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

the clergy who engaged in business as merchants or as small traders on the
understanding that their profits would benefit the poor.
CTh. 12.1.63 of 1 January 370 was addressed to Modestus, Praetorian Prefect of
the East and was concerned with monasticism. Monasticism was more an eastern
phenomenon than a western and therefore Valens was able to legislate against monks
without the possibility of offending his elder brother. 189 The law observed that
“certain devotees of idleness” 190 had abandoned service to the councils and “under the
pretext of religion” 191 had joined the monks. Valens ordered that they were to be
“routed out of their hiding places” 192 by the Count of the Orient and recalled to the
councils, or were to give up their property in favour of others who would perform the
liturgies. The law specified Egypt as the area of operations and therefore, presumably,
no other province was to be targeted.
Valens had held an antipathy towards ascetics since the beginning of his reign; 193
it was a sentiment common to the ruling and elite class. Monks had emerged during
the fourth century to stand, by the end of it, outside the traditional arrangements of
power and influence hitherto channelled through the city and its civic elites. Often of
low social status, they were able to claim a direct relationship with God and to self-
consciously ignore previous social and cultural conventions. 194 Frazee regards this law
as one attempt by Valens to undermine Nicean Christianity in favour of his own
Arian version and as such it would have been logical to have attacked Egyptian monks,
Athanasius’ loyal militants. 195 This is a reasonable interpretation of the law, but the
189
The text indicates that the law was posted at Beirut on 1 January 370 and therefore it would actually
have been issued in late 369. Although Lenski (2002) 257 n264 maintains that it was issued on 26
January 373
190
quidam ignav iae sectatores
191
specie religion is
192
erui e latebris
193
Lenski (2002) 265 citing Epiph. Panarion 80.2.3-4.who records a small massacre of Messalian monks
by Lupicinus, a general of Valens; trans Amidon (1990) 356; Lenski (2002) 365 on Valens drafting
monks into the army.
194
Brown (1992) 70-73 See also Caner (2002) 168-169 on elite suspicions of deliberately idle beggars and
monks.
195 Frazee (1982) 264-265
139