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

confiscated if heretics convened in them during Easter. Since Easter was, and is, the
most important festival in the Church, perhaps just preventing heretics from
performing then was considered sufficient, in which case, this law is considerably more
tolerant than it might appear. However, the purpose of the ban at Easter may have
been a further attempt to ‘strangle’ the heretic churches, by preventing them from
admitting new members, if, that is, new members were admitted at Easter, as tends to
be the practice today, at least in the Roman Catholic Church. Such an attempt would
be in harmony with the prohibition against ordaining new priests in this law, and also
with the financial restrictions imposed on Manicheans by CTh. 16.5.7 of two and a
half years earlier.
The only other punishment was directed against the office staffs of provincial
judges and the chief decurions and those were undefined. Most notably, the heretics
were only punished with deportation to their places of origin, other than the
confiscation of properties. This is evidence of leaders and clerics of heresies moving
around the empire preaching their message and maintaining communities of believers
in the same way that St. Paul had done in the early decades of the Church. Equally it
might be a reference to the Manicheans, who had considerable links to the Persian
empire.
Collectio Av ellan a 2.a is Theodosius' next ruling on heretics and is only
preserved there, not in the Theodosian Code. 202 It was issued in response to a petition
received by Theodosius from the Luciferians, (know in short as the Libellus Precum )
asking for Imperial protection from persecution by Arians. The sect was named after
the founder Bishop Lucifer of Calaris (Cagliari) in Sardinia who believed that clerics
should be disbarred from the priesthood and excommunicated if they had ever been
Arians, regardless whether they had renounced their Arianism. The same applied to
202 Coll. Av e. 2a; Honoré (1998) 40, 53 does not assign this law to any quaestor, instead he assigns it as
being Theodosius' own work, or that of a “close religious advisor.” Quote at 53. The text is given in
CSEL 35:45-46; Coleman-Norton (1966) 390-392 gives a translation.
229