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

conviction to Claudius and appealing a just conviction was unlawful and so therefore
he was fined for making that appeal. This law indicates that although decisions of
synods were final, the secular authorities had to deal with situations that went beyond
such finality.
CTh. 13.10.4 of 22 November 368 or 370 was addressed to the same Viventius
who had received CTh. 9.38.3; he received this law as Praetorian Prefect of Gaul. (As
with CTh. 8.8.1 the date is only determinable from the named consuls, Valentinian
and Valens, and from the known date of Viventius’ Prefecture. The text does not give
the place of issue.) This law exempted from the plebeian capitation tax male pupils
under twenty, unmarried women, widows who were of such age that it was deemed
unlikely that they would remarry and also “women who live in perpetual virginity.” 43
Like his earlier law granting an Easter amnesty (CTh. 9.38.3), the beneficiaries of this
law could potentially have come from any religious group (as in Jovian’s CTh. 9.25.2).
Christians were necessarily the main beneficiaries of the provision that women who
were in a state of “perpetual virginity” should be exempt simply because such a
phenomena was more common in Christianity than in other religious communities.
Of course, the other groups exempt from the capitation were not disproportionately
represented in the Christian community. No punishment was prescribed against
anyone who might have sought to force the exemptees of this act to pay the capitation.
CTh. 13.10.6 of 30 March 370 was slightly more explicit in its references to
Christianity, it was also the last law addressed to Viventius. It repeated the provisions
of the previous act that widows and school-age pupils should not pay the capitation tax
and also ordered that “any women who have dedicated themselves to the perpetual
service of the sacred law shall also be held exempt from such public service.” 44
43 in v irginitate perpetua v iv entes
44 sim ili autem dev otione habeantur im m unes et si quae se sacrae legis obsequio perpetuo dedicarunt
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