[[Image:Solidus Valentinian II trier RIC 090a.jpg|right|thumb|300px|On the reverse of this coin minted under Valentinian II, both Valentinian and Theodosius are depicted with halos, holding a globus cruciger.]] Flavius Theodosius (Cauca (modern Coca, Segovia (province), Spain), c. 346 - Milan, January 17, 395), also called Theodosius I and Theodosius the Great, was a Roman emperor. He was the son of a senior military officer, Count Theodosius. Theodosius was the last ruler of a united Roman Empire - after the division between his heirs it was never again ruled by a single man. He is also known for making Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire. == Career == [[Image:theodosius.jpg|thumb|Emperor Theodosius I with a halo, on a contemporary silver plate (Royal Academy of History, Madrid)]] Theodosius accompanied his father to Roman Britain to help quell the Great Conspiracy in 368. He was military commander (''dux'') of Moesia, a Roman province on the lower Danube, in 374. However, shortly thereafter, and at about the same time as the sudden disgrace and execution of his father, Theodosius retired to Cucua. The reason for his retirement, and the relationship (if any) between it and his father's death is unclear. It is possible that he was dismissed of his command by the emperor Valentinian I, after the loss of two of Theodosius' legions by the Sarmatians in late 374. In 378, after the death of the emperor Valens at the Battle of Adrianople (378), the emperor Gratian appointed Theodosius co-augustus for the East. After 392, following the death of Valentinian II, whom he had supported against a variety of usurpations, Theodosius ruled as sole emperor, defeating the pagan usurper Eugenius on September 6, 394, at the Battle of Frigidus. == Family == By his first wife, Aelia Flaccilla, he had two sons, Arcadius and Flavius Augustus Honorius and a daughter, Pulcheria; Arcadius was his heir in the east and Honorius in the west. Both Pulcheria and Aelia Flaccilla died in 385. By his second wife, Galla, daughter of the emperor Valentinian I, he had a daughter, Galla Placidia, the mother of Valentinian III. == Diplomatic policy with the Goths == The East was quiet during the reign of Theodosius. The Goths and their allies entrenched in the Balkans consumed his attention. The Gothic crisis was bad enough that his co-Emperor Gratian relinquished control of Illyrian provinces and retired to Trier in Gaul to let Theodosius operate without hindrance. A major weakness in the Roman position after the defeat at Adrianople was in recruiting barbarians to fight against barbarians. Theodosius was reduced to the expensive expedient of shipping his recruits to Egypt and replacing them with more seasoned Romans, but there were still switches of allegiance that resulted in military setbacks. Gratian sent generals to clear Illyria of Goths, and Theodosius was able finally to enter Constantinople on November 24, 380, after two seasons in the field. The final treaties with the remaining Goth forces, signed October 3, 382, permitted large contingents of Goths to settle along the Danube frontier in the diocese of Thrace and largely govern themselves. Many would serve in Roman legions and others, as ''foederati,'' would join for a single campaign, while bands of Goths switching loyalties became a destabilizing factor in the internal struggles for control of the Empire. In the last years of Theodosius' reign, one of their emerging leaders named Alaric I, participated in Theodosius' campaign against Eugenius in 394, only to resume his rebellious behaviour against Theodosius' son and eastern successor, Arcadius, shortly after Theodosius' death. == Civil wars in the Empire == The army of Eugenius, marching under the banner of ''Heracles'' marked the last stand of an official segment of the Roman Empire against the new official cult. ==Theodosius the patron== Theodosius oversaw the erection in 390 of the Egyptian obelisk from Karnak. As Imperial spoils, it still stands in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, the long racetrack that was the center of Constantinople's public life and scene of political turmoils. Re-erecting the monolith was a challenge for the technology that had been honed in siege engines (compare the 20th century arms race). The obelisk, still recognizably a Helios, was removed to Alexandria in the first flush of Christian triumphalism at mid-century, but then spent a generation lying at the docks while people figured how to ship it to Constantinople. (It was cracked in transit nevertheless.) The white marble base (''illustration left'') is entirely covered with bas-reliefs documenting the Imperial household and the engineering feat itself. Theodosius and the Imperial family are separated from the nobles among the spectators in the Imperial box with a cover over them as a mark of their status. The naturalism of the Roman tradition in such scenes is giving way to a conceptual art: the ''idea'' of order, decorum and respective ranking, expressed in serried ranks of faces, is beginning to oust