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Contrary to the frantic efforts of some modern writers, until Christianity became dominant with imperial favor under Constantine and his successors, the Roman Empire enjoyed not only religious toleration but indeed freedom of worship and religion. (See Chapter 10.)

The religious intolerance and persecutions instituted by the Christian Roman Empire, in East and West alike, fractured this unity. Even before 380, when Christianity became the exclusive official religion of the Empire, all those who were not adherents of that religion—and of its dominant denomination—found themselves the targets of incessant attacks, which sometimes spurred them into active disobedience. The usurper Firmus was able to hold out against the imperial government in Africa between 372 and 375, with the support of the Donatists, a “heresy” that was particularly popular in that area. The ousting of the Eastern Emperor Zeno by Basiliscus in 475 was achieved with the support of another group of “heretics,” the Monophysites, who were very strong in Egypt and Syria, and who sided with the Muslims in their conquest of Egypt (639–646.) It is clear, from among other things, the long saga of the Altar of Victory, that there were a good many pagans in the aristocracy up to and beyond the end of the fourth century. It is significant that Eugenius, the puppet emperor chosen by Arbogast with the support of the Senate in 392, made a point of restoring the Altar of Victory to its place in the Senate house and appointed the influential pagan aristocrat Virius Nicomachus Flavianus as praetorian prefect of Italy. Significantly, Priscus Attalus, selected by the Visigoths as emperor in 409 and again in 414, was a pagan. Some modern writers, in their concern to kill off paganism as early as possible, have gone out of their way to disprove the existence of an active pagan resistance in the late fourth century. Yet pagans did not need to be activists in order to feel less than loyal toward an intolerant, persecuting government. And, though supposedly extinguished by 423, paganism clearly continued to have considerable numbers of adherents for a long time thereafter. As late as the reign of Justinian (527–565), John of Ephesus boasted of converting 70,000 pagans in Asia Minor, one of the most Christianized parts of the Empire, and, in addition, a large number of pagans, including some highly placed men, in Constantinople itself, which had been established as a Christian capital by Constantine in 330.

The poisonous religious atmosphere of the fragmented society that was the Christian Roman Empire helps to explain the divided loyalties that weakened the West in the face of the “barbarian” invasions and also the loss to the East of the bulk of its territory to the Muslims in the seventh century (some of which was, however, reconquered in the ninth and tenth centuries, only to be permanently lost in the aftermath of the Battle of Manzikert of 1071.)