Episode 9 – The Whipped Dog

* Theodosius appointed his young children as his co-emperors, but he’s the sole emperor * He died a few months later, leaving the empire in the hands of his two young children. * Before we get on to what happened next, we need to talk about “Cunctos populos” * the so-called “Edict of Thessalonica” * On 27 February 380, together with Gratian and Valentinian II, Theodosius had issues the edict which declared Nicene Trinitarian Christianity to be the only legitimate imperial religion and the only one entitled to call itself Catholic, which means universal. * All other Christians were declared to be “foolish madmen” and `insane and demented heretics’. * When he first entered Constantinople in November 380, Theodosius summoned the bishop there, Demphilus, and demanded he renounce his “homoian” beliefs and accept the Nicene creed. * This is how silly it’s become. * Homoian mean Jesus was “similar” to God, but said nothing about substance. * And even that was a heresy now. * So Demophilus refuses, Theodosius fires him, and appoints his own Nicene bishop. * Even though the Nicene contingent in the city was quite small. * To ensure his safety from the Homoian masses, troops had to line the streets and even take up guard inside the Church of the Holy Apostles where his enthronement took place. * A year later, in 381, Theodosius begun his persecutions of the pagans. * He also declares that only Nicenes can become bishops. * Everyone else is locked out of the church. * They had to surrender their churches to those clergy who came within Theodosius’ definition, lose any tax exemptions they had and they could not build replacement churches within the city walls. * Not surprisingly disorder broke out as the new laws were enforced. * The church had built up so much wealth and enjoyed so many privileges that expelling the `Arians’ from their churches was explosive. * One pro-Nicene historian, writing in the next century, talks of ` [Arian] wolves harrying the flocks up and down the glades, daring to hold rival assemblies, stirring sedition among the people, and shrinking from nothing which can do damage to the churches’. * It’s worth stopping and wondering why Theodosius might have favoured the Nicene version. * The problem for anyone, emperor, senior administrator or aristocratic landowner, who was concerned with upholding the hierarchical structure of the empire, was that the Jesus of the gospels was a rebel against the empire and had been executed by one of its provincial governors. * He had preached the immediate coming of the kingdom in which the poor would inherit the earth, hardly what the elite wished to hear at a time of intense danger. * There was an incentive to shift the emphasis from the gospels to the divine Jesus, as pre-existent to the Incarnation and of high status `at the right hand of the Father’. * Less talk about how Jesus was executed by Romans and is coming to take his revenge. * More talk about how one day, if you’re nice and obedient and don’t cause trouble, you might get to heaven. * He reiterated Constantine’s ban on pagan sacrifice, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, pioneered the criminalization of magistrates who did not enforce anti-pagan laws, broke up some pagan associations and destroyed pagan temples. * In 388 he sent a prefect to Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor with the aim of breaking up pagan associations and the destruction of their temples. * The Serapeum at Alexandria, an ancient Greek temple built by Ptolemy III Euergetes 600 years earlier, was destroyed during this campaign, probably around 391. * the Serapeum was the largest and most magnificent of all temples in the Greek quarter of Alexandria. * It may have also housed the last remains of the collection of the great Library of Alexandria....