The Greek Text of Against Heresies Survived Until the 16th Century

[Leucius Charinus]

Speaking of heresies, the negative sense of the Greek word for heresy, like the negative sense of the Hebrew word minim (kinds), took on the negative senses in (or by) the second century, not after Constantine (pace LC).

In political reality (as distinct from any hypothetical ecclesiastical reality) the term appears to have entered the Roman law codes in the later 4th century.

• 'We authorise followers of this law to assume the title of orthodox Christians; but as for the others since, in our judgement, they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious names of heretics.'
  - Emperor Theodosius.

In AD 381, Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman empire, issued a decree in which all his subjects were required to subscribe to a belief in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This edict defined Christian orthodoxy and brought to an end a lively and wide-ranging debate about the nature of the Godhead; all other interpretations were now declared heretical.

Moreover, for the first time in a thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization free thought was unambiguously suppressed. Not since the attempt of the pharaoh Akhenaten to impose his god Aten on his Egyptian subjects in the fourteenth century BC had there been such a widesweeping programme of religious coercion.

Book Description: (2008):
AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State - Charles Freeman
https://www.amazon.co.uk/AD-381-Heretic ... 1845950062

However there is little doubt that Constantine considered Arius of Alexandria to have been a heretic:

Constantine the King
to the Bishops and nations everywhere.


Inasmuch as Arius imitates the evil and the wicked,
it is right that, like them, he should be rebuked and rejected.

As therefore Porphyry,
who was an enemy of the fear of God,
and wrote wicked and unlawful writings
against the religion of Christians,
found the reward which befitted him,
that he might be a reproach to all generations after,
because he fully and insatiably used base fame;
so that on this account his writings
were righteously destroyed;

thus also now it seems good that Arius
and the holders of his opinion
should all be called Porphyrians,
that he may be named by the name
of those whose evil ways he imitates:

And not only this, but also
that all the writings of Arius,
wherever they be found,
shall be delivered to be burned with fire,
in order that not only
his wicked and evil doctrine may be destroyed,
but also that the memory of himself
and of his doctrine may be blotted out,
that there may not by any means
remain to him remembrance in the world.

Now this also I ordain,
that if any one shall be found secreting
any writing composed by Arius,
and shall not forthwith deliver up
and burn it with fire,
his punishment shall be death;
for as soon as he is caught in this
he shall suffer capital punishment
by beheading without delay.


(Preserved in Socrates Scholasticus’ Ecclesiastical History 1:9.
A translation of a Syriac translation of this, written in 501,
is in B. H. Cowper’s, Syriac Miscellanies,
Extracts From The Syriac Ms. No. 14528
In The British Museum, Lond. 1861, p. 6–7)

[StephenGoranson]

In addition to the discussion of minim and heresy linked above, if of interest, here's the OED etymology for heresy:

"Summary
A borrowing from French.
Etymons: French eresie, hérésie.
< Old French eresie, heresie (12th cent.), modern French hérésie, < Latin type *heresia (whence also Italian eresia, Portuguese heresia), for Latin hæresis school of thought, philosophical sect, in ecclesiastical writers, theological heresy, < Greek αἵρεσις taking, choosing, choice, course taken, course of action or thought, ‘school’ of thought, philosophic principle or set of principles, philosophical or religious sect; < αἱρεῖν to take, middle voice αἱρῖσθαι to take for oneself, choose.
Notes
The Greek word occurs several times in the New Testament, viz. Acts. v. 17, xv. 5, xxiv. 5, xxvi. 5, xxviii. 22, where English versions from Tyndale render ‘sect’ (i.e. of the Sadducees, Pharisees, Nazarenes or Christians, considered as sects of the Jews); Acts xxiv. 14, where all versions from Wyclif to 1611 have ‘heresy’, Revised Version ‘a sect (or heresy)’; in 1 Corinthians xi. 19 Wyclif, Geneva, Rhemish, and 1611 have ‘heresies’, Tyndale and Cranmer ‘sectes’, Revised Version ‘heresies (or factions)’; in Galatians v. 20, Wyclif, Tyndale, Cranmer, Rhemish have ‘sectes’, Geneva and 1611 ‘heresies’, Revised Version ‘heresies (or parties)’; in 2 Peter ii. 1 Wyclif, Tyndale, Cranmer, Rhemish have ‘sectes’, Geneva and 1611 ‘heresies’, Revised Version ‘heresies (or sects)’. The earlier sense-development from ‘religious sect, party, or faction’ to ‘doctrine at variance with the catholic faith’, lies outside English."

[added later:]
Note in particular the final sentence about the sense-development before English: namely, in Greek [before the time of Constantine, of course]. This development was similar to the development of Hebrew minim--compare the Birkat haMinim.

[Roger Pearse]

https://www.tertullian.org/articles/zah ... us_eng.htm

There are a number of lists of books, supposedly preserved in libraries in the early modern period. I faintly recall that all of these are fakes, again from that period. The theory is that they were produced by book dealers to entice western collectors in order to get them to travel out to Greece where bait-and-switch tactics could be employed.