But were/are they? Or did forcefully eliminating heretical teachings just give them that appearance? (I admit I do not know the answer to this.) We confess that God does not force us to come to Him, but as far as I can tell that's exactly what was attempted: "The authorities intended to make the reading of such writings simply impossible."
“But were/are they? Or did forcefully eliminating heretical teachings just give them that appearance? (I admit I do not know the answer to this.)”
On balance, I think they really were more likely to foster theosis than our societies in the West (and now the East too, I suppose). What happened in this life was of little consequence as the focus was, ultimately, on theosis. You know, only in a society like that could bishops themselves come up with the concept that the floor of hell was paved with the skulls of bishops! A political/social system headed by a God annointed Emperor presiding over a Christian Oecoumene, where the people saw themselves as members of an Omogenia fits a world where theosis is the proper goal of everyone. We see a sort of a funhouse mirror vestige of it in the whole Mohammedan idea of the Umma and a worldwide caliphate. Like I said earlier, in a system like that, different, heterodox ideas are seen as destructive and in fact they are destructive of a society like that. But that society places virtually no value on individual opinion except to the extent that it is expressed within the context of “The Church” and open questions, it should be noted, were openly and widely debated at all levels of society until a council decided a question.
What we have in the West is the inevitable result of events such as the Reformation and the Enlightenment arriving a few hundred years after Magna Carta. The system of government we have is attuned to a religious view of salvation which is near antithetical to the theosis theology of the East. This shouldn’t be surprising given what the reformers saw themselves as rebelling against. Nobody or at least no government forces people to believe one way or the other in the West. It can be argued that that has lead to a spiritually deadly, or even dead society.