The role of Constantine at Nicaea and of other Emperors from Nicaea to Constantinople

2025 was the seventeen hundredth Anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. It proved to be quite a year in the life of the Church and the world. We have a new Archbishop of Canterbury, sometimes called ‘Vicar of England’, in whose appointment the State, including the Monarch – let us put it somewhat loosely – had an interest. We have a new Bishop of Rome, at once Catholic Pope and Head of the Vatican State. We have had war waging in Ukraine and the borders of Western Russia, with the Orthodox Churches, Ukrainian and Russian, bound to the armed policies of their States.

So much for the 21st century; what about the 4th? Over the years the Nicene Faith has been the lodestar in my study and writing, my faith and prayer, my preaching and ministry. The Anniversary Year gave me reason to make a pilgrimage to the places where it was most clearly defined in Nicaea and Constantinople. My first discovery was to find how difficult it is, even today, to travel without a car to modern day Iznik (ancient Nicaea) not too far east of Istanbul (ancient Constantinople). I cannot imagine how long and arduous it was for the bishops and their entourage, although – pertinent to the theme of this article – horses and other helps provided by the Emperor will have eased the burden, certainly of cost. I found a Turkish town not much bigger than the ancient city, with its walls still largely in place. Even though a sizable city for ancient times, the impact of 200–250 bishops with their two priests and three deacons, descending on Nicaea and staying there for two months would have been immense, and certainly good for trade, all at the Emperor’s expense. I imagined the arrival of Constantine from his residence in Nicodemia, modern day Izmit, through which I also travelled. What a sight the Emperor’s arrival would have been as he entered the city through one of the great gates, perhaps the Imperial Arch that is still there, even if rebuilt over the years!

The actual site of the Council is long gone (perhaps submerged in Lake Iznik as a photograph in the Church Times revealedFootnote ¹ ) but one can well imagine Eusebius of Caesarea’s description of a large Basilica where ‘many tiers of seating had been set along either side of the hall [so that the emperor] walked along between [the assembled bishops]’; and that ‘when he reached the upper end of the rows of seats and stood in the middle, [he took his place at] a small chair made of gold [that] had been set out for him’.Footnote ² Although Constantine convened the Council and was present for at least part of it, he did not chair it. That task he put in the hands of Ossius, a Western bishop from Spain. Nevertheless, according to Eusebius, the Emperor’s influence was made to bear not only by his presence, which made the bishops think judiciously before speaking, but also by his frequent contributions. Whether or not we believe Eusebius’s account that it was the Emperor who proposed the decisive homoousios (‘of one substance’) formula to the CouncilFootnote ³ – a scene set out so powerfully in Dorothy Sayers playFootnote ⁴ – it is clear that the Emperor was not an imperial wall flower simply there to adorn an ecclesiastical affair. Nicaea was not the first Council in which Constantine had a hand. He convened the earlier Council of Arles in 314 to resolve the Donatist dispute, and provided imperial support for travel and other practical arrangements, no doubt especially appreciated by the three bishops from the far-off British Isles. Although he did not attend the Council in person, he enforced its decisions with his power.

What was true for Constantine at Arles and Nicaea was also the case for a number of his successors as the deliberations and decisions of Nicaea were debated in the long and very rough of road to reception that followed the Council. Put theologically, the two trajectories of, on the one hand, closeness of, even sameness between the Father and the Son and, on the other, difference and distinction between them, were not resolved at Nicaea.Footnote ⁵ Frankly, what followed was not pretty, with Bishops lining up against each other, demanding further councils to correct or confirm Nicaea, using every attempt to inveigle imperial support for their cause. For their part, Emperors were not slow in lending their support to one side or the other or, in the case of Julian, in calling down a plague on both their houses and returning the Empire to paganism.

