Christianity: Details about 'Julian The Apostate'
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Flavius Claudius Julianus (331/332–June 26, 363), was a Roman emperor who ruled from 361 to 363. Christian sources commonly refer to him as Julian the Apostate because of his rejection of Christianity and apparent conversion to a late form of Neoplatonic Hellenism.
Early yearsJulian, born in 331 in Constantinople, was the son of Julius Constantius, half brother of Constantine I (Constantine the Great), and his second wife, Basilina. His paternal grandparents were Western Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus and his second wife, Flavia Maximiana Theodora. His maternal grandfather was Caeionius Iulianus Camenius. In the turmoil after the death of Constantine I in 337, in order to establish himself as sole emperor, Julian's devout Christian cousin Constantius II led a massacre of Julian's family. Constantius II extinguished many descendants from the second marriage of Constantius I Chlorus and Theodora, leaving only Constantine II, Constans, Julian and Julian's half brother Gallus as surviving males related to the emperor Constantine the Great. Constantius II then saw to a strict Christian education of the surviving Julian and his brother Gallus. Constantine was succeeded by his three sons Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans. Constantine II died in 340 when he attacked his brother Constans. Constans fell in 350 in the war against the usurper Magnentius. Julian's brother Gallus was made junior emperor (Caesar) by Constantius II to govern the East, while he himself defeated Magnentius. Shortly afterwards, Gallus was executed. Julian was imprisoned, but soon released and promoted to Caesar in Gaul, since Constantius had to deal with the Persian threat in the East. In Gaul, Julian's rule was very successful. Eventually, he succeeded his cousin Constantius II on the throne. In traditional accounts of his life, considerable weight is given to the Julian’s early psychological development and education. Initially growing up in Bithynia, raised by his maternal grandmother, at the age of seven he was tutored by Eusebius, the Arian Christian bishop of Nicomedia, and Mardonius, a Gothic eunuch. However, in 342, both Julian and his half-brother, Gallus, were exiled to the imperial estate of Macellum in Cappadocia. Here he met the Christian bishop George. At the age of 18, the exile was lifted and he dwelt briefly in Constantinople and Nicomedia. In 351, Julian returned to Asia Minor to study Neoplatonism under Aedesius, and later to study the Iamblichan Neoplatonism from Maximus of Ephesus. The emperor’s study of Iamblichus and theurgy are a source of criticism from his primary chronicler, Ammianus Marcellinus. Rise to powerAfter his brother Constantius Gallus was made Caesar of the East (351) and executed (354) by Constantius II, Julian was called to the emperor in Mediolanum (Milan), in 355, made Caesar of the West and married to Constantius' sister Helena. In the years afterwards he fought the Germanic tribes that tried to intrude upon the Roman Empire. He won back Colonia Agrippina (Cologne) in 356, during his first campaign in Gaul. The following summer he defeated the Alamanni at Argentoratum (Battle of Strasbourg) on August 25th . In 358, In the fourth year of his campaign in Gaul, Shapur II of Persia invaded Mesopotamia and took the city of Amida after a 73 day siege. In February of 360 Constantius ordered Julian to send Gallic troops to his eastern army. This provoked an insurrection by his troops to proclaim Julian emperor in Paris, and to a very swift military campaign to secure or win the allegiance of others. From June to August of that year Julian led a successful campaign against the Attuarian Franks. That same June, forces loyal to Constantius II captured the city of Aquileia on the north Adriatic coast, and was subsequently besieged by forces loyal to Julian. Civil war was avoided only by the death of Constantius II, who in his will recognized Julian as his rightful successor. Julian and religionJulian is called by Christians "The Apostate" because they believe he converted from Christianity to Paganism. He himself, as attested to in private letters between him and the Rhetorician Libanius, had Christianity forced on him as a child but had never really accepted any religion until his reading of the Homeric poems, some of the most important texts for the Greek religion. After this conversion to Hellenism he devoted his life to protecting and restoring the fame and security of this more ancient tradition as well as other religious traditions such as Judaism from Christian persecution. He suppressed the official bias against pagans and allowed them to once again repair their temples, a practice that was forbidden after the Christian Roman Emperor Constantine I's official encouragement of Nicene Christianity. (During his earlier years, while studying at Athens, he became acquainted with two men who later became both bishops and saints: Gregory Nazianzus and Basil the Great.) Though Constantine had legalized Christianity, it was not declared the official state religion until Theodosius I in the 380s. Constantine and his immediate successors had prohibited the upkeep of pagan temples, and many temples were destroyed and pagan worshippers killed during the reign of Constantine and his successors. The extent to which the emperors approved or commanded these destructions and killings is disputed, but it is certain they did not prevent them. Julian's religious status is