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

epealing what may have remained of Julian’s pagan reformation was passed nearly
seven years after his death; evidently whatever had remained was not given top
priority.
The only derogatory reference in this law occurred in the last sentence in
which the “minds of the pagans are aroused by any depravity (deprav itionibus)”.
Deprav atio indicates a moral error or perversion, a distortion, or a deviation from
correct behaviour. The law was evidently suggesting that pagan minds might be
susceptible to deviant ideas. But more importantly, the law was indicating that that
which had been decreed under (the unnamed) Julian was simply wrong. Rather than
just saying that whatever had been decreed by Julian was abolished, the law went a
little further and stated that his legislation was a moral error. Although this law was
not particularly intolerant in itself or in what it decreed, it was clearly demarcating a
difference between the legislation of the Christian Constantius and the pagan Julian.
As such, it was prescribing what was acceptable and that which was not. At the same
time, however, the law laid down no penalties against anyone who may have
continued to enforce, or be guided by, Julianic legislation.
CTh. 9.38.4 of 6 June 370, repeated an Easter amnesty for the citizens of Rome.
It was addressed to Olybrius and contained the same provisions as 9.38.3 of 5 May
367. 49 It contained the same provisions and categories of those to be released as the
earlier law; i.e. it was not applicable to murderers, adulterers, traitors, magicians,
sorcerers or rapists. The disturbances between the followers of the rival bishops
Damasus and Ursinus were still continuing in 370 and therefore this law may have
been passed for the same reasons as CTh. 9.38.3; that of the authorities trying to
demarcate an end to the affair, and therefore the violence too.
CTh 16.2.20 of 30 July 370 was, unusually, addressed to a bishop, Damasus of
Rome. The law was apparently designed to combat clerical legacy hunting and forbade
“Ecclesiastics, ex-ecclesiastics and those men who wish to be called by the name of
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