It fell to Theodosius to marshal the powers of his rule over a re-united Empire, West and East, in the service of his Nicene faith by – in what had become a familiar pattern of imperial involvement in the affairs of the Church – convening and sponsoring the Council of Constantinople in 381, ensuring that its proceedings were orderly and then enforcing its decisions across the Empire. Hagia Eirene, the Church of the fittingly called, ‘Holy Peace’, remains to this day for pilgrims to behold and tourists to admire. No longer a Church, of course, it is still easy to imagine the Bishops, this time only from the East, gathering in its vast space to confirm the heart of Nicaea’s decisive contribution to the fullness of the Church’s incarnational and trinitarian faith. Although this once great Church is now almost entirely stripped of present day Christian character, I gave thanks, nonetheless, as I imagined its life 1700 years ago, for the way Constantinople held true to Nicaea and that, between them, these two Ecumenical Councils plumbed the deep reality of what the New Testament’s Letter to Jude calls, ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3). They preserved its truest implications for our understanding of the nature of God and the identity of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and bequeathed to Christians and their churches through the centuries the faith that unites us.

All these spiritual riches were preserved and passed on with the temporal help of Emperors Constantine and Theodosius. And it did not all end there. The Church is seldom short of theological controversy. Emperor Marcion lent his support to the Council of Ephesus in 431; Theodosius II did the same for the Council of Chalcedon, also of modern day Istanbul, in 451; and so the story went on right up the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 with the support of Constantine VI and Empress Irene.

It is easy to be cynical about the motivation of the Emperors, that their concern for ‘The Peace of the Church’ was merely because a church unified by one faith not only brought peace between an increasingly large swathe of the Empire’s citizens but would be also an easier tool to use – or weapon to wield – for the peace and rule of Rome. Peace among the citizens of the Empire, however, was not an unworthy aim; and the peace of God in Christ is one that surpasses the usual understanding of political and military forces left to their own devices. The rule of any worldly power is better founded on the rule of God’s righteousness, than on the slippery surface of paganism, ancient or modern. Bishop Ambrose of Milan – Milan of the Edict of Milan which legitimised Christian Faith in the Empire in 313 – is not a bad guide. A close confidant to Emperor Gratian, Ambrose counselled and prayed for him. Appalled at the atrocities committed by Theodosius I against the people of Thessalonica in 390, Ambrose barred him from entering the Cathedral until his public repentance.

Monarch, Church and State in some vignettes of British history

The contribution of Roman Emperors to the unity and peace of the Church, the contribution of the Church to the constitution of good, even godly, society, and the capacities the patristic Church learnt to navigate these inevitably complex relationships, provide a lens through which we can view and assess the close association between Monarch, Church and State in British history. I offer five vignettes of that evolving story.

First, in the 7th century, King Oswald of Northumbria and Bishop Aidan, once of Iona, were close partners in the evangelisation of his kingdom. The Bishop learnt which of the King’s gifts he would refuse and which he would receive gladly. Oswald’s offer of a horse would associate him too closely with regal power, Aidan decided; while Oswald’s patronage of the Christian message for the genuine good of his people was a welcome blessing to the spread of the faith in the North East, and to the establishment of colonies of the kingdom of God, such as Lindisfarne and other monastic communities, in Oswald’s kingdom.

Second, in the 13th century, Archbishop (and Cardinal) Langton, together with other Bishops of the land, played a critical part in calibrating both the space for the freedom of the Church within the state and the constraints upon the King in the rule of the kingdom. If the battle between Church and state in those tumultuous times that cost Thomas Becket his life and placed England under Pope Innocent’s Interdict, could be described as a ‘boundary dispute’ by a former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales,Footnote ⁶ the same could be said of the tension between the Monarch and the law. It is not only a case that ‘the English Church shall be free’, declared Magna Carta, it is also to be now established that the people of the land shall be free to live under the protection of the rule of law to which, like the kings of Hebrew history, English monarchs would themselves be subject. In this way the Church played a critical part in ensuring that whatever claims monarchs made to ‘divine right’, they were nonetheless accountable to human law.

