Episode 6 – The Imperial Threesome

* So let’s move on to Julian. * Julian’s personal religion was both pagan and philosophical; he viewed the traditional myths as allegories, in which the ancient gods were aspects of a philosophical divinity. * He was tutored by Eusebius of Nicomedia, the same guy who baptised Constantine on his death bed. * He was apparently a vegetarian. * The historian Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that he believed that Christian infighting was so bitter that the religion would simply destroy itself. * He returned to the old gods. * He was also prepared to write his own rebuttal of Christianity. * During his short reign, he wrote Contra Galilaeos (‘Against the Galileans’), which Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, claimed was one of the most important anti-Christian works that had been written, and that it was widely considered to be irrefutable, Julian used his considerable knowledge of the scriptures to highlight their contradictions. * For example * Why is there no recognition in the synoptic gospels of Jesus’ divinity? * He thought the use of Old Testament prophecies as harbingers of Christ is arbitrary and unjustified. * Why did God create Eve if he knew that she would thwart his plans for creation? * Unfortunately the three-book volume didn’t survive, except for when it’s quoted by Christian apologists who tried to argue against it. * He made a sophisticated plea for religious toleration, giving the view that each culture needed to define the supreme divinity in its own way. * When he became Augustus, he started a religious reformation, restoring the traditional polytheism as the state religion. * He didn’t try to destroy Christianity, but to drive them out of the governing classes of the empire. * He restored the pagan temples and repealed the stipends that Constantine had awarded to Christian bishops. * On 4 February 362, Julian promulgated an edict to guarantee freedom of religion. * This edict proclaimed that all the religions were equal before the law, and that the Roman Empire had to return to its original religious eclecticism, according to which the Roman state did not impose any religion on its provinces. * The edict also allowed the return from exile of dissident Christian bishops. * He also issued an edict that declared that all public teachers had to be approved by himself. * He wanted to stop Christian teachers from using pagan texts like the Iliad. * He wrote: “If they want to learn literature, they have Luke and Mark: Let them go back to their churches and expound on them” * This was an attempt to remove some of the power of the Christian schools which at that time and later used ancient Greek literature in their teachings in their effort to present the Christian religion as being superior to paganism. * But after several generations of pro-Christian emperors, the pagans were reluctant to just pick up where they left off. * On top of that, they didn’t have the funds to hold big public sacrifices and festivals, because the Constantines had stolen all of their treasuries and given them to the Christians. * And of course there was no single pagan religion, there were tons of them, so it was all disorganised. * So Julian tried to re-organise the pagan worship more in line with the Christian model. * He tried to introduce new moral codes for pagan priests. * Traditionally, there weren’t any – a priest was just an elite with social prestige and financial power to organise and pay for festivals. * But Julian’s attempts to tighten it up went nowhere. * He ended up making paganism a religion, where traditionally it had just been more of a tradition. * He also tried to set up a system of charity resembling the Christian model. * He wrote: “These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor...