Imperial Law or Councils of the Church? Theodosius I and the Imposition of Doctrinal Uniformity

Abstract

On 27 February 380, the emperor Theodosius – newly elevated the previous year to take control of the East amid the political and military turmoil unleashed by the debacle at Adrianople -addressed an edict from his current headquarters at Thessalonica to the people of Constantinople. The text famously proclaimed the religion to be followed by ‘all the peoples’ who fell under his rule as that handed down at Rome from the apostle Peter, now maintained by the pontifex Damasus and bishop Peter of Alexandria, ‘that is,… we should believe in the single godhead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and holy trinity’. Those who subscribed to this doctrine, Theodosius ordered, were to ‘embrace the name of Catholic Christians’, while all the rest were branded heretics, whose places of assembly were denied the name of churches, and who would be smitten ‘first by divine vengeance, and afterwards by the retribution of our own punishment, which we shall enact in accordance with the judgement of Heaven’.

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