@papag,
It was Emperor Constantine who decided to personally summon all the opposing and quarrelling Christian leaders to the first ever ‘World Council’. The date was 325 AD, in the town of Nicaea, where Constantine was to resolve the bitter source of contention between those differing bodies of beliefs. After Constantine 'THE JUDGE', had made 'HIS' decision on which belief the Christians should follow, he urged all council delegates to sign the revised formula as a statement of faith on which all Christians should in the future agree.
From the book--- “Jesus The Evidence,” by Ian Wilson. P. 144. “The Middle Ages, for the Jews at least, began with the advent to power of Constantine the Great. He was the first Roman Emperor to issue laws which radically limited the rights of the Jews as citizens’ of the Roman Empire, a right conferred on them by Caracalla in 212. As Constantine’s church grew in power it influenced the emperors to limit further the civil and political rights of the Jews.
But if times were again difficult for the Jews, for the Christian Gnostics and other fringe groups they were impossible. The books of Arius and his sympathizers were ordered to be burnt, and a reign of terror proclaimed for all those who did not conform with the new official Christian line decided upon by Emperor Constantine.
:Understand now by this present statute, Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulinians, you who are called Cataphrygians. . . . with what a tissue of lies and vanities, with what destructive and venomous errors, your doctrines are inextricably woven! We give you warning . . . .Let none of you presume, from this time forward, to meet in congregations. To prevent this, we command that you be deprived of all the houses in which you have been accustomed to meet . . . . and that these house’s, should be handed over immediately to the catholic/ i.e. universal church.
Within a generation, hardly leaving a trace of their existence for posterity, the great majority of these groups simply died away as successive Christian emperors reiterated the policies that Constantine had pursued.”