Chapter 56. Theodosius and the Christian State: Edicts, Temples, Hypatia and the End of Paganism

Constantine had made Christianity the emperor’s religion. Theodosius I (379-395) made it the religion every subject was required to profess. Within about fifteen years came an edict defining orthodoxy for “all the various nations” of the empire, laws forbidding sacrifice even at the household altar, and a bishop who barred an emperor from communion. In the same period the greatest temple of Alexandria was destroyed, and the last pagan usurper was defeated on the Frigidus. A generation later a mob of churchmen killed the philosopher Hypatia. The sources disagree about what all this meant. Catherine Nixey reads the period as the deliberate destruction of classical civilisation. Christopher P. Jones and Samuel Dill emphasise how stubbornly paganism survived the laws. Frank O’Collins sets the events out as an indictment. Keshe offers a modern reading of the church as a power of money and state. This chapter sets these readings side by side.

The Edict of Thessalonica and the legal definition of orthodoxy

On 27 February 380 Theodosius, with Gratian and Valentinian II, issued the edict Cunctos populos, addressed to the people of Constantinople. The reference shelf calls it the act that “made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire” [Wikipedia: Edict of Thessalonica]. Its text reads: “It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter … and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria.” Those who follow it are “to embrace the name of Catholic Christians,” while the others, “since, in our judgment they are foolish madmen,” “shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority” (Codex Theodosianus xvi.1.2). The edict came after Theodosius had been baptised during a severe illness at Thessalonica. It was later placed in Book XVI of the Theodosian Code, and the reference shelf calls it “the first known secular law which includes in its preamble a clear definition of what a Christian Roman ruler considers as religious orthodoxy” [Wikipedia: Edict of Thessalonica]. McCabe’s nineteenth-century world history describes the same turn from Egypt’s point of view: “In A.D. 379 the Emperor Theodosius I. made an earnest effort to root it [paganism] out. He issued a decree that the whole body of his subjects …” [McCabe, The Pictorial History of the World, #66127, “Egypt from the Roman Conquest”].

Jones calls the accession of Theodosius “a turning point in the legislative history of Christianity, and a visible hardening of imperial attitudes toward paganism.” A law of 381 banned divinatory sacrifice, which “tended to outlaw sacrifice even in private.” In 385 the prefect Cynegius began “a campaign of destruction against rural shrines and against temples located in cities,” which provoked Libanius’ speech For the Temples [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 3 “After Constantine: Indifference and Intolerance”].

The laws of 391-392

Jones quotes the law of 391: “Let no-one pollute himself with sacrifices, let no-one slaughter an innocent victim, let no-one approach shrines, visit temples, or revere images made by human hand.” It was the first law to forbid administrators of every rank to enter a temple for worship [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 3]. Samuel Dill, writing in 1899, explains how far the law of 392 went. It “forbids absolutely the offering of sacrifices, and even the visiting of temples,” and “the most private worship of the household gods, by incense, lights, or garlands, is interdicted.” He calls it “of the most sweeping and uncompromising character,” intended “for the whole Roman world” [Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, #60233, Book I ch. 2, “Anti-pagan laws of Theodosius”]. Higgins notes an effect at Olympia: “In 391 CE, Theodosius I closed the temples of the sanctuary, which led to a steep decline in the prestige of the games” [Higgins, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, #64793].

Frank O’Collins’ Almanac of Evil presents the same legislation as a charge sheet. Its entry for 391-399 lists “Offences causing major property damage” and says that “upon the order of Christian Emperor Theodosius … all pagan temples across the Roman Empire must be closed” [O’Collins, The Almanac of Evil, #76627, ch. 4]. In the same style O’Collins accuses Pope Innocent I of ordering “the systematic extermination of the Donatists” in 409-428 [O’Collins, The Almanac of Evil, #76627].

Jones and Dill both question how well the laws were enforced. Jones quotes a western bishop: “good emperors promulgate laws in behalf of religion, but their agents do not enforce them properly.” He adds that “the comparative rarity of laws specifically directed against pagans … is a sign that paganism was not uppermost in the mind of most imperial legislators” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 3]. Dill records that “in the very year when the first of these laws was published, a votary of Mithra within the walls of Rome received ‘the new birth to eternal life’ through the cleansing rites of the Taurobolium.” He also observes that laws were sometimes addressed to pagan officials, such as the law of 391 sent to Flavianus, “the man who, within three years, was to be a leader in the great pagan reaction” [Dill, Roman Society, #60233, Book I ch. 2]. Jones also points out that Theodosius himself ordered a temple in Osrhoene to remain open, with its statues valued “more for the value of their art than for their divine nature” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 3].

