Enforcing Orthodoxy in Byzantium*

Following in the tradition of Montesquieu and Gibbon, Wolfgang Liebeschuetz has recently again argued that one of the two most revolutionary aspects of Christianity in its history since Constantine has proved to be religious intolerance. The Byzantine state certainly made many efforts to enforce orthodoxy, and the question arises whether Byzantium was therefore a ‘persecuting society’, to use the now-familiar formulation of R. I. Moore. In a telling aside, Paul Magdalino asked in the course of an important discussion of eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantium whether it became ‘even more of a persecuting society than before’ (my italics). Another strand of scholarship however has seen a contrast in this respect between western and eastern Europe, and several recent authors have argued for a comparative degree of toleration in Byzantium, or at least for a limitation on the possibilities of real repression. However this desire to find a degree of toleration and religious freedom in earlier societies clearly derives from our own contemporary concerns, and despite recent attempts to claim the Emperor Constantine as the defender of religious toleration, I agree with those who argue that it is misguided to look for an active conception of religious toleration in this period. This paper starts from the position that Constantine himself, and successive emperors after him, inherited an existing assumption that religious conformity was the business of the state, and looks at some of the less obvious ways by which the Byzantine state attempted to promote and enforce orthodoxy.