We desire that all peoples whom Our Grace rules shall live by the very religion that the divine Peter, the apostle, gave to the Romans...

we order all those who follow this law to assume the name of Catholic Christians, and considering others as demented and insane, we command that they shall bear the disgrace of heresy, and that their places of assembly not acquire the name of churches.

CODEX THEODOSIANUS^[371]

This law, issued on Feb. 27, 380 by the emperors Gratian and Theodosius I, rep­resented the culmination of the process of Christianization begun under Con­stantine I at the beginning of the fourth century. General surveys of the Later Roman Empire or Late Antiquity often designate this constitution as the point when �Orthodox’ Christianity was made the official religion of the empire, fol­lowing a brief rapprochement with paganism under Julian (r. 361-363).^[372] As such, it marked not only a dramatic shift from the religious syncretism which the Roman state had hitherto practiced, but was also to serve as a touchstone of Byzantine law. Henceforth, only Christians following the rite of the imperial church (those whom I will describe in what follows for the sake of conveni­ence as �Orthodox’) could enjoy the rights of full Roman citizens. By contrast, over the following centuries various curtailments were introduced with regard to marriage, inheritance, officeholding and testamentary capacity for non­Orthodox or �heretical’ Christians, pagans, and Jews.

While this process of legal exclusion and persecution is relatively well- studied for the period until the time of Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565), to date

Koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.ii63/9789004431249_007

Edward Cavanagh - 978-90-04-43124-9

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little attention has been given to the treatment of non-Orthodox Christians in Byzantine law - a term by which I mean the law of the Byzantine state (secular law) as well as the imperial church (canon law) from Justinian’s reign until the empire's end in 1453. Likewise, there is no comprehensive account of the legal status of Muslims in the empire: a fact which, as will be demonstrated in what follows, reflects their nebulous legal status.^[373]

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