MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

THE EMPEROR JULIAN THE APOSTATE

CHAPTER VII.

JULIAN'S ADMINISTRATION.

When Julian on his march from Gaul first publicly announced his apostasy, and took the title of Pontifex Maximus, men paid small heed to the avowal. Technically he was but Caesar still, and not Augustus: and at least he had a Christian colleague and superior to hold his zeal in check. The declaration was assumed to be a political stratagem, and nothing more. Men's politics in those days made them Arians or Eusebians or Anomoeans, and by the same token Pagans as well. Even as a political move its dexterity was questionable. Licinius forty years previously had done the same thing. In his final rupture with the Christian emperor, he had used the name of the 'Gods of our fathers' as an effective war-cry. Licinius' discomfiture before the father was a poor presage for Julian's success against the son. But when Julian sole Julian's proclaimed apostasy and march into Illyria was followed by Constantius' sudden death at Mopsukrenae, and the young pretender stood alone at the head of Empire Christians must have watched anxiously, and bethought them of the days when they groaned beneath a Galerius or a Maximin. In spite of Constantius' cunning suppressions, and free fabrication of lying dispatches, the sound of Julian's exploits, and the praises of his troops had ere now traversed East and West alike. The cause which had seemed forlorn was, without one blow, triumphant. People might be excused for ascribing his triumph to the direct intervention of God, or—the Gods.

His earliest care was the funeral of his illustrious predecessor. It was conducted with becoming pomp of royal and Christian ritual. The entire army joined in the procession, and multitudes of citizens thronged without the gates of Constantinople to meet the imperial cortege. The emperor himself as chief mourner took part in the procession, wearing the purple, but with the diadem reverently removed from his head. So with night-long chants, amid  the blaze of torches and the homage of multitudes, the corpse was brought to its own chosen resting-place in the Church of the Holy Apostles. The death of Constantius took place on Nov. 3, 362;  the obsequies were completed in the same month. The latest recorded law of Julian belongs to the middle of March 363 AD, when he was already moving eastward on his Persian campaign. Thus the period of his legis­lative and administrative activity as sole Emperor is confined within narrow limits of less than a year and a half. And though, according to La Bleterie, no Emperor made so many laws in so short a reign, his legislation is not alarming in bulk. It is our business in the present chapter to examine it, more particularly in its bearing on Julian's attitude towards the religious of his day.

The earliest acts of the young Emperor were reassuring. A religious amnesty was proclaimed. Bishops, orthodox or heterodox, were recalled from banishment, and no doubt reinstated in their sees if vacant; heretics of all shades were invited to return from exile. The breadth of his toleration has been manufactured into an accusation: he has been abused for recalling not only the orthodox bishops, but also suffering Arians, Semi-Arians, and Novatians to flock back unhindered, and even rehabilitating Donatists and Circumcellions in the political rights of which preceding Emperors had deprived them. For such a course it is easy to impute sinister motives, but it would have been a breach of principle to penalize opinions, and most certainly a hard matter to draw the line between their civil and their dogmatic offences; restitution of their rights was the most equitable course, leaving it perfectly open to anyone to prosecute the heretics for any criminal misdemeanour. Julian, no doubt, had the political sagacity to leave Arians and Catholics and Sects to fight out their own quarrels, but it is unfair to make that the motive of his policy of toleration. Invitations to court were addressed not only to Neo-Platonists and Pagans, but to Proeresius the Christian professor, to Basil, whose piety and learning already marked him out as bishop designate of Caesarea, and to Aetius the Arian, subsequently bishop of Constantinople. Nothing could be fairer than the monarch’s professions of tolerance: nothing warmer than his letters of invitation. Basil is to come “as friend to friend”; to stay as long as he pleases, and as soon as tired to be sent on his way, where he will: both he and Aetius are allowed to travel at the state's expense. In fact Julian's court was to be of an entirely new model. Wise councilors and skilled administrators should be his courtiers. Titles of servile respect were to disappear: hypocrisy, envy and sloth to be replaced by the candor of outspoken friendship and the energy of beneficent co-operation.

