otto II (955-983).

And you know you're an important person when they dig up your body in order to keep it safe (as monks had done in England with St. Cuthbert). In 1071 the Turks took control of most of Asia Minor. Among other things, this meant losing control of the burial site of Nicholas. Byzantium regained control under Emperor Alexios I Comnenus, but sailors from Bari in southern Italy took it upon themselves to save the saint's bones. They brought the relics to Bari in 1087, where they have remained. (Actually, they brought the major bones, leaving fragments. Venetian sailors during the First Crusade brought the remainder to Venice where they were put in a church. Scientific investigation in the 1990s proved that the bones in Bari and Venice belong to the same man.)

Traditional pawnbroker sign

The chief story of his giving nature—the story that eventually gave rise to the legend of Santa Claus—is about a man with three daughters for whom he did not have enough money for dowries. Without a dowry, marriage was unlikely, and the fear was that they would wind up as prostitutes in order to support themselves. Nicholas passed by on three consecutive nights and each night threw a bag of gold in the window, saving the future of the daughters. Because of this he has been made the patron saint of (besides children and sailors, etc.) pawnbrokers; some think the traditional image of three golden balls for a pawnbroker shop is because of the three bags of gold. A 15th century woodcut now in the British Museum (see image above) shows Nicholas laying three gold balls instead of bags into the girls' bed. (An alternate theory has the three balls connected to the Medici family heraldry.)

His feast day is today, December 6. In some countries, children put their shoes outside their doors on the evening of the 5th, and on the morning of the 6th find chocolate, coins, or trinkets.

To Make an Antipope

What makes a pope into an antipope?

In 355, the Roman Emperor Constantius II (317-361) wasn't happy with the pope. Constantius was an Arian Christian, and he did not care for the Council of Nicaea's decision to outlaw Arianism. Since St. Athanasius of Alexandria was instrumental in that decision, Constantius wanted Pope Liberius (ruled 352-366) to condemn Athanasius. Liberius refused to do so, and the Emperor sent him into exile in Thrace.

In his place, the Emperor installed Pope Felix II. The politics of papal succession were far more flexible then. It wasn't until Celestine V that formal voting by the body of cardinals began to be the expected method. So temporal rulers often put their favorites on the Throne of St. Peter. Little is known of what Felix accomplished. Records from the 4th century are scarce, and his name was later confused with St. Felix. After two years, the people of Rome begged Constantius to bring back Liberius; it took another year for him to return. Felix was still present, and Constantius wanted the two to rule jointly, but the people of Rome objected and drove Felix out. Tradition says he was forced to retire to Porto, near Rome, where he died on 22 November 365.

To declare Felix II an antipope seems easy—he was appointed randomly by a temporal ruler who ousted the previous pope—but what about situations like the chaos connected to Benedict VIII? How do you untangle that mess? And if cardinals are split, and some elect one pope and some elect another, how do you determine legitimacy? The Annuario Pontificio (the Pope's Yearbook) puts it thusly:

we come across elections in which problems of harmonising historical criteria and those of theology and canon law make it impossible to decide clearly which side possessed the legitimacy whose factual existence guarantees the unbroken lawful succession of the successors of Saint Peter. The uncertainty that in some cases results has made it advisable to abandon the assignation of successive numbers in the list of the popes.

Felix II, for instance, has not had his number altered, and so the next pope to take the name Felix is called Felix III, even though he is only the second "true" pope to be named Felix. Forty-one names in papal records are listed as antipopes. The last was Felix V, who reigned from 1439-1449. Since that time, the College of Cardinals has been more careful in its elections, and has reached consensus before declaring Habemus papam! ("We have a pope!") The illustration above is of Saint Hippolytus of Rome, (c.170 - 235), considered the first antipope.

Not One Iota of Difference

Iota, the smallest thing in the Greek alphabet, with the reputation for being ... the smallest thing.

Even people who don't know a bit of Greek know the phrase "not one iota." Where did that phrase come from, and does its origin belong in a blog post about the Middle Ages? A week ago, I would have said "No." But now—if you've been reading faithfully—you have the background you need to understand better the impact of this phrase.

The complete phrase is "it makes not one iota of difference," and believe it or not, it is tied to the Arian heresy. One of the problems Arius had with what became conventional Christianity was the nature of Jesus vs. God the Father. Arius and his followers believed that Jesus had a separate existence and was subordinate to the Father. During the Council of Nicaea, Arius argued with others over the word homoousios (Greek 'homo'=same + 'ousios'=substance). This is the word that was translated into the Latin consubstantialem in the Nicene Creed, translated into English as "one in being." Arius argued for heteroousios ('hetero'=other).

