GRAZIANO (Imp. Flavius Gratianus), ROMAN EMPEROR. — Son of Valentinian I and his first wife Marina, born at Sirmium on 23 May 359, died near Lyon on 25 August 383. Elected consul for the first time in 366, he was appointed Augustus in August 367. He received a careful education under the guidance of the rhetor Ausonius; in 374 he married Constantia, daughter of Constantius II. In November 375 he succeeded his father in the government of the Western Empire, but had to share it with his half-brother Valentinian II, acclaimed Augustus by the army at the age of barely four, at the instigation of Justina, the second wife of Valentinian I. A cultivated, mild young man of good character, G. proved generous and merciful. In 378 he went to the East to help his uncle Valens in the struggle against the Goths and, when Valens was killed in August of the same year, remained ruler for several months of the East as well. In January 379 he associated with himself in the Empire the brave Spanish general Theodosius, to whom he entrusted the government of the East. In 383, while he was marching against the Alamanni, the general of Britain, Magnus Maximus, rebelled; G. marched against him, but, abandoned by the army, was taken prisoner and murdered.
Although he was a convinced Christian, during the first years of his government G. showed himself indifferent to the religious questions that were then troubling the Church. From 378 onward, however, under the influence and direction of s. Ambrose, he inaugurated an active religious policy wholly devoted to Catholicism and opposed to paganism and Arianism. The first act of this new activity was the Council held at Sirmium (378) during the expedition to the East, at which attempts were made to bring the Eastern and Western bishops together in order to combat jointly the Macedonian error, then emerging, and to resolve the schism that was afflicting the Church of Antioch; six heretical bishops of Illyricum were also deposed. Returning to Gaul, where he had settled at Trier, he showed himself an increasingly open supporter of Nicene orthodoxy against every kind of heretic. In August 379 and April 380 he issued two decrees proscribing Arianism. Having settled in Milan, in September 381 he convened there, at the suggestion of s. Ambrose, a Council attended by 35 Italian and Illyrian bishops, to judge the position of the two Arian bishops, Palladius of Retiaria and Secundianus of Singidunum. The two heretics were deposed, and G. ratified the sentence by sending them into exile. At the request of the same Council he also prohibited the religious assemblies of the Photinians at Sirmium and of the Ursinians at Rome. In 382, again through his intervention, the Council of Rome was convened to settle the affairs of the Churches of Antioch and Constantinople, torn apart by internal conflicts; but, owing to the absence of the Eastern bishops, nothing was accomplished. The decree of exile against the Priscillianists also dates from that year.
While G. worked for the restoration of Catholicism and the suppression of Arianism, he did not neglect to weaken paganism ever further; he refrained from persecuting those who still adhered to it, but was radical and energetic in principle, taking decisive measures to separate the State completely from paganism. Thus, in 382, he refused the title of Pontifex maximus, which until then had also been held by Christian emperors; he had the Altar of Victory removed from the Senate chamber; he deprived the priestly colleges and the Vestal Virgins of the state subsidies and immunities they enjoyed, assigning their property to the public treasury; he prohibited apostates from Christianity from making wills, proscribed divinatory superstitions, and forbade public worship in the temples.
G.’s religious policy in the West, combined with that of Theodosius in the East, certainly hastened the end of paganism and the triumph of Catholic orthodoxy over Arianism.