But in his desire for peace Julian did not weakly overlook criminal offences. He appointed a commission to investigate and chastise the official misdemeanours and crimes of the late reign. It was composed of Mamertinus and Nevitta, consuls for 362, of Arbitio an ex-consul of known severity, of Agilo, and of Julian's own master of the horse Jovinus. Over these presided Salustius praetorian prefect, and in the ensuing year Julian's colleague in the consulship. Cases of spoliation were investigated, prompt restoration enforced, and where reparation was impossible, severe penalties inflicted. No elevation of rank secured immunity. The infamous favorites of Constantius, the tribes of informers who had thronged his court, were among the earliest victims. Eusebius, the Chamberlain, as prime instigator of the murder of Gallus, expiated his crimes on the scaffold. Apodemius, the vile agent who had concerted the death both of Silvanus and Gallus, was burned alive; Paul, the infamous notary, surnamed “the Chain”, a kind of Titus Oates, shared the same cruel fate. More innocent victims also fell, or suffered banishment.

Information once invited is hard to curb or control perfectly; the guillotine once set in motion ne va pas mal; in that active discouragement of Christianity which the Emperor approved, his agents probably transgressed the strict observance of justice which he enjoined in the same breath; but it is fair to say that the Commission if not happily selected, was honestly required, honorably intended, and removed only too punctiliously from the immediate sphere and influence of court, that there might be no suspicion of Julian's personal sentiments unfairly prejudicing his enemies. Years before attaining to the supreme power he had laid it down as a theory of government, that the wise prince, while taking strict personal cognizance of minor remediable crimes, ought rigorously to abstain from sitting in judgment on capital offences. These should be tried by proved impartial judges, whose verdict could neither be warped by prejudice, nor impaired by unjudicial haste. In this edict then he carried out in practice a principle which had approved itself to his calm judgment, and may be acquitted without reserve from the odium of willful persecution.

Justice satisfied, or at least a way to its satisfaction duly prepared, Julian devoted himself to reform. His charity began at home. The severest retrenchments were enforced in the palace expenditure. On his accession Julian found in occupation a thousand cooks and barbers, butlers and serving-men innumerable, and eunuchs “thicker than summer flies”. At a blow he dismissed them all, and turned the palace into a desert. For the cooks, he wanted, he said, but simple fare, and the preparers of it to dress like cooks, not senators: for barbers, one was enough for many (which was all the more true, no doubt, in days when the Emperor wore the philosopher's beard, and the courtiers followed suit): for eunuchs, he wanted not one, for his first wife was dead, and he had no kind to marry a second.

So a general cataclysm swept away the whole army of domestics, retainers, official detectives and spies (the so-called Curiosi), and other parasites who had previously clung about the person of the monarch. That the bulk of the servants of Constantius were Christians is no mere conjecture. Doubtless that royal barber who waited on Julian so daintily appareled, and in addition to his handsome salary and perquisites received daily rations for twenty squires and as many horses, was a pronounced Christian. Whether this be so or no, the abuse was flagrant, the reformation just, and no blame attaches to the reformer if Christians were the principal sufferers. The sole ground for complaint is that their places were refilled in great measure by that “conflux of so-called philosophers”, for which Socrates denounces the Emperor.

Sophists, literati, quacks and soothsayers, they came pricking in hungry swarms from three continents, thirsting for a share of the spoil. Each had his special claim on the new monarch, his special sufferings for the good cause to recount, or his special qualifications for useful work in the future.

The philosophic maxims of their obscurity were forgotten or abjured with a marvelous readiness. Ascetics turned Sybarites, and Neo-Platonists Epicureans. Maximus himself, dropping the Cynic’s cloak and stick, appeared attired in silk and gold; was attended by his train of slaves; feasted luxuriously; received sumptuously, and in all respects affected Asiatic pomp. Nor were imitators slow to follow where the master led. Others, by a more refined flattery, adopted the coarse dress and the shaggy beard of the Cynic, but at that point ceased to be the followers of Diogenes. They neither bridled the appetites, nor kept under the sensual passions, nor subdued covetousness and self-seeking. Their exterior was Cynic, but their heart Cyrenaic. Julian's worst foes were of his own household.  Personally he did what he could: by word and look and act he protested. He wrote an indignant tirade against false Cynics; his dress and appearance grew more and more severe; above all he strove by example of active self-denial to  shame these  courtier-philosophers into worthier ways.

His diet became more spare; his devotion to business more unremitting; his reforms and edicts more rigorous. No man could say that he spared himself. “Always abstemious, and never oppressed by food, he applied himself to business with the activity of a bird, and dispatched it with infinite ease”. He would write, dictate, and give audience at the same time: His ministers came to him by relays; as soon as one retired to rest or sleep, another was admitted, and then the next, till perhaps the circle began again. When the rest of the palace was wrapped in sleep the Emperor sat alone in his library dispatching correspondence, composing orations, framing decrees, or composing elaborate philosophic lucubrations. Yet in the grey of morning he might be found receiving complimentary calls, hearing petitions, or giving audience to his consuls. “He multiplied time by subtracting from leisure”.

