History UsefulNotes / TheodosiusI

Christian historiography traditionally holds Theodosius as a hero of the church and a glorious persecutor of paganism, and for a long time historians accepted that he was in fact the emperor who forcefully installed Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire and banned all other faiths. The fact that he was the third and final emperor born in Hispania, following the tread of UsefulNotes/{{Trajan}} and UsefulNotes/{{Hadrian}}, might evoke in the reader a foreshadowing of Spanish conquistadors toppling Huitzilopochtli statues many centuries later. However, those views are DatedHistory nowadays, as it is now known that, while he was certainly an ardent Christian of the Nicene Creed and a promoter of orthodoxy, Theodosius was quite tolerant towards non-Christians and made no move towards forceful conversions, being much more active against rival forms of Christianity like Arianism and UsefulNotes/{{Manichaeism}}. He was, alas, slow to act against those who favored harder measures; the last Olympic Games, as well as the last prophecies of Apollo in Delphi, were held under his mandate before being suppressed, although historians are unsure whether he personally ordered it.

Theodosius I (11 January 347 – 17 January 395), called Theodosius the Great, was [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire Roman emperor]] from 379 to 395. He lived a tumultuous mandate during the decadence of Rome, full of fruitless wars and urgent peace treaties against the barbarian invasions, but as his nickname implies, he is generally considered one of the last great Roman emperors from the time when Rome still reached from Europe to Asia. Aside from having been a competent ruler within the possible, which was not a small feat by that point, he was the last emperor to control both the western and the eastern sections of the empire before the division turned irreversible. He also had a hand in establishing Catholicism as the dominant form of Christianity in the empire.

Christian historiography traditionally holds Theodosius as a hero of the church and a glorious stamper of paganism, and for a long time historians accepted that he was in fact the emperor who forcefully installed Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire and banned all other faiths. The fact that he was the third and final emperor born in Hispania, following the tread of UsefulNotes/{{Trajan}} and UsefulNotes/{{Hadrian}}, might evoke in the reader a foreshadowing of Spanish conquistadors toppling Huitzilopochtli statues many centuries later. However, those views are DatedHistory nowadays, as it is now known that, while he was certainly an ardent Christian of the Nicene Creed and a promoter of orthodoxy, Theodosius was quite tolerant towards non-Christians and made no move towards forceful conversions, being much more active against rival forms of Christianity like Arianism and UsefulNotes/{{Manichaeism}}. He was, alas, slow to act against those who favored harder measures; the last Olympic Games, as well as the last prophecies of Apollo in Delphi, were held under his mandate before being suppressed, although historians are unsure whether he personally ordered it.

Theodosius was born the son of Flavius Theodosius, a high-ranking general for Western Emperor Valentinian I. His early life remains obscure, but it seems that, like Trajan before him, he belonged to a sort of Hispanic family lobby and went to have a successful military career before reaching the purple. He had his first great showing [[ParentChildTeam along with his father]], deploying in Britannia to help drown the Great Conspiracy, in which the garrison of Hadrian's Wall had revolted and supported an amphibious German and Celtic invasion of the isles. His career took a bump afterwards, as Theodosius Sr. was murdered and his family forced to exile themselves to Hispania by the political supporters of the new child emperor Valentinian II, but the Hispanics were eventually reinstated by Gratian, who went to share command of the Western Empire with the kid. When news reached Rome that the Eastern Emperor Valens had been disastrously defeated and killed in Adrianople against invading Goths, Theodosius became the best candidate to manage the crisis, so Gratian begrudgingly gave him the vacated throne.

