ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ‘ARIAN CONTROVERSY’ IN THE FOURTH CENTURY

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The so-called ‘Arian Controversy’ that divided the Christian Church in the 4th c. has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate in recent decades. The literary sources from which the majority of our knowledge of the controversy derives are highly polemical and distorted, written almost exclusively from the perspective of those whose positions would come to be accepted as ‘orthodox’, and this in turn has directly influenced scholarly interpretations of the material evidence from this crucial period in the history of the Church. In this paper I wish to reconsider that material evidence and ask how an archaeological approach independent of the biases of our literary sources might broaden our understanding of the controversy and its impact upon the 4th c. Roman empire.