The few hours that he doled out to sleep, were passed often upon the hard ground. Under such circumstances censure will be lenient if the prince was able to bridle only, not eradicate the rapacity of his followers. Numbers of these impostors, on an enemy's testimony, went disappointed away, cursing their own folly, and the deceit, as they were pleased to call it, of the Emperor, in not following up his invitation with more substantial rewards. While recognizing his liberality, impartial historians add that towards unworthy recipients he was less indulgent in favors than his position was supposed to demand.

But Julian's projects of retrenchment were not limited to the palace of Constantinople: nor again to mere sumptuary laws, feeble attempts to cure only and not prevent. They look a much wider sweep. His legislation testifies to unceasing activity in this department. His Gallic administration had yielded him varied large experience; if in his first years he “spent summer in the camp, winter in the tribunal”.

During his last year in that country financial and judicial reform had engrossed his whole attention. In nothing had he been more successful than in reducing the burdens of the overtaxed provincials, and reinvigorating industrial enterprise: during his brief sojourn at or near Sirmium he had engaged in the same good work for the Illyrian and Dalmatian dis­tricts: from Hadria to Nikopolis his life-giving hand had touched decaying industries. Now sole Emperor he extended like efforts through the realm.

The two great principles that guided his legislation were the withdrawal of immunities from favored classes or individuals, and the prevention of corrupt exactions or returns by the official collectors of taxes. To this last end his earliest and his latest edict are alike directed, and others reinforce them in the interval.  The principal provisions are for the transmission of exact and speedy returns to the provincial governors, who in turn forwarded the reports to the emperor: unpunctuality is made punishable by a considerable fine. Falsification of the returns by the official collectors is visited with bodily' pains and penalties: and without the imperial leave no new impost may be introduced, nor existing one modified! Further, a quinquennial tenure of office is prescribed after which is intercalated a non-official year, to the express end that complainants may appeal unawed by the terror of official persecution and revenge.

Other regulations are directed against official bribery and corruption, and against abuses of judicial procedure in the case of public functionaries. While adopting these precautions against official extortion, Julian displayed still greater energy in the direct relief of the provincials, chiefly by rigid limitation of diverse forms of immunities. Constantius, following but exaggerating his father's method, had accorded exemptions on the largest scale to the Christian clergy.

Not only monks, not only religious communities of virgins and widows, not only the higher clergy, but even the lower orders in the Church were wholly or in great part exempted from the ordinary burdens of the subject. Indeed, if the letter of Julian's decree may be pressed, the conclusion would be that the bare profession of Christianity in some cases bestowed pecuniary advantages. Not seldom too, besides special endowments of churches and the like, the clergy received fixed allowances of the public corn without payment. The system was unmistakably pernicious. It  crippled  the State and burdened industry; it pauperized and not less corrupted the Church by making Christianity a form of money investment. Julian at a stroke did away with this large class of immunities.   

He decreed, not indeed of any conscious kindness to the Church, that all decurions who as Christians claimed exemption from public burdens, should be restored to the tax-roll. Though a few more vehement advocates  decried the enactment as persecuting, its substantial justice is tacitly admitted by soberer ecclesiastical writers.  No other edict preserved in the Theodosian Code mentions the Christians by name; obviously these need no defense, as they merit no reproach. When Julian went beyond this, and conferred immunities and allowances of corn on Pagan priests, he swerved from strict justice and sound economy, though merely adopting, be it remembered, the practice of all his predecessors. In the one case where details are furnished the corn and wine dues are not granted to the priests for their own support, but for distribution among the sick and needy, the alleged motive being that Jews and Christians may not have all the good almsgiving to themselves.

