Arians and Axumites

Today the General Synod of the Church of England begins debates on not whether, but how, to start appointing  women bishops. The more option is to allow women simply to be bishops. The other option is to allow them technically to be bishops, but supervised by roving male superbishops to look after priests in the diocese who don't want to be looked after by female bishops. These superbishops would be able to dispense on-the-spot masculinity wherever the female bishop is inadequate (some of those croziers are awfully heavy after all). It has made me wish for the days of the First Council of Nicaea, when theological debate was about proper things - specifically on whether (with Arius) the Son was created by a superior pre-existing Father, or whether (with Athanasius) both are eternal and omnipotent.
Constantine called the Council of Nicaea because the Arian controversy was threatening to tear apart the religion that he had used to unite the Roman Empire, and he succeeded in establishing a creed that would get people quite literally singing from the same hymn sheet.
However I didn't realise until today that the 325, the year of the Council of Nicaea, was also the year in which the Aksumite Empire became officially Christian. (325 is around when its King Ezana was converted to Christianity by Frumentius, and Aksum became officially Christian by its own account. An alternative date of 328, when Frumentius had been given the all-clear by Patriarch Athanasius and returned to Aksum as its first bishop, is when Aksum became officially Christian from Orthodoxy's point of view).

Either way, surely that is the religious equivalent of watching a colleague's relief at adopting Windows 7 after years of struggling with Vista before you buy a computer yourself. Or something like that.


History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet