This edited volume offers an interdisciplinary set of papers on tolerance in the early fourth century, with the wide range of contributions including on legal reform and imperial politics. The outcome of an early-career conference in 2013, it principally comprises perspectives from legal, political and religious history, generally addressed to textual sources, with some contributions addressing issues outside ‘tolerance’ narrowly conceived. Ulrico Agnati opens with a comparative overview examining fourth-century tolerance in relation to earlier Roman paradigms, the later development of modern ideas of toleration and finally the place of religion (particularly Islam) within European secularism, and attendant concerns over ethnic tensions and political participation. Here Agnati raises some interesting points, including the recognition that ‘secular’ values are substantially those of a ‘secularised’ European religious tradition, although the treatment here would benefit from engagement with some of the modern literature on these topics (in English, for example, Jose Casanova, Public religions in the modern world, Chicago 1994, and Jocelyne Cesari, Why the West fears Islam: an exploration of Muslims in liberal democracies, New York 2013). The volume's first papers proper offer analyses of Tetrarchic religious policy and its broader context. Valerio Massimo Minale discusses Maximinus Daia's policy toward Christians, intelligently exploring the progress of his persecutory measures as a result of dialogue and interaction with both local political stakeholders and his imperial colleagues. Daniela Borelli offers another close reading of the function of priests in the ‘religious revivals’ which took place in the reigns of Julian the Apostate and Maximinus Daia. She broadly following the model of comparison established by Oliver Nicholson (‘The “pagan churches” of Maximinus Daia and Julian the Apostate’, this Journal xlv [1994], 1–10) though differing in viewing Daia's priestly caste as Neoplatonically-inspired, and noting the differences that the accounts of Lactantius and Eusebius present.

Moving into the reign of Constantine, Marco Rocco re-examines, from a legal perspective, the sources for the deaths of that emperor's son Crispus and wife Fausta. Following an examination of Constantine's legislation on adultery (particularly the April 326 law on adultery, CTh 9.7.1) and the textual accounts, he argues that Crispus could not have been executed for that crime. Instead, he suggests that the only way to harmonise this with the narrative accounts (in Philostorgius, Eunapius, Pseudo-Aurelius Victor and Zonaras), which suggest that Fausta had him killed after he refused her advances, is by concluding that while there was sexual impropriety it was rather Crispus who attempted to rape Fausta, thus forcing Constantine to execute him. While an innovative and thought-provoking contribution it rests on two questionable assumptions, namely that the later historians had information about the existence of a sexual crime unavailable to their earlier counterparts (Eutropius and the real Aurelius), and that, in any case, Constantine would have followed legal procedure. Michele Giagnorio meanwhile offers a considered analysis of the political thought which lay behind the 311 and 313 measures for the toleration of Christians, emphasising how they differed both from each other and from other conceptions advanced by Christians like Tertullian.

Davide Dainese’s close reading of Eusebius’ political theology, on the other hand, moves away from questions of toleration to address the relation between emperor and Church more broadly, and perceptively highlights the differences between the respective positions of emperor and bishop. Dario Annunziata, meanwhile, provides a general overview of the legal and doctrinal implications of private and ecclesiastical property prior to 313. Alessia Spina argues for placing Constantine's reforms to slavery in a more gradual evolution of Roman legal practice (particularly concerning manumission), rather than as evincing specifically Christian concerns. Finally, Francesca Zanetti's paper returns to the theme of toleration and religious difference, providing a summary of Constantinian legal measures concerning the Jews. She emphasises the interplay between Christian identity formation and boundary creation with earlier precedents concerning Judaism as a religio licita.

This volume is strongest in the close attention paid by the contributors to the ancient sources, together with their extensive dual-language quotation; the analysis of their respective themes is often incisive. Despite the title, however, it does not really move ‘beyond’ traditional paradigms of intolerance and religious change, at least in the sense of offering a worked-out and consistently applied alternative throughout the volume. For a volume on this theme one might also expect more attention to have been paid (outside the introduction) to temple closures or Cesset superstitio (CTh. 16.10.2) as well as the policy of Constantine's sons. Some papers also feel only tangentially connected to the main theme (thus Rocco, Spina and Borelli). Two represent work elaborated at length elsewhere by the contributors (for example, in Dario Annunziata's Opulentia ecclesiae: alle origini della proprietà ecclesiatica, Naples 2017, and Francesca Zanetti's Gli ebrei nella Roma antica: storia e diritto nei secoli III–IV d.C, Naples 2016). One suspects that this is the result of the delay between the conference at which the papers were first presented (2013) and final publication. This delay, though perhaps unavoidable, has none the less inhibited consideration of some subsequent contributions and prevented these papers from informing scholarly discussions during intervening years (such as in Edward Siecienski [ed.], Constantine: religious faith and religious policy, London 2017). None the less, individual papers remain valuable and address concerns which are still relevant, such as Minale's discussion of how Daia's persecutory measures arose out of interactions between that emperor, his city-based subjects and his peers, which recalls (or anticipates) Noel Lenski's analysis of Constantinian policy in his Constantine and the cities: imperial authority and civic politics (Philadelphia 2015).

The standard of English is, with some exceptions, generally good, with the occasional odd turn of phrase that one would expect in papers written in a second language (as is the case in all bar two cases). There are however some consistent editorial problems, including the seemingly random occurrence of superscript numerals in some of the bibliographic entries. Overall, the papers in this volume will be of interest to scholars concerned with the specific issues that its contributors address in early fourth-century religious and political history, particularly those concerned with Roman legal practice. Taken as the sum of its parts, however, it is unlikely to revolutionise our understanding of intolerance in the early fourth century.