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

eign, to genuinely attempt to maintain some sense of harmony. 294 It should be noted
that this is Theodosius' first law on religion.
CTh. 16.10.7 of 21 December 381 was issued to Florus, Praetorian Prefect of
the East. 295 It ordered that any “madman or sacrilegious person” who would “immerse
himself in forbidden sacrifices by day or by night, as a consulter of uncertain events”
and if such “should employ, or think that he should approach, a shrine or a temple for
the commission of such a crime” then he would be “subject to proscription, since we
give warning by our just provision that God must be worshipped by chaste prayers
and not be profaned by dire incantations.”
This law was evidently directed against private divinations and in particular,
nocturnal ones, and was not a general prohibition on pagan cult. Nocturnal activities
involving sacrifice, especially those associated with divination, had always generated
suspicion (see Valens’ CTh 9.16.7 of 9 September 364 and, to a lesser extent,
Valentinian's CTh 9.16.9 of 29 May 371 on the magic trials). Valens’ previous law
may have demanded the death penalty for such offences, as had been consistent with
earlier legislation and practice on the subject, whereas this law orders that the accused
would be “subject to proscription” which suggests that the penalty for these offences
under Theodosius was worse. Proscription implies not only the death penalty and
confiscation of wealth and property, but also that the offender had been condemned,
or marked out for punishment, before (or instead of) a trial. But that should be
understood to relate to ‘fringe’ and potentially subversive religious activities, rather
than to ‘mainstream’ paganism.
CTh. 16.10.8 of 30 November 382 to Palladius, dux Osdroen ae, the frontier
region to the east of the Euphrates. The law may originally have been addressed to
294 Lib. Or 1.109, however cf his Or. 30.51 stating that there were only four temples still intact at the
time of writing: Fortune, Zeus, Athena and Dionysus.
295 Florus 1 PLRE 1.367-368; Honoré’s (1998) E2 45-47
266