the mere transitory details of this life, celebrated in Paganism portraiture. == Nicene Christianity becomes the state religion == In the 4th century, the Christian Church in the Roman Empire was wracked with controversy over the nature of the Trinity. In 325 AD, the First_Council_of_Nicaea had condemned the teachings of the theologian Arius: that Jesus was a created being and inferior to God the Father, and that the Father and Son were of a similar substance (''homoiousion'' in Greek) but not identical. The Council of Nicea had formulated the Nicene Creed, which declared that Jesus and God the Father were of the same substance (''homoousion'' in Greek). The Council of Nicea did not settle these controversies, and by the time of Theodosius' accession, there were still several different church factions that sought to impose their views on Christianity as a whole. While no mainstream churchmen within the Empire explicitly adhered to Arius or his teachings, there were those who still used the ''homoiousion'' formula, as well as those who attempted to bypass the debate by merely saying that Jesus was like (''homoi'' in Greek) God the Father. All these non-Nicenes were frequently labeled as Arians (i.e., followers of Arius) by their opponents, though they would not have identified themselves as such. (For a succinct survey of the situation just before Theodosius' accession, see ''Failure of Empire,'' Noel Lenski (U. of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0520233328) pp. 235-237) The emperor Valens had favored the group who used the ''homoi'' formula; this theology was prominent in much of the East and had under the sons of Constantine the Great gained a foothold in the west. Theodosius, on the other hand, cleaved closely to the Nicene Creed: this was the line that predominated in the West and was held by the important Alexandrian church. Two days after Theodosius arrived in Constantinople, November 24, 380, Theodosius expelled the non-Nicene bishop, Demophilus of Constantinople, and surrendered the churches of that city to Gregory Nazianzus, the leader of the small Nicene community there, an act which provoked rioting. Theodosius had just been baptized, by bishop Acholius of Thessalonica, during a severe illness, as was common in the early Christian world. In February he and Gratian published an edict that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith). Although much of the church hierarchy in the East had held non-Nicene positions in the decades leading up to Theodosius' accession, he managed to impose Nicene uniformity during his reign. Later Nicene writers took special glee in the ignominious death of Valens, the Arians' protector, and indeed his defeat probably damaged the standing of the Homoian faction. For the first part of his rule, Theodosius seems to have ignored the semi-official standing of the Christian bishops; in fact he had voiced his support for the preservation of temples or pagan statues as useful public buildings. Then, in a series of decrees called the Theodosian decrees he progressively declared that those pagan feasts that had not yet been rendered Christian ones were now to be workdays (in 389). In 391, he outlawed blood sacrifice and decreed "no one is to go to the sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or raise his eyes to statues created by the labor of man". The temples that were thus closed could be declared "abandoned" as Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria immediately noted in applying for permission to demolish a site and cover it with a Christian church, an act that must have received general sanction, for Mithraism forming crypts of churches and temples forming the foundations of 5th century churches appear throughout the former Roman Empire. Theodosius participated in actions by Christians against major cult sites: the destruction of the gigantic Serapeum of Alexandria and its library by a mob in around 392, authorized by Theodosius (''extirpium malum'') and described in exultant detail by Christian propagandists, was only the most spectacular such occasion (Peter Brown, ''The Rise of Western Christendom,'' 2003, p. 73-74). The destruction of the greatest temple in Alexandria gave encouragement to Christian vigilantism and mob action in other centers, often spurred on by the local bishops, as early hagiographies proudly relate. By decree in 391, Theodosius ended the subsidies that had still trickled to some remnants of Greco-Roman civic paganism too. The Sacred fire of Vesta in the Vesta in the Roman Forum was extinguished, and the Vestal Virgins were disbanded. Taking the auspices and practicing witchcraft were to be punished. Pagan members of the Roman Senate in Rome appealed to him to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House; he refused. After the last Ancient Olympic Games in 393, Theodosius cancelled the much-diminished games, and the reckoning of dates by Olympiads soon came to an end. Now Theodosius portrayed himself on his coins holding the labarum. The apparent change of policy that