discoveries have undermined this view. The archaeological evidence for the violent destruction of temples in the fourth and early fifth centuries around the entire Mediterranean is limited to a handful of sites. Temple destruction is attested to in 43 cases in the written sources, but only 4 of them were confirmed by archaeological evidence. Trombley and MacMullen say part of what creates this discrepancy are details in the historical sources that are commonly ambiguous and unclear. For example, Malalas claimed Constantine destroyed all the temples, then he said Theodosius did, then he said Constantine converted them all to churches. There is no evidence of any desire on the part of the emperor to institute a systematic destruction of temples anywhere in the Theodosian Code, and no evidence in the archaeological record that extensive temple destruction ever took place. Theodosian decrees According to The Cambridge Ancient History, the Theodosian Law Code is a set of laws, originally dated from Constantine to Theodosius I, that were gathered together, organized by theme, and reissued throughout the empire between 389 and 391. Jill Harries and Ian S. Wood explain that, in their original forms, these laws were created by different emperors and governors to resolve the issues of a particular place at a particular time. They were not intended as general laws. Local politics and culture had produced divergent attitudes, and as a result, these laws present a series of conflicting opinions: for example, some laws called for the complete destruction of the temples and others for their preservation. French historian of Antiquity, , observes that Ammianus Marcellinus says this legal complexity produced corruption, forgery of rescripts, falsified appeals, and costly judicial delays. The Theodosian Law Code has long been one of the principal historical sources for the study of Late Antiquity. Gibbon described the Theodosian decrees, in his Memoires, as a work of history rather than jurisprudence. Brown says the language of these laws is uniformly vehement, and penalties are harsh and frequently horrifying, leading some historians, such as Ramsay MacMullen, to see them as a 'declaration of war' on traditional religious practices. It is a common belief the laws marked a turning point in the decline of paganism. Yet, many contemporary scholars such as Lepelly, Brown and Cameron, question the use of the Code, a legal document, not an actual historical work, for understanding history. One of many problems with using the