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

disadvantageous to clerics, but at least it was not as disadvantageous as CTh. 12.1.121
had been in stripping them of all their wealth.
Sections three and four refer to CTh. 12.1.86 and 122 and were directed
towards decurions who had become senators and reinforced the existing rulings that
they were still obligated towards the councils, despite being elevated to the senate.
Section five reasonably demanded that sons of decurions, if not already in the Church
were obligated to the councils with their fathers’ property if their fathers were
“occupied in divine worship and in giving service to the sacrosanct mysteries.” 147 The
law finished (section six) by giving ownership to the councils of any unoccupied
estates.
CTh. 9.40.15 of 13 March 392, 148 also to Tatianus, ordered that if anyone had
been “convicted of a very great crime and sentenced” then the judgment should be
fulfilled, and any “clever trickery” such as “the assertion that the defendant has been
snatched away by clerics or the pretence that he has appealed” was not to be employed.
Curiously, no penalties were prescribed for any defendant engaging in such “trickery,”
but penalties (of thirty pounds of gold) were to be levied against senior bureaucrats
(proconsuls, counts, prefects and vicars) if, being charged with executing the law, they
failed to enforce it. Similarly, judges would be fined fifteen pounds and their staffs the
same amount if they failed to advise the judge of the law or even if “they had not used
physical force to prevent the accused person from being taken away” and if they had
failed to ensure that the sentence was carried out.
Evidently, there is an element of drama in this law; it conjures up images of
convicted clerics being dragged away by their colleagues, (and presumably hidden
somewhere, beyond the reach of the law) and the court staff jostling with the clerics in
147 div ino cultu occupati et sacrosanctis m ysteriis serv ientes
148 Honoré (1998) 72, 74-5 suggests this law was drafted by E10, but finally issued during the
quaestorship of E11 (whose name is unknown) since it contains features common to both.
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