resulted in the "Theodosian decrees" has often been credited to the increased influence of Ambrose, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milan. The personal piety of Theodosius cannot be assessed. It is worth noting that in 390 Ambrose had excommunicated Theodosius, who had recently ordered the massacre of several thousand inhabitants of Thessalonica, in response to the assassination of his military governor stationed in the city and that Theodosius performed several months of public penance. The specifics of the decrees were superficially limited in scope, specific measures in response to various petitions and accusations from the increasingly militant Christians throughout his administration. In 391 or 392 he officially sanctioned the destruction of the most famous of the temples in the East, the Serapeum at Alexandria. Bands of monks and Christian officials had long been accustomed to take the law into their own hands and destroy various centers of pagan worship, but the destruction of the Serapeum seemed to confirm that such actions enjoyed the emperor's tacit approval at least, and served to encourage such action in the future. Theodosius had been effectively manipulated into sanctioning the destruction of the Serapeum by local officials who had essentially engineered the crisis there for this very purpose. Ambrose preached a panegyric at Theodosius' funeral. ==The Theodosian women== :Galla Placidia :Justa Grata Honoria :Serena (Roman) :Pulcheria ==External link== *[http://www.roman-emperors.org/theo1.htm De Imperatoribus Romanis website:] Theodosius I 340s births 395 deaths House of Theodosius Late Antiquity Roman emperors Romans in Britain
Would someone please explain what it means that Theodosius decided to punish "witchcraft"? How did his men decide what to call witchcraft, and what did they do about it? --Dan In the ancient world there was a clear distinction between the worship of nature gods and natural forces, which was until Theodosius legal, public, and (often) state-subsidized and the attempt to help or harm others by private powers or to find out the fate of others through private augury. The typical Latin name is ''veneficia'' (which also means any kind of "poisoning"); I don't have a copy of the Theodosian Code at home to look up what term it uses or what the penalty is. It had for a very long time (since Augustus Caesar?) been illegal to practice private divination about the life of the emperor; this included astrology, which many of the Romans believed in fervently. Public augury had been legal - in fact, a duty of state officials. Private augury had ''always'' been seen as subversive; after the prevailing of Christianity it was also seen as a practice that denied free will. So if you are thinking of the nature-religion side of modern Wicca this may help sort that out. --MichaelTinkler. :So if the Theodosian decrees mention "veneficia" that would be nothing new, and would refer to astrology as a treasonous inquiry, rather than to the veneration of the gods. If "witchcraft" was a red herring here, it doesn't appear any more. Other distinctions are more historical: the subject of Ambrose' and Theodosius' intolerance for the synagogues is not even mentioned in this article yet... User:Wetman 19:57, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC) ---- With the remark "Emperors Don't Have to Collude," an anon. editor has given us this picture: ''"Theodosius participated in actions by Christians against major cult sites:"'' Not actually true, is it? I haven't reverted. Our anon. passer-by also removed "fanatical" describing the mob that looted the Serapeum. If this was not fanaticism, perhaps, then, ''no'' actions may be termed "fanatical," --if Christians are involved. --User:Wetman 23:34, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC) == Arians vs. Homoians == Hello -- my edits about Arians and Homoians were removed by a user who did not log in. I'd like to hear justification for these edits. Most scholars of late antiquity would ''not'' use "Arian" to discuss most of the contenders for ecclesiastical power in the late 4th century AD. Their Nicene opponents (like Ambrose of Milan and Gregory of Nyssa) would have called them Arians, and those opponents ended up prevailing and defining Orthodoxy; however, these ecclesiastics would ''not'' have called themselves this, and, more importantly, were a different group than the self-declared followers of Arius from the early 4th century. Check out Daniel Williams "Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian Conflicts" for more details. Unless the nameless editor would like to discuss the reasons behind these changes, I'd like to revert back. The resulting article doesn't even make grammatical sense, for one thing. --User:Jfruh 19:54, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Can you explain what you understand to be the relationships and distinctions between the Homoians and the Arians? How are they similar? How are the different? User:Paul August User_talk:Paul August 