BOOK II.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS I , A.D. 313-395.
CHAPTER III.
JULIAN
A.D. 361-363.
Immediately after the death of the great Constantine,
the soldiery at Constantinople committed a massacre among the princes of his
house. With the exception of his three sons—of whom two were at a
distance, while Constantius was even supposed to have instigated the
murderers—the only survivors of the imperial family were two children of the
late emperor’s half-brother, Julius Constantius, who himself had been one of
the victims. Gallus was spared because his sickly constitution seemed to
preclude the apprehension of future danger from him; his half-brother Julian,
who was only six years of age, is said to have been saved and concealed in a
church by Mark, bishop of Arethusa.
The early education of these brothers was
superintended by Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was distantly related to the
younger prince’s mother. When Julian had reached the age of fifteen, they
were removed to Macellae, near Caesarea, in
Cappadocia. They lived in the palace of the old Cappadocian kings, and were
treated in a manner suitable to their rank, yet were kept in a seclusion which
had the nature of imprisonment. They were trained in a strict routine of
religious observances; they were even admitted into the order of readers, and
officiated in the service of the church. After five years had been thus spent
by the young princes, the attention of Constantius was especially directed to
them by the circumstance that the murder of Constans had left them the only
male heirs of the imperial family. Gallus was appointed Caesar, was
married to a widowed daughter of the great Constantine, and was established at
Antioch, while his brother was allowed to study at Constantinople. But as the
popularity which Julian gained there excited the emperor’s jealousy, he was
soon ordered to Nicomedia, where he endeavoured to disarm the suspicions of
Constantius by shaving his head and living like a monk. In the end of the year
354, Gallus, who had displayed both violence and incapacity in his new
elevation, was removed from his government, and was put to death by order of
Constantius. At the same time Julian was summoned from Ionia to the court at
Milan, where he was detained in a state of suspense for seven months; but at
length, through the influence of the empress Eusebia, who steadily befriended
him, he obtained leave to attend the schools of Athens.
The Persians on the east, and the barbarian nations on
the north, obliged Constantine to seek for assistance in the government of the
empire. Julian was therefore declared Caesar in November 355. He received in
marriage the hand of the emperor’s sister Helena, and at the suggestion of
Eusebia, who represented him as a harmless, studious youth, who would either
bring credit to the emperor by success, or would deliver him from uneasiness by
meeting with death, he was sent to undertake the government of Gaul. Although
his life had hitherto been that of a student, he soon distinguished himself by
his ability both in war and in civil administration But his relations with Constantius
were of no friendly kind : the emperor openly decried and ridiculed him,
thwarted and crippled him in his administration, and assumed the credit of his
victories. The army murmured because its commander was not furnished with the
means of bestowing the usual donatives; and this discontent was at length
swollen to a height by an order which Julian received when in winter-quarters
at Paris, in April 360. On being informed that their general was required to
despatch the strength of his troops to the Persian frontier, the soldiers rose
in mutiny; and, notwithstanding a show of resistance to their wishes, which was
perhaps not wholly sincere, the Caesar was hailed as Augustus, was raised aloft
on a buckler, and was crowned with a circlet formed of the chain by which the
standard-bearers of the legions were distinguished. Eusebia and Helena, whose
mediation might have prevented a breach between the imperial kinsmen, were both
lately dead. Julian’s proposals for a division of the empire were scornfully rejected;
and, after some fruitless negotiation, he resolved to march against
Constantius. Carrying out a brilliant conception with an energy which triumphed
over all difficulties, he penetrated through the Black Forest to the Danube,
embarked his army on the great river, and landed at a point within a few miles
of Sirmium. He had already become master of almost all the west, when the death
of Constantius saved the empire from the miseries of a civil war.
The policy of Constantius towards paganism had been,
on the whole, a continuation of his father’s. Laws are found which forbid
sacrifice and idolatry even on pain of death; and under Julian the pagan
orators complained of severities exercised against their religion in the late
reign. It is, however, certain that the more rigorous laws, even if they were
actually published at the time, were not generally acted on. Paganism was still
largely cherished, especially among the aristocracy of the older capital, among
the philosophical and literary class, and among the peasantry. Its rites appear
to have been freely practised, even by persons in authority. The first
Christian emperor was, like his predecessors, enrolled among the gods.
