A.D. 381

These were delicate matters. Theodosius had, of course, already shown in his law of January 381 that he was prepared to throw his weight behind one definition - and, as it had turned out, Ambrose’s definition - of the Christian faith and impose it by law. Yet by now he must have realised that the ancient rituals and religious beliefs of the empire were still firmly embedded and could not be suppressed in the way that Ambrose demanded. This had been recognised by earlier Christian emperors. Constantius, for instance, had issued a request in 342 to an urban prefect specifically asking that temple buildings sitated outside the city walls should remain intact on the grounds that the ancient ceremonies they hosted provided enjoyment for the people. Fifteen years later, on a visit to Rome, Constantius inspected the ancient shrines of the city, ‘asked about the origins of the temples and expressed his admiration of their founders’.² Theodosius himself had shown caution in attacking pagan shrines. In 382 he had received a request from Palladius, the military commander in Osrhoene on the Persian frontier, asking whether he should close the famous temple at Edessa, presumably as a result of demands by local Christian groups. Theodosius had replied pragmatically that because of its great artistic value, it should remain open. Yet his moderation was soon undermined by his more hotheaded Christian officials. The praetorian prefect of the east, a fellow Spaniard, Maternus Cynergius, was particularly ruthless, and appears to have destroyed Edessa and its treasures. His vandalism unleashed the aggression of others, notably bands of fanatical monks who delighted in the destruction of shrines.

To this day the word ‘pagan’ has the negative connotations that its early use by Christians gave it - the word originally described an untutored country dweller - but it is important to remember that these places of worship had been the focus of community life and ritual for centuries. To their guardians, Christians appeared as sacrilegious barbarians - ‘men by all appearances, though they lived like pigs’, as one shocked observer put it.³ In 386 the orator Libanius bravely warned Theodosius of the devastating effect that tearing down ancient temples in the countryside would have on peasant life. He detailed how ‘the black-robed tribe [the monks] ... hasten to attack the temples with sticks and stones and bars of iron ... utter desolation follows, with the stripping of roofs, demolition of walls, the tearing down of statues and the overthrow of altars... the priests [i.e. of the sanctuary concerned] must either keep quiet or die’. This is one of the last pleas for religious toleration to be recorded in the ancient world. The archaeological evidence for this destruction, in both the eastern and western empire, is pervasive.⁴

Although Libanius’ oration was addressed to the emperor, there is, in fact, no record that it ever reached him. But Theodosius was clearly concerned about the unsettling effect these rampaging Christians, whether officials or monks, were having on public order. In 386, he replied to a request from Egypt that it was better that the overseer of the temples of the province should be a non-Christian, since it would be wrong to entrust the buildings to those whose beliefs would not allow them to care for them. The emperor was acting to preserve temples just as his officials were destroying them. After the death of Cynegius in 388, Theodosius was able to confirm his distaste for this destruction by replacing him with a pagan aristocrat, Tatianus; his son, Proculus, also a pagan, was appointed the prefect of Constantinople. It seems that it was the lack of public order that concerned Theodosius rather than the upholding of his own orthodoxy. A law issued to Tatianus in June 388, and thus applicable to the whole of the eastern empire, forbids religious debate of any kind. ‘Let no opportunity be offered to anyone to enter a public place either to debate about religion or to hold discussions or to bring about any kind of deliberations.’ Another ruling issued by Theodosius in September 390 ordered monks to stay in deserts or ‘great empty spaces’ - in other words, to keep away from cities and large shrines.

However, the stifling of free debate went hand in hand with conciliation with the pagans, and now Theodosius turned to Rome. There was good reason for such a move. With Arcadius established as his successor in the east, it was crucial that Theodosius obtained for his younger son Honorius, born to his first wife Flaccilla in 384, an equal status in the west. For this he needed the support of the Senate and the aristocracy in Rome, many of whom were still pagans, so in July Theodosius, with Honorius in his retinue, set off south to the ancient, if now largely redundant, capital of the empire.

