Last year, Nathan Israel Smolin wrote Christ the Emperor. It's been reviewed at Bryn Mawr and it looks like some outfit called "The European Conservative" reviewed it too. The latter review is the easier read.
This concerns the Eunomian turn in the Constantinian Empire, which Smolin starts at "Oration to the Saints" AD 327 - very soon after Nicaea. On the deaths of the autocrat and then of one of his sons as he didn't murder, namely Constantine II d. 340, the empire was divided. In 350 Constantius II inherited the pieces and then put down a revolt.
Smolin probably doesn't read here but agrees with my thesis that theology is cover for the struggle between Power and Truth. As Michel Foucault teaches, these are interconnected; although neither can defeat Math. Bayes counts as Math.
Constantine already had to put down clerics as didn't agree with his Patriarchy, like Donatus; this book notes Marcellus closer home in Ancyra, deposed AD 336. The dynasty had little trouble finding allies like Philostorgius and the Eusebii, and Eustathius somehow survived unpurged. Constantius II's problems were Hilary of Poitiers and a man of Cagliari called, uh, Lucifer [JEROME 5/20: if para-Donatist]. In the council of Milan AD 355, the emperor had both exiled. Hilary is famous; Lucifer is not, anymore, which Smolin hopes to rectify.
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