INTRODUCTIONonly on pagans and Jews but also on heretics.^54 Penalties against Manichees,
‘Eunomians’, ‘Phrygians’, ‘Priscillianists’ and ‘Donatists’ were laid down in
constitutions starting in 381, and similar civil disabilities were also applied to
‘apostates’ from Christianity, whether to paganism or Judaism. It would be a
mistake to imagine that this legislation was everywhere enforced, or even that
it represented laws applicable to the entire empire. It has come down to us in
the Theodosian Code, a highly edited collection made under Theodosius II
(408–50). But it had more than symbolic importance. It could be exploited by
powerful bishops, who could claim imperial support even more confidently
than before;^55 it also invited informers to lay charges against individuals, and
even allowed the possibility of challenging inheritances from persons alleged
to have been Manichees or ‘apostates’. Sometimes it also led to public pros-
ecutions of which detailed accounts remain, as in the case of Augustine’s two
public debates with Manichaeans in Hippo in 392 and 404, for which the
surviving texts by Augustine are actually records made as part of the legal
process.^56
By 395 it was possible to feel that the organisational and military changes
introduced under the tetrarchy and continued by Constantine had on bal-
ance been successful.^57 The empire had recovered economic stability and was
largely able to maintain and defend its provincial organization; it was even
able to conduct offensive wars. But the problem of ensuring a smooth suc-
cession to the imperial power had not been resolved, though much effort had
been expended on it. The state was now taking, and was willing to take, a far
more interventionist approach towards religious change, even if it still had to
balance the competing claims of established practice. The Christian church,
represented by leading bishops, and indeed also some influential ascetic
figures, was far more visible than before. It was also developing systematic
mechanisms for defining doctrine, notably through church councils, and this
process would continue in the fifth century with the councils of Ephesus (431
and 449) and Chalcedon (451).^58 On the other hand, there were already at the
end of the fourth century signs of the religious conflict that was to be one
of the features of urban life in the fifth century (Chapter 7). Finally, the last
decades of the fourth century presented some troubling precedents in relation
to the rise to power of a class of military power-brokers, and the likely future
problems in dealing with pressure from non-Romans, while in the east the
Sasanian state remained a powerful danger to the security of the cities of the
eastern provinces.