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Julian the Apostle: the Emperor Who “Brought Piety As It Were Back from Exile”

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Julian the Apostle: the Emperor Who “Brought Piety As It Were Back from Exile” MJUR 2017, Issue 8 103 Julian the Apostle: The Emperor who “Brought Piety as it Were Back from Exile” Adrian Scaife Rhodes College Abstract Julian the Apostate stands as the only pagan emperor to rule after Constantine the Great instituted Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire. During his reign he attempted to reestablish classical religion to its former preeminence, though he also recognized the need to adapt these practices to the context of the post-Diocletian, post-Constantinian empire. This paper will explore his paradoxical forward-looking conservatism through an analysis of the ways in which Julian’s paganism came to resemble the Christian faith he hoped to replace, namely the role of the priesthood, the emerging “pagan orthodoxy,” and the reorganization of the religious power structure into a strict hierarchy. Julian was a prolific writer, and his extant literature provides rare insight into the intentions and beliefs of this notable iconoclast. His polarizing attitudes garnered both enthusiastic praise and ardent condemnation from contemporary historians and theologians, all of which combine to produce an outsized historical record for an emperor whose reign lasted less than two years. Ultimately, the formidable intellectual and political challenge Julian posed to the Christian community required a proportional response, and the extent to which he affected the development of Christianity arguably makes Julian a “father of the Church.” From the end of the third century and into the fourth century CE, the vast Roman Empire underwent arguably the most significant shift in Western history. The military ballooned in size and social and political importance, necessitating a sprawling bureaucracy to support its needs. Soon a talented new political elite sprang up almost exclusively from the military ranks and rose through the recently centralized government. From this new class of warrior-statesmen came Constantine, who, in an appeal for imperial unity, converted to Christianity. By the end of the century Christianity had become the dominant religion, and in a twist of fate it was the worshippers of the traditional Hellenic pantheon of gods who found themselves persecuted. In the grand arc of history the rise of Christianity, once set in motion, may seem inevitable. But in the midst of that 104 Scaife rise one figure stood athwart history, looking to curb the seismic shift going on around him by clinging to the models of the past. Flavius Claudius Iulianus, more commonly known as Julian the Apostate, defines the complicated influences at play during his revolutionary era more acutely than any contemporary, as his life reflects the tension between the appeal of the past and the obstacles of the present. On the one hand, Julian was determined to check the growth of an expensive, tax-funded professional bureaucracy as well as the rise and institutionalization of Christianity. In their wake he saw the collapse of a classical legacy that had developed seemingly unchecked under the conservative leadership of iconic emperors like Augustus and Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. On the other hand, he understood that conventions of the past were no longer suitable to deal with the impediments of the present. The institutions that had defined Rome for centuries had proven insufficient in managing an empire that had, at its peak, stretched from the British Isles to the deserts of Arabia. In response to the challenge before him, Julian implemented sweeping reforms to reassert a fundamental way of life informed by the classical paideia of Rome’s Hellenic heritage but evolved enough to cope with new obstacles that necessitated change. This paper will focus on one specific and particularly notable point of intersection between tradition and innovation during Julian’s reign. Despite being the nephew of Christianity’s great patron, Constantine the Great, Julian came to be a staunch disciple of the traditional Hellenic pantheon of gods. He was the only non-Christian Caesar to obtain power after Constantine I. But though a “pagan”1 had temporarily returned to the imperial throne, the organized and increasingly powerful Christian clergy continued to exert its influence over the minds and souls of many Romans. Julian was familiar with the tenets of Christianity, having studied under prominent religious leaders throughout his youth (and having been, at least in name if not always at heart, a Christian for much of his life), and so it is not surprising that his efforts to reestablish the hegemony of paganism involved adopting some of the most compelling and structurally effective characteristics of its rival religion. Julian’s evolved paganism was one that strove to put forward a more unified religious face than had ever emerged from the disparate local, mystic, and hero cults of paganism-past. In so doing Julian and