St Nicholas striking Arius at the Council of Nicaea. Origin unknown but sought
'Legend has it that, in the heat of debate, Bishop Nicholas of Myra (the original Father Christmas) struck Arius in the face.'

Matthew Graham looks at the heretics throughout history whose name begins with A, B and C

Santa Claus is not known for his psychotic tendencies but assaulting a heretic defended by the Archbishop of Canterbury is bound to have consequences.

Arius (c. 250 – 336), a presbyter from Alexandria, is regarded as the archetypal heretic for denying the divinity of Christ. He believed that as Jesus was “begotten”, he must be of different substance from God and, to some extent, subordinate.

This teaching proved to be immensely popular in the Greek-speaking east of the Roman Empire but not to most bishops.

So in 325 Emperor Constantine I convened the First Council of Nicaea principally to resolve this issue.

Legend has it that, in the heat of debate, Bishop Nicholas of Myra (the original Father Christmas) struck Arius in the face.

Expelled

Nicholas was immediately expelled from the Council and relieved of his bishopric. That night, however, many of the attendees dreamt of Nicholas flanked by Jesus and Mary who was holding a bishop’s robe.

The following morning Nicholas was reinstated. The Council would go on to produce the statement of faith that we still use today, the Nicene Creed, with its declaration that Jesus, although begotten, is also “of one substance with the Father”.

Arius was excommunicated and most probably poisoned by his opponents ten years later. However, every emperor for the next 60 years would be an Arian.

In 391 Theodosius declared a new brand of Christianity called Catholicism the official state religion with its mystic central theme of a triune Godhead.

Arianism survived as the religion of the Vandals and Goths, providing the inspiration for several religious wars, until they were converted to Nicene Christianity in the fifth and sixth centuries.

And what about the Archbishop of Canterbury? In his masterwork on Arius, Rowan Williams argues that he was actually a theological conservative defending the free and personal character of God and that his heresy dealt with issues of authority in the church and no more.

With its emphasis on the non-divinity of Christ, “The Da Vinci Code” has been accused of being an Arian text.

Cathars

However, the Cathars, the heretics central to the story, were really adherents of the Gnostic dualist teachings of an obscure 10th century Bulgarian priest named Bogomil (or Theophilus or maybe Jeremiah).

They believed that the eternal God had two sons, Samael and Michael, the elder of which rebelled and was thrown out of heaven. Samael (or Satan) created the world and humanity but had to call on his father to breathe the spirit of life into man and woman.

After 5,500 years, God the Father sent Michael (or Jesus) down to defeat his brother and ease the suffering of the human spirit.

The Bogomilists and Cathars combined this cosmology with an ascetic world-renouncing lifestyle, abandoning oaths, marriage, family, sex, and any food associated with sexual coition including meat, milk, cheese and eggs.

Hardly the most obvious group to be protecting the bloodline of Christ! In reality, though, the perceived threat to mediaeval society was such that the Church launched the Albigensian Crusade, a 20-year military campaign that is believed to have killed more than 200,000 people.

The celibacy of the Cathars is also at odds with the propaganda of obscene sexual practices that was leveled against them (which gave us our word “bugger” via the Bogomils from Bulgaria).

Sinful

The association of perverted acts and heretics is yet another common theme, going all the back to the Carpocrates in the early 2nd century. He “taught his followers to perform every obscenity and every sinful act”.

In this first foray into the world of heterodoxy, we’ve seen that politics and heresy are very much intertwined and that false propaganda and even forgeries have been employed to discredit and misinform since the earliest days of the Church.

We’ll see plenty more of this in coming months but we’ll end this time with mention of three more important heretics: St Augustine of Hippo, a heretic in his youth; Basilides, the Jungian and Borgesian heretical influence; and Giordano Bruno, the scientist burned for believing in the plurality of worlds.

• Read our A-Z Saints series