Constantine and the Problem of Anti-Pagan Legislation in the Fourth Century

Abstract

A LTHOUGH CONSTANTINE'S ATTITUDES and policies toward his fellow Christians emerge clearly enough from his correspondence, speeches, and legislation, his policies toward the pagan majority remain ambiguous and elusive. No aspect of Constantine's attitude toward pagans has proven more controversial than the claim that he legally banned blood sacrifices in the empire. The issue is of obvious importance to the religious history of the fourth century, since sacrifices were the central ritual act of so many traditional Greco-Roman cults and had long been emblematic of the whole complex of pagan belief and practice. Our conclusions condition not only our assessment of Constantine's personal religious convictions and his sense of divine mission, but also the broader question of the Christianization of the empire and the strength and character of paganism in the early fourth century. Historians confronting the controversial claim that Constantine issued a law against blood sacrifice have been forced to decide among a handful of tendentious, contradictory sources. In the Vita Constantini, Eusebius of Caesarea states emphatically that Constantine banned sacrifice when he became sole Roman emperor after the victory over Licinius in A.D. 324, and this claim is supported by the evidence of the first extant law against sacrifice (CTh 16.10.2), issued by Constans and Constantius in 341, which alludes to a law against sacrifice issued in the past by Constantine. In the Pro Templis, however, Libanius states bluntly that Constantius II and not his father, Constantine, was responsible for the ban on sacrifice. Scholars have been unduly hesitant to accept the idea of a Constantinian ban on sacrifice for two reasons. First, the debate has focused too much on the evidence of Eusebius' Vita Constantini and has become a referendum on Eusebius' reliability. In the process other important evidence has not been given the prominence it deserves. Second, many skeptics have doubted the general ban on sacrifices because it would have been, in their view, provocative and politically unfeasible. In any event, it does not appear to have had much effect. Why assume that it even happened? I will argue that Constantine made no secret of his loathing for blood sacrifices, that he consistently denounced them in his speeches and correspondence, and that he would not permit them in his presence. Furthermore, he did, probably in 324, issue a law (or series of laws) against sacrifices, but his law and subsequent anti-pagan laws were