Chapter 2 considers how requirements for Christian officials intersected with ongoing debates and disputes over the definition of orthodoxy in East and West. Eastern emperors and post-imperial kings felt the need to establish forms of consensus which might unite potentially opposing churches and church factions amidst new Christological disputes (in the East) and renewed Trinitarian controversies (in the West). This chapter considers how that pursuit of accommodation affected the practical implementation of ideals of a religiously uniform state. What Eastern emperors seem to have sought (and officials provided) was not personal commitment to a particular Christological orthodoxy, but rather, public support of and administrative co-operation with the current imperial line on its definition. Post-imperial kings adopted similar strategies. While the Hasding dynasty eagerly (and self-consciously) deployed the precedents of Theodosian legislation on religious uniformity within the state, these provisions were quietly shelved elsewhere in the West. This tacit acceptance of Christian diversity within the state maps onto the wider attempts of Burgundian and Ostrogothic regimes and their elite subjects to skirt the implications of doctrinal difference as part of wider strategies of accommodation.

This chapter offers a critical narrative of the development of Arianism as a heresy from the fourth to the sixth century. It explores the changing meanings of the heresiological label, and the political and ecclesiastical contexts in which it was deployed, from the origins of controversy between Arius and Alexander in Alexandria through to the barbarian successor kingdoms of the post-imperial West.

After the violent murders of the emperor Valentinian (March 16, 455) and his senatorial successor, Petronius Maximus (May 31, 455), in a series of coups, the Vandals occupied and then systematically plundered the city. Yet Roman elites – senators, contenders for the imperial throne, and military leaders – marshalled the will and resources after 455 to restore the city. Within a decade, Rome had reconstituted its government, with a stronger senatorial and military presence but a weakened imperial presence. Papal response after 455 focused on restoring clergy and church property.

Whether to baptize returned heretics, and whether to let them exercise priestly functions, were major practical problems, solutions for which called on the subtlety and flexibility of, especially, Innocent I.