MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

THE EMPEROR JULIAN THE APOSTATE

CHAPTER VIII.

PERSECUTION UNDER JULIAN

The Christian historians appear, if but roughly, to recognize two distinct periods in Julian's reign, or at least a change of policy, which though it cannot be assigned definitely to a very precise time or place, yet stamped the beginning and close of his reign with distinguishable characters. “At the outset of his reign”, writes Socrates, “the emperor Julian was indulgent to all alike, but as time went on he began to display partialities”. And Theodoret is hardly less explicit.

True the materials have been so ill labeled and sorted, that only approximate correctness can be attained: but something will be gained in precision if we refer to the period of the residence at Antioch such  incidents as demonstrably fall within it, grouping the rest together even at the risk of sometimes unduly   anticipating.  Further, in considering charges of persecution during the earlier part of Julian's reign, it will be well to discriminate various classes into which the alleged instances naturally fall.

First, instances of local outbreaks of popular violence: secondly, official acts of persecution by local governors: thirdly, cases in which the emperor was directly implicated. Under our first head might fall the sufferings of Mark of Arethusa, which have already been recited.

A more notorious instance is the fate of the virgins of Heliopolis. In this town had flourished a famous temple of Venus, in connection with which the inhabitants used to drive a vile but lucrative trade in their daughters' virtue. Constantine had closed, and apparently destroyed the shrine on the score of the licentiousness of the rites there practiced. A church was erected in its place: a community of holy virgins replaced the 'priestesses' of Venus. This Christian travesty of what had been, bitterly galled the pagan patrons of the shrine. For years they brooded revengefully, but impotently. On the accession of Julian, leave was given to reopen the temple. The elated Pagans were wild with joy. The time for retaliation had come. Cyril the deacon who in the reign of Constantine, fired with godly zeal, had broken in pieces many of the sacred idols was seized, killed and disemboweled by the savage mob. Fitly to inaugurate old forms of Venus-worship, the holy virgins were stripped naked, publicly exposed, and after every indignity ripped up, and their entrails flung to the pigs. Such is the account of Sozomen, and we do not hear of condign punishment being inflicted on the offenders.

Theodoret gives a very similar story of outrage on Christian priests and virgins at Ascalon and Gaza. In case of the latter we have a more particular account of the martyrdom of the brothers Eusebius, Nestabus and Zeno.  In the dark days of Paganism the three had been conspicuous for the insults and injuries they heaped on the temples and images of the Gods. At the time of the reaction they were imprisoned and then scourged. Their  taunts and mutual exhortations enraged the bystanders to such heat, that women with their bodkins, cooks with boiling water, and roughs with sheer force of hauling and tossing and bruising worried to death their helpless victims.

What is important to notice is that the whole affair was an unpremeditated outburst of passion, not any systematized persecution: and further, that the perpetrators, as soon as sober reflection revealed the true nature of their excesses, seriously dreaded sharp chastisement from the imperial justice: reports of Julian's vexation went abroad, and that he even thought of decimating the mob who were implicated. The sequel, as Sozomen gives it, must in fairness be added. The rumor of the Emperor's anger turned out mere gossip. So far from even blaming the popu­lace, Julian deposed the governor of the district of his office giving him to understand that his previous leniency presumably towards Christians looked suspicious, and that he had exceeded his rights in putting the ringleaders of the riot under arrest. “What need to arrest the fellows”, he said, for retaliating on a few Galileans for all the wrongs they had done to them and the Gods?” Here therefore, if Sozomen's tale be true, we have an ex post facto implication of Julian in a passionate outburst of persecution.

The records of acts of desecration are curiously scanty; perhaps from their very commonness they became so much a matter of course, that to enumerate them was beneath the dignity of history. Samples however are not wanting. Independently of the confiscation of church vessels, as at Antioch or Caesarea, accompanied by acts of grossest profanation, Sebaste was stripped of her treasured relics, the reputed bones of Elisha and of John the Baptist, while at Emesa the pagans burnt the martyrs' shrines and rededicated the church to Dionysus Gynnis, setting up withal a grotesque image of the androgynous deity; some similar profanation took place at Epiphania in Syria, and Ambrose speaks of two Christian basilicas being fired by the Jews. At Paneas (Caesarea Philippi), the miracle-working statue of Jesus was thrown from its pedestal in the sacristy of the Church, and ruthlessly broken in fragments. 