The new Eastern Emperor did his best to reinforce the frontier and replenish the local military, but the state of the things was so dire that he had to [[{{Conscription}} forcefully conscript random people]] and [[StartXToStopX admit masses of allied barbarians as auxiliaries]]. With this makeshift army, Theodosius managed to scrap some minor victories, including a highly-publicized submissions of the Goth chieftain Athanaric, but over time Theodosius realized Rome [[WonTheWarLostThePeace could not aspire to keep the barbarians outside forever]], so he changed plans and sought out negotiations. Those concluded in the peace treaty of 382, in which Goths would be allowed to settle in the empire as semi-independent states in exchange for military help. Around this period, by the hand of Ascholius, the Bishop of Thessalonica, Theodosius [[TurnToReligion converted to Christianity]] after a long disease, likely because the promise of a glorious afterlife becomes very attractive for someone seeing death so up close. Furthermore, with the support of Gratian and Valentinian, he issued the appropriately named Edict of Thessalonica, establishing Nicene Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire and condemning all the other Christian denominations as heresies to be punished.[[note]]Others claim he was born a Christian, which is probable given that Christianity was quite popular in the place where he was born. A third camp has it that he was already a Christian, but the tenor of the times drove him to take it much more seriously, either by personal or political reasons - after all, religious unity translates into social unity, for good or bad.[[/note]]

The Edict is notable by being the first secular Roman law to positively enforce religious orthodoxy, although as noted above, despite its [[IllegalReligion ominous presentation]] in regards to the varied faiths of the empire, it did not savagely compromise freedom of religion, as it only targeted Christians, who amounted to a meager, urban-focused 10% of the Roman Empire at the time. Theodosius would not persecute pagans, having many of them in his own circle, and at some points even acted to protect them and their patrimony from Christian abuse, although this policy was not always skilfully enforced and this allowed desecrations like the Serapeum of Alexandria, wrecked by Christian mobs. Similarly, sources have also credited him with the destruction of the Delphic Oracle and the closure of the Olympic Games, although again, it’s hard to tell whether he had a hand on it or it merely happened during his mandate. At the end, while Theodosius did progressively work to limit paganism and promote Christianity, it obeyed more to a cautious, nuanced and tactical policy than to the image of a wild Bible-thumper.

Peace lasted over a year, after which a Britannian [[TheUsurper pretender to the western throne]], Magnus Maximus, attacked the court and killed Gratian. Being busy with the usual barbarians and the additional threat of the Sasanian Empire, Theodosius patched up things between Magnus and Valentinian II and put peace among them for some years, which he invested in controlling the frontier, drowning some inner rebellions and signing another peace treaty with the Sasanians in Acilisene. This left the Hispanic with the hands free for the inevitable clash with Magnus, who declared war due to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere Valentinian's escape to the eastern court]], but Theodosius made good usage of his allied barbarians, including Goths, Alans and Huns, and utterly rumpled Magnus in the city of Poetovio, eventually capturing and executing him. The victory turned Theodosius into the practical ruler of all of the Roman Empire, the last to do so before diving the empire between his sons.

390 was the year of the infamous Massacre of Thessalonica, during which an urban riot in the aforementioned city got out of hand and ended [[PoliceBrutality with the army butchering people on the streets left and right]]. The official story seems to be that a Goth commander executed a famous charioteer for sexual assault, which angered the population and caused all Hell to break loose, but chroniclers are unclear on what exactly happened, with Theodosius' personal implication being commonly entertained, although how much and exactly why remaining open questions. In any case, St. Ambrosius of Milan gave the emperor a WhatTheHellHero by letter, a popular legend arising of the Saint personally barring the Emperor from entering the Cathedral in Milan and attending mass, and the incident left as a perennial taint in Theodosius' reign, which only in modern times historians have started disputing.