20:53, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC) ::Basically, Arius had taught that Jesus had been created by, and was therefore different from and inferior to, God the Father. This was the belief that had been condemened as heresy by the Council of Nicea; the Nicene Creed that had been established by the bishops there declared the the Father and Son were "homoousios", which can be variously translated as "of the same same nature" or "of the same substance." The council also explicity declared Arius and his followers to be heretics. Mainstream chruchmen (with a few exceptions) accepted the heretic nature of Arius and they did not preach that Jesus was a created or inferior being; however, many did not accept the "homoousios" formula. Some declared that Jesus was of a "like substance/nature" (homoiousios) to God the Father; others wanted to get rid of discussion about "nature" altogether, and would only say that Jesus was "like (''homoi'') the Father, according to the scriptures." It was this last group who had been favored by Valens, though the idea that there were rigidly defined factions is perhaps a bit overschematic; many churchmen changed their position to match prevailing wisdom or political expediencey. The non-Nicene churchmen would ''not'' have identified themselves as Arians. ::The issue is clouded by a couple of points. First, the champions of Nicene theology, like Gregory of Nyssa and Ambrose of Milan, didn't really care about these distinctions: as far as they were concerned, anyone who didn't accept the ''homoousios'' formula was an Arian whether they admitted it or not. Since their faction ended up prevailing under Theodosius, it's their writings that have been by and large used to understand the conflict, though modern scholars attempt to see past their biases to understand precisely how the other side defined themselves. Second, outside the Roman Empire, the Christian churches in Germany ''were'' explicitly Arian, and when the Germans conquered the West in the 5th century AD, they brought their Arian religion with them, setting off another round of conflict that the Nicenes eventually won again. Thus the early 4th century, late 4th century, and 5th century conflicts tend to be collapsed into a single, long-running Arian vs. "Catholic" battle. ::The salient facts for this article are that the conflict in the late 4th century was one fought within the church organization, rather than between two separate churches; while Valens had favored Homoians and occasionally intervened (sometimes violently) in Church affairs, many Nicene bishops were allowed to keep their positions throughout his reign. Cases like that of the Nicene Gregory of Nazianzus, who claimed to be the "real" bishop of Constantinople while another Homoian churchman also held the role (and was recognized as bishop by most of the city), were rare; usually conflict broke out when a bishop died and the factions vied to establish one of their own as his successor. Theodosius, however, intervened much more forcefully, ejecting the incumbant bishop in Constantinople and recognizing Gregory of Nazianzus, and establishing the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria and legally defined Christianity. His strong intervention, along with the shameful death of a known non-Nicene emperor, combined to establish the Nicene faith in the East. ::Anway, I've gone on quite a bit here; hope it answers your question. The question now is, how to best integrate all this into the article? --User:Jfruh 21:42, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Thanks for taking the time to answer some of my questions. I think I understand the situation a bit better now. I still have some questions though. Some of what you are saying seems at variance with our article on Arianism which says:
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Theodosius I
[[Image:Solidus Valentinian II trier RIC 090a.jpg|right|thumb|300px|On the reverse of this coin minted under Valentinian II, both Valentinian and Theodosius are depicted with halos, holding a globus cruciger.]] Flavius Theodosius (Cauca (modern Coca, Segovia (province), Spain), c. 346 - Milan, January 17, 395), also called Theodosius I and Theodosius the Great, was a Roman emperor. He was the son of a senior military officer, Count Theodosius. Theodosius was the last ruler of a united Roman Empire - after the division between his heirs it was never again ruled by a single man. He is also known for making Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire. == Career == [[Image:theodosius.jpg|thumb|Emperor Theodosius I with a halo, on a contemporary silver plate (Royal Academy of History, Madrid)]] Theodosius accompanied his father to Roman Britain to help quell the Great Conspiracy in 368. He was military commander (''dux'') of Moesia, a Roman province on the lower Danube, in 374. However, shortly thereafter, and at about the same time as the sudden disgrace and execution of his father, Theodosius retired to Cucua. The reason for his retirement, and the relationship (if any) between it