§ 43.1. The =Jus circa sacra= gave to the =Emperors= the right of legally determining all the relations between church and state, but assigned to them also the duty of caring for the preservation or restoration of peace and of unity in the church, guarding orthodoxy with a strong arm, looking after the interests of the church and the clergy, and maintaining the authority of ecclesiastical law. Even Constantine the Great excluded all heretics from the privileges which he accorded to the church, and regarded it as a duty forcibly to prevent their spread. The destruction or closing of their churches, prohibition of public meetings, banishment of their leaders, afterwards seizure of their possessions, were the punishments which the state invariably used for their destruction. The first death sentence on a heretic was issued and executed so early as A.D. 385 by the usurper Maximus (§ 54, 2), but this example was not imitated during this period. Constans II. in A.D. 654 gave the first example of scourging to the effusion of blood and barbarous mutilation upon a persistent opponent of his union system of doctrine (§ 52, 8). The fathers of the 4th century were decidedly opposed to all compulsion in matters of faith (comp. however § 63, 1). The right of determining by imperial edict what was to be believed and taught in the empire was first asserted by the usurper Basilicus in A.D. 476 (§ 52, 5). The later emperors followed this example; most decidedly Justinian I. (§ 52, 6) and the court theologians justified such assumptions from the emperor’s sacerdotal rank, which was the antitype of that of Melchizedec [Melchisedec]. The emperor exercised a direct influence upon the choice of bishops especially in the capital cities; at a later period the emperor quite arbitrarily appointed these and set them aside. The church’s power to afford protection secured for it generally a multitude of outward privileges and advantages. The state undertook the support of the church partly by rich gifts and endowments from state funds, partly by the making over of temples and their revenues to the church, and Constantine conferred upon the church the right of receiving bequests of all kinds. The churches and their officers were expressly exempted from all public burdens. The distinct judicial authority of the bishops recognised of old was formally legitimized by Constantine under the name of _Audentia episcopalis_. The clergy themselves were exempted from the jurisdiction of civil tribunals and were made subject to an ecclesiastical court. The right of asylum was taken from the heathen temples and conferred upon the Christian churches. With this was connected also the right of episcopal intercession or of interference with regard to decisions already come to by the civil courts which were thus in some measure subject to clerical control.