Constantine Sends Hosius to Make Peace

Many synods were held in Egypt, and still the conflict kept growing more violent, until the report of the dispute reached the palace. Constantine was greatly troubled by it, for just at this time, when religion was beginning to spread more widely, many were being kept from embracing Christianity by the disagreement over doctrine. The emperor openly blamed Arius and Alexander for starting this disturbance. He wrote to rebuke them for making public a controversy that they had the power to keep hidden, and for quarrelsomely stirring up a question that should never have been raised, or on which, at least, they should have given their opinion quietly. He told them that they ought not to have separated from others because they differed in opinion over certain points of doctrine. [a] For about divine providence, he said, people must hold one and the same belief; but detailed inquiries in this area, especially if they do not bring people to one opinion, ought by every reason to be kept private. He urged them to put an end to all loose talk about such points and to be of one mind. For he had been greatly grieved, and for this reason he had given up his plan of visiting the cities of the East. This was the tone in which he wrote to Alexander and to Arius, rebuking and urging them both.

Constantine was also deeply grieved by the difference of opinion over the celebration of the Passover. Some of the cities in the East differed on this point, although they did not refuse communion with one another. They kept the festival more in the manner of the Jews, and, as was natural with such a divergence, they took away from the splendor of the sacrifice of the feast. The emperor worked earnestly to remove both these causes of division from the church. Thinking that he could put an end to the evil before it grew any larger, he sent a man honored for his faith and his virtuous life, and most highly approved in earlier times for the confessions he had made for this doctrine. He was to reconcile those who were divided over doctrine in Egypt, and those in the East who differed about the Passover. This man was Hosius, bishop of Cordova. [b]