Power and Creed. Reflections on the Imperial Definition of the Christian Faith in the Late Antiquity

Beginning with the reign of Constantine the Great, the Roman emperors discussed matters of faith in their legislature with increasing frequency and later even issued laws in the form of creeds. Three stages of this development may be discerned. (1) Until Theodosius the emperors did not, by and large, express specific views regarding the content of the creed, but attempted instead to unite the Church on the basis of existing synodal formulae. (2) From 380 onwards the legal texts increasingly included descriptions of the content of the faith, which was then made obligatory, albeit still in a relatively unspecific manner. (3) The Henoticon of 482 was the first law which claimed to be a personal creed of the emperor himself, who thus began to compete with the councils in the definition of credal formulae. This development reached its climax in the numerous creeds of Justinian and extended until the Ecthesis of Heracleius (638). The article describes this process and also discusses the characteristics of the relevant laws and their significance for the imperial self-definition in ecclesial matters. © 2016 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston.