JULIAN THE APOSTATE (Imp. Flavius Claudius Julianus), Roman Emperor. - B. at Constantinople in 331, d. at Ctesiphon on 27 June 363. Son of Julius Constantius, brother of Constantine the Great, and of Basilina, he was early left an orphan by his mother. On account of his tender age he was spared in the massacres that followed the death of Constantine in 337. He was then entrusted, together with his brother Gallus, to the guardianship of the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, and had as his tutor the old eunuch Mardonius, who initiated him into the beauties of Hellenism, making him acquainted with and appreciate Homer and Hesiod. He was afterwards, again with his brother (341), relegated to the Villa of Macellum near Caesarea of Cappadocia, carefully watched and spied upon by the henchmen of Constantius II, deprived of every friendship of his contemporaries and forced to pass a sad and wretched boyhood.
There he met George of Cappadocia, later appointed by the Arians bishop of Alexandria, who initiated him into ecclesiastical studies and had him make use of his rich library. J. at that time docilely followed religious practices, was baptized and enrolled also among the clergy, exercising the office of lector in ecclesiastical functions. Around 347, when Gallus was summoned to court to be named Caesar, J. too was able to go to Constantinople, where he studied grammar and rhetoric. Soon, however, he was sent back by the suspicious Constantius to Nicomedia, where he secretly attended the lectures of the rhetor Libanius, of whom he became an admirer and disciple, and was initiated into the doctrines of the Neoplatonists. Although educated by Christian teachers at Nicomedia, J., who already hated Christianity both because it had been imposed on him by his uncle, the author of the sad events of his childhood, and because he found it inferior to the Hellenic culture whose eloquence, mysticism and bold speculations he admired, adhered with enthusiasm to polytheism. In 351 he went to Pergamon, where he frequented Aedesius, Eusebius and Chrysanthius, then to Ephesus, where he met Maximus, all Neoplatonic philosophers who professed a most sincere religious theosophy permeated with Chaldean theurgy; he then had himself initiated, besides into that philosophy, also into the mysteries of Mithras, consummating the apostasy from Christianity already begun at Nicomedia. This must be considered as the fruit of his philosophical-mystical aspirations, of his love for everything that Hellenism signified and meant, considered as a heritage to be defended and preserved as culture and as a political idea, and finally as the consequence of his intimate aversion to Christianity. His deviation was known at court, and when his brother Gallus returned to Nicomedia he placed the Arian Aetius beside him to lead him back to the Christian faith, but J. knew well how to dissemble his feelings and continued to frequent his pagan friends, among whom he acquired great popularity.
On the death of his brother Gallus, who was put to death by Constantius II in 354, J. went through a bad period; he was summoned to Milan and kept at court without, however, ever being admitted to the Emperor's presence. He was protected, however, by the empress Eusebia, who obtained for him permission to go to Athens to continue his studies. There he devoted himself to philosophy and frequented the school of Priscus and was also initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. In Oct. 355 he was again recalled to Milan and created Caesar; he married Helena, sister of Constantius, and in Nov. was sent to Gaul, where the barbarians were showing signs of rebellion. In his new office J. showed himself a good politician and warrior, carrying out a sound administration of justice and of the treasury and achieving a series of brilliant victories culminating in the battle of Strasbourg (357). His successes, however, were never viewed favorably by Constantius, who in 360 asked him for a part of the army to send to the East against the Persians. The soldiers mutinied and at Paris proclaimed J. Augustus, despite his reluctance. Civil war was inevitable. After the negotiations for an agreement failed, in the spring of 361 J. marched against Constantius and occupied Sirmium and Naissus. As he drew ever closer to Constantinople, Constantius moved to meet him but died at Mopsucrene in Cilicia on 3 Nov. 361: J. remained the sole master of the Empire.
On 11 Dec. he entered the capital, welcomed with enthusiasm by the Senate and the people, and paid solemn honors to the corpse of Constantius, for whom he also decreed apotheosis. In the government of the whole Empire J. carried out on a larger scale the wise administration already tested in Gaul. First of all he purged the court of all the parasites who prospered there, reducing the household to the bare necessary. At the same time he instituted a special tribunal to judge and punish, not always impartially in truth, the informers and spies who had run rampant at the court of the deceased emperor. He restored to the Senate its ancient privileges, granting it fiscal and judicial immunities. He appointed to the various offices new honest and upright men, with judicious choice. He himself showed himself always and everywhere democratic, without that apparatus of luxury that had already been introduced into the Byzantine court. He sought to raise up from the wretched state into which many cities of the Empire had fallen; he reorganized the finances, the municipal authority; he abolished privileges of exemptions that were not deserved; he improved the public post by suppressing useless permits and reduced taxes, distributing them with justice. He concerned himself with making the administration of justice more expeditious, not disdaining to act as judge himself and always with equity. He restored the discipline of the army, placing over it trusted and experienced leaders.