Nor was it Christians alone whom he robbed of their exemptions. Their due share of taxes is exacted from all hereditary holders of estates and from all landowners, all private arrangements between vendors and lessees and tax-collectors being strictly prohibited. On the other hand certain exemptions are accorded. One edict of the kind guaranteeing large vested immunities to privileged persons appears wide in scope. Another secures the customary privileges of physicians of the highest grade. New exemptions are accorded only to limited classes and in acknowledgment of special services to the state. Military service would seem to take precedence. Three years of military service exonerate all agentes in palatio from subsequent curial functions, while ten years suffice to do the same for all of curial descent. There are but two other exempting enactments preserved in the Theodosian Code. The first is characteristic and runs thus: “First of all things comes war; second, letters the adornment of peace. Therefore on all engaged in the service of our scrinia, we bestow the second place in privilege: all who have served for 15 years in the office of records and in the due custody of dispatches and charters shall be, every liability notwithstanding, excused from curial obligations”. The one remaining immunity granted is very complete; for it absolves even from assessment as a decurion; its attainment in the fourth century must have been indeed exceptional, and perhaps not ill-deserved; it was the guerdon reserved for fathers of thirteen children!

In his imperial progresses Julian was used to confer privileges on special towns. But these took most generally the form of increased municipal privileges—for Julian did his utmost to foster a healthy spirit of independence and self-government—or of special rights or freedoms for the promotion of trade or the encouragement of religion. No instance is reported of the remission of the ordinary taxes. Church writers complain, and not improbably with some partiality displayed towards Pagan cities, but as specific instances are not alleged, and the murmurs are withal rare, this can hardly have been very aggravated, and would pro­bably, could the truth be discovered, resolve itself into indirect favors conferred on cities possessed of famous sanctuaries. What he did not confine his favors to Pagan cities is certain from his treatment of Constantinople and Antioch.

By origin and tradition Constantinople was Christian to the backbone. At Julian's accession alone among great cities it had not even one temple: yet he showered benefits upon it. Than Antioch there was no more 'protestant' city in the Empire, nor any wore defiant against Julian personally. Yet he by no means withheld from it wise favors, and was able to make there large abatements of taxation. It is observable that while Julian thus carefully restricted immunities, and exacted their due quota impartially from all holders of property, and while he constantly bore in mind the needs and welfare of his poorer subjects, he did not rush into the opposite extreme of bringing down the wealthy. In the absence of much indirect taxation there was a dangerous tendency to this in Imperial finance. No class in the state were so heavily taxed in Proportion to their means as the curiales: accordingly Julian while fining severely all evasion of their duties was careful in the same edict to protect them from undue exactions. In the same way he declined to levy either from senators or others forced contributions to the so-called 'Crown Gold,' declaring it by edict voluntary in fact and not in pretence alone.

If it was to general principles, to annulling exemptions and enforcing honest punctual collection of the taxes that Julian devoted his fullest energies, he did not neglect surveil­lance over minor matters and removed at least one burdensome abuse with a very firm hand. Throughout the empire one of the normal demands made upon the subject was the repair of roads and the provision of horses for the public service of the district.

Rising from small beginnings, the charge had reached formidable dimensions: it had become the fashion for not merely the highest functionaries, but for all provincial magnates or petty officers of state to travel hither and thither at the public expense. Not content with the modest one-horse vehicle, they required their two and their three horses as the case might he, or perhaps a train of carriages to transport their wives, children and baggage to boot. To such a pass had things come, that even the transport of bulky wares, the conveyance of blocks of marble for the enrichment of private edifices, and suchlike gratifications of luxury were charged upon the suffering provincials.

The system had become a crying scandal: the poor were sinking under the burdens it involved: the whole administration of the public post threatened to break down under its own weight. More than one vigorous decree copes with this evil. The privilege is restricted to certain defined officials; none but the governor is permitted to use it at discretion: on all others very definite limitations are imposed both as to the character of the vehicle and the frequency of use: no extension of these is allowed except under the Imperial hand. Bishops, it appears, had under the regime of Constantius been among the most hardened offenders. Ammian singles them out as the chief culprits, and if so they would be among the sufferers, or rather the losers by Julian's decree. But so far as the edict itself particularizes, it is 'the inordinate requirements and restless peregrinations' of 'prefects, magistrates and consulars' that are assailed: nothing but prejudice can expound this legislation by religious sympathies or antipathies.

On the whole, though Julian—as his Antioch Corn Laws testify—was not infallible enough to escape every economical error, it cannot be gainsaid, what even his vilifiers admit, that he relieved the overtaxed provincial, that he checked official avarice, that he diminished pauperism, and gave honest industry its rightful due, in fact, that to the extent of his powers and knowledge he labored, without fear and without favor, to protect without pampering the poor, to toll without plundering the rich, to economies yet not stint imperial expenditure.