Theodosius got then into in another civil war when one of his barbarian loyalists, the Frankish general Arbogast, capitalized on Valentinian's suicide to seize power in his state (it seems likely that Arbogast had the emperor assassinated and made it pass as a suicide) and proclaim another loyalist, the pagan revivalist Eugenius, as new emperor of the west. Theodosius answered appointing his son Honorius as the true emperor of the Western Empire, gathering another of his usual multinational armies, and marching against the usurpers to terminate the affair with extreme prejudice. Atypically, Theodosius attacked them with [[ZergRush human wave tactics]], perhaps because he secretly expected to [[XanatosGambit kill two birds with one stone and weaken untrustworthy allies]], and at least one of his Goth mutinied and escaped. However, winds turned in their favor, literally speaking, when hurricanes disrupted Eugenius' army and allowed Theodosius to easily trump him. The pretender was executed and Arbogast killed himself, leaving Theodosius the victor again, only for him to suddenly die of edema some days later. The empire was left divided between his sons, Honorius and Arcadius, who would have to deal with the Goth deserter - whose name, by the way, was [[FromNobodyToNightmare Alaric]].

-->-- '''The last Oracle of Delphi to a representative of Theodosius'''

Christian historiography traditionally holds Theodosius as a hero of the church and a glorious stamper of paganism, and for a long time historians accepted that he was in fact the emperor who forcefully installed Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire and banned all other faiths. The fact that he was the third and final emperor born in Hispania, following the tread of UsefulNotes/{{Trajan}} and UsefulNotes/{{Hadrian}}, might evoke in the reader a foreshadowing of Spanish conquistadors toppling Huitzilopochtli statues many centuries later. However, those views are DatedHistory nowadays, as it is now known that, while he was certainly an ardent Catholic of the Nicene Creed and a promoter of orthodoxy, Theodosius was quite tolerant towards non-Christians and made no move towards forceful conversions, being much more active against rival forms of Christianity like Arianism and UsefulNotes/{{Manichaeism}}. He was, alas, slow to act against those who favored harder measures; the last Olympic Games, as well as the last prophecies of Apollo in Delphi, were held under his mandate before being suppressed, although historians are unsure whether he personally ordered it.

Christian historiography traditionally holds Theodosius as a hero of the church and a glorious stamper of paganism, and for a long time historians accepted that he was in fact the emperor who forcefully installed Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire and banned all other faiths. The fact that he was the third and final emperor born in Hispania, following the tread of UsefulNotes/{{Trajan}} and UsefulNotes/{{Hadrian}}, might evoke in the reader a foreshadowing of Spanish conquistadors toppling Huitzilopochtli statues many centuries later. However, those views are DatedHistory nowadays, it being now known that, while he was certainly an ardent Catholic of the Nicene Creed and a promoter of orthodoxy, Theodosius was quite tolerant towards non-Christians and made no move towards forceful conversions, being also much more active against rival forms of Christianity like Arianism and UsefulNotes/{{Manichaeism}}. He was, alas, slow to act against those who favored harder measures; the last Olympic Games, as well as the last prophecies of Apollo in Delphi, were held under his mandate before being suppressed, although historians are unsure whether he personally ordered it.

Theodosius was born the son of Flavius Theodosius, a high-ranking general for Western Emperor Valentinian I. His early life remains obscure, but it seems that, like Trajan before him, he belonged to a sort of Roman Hispanic family lobby and went to have a successful military career before reaching the purple. He had his first great showing along with his father, deploying in Britannia to help drown the Great Conspiracy, in which the garrison of Hadrian's Wall had revolted and supported an amphibious German and Celtic invasion of the isles. His career took a bump afterwards, as Theodosius Sr. was murdered and his family forced to exile themselves to Hispania by the political supporters of the new child emperor Valentinian II, but the Hispanics were eventually reinstated by Gratian, who went to share command of the Western Empire with the kid. When news reached Rome that the Eastern Emperor Valens had been disastrously defeated and killed in Adrianople against invading Goths, Theodosius became the best candidate to manage the crisis, so Gratian begrudgingly gave him the vacated throne.

