Reverse Prohibition: Roman Persecution of Water-Drinking Christians

In the US, Prohibition laws followed on the heels of a largely Christian Temperance Movement. Accordingly, (and thanks to religious freedom) those who consumed wine in religious contexts, namely the Jewish and Catholic communities, were allowed exemptions from the law. Throughout the 1920s, they could legally buy and consume wine for prayer.

Temperance as an idea has ancient roots and a long relationship with Christianity. During the times of St. Ambrose during the fourth century, Temperance was added to the ancient Greek cardinal virtues: Wisdom, Courage, and Justice. (Raymond) Ever since, Christianity has been a strong proponent for Temperance. Yet, in history, there is one obscure and forgotten example of what might be called “Reverse Prohibition.” While not opposing Temperance, the example is unique in its conceptual implication–de jure forced consumption of alcohol.

Under the rule of Theodosius the Great, Christian motivations clashed with Temperance ideals. The Romans classified a group of individuals known as Hydroparastatae as heretics and threatened them with execution. Why? Largely because they did not drink wine.

In the early days of Christianity, there was a group of cult-like Christians known as the ‘water-drinkers’ or Hydroparastatae. The Eucharist of bread and wine consecrated at an altar of the modern church was still developing in the early centuries. The Eucharistic table of the diverse early Christians could include things like oil, vegetables, salt, and, for some, water instead of wine.

Abstention from wine in the ancient world was significant, but not unprecedented. All Mediterranean peoples drank wine as a daily part of their diets. Greco-Roman and Judaic religions both used wine in religious contexts–in libations and blessings respectively. A wine soaked context, but certain groups persisted in their tee-totaling.

In the pre-Christian Judaic tradition, the Nazarites (and their pregnant mothers) took a vow to avoid all wine and even grapes, in case the fruit had fermented slightly. The Essenes were a mystic sect of ancient Judaism who also swore off both wine and marriage. Finally, the Rechabites, a clan of the Old Testament, collectively abstained from wine and viticulture.

With the birth of Jesus Christ, this trend of asceticism continued in small, cultic offshoots of early Christianity. The second century saw the rise of the theologian Tatian. With his ideas, he gathered a following of individuals known as Tatianists, who abstained from meat. marriage, and wine. During their Eucharistic meal, water replaced the wine earning them the name Aquarii or Hydroparastatae—a mocking term describing this defining preference for water.

A century later, the Encratitis became notorious for avoiding wine, such that anyone who refused to drink the grape stuff was called an Encratite. (Raymond) These ascetic Christians were sundry and went by a wide variety of names including Ebionites, Encratites, Essenes, Hydroparastatae, Marcionites, Montanists, Gnostics, Tatianists and Therapeutae. All eschewed material goods in life in search of deeper piety.

These groups did not all share common beliefs, but they marked themselves off from the masses of Christianity in the same way: not drinking wine. They existed across centuries, but all lived in Mediterranean cultures where wine was a fact of life. The Dean of Yale’s Divinity School, Andrew McGowan, speculates that these groups were not reacting to the use of wine in early Christianity, but rather inheriting the tradition from an earlier time. The fact that many of these groups were geographically clustered supports the argument. (McGowan)

As the groups came and went, their similarities and otherness bled together. Their names came to be disparaging identifiers for the sober, the religiously different, and the ascetic. As Christianity entered its 4th century, codification of religion pushed these groups even further to the outside. Some water-drinkers found themselves as legal heretics.

In the year 312 CE, the Emperor Constantine officially converted to Christianity. During his reign, huge swaths of the Roman Empire began to convert to the religion and the church began to integrate with the state. Constantine’s preference for Christianity signaled the start of a trend in civil and criminal law in which one could be punished for wrong religious beliefs. (Humfress)

In his wake, the emperor Theodosius the Great of Constantinople officially declared the apostolic faith of the Nicaean Creed the state religion of the Roman Empire in with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. The text read, “All of the people shall believe in God within the concept of the Holy Trinity, as taught by St. Peter, and take the name Catholic Christians.” This was a historic moment, but Theodosius did not stop there. In establishing what the standard religion was, the emperor also outlawed behavior that strayed from the new legal orthodoxy.

I Timothy 5:23 states, “Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.” (NIV) Some experts believe this meant not to pervert the true sense of the Eucharist by excluding wine. Theodosius I, who helped to solidify the Nicaean creed, noted Manichaeism for its abstinence from wine and tried to erase the religion.