In the 14th century, there was an interesting example of the co-creation of society by Monarch and Church. Edward III, inspired by the Arthurian legends of round tables and chivalrous rule, founded the Order of the Garter. He gathered trusted Knights around him who were committed to the defence of the realm and the godly government of society. Before doing so, he founded the College of St George with the same number of clergy as there were to be knights. The full approval of Pope Clement VI soon followed, who duly instructed the Bishop of Winchester, Prelate (now and then) of the Order of the Garter to draw up statutes for the newly formed College. The College and the Order both continue to this day. I find myself Dean of the College and, by virtue of that office, Register of the Order. The calling of the College was then, and remains now, in the words of Pope Clement, to ‘evermore wait upon the Lord’s service’, praying for the Sovereign and the other Companions of the Order and providing a spiritual mirror to the Order so that its work for the kingdom of the earth might better reflect the ordering of the kingdom of heaven.

Fourth, the 16th century saw Monarch and Church in a joint project of consolidation of the nation state, together with both the reform of the Church and the preservation of its catholic faith and order, that gave the English Church a distinct ecclesial form. Cutting the juridical connection between the Roman and English Church established at the Council of Whitby in 664, revising and often replacing the liturgy that had evolved under Roman jurisdiction, establishing by statute a new canonical ordering of Monarch, Church and people during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I, was complex and at times, tortuous, sometimes literally. It was contested by one Monarch, Mary, by some bishops and clergy, and by a good many of the people. Its aim was to restore a fuller connection with the catholicity of church life and apostolicity of church teaching, free of what were perceived to have become by then the corrosive influences of Roman and, especially, papal control. One result was an acceleration (not least through fear of Catholic Spain) of the concept of the nation state that was sweeping through Europe and, at the same time, a deepening of English cultural identity (not least through the shaping of English language through the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Version of the Bible). Throughout, the English Reformers sought both the better salvation of souls and the stronger shaping godly society, a mission that required the commitment of the Monarch.

Finally, the 17th century was an era of intense constitutional evolution as Monarch, Church and people through Parliament negotiated a set of relationships that, in essence, have remained in place until today. The ups and downs of that tumultuous century saw violent revolution against Monarch and episcopally ordered Church, peaceful – largely – restoration of both and then an unbloody replacement of one Monarch with another – actually another two with William and Mary, whose power both to rule society and to choose their religion were constitutionally constrained.

Although the Monarch was denied that which we would call today ‘freedom of religion’, the evolving constitutional arrangements laid the groundwork for the modern pluralist state by a number of steps, including the Toleration Acts of 1689, and the permissions they allowed for non-conformist worship; the Acts of Union with Scotland in 1707 which dignified Presbyterianism with a form of establishment and claimed the Monarch as its own north of the border; the various acts of Parliament that, stage by stage, brought emancipation to British and Irish Catholics from the late 18th century into the 19th. Other 19th century legislative reforms allowed Protestant non-conformists as well as Roman Catholics, Jews and atheists to sit in Parliament, a presence that, among other pressures, led to the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and the Church of Wales and to the granting of considerable freedom from parliamentary control to the Church of England.

Monarch and State and Church in the 21st century

We began with the role of the imperial Sovereign in the life of the Church during its still formative centuries in the Roman Empire, noting the particular contribution emperors made to the Church’s unity around a common faith. We then dipped into moments of British history and saw how the relationship between Monarch and Church, and the ensuing interconnection between Church and State, has been embedded in the life of the land for at least 1400 years, evolving with the changing seasons of national and international life. We now move on to reflect on the relationship between Monarch, Church and State in the UK in the 21st century – and the 21st century has given us already much to reflect upon, especially over the past few years.

We have had the death of a Monarch, not simply a Head of State, but an anointed Queen buried according to the rites of the Church with the world looking on, mesmerised by our ceremony with its combination of State splendour and religious profundity, and caught up in our grief. Even now, some years on from the Late Queen’s demise, I witness every day in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, a phenomenon that has all sorts of religious associations. Thousands file past the simple tomb of Queen Elizabeth II to pay their respects and, for many, to pray and to weep. It has the feel of a pilgrimage, as if people from across the country and, moreover, the world, are drawn to what they sense had been an embodiment of the good, a good in a person that was inseparable from her faith and bound to the people whom she served.