Despite all these political and social merits, J. passed into history with a grave note of infamy derived from his religious policy. The greatest concern and almost the sole purpose of his government was to halt the march of Christianity and restore Hellenism as the public religion and as policy; and his political and social activities and merits were, one might say, undertaken with a view to and in function of this purpose. To this end he undertook a struggle without apparently departing from the principles of tolerance, but in reality with passion and harshness, becoming irritated when he encountered difficulties, resorting to petty, sometimes even cruel, spite, waging a silent war against the Christians in which he more than once compromised his dignity. During the first months of his government he showed himself 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 accelerated its dissolution. Toward the end of 361 J. issued the first edicts of restoration, having the temples reopened and those that were crumbling or had been demolished rebuilt; he ordered the reinstatement of public sacrifices and granted ample privileges to all those who labored for the revival of the worship of the gods. He did indeed grant, in Feb. 362, amnesty to all the bishops exiled by Constantius, but rather than being driven by a sentiment of justice, he did so in reaction to the policy of his predecessor and, principally, because he thought and hoped that the measure would prove a cause of internal strife between Catholics and Arians and would therefore accelerate the disintegration of Christianity. Later, in fact, he did not hesitate to persecute and drive back into exile certain bishops, among them also St. Athanasius, who, rather than unconsciously carrying out J.'s designs, had rather succeeded in further crushing resurgent paganism. But the favor he openly accorded to the latter was the cause of fierce reprisals on the part of the mob, assured of imperial protection. In several cities churches were sacked, priests killed, sacred virgins violated; riots occurred in many places such as Bosra and Alexandria, where J.'s own old friend George, the Arian bishop of the city, was massacred, without the Emperor punishing the guilty, contenting himself only with an epistolary recrimination. The Christians naturally, unable to hope for justice from the authorities, reacted by returning the insults; hence individual and collective repressions such as at Mero in Phrygia, at Antioch, Gaza, Heliopolis, Arethusa, Edessa, Caesarea, etc. The resistances that J. encountered in the implementation of his designs irritated him further and little by little he became a sectarian autocrat. In the spring of 362 he summoned to court his old theosophist teachers Maximus and Priscus, and with their counsel began the more open struggle. On 27 June he promulgated the law on teaching, judged iniquitous by Ammianus Marcellinus himself, 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. More than their competence, it was a matter of judging by their religious ideas, since it could not be tolerated that the despised "Galileans" should teach or study the classical letters permeated with mythology and paganism, if they did not believe in these things. Teachers were therefore forced to choose between the faith and the school: many left their chairs, others sought to replace the Greek and Latin classics with Christian compositions, as did the two Apollinarii, father and son, versifying the Bible, writing tragedies, comedies, dialogues, and lyrics on Christian subjects. Against the clergy, moreover, he issued a series of decrees by which he deprived them of their ancient privileges, subjecting them to military obligations; he compelled soldiers to venerate the gods painted on the standards, from which he had had the Cross removed; to all he forbade the offices of magistracies and administrations, nor did he permit them to be invested with honors or dignities.
To combat the Christians he did not scruple to solicit the adherence of the Jews, for whom he even attempted to restore the temple of Jerusalem with the perfidious secret malice of disproving the prophecy of Jesus (Mt. 24, 2; Lk. 21, 5 ff.); but the terrible earthquake shocks and the flames that rose from the ruins forced him to desist from the enterprise.
Contemporaneously with these measures against Christianity, J. issued others to restore paganism, though plagiarized from Christian ideas and institutions, establishing a ridiculous theocracy. Beginning in fact from June 362, posing as pontifex maximus, he wrote a series of letters called "pastoral," with which he gave instructions to the priests of the temples, obliging them, under penalty of grave sanctions, regarding the ritual to be followed in sacrifices, the instructions to be given to the faithful, the virtues to be practiced, the works of mercy and especially the philanthropy to be exercised.
In the summer of 362 he decided to overthrow the power of the Persians who threatened the Empire. The preparations for the expedition were made gladly at Antioch, from which he set out in March 363. The first months of fighting were favorable to him; but on 27 June, during a battle, he was wounded and carried into his tent, where he died of loss of blood, attended by some friends. The body was taken to Tarsus and buried in a suburb of the city.
During his brief life J. found time to write much, but several of his works have been lost. There survive panegyrics of the emperor Constantius and a eulogy of the empress Eusebia, written before he assumed the government of the Empire. Lost are the commentaries on his campaigns in Gaul. He also wrote discourses on philosophical, religious, satirical and polemical subjects. In this genre the masterpiece is the Misopogon (Μισοπώγων), written at Antioch in 363, shortly before the expedition against the Persians, to take witty revenge for the mockery of the Antiochenes directed at his long beard. Of lesser value is the Symposium (Συμπόσιον), in which he reviews, in a kind of banquet held on Olympus, all his predecessors in the Empire; no one escapes his biting criticisms, and in particular Constantine the Great, the protector of the Christians, while all his favors are for Marcus Aurelius. Also preserved are 78 letters addressed to friends. The work, however, in which he manifested all his hatred against Christianity was Adversus Galilaeos (Κατὰ Γαλιλαίων), written at Antioch between 362 and 363, in three books. The work is lost, but some fragments are known from the confutation written by St. Cyril of Alexandria in 30 books, of which however only the first ten remain, directed at combating the first book of J.'s work. The latter knew the Holy Scripture and the internal organization of the Church quite well, and he made a severe criticism of both, but the arguments adduced are modeled on those of Celsus and Porphyry.