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Loading...Most people know that Constantine was the first Christian emperor. Lots of other things they think about him are wrong — for example, that he decided or helped to decide which books would be in the New Testament or that his conversion was just a political ploy. I deal with these in my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2019). But this one’s right. He was the first Christian emperor.
It’s also right that nearly all the emperors after Constantine were Christian. I say *nearly* because of one brief but highly noteworthy exception: his nephew Julian, most frequently referred to as Julian the Apostate. Julian ruled for nineteen months in 361-63 CE. His short reign was highly significant: Julian tried to turn the empire back to the ways and worship of paganism. He is called “the Apostate” because he started out as Christian but then opted to worship the traditional gods of Rome. And he tried to enforce this view on his Empire. Here is how I describe how he did that (or tried to do that) in my book.
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The Last Pagan Emperor
Julian spent his first six months as emperor in Constantinople, and then nine unhappy and turbulent months in Antioch, before marching against the Persians. He was killed early in the conflict, having ruled the empire for a mere nineteen months. It was, however, an eventful year and a half, especially for pagan-Christian relations. Upon ascending to the throne, Julian declared he had converted to paganism years earlier. (The very fact that he could understand paganism as a “religion” to which he could even convert shows just how much had changed by his time.) He made it one of his goals to reinstate traditional pagan sacrificial practices throughout the empire. That required him to suppress the burgeoning Christian movement.
We do not know why, exactly, Julian became such a passionate devotee of pagan traditions.
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We do know that as a studious young man, in addition to reading Christian literature, he devoured the pagan classics and was drawn to the moral world they portrayed. Moreover, his bad experience with Christians may have made the difference. His ardent Christian cousin Constantius II had arranged for the murder of all his male relatives.
In some ways Julian’s passionate devotion to the pagan cause was driven by a now-familiar motivation: he indicates that the gods “say they will give rewards for our labors, if we do not grow slack.” He certainly was not slack. At the beginning of his reign he reopened pagan temples, restored pagan rites, and declared universal religious tolerance. More famous than these positive steps to rejuvenate traditional religion were the negative measures he took to strangle Christianity. Julian had no intention of persecuting Christians, imprisoning them, or making them martyrs. He was a good enough student of history to know how badly that would go. But he did rescind many of the benefits afforded Christians by his predecessors and reversed several of their policies.
Some of his actions were subtle. For example, his Arian cousin Constantius II had exiled a number of Christian leaders who did not toe the Arian theological line that he preferred. Julian brought them back from exile. This appears not to have been an act of tolerance: on the contrary, it was almost certainly an attempt to weaken the church by re-introducing vehemently opposed spokespersons back into communities that had earlier been rid of them. A disunified Christian movement posed far fewer problems to a pagan resurgence than a unified front.
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Less subtly, Julian eliminated privileges accorded to Christian clergy since the time of his uncle Constantine: no longer were they exempt from participating in civil life or contributing their wealth to municipal causes. This move satisfied two needs: it weakened the elite clergy by draining a good bit of their resources, and it strengthened the governance of the cities. It also, of course, brought funds from the church into the municipal coffers.
Julian sometimes refused to provide justice for Christian leaders. In December 361, an Arian bishop named George was murdered by a pagan mob in Alexandria, Egypt. When Christians howled their objections, Julian chose not to penalize the culprits and explained why: he considered George “an enemy of the gods.” Julian would not order the deaths of Christian leaders, but he would not object to them either.
Possibly most insidious of all was an edict Julian published on June 17, 362, proscribing Christian instructors from teaching the pagan classics to schoolboys. Julian’s logic was that no one should teach what they did not believe; moreover, Christians were unqualified to teach the classics because they were themselves morally deficient. Christian teachers were given a choice: they could either acknowledge the gods or resign their positions. This policy may seem relatively benign but in fact it was unusually clever. No longer could Christians teach the principal subjects of instruction: grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. That meant the next generation of elites would be trained exclusively by pagans. As ancient historian Glen Bowersock points out: “Julian knew perfectly well what he was doing. Within little more than a generation the educated elite of the empire would be pagan.”
In trying to devise steps to increase the attractiveness of the pagan traditions, Julian strove to make changes, particularly in light of what he considered to be the greatest appeal of the Christian tradition, its social programs: “Do we not observe that what has most of all fostered the growth of atheism [i.e., Christianity] is humanity towards strangers, forethought in regard to the burial of the dead, and an affectation of dignity in one’s life. Each of these ought, in my opinion, to be cultivated genuinely by us.” To provide pagan counterparts, Julian set up guest houses in cities and free distributions of wheat and wine to the poor. Clearly these policies were not simply driven by a good-hearted nature. They were an attempt to attract converts back into paganism and thus decimate the ranks of the Christians.
