The Idea of Nicaea in the Early Church Councils, Ad 431-451The Idea of Nicaea in the Early Church Councils examines the role that appeals to Nicaea (both the council and its creed) played in the major councils of the mid fifth century. It argues that the conflict between rival construals of Nicaea, and the struggle convincingly to arbitrate between them, represented a key dynamic driving and unsettling the conciliar activity of these decades. Mark S. Smith identifies a set of inherited assumptions concerning