Christian "heresy" after Nicaea

I am presently reading "A short history of Byzantium" by John Julius Norwich, and it strikes me when reading it that even after AD 400 there still were examples of people in high positions that belonged to varieties of Christianity considered as heretic by the authorities. The same even applies with Pagans. A Greek, Pagan woman, named Athenais, even got access to the court and later married Theodosius, although she had to convert before the marriage. With the death of the Emperor Marcian in 457, the chief of the army, named Aspar, was suggested as new emperor. He was not picked as he was an Arian, still the fact that he had managed to become chief of the army shows that Arianism was not totally suppressed. The same applies even with Paganism, as it did not stop Athenais from getting access to the court. I thought that "heretic" Christianity and Paganism became illegal in 392, when Theodosius declared Orthodox Christianity as the only religion in the country?
 

tenthring

Banned
I am presently reading "A short history of Byzantium" by John Julius Norwich, and it strikes me when reading it that even after AD 400 there still were examples of people in high positions that belonged to varieties of Christianity considered as heretic by the authorities. The same even applies with Pagans. A Greek, Pagan woman, named Athenais, even got access to the court and later married Theodosius, although she had to convert before the marriage. With the death of the Emperor Marcian in 457, the chief of the army, named Aspar, was suggested as new emperor. He was not picked as he was an Arian, still the fact that he had managed to become chief of the army shows that Arianism was not totally suppressed. The same applies even with Paganism, as it did not stop Athenais from getting access to the court. I thought that "heretic" Christianity and Paganism became illegal in 392, when Theodosius declared Orthodox Christianity as the only religion in the country?

What you'll find across the board is that religious conversion and consolidation takes a long time. Usually a couple hundred years. As a simple example when the Crusaders showed up in 1000's AD most of Egypt was still Coptic Christian, despite the Muslims conquering it centuries earlier. Long after an official edict comes down it takes a long time for it to be widely accepted and practiced.
 
Aspar wasn't chosen more because he was of Germanic origins, rather than because of his Arianism (After all, Valens was Arian and Anastasius was Monophysite, so one didn't necessarily have to follow established orthodoxy to be emperor).
 
It's worth bearing in mind that, however much Emperors blustered, there was in practice pretty much no way of enforcing religious uniformity. Also consider that in the fourth and fifth centuries these were very much live debates, and it was by no means clear exactly which argument was correct.
 

fi11222

Banned
I am presently reading "A short history of Byzantium" by John Julius Norwich, and it strikes me when reading it that even after AD 400 there still were examples of people in high positions that belonged to varieties of Christianity considered as heretic by the authorities. The same even applies with Pagans. A Greek, Pagan woman, named Athenais, even got access to the court and later married Theodosius, although she had to convert before the marriage. With the death of the Emperor Marcian in 457, the chief of the army, named Aspar, was suggested as new emperor. He was not picked as he was an Arian, still the fact that he had managed to become chief of the army shows that Arianism was not totally suppressed. The same applies even with Paganism, as it did not stop Athenais from getting access to the court. I thought that "heretic" Christianity and Paganism became illegal in 392, when Theodosius declared Orthodox Christianity as the only religion in the country?
The decree outlawing paganism passed by Theodosius in 392 was a legal fiction. No one is sure to what extent the people who drafted it thought it would actually be enforced. But it is quite certain that few thought paganism would disappear overnight. It seems that the main point was not to eradicate it in the short term but rather to prevent its public display.

In any case, there were pagans in high places well into the VIth century and in the countryside, people were never fully converted. That is why so many pagan practices remained, under a thin veil of Christian appearances, into the modern era.

As far as heresies are concerned, they were never eradicated either. Like paganism, they just went underground. That is why they surfaced back into the spotlight during the Middle Ages from time to time (Bogomils, Cathars, Templars, ...)
 
Aspar wasn't chosen more because he was of Germanic origins, rather than because of his Arianism (After all, Valens was Arian and Anastasius was Monophysite, so one didn't necessarily have to follow established orthodoxy to be emperor).

According to Norwich book, Anastasius signed a written declararation of Orthodoxy before his coronation, although as far as I understand from what Norwich writes, Anastasius and patriarch Euphemius had a different understanding of the implications of the declaration.
 
In any case, there were pagans in high places well into the VIth century and in the countryside, people were never fully converted. That is why so many pagan practices remained, under a thin veil of Christian appearances, into the modern era.

As far as heresies are concerned, they were never eradicated either. Like paganism, they just went underground. That is why they surfaced back into the spotlight during the Middle Ages from time to time (Bogomils, Cathars, Templars, ...)

One could argue that most of those pagan practices were rather subsumed into Christianity, as it did with everything else about the Roman Empire.

Calling it a thin veil makes it seem like centuries of Christianity were meaningless. Even the pagans who remained understood better than that.

And those heresies are quite clearly within a Christian context. The Bogomils and Cathars may have preached of the world being evil and its Creator being Satan, but they were certainly working under the context of a Creator and His Creation.

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Theodosius and his 392 edict are good markers of the dominance of Christianity, but as others have said those are not absolute ends or beginnings. Just like how 476 was not the definitive end of the Western Roman Empire and how 1453 was not the definitive end of the Eastern one.

Certainly a lot of the Empire was already functionally gone in the latter two cases before those years and there were a few remnants that remained after those years, but the years matter because of the symbolism behind them.

So too with Theodosius, who simply affirmed the end of paganism as a collective force in the Empire. There may have been powerful individuals who happened to be pagans after that, but none who would actually confirm it in public.
 
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