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

Justinian also tried to find a solution to the theological controversy that was
splitting his empire. He was not a theologian but, like his predecessors, he
believed in religious unity under the auspices of an emperor appointed by God.
His famous law codes (promulgated between 529 and 534), which brought
together a thousand years of Roman law into a coherent body of interlocking
texts, were issued in the joint names of Lord Jesus Christ and the emperor
himself. In one of his laws of the 530s, he ordered all to come forward for
Christian baptism. ‘Should they disobey, let them know that they will be
excluded from the state and will no longer have any rights of possession, neither
goods or property; stripped of everything, they will be reduced to penury,
without prejudice to the appropriate punishments that will be imposed on
them.’ 27 The death penalty was decreed for all who followed pagan cults. In
526, the last Egyptian temple had been closed down, and in 529, the
philosophers in Plato’s Academy, which had survived for 900 years, were
dispersed. 28 ‘The sixth century is a period in which the philosophical glory that
was Greece is wearing thin,’ writes one scholar. ‘Philosophers, and especially
pagan ones, are rare birds indeed, flocking together for shelter and survival in
various parts of the empire.’ 29 A great intellectual tradition had withered.
This determined attempt to create a unified Christian state was marred by the
continuing debate over the Chalcedon formula. When he came to power,
Justinian originally accepted Chalcedon. He knew its Nestorian features would
earn him the support of the people of his capital, Constantinople, Nestorius’ own
see, and that it would also keep open a channel to the Church in Rome. He was
unwilling to jettison Chalcedon in search of a new settlement, but he thought it
might be possible to find a way of getting the intransigent Christians in Egypt
and Syria back into the Chalcedonian fold. His first manoeuvres to draw them in
failed as miserably as those of his immediate predecessors, and by the 540S he
had hit on another approach: if he could condemn Nestorianism outright, notably
the Three Chapters, the works of three key Nestorian theologians, then the anti-
Chalcedonians might soften. It was a tricky strategy because these theologians,
Theodore of Mopsuestia, the historian Theodoret, an opponent of Cyril, and
Ibas, Bishop of Edessa, had been considered orthodox in their day. Justinian
desperately needed the support of the Bishop of Rome, Vigilius, and the western
bishops if he was to make any progress. Vigilius was summoned to
Constantinople, where Justinian bullied him into supporting the condemnation of
the Three Chapters. But the emperor’s action had the opposite effect. By now the