Theodosius I: Last United Emperor and Christian Rome
Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and progressively outlawed everything else. He became emperor in the east in 379, appointed by Gratian after the disaster at Adrianople, and was baptised the following year during a serious illness. The Edict of Thessalonica in February 380 required all peoples of the empire to hold the faith the apostle Peter had given to Rome — the Trinity of equal majesty — and declared everyone else demented and insane, subject to divine punishment and then to imperial action. The Council of Constantinople in 381 settled the creed and ended sixty years of Arian dominance in the east. The measures against paganism came in stages through the 380s and culminated in 391 and 392: sacrifice prohibited, temples closed, the visiting of shrines forbidden, the Vestal Virgins disbanded, and private household worship criminalised. The Olympic Games, held every four years since 776 BC, were discontinued around 393. The Serapeum at Alexandria was destroyed by a Christian crowd in 391 with the local bishop's encouragement. Theodosius also submitted to the church himself. After his troops massacred perhaps 7,000 people in the hippodrome at Thessalonica in 390 in reprisal for a lynching, Ambrose of Milan refused him communion until he did public penance, and he did. An emperor kneeling to a bishop was a new thing in the world. He was the last man to rule the whole empire, and divided it between his sons in 395. Christianity had gone from a persecuted sect to the sole legal religion in under eighty years.
- Year: 379 CE
- Category: Political