Manichaeism, which was born of the teachings of Mani executed in 276 AD by King Bahram of the Iranian Sassanid Empire, was loathed by most Christians as heretical. They were anti-materialist, but the fact that the followers of this religion did not drink wine was one way to tell them from others.

After establishing Christianity as the religion of the land, Theodosius the Great immediately turned his attention to prosecuting the heresy of the Manichaeans. In 381, he and his co-emperor Gratian passed a law that banned churches and shrines of the religion, prevented the children of Manicheans from inheriting their parents’ property, and made it illegal to not celebrate Easter. (Graf)

In 382, the emperor continued to put a stranglehold on the heretical religion and passed a new law stating that Manichaeans could not, “be protected by a profession of names but shall be held infamous and execrable because of the crimes of their sects.” (translation in Humfress) Among those names claimed by persecuted Manichaeans: Encratites and Hydroparastatae.

Ceterum quos encratitas prodigiali appellatione cognominant, cum saccoforis sive hydroparastatis refutatos iudicio, proditos crimine, vel in mediocri vestigio facinoris huius inventos summo supplicio et inexpiabili poena iubemus adfligi, manente ea condicione de bonis, quam omni huic officinae imposuimus, a latae dudum legis exordio. sublimitas itaque tua det inquisitores, aperiat forum, indices denuntiatoresque sine invidia delationis accipiat. nemo praescriptione communi exordium accusationis huius infringat. nemo tales occultos cogat latentesque conventus: agris vetitum sit, prohibitum moenibus, sede publica privataque damnatum.

Codex Theodosianus 16.5.9.1, March 31, 382 CE

The abstention from wine that marked the Manicheans from the Christian was reason enough for Theodosius to suspect that certain Christian ascetics were secretly heretics. Yet, in 383, the Emperor moved passed Manicheans disguised as Hydroparastatae ascetics and decided that “those persons who are called Encraties, with a monstrous appellation, together with the Saccophori, and the Hydroparastatae, when they have been convicted in court, betrayed by crime, or discovered in a slight trace of this wickedness, We order to be afflicted with the supreme penalty and with inexpiable punishment.” (translation in Humfress) For their religious views, these groups would be sentenced to death.

There exists no research on the legal prosecution of these groups, but the implication of the law is unprecedented. Theodosius, in his hunt for heretics, set his gaze upon obscure and cultic Christian groups who differentiated themselves from his state-sponsored Christianity by anti-materialism. In the case of the Hydroparastatae, the material they rejected was wine. Indeed, it was truly the legacy of the emperor Theodosius that heresy became criminal in both civil and religious contexts.

In some sense, it was illegal to not drink wine for those living in Rome during the late 4th century. This was a “Reverse Prohibition,” where, unlike modern American Prohibition which was religiously inspired and allowed religious leeway, the government sought to persecute religion via wine-drinking.

A student of law may disagree with our proposition, but the facts are very straightforward. Theodosius sentenced all Hydroparastatae to death. The Hydroparastatae were Christians who used water for Eucharist rather than wine. So, while not everyone who abstained from wine might have been considered a heretic, some were and would have had two options: drink or die.

Sources Cited

Graf, Fritz. “Laying down the law in Ferragosto: The Roman visit of Theodosius in Summer 389.” Journal of early Christian studies 22.2 (2014): 219-242.

Humfress, Caroline. “Roman law, forensic argument and the formation of Christian orthodoxy (III-VI centuries).” Roman law, forensic argument and the formation of Christian orthodoxy (III-VI centuries) (2000): 1000-1023.

McGowan, Andrew Brian. Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink In Early Christian Ritual Meals. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999.

Raymond, Irving W. The Teaching of the Early Church On the Use of Wine and Strong Drink. New York: Columbia university press, 1927.

Riddle, J. E. A Manual of Christian Antiquities; or, An Account of the Constitution, Ministers, Worship, Discipline, and Customs of the Ancient Church, Particularly during the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Centuries; to Which Is Prefixed an Analysis of the Writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. John W. Parker, 1843, https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=UAJOAAAAYAAJ&rdid=book-UAJOAAAAYAAJ&rdot=1.

Welton, Rebekah. ’A Glutton and a Drunkard’ : Excessive and “Deviant” Consumption of Food and Alcohol in the Hebrew Bible in Relation to the Law of the Rebellious Son (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). 2018. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=ddu&AN=DE66A99800229FBD&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

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Reverse Prohibition: Roman Persecution of Water-Drinking Christians

Sources Cited

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