Under our present head no other instances of persecution with bloodshed are alleged with any pretence to exactitude, in the earlier months of Julian's reign. To summaries then the results so far obtained. First, the instances are surprisingly few, three at most: secondly, individuals only were assailed, not classes: thirdly, each case is of the nature of an outburst of passion, nothing approaching methodical persecution occurs: finally, every instance is distinctly retaliative, and the provocation given was considerable. On the whole we infer that during Julian's earlier months there were quite remarkably few cases of intolerance proceeding to bloodshed: and that the Emperor's influence must have been, as more than once we have proof that it was, strongly exerted on the side of peace and toleration.

We have next to handle the reported instances of official persecution, and to consider how far they reflect upon Julian

The first case for notice is that of S. Emilian. He was a young soldier, resident at Dorostolus, a town in Thrace. Pagan worship, for some time in abeyance, having been reinaugurated there under the impulse of court favour, Emilian, indignant at what he deemed a sacrilegious insult, made his way into the temple, overturned the altars, and flung sacrifices and libations right and left. For this offence he was brought to the bar of Capitolinus, scourged, and put to a cruel , death by burning. His punishment calls for two remarks. First, by medieval and more modern use death by burning became more or less the monopoly of religious misdemeanors, but Roman law appears to have recognized it still as a penalty for purely political offences. Secondly, as to the severity of the punishment. The Church has canonized S. Emilian, we are told, owing to the disproportion between his offence and its chastisement. Now sacrilege by the roman code was by no means a venial peccadillo: still more, at a time when public feeling was perilously tense, when a taunt or a prank might have proved the signal for a general riot, exploits like that of Emilian could not but become dangerously incendiary in character, and merit corresponding severity of treatment.

Another cardinal instance of savage zeal against Christian Sacrilege is that of the prefect Amachius. At Merus in Phrygia the decaying temple had been by official order re­stored, and the statues belonging to it cleaned and replaced. Such proceedings incensed the Christians, and one morning the guardian of the temple woke to find the cherished statues shivered in pieces. The prefect was not unnaturally enraged: to shelter the innocent from his anger, the real perpetrators, three young Phrygians named Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tatian, generously surrendered to justice. They were granted the option of offering sacrifice, but scornfully refused thus to redeem their guilt. They suffered torture with great constancy, and as the terrible penalty of their sacrilege were slowly roasted to death.

Ancyra was another place at which the strife of parties appears to have been both violent and confused. Perhaps the prospect or the realization of the Emperor's presence in the town stimulated zeal into fanaticism. We read of a pertain Busiris, of the sect of the Encratites, who for insults against the Pagans was arrested by order of the Governor, tortured and imprisoned, and only released on the news of Julian's death. Genellus, we are briefly told, was crucified. But in the case of S. Basil of Ancyra we have far more pungent particularities. This fiery young presbyter had been put under arrest for insults publicly offered to persons engaged in sacrifice, and for seditious preaching in the streets. Brought before the bar of Saturninus the Proconsul, and exhibiting nothing but the most uncompromising defiance, he was flogged and imprisoned. There he was visited by a special imperial commissioner Pegasius, whom he taunted with apostasy. After a second hearing before the Proconsul, Basil was remanded until the arrival of the Emperor. Julian summoned the saint before his tribune. His efforts to convince him of the foolishness of Christianity were met with reproaches and anathemas. 'Misguided man”, said the Emperor at last, “I wished to set you free; as you do but reiterated insult, and spurn my advice, and treat me to one affront after another, the dignity of Empire requires that seven strips be flayed from your body every day”. In the sequel we are told how the confessor cast one of the ordained strips in the Emperor's face, saying, “Take, Julian, the food you relish”. His indignant warder forthwith made the daily flaying more severe, and on Julian's departure for Antioch ended his slow torture by execution. When brought to the block all traced of the martyr's scars had miraculously disappeared, so that his body was presented to the executioner pure and whole as his soul was to the Saviour! As the irons heated white hot were plunged into his entrails, he fell into a sweet sleep and died! The Acts intimate, what Sozomen’s more sober account states explicitly, that his death was contrary to the Emperor's will.

