Remembering Nicaea presents the first complete English translation of Anonymous Cyzicenus’s Ecclesiastical History, the fullest surviving account of the Council of Nicaea (325 CE). The introduction features new arguments for the dating of the text, a discussion of Anonymous Cyzicenus’s sources and their modification, and an evaluation of the larger purpose of the Ecclesiastical History as a unique and instructive source for the christological controversies of the fifth century CE. Appendixes include the text of the Byzantine epistolary supplement found in all manuscripts, the Pinakes, testimony about the work from the ninth-century patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, and the prefatory letter to the 1599 critical edition. This unique combination of history and legend preserves otherwise-lost sources for students and scholars of church history.

The first part of Nicaea and its Legacy offers a narrative of the fourth-century trinitarian controversy. It does not assume that the controversy begins with Arius, but with tensions among existing theological strategies. Lewis Ayres argues that, just as we cannot speak of one `Arian' theology, so we cannot speak of one `Nicene' theology either, in 325 or in 381. The second part of the book offers an account of the theological practices and assumptions within whichpro-Nicene theologians assumed their short formulae and creeds were to be understood. Ayres also argues that there is no fundamental division between eastern and western trinitarian theologies at the end of the fourth century. The last section of the book challenges modern post-Hegelian trinitarian theology toengage with Nicaea more deeply.