and his father's death is unclear. It is possible that he was dismissed of his command by the emperor Valentinian I, after the loss of two of Theodosius' legions by the Sarmatians in late 374. In 378, after the death of the emperor Valens at the Battle of Adrianople (378), the emperor Gratian appointed Theodosius co-augustus for the East. After 392, following the death of Valentinian II, whom he had supported against a variety of usurpations, Theodosius ruled as sole emperor, defeating the pagan usurper Eugenius on September 6, 394, at the Battle of Frigidus. == Family == By his first wife, Aelia Flaccilla, he had two sons, Arcadius and Flavius Augustus Honorius and a daughter, Pulcheria; Arcadius was his heir in the east and Honorius in the west. Both Pulcheria and Aelia Flaccilla died in 385. By his second wife, Galla, daughter of the emperor Valentinian I, he had a daughter, Galla Placidia, the mother of Valentinian III. == Diplomatic policy with the Goths == The East was quiet during the reign of Theodosius. The Goths and their allies entrenched in the Balkans consumed his attention. The Gothic crisis was bad enough that his co-Emperor Gratian relinquished control of Illyrian provinces and retired to Trier in Gaul to let Theodosius operate without hindrance. A major weakness in the Roman position after the defeat at Adrianople was in recruiting barbarians to fight against barbarians. Theodosius was reduced to the expensive expedient of shipping his recruits to Egypt and replacing them with more seasoned Romans, but there were still switches of allegiance that resulted in military setbacks. Gratian sent generals to clear Illyria of Goths, and Theodosius was able finally to enter Constantinople on November 24, 380, after two seasons in the field. The final treaties with the remaining Goth forces, signed October 3, 382, permitted large contingents of Goths to settle along the Danube frontier in the diocese of Thrace and largely govern themselves. Many would serve in Roman legions and others, as ''foederati,'' would join for a single campaign, while bands of Goths switching loyalties became a destabilizing factor in the internal struggles for control of the Empire. In the last years of Theodosius' reign, one of their emerging leaders named Alaric I, participated in Theodosius' campaign against Eugenius in 394, only to resume his rebellious behaviour against Theodosius' son and eastern successor, Arcadius, shortly after Theodosius' death. == Civil wars in the Empire == The army of Eugenius, marching under the banner of ''Heracles'' marked the last stand of an official segment of the Roman Empire against the new official cult. ==Theodosius the patron== Theodosius oversaw the erection in 390 of the Egyptian obelisk from Karnak. As Imperial spoils, it still stands in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, the long racetrack that was the center of Constantinople's public life and scene of political turmoils. Re-erecting the monolith was a challenge for the technology that had been honed in siege engines (compare the 20th century arms race). The obelisk, still recognizably a Helios, was removed to Alexandria in the first flush of Christian triumphalism at mid-century, but then spent a generation lying at the docks while people figured how to ship it to Constantinople. (It was cracked in transit nevertheless.) The white marble base (''illustration left'') is entirely covered with bas-reliefs documenting the Imperial household and the engineering feat itself. Theodosius and the Imperial family are separated from the nobles among the spectators in the Imperial box with a cover over them as a mark of their status. The naturalism of the Roman tradition in such scenes is giving way to a conceptual art: the ''idea'' of order, decorum and respective ranking, expressed in serried ranks of faces, is beginning to oust the mere transitory details of this life, celebrated in Paganism portraiture. == Nicene Christianity becomes the state religion == In the 4th century, the Christian Church in the Roman Empire was wracked with controversy over the nature of the Trinity. In 325 AD, the First_Council_of_Nicaea had condemned the teachings of the theologian Arius: that Jesus was a created being and inferior to God the Father, and that the Father and Son were of a similar substance (''homoiousion'' in Greek) but not identical. The Council of Nicea had formulated the Nicene Creed, which declared that Jesus and God the Father were of the same substance (''homoousion'' in Greek). The Council of Nicea did not settle these controversies, and by the time of Theodosius' accession, there were still several different church factions that sought to impose their views on Christianity as a whole. While no mainstream churchmen within the Empire explicitly adhered to Arius or his teachings, there were those who still used the ''homoiousion'' formula, as well as those who attempted to bypass the debate by merely saying that Jesus was like (''homoi'' in Greek) God the Father. All these non-Nicenes were frequently labeled as