Over Julian's judicial legislation, apart from the already judiciary recorded Chalcedon Commission, there is no call to linger. It aims at improving the procedure of courts, at preventing partialities, at mitigating the position of debtors, at protecting minors and amending the marriage laws, but can nowhere be twisted to a suspicion of religious partisanship, unless indeed the abolition of the irregular Church jurisdiction that mad already sprung up for the settlement of wills, the appropriation of property, and the arbitration of suits, by episcopal courts can be included in that category.

With regard to administration the case stands differently. Statements diverge concerning Julian's choice of his subordinates. Rufinus declares that Julian debarred Christians from becoming governors of provinces, on the ground that their law forbade them to inflict capital punishment; others dilate on the rapacity, arrogance and inhumanity of his prefects and officers. It is true that in parting spite he inflicted a rough governor on the recalcitrant Antiochenes. But the fellow seems to have frightened his troublesome vassals into order without any great enormities. On the other hand even Gregory of Nazianzus, though maligning Julian's creatures, and averring that apostasy was the royal load to office, seems elsewhere to admit some sort of justification for the pride Julian took in his selection of agents, and Mamertinus avers that in selecting governors he looked not to intimacy of friendship, but to blamelessness of cha­racter. The most natural conclusion is that, as might prima facie be expected, Julian's appointments were for the most part or perhaps altogether confined to Pagans, but that in making his choice he used all possible discrimination.   

In theory, if not in act, he certainly laid much stress on the duty of careful selection of his ministers by the monarch. What diligence he displayed in providing against preventable abuses of power has been already shown. This very diligence exposed him to misrepresentations: he enacted a salutary decree that any one of whatsoever rank or order who had attained to public functions of any kind whatsoever by irregular or underhand methods should forthwith forfeit all emolument therefrom derived. As a matter of course the officials, who were nominated by Constantius, were by profession Christians to a man. And Christian writers were too apt to regard as martyrs for their faith men whose degrada­tion was really due to far less honorable causes. Artemius secured a decent or even honorable niche in ecclesiastical records; even Bp. George himself was supposed to have been transfigured into the titular saint and patron of English chivalry.

There is in the Theodosian Code one Statute which may fairly be traced to religious differences. It is a sort of police regulation against trespass and desecration of grave plots, accompanied by a clause prohibiting funerals  by day, as inauspicious and unpleasant to the living, without any gain to the dead. Though the philosophy of the decree is explained and justified in a lengthy rescript, quite in Julian's own manner, in which he expounds the natural affinities between Darkness and the Grave, Sleep and Death, and the probable diversities between the Gods Celestial and the Gods Infernal, with some enlargement on the dissonance of funerals with the market, the law-court, the daily round of town life, and above all the worship of the Gods, the date of the decree, and the place, Antioch, irresistibly compel us to connect it with the famous removal of the bones of Babylas, and the impulse thereby given to converting public funerals into  Christian  demonstrations. So viewed the decree remains legitimate enough, rather a wise safeguard against irritating disorders than in any sense persecution.

Julian's legislation on property touched the Church on one of its tenderest sides. The age of endowments, of magnificent buildings, of landed estates and propertied communities had commenced. The fervor of acquisition, which late emperors had so fostered, received from Julian a rude slap. He decreed in general terms that municipal property which during late troubles had passed into private hands should be restored to the townships, to be leased out at a just valuation. Equitable as was the spirit of the decree, its practical execution involved many hardships and aroused fierce resentment. Much of the property in question, probably by far the greater portion, had passed into the hands of Christians, not seldom  for directly religious purposes.

During the later years of Constantius, when fortune had sunned him into a full-blown tyrant, capricious, arrogant and intolerant, pagans had everywhere felt the weight of the displeasure of their most Christian king. Never perhaps was monarch served by more unscrupulous ministers: his organized system of espionage drove every true man from his court and his service: if such a one held to his post, he soon became, like Silvanus, the victim of the plots of the wretched underlings whose interests he thwarted. Men of the Eusebian stamp were everywhere busy at their work of spoliation and embezzlement. Independently of these private depredations, an almost official pillage of temples was carried on. Some were rifled, some closed, some completely demolished. Now the edict decreed the restoration of all these. It was enforced upon Christian Bishops, like Eleusius of Cyzicus, no less than upon unprincipled speculators.

