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

einforce the illegality of such assemblies, but sought to punish simply the offence of
disobedience. As such they were rendered unable to make wills or receive gifts or
bequests. This substantial part of the law appears to be punitive simply as vengeance
for the fact that they had disobeyed a previous law. 184
Against these indices of intolerance however should be balanced the lack of
punishments for any Manichean caught receiving or bequeathing property or gifts;
indeed, although the harshness of the law is explained by the fact that its predecessor
had been utterly ignored by the Manicheans, from which we may presume that there
was some degree of anger in the Imperial government against the Manicheans, still, no
punishments were prescribed for those who may have broken that previous law. The
lack of practical punishments and vengeance stands in striking contrast to the rhetoric
employed; in this instance, the Imperial bark appears to have been worse than its bite.
CTh. 16.5.8 of 19 July 381 was issued to Clicherius, Count of the Orient and
probably after the end of the Council of Constantinople. 185 Clicherius was of course
Eutropius’ deputy, so this law may well have been originally addressed to him. The
provisions of this law follow on from those of CTh. 16.5.6. That previous law had
banned Arians and Eunomians from holding assemblies in towns and had ordered the
transfer of churches to the Nicenes; this latest law ordered that Arians and Eunomians
were forbidden from building churches “in the municipalities or in the country.”
Presumably, Arians and Eunomians had followed the provisions of CTh. 16.5.6 and
surrendered their churches and places of worship, only to commence construction on
replacements. The third group of heretics mentioned in the previous law, the
Photinians, were not mentioned in this law, which presumably means that they may
184 See Jones (1964) 421 however, who suggests that the fines imposed on heretics by Theodosius'
legislation provided a source of income for the government which possibly replaced that which had
once been provided by Augustus’ Lex Papia Poppaea.
185 Clicherium in the text; Mommsen suggested Glycerius in his edition of the code and that spelling has
been adopted by the editors of the PLRE 1.397; Glycerius is otherwise unknown. Honoré (1998) 45-47
believes CTh. 16.5.8 to be the work of his E2
220