Arians (i.e., followers of Arius) by their opponents, though they would not have identified themselves as such. (For a succinct survey of the situation just before Theodosius' accession, see ''Failure of Empire,'' Noel Lenski (U. of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0520233328) pp. 235-237) The emperor Valens had favored the group who used the ''homoi'' formula; this theology was prominent in much of the East and had under the sons of Constantine the Great gained a foothold in the west. Theodosius, on the other hand, cleaved closely to the Nicene Creed: this was the line that predominated in the West and was held by the important Alexandrian church. Two days after Theodosius arrived in Constantinople, November 24, 380, Theodosius expelled the non-Nicene bishop, Demophilus of Constantinople, and surrendered the churches of that city to Gregory Nazianzus, the leader of the small Nicene community there, an act which provoked rioting. Theodosius had just been baptized, by bishop Acholius of Thessalonica, during a severe illness, as was common in the early Christian world. In February he and Gratian published an edict that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith). Although much of the church hierarchy in the East had held non-Nicene positions in the decades leading up to Theodosius' accession, he managed to impose Nicene uniformity during his reign. Later Nicene writers took special glee in the ignominious death of Valens, the Arians' protector, and indeed his defeat probably damaged the standing of the Homoian faction. For the first part of his rule, Theodosius seems to have ignored the semi-official standing of the Christian bishops; in fact he had voiced his support for the preservation of temples or pagan statues as useful public buildings. Then, in a series of decrees called the Theodosian decrees he progressively declared that those pagan feasts that had not yet been rendered Christian ones were now to be workdays (in 389). In 391, he outlawed blood sacrifice and decreed "no one is to go to the sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or raise his eyes to statues created by the labor of man". The temples that were thus closed could be declared "abandoned" as Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria immediately noted in applying for permission to demolish a site and cover it with a Christian church, an act that must have received general sanction, for Mithraism forming crypts of churches and temples forming the foundations of 5th century churches appear throughout the former Roman Empire. Theodosius participated in actions by Christians against major cult sites: the destruction of the gigantic Serapeum of Alexandria and its library by a mob in around 392, authorized by Theodosius (''extirpium malum'') and described in exultant detail by Christian propagandists, was only the most spectacular such occasion (Peter Brown, ''The Rise of Western Christendom,'' 2003, p. 73-74). The destruction of the greatest temple in Alexandria gave encouragement to Christian vigilantism and mob action in other centers, often spurred on by the local bishops, as early hagiographies proudly relate. By decree in 391, Theodosius ended the subsidies that had still trickled to some remnants of Greco-Roman civic paganism too. The Sacred fire of Vesta in the Vesta in the Roman Forum was extinguished, and the Vestal Virgins were disbanded. Taking the auspices and practicing witchcraft were to be punished. Pagan members of the Roman Senate in Rome appealed to him to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House; he refused. After the last Ancient Olympic Games in 393, Theodosius cancelled the much-diminished games, and the reckoning of dates by Olympiads soon came to an end. Now Theodosius portrayed himself on his coins holding the labarum. The apparent change of policy that resulted in the "Theodosian decrees" has often been credited to the increased influence of Ambrose, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milan. The personal piety of Theodosius cannot be assessed. It is worth noting that in 390 Ambrose had excommunicated Theodosius, who had recently ordered the massacre of several thousand inhabitants of Thessalonica, in response to the assassination of his military governor stationed in the city and that Theodosius performed several months of public penance. The specifics of the decrees were superficially limited in scope, specific measures in response to various petitions and accusations from the increasingly militant Christians throughout his administration. In 391 or 392 he officially sanctioned the destruction of the most famous of the temples in the East, the Serapeum at Alexandria. Bands of monks and Christian officials had long been accustomed to take the law into their own hands and destroy various centers of pagan worship, but the destruction of the Serapeum seemed to confirm that such actions enjoyed the emperor's tacit approval at least, and served to encourage such action in the future. Theodosius had been effectively manipulated into sanctioning the destruction of the Serapeum by local officials who had essentially engineered the crisis there for this very purpose. Ambrose preached a panegyric at Theodosius' funeral. ==The Theodosian women== :Galla Placidia :Justa Grata Honoria :Serena (Roman) :Pulcheria ==External link== *[http://www.roman-emperors.org/theo1.htm De Imperatoribus Romanis website:] Theodosius I 340s births 395 deaths House of Theodosius Late Antiquity Roman emperors Romans in Britain