Injustice once committed, nothing is harder than to repair it. Reparation too often involves injustice hardly less grievous than that which it attempts to cure. Of this the present edict is an instance. That the original owners should receive compensation was fair and reasonable: that the existing owners should give the compensation by no means followed. In many cases the property in question had been put up to open sale, and the title of the owner was perfectly legitimate. The real defaulter had long ago disappeared, or wasted the proceeds, or perhaps met his proper doom. A case in point is that of Theodulus, a Christian gentleman of Antioch. He had the misfortune to buy (at its full price) a plot of ground fraudulently come by: he had beautified it by a palatial residence, which formed a new ornament to the town. The site had now to be restored to the city authorities, and all that was upon it mercilessly confiscated or destroyed. Another Christian, Basiliskus by name, who in their darker days had befriended Pagan fellow-townsmen, found himself on similar grounds called upon for an enormous compensation; nothing but the leniency of his creditors stood between him and absolute penury. These are instances furnished by Pagan evidence: they serve to show the incompleteness of a decree in its main tenor perfectly equitable.

There is one class of cases, in which the complications were greater still. There was no commoner destination of the sites, materials or embellishments of heathen temples than their conversion to the use of Christian sanctuaries. Often enough the holders had no real vested right of ownership: some unprincipled patron had perhaps handed over to the church, by way of atonement for his sins, a rich site or a handsome edifice torn from the rightful proprietors. One ordinary sample will illustrate the action of the edict.

At Tarsus, on his way to the Persian war, Artemius, priest of the temple of Esculapius at Aegea, represented to Julian that the chief Christian minister of the place had taken away the temple columns and employed them in rearing a Christian Church. The emperor forthwith ordered restoration of the stolen property at the expense of the bishop. In this and analogous cases a real grievance, not the less real because it may he dubbed sentimental, was involved. However faulty the title, the place had now become holy, set apart by episcopal Benediction, sanctified by the feet of worshippers, consecrated maybe by the tombs of martyrs.

The rare marble that held the holy water or formed the altar slab had been torn perchance from Pagan shrines, yet had not the sacramental water rested there and the holy elements reposed upon it? The gold of the chalices and the jewels that sparkled round them had graced the thank offering to some heathen God, yet now had not the blood of Christ made them forever sacred?

It is easy to imagine the strength of passions stirred by such associations, and the bitterness of disputes into which they entered. In some cases a compromise might be effected by pecuniary compensation; in others this was impossible; in others refused. No better illustration could be found than the story of Mark of Arethusa. He had taken advantage of Constantius' proclivities to demolish an ancient and much revered temple, and on its site had reared his metropolitan church.

The order came that he should restore the site and rebuild the shrine; or as an alternative provide the equivalent sum according to fair valuation. He refused to do either. Avoiding the fury of the rabble, at first he fled. The mob then turned upon his followers. Hearing of the danger in which he had exposed his flock, the old man returned to brave their rage. His grey hairs won him no reverence, nor his stately bearing. There were magistrates and philosophers and ladies there; but none raised a hand in his defense. He was stripped naked and dragged through the filth. Wanton women jeered him; schoolboys pricked him with their pens, or leaped upon him. When abuse and insult had exhausted themselves, the holy man, bruised, bleeding, torn, but still alive, was smeared with honey and treacle, and hung up at, the prey of bees and wasps.

But his spirit rose at every affront; his tone grew higher each moment. Suspended there he told them scornfully that he was higher than they. He rejected every overture. Not one penny, be said, could a Christian bishop contribute to the cost of a Pagan shrine. He would as soon pay the whole as a single penny. Nothing could move him, or extort one word of compromise. Hit stubborn patience turned the laugh, says Sozomen, against his persecutors; and even among the highest officers of state new souls that day were added to the Church.

This may serve as a sample of the working of this famous edict. Though his steadfastness of faith, and his courage under torture may condone his fault, clearly Mark was in the wrong. The original aggressor he was bound to make full reparation. Cases analogous to these and few in number hardly merit the name of persecution. Yet during the opening months at any rate of his reign it is difficult to adduce others against Julian. In the enactment of this edict and impartial judgment will acquit him of bigotry or willful persecution. The worst charge that can be brought is that of haste and indiscretion, a serious but more venial allegation.

No bare edict could meet the case. A permanent commission could alone have examined and adjusted conflicting claims, for which Julian's own enactment rightly laid down the general rule. In places doubtless acting magistrates exceeded their commission, but this must not be laid entirely at Julian's door. It was the fear of Julian's displeasure which more than anything else restrained the mob of Arethusa from the worst extremities of violence. Mark was the bishop who had saved him when a child of six from the clutch of the murderers. From respect for Julian's wrath even the infuriated mob dared not put him to death: nor did the emperor subsequently withdraw his sheltering aegis. Thus even this horrible tale becomes a testimony to Julian's personal tolerance rather than his violence.