We have seen a coronation in Westminster Abbey that was much more interesting than The King’s visit to the Houses of Parliament shortly after the accession, although that visit is worth a comment. I had the privilege of attending as a member of the House of the Lords and witnessing the Speaker of the House of Commons delicately reminding the new Sovereign of his constitutional limits. Not much there to move the heart until, that is, the singing of the National Anthem by both Houses in the presence of The King only a few days after accession, praying together in song for God to save The King and, thereby, the people over whom he reigns, ennobling them to aspire to a good society rooted in the goodness of God.

The coronation, of course, was on another level. Plenty of state pageantry again, especially before and after, but at its heart a man making solemn vows on a Bible, kneeling alone before God in front of the altar, preparing to be stripped to inner clothing and anointed with holy oil consecrated in Jerusalem. Whatever 21st century UK thought of the heavy and heady symbolism of the coronation, its sacral character was impossible to deny, and moved many a hardened heart. In a gesture of noteworthy generosity, the sacral quality of this 1000-year-old Christian rite, ever adapted for the conditions of each new reign, was recognised by Pope Francis in the gift of a relic of the True Cross, which, embedded in a newly made St David’s Cross, King, Queen and Bishops followed as they processed into the ancient Abbey.

The warm and respectful relationship between anointed Monarch and elected Pope was very evident during the State Visit of The King and The Queen to the Vatican in October 2025, a visit previously planned for April 2025 but postponed because of the ill health of Pope Francis.Footnote ⁷ King Charles III was received by Pope Leo XIV both as Head of State by the usual protocols and also as Religious Figure through prayer in the Sistine Chapel in a similar manner to that afforded to Heads of Church, with the Archbishop of York taking a leading part in the historic service.Footnote ⁸ Later in the day The King was made a Royal Confrater of the Basilica and Abbey of St Paul outside the Walls, a ‘gift of confraternity’ offered by the Abbot of the Bendictine Abbey:

Such religious identity gives to the Monarch a constitutional freedom and authority to draw on Christian narrative at pivotal moments of national life. I think of George V in 1919, for example, setting the tone of commemoration of modern war in the solemn keys of Christian reflection and prayer; and of George VI on the outbreak of the Second World War inviting the people to put their hand in the hands of God who shall be their light amidst the darkness to come.Footnote ¹⁰ I remember the Late Queen during the Jubilees of her reign, telling of the faith that had sustained her; and of The King speaking to country and commonwealth shortly after her death – and his accession – of his own faith, making use of Shakespeare in the process, drawing on that rich repository of cultural identity to which we have earlier referred.

I think also of the Christmas Speeches of the Late Queen, often, especially in later years, the shortest and best sermon of the year, subtly shading the events of the last twelve months in the colours of the incarnate Christ. It is a mode of address that the King has made his own with – if I may put it this way – a Johannine feel, at once inclusive (the light enlightening all people) and incarnational (the Word made flesh).

The religious character of the Monarch, and thereby the religious foundation of the State, is also expressed in another piece of British theatre. Although the State Opening of Parliament sees the King very much in the mode of constitutional monarch as Head of State, His Majesty concludes his speech to Parliament not with further words about the work of ‘my Government’ but with a blessing from God.

