Christendom at the Crossroads

The Council of Nicaea (325 CE), Arianism, and the Mediterranean History of Monotheism

Resumen

This article examines the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) not merely as an internal Christian ecclesiastical event but as a pivotal moment in the broader Mediterranean history of monotheism. Situated within the dossier 'Councils and Christianisms. Mobilities, Religiosities and Spirituality in Antiquity and the Middle Ages', the study looks to the Hellenistic past — through the Christological controversies of Tertullian (c. 160-220 CE) and Origen (c. 185-253 CE) — and to the medieval future, through the Germanic Arian kingdoms. It analyzes the subordinationist Christology of Arius of Cyrene, whose insistence that Jesus was a created servant and messenger of God placed him at the intersection of radical monotheistic traditions that later shaped the theological environment in which Islam emerged. Drawing on four analytical frameworks — historical theology, political theology, the social history of the Germanic Arian kingdoms, and comparative monotheism — the article argues that the suppression of Arianism at Nicaea dispersed subordinationist monotheism across the Mediterranean through the Visigothic, Ostrogothic, and Vandal kingdoms, creating social and religious conditions that facilitated the reception of Islam in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Levant.