The Trinity Shield; Arian or not?

After Nicaea and the defeat and outlawing of Arianism, a subset of Arius' followers modified their position and were willing to say that the Son and the Father were, not the same substance, but similar. The word they proposed to explain this was homoiousios ('homoi'=similar). These people are called the "Semi-Arians."* The addition of that single letter satisfied them; it did not, however, satisfy the strict Trinitarians, who refused to change. This gave rise to the phrase "it makes not one iota of difference."

Or did it? There really is no evidence for that origin, although it sounds good, and sufficiently obscure and scholarly that no one wants to argue with it.

Some try to tie this into Matthew, 5:18:

For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. [English Standard Version]

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. [New Revised Standard Version]

The argument for this origin (I guess) is that an iota is the smallest imaginable amount of difference, or the smallest written bit of the law, and even that will/must not alter before the end comes.

There may be a simpler reason for the saying, however, that goes back to the Greek language itself. The letter iota could be the second part of a diphthong, and the first vowel could be long or short. If the first vowel were long, the iota lost strength and ceased to be pronounced, but in written Greek it was still added as a subscript below the preceding long vowel. So αι (alpha + iota) became ᾳ,  ηι (eta + iota) became ῃ. The iota, in some circumstances, became the least important letter, reduced in size as well as in the way it affected pronunciation. To me, this is a potential (and potent) origin story for an "iota of difference" being completely insignificant.

*By the way, Semi-Arianism is alive and well in 21st century America, apparently.

Arian Christianity

In the theological free-for-all of the first few centuries after Jesus of Nazareth, different theories as to the nature of God and the divinity of Jesus abounded. Arianism, first mentioned here, was a version of Christianity begun by Arius of Alexandria (c.250-336)

Arius of Alexandria

Bishop Theophilus of Antioch (d.c.184 CE) was the first (that we know of; who knows how many early writings have been lost?) to present the concept of the Christian God as a Trinity, referring to "God, his Word (Logos) and his Wisdom (Sophia)"; this was in the Apologia ad Autolycum (Apology to Autolycus), a defense of Christianity written to a pagan friend.

Tertullian (c.160-c.225), sometimes called the "father of Latin Christianity" because of the enormous body of writings he left behind, defended the Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Ghost in his book Adversus Praxean (Against Praxeas). His purpose was to put down the view of Praxeas that, if Christianity were to be monotheistic, then Jesus and the holy Spirit could not be thought of as separate entities. Jesus must have been God incarnate, not a distinct "son of God" who was his own individual.

But Tertullian and others found multiple references to threes in the Old Testament, and they put these forth as prefigurations of the Trinity as it was revealed in the New Testament. Trinitarian Christology was on its way to becoming official doctrine.

Then Arius stepped forward and pointed to the Gospel of John, which read: “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I." (John 14:28) It was clear to Arius that Jesus was subordinate to God in some way, and the Trinitarian view was wrong. Also, if the Son was begotten, then he had a point of origin, as opposed to the Father who always existed.

Many people got involved in the controversy: Origen, Eusebius, Lucian of Antioch, Alexander of Constantinople, Alexander of Alexandria, Socrates of Constantinople, Epiphanius of Salamis. Everyone who was anyone weighed in on just what the Trinity was. Then Emperor Constantine decided he needed clarification. He had legalized Christianity in 313 through the Edict of Milan, and he wanted to make sure Christianity didn't generate controversy. In 325 he called the first Council of Nicaea to resolve the growing issue of Arianism.

Icon of the Council of Nicaea

For two months, the two sides argued, each finding scriptural support. Supposedly, things got so heated at one point that Nicholas of Myra* slapped Arius' face. Constantine pushed the majority to create a statement; this became the Nicene Creed, which in Latin has the phrase

genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri (begotten, not made, one in being with the Father)

The Emperor, in order to keep things simple, outlawed Arianism and insisted that all his works be burned. Arius was exiled. His ideas lived on under his name, however, especially among the Goths, until the 7th century. His ideas also lived on in the Emperor's son, Constantius II, who ruled after Constantine and was friendly to Arianism, even being baptized on his death-bed by a Semi-Arian bishop!

*Who would some day be known as St. Nicholas; yes, that St. Nicholas.