Julian the Apostate

Flavius Claudius Iulianus (331–June 26, 363), was a Roman Emperor (361–363) of the Constantinian dynasty. He was the last pagan Roman Emperor, and tried to reform the traditional worship as a measure to stop the decay of his world.

His philosophical studies earned him the attribute the Philosopher during the period of his life and of those of his successors. Christian sources commonly refer to him as Julian the Apostate, because of his rejection of Christianity and conversion to Theurgy, a late form of Neoplatonism.

Julian, born in 331 in Constantinople, was the son of Julius Constantius, half brother of Emperor Constantine I, and his second wife, Basilina. His paternal grandparents were Western Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus and his second wife, Flavia Maximiana Theodora. His maternal grandfather was Caeionius Iulianus Camenius.
 

Constantius Chlorus
- grandfather
 

In the turmoil after the death of Constantine in 337, in order to establish himself as sole emperor, Julian's zealous Arian Christian cousin Constantius II led a massacre of Julian's family. Constantius ordered the murdering of many descendants from the second marriage of Constantius Chlorus and Theodora, leaving only Constantine II, Constans, Julian and Julian's half brother Gallus as surviving males related to Emperor Constantine.
 

Constantius II

 

Initially growing up in Bithynia, raised by his maternal grandmother, at the age of seven he was tutored by Eusebius, the Arian Christian Bishop of Nicomedia, and Mardonius, a Gothic eunuch. However, in 342, both Julian and his half-brother Gallus were exiled to the imperial estate of Macellum in Cappadocia. Here he met the Christian bishop George. At the age of 18, the exile was lifted and he dwelt briefly in Constantinople and Nicomedia.
 

Eusebius of Nicomedia
- Julian's tutor
 

In 351, Julian returned to Asia Minor to study Neoplatonism under Aedesius, and later to study the Iamblichan Neoplatonism from Maximus of Ephesus. During his studies in Athens, Julian met Gregory Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea, two Christian saints.

Julian's brother, Constantius Gallus, was made Caesar of the East (351) by Constantius II, while he himself defeated Magnentius, but shortly afterwards Gallus, who had imposed a rule of terror during his brief reign, was executed (354), and Julian himself briefly imprisoned. However Constantius still had to deal with the Sassanid threat in the East, and so he turned to his last remaining male relative, Julian. He was called to the emperor in Mediolanum (Milan) and, on 6 November 355, made Caesar of the West and married to Constantius' sister Helena.
 

Constantius Gallus
- Julian's brother
 

In the years afterwards he fought the Germanic tribes that tried to intrude upon the Roman Empire. He won back Colonia Agrippina (Cologne) in 356, during his first campaign in Gaul. The following summer he defeated the Alamanni at the Battle of Strasbourg, a major Roman victory. In 358, Julian gained victories over the Salian Franks on the Lower Rhine, settling them in Toxandria, near the city of Xanten, and over the Chamavi. During his residence in Gaul, Julian also attended to non-military matters. He prevented a tax increase by the Gallic praetorian prefect Florianus and personally administrated the province of Belgica Secunda.

In the fourth year of his campaign in Gaul, the Sassanid Emperor Shapur II invaded Mesopotamia and took the city of Amida after a 73 day siege. In February 360, Constantius ordered Julian to send Gallic troops to his eastern army. This provoked an insurrection by Petulantes troops, who proclaimed Julian emperor in Paris, and led to a very swift military campaign to secure or win the allegiance of others. From June to August of that year, Julian led a successful campaign against the Attuarian Franks.
 

Shapur II

 

That same June, forces loyal to Constantius II captured the city of Aquileia on the north Adriatic coast, and was subsequently besieged by forces loyal to Julian. Civil war was avoided only by the death of Constantius II, who, in his last will, recognized Julian as his rightful successor.

Among his first actions, Julian reduced the expenses of the imperial court, removing all the eunuchs from the offices. He reduced the luxury of the court established with Constantius, reducing at the same time the number of servants and of the guard.

After gaining the purple, Julian started a religious reformation of the state, which was intended to restore the lost strength of the Roman State. He supported the restoration of the old Roman faith, based on polytheism. He also forced the Christian church to return the riches, or fines equalling them, looted from the pagan temples after the Christian religion was made legitimate by Constantine. His laws tended to target wealthy and educated Christians, and his aim was not to destroy Christianity but to drive the religion out of "the governing classes of the empire — much as Buddhism was driven back into the lower classes by a revived Confucian mandarinate in thirteenth-century China."