Ambrose, the Altar of Victory and the penance of an emperor

According to Dill, the removal of the statue and altar of Victory from the Senate-house under Gratian was “the most serious assault on the old religion.” For “twelve generations of senators” their sittings had been opened with sacrifice at that altar [Dill, Roman Society, #60233, Book I ch. 2]. In 384 Symmachus pleaded for its restoration in a speech that Dill calls “the last formal and public protest of the proscribed faith”: “Each nation has its own gods and peculiar rites. The Great Mystery cannot be approached by one avenue alone … A religion should be judged by its utility to the men who hold it.” Ambrose defeated the petition. When Symmachus tried again in 391, “Theodosius was thoroughly mastered by the powerful will of S. Ambrose, and the chief of the pagan party was hurried from the imperial presence, and set down at the hundredth milestone from Milan” [Dill, Roman Society, #60233, Book I ch. 2].

Dill describes Ambrose as “the man who confronted fearlessly the Arianism of Justina, and who forced Theodosius to do penance for the massacre of Thessalonica” [Dill, Roman Society, #60233]. The reference shelf gives the episode, c. 390. After the general Butheric was lynched in a riot at the circus, Theodosius authorised his Gothic soldiers to punish the city, and many citizens were killed in the hippodrome. Ambrose wrote that the emperor must show repentance and would be “forbidden from receiving the Eucharist until he had done so,” and Theodosius complied. The article also notes that there are “no contemporaneous accounts,” that the fifth-century church historians “contradict one another,” and that pagan historians do not mention the massacre at all [Wikipedia: Massacre of Thessalonica]. The episode set a lasting precedent for church and state: a bishop disciplined an emperor publicly.

The Serapeum, the monks and the war on temples

The Serapeum of Alexandria was destroyed under Bishop Theophilus. Jones dates it to the reign of Theodosius, “aided by the governor” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 3]. Nixey places the fall in 392, and describes the scene at the colossal statue: “rumour had it that if Serapis was harmed then the sky would fall in. Theophilus ordered a soldier to take his axe and hit it.” She adds that Theophilus, “flushed by his success,” went on “to demolish numerous shrines in Egypt.” On the library she writes: “The tens of thousands of books, the remnants of the greatest library in the world, were all lost, never to reappear. Perhaps they were burned” [Nixey, The Darkening Age, #70864, ch. 6 “The Most Magnificent Building in the World”]. The Encyclopedia of World History states that “in the fourth century not only were pagan temples destroyed, but libraries were also closed down under the orders of Theophilus, the bishop of Alexandria” [Encyclopedia of World History, #5204, “Alexandria”]. Jones adds that Theophilus built a martyr’s shrine to John the Baptist and a church named for the emperor Arcadius within the temple enclosure [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425].

Nixey’s prologue opens with Palmyra c. 385 and the epigraph from St Shenoute: “There is no crime for those who have Christ.” She describes “marauding bands of bearded, black-robed zealots” [Nixey, The Darkening Age, #70864, Prologue]. In her chapter “How to Destroy a Demon” she names Marcellus as “the first of the bishops to put the edict in force,” and records that the 1965 Penguin Dictionary of Saints noted “with little more than amused indulgence” that Martin of Tours “was not averse to the forcible destruction of heathen shrines” [Nixey, The Darkening Age, #70864, chs. 7-8]. Jones quotes the pagan Eunapius on the monks brought into the Serapeum: “human beings in appearance, but swinish in their way of life … for everyone in those days who wore a black robe had tyrannical power” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 3]. Drawing on Besa’s Life, Jones describes Shenoute of Atripe (active c. 430-460) and his monks breaking into the house of the landowner Gesios, smashing statues and posting a notice of his “disgrace and infamy.” Shenoute was charged by the “priests of idolatry” before the governor at Antinoe and acquitted. In Jones’ account, Shenoute was angered not only by Gesios’ paganism but by his exploitation of the poor [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 10 “The East”]. Dill notes a counter-current: the edict of 399 forbidding destruction of artworks in Spain and Gaul, and Arcadius’ prohibition of “the tumultuous gatherings, headed by monks, which wrought such deplorable havoc in the East” [Dill, Roman Society, #60233, Book I ch. 2].

Eugenius and the Frigidus: the last pagan stand

After Valentinian II was murdered, Arbogastes raised Eugenius, “a Christian in name … a Hellenist in culture.” At the urging of Virius Nicomachus Flavianus, the altar of Victory was restored and the state again paid for pagan rites. Dill writes that both sides sought oracles: Theodosius consulted a holy man in the Thebaid, while an oracle circulated predicting “the final overthrow of the Christian faith in the very year of the impending struggle.” The usurpers boasted that “they would return to stable their horses in the Christian basilica.” Then “within a few days these hopes were crushed in the battle on the Frigidus” (394), and Flavianus killed himself [Dill, Roman Society, #60233, Book I ch. 2, “Usurpation of Eugenius”]. Dill adds that Serena, wife of Stilicho, took the necklace from the statue of the Great Mother “in the presence of the last Vestal Virgin”. He also writes that the Senate remained “obstinately attached” to the old faith [Dill, Roman Society, #60233].