The new Eastern Emperor did his best to reinforce the frontier and replenish the local military, but the state of the things was so dire that he had to forcefully conscript random people and admit masses of barbarians auxiliaries. With this makeshift army, Theodosius managed to scrap some minor victories, including a highly-publicized submissions of the Goth chieftain Athanaric, but over time Theodosius realized Rome could not aspire to keep the barbarians outside forever, so he changed plans and sought out negotiations. Those concluded in the peace treaty of 382, in which Goths would be allowed to settle in the empire as semi-independent states in exchange for military help. Around this period, by the hand of Ascholius, the Bishop of Thessalonica, Theodosius converted to Christianity after a long disease, likely because the promise of a glorious afterlife becomes very attractive for someone seeing death up close. Furthermore, with the support of Gratian and Valentinian, he issued the appropriately named Edict of Thessalonica, establishing Nicene Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire and condemning all the other Christian denominations as heresies to be punished.[[note]]Others claim he was born a Christian, which is also probable. A third camp has it that he was already a Christian, but the tenor of the times drove him to take it much more seriously, either by personal or political reasons - after all, religious unity translates into social unity, for good or bad.[[/note]]

The Edict is notable by being the first secular Roman law to positively enforce religious orthodoxy, although as noted above, despite its ominous presentation in regards to the varied faiths of the empire, it did not savagely compromised freedom of religion, as it only targeted Christians, who amounted to a meager urban-focused 10% of the Roman Empire at the time. Theodosius would not persecute pagans, having many of them in his own circle, and at some points even acted to protect them and their patrimony from Christian abuse, although this policy was not always skilfully enforced and this allowed desecrations like the Serapeum of Alexandria, wrecked by Christian mobs. Some sources have also credited him with the destruction of the Delphic Oracle and the closure of the Olympic Games, although again, it’s hard to tell whether he had a hand on it or merely allowed it to happen. At the end, while Theodosius did progressively work to limit paganism and promote Christianity, it obeyed more to a cautious, nuanced and tactical than to the image of a wild Bible-thumper.

Peace lasted over a year, after which a Britannian pretender to the western throne, Magnus Maximus, attacked the court and killed Gratian. Being busy with the usual barbarians and the additional threat of the Sasanian Empire, Theodosius patched up things between Magnus and Valentinian II and put peace among them for some years, which he invested in controlling the frontier, drowning some inner rebellions and signing another peace treaty with the Sassanians in Acilisene. This left the Hispanic with the hands free for the inevitable clash with Magnus, who declared war due to Valentinian's escape to the eastern court, but Theodosius made good usage of his allied barbarians, including Goths, Alans and Huns, and utterly rumpled Magnus in the city of Poetovio, eventually capturing and executing him. The victory turned Theodosius into the practical ruler of all of the Roman Empire, the last to do so before diving the empire between his sons.

390 was the year of the infamous Massacre of Thessalonica, during which an urban riot in the aforementioned city got out of hand and ended with the army butchering people on the streets left and right. The official story seems to be that a Goth commander executed a famous charioteer for sexual assault, which angered the population and caused all Hell to break loose, but chroniclers are unclear on what exactly happened, with Theodosius' personal implication being commonly entertained, although how much and exactly why remaining open questions. In any case, St. Ambrosius of Milan gave the emperor a WhatTheHellHero by letter, a popular legend arising of the Saint personally barring the Emperor from entering the Cathedral in Milan and attending mass, and the incident left as a perennial taint in Theodosius' reign, which only in modern times historians have started disputing.

Theodosius got then into in another civil war when one of his barbarian loyalists, the Frankish general Arbogast, capitalized on Valentinian's suicide to seize power in his state (it seems likely that Arbogast had the emperor assassinated and made pass as a suicide) and proclaim another loyalist, the pagan revivalist Eugenius, as new emperor of the west. Theodosius answered appointing his son Honorius as the true emperor of the Western Empire, gathering another of his usual multinational armies, and marching against the usurpers to terminate the affair with extreme prejudice. Atypically, Theodosius attacked them with human wave tactics, perhaps because he secretly expected to kill two birds with one stone and weaken untrustworthy allies, and at least one of his Goth mutinied and escaped. However, winds turned in his favor, literally speaking, when hurricanes disrupted Eugenius' army and allowed Theodosius to easily trump him. The pretender was executed and Arbogast killed himself, leaving Theodosius the victor again, only for him to suddenly die of edema some days later. The empire was left divided between his sons, Honorius and Arcadius, who would have to deal with the Goth deserter - whose name, by the way, was [[FromNobodyToNightmare Alaric]].

