Julian by Philip Freeman

Author:Philip Freeman [Freeman, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2023-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Against the Galileans

Julian was a devout follower of the old gods who had firmly rejected the Christianity of his family and youth. But did he simply want to level the playing field and give paganism a fair chance to reassert itself in the empire or did he have something darker in mind from the beginning? Was Julian, that is, an advocate for the open marketplace of religious ideas or was he a budding Nero or Diocletian who would eventually outlaw Christianity and slaughter its followers? Did he plan to destroy the Christians—whom he dismissively called Galileans after the backwater homeland of Jesus—to rid the world of a faith he firmly believed was an insult to reason and a curse on humanity? The question of Julian’s intentions and what he would have done given enough time on the throne has been central to both his admirers and his enemies since his own lifetime. The answer is murky, but it seems probable that his hope from the start was to weaken and eventually eliminate Christianity throughout the Roman lands. There would be no bloodbaths—at least not at first—but his ultimate goal was to press the church beneath the yoke of Roman power until it broke.

One of the first edicts Julian issued when he became emperor decreed the reopening of the temples and shrines of the Roman gods throughout the empire and the resumption of widescale animal sacrifices. His edict was perhaps an overstatement since the temples had never been formally closed nor had sacrifices been outlawed by his predecessors. But in certain localities Christian officials and bishops had shut down or at least strongly discouraged pagan worship. Nonetheless, Julian meant from the beginning to signal unmistakably to Christians that no hinderance would be allowed to the worship he clearly favored. Julian also took the unusual step of proclaiming universal religious tolerance. He assured his subjects that followers of all religious traditions—pagan, Christian, Jewish, and others—would be treated with equal respect as long as they posed no threat to the general peace and security of the empire.

The fact that these decrees were issued in the first weeks of his rule was both encouraging to the majority of imperial subjects who were still pagan and a warning to Christians that the old days of favoritism under his uncle Constantine and cousin Constantius were over. But Julian was not, at this stage, outlawing Christianity or persecuting the church. He claimed he simply wanted to give the ancient pagan religion an opportunity to flourish again and assert itself against what he considered a misguided cult invented by followers of an unremarkable Jewish rabbi. He declared that Christians would have nothing to fear from him or his imperial administration. There would be no martyrs. They would not be punished nor would their churches or scriptures be burned. They could continue to gather in worship and live their lives as before. As he wrote to Atarbius, a fellow pagan who was one of his governors in Mesopotamia:

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