A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

of the fourth century,’ writes Caroline Humfress, ‘the charge of maleficium had
become a convenient category under which crimes relating to heresy could be
subsumed.’ 3
But there still remained the problem of knowing what was and what was not
heretical. In 395 the proconsul of Asia, Aurelianus, was presiding over the trial
of a bishop, Heuresius, who was accused of being a follower of Lucifer, Bishop
of Caglieri, who had been excommunicated. Completely out of his depth,
Aurelianus wrote to the emperor Arcadius, Theodosius’ son, who had succeeded
him, asking for an imperial rescript on the definition of heresy. The response was
uncompromising: ‘Those persons who may be discovered to deviate, even in a
minor point of doctrine, from the tenets and path of the Catholic religion are
included within the designation of heretics and must be subject to the sanctions
which have been issued against them.’ 4
In the years that followed, the definition of heresy and the treatment of
heretics absorbed most of the energy of the government. The very complexity of
Christian debates meant, however, that it was impossible to create a secure
boundary between heresy and orthodoxy and at local level personal rivalries
could easily be transformed into accusations of heresy. One such case involved
the Bishop of Synnada in Phrygia, Theodosius, who travelled to Constantinople
to ask for imperial help against heretics in his diocese. While he was away, these
‘heretics’ declared that they had converted to ‘orthodoxy’ and seized his
churches. The advantages of holding on to the assets of a Church, its land and its
buildings, made charges of ‘heresy’ or proclamations of ‘orthodoxy’ for material
advantage highly attractive.
In 428, Theodosius II, the grandson of Theodosius I, was forced to put in
place a more rigorous definition of heresy. As the preamble to his law suggests,
it was the struggle over Church assets that was the problem. ‘The madness of
heretics must be so suppressed that they shall know beyond doubt, before all
else, that the churches which they have taken from the orthodox, wherever they
are held, shall immediately be surrendered to the Catholic church, since it cannot
be tolerated that those who ought not to have churches of their own should
continue to detain those possessed or founded by the orthodox and invaded by
such rash lawlessness.’ 5 There followed a list of heresies. First came the Arians,
Macedonians and Apollinarians, then Novatianists and Sabbatians, followed by
another grouping of sixteen heresies, and finally the Manicheans were listed as
‘at the lowest depth of wickedness’. The silencing of theological debate