Constantius retained the style of Pontifex Maximus; on his visit to Rome in
357, he showed respect to the old religion, and even made appointments to
priestly offices; and although he was unremitting in his hostility to the arts
of astrology and divination, it was on account of their dangerous political
character. Some temples were given up for Christian purposes, or were bestowed
on favourites of the court; but there were enactments against destroying
temples and defacing heathen monuments. The doctrinal controversies of the time
diverted the attention of the Christians from paganism, while they also
rendered each party unwilling to provoke the multitude which was without the
church.0It was in vain that some of the more intemperate Christian writers
among whom Firmicus Maternus is the most noted,
attempted to urge the government to more vigorous measures for the suppression
of idolatry.
Before setting out on his expedition, Julian, although
he still kept up the outward appearance of Christianity, placed himself under
the guardianship of the "Immortal Gods", and propitiated them with
copious sacrifices. Even after having advanced as far as Vienne, he celebrated
the festival of the Epiphany; but before reaching Thrace, he threw off all
disguise, and openly professed himself a pagan. It is not difficult to
understand the motives of this defection, on account of which the epithet
apostate has become the usual accompaniment of his name. His Christian
training, with its formal and constrained devotion, had been so conducted that
it could hardly have failed to alienate a mind like his—quick, curious,
restless, and vain. His desire of knowledge had been thwarted in its direction;
in his earlier years he had been forbidden to seek instruction from those
heathens who were most celebrated as professors of rhetoric and the prohibition
had lent a charm to their opinions. Filled with an enthusiastic admiration for
the heroes and sages of heathenism, he was unable to understand the dignity of
Christian meekness and endurance; and, moreover, he had come to estimate the
system in which he had been educated by the imperfections of those around him,
while heathenism appeared to him in ideal brightness, as embodied in the lives
of its worthies—as connected with literature, philosophy, and art. The
eyes of the pagans had early been fixed on him as the hope of their religion.
He was courted by philosophers and rhetoricians, and in all his changes of
residence he was handed over by one of them to another. These teachers not only
entangled his mind in their speculations, but practised on it by the proscribed
arts of theurgy and divination, flattering him with the idea of one day
becoming master of the empire. At Ephesus, in his twentieth year, he was
formally initiated into paganism by Maximus, a philosopher who had gained a
powerful influence over him; and during his stay at Athens he was admitted to
the Eleusinian mysteries. But the secret of his apostasy was carefully kept
until his assumption of the imperial title rendered a longer hypocrisy
needless.
Julian arrived at Constantinople on the 11th of
December 361, and left it in the middle of the following May. He reached
Antioch in the end of June 362, and remained there until March 5, 363, when he
set out on his fatal expedition into Persia. Thus the greater part of his short
reign was spent in two cities especially unfavourable to his religion; for
Constantinople had never until this time been polluted by public sacrifice, and
at Antioch—although the inhabitants were too commonly licentious, luxurious,
and passionately fond of frivolous diversions—Christianity was generally
professed, so that there were only a few aged people who looked back with
regret to the days when paganism had been the national creed. The utter decay
of the old religion in the Syrian capital may in some measure be estimated from
a story which is told by the emperor himself—that when, after having restored
the temple of Daphne, near the city, he repaired to it on the day of a great
local festival, he found, instead of the splendid ceremonial and the crowd of
worshippers which he had expected, that only a single old priest was in
attendance, with no better sacrifice than a goose, which the poor man had been
obliged to provide at his own cost.
