GIULIANO L'APOSTATA (Imp. Flavius Claudius Iulianus), ROMAN EMPEROR. — Born in Constantinople in 331, died at Cresifonte on 27 June 363. Son of Giulio Costanzo, brother of Costantino Magno, and Basilina, he was soon orphaned of his mother. Because of his tender age, he was spared in the massacres that followed Costantino’s death in 337. He was then entrusted, together with his brother Gallo, to the guardianship of the Arian bishop Eusebio di Nicomedia, and had as tutor the elderly eunuch Mardonio, who introduced him to the beauties of Hellenism by acquainting him with and teaching him to appreciate Omero and Esiodo. Later, still together with his brother (341), he was confined to the Villa di Macellum near Cesarea di Cappadocia, carefully watched and spied upon
by the henchmen of Costanzo II, deprived of every friendship with his peers and forced to spend a sad and wretched childhood.
There he met Giorgio di Cappadocia, subsequently appointed bishop of Alessandria by the Arians, who introduced him to ecclesiastical studies and allowed him to use his extensive library. G. then followed religious practices obediently; he was baptized and even enrolled among the clergy, serving as a lector at ecclesiastical functions. Around 347, when Gallo was summoned to court to be appointed Caesar, G. too was able to go to Costantinopoli, where he studied grammar and rhetoric. Soon, however, the suspicious Costanzo sent him back to Nicomedia, where he secretly attended the lectures of the rhetor Libanio, of whom he became an admirer and disciple, and was introduced to the doctrines of the Neoplatonists. Although he had been educated by Christian teachers in Nicomedia, G., who already hated Christianity both because it had been imposed on him by his uncle, the author of the unhappy events of his childhood, and because he found it inferior to Hellenic culture, whose eloquence, mysticism, and daring speculations he admired, enthusiastically embraced polytheism. In 351 he went to Pergamo, where he attended Edesio, Eusebio, and Crisanto, and then to Efeso, where he met Massimo—all Neoplatonic philosophers who professed an utterly sincere religious theosophy permeated by Chaldean theurgy. He was then initiated not only into that philosophy but also into the mysteries of Mithras, completing his apostasy from Christianity, which had already begun at Nicomedia. This must be regarded as the fruit of his philosophical and mystical aspirations, of his love for everything that signified and embodied Hellenism, regarded as a heritage to be defended and preserved both as culture and as a political idea, and finally as the consequence of his deep-seated aversion to Christianity. His deviation became known at court, and when he returned to Nicomedia his brother Gallo placed the Arian Aezio beside him to bring him back to the Christian faith; but G. was able to conceal his sentiments successfully and continued to associate with his pagan friends, among whom he acquired great popularity.
Following the death of his brother Gallo, whom Costanzo II had put to death in 354, G. went through a difficult period. He was summoned to Milano and kept at court, without ever being admitted into the Emperor’s presence. He was, however, protected by the empress Eusebia, who obtained permission for him to go to Atene to continue his studies. There he devoted himself to philosophy, attended the school of Prisco, and was also initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. In October 355 he was again summoned to Milano and made Caesar; he married Elena, Costanzo’s sister, and in November was sent to Gallia, where the barbarians were showing signs of rebellion. In his new office G. proved himself a capable politician and warrior, implementing sound administration of justice and taxation and achieving a series of brilliant victories, culminating in the battle of Strasburgo (357). His successes, however, were never viewed favorably by Costanzo, who in 360 requested part of his army in order to send it eastward against the Persians. The soldiers mutinied and, at Parigi, proclaimed G. Augustus, despite his reluctance. Civil war was unavoidable. When negotiations for an agreement failed, in the spring of 361 G. marched against Costanzo and occupied Sirmio and Naisso. As he advanced ever closer to Costantinopoli, Costanzo went out to meet him, but died at Mopsucerene in Cilicia on 3 November 361: G. remained sole master of the Empire.
On 11 December he entered the capital, welcomed enthusiastically by the Senate and the people, and paid solemn honors to Costanzo’s corpse, decreeing his apotheosis as well. In governing the whole Empire, G. implemented on a broader scale the wise administration he had already put into practice in the Gallic provinces. First of all, he purged the court of all the parasites who flourished there, reducing the household staff to what was strictly necessary. At the same time, he established a special tribunal to judge and punish—though, in truth, not always impartially—the informers and spies who had run rampant at the court of the deceased emperor. He restored the Senate’s ancient privileges, granting it fiscal and judicial immunity. He appointed new, honest, and upright men to the various offices, choosing them with discernment. He himself always and everywhere displayed a democratic manner, without the apparatus of luxury that had already been introduced at the Byzantine court. He sought to raise the many cities of the Empire from the wretched condition into which they had fallen; he reorganized the finances and municipal authority; abolished exemptions and privileges that were not deserved; improved the public postal service by eliminating unnecessary permits; and reduced taxes, distributing them equitably. He worked to make the administration of justice more expeditious, not disdaining to act as judge himself and always doing so fairly. He restored discipline to the army by placing trustworthy and experienced commanders over II.
