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

We command that persons who follow this rule shall embrace the name of
catholic Christians. The rest, however, whom We judge demented and insane,
shall carry the infamy of heretical dogmas. Their meeting places shall not
receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by Divine
Vengeance, and secondly by the retribution of hostility which We shall assume in
accordance with the Divine judgement.’ 15
Theodosius had gone very much further than his previous legislation by
actively condemning alternative beliefs and promising both divine vengeance
and ‘the retribution of hostility’ to the ‘demented and insane’ heretics. As yet this
was no more than an edict issued only to the people of one city of the empire,
but the historian Sozomen notes that it would have ‘quickly become known in
the other cities, as if [proclaimed] from a kind of acropolis of the whole area
subject to him’. 16 Why did Theodosius issue it? It is certain that the formula of
‘the single deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost under the concept of
equal majesty and of the Holy Trinity’ was typical of the beliefs held by Spanish
Christians, many of whom had joined the new court. There is evidence, from
both texts and archaeological sites, that in Spain and Gaul the aristocratic class
to which Theodosius belonged had already begun to enforce its Nicene views,
often violently. 17 Theodosius must also have been encouraged by the Nicene
Bishop of Acholius, who had links with the west. According to Ambrose, the
Bishop of Milan, Acholius’ prayers were so effective that they had resulted in the
expulsion of a barbarian invasion in Macedonia and the spread of a plague
among them! Thus Theodosius’ adoption of the Nicene faith after he had come
into close contact with such a miracle-worker was not remarkable in itself. It was
his active and sustained condemnation of alternative views that was the
innovation; in the years that followed, this was widened into an attempted
suppression of all pagan thought. One can only imagine that, confronted by the
unsettled atmosphere of his empire, Theodosius’ immediate concern was to
restore order through enforcing unity of belief. However, the uncompromising
language of the edict suggests that he had no understanding of the diversity of
spiritual life in the east and the long-standing tradition of freedom of speech that
had sustained intellectual life there. This tradition needs to be explored.