Bruno POTTIER (Aix-Marseille Université, Centre Camille Jullian)
L’intervention de l’armée dans les querelles religieuses au IVe siècle : violences, tortures ou simple coercitio ? [The army interventions against religious dissidents in the fourth century : violence, tortures or mere coercitio ?]
Keywords : Donatism, circumcelliones, Marculus, Isaac and Maximianus, Athanasius, Constantius II, Ammianus Marcellinus.
Abstract : The army interventions against religious dissidents in the fourth century : violence, tortures or mere coercitio ? Members of Christian Churches stigmatized as schismatics and heretics by Christian emperors in the fourth century often denounced the violence committed by the army against them. They claimed to be victims of a full scale persecution comparable to that of the pagan emperor Diocletian. Soldiers were often assumed to have retained a sadistic behavior towards Christians and to have usually submitted these heretics or schismatics to torture. This raises the question of the level of state violence that can be tolerated by fourth century society. However, two cases studies, the repression of Donatism by Constantine and his son Constans between 317 and 347 and that of the Nicene Church of Alexandria by his brother Constantius II, show that these emperors usually intended to limit the use of force by the soldiers, in particular to avoid creating martyrs. Heretics and schismatics used rhetorical strategies to present as violence and torture the limited use of force to expel them from the basilicas which they were supposed to possess illegally. This derived from the right of coercitio traditionnally attributed to magistrates and soldiers, which only involved beatings by sticks. However, these rhetorical strategies could be successful, as they could coincide with critical discourses against the abuses usually committed by the administration and the army under tyrannical emperors that were well accepted among pagan and Christian elites in the fourth century.