Among the many pieces of ancient literature that we greatly regret no longer having is a book, or possibly a series of books, that Julian himself wrote to attack Christianity. The work is commonly called “Against the Galileans,” and unfortunately it survives only in fragments quoted by a later Christian author, Cyril of Alexandria, in an effort to refute it. Julian was particularly well-positioned to attack Christians, their theology, and their Scriptures. He had been raised a Christian himself and had been an active participant in the Christian churches, even during the years when he was, for political reasons, disguising the fact that in his heart he was a pagan. Yet even as a pagan emperor he knew it was better to attack the Christian movement through words and arguments than through harsh measures of persecution. From his uncle Constantine he had learned to promote his views through persuasion rather than coercion. Many of his successors took a different view.
“Julian eliminated privileges… no longer were they exempt from… contributing their wealth to municipal causes.” Well, at least he got one thing right! Tired of my taxes subsidizing wealthy religious institutions!
Ah, you too can become a great apostate.
Unrelated but do you have any book recommendations on the political history of the proto-orthodox church and why those people with those ideas became the powerful ones? Athanasius is really interesting, maybe start with Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism by Brakke?
Yup, he’s a terrific scholar. I deal with the issue a bit in my book Lost Christianities, in a different way.
“To provide pagan counterparts, Julian set up guest houses in cities and free distributions of wheat and wine to the poor. Clearly these policies were not simply driven by a good-hearted nature. They were an attempt to attract converts back into paganism and thus decimate the ranks of the Christians.”
Why were the “pagans”so different from the christians?
Well, just make a couple of modifications.
“Clearly chirstian policies in helping the poors were not simply driven by a good-hearted nature. They were an attempt to attract converts into christianity and thus decimate the ranks of the Pagans.”
One of those great “what-ifs” of history. If Julian had reigned twenty years, who knows?
Let me recommend Gore Vidal’s fine historical novel JULIAN.
Such a phenomenal book
For Jews, Julian and his policies represent one of the great “what-if”s of history. He gave them permission to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, but he died before the project could get under way. Had he lived and a third Temple been erected (with, implicitly, a Jewish population around it), subsequent history would have been very different.
How would nascent Christianity have dealt with an active sacrificial cult in a renewed Jerusalem and a resurgent Judaism? Could the two faiths have learned to co-exist, or would conflict inevitably erupt and the oppression of one group or the other begin even sooner? We’ll never know, but it’s fun to speculate.
Julian died in Mesopotamia, during a campaign against the Sasanian Empire. What do we know about the manner of his death? Did he die at the hands of one of his own soldiers, a Christian, as has be sometimes asserted?
He appears to have made an uncharacteristically very bad strategic decision in the course of battle and was cut down as a result. We don’t, of course, have reliable accounts about who did the deed, but usually I believe it is thought to have been enemy soldiers.
“he indicates that the gods say they will give rewards for our labors, if we do not grow slack.”
Can you tell me if Julian said this or was this quote in pagan scripture?
Thank you
Pagans didn’t really have scriptures the way Jews and Christains did. He was stating a widespread religious truism.
Do we know of any other prominent Christians in early church history who reverted to pagan religion or became pagans?
N other prominent one. We do have Xn authors talking about those who have fallen away from teh faith to return to their old ways (e.g., during persecutions, to the lament of the authors)
Okay. I’m currently reading the writings of the early church fathers so I probably will find more information in there.
Eusebius talks about it in places where he discusses persecution. But only in passing for the most part, speaking of those who have fallen away.
Gore Vidal’s Julian is one of my favorite works of historical fiction. Any thoughts?
Yup, it’s become a classic.
I have a question prompted not by the blog but by something in a (non-scholarly) book I am re-reading.
The author writes: “An older religion may strive to adopt the attractive characteristics of the new, as paganism acquired a trinity and an ethical cast under the influence of Christianity” (followed by other examples from different religions or sects).
He doesn’t say which pagans he has in mind (and he might be thinking more of modern pagan revivalist movements than anything in the ancient world), or what’s so attractive about a trinity, but I’d just like to hear your take on that sentence as a historian.
I think he’s makin’ it up.