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

followed. When, in 457, the emperor Leo I (457-474) asked the Bishop of
Melitene, in Armenia, whether he wanted a council to discuss theological issues,
the bishop shrewdly replied: ‘We uphold the Nicene creed but avoid difficult
questions beyond human grasp. Clever theologians soon become heretics.’ 6 A
hundred years earlier such a reply would have been an insult to the tradition of
free thought, which was intrinsic to Greek culture. The very concept that there
were ideas ‘beyond human grasp’ that should be avoided for that reason would
have been incomprehensible to anyone with an educated mind.
One irrevocable loss during these years were works of theology. A law of 409
targeted at the books of heretics required their codices to be burned. (A codex
was a bound book, which had by now largely replaced scrolls of papyrus.) ‘If
perchance any person should be convicted of having hidden any of these books
under any pretext or fraud whatever and of having failed to deliver them [for
burning], he shall know that he himself shall suffer capital punishment, as a
retainer of noxious books and writings and as guilty of the crime of
maleficium.’ 7 This shows how elastic the ‘crime’ of maleficium had become: it
could now be extended to cover even the possession of heretical books. How
these books were selected and tested for orthodoxy is unknown; it is likely that
the libraries of heretics were simply confiscated or destroyed.
Other laws of the first half of the fifth century document the continuing
assault on paganism. Pagans were easy to isolate, and their sheer variety of
deities, spiritual beliefs and philosophies made them vulnerable to the forces of
organised monotheism. However, as Theodosius I had realised, there were
dangers here. Although in principle the emperors supported the closing down of
pagan temples, they were worried that this could lead to disorder. So when
Porphyry, the Bishop of Gaza in Syria, arrived in Constantinople in 400 to
petition the emperor Arcadius for armed support in his campaign against local
pagans and temples, the emperor urged caution. He told the bishop that he
preferred a more gradual elimination of temple activity. However, according to
the account given by Porphyry’s biographer, Mark the Deacon, published after
the bishop’s death in 420, Porphyry won over the empress Eudoxia, and when
she gave birth to a son, the future emperor Theodosius II, this was seen as a sign
that God himself supported the campaign. The baby even apparently nodded his
assent to the plan and Arcadius capitulated to the bishop’s demands. Soldiers
were provided for Porphyry, and when he returned to Gaza, the pagan temples
were duly burned to the ground and their contents ransacked. To add to the