Despite all these political and social merits, G. has gone down in history with a grave mark of infamy deriving from his religious policy. His greatest concern, and almost the sole aim of his government, was to halt the advance of Christianity and restore Hellenism as the public religion and as a political system; and his political and social activities and merits were, one might say, undertaken with this aim in view and in its service. To this end he embarked upon a struggle without apparently departing from the principles of tolerance, but in reality with passion and harshness, becoming irritated when he encountered difficulties, employing petty and sometimes even cruel vexations, and waging against the Christians a covert war in which more than once he compromised his dignity. During the first months of his rule he appeared reasonable and tolerant, hoping that everything would easily succeed according to his plans. At his accession to power, paganism was officially in decline: the laws of Constantius had hastened its dissolution. Toward the end of 361 G. issued the first edicts of restoration, ordering the temples to be reopened and those that were dilapidated or had been demolished to be rebuilt; he ordered the restoration of public sacrifices and granted broad privileges to all those who worked for the revival of the worship of the gods. It is true that, in February 362, he granted amnesty to all the bishops exiled by Constantius, but he did so less out of a sense of justice than as a reaction against his predecessor’s policy and, principally, because he thought and hoped that the measure would become a cause of internal conflict between Catholics and Arians and would thus hasten the disintegration of Christianity. Later, in fact, he did not hesitate to persecute and send back into exile certain bishops, including St. Athanasius, who, instead of—even unconsciously—furthering G.’s aims, had rather succeeded in dealing a greater blow to the resurgent paganism. But the favor he openly showed the latter caused savage reprisals by the rabble, confident of imperial protection. In several cities churches were plundered, priests killed, and consecrated virgins violated; riots took place in various places, such as Bostra and Alexandria, where G.’s old friend, George, the Arian bishop of the city, was massacred, without the Emperor punishing the guilty, contenting himself merely with an epistolary reprimand. The Christians, naturally, being unable to expect justice from the authorities, retaliated by returning the insults; hence individual and collective persecutions, as at Mero in Phrygia, Antioch, Gaza, Heliopolis, Arethusa, Edessa, Caesarea, etc. The resistance G. encountered in carrying out his designs irritated him still further, and little by little he became a sectarian autocrat. In the spring of 362 he summoned his former theosophist teachers, Maximus and Priscus, to court, and with their advice began the more open struggle. On 27 June he promulgated the law on education, judged unjust even by Ammianus Marcellinus, according to which Christian teachers could not teach without the prior approval of the municipal councils, which had to be ratified by the Emperor himself. The question was less one of their competence than of judging their religious ideas, since it could not be tolerated that the despised “Galileans” should teach or study the classical literature imbued with mythology and paganism if they did not believe in these things. Teachers were therefore forced to choose between faith and school: many abandoned their chairs, while others sought to replace the Greek and Latin classics with Christian compositions, as did the two Apollinarii, father and son, versifying the Bible and writing tragedies, comedies, dialogues, and lyrics on Christian themes. Against the clergy, moreover, he issued a series of decrees stripping them of their former privileges and subjecting them to military obligations; he forced soldiers to venerate the gods depicted on the standards, from which he had ordered the Cross removed; and he forbade them all civil and administrative offices, nor did he permit them to be invested with honors or dignities.
To combat the Christians, he did not hesitate to seek the support of the Jews, for whom he even attempted to restore the Temple of Jerusalem, with the perfidious secret intention of disproving the prophecy of Jesus (Mt. 24, 2; Lc. 21, 5 sg.); but the tremendous earthquakes and the flames that rose from the ruins forced him to abandon the undertaking.
At the same time as these measures against Christianity, G. issued others to restore paganism, though they were plagiarized from Christian ideas and institutions, thereby establishing a ridiculous theocracy. Beginning in June 362, in the guise of the supreme pontiff, he wrote a series of letters called “pastorals,” in which he gave instructions to the priests of the temples, obliging them, under threat of severe sanctions, to observe the ritual to be followed in sacrifices, the instruction to be given to the faithful, the virtues to be practiced, works of mercy, and especially the philanthropy to be exercised.
In the summer of 362 he decided to crush the power of the Persians, who were threatening the Empire. Preparations for the expedition were undertaken at Antioch, whence he departed in March 363. The first months of the struggle went favorably for him; but on 27 June, during a battle, he was wounded and carried to his tent, where he died from loss of blood, attended by several friends. His body was taken to Tarsus and buried in a suburb of the city.
During his brief life G. found time to write a great deal, but several of his works have been lost. Two panegyrics of the Emperor Constantius and a eulogy of the Empress Eusebia survive, written before he assumed the government of the Empire. Lost are the commentaries on his campaigns in Gaul. He also wrote speeches on philosophical, religious, satirical, and polemical subjects. In this genre, the masterpiece is the Misopogon (Μισοσώγων), written at Antioch in 363, shortly before the expedition against the Persians, to avenge himself humorously for the mockery directed at his long beard by the Antiochenes. Of lesser value is the Symposium (Συμπόσων), in which he reviews, in the form of a banquet held on Olympus, all his predecessors in the Empire; none escapes his biting criticisms, and Constantine the Great, the protector of the Christians, is singled out in particular, while all his favor is reserved for Marcus Aurelius. Also preserved are 78 letters addressed to friends. The work in which he displayed all his hatred of Christianity, however, was Adversus Galilaeos (Κανά Γαλλιάων), written at Antioch between 362 and 363, in three books. The work is lost, but some fragments are known from the refutation written against it by St. Cyril of Alexandria in 30 books, of which only the first ten remain, directed against the first book of G.’s work. He knew Holy Scripture and the internal organization of the Church fairly well, and he subjected both to severe criticism, but the arguments he advanced were modeled on those of Celsus and Porphyry.