El proceso de rehabilitación de Atanasio de Alejandría entre los concilios de Roma y Sárdica (341-343). Aspectos de un conflicto político y religioso entre Constante y Constancio II*, Annales Historiae Conciliorum 51 (2021) Heft 2, 367-388

The problem of Athanasius of Alexandria was one of the trickiest political and religious
issues emperor Constantine left to his heirs. After he was received in Rome after his second
exile and rehabilitated by the Council of Serdica in 343, the fact that the Western clergy
closed ranks around the cause of the Alexandrian patriarch and, collaterally, that of Marcellus
of Ancyra, gave rise to a passionate reaction from their Eastern colleagues, who summoned
a series of councils in which the conviction of the two clergymen was ratified in response.
In this paper, we will analyse how this tension between the Eastern and Western
clergies bled over into the political sphere, in which emperors Constans and Constantius II
saw themselves embroiled in a religious dispute that would not be resolved until the death
of the former and the full domination of the Empire by the latter.