The evidence is now duly ranged and marshaled, which will enable the reader to distinguish equitably between Julian and his subordinates. In times of great religious excitement embittered partisans invariably outrun their orders. It was so at Ancyra: it was so later at Alexandria, where fines and  corporal  punishments were inflicted, we read, “beyond the Imperial instructions”. In such cases their party is made responsible for their excesses, and not altogether unjustly. But an individual leader of a party is morally innocent, if he has neither inflamed nor approved such outrageous exhibitions of zeal. By this standard, no man can rate Julian's culpability very high. On the whole, whether we regard the dealings of citizens with one another or of governors with their subordinates, we may fairly congratulate all parties concerned on the general restraint put upon actions in an age when sectarian animosities, alike in feeling and in word, ran very strong. Since the promulgation of the Edict of Milan principles of tolerance had made enormous strides.

Christians as a body, whatever may have keen the conduct of a Constantius or of not a few scheming relates, had not yet renounced tenets which during three Centuries of oppression they had urged importunately. It had come to the turn of the Pagans to advocate like principles in their own interest—and this was done now as before not only by Julian, but by most leading Hellenists, eminently by the most representative of all, Libanius. Hence it came about that only a few individual, and it may almost be added pardonable, instances of persecution resulted from the spas­modic reintroduction of an abandoned State-religion, in penance of the sentiments of the subjects at large. For these stories of persecution entirely corroborate what is certain from other sources, namely, that Christianity was at this time consciously the winning religion. They prove that the bureaucratic machinery of a perfectly centralized despotism was impotent seriously to check Christianity, nay had a struggle even to vindicate its proper rights and secure respect for its established ceremonial.

Where persecution did occur, it was provoked, if not necessitated, by Christians: Christians took the initiative in intolerance. Nor need this surprise. There is a noble intolerance which Christianity has always avowed; laying claim to be universal, she has never patiently acquiesced in the triumph or coexistence of a rival: never, except when palsied by corruption or indifference. It is theoretically impossible for any universal religion to make truce with rival systems. To do so were an abdication of right, a confession of falseness. But Christianity has too often forgotten the sphere to which alone this noble intolerance may extend. She has confounded with it a bastard intolerance, unchristian in aim and action, intruding itself beyond the proper sphere of religion into outer spheres of thought, or science, or law, or policy, or even brute violence. Such was the case with Christianity at this epoch. No sooner had it attained legal equality with other religions than it claimed superiority; no sooner had superiority been granted, than elate with success it claimed autocracy and summoned State police to its assistance. A Pagan reaction, a reassertion of trampled superstitions, was a startling surprise. Astonished Christians used illegitimate means of resistance; not only breach of courtesy or breach of charity, but stubborn breach of law, was accounted a fair weapon for the fight. Nay even offensive tactics were adopted: Pagans had to seek protection from the law. Christianity had mistaken her right sphere of intolerance, and needed to be taught her error. For this end severe punishments were often necessary. And perse­cution is no right name for the assertion of the paramount majesty of law over the freaks of unruly citizens.

Finally, confining ourselves still to the earlier months of the reign, we consider Julian's personal implication in acts of persecution. The tenor of his laws, and to some extent his idea of the relations between Church and State are already before us. The simple remembrance of the principles therein embodied will explain many damaging charges. Oc. 20 was consecrated by the Greek and Latin Churches to the memory of Artemius, military prefect in Egypt, whom Theodoret represents as stripped of his goods and beheaded by 'the most humane' Emperor for his zeal against idols in the days of Constantius. In reality, a worthy successor to Sebastian, he was the detested abettor of the infamous Bp. George, whose Iniquities and exactions he upheld by military violence, and was put to death for civil not religious offences, one main allegation being complicity in the death of Gallus.

At Cyzicus the Novatian Church had been destroyed by Eleusius the orthodox bishop of the town. He was peremptorily required to rebuild it, and at a subsequent period was apparently banished by the Emperor from his see. At the same time Sozomen, who gives us the information, does not conceal that the assigned cause was political agitation. The offences named are desecration, and damage inflicted on Pagan shrines; institution of widows' houses, and establishments for sisterhoods; proselytism; introduction of bodies of Christian partisans into the town; organization of anti-Pagan demonstrations, more particularly among the important guilds of pie wool-workers and coin-casters.