Hypatia, 415

Jones explains Hypatia’s death through the politics of Alexandria. Cyril, Theophilus’ nephew, quarrelled with the governor Orestes, who “hated the power of the bishops of Alexandria because they appropriated much of the power of those appointed to rule by the emperor.” A rumour spread that Hypatia was turning Orestes against the bishop, and “hot-tempered men” led by a minor cleric named Peter attacked her. Quoting Socrates: “They dragged her to the church called the Caesarion, and stripping off her clothing killed her with scraps of pottery, and after tearing her limb from limb brought the limbs to the so-called Cinaron and destroyed them by fire.” Jones identifies the attackers as parabalanoi, “Christian toughs usually employed in the care of the dangerously ill,” and says that Cyril “took a large part in the notorious lynching” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 3]. In Nixey’s account, Cyril assembled “a mob of the parabalani.” The killers, “under the guidance of a Church magistrate called Peter … ripped the clothes from her body then, using broken pieces of pottery as blades, flayed her skin from her flesh,” and burned what was left of “the ‘luminous child of reason'” [Nixey, The Darkening Age, #70864, ch. 9]. Nixey also stresses that Hypatia was non-partisan and that Orestes himself was a Christian [Nixey, The Darkening Age, #70864, ch. 9]. McCabe’s chapter heading “Cyril—Murder of Hypatia” shows that the episode was already standard in popular world history in the nineteenth century [McCabe, The Pictorial History of the World, #66127].

Did paganism die? Did Christianity kill Rome?

Jones’ conclusion, “The Persistence of Paganism,” questions the idea of destruction. Gibbon titled his twenty-eighth chapter “The Final Destruction of Paganism.” Jones answers that “paganism was indestructible, in that it had never really existed except as an entity in the eyes of its opponents.” Worshippers of the old gods survived “in fringe regions such as Osrhoene, southern Egypt, and Sardinia.” The political effect of Constantine’s conversion, he argues, “was to nationalize Christianity—not to compel conversion or to execute or exile nonbelievers” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 11]. He nonetheless records persecution “at the local level, the action of ordained clergy or monks,” made possible by “an atmosphere of impunity” under devout emperors such as Theodosius [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, ch. 3].

Tainter summarises Gibbon’s list of causes for the Roman collapse: “relaxation of military discipline, Christianity, ignorance of dangers, bad emperors,” while noting that Gibbon above all “indicted poor leadership” [Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, #64889, ch. 4]. Jim Penman’s Biohistory gives a biological variant. He argues that Christianity’s sexual restraints ought to have raised the temperament factor he calls “C,” but “not only did Christianity fail to raise C in the Roman Empire, it could not even halt the decline” [Penman, Biohistory, #63863]. Dill describes the theological argument that came with the barbarian invasions: a “melancholy strife of sophistry, as to the efficacy of the old gods or the new to protect and prosper their worshippers, which was only closed by the genius of S. Augustine.” Pagans complained that Radagaisus’ army had its gods while “the sons of old Rome were deprived of the help of their ancient deities” [Dill, Roman Society, #60233, Book I ch. 2]. The sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 sharpened this argument, and it led to Augustine’s City of God (begun 413), which O’Collins lists in his almanac for that year [O’Collins, The Almanac of Evil, #76627].

For a modern comparison, Keshe describes the Roman church as a financial and political actor rather than a spiritual house. In Knowledge Seekers Workshop 422 he calls it a “House of God” that “never looses in the world of religion, because it is a house of money, not God.” He also claims, about the war in Ukraine, that “Vatican has already paid for it” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 422, #378134, “Vatican Financial Control”]. Keshe thus carries into the present the theme this chapter traces, a church fused with money and the state.

Key points

• The Edict of Thessalonica (27 February 380, with Gratian and Valentinian II) made Nicene Christianity the state religion and branded dissenters “foolish madmen” liable to punishment. It entered Book XVI of the Theodosian Code.
• The laws of 391-392 banned sacrifice, temple visits and even private household worship. Dill and Jones document widespread non-enforcement and continuing pagan rites, including a Mithraic Taurobolium in Rome in 391.
• Ambrose defeated Symmachus over the Altar of Victory and made Theodosius do public penance after the Thessalonica massacre (c. 390). The reference shelf notes that the sources for the massacre are late and contradictory.
• Theophilus destroyed the Serapeum (391 or 392; the sources differ by a year) and, per the Encyclopedia of World History, closed libraries. Monks such as Shenoute led local campaigns against temples and idols.
• The defeat of Eugenius at the Frigidus (394) ended the last pagan political reaction, though the Senate stayed largely pagan.
• Hypatia was murdered in 415 by parabalani under the cleric Peter, amid Cyril’s feud with Orestes (Jones; Nixey).
• Jones argues that paganism was “nationalized” out of public life rather than destroyed. Gibbon, as Tainter summarises him, counted Christianity among the causes of Rome’s fall, and Penman says it “could not even halt the decline.” The debate over the sack of Rome in 410 led to Augustine.