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

This law also appears to lay down a hierarchy of people whom the government
considered to be more important to its secular aims and therefore prevented “provosts
of the state storehouses and persons who are going to accept a magistracy, and also
provosts of the peace and receivers of the various taxes in kind” from becoming
members of the clergy. 203 The bishops were to prevent them becoming so and if they
failed, then the provosts would be brought back to their duties by the judges.
Evidently the government considered it vital that praepositi, whether as supervisors in
state storehouses or as tax collectors as well as those about to take secular office in a
municipality, should remain in post or continue to posts already designated rather
than join the Church; it might be unreasonable to suggest that the government
thought its own offices and functions more important than the necessity that the
Church should be able to perform its function in ensuring the safety of the state, but
certainly the government was not going to allow a situation in which vital functions
might not be fulfilled because personnel were opting to join the Church. Effectively
the interests of the state were guarded against the interests of the Church. Moreover,
the interests and manpower requirements of the council would appear to take second
place to the requirements of the state in that decurions could (even perhaps in practice
only theoretically) become property owing clerics exempt from liturgies, unlike the
personnel required for the state.
Admittedly, Taurus’ laws could have been stricter: neither contained any
punishments or penalties against transgressors, even in vague terms. The second law
might simply have stripped all propertied clerics of their wealth or have required them
to rejoin the councils, as Constantine's CTh 16.2.6 of 1 June 326 does. But this would
have missed the purpose of what Taurus was trying to do and would probably have
been ineffective anyway. Taurus went further and with CTh 12.1.49 attempted a
lasting solution to this council/Church problem and did so to the detriment of the
Church by seeking to ‘routinise’ the selection of candidates for the clergy. An
203 praepositi horreorum iique, qui suscepturi sunt m agistratum , praepositi etiam pacis seu susceptores
div ersarum specierum
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