his advisors implemented—oftentimes quite vehemently—something akin to a pagan orthodoxy, which, though it still accounted for the wide range of polytheistic influences, brought the many gods into the fold of a single prevailing deity, Helios. At no point, however, were any characteristics of Christianity adopted solely for their utilitarian value without their first being justified within Julian’s Neoplatonic and Hellenic worldview. Accordingly, Julian reinterpreted many of the canonical Hellenic myths by Neoplatonic standards, instilling them with allegorical importance—much as Biblical texts were received—thereby introducing a theurgical element to the religion. Organizational changes were 1. “Pagan” is not, of course, the term by which Julian and those of his creed would have called themselves, but rather a Christian designation. But for the sake of simplicity, except for when more specificity is required, I will refer to them as “pagans,” and the religion as “paganism.” MJUR 2017, Issue 8 Scaife 105 likewise justified for their adherence to Hellenic values, and in so doing Julian’s priests achieve a close resemblance with Christian bishops. To understand the historical significance of Julian’s reign, one must understand who he was and how he came to hold power in an era that abandoned many past traditions. Julian came to preside over a world in transition, and he represented an ideological holdout—not a relic—of the past fighting for its place in the new Rome. Though history ultimately sided against Julian and his appeal to tradition, defeat was never the inevitable outcome. As chance would have it, his most radical ambitions for Rome shattered upon the impact of a Persian arrow, which left the emperor mortally wounded only a year and a half into his administration. His legacy, however, is far more than a mere historical what-if: Julian revealed the tenuousness of Christian dominion, and the existential shock his ascendancy gave the theological establishment provoked reactions and shaped doctrine in ways that are still relevant to the modern world. Julian, true to his ideals, reckoned himself as much a philosopher as a politician or general, and accordingly he wrote more treatises, panegyrics, and orations than any other emperor in history, as well as a considerable archive of letters—his “immortal children,” according to Julian’s friend and fellow pagan philosopher Libanius.2 Fortunately for the modern scholar, many of those texts have been preserved either in full or as excerpts transmitted via the works of his contemporaries.3 They provide a rare glimpse into Julian’s life, and an analysis of their contents provides explanations for many of Julian’s actions and beliefs, revealing how they evolved over the course of his life. Divisive as he was, the historical record is further bolstered by those who found much to admire in his example and by those who found much to curse. Three accounts are of particular note: first, the contributions of Libanius, who, in addition to their correspondence, wrote many orations in defense of Julian; second, the historical work Res Gestae written by Ammianus Marcellinus, an eye-witness and enthusiastic pagan admirer of Julian’s who fought in the emperor’s army; and third, the immense collection of works by the influential Christian theologian Gregory of Nazianzus, safely written after Julian’s death. Becoming Julian For many years, scholarship branded the Late Antique period as little more than the end of the classical world, emphasizing the traditional institutions that fell out of use. The Crisis of the Third Century nearly destroyed the administration of the Roman Empire, as invasion, civil war, and rampant inflation 2. In 1913 Julian’s collected works were translated into English by Wilmer Cave Wright and published alongside the original Greek in three volumes by the Loeb Classical Library, the source from which my quotes and summaries of Julian’s work are derived. The Libanius quote was found in the introduction to volume three, xvii. 3. It can be assumed some letters that did not survive were destroyed because they were too personally dangerous to their recipients or too blasphemous by the Christian powers-that-were. Others survived precisely because they documented Julian’s persecution of Christians, or, more pertinent to my research still, because they record Julian mimicking certain Christian practices. 106 Scaife exposed traditional institutions as unfit to handle problems posed by such an expansive empire. But more recent scholarship by Peter Brown (1971) and others has renewed interest in the many beginnings that marked the period and the way the emergence of new institutions foreshadowed much in the modern world (7-9). Emperor Diocletian, an accomplished general, came to the rescue of the empire and lifted it from the crisis that nearly brought about its fragmentation and collapse. To do so he relied on the institution most familiar: the army. In response to external threats of invasion from the Persians, Goths, and war-bands along the Rhine, Diocletian nearly doubled Rome’s fighting force.
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