On the agenda of this Council, which was summoned to warn the assembled bishops of the imminent 'promotion' of Christianity, and to make plans for the assumption of power, was the subject of the Church's future relations with State Paganism, and all the other religions which were outside The One True Faith. In particular, the assembly concentrated its attention on the Old Religion - for reasons which have been only superficially (and never constructively) examined. Here I may put forward my view that it was because aristocratic, rich women - the Church's most notable converts to date -were already forming a 'reform group' within their own intrinsically separate (but which might easily become separatist) section of True Belief.
