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

III
FREE SPEECH IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD
IN January 364, the court orator Themistius addressed a panegyric to the
Christian emperor Jovian congratulating him on his first consulship. 1 It was a
tricky moment for both of them. Jovian’s predecessor, the pagan emperor Julian,
had removed Christians from teaching positions and abolished the tax
exemptions they had enjoyed. Jovian was in the process of restoring them, and
inevitably, many traditional Romans, still pagan, were resentful. They must also
have been unsettled by the humiliating peace Jovian had made with the Persians.
Themistius found himself in the position of being a mediator between the
Christian court, and the pagan aristocracy. To preserve his own status in the court
and also the peace of the empire, he realised how crucial it was for the new
emperor not to try to impose a particular brand of Christianity or seek revenge
on Julian’s pagan advisers. So in his speech Themistius made a sophisticated
case for religious toleration.
‘It seems’, he told Jovian, ‘that you must be aware that a king cannot compel
his subjects in everything ... there are some matters which have escaped
compulsion ... for example the whole question of virtue, and above all, reverence
for the divine. The impulse of the soul is unconstrained, and is both autonomous
and voluntary.’ There are areas of life, including the freedom of the soul, that
even an emperor must not try to control; in fact, freedom to follow one’s own
way in spiritual matters is God-given. ‘God made the favourable disposition
towards piety a common attribute of nature, but lets the manner of worship
depend on individual inclination.’ (Though Themistius was a pagan, he was
speaking at a time when even pagans talked of a supreme god.) Showing off his
knowledge of history, Themistius gives the cases of the pharaoh Cheops and the
Persian ruler of Egypt Cambyses, who tried to impose religious uniformity on
their subjects but whose laws collapsed after their deaths. In contrast, the law of
God, which states that ‘each man’s soul is liberated for the path of piety that it
wishes’, can never be abrogated. ‘Neither sequestration of property, nor
scourges, nor burning has ever overturned this law by force. While you will
persecute the body and kill it, the soul, however, shall escape, carrying its