It is time to pass to Julian's directly religious legislation. In that department his policy was, it need hardly be said reactionary. Historians impute to him an eagerness to undo the work of Constantius. If Constantius had exiled Christians, Julian recalled them: clerical immunities which Constantius had granted Julian rescinded; his favors are said to have been more marked towards the sects or the indi­viduals, who had been visited by his predecessor with the severest tokens of displeasure. If there is partial truth in the charge that Constantius' adoption of one policy was in itself a recommendation of the opposite to Julian, he certainly did not hamper his action by this petty negative conception.

His idea of the true relations of Church and State was too large, too positive, it might almost be said too dogmatic for such a procedure. He may justly be called the Constantine of Paganism. Not merely because in his religious legislation he returned to the lines laid down by the edict of Milan, with this difference, that while free toleration was accorded to all, the weight of State favor and material support was transferred from the Christians to the Pagans: but also because he did Endeavour in some sort to realize a Pagan Church, to create a mutually helpful union between the State and the new Church, at once imparting religious sanctions to services undertaken for the state, and conversely conferring recognized civic rank on the ministers of religion, in a word to establish Paganism.

But though prima facie the Constantine of Paganism, he was actuated by a more religious spirit than the Christian Constantine. Both hoped to effect a spiritual as well as temporal unity in the Roman Empire. But with Constantine the union of Church with State was attempted primarily in the interests of the latter. Julian conceived religious unity to be no less important than political. The achievement of the former was of the two the higher task. The priest took precedence of the magistrate; Julian as Pontifex Maximus, Pope Julian as one writer calls him, was a more exalted personage than Julian Imperator: the suppression of Germany, the overthrow of Persia were preliminaries to the reconstruction of Hellenism.

This reconstruction aimed at nothing less than a federation of all existing cults into a Pagan Church Catholic, realizing its intellectual unity in the doctrines of Neo-Platonism, its administrative in the person of the Emperor its head.

His conception of this Pagan Church will be presently examined:  at this point its relation to the body politic alone comes under discussion. All persecution of Paganism was as a matter of course forbidden: the destruction of Pagan temples became a criminal offence, an attack upon the property of the State. The official observance of Sunday and Christian feasts was at once discontinued. But much more positive steps were taken. The world-stage  witnessed a veritable transformation scene.

It was one of Julian's first acts to insure the re-opening of the temples; he did not confine himself to exhortation or example: charges were laid upon the Christian destroyers, grants were made from the Imperial treasury, in aid of restoration; worshippers, in the army if not elsewhere, were officially remunerated; immunities were granted to priests, or at least privileges conferred upon them. The great festivals of heathendom, the Ludi Saeculares for instance, were reinaugurated with historic pomp.

The Emperor, Pontifex Maximus, became in virtue of his office head of the Church, Defender of the Faith: he turned the palace into a temple: at sunrise and sunset he offered libations: he appointed priests; established grades and orders; distributed provinces into dioceses; visited of deprived unworthy priests; prescribed rules of Church Discipline; regulated vestments, precedence civil and ecclesiastical, celebration of festivals, indeed everything short of doctrine, which was left to national or congregational predilections.

Nor was it within the Church alone, as distinct from State, that he manifested this activity. The Church was to be a definitely recognized factor in the State, almost another aspect of the State itself. Now the first duty of the State, almost its raison d'être, was war; from a Roman point of view that function took undisputed precedence of all arts of peace.

In so far, the Emperor himself excepted, the army was the truest as well as the most tangible representative of the State. It was there that Julian made the most consistent efforts to revive Paganism, and that his efforts were most rewarded with success. Religion with the army had always been the main a matter of discipline; Constantine had made services a part of drill. Reconversion was easy. Soldiers tendered very unquestioning adhesion to the creed of a successful and thoroughly popular commander: and a little pious adjustment of decorations and promotions would produce a most rapid and sensible effect. When Christianity was publicly adopted as the state religion, such religious requirement as army discipline recognized were modified suitably to the emergency.

