16.5.65
EMPERORS THEODOSIUS AND VALENTINIAN AUGUSTI TO FLORENTIUS, PRAETORIAN PREFECT.
The madness of the heretics must be so suppressed that they shall know beyond doubt, before all else, that the churches which they have taken from the orthodox, wherever they are held, shall immediately be surrendered to the Catholic Church, since it cannot be tolerated that those who ought not to have churches of their own should continue to detain those possessed or founded by the orthodox and invaded by such rash lawlessness.
1. Next, if they should join to themselves other clerics or priests, as they consider them, a fine of ten pounds of gold for each person shall be paid into Our treasury, both by him who created such cleric and by him who allowed himself to be so created, or if they should pretend poverty, such fine shall be exacted from the common body of clerics of the aforesaid superstition or even from their offertories. 2. Furthermore, since not all should be punished with the same severity, the Arians, indeed, the Macedonians, and the Apollinarians, whose crime it is to be deceived by harmful meditation and to believe lies about the Fountain of Truth, shall not be permitted to have a church within any municipality. Moreover, the Novatians and Sabbatians shall be deprived of the privileg of any innovation, if perchance they should so attempt. The Eunomians, indeed, the Valentinians, the Montanists or Priscillianists, the Phrygians, the Marcianists, the Borborians, the Messalians, the Euchites or Enthusiasts, the Donatists, the Audians, the Hydroparastatae, the Tascodrogitae, the Photinians, the Paulians, the Marcellians, and those who have arriaved at the lowest depth of wickedness, namely, the Manichaeans, shall nowhere on Roman soil have the right to assemble and pray. The Manichaeans, moreover, shall be expelled from the municipalities, since no opportunity must be left to any of them whereby an injury may be wrought upon the elements themselves. [...]
Here follows the further legal restrictions for heretics (the prohibition to serve in the imperial service, to transfer property by a gift or a testament, to receive gifts or property, to build churches). The former antiheretical laws are still in force.
4. None of the heretics shall be given permission to lead again to their own baptism either freeborn persons or their own slaves who have been initiated into the mysteries of the orthodox Church, nor indeed shall they be allowed to prevent from following the religion of the Catholic Church those persons whom they have bought or have possessed in any way and who are not yet adherents of their supersitition. If any person should administer such baptism, or should permit it to be administered to him be condemned to exile and a fine of ten pounds of gold and to both offenders shall be denied the right to make a testament or a gift. [...]
GIVEN ON THE THIRD DAY BEFORE THE KALENDS OF JUNE AT CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE YEAR OF THE CONSULSHIP OF FELIX AND TAURUS (= 30 May 428).
(trans. Pharr 1952: 461-63)
