When Did Theodosius Ban Pagan Worship?

Theodosius I did not abolish paganism in a single act; he issued a sequence of laws, of which the decisive ones fall in 391 and 392 CE. A law dated 24 February 391 (Codex Theodosianus 16.10.10) forbade sacrifice and entry into temples for worship; a companion law of 16 June 391 (16.10.11) extended the ban to Egypt and Alexandria; and a comprehensive law of 8 November 392 (16.10.12) outlawed even private household cult, including incense, libations and the honouring of the household gods. These laws prohibited pagan worship rather than legislating the destruction of temples, and the repeated re-issuing of similar bans by later emperors shows compliance was patchy for generations.

The actual laws, with their dates

The evidence is unusually good here, because the relevant laws survive in the Codex Theodosianus, the compilation of imperial legislation published in 438 CE. Book 16, title 10, is headed De paganis, sacrificiis et templis ("On pagans, sacrifices and temples"), and each law carries the names of the officials addressed and a date. Like all late-Roman legislation, these constitutions were issued in the joint names of the reigning emperors; attributing them to Theodosius alone is conventional shorthand.

24 February 391 (CTh 16.10.10), addressed to Albinus, styled praetorian prefect in the manuscript rubric and usually identified with the urban prefect of Rome of those years: it bans sacrifice, bans the inspection of sacrificial victims' entrails, and bars anyone from entering temples for the purpose of worship. Penalties fall particularly on officials who use their rank to do so.

16 June 391 (CTh 16.10.11), addressed to Evagrius, Augustal Prefect of Egypt, and Romanus, count of Egypt: substantially the same prohibition, issued specifically for Egypt. This is the law behind questions about Egyptian and Theban rites in 391.

8 November 392 (CTh 16.10.12), addressed to Rufinus, praetorian prefect: the most sweeping of the three. It reaches into the home, forbidding blood sacrifice, incense, lamps, wreaths and libations offered to household gods, and treats such acts as comparable to sacrilege and treason, with confiscation of the property where the rite took place.

An earlier and much-cited law, Cunctos populos of 27 February 380 CE (CTh 16.1.2), belongs to a different category: it defined which form of Christianity was orthodox and was aimed at Christian doctrinal rivals, not at pagans.

Egypt, Alexandria and the Serapeum

Egypt is where enforcement after 391 turned violent, and where the popular image of Theodosius "ending paganism" largely comes from. Under the patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria, the great temple of Serapis, the Serapeum, was stormed and destroyed by a Christian crowd, with imperial approval given after the fact. The episode is described by Rufinus of Aquileia, who wrote close in time to it, and by the later church historians Socrates and Sozomen.

Two cautions matter. First, the date of the Serapeum's destruction is not fixed with certainty: both 391 and 392 are defended in the scholarship. Rufinus, the closest source, supplies no year, and the later accounts and chronicles do not agree closely enough to settle it. Second, the destruction was not what the law commanded. CTh 16.10.10 and 16.10.11 prohibit worship; they do not order demolition. The demolition was a local action by a bishop and a mob, retroactively endorsed, and it is a mistake to read it as the empire executing a stated policy of temple-razing.

For Upper Egypt and Thebes the record is thinner still. The June 391 edict applied there in law, but no reliable narrative source describes a specific closure event at Thebes in that year, and confident claims about one should be treated as unsupported.

Why there was no single abolition moment

The strongest evidence that 392 did not end pagan practice is the legislation that followed it. Emperors after Theodosius, including Arcadius, Honorius, Theodosius II and later Justinian, kept issuing bans on sacrifice, kept ordering temples closed or converted, and kept penalising those who persisted. Laws are not re-issued against behaviour that has already stopped.

Alongside the laws, the practical texture of change was slow and uneven: temple estates lost their revenues, civic subsidies for cult dried up, priesthoods lost their status, and buildings were repurposed as churches or quarried for materials over decades. In the countryside, and in centres such as Athens, Harran and Alexandria, traditional practice or its philosophical descendants continued long after 392.

Modern scholarship, notably Alan Cameron's The Last Pagans of Rome (2011), has also dismantled the older picture of a dramatic last stand by a pagan Roman aristocracy. The transition looks less like a single decree and more like a long attrition in which the 391-392 laws are the sharpest legal turning point rather than the end of the story.

What most scholars accept, and what stays contested

Accepted: That Theodosius I issued laws prohibiting sacrifice and temple worship dated 24 February 391 and 16 June 391, and a ban explicitly reaching private domestic cult dated 8 November 392, all preserved in Codex Theodosianus 16.10. That the 380 law Cunctos populos concerned orthodoxy among Christians rather than pagan worship.
Mainstream: That these laws mark the decisive legal turning point against public pagan cult in the Roman Empire, but did not by themselves end pagan practice, which persisted for generations and required repeated later legislation. That the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria was a local act by Theophilus and a Christian crowd rather than the execution of an imperial demolition order.
Contested: The exact year of the Serapeum's destruction (391 vs 392). How far the 391-392 laws were actually enforced outside a few major cities. Whether any specific closure of temples at Thebes occurred in 391, for which there is no reliable narrative source. Whether Theodosius ended the Olympic Games in 393, a claim absent from the surviving legislation and resting on late, indirect testimony. How coherent a pagan aristocratic resistance existed at Rome, which Alan Cameron has argued was largely a later construction.

Frequently asked questions

What date did Theodosius ban pagan worship?

The core prohibitions are dated 24 February 391 CE (Codex Theodosianus 16.10.10, banning sacrifice and entering temples to worship), 16 June 391 CE (16.10.11, the same ban issued for Egypt), and 8 November 392 CE (16.10.12, extending the ban to private household cult such as incense and libations). There is no single edict abolishing paganism outright.

Did Theodosius order pagan temples to be destroyed?

No surviving law of Theodosius orders the general destruction of temples. His 391 and 392 edicts prohibit sacrifice, temple worship and private cult. Destructions such as that of the Serapeum in Alexandria, whose date is disputed between 391 and 392, were carried out locally by bishops and Christian crowds and endorsed after the fact rather than commanded in advance.

Did Theodosius make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380?

The law usually cited, Cunctos populos of 27 February 380 CE, declared Nicene Christianity the orthodox faith and labelled dissenting Christians heretics. It was directed at Christian doctrinal rivals, chiefly Arians, not at pagans, and the phrase "official state religion" is a modern summary rather than the language of the law. The measures against pagan worship came a decade later, in 391 and 392.

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Sources and further reading

The surviving imperial laws themselves, Book 16 title 10 (De paganis, sacrificiis et templis), including 16.10.10 of 24 February 391, 16.10.11 of 16 June 391 and 16.10.12 of 8 November 392, with their addressees and dates.
The standard English translation of the Theodosian Code, the usual scholarly reference for the texts and dates of these laws.
Overview of Theodosius I's reign and his religious legislation.
The closest near-contemporary narrative of the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria under the patriarch Theophilus.
Modern reassessment arguing against the older picture of a dramatic pagan aristocratic resistance and for a slower, more uneven decline of traditional cult.