Julian’s paganism was very unlike the old political
religion of Rome; it was eclectic, philosophical, enthusiastic, and more akin
to Gnosticism than even to the theology of the ancient Greeks. He believed in
one supreme God, whom he identified with the Mithra or sun-god of oriental
worship. Under this deity he acknowledged others— the tutelaries of nations, sciences, and the like. He believed the world to be eternal, and
from the diversity of national character he argued against the common origin of
mankind. The worship of images was defended by him on philosophical grounds,
very remote from the popular belief. The convert’s zeal for the old religion
far outstripped that of its hereditary professors. A pagan historian of the
time describes him as rather superstitious than properly religious; and his
heathen subjects in general looked with surprise and disrespect on the
profusion of his costly sacrifices, and on the share which he himself took in
them—performing even the coarsest and most repulsive functions. In other
respects, too, his vanity displayed itself in an ostentatious disregard
of the form and dignity which are usually associated with sovereign power.
In his appearance and habits he affected a cynical roughness, which drew on him
the satire of the wits of Antioch; and he condescended to reply to their jests
and ballads by a book in defence of his beard. He reformed the luxury of the
court with an unwise and precipitate severity; he disbanded the host of eunuchs
and parasites who had been attached to it during the late reign, and replaced
them by philosophers and professors of divination, many of whom proved unable
to bear with equanimity the honours and employments which were bestowed on
them.
The religious policy of the last two reigns was now
reversed. The immunities and endowments which had been bestowed on the clergy
were transferred to the heathen priesthood; but whereas Constantine, in
restoring church-property to the rightful owners after the persecution, had
indemnified the existing holders at the expense of the state, Julian ordered
that Christians who had been concerned in the destruction of temples should
rebuild them at their own cost, and that money received from property which had
formerly belonged to the pagan religious establishment should be refunded.
Even if the means of such restitution had been in their hands, the restoration
of temples (which would in many cases have involved the demolition of churches
erected on their sites) was intolerable to the consciences of the Christians;
and in consequence of the edict many of the clergy were subjected to tortures,
imprisonment, and death. The case of Mark, bishop of Arethusa, is especially noted.
“The magistrates”, says Gibbon, “required the full value of a temple which had
been destroyed; but as they were satisfied of his poverty, they desired only to
bend his inflexible spirit to the promise of the slightest compensation. They
apprehended the aged prelate, they inhumanly scourged him, they tore his beard;
and his naked body, anointed with honey, was suspended between heaven and
earth, and exposed to the stings of insects and the rays of a Syrian sun. From
this lofty station Mark still persisted to glory in his crime, and to insult
the impotent rage of his persecutors. He was at length rescued from their
hands; Julian spared his life; but if the bishop of Arethusa had saved the
infancy of Julian, posterity will condemn the ingratitude, instead of praising
the clemency of the emperor”.
Julian knew from the experience of former times that
the employment of force against Christianity, far from suppressing it, had
tended to its advancement. He was unwilling to excite the zeal of the
Christians by the opportunity of martyrdom; he was unwilling to sully his own
reputation by harsh measure; he wished to gain credit by a display of
toleration which might contrast with the persecutions of Constantius. The
stories of martyrdoms which are referred to this reign are probably for the
most part fabulous; and although much of oppression and outrage was committed
against the Christians, it does not appear that the emperor was directly
concerned in such acts. It is, too, very evident that the Christians sometimes
provoked the ruling party by needlessly offensive conduct, and that their
complaints are not always free from exaggeration. But although Julian declared
that argument and persuasion were the only means to be employed for the
furtherance of his opinions, he allowed proceedings of a very different kind.
He refused justice to the Christians with a shameless partiality, and made the
refusal offensive by sarcasm. Thus when the Arian bishop George was murdered by
the pagans of Alexandria, he took no further notice of the deed than by very
slightly reproving them. In consequence of a disturbance between the orthodox
and the Valentinians of Edessa, he seized on the property of the Edessan
church, and distributed it among his soldiers—telling the Christians that their
wealth would no longer be a hindrance to their attaining the kingdom of heaven.
When Christians appealed to him against the illegal violence of governors or of
mobs, he reminded them that their religion enjoined on them the duty of
patience under wrong. He deprived them of civil and military employments, and
excluded them from the courts of law; and he alleged as his reason that the
gospel forbids worldly ambition, bloodshed, and litigation. Although he
professed to consider the devotion of the heart essential in religion, he used
artifices to entrap his Christian subjects into outward, and even unconscious,
acts of homage to the gods; thus he surrounded his own picture with heathen
figures and emblems, so that the usual obeisance to it should involve an
appearance of idolatry. In like manner, on the occasion of a donative, he
required his soldiers to cast a few grains of incense into the
fire—representing this as merely an ancient custom, without any
explanation of the import which he attached to it as an act of worship.
