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

hold unlawful assemblies within the towns.” They were also not to be allowed to
return “if factions should attempt to do anything, we order that their madness shall be
banished and that they shall be driven away from the very walls of the cities;” this
would ensure that all “Catholic churches” would be restored to “orthodox bishops
who hold the Nicene faith.”
Branding was the only actual punishment prescribed by this law so it is not
particularly intolerant on that measure. It is more intolerant on the language and
rhetoric used and in particular that directed towards the three named heresies of Arian,
Photinian and Eunomian. These three groups would not be able to accept the
consubstantiality of Father and Son, as decisively given in this law, but other heretics,
such as the Macedonians (who accepted the latter, but did not accept that the Holy
Spirit was consubstantial with the other Two), would not, according to the letter of
this law, be unable to accept it. The law may also be observed to be essentially
intolerant by requiring Eutropius to take further action against any heretics who
attempted to conduct services in towns in the future, so there was a degree of
permanence in its provisions; it was not designed just to meet an immediate problem,
but was designed to deal with a problem in perpetuity.
CTh. 16.5.7 of 8 May 381 was also to Eutropius and was longer. 176 Like the
previous law it is divisible into three parts and was directed against the Manicheans and
prevented them from receiving bequests or gifts. As such it appears to have been
designed to make the Manichean community poor; possibly to prevent them from
supporting their churches, priests and worship. It began by recalling an earlier law
(Valentinian's CTh. 16.5.3 of 2 March 372) but without such specific reference, merely
calling it “the law as previously and originally issued by our fathers.” Valentinian's
law had ordered that Manichean teachers should be punished and properties on which
they assembled should be confiscated; there is no surviving reference in it to wills,
176 Honoré’s (1998) E2
216