Julian was naturally brought into constant contact with Christianity in his judicial functions. In one instance a whole town is said to have been prejudiced by the unjudicial religious animosities of the judge. Maiuma, the Piraeus of Gaza, for its devotion to Christianity, was elevated by Constantine to the rank of an independent city, and was christened Constantia after its benefactor's son. The Pagans of Gaza were violently jealous of their upstart dependents. The story of Eusebius and Nestabus has shown what extremes religious feuds reached. The independence of Maiuma was an injury as well as an insult, and one too ever present in a galling form. On Julian's accession the Gazaeans laid a plea before the Emperor. Be it that, as Christian historians say, he took especial delight in undoing the work of Constantine and Constantius, or rather that in pursuance of his avowed policy he desired to disconnect political and material advantage from religious creed, Julian rescinded the privileges and immunities conferred by Constantius. At the same time while unifying the municipal organization, he retained the twofold episcopal jurisdiction initiated by Constantine. The decision does not bear the stamp of a very violent odium theologicum, and taken alone cannot substantiate a charge of persecution against Julian.

In his personal demeanor as a judge Julian aimed at preserving rigorous impartiality. He was too loquacious and argumentative, too fussy and inquisitive, perhaps even too sensitive and too anxious after certainty, to be a really powerful judge. But he spared no pains and prided himself on his strict fairness. It was characteristic of the man to inquire of each pleader what religion he professed, if only to certify to himself as well as to others his superiority to all preju­dice. Anecdotes even like that of S. Basil of Ancyra, stripped of their sensational appendages, fairly bear out Ammian’s verdict that “neither religion nor anything else made him swerve from the path of equity”.

As an individual moreover, even when most nearly touched, he seems t0 have exercised the same self-control as in his official guise. Considering the impetuosity of his character, and not less the vanity which again and again peeps through the philosopher's mask, the following incident does Julian no small credit. The scene is laid at Constantinople, the imperial city. There the Emperor before assembled multitudes was doing public sacrifice to the Genius of the City. An old blind man is led in, Maris, the bishop of Chalcedon. Interrupting the solemn service, he brands the Emperor aloud with the title of Heathen and Apostate. Julian with charac­teristic want of dignity, taunted him with his blindness.

“Be sure”, he said, “your Galilean God will never heal you”. “Nay”, answered Maris, “I thank God for my blindness, that has spared me the sight of an apostate!” The Emperor had by this time recovered his composure, and without a word passed quietly out of the building. Of these earlier months better words could hardly be found than the terse summary of the Christian chronicler, who describes Julian's policy as “a gentle violence that strove to win not drive”.

But as months went by Julian, we are told, grew embittered. In the words of Theodoret, “Then did Julian begin more openly or rather more shamelessly to wage war upon the faith. Wearing a mask of clemency, he set snares and pitfalls to catch the unwary and bring them to everlasting perdition”. There was much to tempt it. In his policy of persistent toleration he stood almost solitary. It proved neither so easy nor so triumphant as he had anticipated. It was too often interpreted as conscious weakness by enemies, as a stupid scrupulosity by friends. Pagans besieged him with importunities; Christians nettled him by ingratitude. As fear subsided, sectarian animosities swelled more turbulently. Julian set out for the East bent on maintaining the same policy he had hitherto pursued. In his progress through Asia he was met constantly by indifference, not seldom by open derision. He was compelled to avoid or hurry by the more Christian towns. Arrived at Antioch, his tone assumes a sterner type. Writings and acts alike betray his mortification. It is this period we must now examine more minutely. His changed temper is evident in his correspondence. He chafes more irritably under opposition; he condescends to pettier expedients. Vexation sours his generosity: irritation distorts his sense of justice. His imperial acts faithfully reflect the personal asperities into which he was galled.

An instance of this is furnished by Julian's letter to the Julian and people of Bostra, dating from the earliest part of his residence at Antioch. It can hardly be omitted in the present connection, though strictly it involves   meanness, rather than violence, in the endeavor to put down Christianity. At Bostra much party rancor had been displayed. The rival religious factions were numerically well balanced, and the clergy seem to have incited the mob to various misdemeanors. Titus, however, the bishop, had at any rate done his utmost to appease irritation, and, the storm having abated, wrote to Julian to say that the Christians, though a fair match for the Pagans, had been restrained by his exhortations from any excesses. Thereupon Julian, trumping up a paltry charge against Titus of stigmatizing the citizens to belaud himself, advises the Bostrenians to drive out their bishop as a slanderer. So petty a piece of backbiting was received, it may be hoped, with the contempt it merited. In such conduct the Pagans found an incentive to persecution, outweighing many maxims of toleration. 