Theodosius I
Would someone please explain what it means that Theodosius decided to punish "witchcraft"? How did his men decide what to call witchcraft, and what did they do about it? --Dan In the ancient world there was a clear distinction between the worship of nature gods and natural forces, which was until Theodosius legal, public, and (often) state-subsidized and the attempt to help or harm others by private powers or to find out the fate of others through private augury. The typical Latin name is ''veneficia'' (which also means any kind of "poisoning"); I don't have a copy of the Theodosian Code at home to look up what term it uses or what the penalty is. It had for a very long time (since Augustus Caesar?) been illegal to practice private divination about the life of the emperor; this included astrology, which many of the Romans believed in fervently. Public augury had been legal - in fact, a duty of state officials. Private augury had ''always'' been seen as subversive; after the prevailing of Christianity it was also seen as a practice that denied free will. So if you are thinking of the nature-religion side of modern Wicca this may help sort that out. --MichaelTinkler. :So if the Theodosian decrees mention "veneficia" that would be nothing new, and would refer to astrology as a treasonous inquiry, rather than to the veneration of the gods. If "witchcraft" was a red herring here, it doesn't appear any more. Other distinctions are more historical: the subject of Ambrose' and Theodosius' intolerance for the synagogues is not even mentioned in this article yet... User:Wetman 19:57, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC) ---- With the remark "Emperors Don't Have to Collude," an anon. editor has given us this picture: ''"Theodosius participated in actions by Christians against major cult sites:"'' Not actually true, is it? I haven't reverted. Our anon. passer-by also removed "fanatical" describing the mob that looted the Serapeum. If this was not fanaticism, perhaps, then, ''no'' actions may be termed "fanatical," --if Christians are involved. --User:Wetman 23:34, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC) == Arians vs. Homoians == Hello -- my edits about Arians and Homoians were removed by a user who did not log in. I'd like to hear justification for these edits. Most scholars of late antiquity would ''not'' use "Arian" to discuss most of the contenders for ecclesiastical power in the late 4th century AD. Their Nicene opponents (like Ambrose of Milan and Gregory of Nyssa) would have called them Arians, and those opponents ended up prevailing and defining Orthodoxy; however, these ecclesiastics would ''not'' have called themselves this, and, more importantly, were a different group than the self-declared followers of Arius from the early 4th century. Check out Daniel Williams "Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian Conflicts" for more details. Unless the nameless editor would like to discuss the reasons behind these changes, I'd like to revert back. The resulting article doesn't even make grammatical sense, for one thing. --User:Jfruh 19:54, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Can you explain what you understand to be the relationships and distinctions between the Homoians and the Arians? How are they similar? How are the different? User:Paul August User_talk:Paul August 20:53, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC) ::Basically, Arius had taught that Jesus had been created by, and was therefore different from and inferior to, God the Father. This was the belief that had been condemened as heresy by the Council of Nicea; the Nicene Creed that had been established by the bishops there declared the the Father and Son were "homoousios", which can be variously translated as "of the same same nature" or "of the same substance." The council also explicity declared Arius and his followers to be heretics. Mainstream chruchmen (with a few exceptions) accepted the heretic nature of Arius and they did not preach that Jesus was a created or inferior being; however, many did not accept the "homoousios" formula. Some declared that Jesus was of a "like substance/nature" (homoiousios) to God the Father; others wanted to get rid of discussion about "nature" altogether, and would only say that Jesus was "like (''homoi'') the Father, according to the scriptures." It was this last group who had been favored by Valens, though the idea that there were rigidly defined factions is perhaps a bit overschematic; many churchmen changed their position to match prevailing wisdom