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Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline November 8th,
392 AD - Constantinople
Constantinople, November 8, A.D. 392
A cold wind swept across the Bosporus.
Ships moved beneath the walls of Constantinople, their
square sails carrying merchants from Egypt, Greece, Syria, and the distant
ports of the Black Sea. The city founded by Constantine little more than sixty
years earlier was rapidly becoming one of the greatest cities on earth.
Above it stood the emperor Theodosius I.
And tucked beneath one arm was the smallest member of the
imperial court.
Truffle.
The little reddish-orange Pomeranian peered solemnly across
the city from the safety of the emperor's purple robes. Senators, generals,
bishops, eunuchs, secretaries and imperial officials might tremble when
summoned into the emperor's presence.
Truffle never did.
On this morning, however, even Truffle might have sensed
that something unusual was happening.
Documents lay upon the imperial table.
Secretaries waited.
Imperial couriers stood ready.
Because Theodosius was about to place the authority of Rome
behind a religious transformation that had been unfolding for nearly a century.
Only eighty-nine years earlier, Emperor Diocletian had
unleashed the Great Persecution, attempting to suppress Christianity
throughout the empire.
Christians had watched their churches destroyed.
Their Scriptures confiscated.
Their bishops imprisoned.
Some had died rather than sacrifice to the Roman gods.
Then came Constantine.
In A.D. 313, Christianity received legal toleration under
the agreement conventionally called the Edict of Milan.
The persecuted faith began emerging into public life.
Basilicas rose.
Bishops acquired influence.
And emperors increasingly intervened in Christian disputes.
But Christianity had not simply replaced paganism overnight.
Rome remained religiously diverse.
Temples still stood. Traditional rituals survived. Pagan
aristocratic families remained influential, particularly in the West.
Then came Theodosius.
The First Great Turning Point came in 380 AD
Twelve years earlier Theodosius had taken a decisive step.
On February 27, A.D. 380, the emperor issued the famous
decree Cunctos populos. The measure supported the form of Christianity
associated with the bishops of Rome and Alexandria, what we would broadly call Nicene
Christianity, against Christian theological rivals. The decree of 380,
rather than the decree of November 392, is the event more properly associated
with establishing Nicene Christianity as the empire's officially favored
religious orthodoxy.
But traditional pagan religion did not simply vanish.
The question remained:
What place would Rome's ancient gods have in this
increasingly Christian empire?
By 391, Theodosius had gone considerably further.
Sacrifices were prohibited. Entering temples for the purpose
of worship was forbidden. Another law extended similar restrictions into Egypt
and Alexandria.
The Roman religious world was being dismantled one law at a
time.
And then came November 8, 392.
The Emperor's Decree
Theodosius was seated within the imperial palace as a
secretary read the proposed constitution aloud.
Truffle sat beside the emperor's feet.
The little dog tilted one ear as the Latin echoed through
the chamber.
The law was addressed to Rufinus, the Praetorian Prefect
of the East, and was issued at Constantinople in the names of Theodosius
and his son Arcadius.
This time the prohibition reached beyond public temples.
It reached into Roman homes.
Blood sacrifice was prohibited.
So were offerings of incense.
So were libations of wine.
So were lamps, wreaths, and other acts connected with
devotion to the traditional household gods. The surviving legislation shows
that Theodosius intended to prohibit pagan sacrifices whether they were public
or private and whether connected with divination or ordinary worship.
This was extraordinary.
For centuries, religion and Roman public life had been
inseparable.
Generals sacrificed before campaigns.
Magistrates participated in ceremonies.
Families honored the Lares and Penates, the
household gods.
Priests tended shrines.
Festivals filled the Roman calendar.
Religion was woven into the machinery of the state itself.
Now an emperor of Rome was using Roman law to suppress many
of the rituals that generations of Roman emperors had regarded as essential to
Rome's prosperity.
The world had turned upside down.
The faith that Rome had once attempted to destroy had moved
to the center of imperial life.
Theodosius lifted the document.
For a moment, perhaps the room was silent.
Then came the imperial authorization.
The secretaries copied the constitution.
Couriers prepared to carry imperial instructions through the
provinces.
Truffle, having contributed nothing whatsoever to the
theological deliberations, nevertheless inspected the proceedings with the
confidence of a dog convinced that imperial decrees existed primarily to
interrupt breakfast.
The law would eventually survive as Codex Theodosianus,
preserved in the fifth-century compilation of Roman imperial law known as the
Theodosian Code.
But even an emperor could not transform the religious habits
of millions of people with a stroke of a pen.
Paganism did not disappear on November 8.
Traditional religious practices continued, particularly away
from major centers of imperial power. Enforcement varied, and later emperors
would repeatedly issue additional legislation against pagan practices.
The temples themselves did not all suddenly fall.
Some remained standing.
Some eventually became churches.
Others were abandoned or stripped for building materials.
And Christianity itself was hardly united. The fourth
century had witnessed enormous disputes among Christians concerning the nature
of Christ and the Trinity.
The transformation of Rome was messy, gradual, contentious
and sometimes violent.
But November 8, 392 nevertheless marked an unmistakable
milestone.
Theodosius walked onto the palace terrace as evening
descended.
Truffle followed close behind, tiny paws clicking across the
stone.
Below stood Constantinople.
Church bells had not yet become the ubiquitous soundscape
they would be in later Christian centuries. Somewhere beyond the Christian
basilicas stood reminders of the religious world Rome was leaving behind.
Theodosius could not have known precisely what future
generations would make of his decision.
The Western Roman Empire would fall less than a century
later.
The Eastern Empire centered on Constantinople would endure
for more than another thousand years.
Christianity would spread far beyond the boundaries of the
Roman Empire itself.
And Rome's relationship with Christianity would eventually
become so deeply embedded in Western history that it would be difficult to
imagine that there had once been a time when Christians secretly gathered
beneath an empire that regarded their religion with suspicion.
Yet there was also an irony.
Rome had not conquered Christianity.
Christianity had survived Rome.
Less than ninety years separated Diocletian's Great
Persecution from the legislation of 392.
Within a single long lifetime, the religious landscape of
the Roman world had been dramatically reversed.
The Cross, once associated with an execution reserved for
slaves, rebels, and criminals, was becoming the defining symbol of the
civilization Rome would leave behind.
And there, overlooking Constantinople on November 8, A.D.
392, stood one of the emperors who had helped make that transformation
irreversible.
Theodosius the Great.
Emperor of Rome.
Defender of Nicene Christianity.
And beside him, as always, was Truffle.
The tiny reddish-orange Pomeranian gazed across the
Bosporus.
Empires would rise.
Empires would fall.
The old gods would fade.
But Truffle?
Truffle simply waited for dinner.
And once again, History is gently guided by a tiny paw.