Referring at a venture to this same period the letter that deals with the Christians of Edessa, we have in it another display of signally bad taste, if no worse charge is involved. Constantius had handed over the great basilica of the place, dedicated to S. Thomas the Apostle, to the Arian faction. The Valentinians however formed a considerable party in the town. Internecine war raged between the two sects; till the weaker were suppressed by a series of atrocities, disgraceful to any civilized community. Hereupon Julian made the wealthy Arians feel the weight of imperial displeasure, by handing over the ecclesiastical funds to the resident military, and confiscating the church domain to fiscal uses. The punishment may have been deserved, but whether that be so or not, Julian had no right to add the scornful remark that such a deprivation of goods would minister for them a steadier entrance into that kingdom of heaven for which they Booked. It is just such a pettish unjudicial remark as reflects doubt on the justice of the sentence itself.

Julian's treatment of Cesarean, in time probably as in kind, belongs to this period. This town, the metropolis of Cappadocia, had in years gone by been adorned with throe handsome temples, two of which, those namely of Jupiter and Apollo, had been razed during the reign of Constantius. When Julian's policy of toleration became known, the town-council proceeded to demolish the surviving shrine sacred to the Genius of the State. Julian, indignant at this open defiance of his known sentiments, avenged the breach of state-law by penalties similar to but severer than those inflicted at Edessa. Not only were orders given for the immediate Restoration of the temples, the confiscation of the ecclesiastical estates, and the imposition of a fine of 300 lbs. of gold, but a capitation-tax was levied on all Christians, the prefect was deposed and banished, and the ecclesiastics degraded to the most costly and humiliating kind of military service.  We are told conjecturally that a certain noble, Eupsychius, was put to death with others of his co-religionists, but against the will of the Emperor. If Sozomen is correct in his facts, the  penalty decreed was  certainly severe, though hardly exceeding the provocation.

To turn from Asia to Africa, Alexandrian politics engaged a considerable share of Julian's attention. At his accession the see was occupied by the unscrupulous George. Armed violence of Constantius' agent had banished the lawful bishop Athanasius, and replaced him after horrible scenes of outrage and desecration by this infamous successor. The adherents of Athanasius, numbering all the better Christians of the town, had perforce tolerated the bishop whom in their hearts they hated: meanwhile in secret they were guided by the councils, and looked longingly for the return, of the fugitive Athanasius himself. George's real support was derived first from the Arian Court which had nominated him, afterwards from the rude soldiery who obeyed the governor's beck. No sooner had this governor Artemius, and some of his most guilty accomplices in crime expiated their past misdeeds before the bar of Julian's special tribunal, than George was left at the mercy of the citizens. For indeed Bishop George was yet more execrated by Pagans than by orthodox Christians. He violated their sanctuaries alike in word and act; he forbade their worship, openly threatening to set light to 'the death-vault,' as he contemptuously designated the principal temple of the place. A certain plot of land too, the site of the ancient Mithrium or temple of Mithras, had been made over to him for the erection of a church. In clearing the foundations a subterranean vault was found, in which numerous skulls were discovered, and a variety of grotesque implements were found, employed formerly for the inspection of livers, and for various bloody and obscene rites that characterized the Mithras cult. The bishop wantonly and mortally exasperated the heathen population by parading these through the streets amid the jeers and hoots of assembled crowds.

Riots followed, resulting in the incarceration of the bishop: subsequently watching their opportunity, the Pagans stormed the prison, dragged out the bishop, and kicked or trampled him to death. The disfigured remains they paraded through the streets on a camel, finally burning them and tasting the ashes into the sea. Two imperial officers, who had abetted his crimes, shared his fate. The Christians, little caring to defend so unworthy a chief, remained as a body passive spectators, certain of the more violent partisans of Athanasius actually compromising themselves among the Pagan rioters. To complete the tale, Julian, while acknowledging and denouncing the criminality of the detestable George, rebuked the Alexandrians for their precipitate violence in anticipating the hand of justice, and warns them that by their inhuman atrocity they had forfeited the good opinion of them he had but so lately expressed. He purposed at first sharp punishment, but eventually, beyond this rather faint reprimand, took no steps to bring the conspicuous culprits to justice, from respect, he says, to the God Serapis, and to their late governor Julian his uncle. In discerning Pagan partialities, which indeed are not far to seek, in this behavior, we must remember that it would have been an extremely delicate task to single out the ringleaders and to apportion punishments rightly, and further that Roman emperors from Caesar downwards had learnt to recognize and, if possible, conciliate, the   passions of the Alexandrian mob. Julian therefore contented himself with providing for the restoration and due conservation of George's valuable books to swell his private library.

