GIULIANO di ALICARNASSO. — Monophysite Bishop of Alicarnassus in Caria at the beginning of the 6th century. In 511 G. had taken part in the disturbances caused in 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he found refuge in Alexandria in Egypt, Severus (v.), the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch, likewise exiled, had also withdrawn. A controversy soon arose between the two leaders over the question of whether Christ’s body, during his 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 very union in the Virgin’s womb, was entirely impassible and incorruptible (ἀφθαρτον); hence G.’s followers, or Julianists, were also called Aphthartodocetists (v.).
Severus, who at first rejected the doctrines of his colleague with great moderation, eventually accused G. of Manichaeism and Docetism. The controversy, which was very lively in the years 520–527, did not end with G.’s death (which occurred not long after 527). His adherents, very numerous in Egypt, also occupied the see of Alexandria for a short time with one of their number (Gaianus, whence the name Gaianites), and disseminated G.’s doctrine in Asia Minor, Armenia, Arabia, and Ethiopia. On the Catholic side, Leontius (v.) of Byzantium, who suggests that G.’s doctrines had found sympathizers even among the ranks of the Orthodox (Chalcedonians). Indeed, the Emperor Justinian (v.), in his constant desire to reconcile the Monophysites, toward the end of his life sought to impose Aphthartodocetism on the entire Eastern Church; however, the Emperor’s death (14 November 565) brought to an end the struggle that had already begun.
Of G.’s writings (Tomus, Adversus blasphemias Severi, Apologia), only fragments have been preserved, in the polemical writings of Severus, in florilegia, and in catenae, almost all in the Syriac version. Modern scholars do not agree on the true significance of G.’s conception. Draguet, to whom we owe knowledge of many fragments of G., believes that he must be interpreted in a fundamentally orthodox sense. G. would have given the word φθορά a new, specifically moral meaning, using it to designate human nature infected by sin, concupiscence, suffering, and death, insofar as these are inevitable for us and so closely connected with sin that one may say that our body is in sin and sin is in the body. Once the state of «corruptible» man is defined in this way, G.’s «incorruptible» Christ would be simply Christ preserved from the stain of original sin and exempt from the tyranny of death. Others, such as Jugie and Fr. Diekamp (Zum Aphtardohetenstreit, in Theologische Revue, 26 [1927], cols. 89–93), admit that G. did not intend to deny Christ’s true humanity 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, particularly during his Passion, he appeared subject to human infirmities that in themselves were not improper (ἀδιώβλητα πάθη), such as hunger, weariness, sensory pain, and death itself, this did not occur naturally; rather, each time, by his own will and through a special miracle, Christ set aside the law of impassibility and incorruptibility that governed the permanent state of his humanity. The Passion, then, occurred in an impassible and immortal body. According to this interpretation, which seems to explain the facts and documents of the controversy better, G., in speaking of the aphtharsia of Christ’s body, did so not merely with a new terminology but in a wholly erroneous manner.