Julian reduced the influence of Christian bishops in public offices. The lands taken by the Church were to be returned to their original owners, and the bishops lost the privilege to travel for free, at expenses of the State.

On 4 February 362, Julian promulgated an edict to guarantee freedom of religion, reverting 353 and 356 edicts by Constantius II which had made Christianity, de facto, the most influential religion in the Roman Empire. This edict proclaimed that all the religions were equal in front of the Law, and that the Roman Empire had to return to its original religious eclectism, according to which the Roman State did not impose any religion on its provinces.
 

Gregory of Nazianzus

 

Basil of Caesarea

 

He suppressed the official bias against pagans and allowed them to once again repair their temples, a practice that was forbidden after the first Christian Emperor Constantine's official encouragement of Nicene Christianity. During his earlier years, while studying at Athens, Julian became acquainted with two men who later became both bishops and saints: Gregory Nazianzus and Basil the Great; in the same period, Julian was also initiated to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which he would later try to restore. Constantine and his immediate successors had forbidden the upkeep of pagan temples, and many temples were destroyed during the reign of Constantine and his successors.
 

Eleusinian Mysteries

 

Julian's religious status is a matter of considerable dispute. He did not practice normative civic Roman cult of the earlier empire, but a kind of esoterical approach to classical philosophy sometimes identified as Theurgy
and also Neoplatonism
. According to Christian historian Socrates Scholasticus, Julian believed himself to be Alexander the Great in another body via transmigration of souls, as taught by Plato and Pythagoras.

Since the persecution of Christians by past Roman Emperors had seemingly only strengthened Christianity, many of Julian's actions were designed to harass and undermine the ability of Christians to organize in resistance to the re-establishment of pagan acceptance in the empire. Julian's preference for a non-christian and non-philosophical view of Iamblichus' theurgy seems to have convinced him that it was right to outlaw the practise of the Christian view of theurgy and demand that suppression of the Christian set of Mysteries. The Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches retell a story concerning two of his bodyguards who were Christian. When Julian came to Antioch, he prohibited the veneration of the relics. The two bodyguards opposed the edict, and were executed at Julian's command. The Orthodox Church remembers them as saints Juventinus and Maximos.

In his School Edict Julian forbids Christian teachers from using the pagan scripts (such as the Iliad) that formed the core of Roman education: "If they want to learn literature, they have Luke and Mark: Let them go back to their churches and expound on them," the edict says. This was an attempt to remove some of the power of Christian schools which at that time and later have used at large ancient Greek literature in their teachings in their effort to present Christian religion superior to the previous. The edict was also a severe financial blow, as it deprived Christian scholars, tutors and teachers of many students.

In his Tolerance Edict of 362, Julian decreed the reopening of pagan temples, the restitution of alienated temple properties, and called back Christian bishops that were exiled by church edicts. The latter was an instance of tolerance of different religious views, but may also have been seen as an attempt by Julian to widen a schism between different Christian sects, further weakening the Christian movement as a whole.

In March 363, Julian started his campaign against the Sassanid Empire, with the goal of taking back the Roman cities conquered by the Sassanids under the rule of Constantius II which his cousin had failed to take back.

Receiving encouragement from an oracle in the old Sibylline Books posted from Rome, and moving forward from Antioch with about 90,000 men, Julian entered Sassanid territory. An army of 30,000 was sent, under the lead of Procopius, to Armenia, whence, having received renforcements from the King of Armenia, it was to attack the Sassanid capital from the north. Julian victoriously led the Roman army into enemy territory, conquering several cities and defeating the Sassanid troops. He arrived under the walls of the Sassanid capital, Ctesiphon, but even after defeating a superior Sassanid army in front of the city (Battle of Ctesiphon), he could not take the Persian capital. Also Procopius did not return with his troops, so Julian decided to lead his army back to the safety of the Roman borders.

During this retreat, on 26 June 363, Julian died near Maranga, during a victorious battle against the Sassanid army. While pursuing with few men the retreating enemy, and without wearing armor, he received a wound from a spear that reportedly pierced the lower lobe of his liver, the peritoneum and intestines. The wound was not immediately deadly. Julian was treated by his personal physician, Oribasius of Pergamum, who seems to have made every attempt to treat the wound. This probably included the irrigation of the wound with a dark wine, and a procedure known as gastrorrhaphy, in which an attempt is made to suture the damaged intestine.
 

 

Libanius states that Julian was assassinated by a Christian who was one of his own soldiers; this charge is not corroborated by Ammianus Marcellinus or other contemporary historians.
 

Coptic icon showing Saint Mercurius killing Julian