Religious deviance - Roman and modern concepts

The ^16th title of the Theodosian Code represents a milestone in the development of the very notion of religion and in the social connotation of religious deviance. Whether they agree or not, the contours of the Theodosian Code's norms relating to religion become even clearer than in Cicero's religious legislation. In both undertakings, the role of the sacerdoces is central, although their nature has changed. The spatial definition of religion has become less important. The formation of concrete religious norms, which are not detailed, then abandons community traditions. Where Cicero and also the fragments of the Tetrarchy standardized internal religion outside the milieu of the community of law, the legislation of Late Antiquity offers a perspective that determines the place of religions in the community. The foundations for a European constitutional law on religion are laid here. The predominant place of divination, especially private divination, in the policy of prohibition, nevertheless reveals a new focus of ancient discourse on religious deviance. At the heart of the debate lies immediate access to authentic knowledge of the divine will or divine world order, and which is not controlled by others.

The spaces where religious deviance is established are changing, as are the contents of the norms that apply to them. Alongside the problem of insufficient religious knowledge, which develops from Cicero (and Varro in particular) to the turn of the ^4th and^5th centuries, the problem of religious experience - in sacred places, before divine images, in divination - plays a particular role.

Finally, religious choice itself is integrated into biographies. The enduring relationship with a deity and the production of corresponding nicknames or slogans, with a particular emphasis on Venus, are already attested for late-Republican generals. Virgil's epic recounts such a choice with the enduring relationship between Aeneas and Venus. Religion is an important element and a characteristic feature of Suetonius' imperial biographies. It becomes a central biographical experience in Apuleius' Metamorphoses and Aelius Aristides' Hieroi Logoi. All these individual experiences do not conflict with the minimal core of public religion. In biographical reflection by a third party, as in autobiographical reflection, religion becomes an individual distinguishing mark that expels successful socialization and, at the same time, individuality.

Radicalizations that produce isolated religious decisions following the model of personal conversion to a life choice can become problematic if they conflict with the "minimal consensus". Moreover, the obligatory core of communal religion has been growing steadily since the ^3rd century, as it increasingly serves to legitimize imperial authority and succession. In these conditions of competing religious normalization, religious individuality easily becomes a deviance. Better to take refuge in the desert or in the complex role of a bishop. Such a path is not open to Manichaeans or Jews. And for the heresiographers and legislators of later centuries, it's a pleasure to extend the list of deviants ever further.