Now that Christianity yielded in turn to Paganism, the reverse process ensued as a matter of course. The religious observance of Sunday was officially ignored. The Labarum was in turn supplanted. The genius of Rome replaced the figure of the Cross. Statues of the Emperor, were surrounded with Pagan emblems; he was represented as receiving from Jupiter the purple and the diadem, or going to battle with the approving smile of Mars. Christian writers, new and old, have combined to interpret this as a cunning plot, worthy of the Apostate, to catch men unaware and render them unconscious perverts.

In reality it was nothing of the kind; it was the most obvious and the only consistent carrying out of Julian's first principles. Rather, it would have been duplicity to do otherwise. Julian did not conceal his Paganism: he paraded it. To have played the Pagan as an individual, as legislator, and as Pontifex Maximus, and then to have flinched from the part as Imperator would have been sheer childishness. He claimed the right which in Roman law and public opinion he indubitably possessed, of regulating the religious ceremonial of the State. The view that such representations as those just alluded to were crafty traps to contrive that men, in doing obeisance to their Emperor, should in the act pay homage to the heathen Gods, is a clumsy aspersion, far less consonant with the character or the political position of Julian. It is on a line with that reading of history, which can only explain, Julian's abstinence from persecution, by assuming that he grudges Christians the honor of martyrdom.

There is one occasion at least, which has been somewhat colored by Gregory's rhetoric, on which state ritual evoked rebellion. It was usual to celebrate great festivals on the emperor's natal day by a donative to the praetorian troops. It had been the immemorial custom, in loyal acknowledgment of the gift, to sprinkle frankincense upon the altar prepared in readiness.

When Julian's day of distribution came, the antique custom was adhered to. The ceremony was made easy even to the scrupulous. No Pagan image was there, no Pagan God invoked. There was mere compliance with a piece of military etiquette. So those that hesitated were assured, and so the judicious reader may still be ready to believe. At the time not a man seems to have demurred. Afterwards, however, when they had returned to quarters, as they sat at mess, significant innuendoes were flung wit, whether by the zeal of indiscreet Pagans or the malice of renegade Christians. Over the cups words ran high: consternation and uproar ensued. Some of the more vehement Christians, carried away by excitement, rushed to the palace, loudly proclaiming their loyalty to Christ. It was an act of mutiny; and Julian was too wise and strict a disciplinarian to allow such military insubordination to pass unnoticed. Christianity was the last pretext that he was likely to accept as an excuse for license. He ordered the ringleaders to be logged. But this sentence, in deference we are given to understand to popular feeling, he subsequently commuted for exchange to a less favored military post.

An analogous policy was pursued in the empire at large. Pagan emblems were re-adopted in the Imperial mint; in the strictly Roman coinage impersonations of the Glory, the Valor, or the Safety of Rome predominate; but on the Alexandrian the commonest of impressions is the Serapis head, with some personification of Nilus, Anubis, or Isis, on the reverse; the latter very variously figured, sometimes crowned with the lotus or holding the sistrum, now standing on her galley, or drawn in her hippopotamus car, or once again mounted on wolf or dog, or suckling the infant Horus. On the few surviving specimens of Antiochene coinage occurs more than once the veiled Genius of Antioch with her turreted crown and at her feet a river God, while Apollo is portrayed on the reverse. Even more distinctively Pagan than these is the die representing the sacrificial bull with twin stars above the victim's head. Strangely enough no single coin with the impress of a heathen God bears Julian's name.

Public buildings received a similar treatment. The great public fountain at Antioch for instance was dedicated to heathen Gods. Theodoret scents a plot to incriminate Christians in the guilt of eating meats or drinking from vessel that had been sprinkled with the lustral water of a heathen deity. A less unfavorable construction is more in accordance with the facts.

Julian did but reassert the right assumed by Constantine, the right namely of the Emperor to share that religious liberty which was the privilege of his subjects. But the Emperor was in many respects the individual representative of the State. He was so in religion as in other things. The State religion was in other terms the religion of the Emperor, not the religion of the majority, or of any representative body.

With   a change in the Emperor's religion came necessarily a change in the State ceremonial, wherever religion came into play. It was a matter of course that at Julian's accession the State religious ceremonial should change. He had as perfect a right to restore Pagan Ensigns as had Constantine to introduce the Labarum. It was no more mean of Julian to set Jupiter over the head of his statues than of Constantine to be portrayed with the Cross. It was as natural for him to dedicate public buildings to heathen Gods as for Constantine to dedicate them to martyrs.

VIII.

PERSECUTION UNDER JULIAN