By a strange exercise of tyranny, Julian issued an
edict that no “Galilean”—for thus he required by law that the Christians should
be styled—should become a teacher of classical literature. By way of giving a
reason for this order, he declared that the Greek language belonged to his own
party, and denounced the immorality and covetousness of persons who taught a
system which they themselves did not believe; but, as it seems incredible that
the emperor could have seriously confounded the religion with the literature of
Greece, other motives have been conjectured—such as jealousy of the eminence
which some Christian rhetoricians had acquired, and a wish to deprive the
Christians of the controversial advantages which they might derive from an
acquaintance with the absurdities of the pagan mythology. It has been said that
he went so far as to prohibit “Galileans” even to attend the public schools, or
to study the classical writers—overlooking the Divine element of the gospel,
ascribing its success to human culture, and thinking to defeat it by reducing
its professors to the condition of an illiterate sect. This, however, appears
to be a mistake, except in so far as the law against teaching must also have
operated as a bar to learning; for many of those who in other times would have
resorted to pagan masters for instruction in secular studies, must have felt
themselves excluded from their schools, now that an attack was made on the
Christian teachers, and that classical learning was to be used as a
temptation to apostasy. But in order that the benefits of classical study
should not be wholly lost to Christian youth, Apollinarius of Laodicea and
others are said to have provided an ingenious substitute for the forbidden
textbooks by clothing the Scripture history in the forms of Greek
composition—such as epic poetry, drama, and Platonic dialogue.
While the emperor thus in many ways exerted himself
against the gospel, he yet paid it the remarkable tribute of attempting to
reform paganism by borrowing from Christian institutions. He pointed to the
Christians as distinguished by their obedience to the rules of their religion.
He admonished the heathen priests to adopt a stricter life than that which had
been usual among their class—charging them to abstain from secular business and
amusements; to be charitable to the poor; to take care that their wives and
families should not be Christians; to be diligent in study, and to abstain from
the perusal of unedifying books. He attempted to imitate the system of
episcopal superintendence and that of commendatory letters, the monastic
orders, the penitential discipline, the arrangement of churches, the liturgy,
the hours of prayer, the expositions of religious doctrine by preaching, the
care of the poor and distressed, of the sick and of the dead.
The edict of Hadrian, which forbade the Jews to
approach their holy city, was still in force; and the legislation of
Constantine and his son had pressed severely upon them. Julian was favourably
disposed towards their religion; he respected it as an ancient national faith,
although he considered it to be wrong in representing its God as the only
deity; and the Mosaic sacrifices accorded with his ideas as to outward worship.
It is said that he summoned some of the most eminent Jews into his presence,
and asked why they did not offer sacrifices according to their lawgiver’s
command. On their answering that it was not lawful to sacrifice except in the
temple of Jerusalem, of which they had been long deprived, the emperor gave
them leave to rebuild the temple, and appointed one of his own officers to
superintend the work. The dispersed Jews assembled from all quarters, in
eagerness to forward the undertaking by their labour and their hoarded wealth.
Women gave their ornaments towards the cost, and themselves carried burdens of
earth in their silken dresses; even tools of silver are said to have been used
in the work. The long-depressed people were loud in proclaiming their
expectations of a triumphant restoration, when the attempt was terribly
defeated. The newly-laid foundations were overthrown by an earthquake; balls of
fire burst forth from the ground, scorching and killing many of the workmen;
their tools were melted by lightning; and it is added by some writers that the figure
of a cross surrounded by a circle appeared in the sky, and that garments and
bodies were marked with crosses, which it was impossible to efface. The truth
of some of these phenomena is attested by the heathen Ammianus Marcellinus, as
well as by Christian writers, and the story, in its essential parts, is broadly
distinguishable in character from the tales of contemporary miracles in
general. As the rebuilding was avowedly undertaken in defiance of the Christian
religion—as its success would have falsified the evidence borne to the gospel
by those words of Scripture which had declared that Judaism was passed away,
and that the temple should be desolate—we may reverently believe that the
occasion was one on which some special exertion of the Divine power might
probably be put forth. It will, however, remain a question how much of the
story ought to be regarded as fabulous embellishment; how far the occurrences
which produced the impression of miracle may have been the result of ordinary
physical causes, and how far there was a mixture of that which is more properly
to be styled miraculous.