Theodosius was welcomed to the Senate with a panegyric from a Gallic orator, Pacatus, which was so rooted in traditional formulas as to give no hint that the emperor was a Christian. It was noted how Theodosius’ birthplace in Spain was also that of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, and how his military victories were reminiscent of those of Scipio Africanus, who had defeated the great Carthaginian general Hannibal. He was declared to have the virtues of revered emperors such as Augustus and Trajan - clemens (clemency), civilitas (courtesy) and amicitia (friendship), the last of which, Pacatus opined, was clothed in purple, wreathed in gold and installed upon the imperial throne. There was even a comparison of the emperor to Jupiter and Hercules. Appropriate mention was made of Honorius and none of Valentinian, who had been sent to Trier to preside over Gaul. The senators must have been thankful that their support for Maximus was overlooked and they dutifully decreed the making of statues of Theodosius and his co-emperors, each with the inscription ‘exterminator of usurpers and founder of public safety’. Theodosius responded as the senators must have hoped. Pacatus was rewarded with the proconsulship of the province of Africa and the aristocratic Symmachus with a consulship (although Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory to the senate house). Symmachus must have been particularly relieved, as he had actually visited Maximus in Milan to offer him his allegiance. The most successful of these pagan aristocrats was Nichomachus Flavianus, who was awarded a prefecture with responsibility for Italy, Illyricum and Africa.⁵

By 390, Theodosius’ position was relatively secure. There was no powerful interest group able to challenge him, he had avoided any major military disasters, and his compromises seem to have led to domestic peace, even if there was some concern over the troublesome activities of Christian mobs. His change of orders in the Callinicum affair, though deeply ominous in that it appeared to legitimise unprovoked Christian attacks on Jews, was achieved quietly and without any apparent loss of face. In other threats to his authority, notably the defacement of his statue in tax riots in Antioch in 387, Theodosius’ response had been comparatively restrained: only those proved to have been guilty were punished and there was no retribution against the citizenry as a whole. But now a major incident was to threaten all he had achieved.

Thessalonika was an important city, the capital of the province of Macedonia, and a thriving port. It had one of the larger hippodromes of the empire, holding perhaps 100,000 people, and as such was prey to the tensions unleashed by the chariot races and their stars, the successful charioteers. The garrison of the city was made up of Goths under a commander by the name of Butheric. It was Butheric who imprisoned one of the most popular charioteers on what seems to have been a charge involving homosexual rape. When he failed to appear in his chariot at the next games, the crowds erupted. Resentment against the Goths added to their anger, and Butheric and several of his officers were murdered and their bodies dragged through the streets.

Theodosius was furious when the news reached him in Milan, but this time, in contrast to the tax riots in Antioch, orders for retribution were given without delay. It remains unclear whether these were given directly by the emperor or elaborated by his officials, such as Flavius Rufinus, his magister officiorum, a ruthless figure in his own right, as the command travelled eastwards to Thessalonika. What followed was a rush of bloodletting in which some 7,000 may have died. By the time Theodosius had realised the enormity of what he had initiated and issued counter-orders, it was too late. The recognition of his own responsibility is suggested by an order issued soon afterwards that all executions in the empire were to be delayed for thirty days so that each could be reviewed. The shedding of more blood could not be risked.

The massacre was a major public embarrassment for the emperor, as much for the deaths caused as for the image it presented of a ruler unable to control his emotions. For Ambrose, here was a chance to establish a psychological hold over Theodosius. In a private letter, he assumed the guilt of the emperor, whose actions he attributed to his unruly temper, and requested that Theodosius show penitence. Ambrose intimated that he would not give the emperor communion until he did so. The events that followed are difficult to interpret. Theodosius did indeed come to the cathedral and profess penitence, but the humilitas he showed in doing so could well have been a carefully calculated pose by which he knew he could resolve the situation. Humilitas was one of the range of virtues an emperor could use in the stage-management of himself before his subjects. Certainly Theodosius had become aware that the Church was another medium through which he could present himself to the public. His initiative seems to have succeeded, in that accounts of the massacre and the penitence of the emperor were reported in contemporary documents as if the emperor’s guilt had been successfully removed. He could now participate again fully in Church activities.⁶

