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

Valentinian and Heretics
CTh 16.5.3 of 2 March 372, addressed to Ampelius, Prefect of the City, was
Valentinian's first extant law against heretics. Ampelius had earlier received CTh.
16.2.21 of May 371. This latest law was directed against Manicheans and ordered that
teachers of Manichaeism should be punished by a “heavy penalty” whenever one of
their “assemblies” or “throngs” was found. 145 Those taking part in such assemblies
were to be “segregated from the company of men as infamous and ignominious” 146
Properties in which the “profane doctrine” was taught, were to be forfeited to the
treasury. 147
The law only sanctioned a punishment for the teachers of the heresy, it did not
seek to punish the attendees of Manichaean assemblies. Nor did it prescribe any
particular punishment for the teachers, only an unspecific sanction that the penalty
should be “heavy”. This presumably allowed the enforcers of the law to exercise a
considerable degree of discretion whenever a teacher of Manichaeism had been
convicted. Similarly the order that those who assembled should be considered
“infamous and ignominious” also allowed any enforcer a considerable degree of
latitude in interpretation when deciding what measures, if any should be brought.
In fam is has no religious connotations and at worst means no more than “disreputable”
or “disgraceful”. Similarly, probrosis, meaning shameful, also has no religious
overtones. Both these insulting words may indicate that the activities of the
Manichaeans themselves were not considered by Valentinian’s government to be
primarily religious offences. Whereas the Manichean in stitutum was labelled profan us
which of course did have religious connotations of impiety or wickedness. Evidently,
on a scale of “unacceptableness”, and therefore of official intolerance, the doctrine itself
was considered to be more unacceptable than the adherents of the doctrine.
Valentinian had drawn a careful demarcation between the morality of people who
145 Manichaeorum conv entus v el turba huiusm odi repperitur, doctoribus grav i cen sion e.
146 Qui conv eniunt ut infam ibus atque probrosis a coetu hom inum segregatis
147 dom us et habitacula, in quibus profana institutio docetur
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