to heaven by barring the pagan cults. Until now, legislation
had not worsened the pagan position, and the commando
raids by Christian monks and mobs had been kept in some
check. In 391 and 392, Theodosius caused surviving pagan
sacrifices at Alexandria and Rome to cease and proscribed
domestic cults (16.10.10–11). The world-renowned Temple
of Serapis at Alexandria was destroyed by monks led on by
the local bishop, while Roman officials stood by. Riots by
the Christian mobs, fueled by the promise of spoils, spread
like wildfire. Alarmed, the pagan aristocrats in the west
looked for allies.
In May 392 Valentinian II died mysteriously. Arbogast
elevated a certain Eugenius to the position of emperor and
in 393 invaded Italy. The western pagans offered their help
and were enthusiastically received. The struggle was likened
by both sides to that of Jupiter and Hercules versus Christ.
As Theodosius tried to enter Italy through the valley of the
Frigidus River in September 394 his enemies gave battle. He
was facing defeat when the bora, a violent Adriatic wind,
sprang up from behind him. Both sides took this as showing
that God was on Theodosius’s side. The panic-stricken pa-
gans died at their posts or fled.
At the time of his triumph in January 395, gout and
death overtook Theodosius. He was survived by his son Ar-
cadius in the East where the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire
lived on until the Turks struck down the last Christian em-
peror in the gateway of Constantinople in 1453. In the West,
his young and feeble son Honorius sat enthroned. The Goths
sacked Rome in 410; within the century the Western Empire
had collapsed and the medieval papacy had emerged.
Despite his title, Theodosius the Great was a mediocre
man who completed the work of Diocletian and Constantine
and put together a scheme of survival for the East Roman
Empire. Behind its fortifications, Western civilization gained
time to take shape. Thanks to the religious policy of Theodo-
sius, his predecessors back to Constantine, and his successors
down to his redoubtable granddaughter Pulcheria (399–
453), certain features of the Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, Afri-
can, and ancient Near Eastern heritages that might otherwise
have been excluded were decisively imbibed by Christianity.
This process created and presented a face of Christianity that
for centuries has obscured its innate affinity with the power-
less, the underprivileged, and the non-Western, as well as its
heritage of detestation of coercion, violence, and trium-
phalism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The text of the Theodosian Code can be found in Theodosiani
Libri XVI, 3 vols. in 2, edited by Theodor Mommsen and
Paul M. Meyer (Berlin, 1905), and translated into English
by Clyde Pharr, in The Theodosian Code (Princeton, N.J.,
1952). See also Jill Harries and Ian Wood, eds., The Theodo-
sian Code (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993), and John F. Matthews, Lay-
ing Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (New
Haven, Conn., 2000). On the Emperor himself, Adolf Lip-
pold’s Theodosius der Grosse, und seine Zeit, 2d ed., enl. (Mu-
nich, 1980), is a thoroughly researched study of most aspects
of Theodosius’s policies. See also Wilhelm Ensslin, Die Reli-
gionspolitik des Kaisers Theodosius d. Gr (Munich, 1953), and
Stephen Williams and Gerrard Friell, Theodosius: The Empire
at Bay (New Haven, Conn., 1995).
A monograph in English central to the question of Theodosius’s
role in Christianity is my The Emperor Theodosius and the Es-
tablishment of Christianity (Philadelphia, 1960). Jörg Ernes-
ti’s Princeps Christianus und Kaiser aller Römer: Theodosius
der Grosse im Lichte zeitgenössischer Quellen (Schöningh,
1998) is a highly detailed and full discussion of the literature
as a whole. Important related discussions can also be found
in Kenneth G. Holum’s Theodosian Empresses (Berkeley,
Calif., 1982) and J. F. Matthew’s Western Aristocracies and
Imperial Court, A. D. 364–425 (Oxford, 1975). Related
themes are taken up in Tony Honoré, Law in the Crisis of
Empire, 379–455 AD: The Theodosian Dynasty and its Quaes-
tors with a Palingenesia of Laws of the Dynasty (Oxford,
1998), and Bente Kiilerich, Late Fourth Century Classicism in
the Plastic Arts: Studies in the So-Called Theodosian Renais-
sance (Oxford, 1993).
This reign saw the beginning of the effulgence of intellect, holiness
and charity, associated with such names as the Cappado-
cians, the Bethlehem women and Jerome, the desert Mothers
and Fathers, Augustine and Monica, Ambrose, the Priscilli-
anists, Martin of Tours, and the Pelagians. Each has an ex-
tensive bibliography that interlinks with that of the Emperor.
See also Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana, Vescovi
e Pastori in Epoca Teodosiana (Rome, 1996). A good visual
aid is also offered in the film “Trials and Triumphs in Rome:
Christianity in the 3rd and 4th Centuries,” directed by Bob
Bee (Princeton, N. J., 1999).
NOEL Q. KING (1987 AND 2005)THEOLOGY
This entry consists of the following articles:
COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY
CHRISTIAN THEOLOGYTHEOLOGY: COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY
Historically, the term comparative theology has been used in
a variety of ways. First, it sometimes refers to a subsection
of the discipline called “comparative religion” wherein the
historian of religions analyzes the “theologies” of different re-
ligions. Second, within the discipline variously named “the
science of religion,” Religionswissenschaft, or “history of reli-
gions,” some scholars have used the term comparative theology
to indicate one aspect of the discipline. F. Max Müller, for
example, in his Introduction to the Science of Religion, used
the term to refer to that part of the “science of religion” that
analyzes “historical” forms of religion, in contrast to theoretic
theology, which refers to analysis of the philosophical condi-
tions of possibility for any religion. As a second example, in
1871 James Freeman Clarke published a work entitled Ten
Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology, which
concentrated on the history of religious doctrines in different
traditions.THEOLOGY: COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY 9125