Le gouvernement de l’empire et l’Église de Dioclétien à Arcadius
Abstract
Since there was no clear distinction between public institutions and civic celebrations in Antiquity, the Roman State’s interventions in the field of religion were essentially political. Therefore, any action taken with regard to the worship of cults had a coercive dimension. At the beginning of the Tetrarchy, the imperial administration required help from municipal authorities to enforce religiously intolerant laws before the imperial power itself carried out any persecution. Institutionalizing the religious repression was characteristic of the global process of submitting cities to the Roman State, which accelerated under Diocletian’s rule and continued throughout the fourth century and after. Emperors’ decisions legalizing religious intolerance, first hostile to Christianity and then to paganism, reinforced centralism at the expense of the cities. The latter became mere cogs in the State machinery, and the conversion to Christianity did little to alter the balance of power, which was definitively unfavorable to cities despite the rise of the episcopate.
Presentato: 15 Dicembre 2022 | Accettato: 30 Marzo 2023 | Pubblicato 05 Dicembre 2025 | Lingua: fr
Keywords Church • Christianity • Intolerance • Persecutions • Christianization • Religions
Copyright © 2025 Sylvain Destephen. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/CG/9999-8882/2025/01/011