or political expediencey. The non-Nicene churchmen would ''not'' have identified themselves as Arians. ::The issue is clouded by a couple of points. First, the champions of Nicene theology, like Gregory of Nyssa and Ambrose of Milan, didn't really care about these distinctions: as far as they were concerned, anyone who didn't accept the ''homoousios'' formula was an Arian whether they admitted it or not. Since their faction ended up prevailing under Theodosius, it's their writings that have been by and large used to understand the conflict, though modern scholars attempt to see past their biases to understand precisely how the other side defined themselves. Second, outside the Roman Empire, the Christian churches in Germany ''were'' explicitly Arian, and when the Germans conquered the West in the 5th century AD, they brought their Arian religion with them, setting off another round of conflict that the Nicenes eventually won again. Thus the early 4th century, late 4th century, and 5th century conflicts tend to be collapsed into a single, long-running Arian vs. "Catholic" battle. ::The salient facts for this article are that the conflict in the late 4th century was one fought within the church organization, rather than between two separate churches; while Valens had favored Homoians and occasionally intervened (sometimes violently) in Church affairs, many Nicene bishops were allowed to keep their positions throughout his reign. Cases like that of the Nicene Gregory of Nazianzus, who claimed to be the "real" bishop of Constantinople while another Homoian churchman also held the role (and was recognized as bishop by most of the city), were rare; usually conflict broke out when a bishop died and the factions vied to establish one of their own as his successor. Theodosius, however, intervened much more forcefully, ejecting the incumbant bishop in Constantinople and recognizing Gregory of Nazianzus, and establishing the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria and legally defined Christianity. His strong intervention, along with the shameful death of a known non-Nicene emperor, combined to establish the Nicene faith in the East. ::Anway, I've gone on quite a bit here; hope it answers your question. The question now is, how to best integrate all this into the article? --User:Jfruh 21:42, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Thanks for taking the time to answer some of my questions. I think I understand the situation a bit better now. I still have some questions though. Some of what you are saying seems at variance with our article on Arianism which says:
Arius and his followers agreed that Jesus was the son of God, but denied that they were one substance (Greek: homo-ousios). Instead, they viewed God and the Son as having distinct but similar substances (Greek: homoi-ousios). The difference in Greek was literally one iota (reflected in the English letter I) of difference. The apparently trivial nature of this difference led Edward Gibbon to remark that "the profane of every age have derided the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited between the Homoousians and the Homoiousians".:Is the above in your view inaccurate? How did the belief of the "Homoians" differ from those of the Arians? Is the term Arian being used correctly elsewhere in the article? Specifically: :*"Theodosius expelled the Arian bishop, Demophilus of Constantinople." :and :*"Although much of the church hierarchy in the East had held Arian positions in the decades leading up to Theodosius' accession, he managed to impose Nicene uniformity during his reign." :Also if you do reinsert your edits, since there does seem to be some controversy surrounding this, (as one would expect from what may be a longstanding historical misnomer), please consider including more explanation (perhaps in a footnote?) and citing some sources. :User:Paul August User_talk:Paul August 22:35, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC) == succession box == I fixed it, since the thing wasn't showing up right. --User:Kross 08:24, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC) == edits by 216.135.9.75 == I've reverted User 216.135.9.75's edits of 17:28–39, May 1, 2005. The following sentence was added: "He ruled the Roman Empire independently from 392 to 395, but made an incredible impact of the Roman World. He ruled jointly with two others from 379-392, when he gained absolute power." But, in my opinion this information is adequately covered in the article. This user also tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to update the succession box to include his rule as Augustus of the Eastern empire, from 379-392. This might have some value. User:Paul August User_talk:Paul August 02:34, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
T
TA | TB | TC | TD | TE | TF | TG | TH | TI | TJ | TK | TL | TŁ | TM | TN | TO | TP | TR | TS | TU | TW | TX | TY | TZ |Words begining with Theodosius_I:
Theodosius_I
Theodosius_I
Theodosius_II
Theodosius_III
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