Religio licita ("permitted religion",[1] also translated as "approved religion"[2]) is a phrase used in theApologeticum ofTertullian[3] to describe the legal toleration of Christians. It was not an official term inRoman law.[4]
Although it occurs in only onepatristic text and in noclassical Roman sources or inscriptions,[5] the phrase has spawned abundant scholarly conjecture on its possible significance. Some scholars have gone so far as to imagine that all religions under the Empire had a legal status as eitherlicita orillicita, despite the absence of any ancient texts referring to these categories.[6] The most extreme view has held that Tertullian's phrase means all foreign religions required a license from the Roman government.[7] However, it was Roman custom to permit or even to encourage the subject peoples of theRoman province and foreign communities in Rome to maintain their ancestral religion unless specific practices were regarded as disruptive or subversive:[8] "Areligio waslicita for a particular group on the basis of tribe or nationality and traditional practices, coupled with the proviso that its rites were not offensive to the Roman people orits gods."[9]
Tertullian uses the phrase in a passage arguing that Christians should be granted the samefreedom to practice their religion as any other of the empire's inhabitants; the passage itself, not the phrasereligio licita, is evidence of the generaltolerance afforded under theRoman system of religion.[10]
Religio licita has sometimes been taken as a formal recognition orcharter originating withJulius Caesar and embodied by various pieces of Roman legislation pertaining to the Jews, conceived of as a coherent policy.[11] In fact, the various privileges and exemptions granted to the Jews were responses to specific complaints or requests, made in the context of the traditionalpatronage network,[12] and had nothing to do with a supposedreligio licita status.[13] To the extent that the Romans respected Judaism, it was because of the religion's great antiquity, ancestral tradition being regarded as a source of social and political stability.[14]
It has been observed that "Roman magistrates treated the Jews the way they did not because they were consciously tolerant, but simply because they had no reason to hinder the free exercise of Jewish religious practices."[15]
Although this term appears nowhere, it has been conjectured that a declaration of Christianity asillicita was the legal basis for official persecutions. There was, however, "no law, either existing section of criminal law, or special legislation directed against the Christians, under which Christians were prosecuted in the first two centuries."[16] Rome lacked a uniform policy or legal code pertaining to foreign cults,[17] and before Christian hegemony in the 4th century, there was no legal language to designate a concept analogous to "heresy" or crimes against orthodox religion.[18] Some scholars have argued that Christianity was declared areligio illicita (an impermissible or illegitimate religion) byNero following theGreat Fire of Rome in 64.[19][20]
UnderConstantine the Great,Christianity and other religions became tolerated with theEdict of Milan in 313. Toleration did not extend to religions that practicedhuman sacrifice, such asDruidism. This state of affairs lasted until 380, whenNicene Christianity was adopted as thestate religion of the Roman Empire, after which timepersecution of non-Christian and non-Nicene cults began.Priscillian was executed for heresy in 385, andTheodosius I began outlawing Rome's traditional religious rituals in 391.