Julian of Halicarnassus

JULIAN OF HALICARNASSUS. - Monophysite bishop of Halicarnassus in Caria at the beginning of the 6th century. In 511 J. had taken part in the disturbances caused at Constantinople by the Theopaschite controversy. Driven from his see in the anti-Monophysite reaction that marked the beginning of the reign of Justin I (518), he found refuge in Alexandria in Egypt, where Severus (v.), the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch, likewise exiled, had also withdrawn. Between the two leaders a controversy soon arose over the question whether the body of Christ, in his earthly life, was naturally subject to "corruptibility" (φθορά). J. maintained the thesis that the body of the Lord, not only after the Resurrection but from the very union in the womb of the Virgin, was entirely impassible and incorruptible (ἄφθαρτον); whence the followers of J., or Julianists, were also called Aphthartodocetae (v.).

Severus, who at the outset rejected his colleague's doctrines with great moderation, ended by accusing J. of Manichaeism and Docetism. The controversy, very lively in the years 520-27, did not end with the death of J. (which occurred not long after 527). His adherents, very numerous in Egypt, briefly occupied even the see of Alexandria with one of their number (Gaianus, whence the name Gaianites) and spread the doctrine of J. in Asia Minor, Armenia, Arabia, and Ethiopia. On the Catholic side Julianism was combated particularly by Leontius (v.) of Byzantium, who implies that the doctrines of J. had found sympathies even in the ranks of the orthodox (Chalcedonians). Indeed the emperor Justinian (v.), in his constant desire to reconcile the Monophysites, at the end of his life wished to impose Aphthartodocetism on the whole Eastern Church; but the death of the Emperor (14 Nov. 565) put an end to the struggle already undertaken.

Of the writings of J. (Tomus, Adversus blasphemias Severi, Apologia) only fragments have been preserved, in the polemical writings of Severus, in florilegia and in the catenae, almost all in the Syriac version. On the true import of J.'s conception modern criticism is not in agreement. Draguet, to whom we owe the knowledge of many fragments of J., believes he must interpret him in a fundamentally orthodox sense. J. would have given a new, purely moral sense to the word φθορά, designating by it human nature infected by sin, by concupiscence, by sorrow and by death, insofar as for us these are inevitable and so connected with sin that one may say that our body is in sin and sin in the body. Having thus defined the state of "corruptible" man, the "incorruptible" Christ of J. would be only the Christ preserved from the stain of original sin and withdrawn from the tyranny of death. Others, such as Jugie and Fr. Diekamp (Zum Aphtardohetenstreit, in Theologische Revue, 26 [1927], coll. 89-93) admit that J. did not wish to deny the true humanity of Christ nor the truth of his Passion and Death. But for J. the Redeemer could in no way be subject to the evil from which he wished to free humanity. If therefore at certain moments of his life, particularly in his Passion, he showed himself subject to human infirmities not in themselves unbecoming (ἀδιώβλητα πάθη) such as hunger, weariness, sensible pain and death itself, this did not happen naturally; but each single time, of his own will, by a special miracle Christ derogated from the law of impassibility and incorruptibility that governed the permanent state of his humanity. The passion thus took place in an impassible and immortal body. According to this interpretation, which seems better to explain the facts and the documents of the controversy, J. spoke of the aphtharsia of the body of Christ not only with a new terminology, but in an altogether erroneous way.

Agostino Mayer