a matter of considerable dispute. He did not practice normative civic paganism of the earlier empire, but a kind of magical approach to classical philosophy sometimes identified as theurgy and also neoplatonism. Whatever his personal practices, they were not Christian. According to Socrates Scholasticus, Julian believed himself to be Alexander the Great in another body via transmigration of souls, as taught by Plato and Pythagoras (Book III, Chapter XXI of his writings). Many of Julian's actions sought to harass and undermine the ability of Christians to organize in resistance to the re-establishment of pagan acceptance in the empire. Julian's preference for a non-christian and non-philosophical view of Iamblichus' theurgy seems to have convinced him that it was right to outlaw the practise of the Christian view of theurgy and demand that suppression of the Christian set of Mysteries see reference . The Orthodox or Catholic Church retells a story concerning two of his bodyguards, who were Christians, that when Julian came to Antioch he gave orders to sprinkle all the food in the marketplace and the water wells with blood from idol worship. This would have left the Christians in that town with nothing to eat or drink without violating their beliefs. The two bodyguards opposed the edict, and were executed at Julian's command. The Orthodox Church remembers them as saints Juventinus and Maximos. In his school edict Julian prohibits Christian teachers from using pagan scripts e.g. the Illias, that formed the core of Roman education. This was an attempt to remove some of the power of Christian schools by alienating their students from Roman society, not to mention a satirical attack at what Julian may have viewed as a hypocrisy: Christian schools teaching the Bible as the sole source of knowledge while simultaneously teaching classical pagan texts as well, knowledge of which was needed for success in Roman society. In his tolerance edict of 362, Julian decreed the reopening of pagan temples, the restitution of alienated temple properties, and called back Christian bishops that were exiled by church edicts. The latter was an instance of tolerance of different religious views, but may also have been an attempt by Julian to widen a schism between different Christian sects, further weakening the Christian movement as a whole. After his arrival in Antiochia in preparation for the Persian war, the temple of Apollo burned down. Since Julian believed Christians to be responsible, the main church was closed. In 363 Julian, on his way to engage Persia, stopped at the ruins of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. In keeping with his effort to foster religions other than Christianity, Julian ordered the Temple rebuilt. A personal friend of his, Ammianus Marcellinus, wrote this about the effort:
The failure to rebuild the Temple has been ascribed to an earthquake, common in the region, and to the Jews' ambivalence about the project. Sabotage is a possibility, as is an accidental fire. Divine intervention was the common view among church historians of the time. DeathIn 362 Julian started his campaign against the Persians, moving from Constantinople. He was misled by a Persian defector into guiding his army into the desert, and after discovering this he attempted to lead his army back to the safety of the Roman borders. During this retreat, on 26 June 363, Julian died in the victorious but inconclusive battle of Ctesiphon; he was so confident of victory —or merely eager and forgetful— that he was not wearing armour, and received a wound from a spear that reportedly pierced the lower lobe of his liver, the peritoneum and intestines. The wound was not immediately fatal. Julian was treated by his personal physician, Oribasius of Pergamum, who appears to have made every attempt to treat the wound. This probably included the irrigation of the wound with a dark wine, and a procedure known as gastrorrhaphy, in which an attempt is made to suture the damaged intestine. Libanius states that Julian was assassinated by a Christian who was one of his own soldiers; this charge is not corroborated by Ammianus Marcellinus or other contemporary historians. Julian was succeeded by the short-lived Emperor Jovian. Considered apocryphal is the report that his dying words were "Vicisti, Galilæe" ("Thou hast conquered, Galilean"), supposedly expressing his recognition that, with his death, Christianity would become the Empire's state religion. The phrase introduces the 1866 poem Hymn to Proserpine, which was Algernon Swinburne's elaboration of what Julian might have felt at the triumph of Christianity. Julian's life inspired both the play Emperor and Galilean by Henrik Ibsen, the historical novel Julian, by Gore Vidal (1964) and Gods and Legions by Michael Curtis Ford (2002) Julian as a writerJulian wrote several works in Greek, some of which have come down to us.
The above are hard for the modern reader to digest. The religious workscontain involved philosophical speculations and the panegyrics to Constantiusare formulaic and elaborate in style. The following works, on the other hand, are quite accessible and readable.
The works of Julian were edited and translated by Wilmer Cave Wright as The Works of the Emperor Julian (3 vols.). London, 1923. Julian in fictionJulian was the subject of a detailed, carefully researched novel, Julian (1962), by Gore Vidal, describing his life and times. It is notable for, among other things, its scathing critique of Christianity. References
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