February: This Month in the History of Christianity. Emperor Theodosius I Establishes Christianty as the State Religion of the Roman Empire

Theodosius I (347-395)

On this last Sunday in February, we celebrate Christianity's glorious triumph as a totalitarian ideology. On February 27, 380, Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica, which established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire as follows:

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, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness.

Now, Theodosius was not the first Christian Emperor -- that honor belongs to Constantine.  Grateful to the Christian God for delivering to him the Empire (Constantine was no fool; he chose his god on the basis of results), Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 which called for the toleration of Christianity.  Just how much of a Christian he actually was remains the subject of debate, for he clearly retained a pagan frame of mind and evaded baptism until right before his death.  Nonetheless, for services rendered, Catholics bestowed upon him the mantle of "greatness" and the Orthodox Church made him a saint.  And if modern evangelicals had a better grasp of history, they too would honor Constantine, perhaps with the  Dr. James Dobson Christian Family Values Award for recognizing the importance of Tough Love -- Saint Constantine was firm believer in familial discipline, compelling his father-in-law to commit suicide, mounting his brother-in-law's severed head on a lance, executing his first-born son, and strangling his wife.

Constantine at the decisive
Battle of Milvian Bridge (312)

No longer facing persecution, right-minded Christians could now fully concentrate on what they loved most, namely excoriating wrong-minded ones.  Whereas there is but a single Christian truth, the errors of the damned are manifold.  As Christian kids in the public schools of Kansas are wont to chant: "Big 'C', little 'c', what begins with 'C'? -- Carpocrations, Cerinthians, Colorbasians, Cainites, Cerdonians" -- these are only a few of the many heretics cataloged and condemned by Epiphanius (also a Saint) in the 370s.  Unfortunately, the edict of toleration did not allow the orthodox to fully press their point.  Worse still, under the brief reign of Julian the Apostate, it looked like traditional Roman tolerance for religious diversity would be restored as imperial policy.  But a spear thrust through Julian's liver (delivered by someone who pagans and Christians alike were certain was a bright-eyed Christian soldier) set things right.  The skewered Emperor's dying words -- "Thou has conquered, Galiliean" (stuffed into his mouth many years after his death by pious Churchmen) -- underscore the point that after Julian's demise, Christianity never looked back.

Still, it was not until the reign of Theodosius I that Christianity became the only religion sanctioned by the Empire.  Theodosius brought traditional Roman religious tolerance to a definitive end.

'Leading Light of Christianity. Nero's Torches,'
Henryk Siemiradzki (1876)

Most Christians, recalling how Nero set their spiritual brethren ablaze to light his garden parties, would be surprised to learn that the Empire had been a religiously tolerant place.  Far from extirpating local gods, the early Roman imperialists usually welcomed them into the fold.  Religion for the Romans was a utilitarian matter, something that served the interests of state and society.  They were much less interested in a religion's specific beliefs than with a religion's social and political consequences.

Of course, the Romans didn't welcome all religions -- only those that made life better.  Hence, they wiped out the Celtic druids, for example -- lacking the politically correct insights of modern sophisticates, the Romans failed to appreciate the social value of druidic human sacrifice.  Likewise, they cared little for Christianity.  With their contempt for earthly existence and eager anticipation of the Empire's collapse and Christ's Second Coming, Christians played an entirely different game.  Instead of strengthening the bonds of human society, their religion threatened to unravel the social and political fabric.  So Tacitus, for instance, identified the Christian faith as a "destructive superstition" and condemned Christians for "their hatred of the human race.”  To escape persecution, all Christians had to do was honor the Emperor with a token sacrifice (indeed, it wasn’t for the “nature of their creed" that Pliny had Christians executed, but for their "stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy").  And what would happen, asked Celus, if everyone behaved like the Christians and refused to honor a human king – “the affairs of the earth would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians.” 

By the 380, however, with the Germanic barbarians already knocking at the Empire's gates, the Lord Jesus of Nazareth had captured the Emperor's heart.  Good Christians needed no longer to fear persecution by the State; indeed, they could now use the State to do some heavy-duty persecuting of their own. And who were the good Christians?  That was, indeed, carefully defined; for the Edict of Thessalonica only recognized that flavor of the faith cooked up in the theological kitchen known as the Council of Nicea in 325:

According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians.

Critical in this respect was a belief in the holy Trinity (recently invented).  Other  forms of Christianity, most importantly Arianism and Manichaeism, which could not fathom the fuzzy math needed to understand the Trinity, did not receive Theodosius' blessing:

But as for the others, since, in our judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that they 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 which in accordance with the will of Heaven we shall decide to inflict.

Thus Christian orthodoxy would be spread not merely by argument but with the sharp edge of the sword, which was far more persuasive.  And in 385, a wayward Christian ascetic named Priscillian (together with six of his friends) was tried by a Roman magistrate for heresy, tortured to reveal his doctrinal impurity, and beheaded.  He was not the first Christian killed by other Christians for the crime of false belief.  Indeed, as Ammianus Marcellinus noted in the 4th century: "No wild beasts are so dangerous to man as Christians are to one another."  But Priscillian was the first to be put to death by the dynamic duo of Church and State.

St. Ambrose teaches Emperor Theodosius
a little humility

At the same time, Theodosius embarked on the systematic destruction of pagan beliefs throughout the Empire.  With good Christians like Saint Ambrose of Milan whispering in his ear, Theodosius passed a series of edicts that criminalized pagan belief and behavior.  They prohibited any kind of sacrifices, public and private; forbade traditional (pagan) ceremonies of State;  proscribed attendance of temples or worship of man-made images; forbade apostasy from Christianity.  They prohibited torchlight processions, votive offerings, tying bands around trees, wafting incense, hanging garlands, and divination (and much, much more).  And they threatened the recalcitrant who continued to worship pagan gods with death:

We command that all those proved to be devoting themselves to sacrificing or worshiping images be subject to the penalty death.

Not only were pagan practices criminalized; so, too, was the failure to enforce those laws that criminalized paganism.  Even discussing religious matters became a punishable crime:

There shall be no opportunity for any man to go out to the public and to argue about religion or to discuss it or to give any counsel.  If any person hereafter with flagrant and damnable audacity, should suppose that he may contravene any law of this kind or if he should dare to persist in his action of ruinous obstinacy, he shall be restrained with a due penalty and proper punishment.

And while Theodosius promulgated laws, the monks left the deserts and swept into the towns, plundering what they could.  Throughout the empire, local bishops led their mobs to desecrate and destroy pagan temples, altars, and shrines.

Meanwhile, in Rome, the statesman Symmachus mounted a final defense of traditional Roman religious values:

What does it matter by which wisdom each of us arrives at the truth? It is not possible that only one road leads to so sublime a mystery.

 To which St Ambrose responded:

What you are ignorant of, we know from the word of God.  And what you try to infer, we have established as truth from the very wisdom of God.

St. Ambrose prevailed.  The pagan Altar of Victory was banished from the Senate; the Vestal Fires that had burned since the early Roman Republic were extinguished.  And poised on the edge of its own decline, the Roman Empire embraced the certainty of Christ -- which did not do the Empire much good but did wonders for the glory of God.