WI: Justinian More Religiously Tolerant.

So I just got finished watching a lecture on the end of paganism in the Roman world and to my surprise, it is in Justinian's day.

According to the lecturer (Professor Kenneth W. Harl in his Fall of the Pagans and the Origins of Medieval Christianity series on The Great Courses Plus) historians mostly agree that in Justinian's day the majority of the population of the Roman Empire, especially outside the cities was still very much pagan. Further, many "Christians" including some high ranking government officials were only publicly Christian and in their private lives still worshiped and sacrificed to the pagan gods.

Justinian carried out a major crackdown in OTL to end this, with a wave of heavy handed persecutions and some botched attempts to reunite the already fracturing christian churches. He essentially promoted the idea that Pagan gods were demons in league with Satan himself and must be exorcised, and even began the trend of persecuting Jews in the Roman world, where we see for the first time forced baptisms of Jews, outlawing reading the Torah in Hebrew and forcing them to live in separate sections of the cities which would later evolve into what we would recognize as ghettos.

By the time Justinian was done, the Army was marching into battle under the cross for the first time, military saints were emerging, the old intellectual centers of the Roman world were gone, their scholars and philosophers fleeing to places like the Sassanian Empire, where they helped form the university in Baghdad, and what it was to be Roman was now changed. The Roman identity following this was thoroughly tied to religion and Christianity.

One long winded summary out of the way, my question in this: What if Justinian had instead promoted a policy of tolerance in the Empire. In my head he would ideally instead seek to unify the people of the empire around, say the monolithic legacy of Rome itself. The reasoning being that as long as people are paying their taxes and not being disruptive or rebellious, the Empire had more pressing issues to deal with and would rather not create even greater divisions to drive it's people apart. Not to mention that to drive away so many intellectuals from the Empire could only hurt the Empire's prospects and strengthen her enemies.

Could this lead to an earlier rise of the concept of the separation of church and state? Could the retention of the academic traditions of the ancient world result in a more technologically advanced ERE, or at the very least prevent the backslide in Roman technology that occurred throughout the Middle Ages? What are the potential implications here?
 
He only continued the job that was started with Theodosius the 'Great'.Even if Justinian promoted a policy of tolerance,there's no telling that his heirs wouldn't have ruined,that just like how emperors after the Julian became religious intolerant.

As for marching into battle under the cross for the first time,Constantine I started that.
 
He only continued the job that was started with Theodosius the 'Great'.Even if Justinian promoted a policy of tolerance,there's no telling that his heirs wouldn't have ruined,that just like how emperors after the Julian became religious intolerant.

As for marching into battle under the cross for the first time,Constantine I started that.
Constantine started the Chi Rho, which was not quite as strong a religious symbol and (according to this lecture) often simply interpreted as the sort of family crest of Constantine himself. It is around this time that they started actually marching under the cross and fighting in the name of God as we tend to think of when we picture medieval armies.

You're right that the process started under Theodosius, but it was not very well enforced. Certainly not outside the cities themselves. After all, apparently more than half the population was still non christian and many Christians were still privately practicing pagan sacrifice and worship. It seems to me that if the benefits of a more tolerant system were made apparent, and pagans given a more prominent voice in government a precedent could be set that could begin a slow process of secularization in the Empire. I may be slightly biased because I think Greek mythology is neat but I do genuinely think that things generally went better for the Empire when they didn't get involved in religious issues. Certainly avoiding the trend of medieval censorship and book burning and even in the Christian world preventing the church councils of Justinian that drive the different sections of Christianity further apart (which was especially disappointing because the whole point of the councils were to unite the churches) would all be good things for the Empire's prospects.
 
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