Imperial Edicts

A pronouncement by an emperor with the force of law across the territory he rules. The heading gathers the Roman decrees that ended the persecutions and then established one religion in their place, the rescripts of an Indian emperor cut into rock and pillar, and an Ottoman reform decree on the standing of non-Muslim subjects. All are legally spent and none is historically spent: they are the moments a state moved from tolerating a religion to sponsoring it, or the reverse, and the later shape of each tradition rests on them.