Up to this point Athanasius had remained in concealment. Not even Julian's edict in favor of banished bishops had tempted him out of the deserts of the Thebais: his advent could but have embroiled matters and initiated new disturbances and schisms. No sooner however was George murdered, than Athanasius re-appeared. His return to the city was an ovation. A Christian father daringly compares his entry into Alexandria to that of the Lord Christ into Jerusalem. He came riding on the foal of an ass; before him people cast flowers and branches and rich tapestries, and shouted in acclaim. He soon showed that he had lost none of his old vigor; and yet had added to it increased forbearance and discretion. As peacemaker, as pastor, as evangelist, he carried all before  him. Chagrined at the Julian deadness of Pagans, Julian was exasperated at the vitality of “the Galileans”.

The impotence of his own revival was a dark contrast to the triumphs of Athanasius. He contracted a jealous hatred against that great man. He seldom speaks of him without some opprobrious epithet. Scoundrel, knave, adventurer, intriguer, accursed—such are the habitual terms of description. He formally charged Athanasius with insulting and contumelious defiance of law in thus returning to his see. The edict in favor of exiled bishops, he said, contemplated only return to their countries, not reinstatement in their sees. It was an instance of his habitual lawlessness thus to re-usurp his so-called episcopal throne without express permission from the Emperor.

Doubtless his conduct was displeasing to all God­ fearing citizens, and he was to depart forthwith from the city, the very day, says Julian, on which the letters of our clemency come to hand. Disregard of the order would entail a severe punishment. A more frank and no less imperious missive was at the same time addressed to Ekdikius the prefect. The impious Athanasius, it said, had actually dared to baptize pagan ladies of illustrious rank, and that while Julian was on the throne. He must forthwith be chased not from Alexandria merely, but beyond the confines of Egypt. In mefault of this a fine of 100 lbs. of gold should be levied on the prefect's division.

The emperor added with his own hand a violent postscript closing with the curt fierce malediction, “persecute him”. But the “God-fearing” citizens of Alexandria, so far from being displeased with their prelate, sent a deputation to the Emperor expressly to appeal for the revocation of the edict. It was in reply to this deputation that Julian wrote the well-known dispatch in which, contrasting the fatuity of the words of Jesus with the splendor of the deeds of Alexander of Macedon and the Ptolemies, he cries shame on the Alexandrians for their degenerate declension to that sect, whose spiritual ancestors (nobler far than their progeny) had been slaves to the very people the Alexandrians had subjugated. As for the scheming Athanasius, the villain, with whose shifty wiles and teaching they were so enchanted, the order for his expulsion not from Alexandria only but from all Egypt was emphatically repeated. Athanasius once more left his see an exile, with the prophetic words that it was a little cloud which would soon blow over. Julian's death put a stop to further proceedings; but in this case undeniably Julian's antipathies led him first to sophistry, which set forced interpretations on plain decrees, and then to bitterness which found vent in ill-mannered and undignified abuse, and which practically pledged Julian to open persecution. In fact no sooner had the bishop been chased away, than government officials proceeded to enrich themselves at the expense of Christians by exactions, which though unauthorized by Julian and indeed unconstitutional, were, if not connived at, at least unpunished by the Emperor.

If such was Julian's temper in dealing with outlying towns and provinces, what treatment did he accord to the disputatious townsmen of Christian Antioch? His residence there was an unbroken series of petty mortifications: they came to a head in what may be called the Babylas riot, which is significant enough to merit detailed description. At the hamlet of Daphne adjoining Antioch was the famous oracular spring of Castalia, which since the days of Hadrian had remained sealed from the eyes of men.

The prophecy that he should one day be Emperor was the last it had been suffered to announce. Julian, with the morbid curiosity and superstition that characterized him, desired to consult the sacred fount. He ordered the stones to be removed. The oracular voice was dumb; from the pollution, was said, of bodies that lay within the holy precincts. Sacrifices and libations could only extract a muffled reiteration, “The dead! The dead!” Among the bones that lay there, were those of the holy Babylas of Antioch, martyr and bishop. In their presence demons could find no voice to speak. By the Emperor's order, the spot was to be disenchanted of the spell by the most approved propitiatory rites. The removal of the honored bones gave occasion for a mass demonstration on the part of the Christians of Antioch.