Julian spent the long winter evenings of 362-3 in
composing an elaborate attack on Christianity, which he continued and finished
after setting out on his expedition into Persia. He had intended, on his
return, to resume the building of the Jewish temple. What his policy might have
been in other respects, if his life had been prolonged, can only be
conjectured; but, as his enmity against the Christians had evidently increased,
it is probable that the course which he had hitherto pursued with so
little success would have been exchanged for a system of undisguised
persecution. His death, in consequence of a wound received in a nocturnal
skirmish, was hailed by the Christians with joy. Prophecies and visions of his
end had before been current among them. By some it was supposed that he had
received his death-wound from an angel. Sozomen, in
reporting the groundless insinuation of Libanius, that it was inflicted not by
a Persian but by a Christian, so far forgets his own Christianity as to argue
that such an act may be laudably done for the cause of God and religion.
We now turn to the internal history of the church.
Julian on his accession recalled all who had been banished on account of
religion. In this measure his object was twofold—to gain the praise of
liberality, and at the same time to damage the Christian cause by giving free
scope to the dissensions of the various parties. But in the latter hope he was
disappointed. The Arians, when deprived of the imperial support, lost all
spirit and vigour; and the common danger from the ascendency of paganism
moderated the controversies which had raged so long and so fiercely.
Athanasius, when expelled from Alexandria in 356, had
withdrawn into the deserts of Egypt. Among his faithful partisans, the
monks, he found a refuge which enabled him to defy the enmity of Constantius,
who attempted to arrest him, and exerted himself to prevent his reception in
Ethiopia if he should flee into that newly-converted country. During an exile
of six years, the bishop kept a watchful eye on all the fortunes of the church,
and by seasonable writings combated the heresy which had driven him from his
see. On receiving the tidings that Constantius was dead, the heathen populace
of Alexandria murdered the intrusive bishop, George, who had made himself even
more hateful to them than to the Catholics. Athanasius, on returning to resume
his see, was received with triumphal pomp and festivity. The churches were at
once surrendered to him, so that the Arians, who had set up one Lucius as their
bishop, could only meet in private houses. Athanasius proceeded to assemble a
council, which Lucifer of Cagliari and Eusebius of Vercelli, who had been
released from banishment in the Thebaid, were invited to attend. Eusebius
appeared, and the Sardinian bishop was represented by two of his deacons, while
he himself repaired to Antioch, with a view of attempting to suppress the
schism by which the church of that city had long been distracted.
The case of the clergy who had conformed to Arianism
in the late reign was decided with that wise consideration for persons which in
Athanasius always accompanied his zeal for the truth. It was enacted that those
who had erred through simplicity or ignorance should be allowed to retain their
positions on subscribing the Nicene creed; and that such as had taken a
more active part on the Arian side should, on repentance, be admitted to
communion, but should be deprived of ecclesiastical office.
Another question which engaged the attention of the
council, related to the use of certain theological terms. The words ousia and hypostasis had in the
beginning of the controversy been used by the orientals as equivalent; both had been translated in Latin by substantia, and had
been understood by the Latins as signifying the nature of God. But in
course of time a distinction had been introduced in the east, so that,
while ousia continued to
denote nature, hypostasis was used in the sense which we are
accustomed to express by the term person; and this distinction was
especially characteristic of such theologians as had come out of the Arian
connection to embrace the Nicene faith. The Latins, then, hearing that three
hypostases were maintained by some of the orientals,
took alarm, as if the words signified three different grades of nature; while
the other party insisted on the necessity of using the
term hypostasis in the new sense—considering that the use of the
Greek prosopon, which answered to the Latin persona, savoured of
Sabellianism, as expressing rather three manifestations of the one Godhead
than that distinction which is asserted in the catholic doctrine. The council,
under the guidance of Athanasius, who during his residence in the west had
become acquainted with the meaning of Latin theological language, endeavoured
to settle this dispute by ascertaining and explaining that the difference as to
one or three hypostases was merely verbal; and by recommending that the Nicene
creed should be adhered to, and that the terms in question should be avoided,
except when opposition to particular heresies might render it necessary to use
them.