Theodosius’ reconciliation with Ambrose had taken place at Christmas 390. Just a few weeks later, in February 391, he issued the first of a series of laws against paganism. This was a major change in his religious policy. Sacrificing had been banned by earlier emperors, but there is no evidence of any order restricting pagan worship being issued during the reigns of Valentinian I and Valens. Even if pagans could not actually sacrifice animals on an altar, it is clear that the old festivals were still being celebrated around the temples, with animals being killed and then feasted on outside their sanctuaries. The new law repeated that ‘no-one is to stain themselves with sacrifices’, a prohibition that had been in force since Constantine, but it now stipulated that ‘... no-one is to enter shrines, no-one is to undertake the ritual purification of temples or worship images crafted by human hand’. It is clear from the listing of the recipients that, despite the repetition of ‘no-one’, its main audience was intended to be local officials. It is even more surprising that this decree was issued at Milan, as it would have to be Nichomachus Flavianus, the pagan prefect Theodosius had appointed shortly before, who would administer it. It was followed in June, when Theodosius was on his way back to Constantinople, by a law aiming at Christians who reverted to paganism: ‘If any splendour of rank has been conferred upon or is inborn in those persons who have departed from the faith and are blinded in mind, who have deserted the cult and worship of the sacrosanct religion [i.e Christianity] and given themselves over to sacrifices, they shall forfeit such rank so that, removed from their position and status, they shall be branded with perpetual infamy and shall not be numbered even among the lowest dregs of the ignoble crowd.’ Status was important in the late Roman Empire and Theodosius must have known how devastating this law would be.⁷

Another law issued in June was directed at Alexandria and shows just how difficult it was for the emperor to control Christian aggression. The law has not survived, but in so far as it can be reconstructed, Theodosius appears to have authorised the closing down of some pagan rituals still being held in a building taken over by Christians. However, his measured pronouncement was subverted by local fanatics who exploited his intervention so as to justify an attack on one of the great temples of Alexandria, the Serapeion, regarded as the most impressive complex of religious buildings outside Rome. As Christian mobs, encouraged by their bishop, Theophilus, moved in on the temple, pagans fled into the sanctuary after taking Christian hostages. The killing of these hostages was followed by an assault on the temple led by the bishop, the city prefect, Evagrius, and the local garrison. There was a moment’s hesitation when the enormity of breaking the boundaries of the sanctuary and defacing an effigy of the god Serapis held the crowds back, but when Theophilus struck the statue, the attack began. The destruction of the temple was a psychological turning point. When, soon after, the Nile flooded the valley with its fertile silt as usual, the Christians felt they had proved that the pagan gods were not responsible for bringing the waters. Moreover, after the violence had died down, it was claimed that the destruction was what the emperor had ordered. The direct involvement of Evagrius made this difficult to contradict, and Theodosius only managed to reassert control by removing Evagrius from his position in April 392. A much safer man, an earlier prefect, Hypatius, replaced him until a permanent successor could be found. When news reached Theodosius that rioters were being dealt with leniently by the local courts, he ordered Hypatius to enforce appropriately severe penalties.

Yet at the same time a new wave of anti-pagan activity began. In April 392, the law restricting monks to the deserts was repealed, allowing them to join the renewed destruction of pagan shrines. Then, in November 392, a law was issued that in comprehensiveness had had no equal since the pharaoh Akhenaten’s attempt to eliminate the ancient gods of Egypt in the fourteenth century BC. Not only was any activity associated with pagan rites suppressed, but any symbol of paganism, even in domestic shrines, was banned. The pagan gods were reclassified as evil spirits. Local officials were given widespread powers to enter homes to search out offending material. It is hard to gauge the effectiveness of this policy. Traditional beliefs and customs are not easily eliminated, and there is a mass of evidence to show that many rituals continued or simply reappeared in a Christian guise. The law of November forbade, for instance, the lighting of lamps before shrines, but these soon reappeared in front of Christian altars and martyrs’ tombs. (Jerome excused the practice by claiming that a detestable pagan practice was acceptable when done for Christian purpose.) There is no doubt, however, that the laws against paganism meant a shift of resources and spiritual energy towards Christianity. The temples of the Roman forum were being restored into the 380s, but shortly thereafter Jerome was able to write that ‘the gilded Capitol [the Capitoline Hill, site of the great temple to Jupiter ] falls into disrepair, dust and cobwebs cover all Rome’s temples. The city shakes on its foundations, and a stream of people hurries, past half-fallen shrines, to the tombs of the martyrs.’⁸ The Olympic Games, held every four years in honour of Zeus, and by now well over a thousand years old, were celebrated for the last time in 393.

