THE SAME AUGUSTI TO EUTYCHIANUS, PRAETORIAN PREFECT.

The clerics of the Eunomian and the Montanist superstitions shall be expelled from the association and intercourse of all municipalities and cities. If perchance they should dwell in the country and should be proved either to assemble the people or to participate in any assemblies, they shall suffer the supreme penalty, and the owner shall be deprived of the landholding, if with their knowledge and connivance these unholy and condemned meetings are proved to have been conducted on such landholding. If, indeed, after the formal publication of this order, these heretics should be apprehended in any city whatsoever or should be proved to have entered any house for the purpose of performing their superstitious rites, their goods shall be confiscated and they themselves shall suffer the supreme penalty. The house which they have entered in the aforesaid manner shall be attached to the fisc without delay, unless such heretics should be immediately ejected by the master or the mistress of the house and reported to the authorities.

1. We command that the books containing the doctrine and matter of all their crimes shall immediately be sought out and produced, with the greatest astuteness and with the exercise of due authority, and they shall be consumed with fire immediately under the supervision of the judges. If perchance any person should be convicted of having hidden any of these books under any pretext or fraud whatever and of having failed to deliver them, he shall know that he himself shall suffer capital punishment, as a retainer of noxious books and writings and as guilty of the crime of magic.

GIVEN ON THE FOURTH DAY BEFORE THE NONES OF MARCH AT CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE YEAR OF THE FOURTH CONSULSHIP OF HONORIUS AUGUSTUS AND THE CONSULSHIP OF EUTYCHIANUS (= 4 March 398)

 

(trans. Pharr 1952: 455-56)