Eusebius and others proceeded from Alexandria to
Antioch with a commission to mediate in the healing of the schism. But in the
meantime Lucifer had rashly taken a step which tended to exasperate and prolong
it, by consecrating Paulinus, a presbyter of the Eustathian party, in opposition to Meletius, who had just returned from exile. Thus
Antioch had three rival bishops—the Arian Euzoius,
with the orthodox Meletius and Paulinus; and to these a fourth, of the
Apollinarian sect, was soon after added. In such circumstances it was
impossible to enforce any ecclesiastical discipline, since offenders, if
threatened with censure in one communion, found the others ready to welcome
them as proselytes; and in the meanwhile the wide patriarchal jurisdiction of
Antioch, with the authority which belonged to the third of Christian sees in
the general affairs of the church, was in abeyance.
Eusebius mildly expressed his regret at the
ordination of Paulinus, and forthwith quitted Antioch. But the vehement
Lucifer disavowed the act of his representatives who had signed the Alexandrian
decrees; he broke oft communion with all bishops who should accept those
decrees, and, after returning to his own diocese in Sardinia, he founded a
schism, on the principle that no one who had subscribed the creed of Rimini
should be admitted to reconciliation. This sect, which is not charged with any
heretical doctrines, found a considerable number of adherents in Italy and
Spain. It even set up a bishop at Rome; but Luciferianism became extinct in the beginning of the following century, if not earlier.
The schism of Antioch continued. Meletius was
supported by the eastern orthodox; Paulinus by Egypt and the west; and,
notwithstanding the exertions of the Alexandrian council, the difference of
usage as to the term hypostasis continued to be a badge of the
parties respectively.
Peace was established in the western church chiefly
through the labours of Eusebius and of Hilary of Poitiers, who had been allowed
to resume his bishopric soon after the councils of Rimini and Seleucia, as the
court partly thought it desirable even on such terms to remove so formidable an
opponent to a distance from the principal scene of action. The two bishops
indefatigably exerted themselves for the re-establishment of orthodoxy on the
terms of the Alexandrian synod, in which they obtained the concurrence of
councils at Rome and elsewhere.
The effects of Athanasius’ labours after his return to
Alexandria soon drew on him the notice of Julian, who knew and dreaded his
energetic character; while the representations of “magi, philosophers,
aruspices, and augurs”, were not wanting to excite the emperor against him as
the most dangerous enemy of paganism. In the end of 362, Julian directed
against him a special mandate, stating that Athanasius had lately presumed to
baptize some Greek (i.e. heathen) ladies of high rank; and declaring that the
edict by which exiles were allowed to return to their country had not been
intended to restore them to their ecclesiastical offices—a distinction which
appears to have been invented for the occasion, as it was not enforced in any
other case. The Christians of Alexandria petitioned in favour of their bishop;
but Julian was only the more exasperated. He styled Athanasius an
“insignificant manikin”; he told them that they were at liberty to make another
bishop, but that so mischievous a person must not remain among them; and,
whereas the former sentence had been limited to banishment from the city, it
was now extended to all Egypt, with an order that it should be immediately
executed. On hearing of the rescript, Athanasius said to his friends, “Let us
withdraw; this is a little cloud which will soon pass over”. He embarked on the
Nile, and sailed up the stream, until, on being told that a vessel was in
pursuit, he ordered the steersman of his boat to turn round, met the pursuers,
who had not observed his movements, ingeniously baffled their inquiries,
and returned in safety to Alexandria. A renewal of the search, however, soon
after compelled him to leave his place of concealment there, and he again found
an asylum among the monks until he received the tidings of Julian’s death.
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