Ambrose has often been held to blame for Theodosius’ sudden change of policy after 389. The brief period between the emperor’s penitence and the first law of February 391 is cited as evidence that Theodosius had discovered sin (as defined by Ambrose) and was busy improving his relationship with God. There may be something in this, in that the laws were a departure from the more measured and tolerant approach Theodosius had adopted to the range of spiritual allegiances to be found in the empire, and suggest a deeper, more personal impulse that overrode his maturing political sensitivities. However, much as Ambrose liked to emphasise his power over the emperor, there is little evidence of a close relationship. There is no known example of them spending time alone together, for instance, as one would expect of a personal confessor. Moreover, the more sweeping and extreme of the laws were promulgated after Theodosius had left Ambrose’s sphere of influence.

A more plausible explanation relates to the promotion of the magister officiorum, Flavius Rufinus, who returned to Constantinople with Theodosius in 391. Rufinus had established himself as a powerful figure in Italy and, as already suggested, may have elaborated Theodosius’ commands to the garrison at Thessalonika. He had a reputation for religious fanaticism. Back in Constantinople, he had been awarded the prestigious post of consul, and it appears that he had been the moving force behind the relaxation of the restrictions on the roving monks. The laws of April 392 seem to reflect a power struggle within the court - those ordering severe treatment of Christian rioters in Alexandria coming from the pagan Tatianus, those releasing the monks from the Christian Rufinus. Then, in what seems to have been a coup, Rufinus replaced Tatianus as praetorian prefect in August 392, and followed up his success with a series of laws aimed at the Lycian aristocracy from which Tatianus and his family came. In 394, he ordered the execution of Proculus, which took place in front of his displaced father. The wide-sweeping law of November 392 seems, therefore, to reflect the victory of Rufinus. Rufinus remained in place for the rest of Theodosius’ reign, but when after the emperor’s death he plotted a coup which would have led to him becoming co-emperor alongside the young Arcadius, he was assassinated by his rivals in November 395.

When Theodosius moved back to Constantinople in 391, he had left Italy comparatively undefended. He had probably wished to avoid appointing a strong man there who might have threatened his plans to keep the west for his son Honorius. Valentinian, who remained in Gaul, under the protection of a leading general, Arbogast, must have grasped that he was gradually being isolated by Theodosius. His confidence undermined by his exclusion, he asked Ambrose in the spring of 392 to come to Gaul to baptise him. Yet before the bishop arrived, Valentinian was found dead at his court in Vienne, probably at his own hand. Suicide resulted in exclusion from a Christian burial, so when Ambrose brought the corpse back to Milan and buried it with imperial honours, the impression given to the wider world was of an unsolved murder, which gossip attributed to Arbogast. Arbogast was determined to protect himself by appointing a new Augustus, one Eugenius, who already had links with the eastern court of Theodosius and who might therefore not be seen as a threat to the emperor. Theodosius was deliberately slow to recognise him: if Eugenius was accepted as Augustus in the west, it would destroy Theodosius’ dynastic ambitions for Honorius. Yet delay brought its own problems. Eugenius was mild-mannered but effective. He and Arbogast launched a successful campaign across the Rhine, and the new Augustus proved an impressive networker in Italy. Though nominally a Christian, Eugenius was receptive to the pagan senators of Rome, even sending them some of his prisoners from the Rhine campaign for slaughter in the Colosseum. When he arrived in Milan in 393 he was welcomed by the prefect, Nichomachus Flavianus. Ambrose conveniently arranged a provincial tour so that he would not have to be in the city to declare his own allegiance, while Eugenius wrote to Theodosius professing friendship. His gestures were finally rejected when in January 394 Theodosius declared that Honorius had been elevated to the highest imperial status, that of Augustus. The Theodosian dynasty was now in place.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Nichomachus Flavianus was ready to exploit the opportunity Eugenius’ support had given him. All the resentment against Theodosius’ anti-pagan laws was expunged in a major revival of the ancient pagan cults of Rome. The Altar of Victory was triumphantly returned to the senate house. Temples were restored and a mass of ancient rituals were celebrated once more. Nichomachus himself presided as a priest in a variety of cults, including those of Mithras, Sol Invictus and the Egyptian deities Isis and Serapis. Symmachus’ son married Nichomachus’ daughter in a gesture of aristocratic solidarity.

