The Nicene Creed

Reading the daily accounts of the conflicts among the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds, added to commotion generated by the various competing sects of aggressive Christians and Jews, one grows nostalgic for Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in the third century CE.  The emperor convened a council to settle on Christian faith that would cut through the competing doctrines afloat in his empire which were making for trouble, dissension, all the things a busy emperor does not need.  The consensus of belief established at that Council was finally the product of Emperor Constantine himself, who like every aggressive manager was quickly tired of the nit picking of doctrine that persons of religious faith always produce and were producing at the Council.  He cobbled together what we call today The Nicene Creed or its variant The Apostles Creed and imposed it upon the mass of his imperial subjects to give everyone an imperial identity, with the aim of making everyone 'orthodox'; it was the passport into participation political or otherwise in the empire.  I used to know it by heart, having recited it every Sunday in the early years of my life, as well as sung it in amateur choruses in some pieces such as Schubert's "Mass In G." On the odd occasion I am attending a Christian service, weddings, funerals, and what not, I find myself enthusiastically mouthing the words of the Creed without the slightest sense of what I mean by doing so.  Constantine is venerated for having converted to the Christian faith, indeed he and his mother have achieved the status of saints in the Byzantine Christian Church, only getting the appellation "great," bestowed by Rome.  The motive for his conversion is tied up with a great story, maybe entirely apocryphal.  On the night before the battle for the Milvian Bridge on the north side of Rome he had a dream in which a cross appeared with someone saying or it was written in Greek, the Latin translation of which has become famous "In Hoc Signo Vinces," in this sign you will conquer [the Latin version even made it onto the Pall Mall cigarette package].   I have a suspicion that he saw conversion as a great way to rein in the crazies, placate his mother Helena, renowned for her devotion to Christianity, and give himself an identity that would make his imperial subjects sit up and take notice.  I doubt that the Emperor was too deeply imbued with the faith.  Someone who punishes a lying wife by having her boiled alive, not to mention killing his son on the suspicion (later proved false) of having slept with the lady does not, to my mind, qualify as having studied the doctrines of Jesus too carefully.  I omit his many other acts of imperial murder; maybe that was why Rome never made him a saint.  One of the sadder features of his legacy is that citizenship or a person's national identity remained tied to a Christian faith, as evidenced by the creed.  For a time citizenship in Greece was tied to belief in Orthodoxy.  Throughout Europe over the centuries Jewish persons were denied their legitimate place simply for their presumed failure of faith, making it all too easy to try to eliminate them, as essentially non-persons.  God rest your soul, Constantine.  You have a lot to answer for.