It is important to register that the accountability of the UK’s Head of State to the ultimate authority of God (‘he knowing whose servant he is’) relativises the authority of the State itself, making it answerable not only to its own democratic processes but also to the transcendent purposes of God for the good of the created order. Nevertheless, although the State receives its authority as gift, rather than possessing it as right, it is deserving of our consent because, on behalf of the Monarch, it serves the just and gentle rule of God (‘we and all his subjects duly considering whose authority he hath’).Footnote ¹¹

Throughout this long history, with its interweaving of state and Church in the person of the Monarch, religion – by means of the Christian faith – has had a formative influence on the character and constitution of both the Church, at least in England, and the state. 21st century UK is very different from Britain in the 7th, 13th, 14th, 16th or 17th centuries but, by virtue of the Church’s relationship with the Monarch in England and, in its own way, in Scotland, society remains rooted in, even founded upon, Christian Faith. We might say that religion is constitutionally established as a public good because the Church of England is established by law to serve the public good through its Christian ministry. In this way, the Monarch protects the place of religion in society by defending the place of Christian Faith in national life in the particular form of religion embodied by the Church of England.

The calling of the Church of England to serve the public good, although shaped by historical circumstances, is theologically rooted in the calling Christ laid upon the apostles to be ‘servant[s] of all’ (Mark 9.35). The establishment by law of the Church of England gives its apostolic calling a place within public life that both enables the more effective exercise of its diaconal ministry and provides means of public accountability for that ministry. For example, Archbishops and Bishops – 26 in total – sit in the House of Lords not because they are distinguished politicians, experts in their field or exemplars of their trade (such are the Lords Temporal), but as Lords Spiritual, there because the Monarch requires their spiritual counsel in matters of state. At the other end of the Parliamentary corridor, the Government appoints a trusted MP as Second Church Estates Commissioner in order that the people, through their elected representatives, may scrutinise the activity of the Church of England and test whether it is serving the public good.

Many other examples could be given of the mutual responsibilities, on the one hand, of the Church of England to society and, on the other, of the state to take a proper interest in the Church of England in a carefully calibrated interplay of opportunity and accountability. I will focus on just one – the parochial system – and one example of establishment in action proposed to – and passed, with only one abstention, by – the Meetings of General Synod in July 2025. The National Church Governance Measure 2025 provides for the creation of a Mission, Pastoral and Church Property Committee to take over the role previously held by the Church Commissioners, largely of appeal, in matters of pastoral reorganisation. The Committee will be a statutory body because its work concerns the citizens of England, all of whom are parishioners in terms of residence. Furthermore, the Committee’s Chair will be an appointment of the Crown to provide assurance of independence of decision making. Thereby, the Church of England’s ministry to be ‘servant of all’, providing, as it claims, ‘a Christian presence in every community’, is recognised to be of interest to the state of which citizens are part, and to require the assurance of the Sovereign that the rights of his subjects will be properly adjudicated.Footnote ¹²

The Magna Carta’s first clause remains in place, ‘The English Church shall be free’. The Church of England is not a State or Folk Church. It is, as the 1962 Catechism puts it, ‘the ancient church of this land, catholic and reformed’, part of – as made clear in the Declaration of Assent – ‘the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church’. Nevertheless, the place given to the Church of England in national life by legal settlement has given a distinctive style and ethos to the Church of England. It is marked by a commitment to the Nicene Faith and a tradition-conscious reformation legacy, and also by a generous comprehensiveness, both in terms of its internal breadth and its respect for the moral and religious integrity of all people. It seeks to provide conscience to and critique of public life, while being sympathetic to the demands of government and institutional leadership.

In commending the Christian vision to society, the Church of England’s proper voice is sensitive rather than shrill, ready to speak of Christian truth intelligently and to apply its principles to public policy carefully. Its forms of evangelism require both clarity about baptismal identity and openness to those who search for faith but cannot find it, and to those who hold on to faith but cannot articulate it. Conscious of its responsibilities to those of every faith, the Church of England instinctively works with other religious bodies for the good of society and the promotion, as several of its classic prayers put it, of ‘true religion and virtue’.Footnote ¹³ Its practice of hospitality enables other communities of faith to benefit from the place and space given to religion in society. Although it desires the well-being of the Church of England, it is concerned also for the common witness of the Church in this and other lands, and the cause of Christian unity. Its pastoral focus may be on the people of England but its relationship with the Monarch keeps its sight set on the whole of his Kingdom; and its place in the Anglican Communion and within the universal church maintains its global consciousness.