This reaction in Italy spelled a major crisis for Theodosius. He risked losing the west and being humiliated by the public rejection of his stance against paganism. By the spring of 394, both sides were preparing for war. The events that followed were later presented by Christian historians as a confrontation between Christianity and paganism, but in essence this was a traditional power struggle of a type common in imperial history. Theodosius drew heavily for his troops on Goths and other Germanic groups, including the Goths he had settled as allies in Thrace in 382, and in the summer of 394 he crossed through Illyricum towards Aquileia. It was a troubled time for the emperor, as his wife Galla had just died in childbirth, together with the child. In the short term there was no hope of a new male heir, and the urgency of consolidating the succession for his two surviving son.s must have been acute. Meanwhile, Arbogast began gathering his forces in Milan and Nichomachus Flavianus mobilised the resources of Italy in support. As Nichomachus’ prefecture extended to Africa, he was also able to arrange the transport of corn from there. Eugenius had become a figurehead in these machinations. He had probably always been malleable to the plans of Arbogast, who remained a pagan, and he was now forced to fight for his position.

The two sides met at the river Frigidus near Aquileia in early September 394. Arbogast was an experienced general and he chose a well-defended position on high ground. Theodosius’ first assault was a disaster. Thousands of Goths died and morale collapsed as word went round that Theodosius was sacrificing his mercenaries to keep his own Roman forces intact. (Later Christian writers claimed that the Goths had died because they were still Arians, as yet unconverted to Nicene Christianity.) According to the historian Theodoret, who was instrumental in presenting the battle as a religious confrontation, Theodosius spent the following night in prayer. He was rewarded at daybreak with a vision of John the Evangelist and the apostle Philip, which gave him the courage to counterattack. Then, suddenly, there was a blast of the notorious bora, a wind that sweeps down from the Alps and cuts to the bone, which covered the battlefield in dust, preventing Arbogast’s men from firing their missiles and javelins. It was now the turn of Arbogast’s troops to suffer a collapse in morale, and Theodosius was able to rally his forces for a final assault on his position. Eugenius, who had stayed on high ground with his troops, was captured and executed; Arbogast fled but committed suicide, as did Nichomachus Flavianus. Theodosius was compassionate to the other survivors, not least because the emperor urgently needed good men. The historian Rufinus, writing shortly after the battle, linked the fortuitous arrival of the bora to the miraculous intervention of God, and by the time of Theodoret, two generations later, Eugenius had been placed fighting alongside statues of Jupiter and Hercules in a last stand for paganism. ‘Such was Theodosius in peace and war,’ concludes Theodoret, ‘ever asking and never refused the help of God.’⁹

The accounts of the Battle of the River Frigidus by Christian historians such as Rufinus and Theodoret provide an excellent example of how historical events were now presented. Traditional Greek and Roman historians such as Thucydides and Tacitus had allowed no place for divine intervention. Events were explored through the natural and human forces that shaped them, with a strong emphasis on the activity of individuals. This made their narrative intrinsically interesting and immediate, not least as it showed how human societies worked. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who was probably writing his history at the very time of the battle, was heir to this tradition. There is a strong emphasis on narrative, which is full of detail of the personalities of his time and the way in which they shaped the events around them. Ammianus mentioned religion only in passing, and as such appealed to the eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon, who praised him in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: ‘It is not without the most sincere regret that I must now take leave of an accurate and faithful guide, who has composed the history of his own times without indulging the prejudices and passions which usually affect the mind of a contemporary.’¹⁰