Men, women, and children gathered in organized procession, and as they wound along the streets, behind the bier, sang aloud in chorus of antiphonal chanting, “Confounded be all they that worship graven images, and that delight in vain gods”. Again and again the triumphant denunciation of the Psalmist rang along the streets, as in the old time when Israel welcomed the ark to the hill of Sion. But the monarch was not now among the dancers or singers.    As he listened to that chorus of menace he rued bitterly the ill-judged order he had given; he issued an edict prohibiting funerals in the day-time: they were, said the decree, inauspicious, inconvenient, and to by­standers distasteful: henceforth obsequies were to take place at night, and to be occasions for mourning, not for parade or ostentation. This was not all: he pondered schemes of counter demonstrations, or revenge. While he thus brooded, a still more stinging injury trod close upon the last.

The magnificent shrine of Apollo stood sequestered amid deep groves of cypress, myrtle and bay, commemorating the metamorphosis of Daphne. Within, at the very spot where the kind earth had sheltered the nymph from her amorous pursuer, towered a colossal figure of the god overlaid with gold, and bending earthward with the golden libation cup; the statues and fountains had been renovated; the gardens smiled with choice exotics; all had been done to charm back the tutelar deity to his consecrated haunt.

One night the city was roused by the glare of a conflagration; at daybreak nothing of the great temple remained but charred walls and blackened columns standing amid a heap of ashes. How the fire arose was never ascertained: one probable account asserts that a Pagan philosopher had left a burning taper on the altar where he had placed his offerings. Whatever the true cause, accident, malice, or as the Christians said the descent of fire from heaven, Julian at least had no doubt it was the handiwork of “the atheists”. The principal church of Antioch closed, and the sacred vessels removed: at least one young Christian hero was placed on the rack. For the livelong day, from dawn till the tenth hour, hung Theodore upon the cruel horse, bearing the stinging torture of the harrowing hooks and the smart of the branding iron. Again and again! he chanted the triumphant refrain, “Confounded be all those that worship carved images”; and in after times would tell how there had seemed to stand beside him in those hours of trial a young man who wiped away the sweat of agony with a fine linen cloth, and sprinkled over him cool water, so that the rapture of the vision took from him all sense of pain. From such a sufferer as this no information could be gained he was released by imperial command, nor do we hear of other Christians being imprisoned or tortured.

If the purification and the burning of the temple of Daphne were the affronts on the largest scale that Julian had to bear, pettier aggravations were not lacking. In a principal street of the city lived Publia, one of the most prominent Christians in the town: she was mother of John, chief of the presbyters, who had more than once declined elevation to the Apostolic see of Antioch: herself a widow, she had founded a seminary for holy virgins, and superintended their training in person. Chanting was one of their accomplishments: and whenever the Emperor passed, they mere bidden to sing at the top of their voices:

“The idols of the heathen are silver and gold,

The work of men's hands.

They that make them are like unto them:

So is every one that trusteth in them”.

The Emperor ordered the singing to stop when he was passing by. Publia, disregarding the injunction, on the next occasion incited her choir to strike up,

"Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered;"

and succeeded in eliciting from the Emperor a public repri­mand.

John Malalas and the Paschal Chronicle yield an uncorroborated account of the death of the hermit St Dometius. The holy man had taken up his abode in a certain cave in the district of Cyrestica. Crowds resorted thither, to be healed of diseases. Julian told him to adhere to his self-imposed life of solitude: but the monk responded that he could not hinder them that came to him in faith. Then the Emperor ordered the cave to be walled up: and the saint remaining within died there.

It remains to consider a certain class of acts of persecution: those namely, directed against military offenders. The standard instance, that of the soldiers at Constantinople, has been already commented on. It has been shown that the punishment inflicted was exacted by the laws of military discipline, just as the original ground of offence was a natural outcome of the existing relations between Church and State. But though neither the punishment of the Constantinopolitan troops, nor kindred instances, deserve to be classed as persecutions, it will at least be fair to set them before the reader.

