e Vandals in Africa, the Goths in Italy, many of the
Gauls, the Suevi, the Burgundians, and the Spaniards openly espoused
their interests. The Greeks indeed, who approved of the Nicene Council,
oppressed and also punished them wherever they were able; but the Arians
returned the like treatment, especially in Africa and Italy. Yet this
prosperity of the Arians wholly terminated when, under the auspices of
Justinian, the Vandals were driven from Africa and the Goths from Italy.
For the other Arian kings, Sigismund, king of the Burgundians,
Theodimir, king of the Suevi in Lusitania, and Receared, king of Spain,
without violence and war, suffered themselves to be led to a
renunciation of the Arian doctrine, and to efforts for its extirpation
among their subjects by means of legal enactments and councils. Whether
reason and arguments or hope and fear had the greater influence in the
conversion of these kings, it is difficult to say; but it is certain
that the Arian sect was from this time dispersed and could never after
recover any strength.

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY

The delegates to the council assembled in the first instance in one of
the chief buildings of Nicaea, apparently for the purpose of a
thanksgiving and a religious reunion. Whether it was an actual church
may be questioned. Christians, no doubt, there had been in Bithynia for
some generations. Already in the second century Pliny had found them in
such numbers that the temples were deserted and the sacrifices
neglected. But it would seem that on this occasion a secular building
was fitted up as a temporary house of prayer. At least the traditional
account of the place where their concluding prayers were held exactly
agrees with Strabo's account of the ancient gymnasium of Nicaea.

It was a large building, shaped like a basilica, with an apsis at one
end, planted in the centre of the town, and thus commanding down each of
the four streets a view of the four gates, and therefore called
_Mesomphalos_, the "Navel" of the city. Whether, however, this edifice
actually was a church or not, its use as such on this occasion served as
a precedent for most of the later councils. From the time of the Council
of Chalcedon, they have usually been held within the walls of churches.
But for this the first council, the church, so far as it was a church,
was only used as the beginning and the end. After these thanksgivings
were over, the members of the assembly must have been co