By contrast, in the new ‘Christian’ history the hand of God is seen as essential to explaining the unfolding of events. The Battle of the River Frigidus is not won through the superior tactics of Theodosius but through the intervention of God via the medium of the bora. This confirms an approach to history that links belief in God with success in war. This had already been evident in Eusebius of Caesarea’s account of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, and in his De Fide, Ambrose attributed the victories of an emperor to Nicene orthodoxy, with God sending defeat to those who clung to Arianism. Ambrose’s assertion in De Fide that Christ leads the legions shows how powerful the new ideology had become. Some sixty years later, in 452, Attila the Hun’s retreat from Italy is attributed by Christian historians to a meeting with Pope Leo in which the pope persuaded him to withdraw. One version has Peter and Paul appearing with swords and threatening Attila with death if he does not do so. (The truth is perhaps more prosaic: Attila was running short of food, his army was weakened by disease and he was aware that he was vulnerable to a counterattack at his rear.) In The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by the Venerable Bede (AD 731), the first history of England, the Christian king Aethelfrith leads his army against the city of Chester and slaughters some 1,200 pagan priests who assembled, without weapons, to pray against him. ‘Thus’, wrote Bede, ‘the prophecy of the holy bishop Augustine [the first missionary to England, not the theologian from North Africa] was fulfilled, namely that those heretics would suffer the vengeance of temporal death because they had despised the offer of everlasting salvation.’ ¹¹ This partisan history in which God intervenes at the right moment to ensure the triumph, violent or otherwise, of Christianity entirely lacks the psychological depth and intrinsic quality of the great historians of the classical world. It reveals the dramatic changes to intellectual life brought about during these years.

Theodosius died at Milan on 17 January 395, shortly after his victory at the river Frigidus. His body was laid in state in the cathedral and Ambrose gave the funeral oration in the presence of the ten-year-old Honorius, which claimed Theodosius and his dynasty for the service of God. While traditionally the funeral rites of an emperor would celebrate his military successes by reference to the great victories of the Roman past, Ambrose evoked instead Old Testament precedents such as the victory of Elisha over the Syrians in the Book of Kings. The emperor’s campaign against paganism was highlighted. Theodosius had ‘imitated Jacob in uprooting the faithlessness of the usurpers, he put the images of the pagans out of sight, for his faith put all the cults of the idols out of sight, and consigned to oblivion all their religious celebrations’. He had defeated Maximus and Eugenius, who had gone straight to hell, while he, Theodosius, ‘now enjoys perpetual light and lasting tranquillity... he has merited the companionship of the saints’. Among these ‘saints’ were Gratian, Constantine and his mother Helena (part of the oration dwells on the story of her finding of the True Cross, the earliest account of this legend, and the placing of one of its nails in the imperial diadem). Valentinian II gets no mention. A prominent place was also given to the ceremony of penitence in the cathedral that Theodosius underwent after the massacre at Thessalonika. ‘He wept publicly for his sin’, Ambrose told his audience. ‘What private citizens are afraid to do, the emperor was not ashamed to do ... nor did a day pass thereafter on which he did not bemoan that fault of his.¹² To Ambrose, the emperor had recognised the supremacy of the Church over temporal power.

In fact, the story was a very different one. It was the power of the emperor that had defined the Church. It was Theodosius who had provided the legal framework within which Christianity had been given dominance over paganism and the Nicene Creed precedence within Christianity. This was recognised by his Christian admirers from Ambrose onwards when they portrayed Theodosius as the quintessentially orthodox emperor who had seen off both Christian heretics and pagans. But Ambrose’s rewriting of history in favour of the Church obscures the political reality. It was the emperor, not the bishops, who was seen by many as representing God on earth. The military historian Vegetius, whose account of military practice, the Epitoma rei militaris, was probably addressed to Theodosius when he was in Italy between 388 and 391, records a recruit’s oath: ‘By God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and by the emperor’s majesty, which, by God’s will, ought to be beloved and venerated by the human race... For when the emperor receives the name of Augustus, faithful devotion must be given to him, as if to a deity present in the flesh [sic] ... For the civilian or soldier serves God when he loves faithfully him who reigns with God’s authority.’¹³

In contrast to the picture presented by Ambrose, Theodosius had not been rigid in the way he imposed his faith. When he became aware of the resilience of the ‘Arians’, he proposed a compromise solution that, if successful, would have created a broader and more tolerant Church. He did try to rein in his more fanatical officials. But he had also initiated a policy, radically different from any that had gone before it, that allowed power to shift towards the ‘Catholic’ Church at the expense of other traditional beliefs - ‘Arian’ Christian, Jewish and pagan. In the assessment of the historian R. Malcolm Errington, Theodosius ‘created a general climate of opinion within which highly-placed Christian extremists, whether bishops or court officials, could act virtually uncontrolled’.¹⁴ Throughout the empire, debate that had been lively until 380 now withered and within Christian communities respect for authority was now placed above intellectual freedom. The consequences for the future of European thought would be immense.