Valentinianus, the future Emperor, was, say the historians, Captain of the Jovians, the 'crack corps' of the Imperial Guards. As such he would walk immediately behind the Emperor on public occasions. One festival-tide he was thus in attendance on the Emperor, as he visited the temple of Fortune. At the entrance the sacristan sprinkled him with the lustral water. Like a good protestant, but a bad soldier, he ostentatiously shook off the drops, and rent away the polluted portion of his uniform, by one account actually abusing and striking the keeper of the shrine. Julian subsequently relegated him to the provinces for a military offence, but without degrading him from the army.

The names of Juventinus and Maximinus are enshrined in a homily of Chrysostom. They were legionaries and Christians. At some drinking bout, their hearts and tongues were enlarged to cry out against the abominations of the heathen reaction: quoting Scripture they said, “Thou didst deliver us into the hands of an unjust king, and the most wicked in all the world”. The mutinous words were reported. They were arrested and put upon their trial, at which they stiffly maintained the spirit of their previous utterances. Finally, on the charge of being drunk and disorderly, and having been guilty of treasonable language, they were put to death. Jan. 25 was kept holy as their day at Antioch, the scene of their martyrdom.   

Many others are said to have resigned rank or left the Military service, rather than deny the faith. The names of three future Emperors, Jovian, Valentinian, and Valens are given. Valentinian's case has been discussed. Jovian held one of the highest commands in Julian's own army at the time of the Emperor's death in the Persian campaign. About Valens corroborative evidence is lacking. To these names Paulinus adds that of a certain Victricius. How easily charges of persecution might falsely intrude in such cases is clear from the story of S. Martin. Enlisted at the age of fifteen, as a young man of twenty he was serving as a private in Julian's army. On the eve of an engagement conviction smote him of the wrongfulness of the soldier's calling. Thereupon he declined the donative distributed by the Caesar to encourage his troops, and announced his resolution to be God's soldier alone. To rebut an undeserved taunt of cowardice, the Saint professed his readiness to take his usual place in the ranks unarmed, relying for safety on the sign of the Cross alone. The danger blew over, and Martin renounced the service. How easily might this incident, which belongs to the period of Julian's Caesarship when he still professed the faith, be twisted into a charge of persecution! As it is he by no means escapes hard names from the pious narrator.

Julian's educational policy is so important as to demand a section to itself. The compliance with set forms of State religion exacted from the imperial troops admits obviously a different interpretation to that assigned to it in this work. With these, no doubt important, exceptions, the category of charges brought to affix on Julian the name of persecutor is complete; for we cannot seriously notice tales of the inspection of human livers, more particularly of ungrown boys and girls, sacrificed for the purpose. Nor again shall we give credence to Theodoret’s statement that the Emperor, having summoned Publia into the streets of Antioch, ordered one of his body-guard to box her ears and scratch her cheeks: or his still wilder figments that, after the Emperor's death, chests filled with heads were found at Antioch, and in a  temple at Carrhae, last visited by the Emperor and sealed till his return, the corpse of a woman suspended by the hair and ripped up to expose the fatidical reading of her liver. Some vague charges have been left unrehearsed, besides those considered in the account of Julian's legislation. Theodoret, for instance, says that all Christians were expelled from the army, while others modify the statement to expulsion from the household troops, the most privileged branch that is of the service. The history of the Persian campaign renders both charges demonstrably untrue. That to secure funds for the Persian campaign fines were levied on all who refused to sacrifice is highly improbable, though we can readily believe that Pagan tax-collectors did not abate their legal claims in assessing Christian contributors. Sozomen informs us that Julian replied to the ambassadors of beleaguered Nisibis, that if they wanted help they must first convert to Paganism: but answering this unproved imputa­tion stands the solid fact that in his Persian campaign Julian did dispatch aid to Nisibis.

With the above reservations no single allegation of real weight has been consciously omitted or underrated.  The collection of so many scattered charges into a single focus neces­sarily tends to intensify their real magnitude.  But on judicial survey of the whole evidence in array it is just to conclude—

1.- That no organized or widespread persecution prevailed during Julian's reign.

2.-That the sporadic instances which occurred were in almost every case provoked, and in part excused, by aggressive acts of Christians.

3.-That, while culpably condoning some Pagan excesses, the Emperor steadily set his face against persecution.

4.-That he never authorized any execution on the ground of religion; that, where his conduct amounted to persecution he did not abjure but set a strained interpretation on the laws of toleration which he professed.

 

IX.

JULIAN AND CHRISTIANITY