According to the historian Gelasios of Cyzicus (Church History, II, 33), the First Œcumenical Synod in Nicæa, which condemned the heresy of Arios, circulated in 325 A.D. “a Synodal Epistle...to the Holy Churches of God in the whole subcelestial world—to the clergymen and laymen of the Orthodox Faith (tes Orthodoxou pisteos).” [¹⁰] In reference to the same Synod in Nicæa, St. Germanos, Patriarch of Constantinople, observes, in his treatise On the Heresies and the Synods (Chapter XIV), that “...after the detailed dogmatic elucidation and investigations that took place there, the doctrine of the Orthodox (to dogma ton orthodoxon) was reconfirmed with even greater power.” [¹¹]