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

giving symbolic privilege to Christians, the emperor appears to have made, and to have
been obliged to make, the right impression; the result of which is that on occasions he
did appear (because he was obliged to appear) more intolerant, but in practice and
more importantly, the action did not met the rhetoric.
The only law he passed against paganism was severe and indeed the severest of
all his laws on religious affairs (CTh. 16.1.1), but it dealt with only one small aspect of
paganism and its severity is probably due to the uniquely dangerous situation that his
new dynasty was in at the time. Otherwise it appears that he may well have legislated
(9.16.9) to preserve aspects of paganism that had long been thought to be acceptable
and similar evidence emerges from the law to Eutherius (CIL 6.31982). On heretics his
legislation was more concerned with the institution of the heresies than with the
ordinary followers (CTh. 16.5.3 and 16.6.1).
facultas trubuta est.
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