Religious Intolerance in the Later Roman Empire - Bad request ...

e used to gauge the intolerance of every Imperial law, letter or other statement
which is analysed below; many laws do not lend themselves to such rigid
categorizations However these criteria serve as useful guides when considering the
degree of religious intolerance in each law and also as exhibited by each emperor
towards each particular religious group.
It should be noted that the concepts of tolerance and intolerance are
products of the enlightenment and would have been alien to the fourth century;
attitudes or actions that may appear to us as intolerant may well have appeared to
contemporaries as entirely reasonable and sensible responses to real and pertinent
problems. 6 One difficulty is assessing the degree of intolerance in the laws is that
they are edited versions of the originals, although the letters discussed below are in
a better state of preservation. Consequently, much original material in the laws,
which may have helped in any determination of intolerance, is lost. Theodosius
II’s commissioners were to include the texts of the original laws, that is the actual
words issued, but were also ordered to omit any superfluous sections of laws, the
“empty copiousness of words,”, leaving just the relevant sections, that is the legal
substance of the issued laws as stated by the enabling law for the project, CTh. 1.1.5
of 26 March 429. 7 The requirement to omit superfluous material has resulted in the
loss of much of the original law; most crucially, the preamble which could have
provided a reason for the issuing of the law, as most notably is shown in Const.
Sirm. 1 of 5 May 333, a version of which is not given in the code. Extra rhetoric
may also have helped in assessing intolerance. However, that which the editors
excluded may not have been as useful (to modern historians) as might be thought;
Const. Sirm. 4 of 4 March 336, (reproduced in edited versions as CTh. 16.9.1 and
CTh. 16.8.5) and unlike Const. Sirm. 1, does not give any indication as to why it
was issued. 8 Equally, it may reasonably be suggested that the length of a law in the
Code reflects its actual length at the time of issue, since if it contained only a short
amount of legal material, then necessarily it would be rendered by the
6 On this see MacMullen (1986) on the increasing severity of punishments under the law.
7 Inanem v erborum copia recuabit. On this law and the compilation of the Code see Honoré (1986)
161-168, Harries (1999a) 59-64, Matthews (2000 55-84 esp. 57-71
8 On the Sirmondian Constitiutions see Matthews (2000) 121-167
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