Today in history, the Council of Nicea was convened in 325, and over the course of the next month, settled the issue of Christology and the relation of Jesus Christ the Son to God the Father (among its other accomplishments). The council also produced the famous Nicene Creed, one of the most enduring documents in all of Christian history.
Contrary to popular belief, the Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the canon of the Bible, nor with 'creating' Christianity (both of which are myths perpetuated by a certain Dan Brown book). It was here that the orthodox belief was officially upheld: that Christ was both 100% man and 100% God, and that the Son, while a separate 'person', was of the same substance as the Father. For an accurate and detailed description of the council in layman's terms, I highly recommend Paul Pavao's book Decoding Nicea (which, incidentally, was one of the books that steered me towards the Early Church).
I'll make a longer post on the Nicene Creed sometime soon, since it's the one I adhere to. However, I do believe that Christianity, while growing in size post-Nicea, has decreased in quality. The writings of the Early Church - the writings of the men who sat under the Apostles! - have been largely pushed aside by the Protestant and Evangelical circles. Perhaps the Council's anniversary is just the time to bring up an Early Church discussion with your Christian friends.
Yesterday, May 19th, marked the death date of one of my favourite historical figures, Alcuin of York. The English Medieval scholar was an educator who had a profound effect on the development of education and books during time of Charlemagne's Frankish Empire. From 782 to 790, he focused on transplanting a mixture of Celtic & Romano-British learning to mainland Europe. He founded the Carolingian palace library, for which he developed a small cursive script of characters called Carolingian Minuscule, which allowed more letter than ever before to be written on a single expensive page of parchment. Of great beauty, this script was later employed by the earliest printers. His hunger for learning revived the Augustinian tradition of Christian classical education and helped to lay the foundations of Europe's civilization of Christendom.
