The life of St Paul of Neocaesarea
He was afterward held in a prison near the Euphrates.
When Licinius fell and Constantine became sole ruler of the empire in 324, those imprisoned for their faith were set free, and Paul returned to his flock. The following year he was among the bishops who gathered at Nicaea for the first ecumenical council, called to settle the Arian controversy and set down the Church's creed. At the council's close, Constantine received the assembled bishops in person, and when he came to Paul, he took the bishop's ruined hand and kissed it, a public honor paid to what Paul had suffered rather than yielded. Paul's steadfastness under torture and his part at Nicaea are unusually well attested among early confessor-bishops, resting on near-contemporary historical record rather than later legend.