The new Eastern Emperor did his best to reinforce the frontier and replenish the local military, but the state of the things was so dire that he had to forcefully conscript random people and admit masses of barbarians auxiliars. With this makeshift army, Theodosius managed to scrap some minor victories, including a highly-publicized submissions of the Goth chieftain Athanaric, but over time Theodosius realized Rome could not aspire to keep the barbarians outside forever, so he changed plans and sought out negotiations. Those concluded in the peace treaty of 382, in which Goths would be allowed to settle in the empire as semi-independent states in exchange for military help. Around this period, by the hand of Ascholius, the Catholic Bishop of Thessalonica, Theodosius converted to Christianity after a long disease, likely because the promise of a glorious afterlife becomes very attractive for someone seeing death up close. Furthermore, with the support of Gratian and Valentinian, he issued the appropriately named Edict of Thessalonica, establishing Catholicism as the official religion of the Roman Empire and condemning all the other Christian denominations as heresies to be punished.[[note]]Others claim he was born a Christian, which is also probable. A third camp has it that he was already a Christian, but the tenor of the times drove him to take it much more seriously, either by personal or political reasons - after all, religious unity translates into social unity, for good or bad.[[/note]]

The Edict is notable by being the first secular Roman law to positively enforce religious orthodoxy, although as noted above, despite its ominous presentation in regards to the varied faiths of the empire, it did not savagely compromised freedom of religion, as it only targeted Christians, who amounted to a meager urban-focused 10% of the Roman Empire at the time. Theodosius would not persecute pagans, having many of them in his own circle, and at some points even acted to protect them and their patrimony from Christian abuse, although this policy was not always skillfully enforced and this allowed desecrations like the Serapeum of Alexandria, wrecked by Christian mobs. Some sources have also credited him with the destruction of the Delphian Oracle and the closure of the Olympic Games, although again, it’s hard to tell whether he had a hand on it or merely allowed it to happen. At the end, while Theodosius did progressively work to limit paganism and promote Christianity, it obeyed more to a cautious, nuanced and tactical than to the image of a wild Bible-thumper.

Peace lasted over a year, after which a Britannian pretender to the western throne, Magnus Maximus, attacked the court and killed Gratian. Being busy with the usual barbarians and the additional threat of the Sasanian Empire, Theodosius patched up things between Magnus and Valentinian II and put peace among them for some years, which he invested in controlling the frontier, drowning some inner rebellions and signing another peace treaty with the Sasanians in Acilisene. This left the Hispanic with the hands free for the inevitable clash with Magnus, who declared war due to Valentinian's escape to the eastern court, but Theodosius made good usage of his allied barbarians, including Goths, Alans and Huns, and utterly rumpled Magnus in the city of Poetovio, eventually capturing and executing him. The victory turned Theodosius into the practical ruler of all of the Roman Empire, the last to do so before diving the empire between his sons.

390 was the year of the infamous Massacre of Thessalonica, during which an urban riot in the aforementioned city got out of hand and ended with the army butchering people on the streets left and right. The official story seems to be that a Goth commander executed a famous charioteer for sexual assault, which angered the population and caused all Hell to break loose, but chroniclers are unclear on what exactly happened, with Theodosius' personal implication being commonly entertained, although how much and exactly why remaining open questions. In any case, St. Ambrosius of Milan gave the emperor a WhatTheHellHero by letter and the incident left as a perennial taint in Theodosius' reign, which only in modern times historians have started disputing.