I've always thought of the Council of Nicaea as Christianity's meeting to get their message straight, - kind of like what John Calvin did for the Calvinists with "The Institutes of the Christian Religion."
It told Christians what the proper beliefs were, so they could quit killing each other over their differences of opinion-and get busy converting Pagans. I hadn't thought of it in relation to the eventual rebirth of scientific thought. I guess I always thought of the resulting time period as one in which the church had a great degree of power, and people looked first to the Bible for answers to their questions about the physical world. Thomas Aquinas, anyone?
I suppose that the degree of power that the church wielded in the middle ages helped lead to the corruption that led people like John Huss and John Wycliffe to start to openly question the church leadership. I also suppose that the power of the church led Philip IV to try to sieze control of Christianity's leadership, which then diminished it's prestige and power.
But, I've generally followed a more economically based path to the Scientific Revolution and then the Enlightenment. Italian city states grew rich, which made possible the support of artists and scientists. The trade routes that the Italians established into northern Europe served to spread ideas, and as usually happens, ideas lead to more ideas until a profound discovery or insight occurs. Like Gallileo.
AI
