This past week I read an interesting blog post that mentions that at the Council of Nicea in 325 there was apparently a representative of the church in India. That's interesting enough, but if you look through the blog post, the comments, and the associated links/articles, it appears that there was at least one but possibly a couple other church representatives from outside the Roman-controlled lands. Who knew?
In my mind, this connects to a book that I read some years ago, which revised my thoughts on the boundaries of Christian history. That book by Philip Jenkins was called The Lost History of Christianity; I blogged about it at the time and would highly recommend it. Incidentally, as far as I can tell, Jenkins doesn't mention the tidbit blogged about above.
***
Articles that were linked in the discussion:
- A. Mingana, “The Early Spread of Christianity in India”, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 10 (1926), 435-514 (online here).
- E. Honigmann, “The Original Lists of the Members of the Council of Nicaea , the Robber Synod and the Council of Chalcedon”, Byzantion 16 (1942-1943), pp. 20-80. (JSTOR)
- “La liste originale des pères de Nicée,” Byzantion 14, no. 1 (1939), pp. 17-16 – https://www.jstor.org/stable/44171181
