Constantine’s Edict Against the Heretics

“Victor Constantine, Greatest Augustus, to the heretics. [a]

“Understand now, by this present statute, you Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulians, you who are called Cataphrygians, and all of you who invent and support heresies by means of your private meetings: understand what a web of falsehood and emptiness, what destructive and poisonous errors, your teachings are woven through with, so tightly that they cannot be pulled apart. Through you the healthy soul is struck with disease, and what is living becomes the prey of everlasting death. You haters and enemies of truth and life, in league with destruction! All your plans are opposed to the truth but at home with shameful deeds. They are full of absurdities and inventions, and by them you make up falsehoods, oppress the innocent, and keep the light from those who believe. Always sinning behind a mask of godliness, you fill everything with defilement. You pierce the pure and guileless conscience with deadly wounds, while you take away, one might almost say, the very light of day from people’s eyes. But why should I go into details, when to speak of your crimes as they deserve would take more time and leisure than I can give? So long and so endless is the list of your offenses, so hateful and so utterly atrocious are they, that a single day would not be enough to tell them all. And indeed it is well to turn one’s ears and eyes away from such a subject, so that the pure sincerity and freshness of one’s own faith is not damaged by describing each particular evil. Why then do I still put up with so much evil, especially since this long leniency is the reason some who were sound have been infected with this plague? Why not strike at once, so to speak, at the root of so great a mischief by a public declaration of my displeasure? [b]