Credo in Unum Deum

Stop off along the way in Iznik — a very picturesque village.Never heard of the place? The town used to be called Nicaea in ancient times. Now, that is a name you recognize, as the site of the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. This gathering of bishops gave rise to the Nicene Creed — or declaration of faith — still in use today by Roman Catholic and many other Christian churches, notably the Orthodox churches. Having recited the Nicene Creed a few hundred times during your younger days are you not more than a little curious about the town where it all started.The ferry from Istanbul pulls into port in Yalova, then an hour’s mini-bus ride brings you to Iznik, passing through olive and other fruit tree groves along the way, a stunning contrast to Istanbul and its 15+ million closely-packed inhabitants. As soon as the bus rolls through the gate of the old city walls of the town, you can be grateful the saga of the Nicene Creed lures you here.
The city seems not to have grown much in population since the time of the Byzantines, when then as now it had about 25,000 inhabitants. It then fell to the Seljuk Turks in 1071, but was retaken at the time of the first Crusade in 1097. Oddly enough, it was not taken by the Crusaders, who were preceded by their fearsome reputation for looting, pillaging, raping and general misbehavior. The townspeople, ensconced behind their impressive city walls, were not about to surrender to these European barbarians barely emerged from the Dark Ages, not if they could help it. However, the Byzantines back in nearby Constantinople (Istanbul) decided to take advantage of this opportunity to regain a lost territory.
Iznik sits on a large lake of the same name, and the Byzantines sent emissaries over the water to propose to Iznik’s defenders that they surrender to their old foes rather than the newcomer and much more savage Crusaders. The Crusaders were primarily interested in glory and booty; the Byzantines were playing a longer term game and would gain nothing from destroying a town they sought to rule once again. The defenders saw the logic of this, and a Byzantine garrison soon arrived by boat via the lake, bypassing the besieging Crusaders, who awoke one morning to see the Byzantine flag fluttering over the ramparts. End of siege.The Crusaders could hardly attack their fellow Christians, the Byzantines — though later Crusaders would have no such scruples, sacking Constantinople in 1204 during a Crusade gone wildly awry.About 1040 years after the Byzantines’ clever re-taking of Nicaea, and nearly 17 centuries after the Council of Nicaea.
The city walls are still there, about five kilometers of them, and in remarkably good condition after all these years. Most of the modern city of Iznik is still contained within these ancient walls, and the town appears to mainly be an agricultural center — tractors regularly roll down the main streets. In the center of town, the 4th century church of Aya Sofya (not the same one as its much more famous namesake in Istanbul), now converted to a mosque, still stands, though the street level is now a good 4-5 meters higher than the foundation of the building. I don’t know if this was where the Council of Nicaea met, but thereis a good chance it was, since the age of the building is right.
And what was the Council of Nicaea about, you ask? At the time, the Christian world was riven by a new heresy, called Arianism, that threatened the unity of the Christian churches by proclaiming that Christ was not an equal member of the Trinity. This was considered a big problem, so 318 bishops gathered to discuss the finer points of this theological dispute. They agreed that Christ was indeed equal to his Father and that therefore the Arians were heretics.
This outcome of this agreement was the Nicene Creed, also known as the” Credo” — Latin for “I believe”. The Creed starts with the words “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty …” Subsequent church Councils modified this Creed, but it is still generally known as the Nicene Creed. Matters grew complicated once again as certain churches added to the Creed, or translated it differently from its original Greek, and the Christian world continued its process of creative splintering which goes on to this day. Still, the Creed is embraced by churches with hundreds of millions of members, so its effect in the world continues to this day.
I’m not sure many of the Muslim farmers on their tractors passing by in front of Aya Sofya are really troubled by any of this. The former church now has a minaret, and only a few mosaics on the floor and a few faint frescoes on the walls serve to remind the visitor of the structure’s origins. The original Greek-speaking inhabitants are now all gone, kicked out in the early 1920′s in the several-million-strong “exchange” of Greek-Turkish populations during and after the Greek-Turkish war that followed World War I. The Greeks in Turkey went to Greece, the Turks in Greece went to Turkey, and that’s the way it has remained ever since.
Iznik has a remarkable number of “family tea houses”, simple affairs brightly lit by naked CFL light bulbs and filled with a few tables covered with plastic red and white checkered tablecloths. The tables spill out onto the sidewalk, sometimes with a trellis overhead. The customers are entirely male, mostly over the age of 50, mostly with a cigarette in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Sometimes there’s a TV on, but other than when there’s a soccer match, no one pays much attention. I doubt that theological disputes come up very often in daily conversations there.