ABSTRACT
The mid-fifth-century historians Socrates and Sozomen devote much of their Ecclesiastical Histories to the conflicts between Arian and Nicene Christians. During a significant portion of the previous century, Arian bishops had held sway in Constantinople, a period the authors characterize as an extended reign of terror. For them, the accession of the emperor Theodosius I marked the end of Arian “persecution” and the transfer of churches to Nicene bishops. Consequently, their histories commemorate the triumph of orthodoxy and provide a memory of Arian aggression that authorizes the current dominance of Nicene bishops. This chapter examines Socrates's and Sozomen' s presentations of the conflicts, attending particularly to how the rhetoric of persecution supports fifth-century claims about Nicene hegemony. Such mobilization of a sentiment drawing on the recitation of past violence would have been particularly effective for constructing boundaries between social groups and imposing cultural order. In the process, the authors simplify a complex social landscape, constructing a clear binary between orthodox and heretic, and then seize claims of imperial support from the formerly dominant group, and create a new normative landscape. In this way, the accounts of Socrates and Sozomen provided a foundational narrative that defined the boundaries of imperial Christianity and legitimated current violence against the Arian Christians. In other words, we can consider the rhetoric of persecution by Arian Christians against Nicene Christians as more than simply the residue of past conflict, but a cultivation of habits of persecution and a continuing act of violence.
