Regarding the number of bishops in the Roman Empire during the council of Nicaea.

[Kameaux]

Hello Forum,

I've been researching the history of the ecumenical councils and keep running into the claim that Constantine invited all bishops in the empire and that these would amount to about 1800. However, i can't find any contemporary source confirming this. Sources available from that time generally talk about how many bishops attended, but not how many bishops there actually were in total. Does someone know on what source this number is based?

Kind regards,

Kameaux

 

[PsaltiChrysostom]

Hello Forum,

I've been researching the history of the ecumenical councils and keep running into the claim that Constantine invited all bishops in the empire and that these would amount to about 1800. However, i can't find any contemporary source confirming this. Sources available from that time generally talk about how many bishops attended, but not how many bishops there actually were in total. Does someone know on what source this number is based?

Kind regards,

Kameaux

I can't find anything either on the total number of bishops at that time. Some probably heard about Nicea after the fact because they were located outside of the Empire or at some distant location like Spain or Britain.

 

[Bob Crowley]

Wikipedia has an entry on the First Council of Nicea. While all 1800 were invited, it would appear around 300 probably were available. Several historical church figures quoted 318 (one of whom was at the council and two others quoted about 270 and more than 300) which is the figure preserved in the liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox. But the article expressed reservations about the uncritical acceptance of this figure.

I'd assume around 300 for the sake of simplicity.

First Council of Nicaea - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Attendees

Constantine had invited all 1,800 bishops of the Christian church within the Roman Empire (about 1,000 in the East and 800 in the West), but a smaller and unknown number attended. Eusebius of Caesarea counted more than 250,[22] Athanasius of Alexandria counted 318,[11] and Eustathius of Antioch estimated "about 270"[23] (all three were present at the Council). Later, Socrates Scholasticus recorded more than 300,[24] and Evagrius,[25] Hilary of Poitiers,[26] Jerome,[27] Dionysius Exiguus,[28] and Rufinus[29] each recorded 318. This number 318 is preserved in the liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox Church[30] and the Coptic Orthodox Church.[31] For some, the number is suspicious as it is the number of Abraham's servants in Genesis 14:14, and there was a polemical reason for the Nicene Fathers to imply that they were servants of Abraham, the father of the Faith.[32]

There's another link here which indicates there may have been more than 1800 in total.

Bishops - Part 4: In the Age of Constantine - Speaking the Truth in Love | Ancient Faith Ministries

In his ongoing series on bishops, Fr. Thomas explores the fourth century under the Emperor Constantine. - An episode of the Speaking the Truth in Love podcast on Ancient Faith Radio

www.ancientfaith.com

Now, you find the same thing being testified to by Peter Brown in his book, The Rise of Western Christendom. Peter Brown deals mostly with the West rather than the East, but the same thing was the same throughout the entire empire, and this is what Peter Brown writes, after saying that he became convinced that Constantine was just very, very impressed by the structures of the Christian population of the empire, which was only then about ten percent of the population, although in his time there were probably about two thousand bishops, 1800 in the East and about 800 in the West, maybe 2500, 2600 bishops that took place.