Christology in Late Antiquity is simply too important to ignore when doing a TL about the Valentinian-Theodosian Dynasties. One could be forgiven for mostly glossing over religion if they were only focusing on Valentinian and the Western Empire. He may or may not have been a Homoian Christian, his bishop in Illyria was Homoian, his Second wife and his brother were both Homoians, but he was considerably more pragmatic on the matter of religion than almost any of his contemporaries. If he was a Homoian, he didn't try and force it on the overwhelmingly Nicene Christians of the West and actively avoided inserting himself into religious matters when it could be avoided (people rioting and trying to murder each other over the election of the Pope being one of the times he was forced to act). He was an anomaly from his generals like the Elder Theodosius who I believe allowed his staunch stance as a Nicene to affect the situation in Africa and fanned the flames of the Nicene-Dontist divide which gave the conflict a pseudo-sectarian nature that prolonged it unnecessarily.Interesting... I particularly like the attention to the religious aspects which are a somewhat under-appreciated aspect to history we sometimes gloss over because of how different the mindset was to our more rational and enlightened modern mentality.
That same forgiveness for minimizing religion can't be extended to Valens and the Eastern Roman Empire at this time. Valens was a Homoian ruling a Christian population where Homoianism was far from having a super majority and where entire regions majority Nicene. Antioch had like three competing bishops when he moved his court there to do battle with the Sasanians, Alexandria (and by extension Egypt) was devoutly Nicene and Patriarch Athanasius was probably the most popular figures in the Nicene world at the time, Constantinople and much of Western Anatolia where Homoian, but Caesarea was at least plurality Nicene if not the majority, Armenia was a mess of Nicenes and Homoians, as was Edessa, and his generals were a mix of pagan, Homoian, and Nicene. It's because of how mixed the situation was that it's impossible to ignore the religious debates of the era and Valens' increasingly hardline stance as time went on IOTL. The two Isaurian revolts under him probably had nothing to do with religion, but the Arab Revolt may have been caused as much by Valens' overuse of Tanukhid auxilia as it was caused by him imposing Homoianism on Arabs who had all the religious fervor of recently converted Nicenes, and there can be no doubt that the riots in Alexandria caused by his move to keep Peter from becoming patriarch. While Valens was no Constantius II (his interactions with St. Basil of Caesarea largely reflecting that) he left a deep enough mark that the story of him being trapped in a small barn and burned alive by the Goths at Adrianople was talked about by both Nicenes and, to a lesser degree, pagans as though it were divine punishment.
If you play down the religious aspects of the period or ignore them entirely, then you're really missing out on huge parts of the story.
It's certainly possible, Ambrose of Milan who helped define the relationship between the Church and the Empire IOTL is still in Trier with the Emperor and it's a long way and nearly a decades worth of time between Trier in 365 and Milan in 374.So is this going to see Rome turn into a sort of caesarpopist theocratic state?
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