GIULIANO of Halicarnassus. — Monophysite bishop of Halicarnassus in Caria at the beginning of the 6th century. In 511 G. had taken part in the disturbances in Constantinople caused 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refuge in Alexandria in Egypt, where Severus (q.v.), the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch, also exiled, had likewise withdrawn. Between the two leaders a controversy soon arose over the question whether Christ’s body, in its earthly life, was naturally subject to “corruptibility” (φθορά). G. maintained the thesis that the Lord’s body, not only after the Resurrection but from the moment of its union in the Virgin’s womb, was entirely impassible and incorruptible (ἀφθαρσία), whence the followers of G., or Julianists, were also called Aphthartodocetae (q.v.).
Severus, who at first rejected his colleague’s doctrines with great moderation, ended by accusing G. of Manichaeism and of the most learned heresy. The controversy, which raged especially in the years 520–27, did not end with G.’s death (which occurred not long after 527). His adherents, very numerous in Egypt, for a short time even occupied the see of Alexandria with one of their number (Gaianus, whence the name Gaianites) and spread G.’s doctrine in Asia Minor, Armenia, Arabia, and Ethiopia. From the Catholic side, Julianism was combated especially by Leontius (q.v.) of Byzantium, who gives to understand that G.’s doctrines had found some sympathy even among the orthodox (Chalcedonians). Indeed, the Emperor Justinian (q.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 emperor’s death (14 Nov. 565) put an end to the struggle already begun.
Of G.’s writings (Tomus, Adversus blasphemias Severi, Apologia) only fragments have been preserved, in the polemical works of Severus, in florilegia and in catenae, almost all in Syriac translation. As to the true scope of G.’s conception, modern criticism is not in agreement. Draguet, to whom we owe the knowledge of many fragments of G., believes he must interpret him in a fundamentally orthodox sense. G. would have given a new, purely moral meaning to the word φθορά, designating by it human nature infected by sin, concupiscence, pain, and death, inasmuch as for us these are inevitable and so closely bound up with sin that one may say that our body is in sin and sin is in the body. Once this “corruptible” state of man is defined, the “incorruptible” Christ of G. would be only Christ preserved from the stain of original sin and freed from the tyranny of death. Others, like Jugie and F. Diekamp (Zum Aphthartodoketenstreit, in Theologische Revue, 26 [1927], cols. 89–93), admit that G. did not mean to deny the true humanity of Christ or the reality of His Passion and Death. But for G. 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, especially in His Passion, He appeared subject to human infirmities not in themselves unbecoming (ἀδάβλητα πάθη) such as hunger, weariness, sensible pain, and even death, this did not happen naturally; but each time, of His own free will, by a special miracle Christ set aside the law of impassibility and incorruptibility that governed the permanent state of His humanity. The Passion therefore took place in an impassible and immortal body. According to this interpretation, which seems better to explain the facts and documents of the controversy, G. spoke of the aphtharsia of Christ’s body not only in new terminology but in a wholly erroneous manner.