Nicaea, Constantine, and Why the West Never Made Him a Saint

Eusebius came to the council of 325 from the wrong side of the argument. He had been in communion with Arius, had written on his behalf, and had been provisionally censured at Antioch shortly before. At Nicaea he submitted a creed of his own, then signed the one the council produced, and afterwards wrote to his congregation at Caesarea explaining in what sense he understood the word of one substance, which is not the letter of a man who has been persuaded. He continued to act against Athanasius in the years that followed. For the tradition that eventually settled on the Nicene formula, that record was disqualifying, and the man who preserved more of the early church than anyone else is commemorated in the Eastern churches but is not a saint in the Western calendars.

His other legacy is political. The Life of Constantine is a panegyric, and has to be read as one, but the oration he delivered for the emperor thirtieth anniversary is a piece of theology with consequences: one God, one divine Word, one emperor who rules as the image of that Word and whose empire mirrors the heavenly monarchy. That argument gave the Christian empire a doctrine of itself, and Byzantine political thought worked with it, and against it, for the next eleven hundred years.