Professors Rosalba Arcuri, Elena Caliri, Marilena Casella, professors of Roman History at the Department of Ancient and Modern Civilizations of the University of Messina, and Lietta De Salvo, former full professor of Roman History in the same Department, announce that they have organized the International conference entitled 325-2025. Before and after Constantine and Nicaea.
The conference sessions will be dedicated to the analysis of what preceded the first Ecumenical Council at a political and historical-religious level, and of the consequences that that Council brought to the continuation of the relationship between the Roman Empire and the Christian Church. The Council, which will celebrate its 1700th anniversary in 2025, marked a turning point in the history of the Christian West, to the extent that an emperor, Constantine I, convened a meeting of bishops on his own initiative, and took on a periodizing value, as a watershed between ancient history and the Middle Ages.
The initiative, which sees Italian and foreign scholars as speakers who have produced significant essays in this field, aims to further develop research on the aspects covered at the level of themes and contexts (social, political, cultural, doctrinal), prodromal, contextual or subsequent to the Council, and the dissemination of relevant research results in the field of study. In relation to this last objective, the collaboration with the Municipality of Piraino seemed fruitful, in whose hamlet of S. Costantino stands the church of the same name which presents a Saint Constantine as in the Orthodox tradition, representing one of the few cases in the West.