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

have both surrendered their churches and followed the a perceived spirit of the law in
not building replacements.
The law ordered that if anyone had “rashly presumed” to build a church in a
town or in the country, then the “house” as well as the land it stood on would be
confiscated to the treasury. If in the countryside then the estate would be confiscated.
The law ordered that “all places which have received either the abode of the ministers
of this sacrilegious doctrine” would also be confiscated to the treasury. 186
This law tends to give the impression that the authorities were engaged in a
systematic programme against heretical groups; CTh. 16.5.6 had forbidden them from
assembling and possessing churches, CTh. 16.5.8 prevented them from building new
churches, which, based on the absence of the Photinians in this law, may have been
implied (at least by the authorities) in that previous law. The punishments,
confiscation of property, is probably milder than that applicable to the Manichean
community, i.e. the prohibition on receiving and giving property and gifts; moreover,
this latest punishment was focused on the institutions of the Arian and Eunomian
communities, rather than on individuals of those groups: it was an institutional
punishment, although, admittedly, the Arian or Eunomian whose property may well
have been confiscated probably did not perceive the punishment as institutional. Also,
the final clause, confiscating the property where heretical clerics had lived is,
implicitly, retrospective, unlike the rest of this law.
CTh. 16.5.9 of 31 March 382 issued to Florus, Praetorian Prefect of the East
again concerned Manicheans. 187 It appears to address Manicheans involved in
186 nullum eunom ianorum atque arrianorum v el ex dogm ate aeti in civ itate v el agris fabricandarum
ecclesiarum copiam habere praecipim us. quod si tem ere ab aliquo id praesum ptum sit, dom us eadem , ubi haec
constructa fuerint, quae construi prohibentur, fundus etiam v el priv ata possessio protinus fisci nostri v iribus
v indicetur atque om nia loca fiscalia statim fiant, quae sacrilegi huius dogm atis v el sedem receperint v el
m inistros.
187 Florus 1 PLRE 1.367-368; also attributed by Honoré to his E2
221