Arianism: Arianism Defeated

The voices of orthodoxy, however, were not silent. In the West St. Hilary of Poitiers and in the East St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Gregory of Nyssa continued to defend and interpret the Nicene formula. By 364 the West had a Catholic emperor in Valentinian I, and when the Catholic Theodosius I became emperor of the East (379), Arianism was outlawed. The second ecumenical council was convoked to reaffirm the Nicene formula (see Constantinople, First Council of), and Arianism within the empire seems to have expired at once.

However, Ulfilas had carried (c.340) Homoean Arianism to the Goths living in what is now Hungary and the NW Balkan Peninsula with such success that the Visigoths and other Germanic tribes became staunch Arians. Arianism was thus carried over Western Europe and into Africa. The Vandals remained Arians until their defeat by Belisarius (c.534). Among the Lombards the efforts of Pope St. Gregory I and the Lombard queen were successful, and Arianism finally disappeared (c.650) there. In Burgundy the Catholic Franks broke up Arianism by conquest in the 6th cent. In Spain, where the conquering Visigoths were Arians, Catholicism was not established until the mid-6th cent. (by Recared), and Arian ideas survived for at least another century. Arianism brought many results—the ecumenical council, the Catholic Christological system, and even Nestorianism and, by reaction, Monophysitism.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Arianism Defeated
• Divisions within Arianism
• Rise of Arianism
• Bibliography

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