Church History 5.1–5.8

Such were the events concerning the churches in the East. Meanwhile Julian the Caesar, having defeated in battle the barbarians along the river Rhine, slew some and took others alive. Having shown himself brilliant at that time, and having won the favour of the soldiers by his moderation and fairness, he was proclaimed Augustus by them. Making no apology to Constantius about this, as would have been fitting, he replaced the officials appointed by him; and he deliberately also displayed the letters by which Constantius had summoned the barbarians against Magnentius and brought them into Roman territory. Suddenly changing his religion, though he had earlier seemed to be a Christian, he named himself supreme pontiff, frequented the temples of the pagans, sacrificed, and urged his subjects to worship in this way. Since the Persians were expected to attack the Romans, and Constantius was therefore staying in Syria, Julian, reckoning that he could take Illyricum without a battle, set out on the road against it, giving as a pretext that he was going to Constantius to make his defence, so as not to seem to have accepted the insignia of empire from the soldiers willingly and against Constantius’s wishes. It is said that when he crossed into the borders of that region, the vines, after the vintage, about the setting of the Pleiades, appeared full of unripe grapes; and that the dew from the air, falling on his clothing and that of his followers, stamped the sign of a cross with each drop. He and many of those with him thought that the grapes appearing out of season were a good omen, and that the dew had marked the clothing in this way by chance, wherever it happened to fall. Others said of the two signs that the one meant that the emperor would perish before his time, like the unripe grapes, and that his reign would be short; and that the other foretold that the doctrine of the Christians was heavenly and that all must be marked with the sign of the cross. It seems that those who took the view contrary to the emperor’s did not miss the truth; for time, as it went on, showed that both had been aptly said. When Constantius learned that Julian was marching against him, he abandoned his preparations against the Persians and hurried to Constantinople; and while making the journey he died at Mopsucrenae, between Cilicia and the Cappadocians near the Taurus, about forty-five years old. Of these years he reigned thirteen with his father and twenty-five after him. When he died, Julian already held Thrace. Coming shortly afterwards to Constantinople, he was proclaimed sole emperor. The pagans put about the story that even before he left Gaul, diviners and demons had moved him to this campaign, foretelling the death of Constantius and the change of affairs. It would indeed be plausible to call this foreknowledge, had not the end of his own life overtaken him almost at once, so that he tasted empire as in a dream. For it is foolish, I think, to say that, having foreseen by divination the natural death of Constantius and his own slaughter among the Persians, he leapt willingly into evident death, winning for himself among many no reputation except for rashness and ignorant generalship, and bringing so great a danger on the Roman empire that almost the whole of it, or the greater part, was in danger of falling under the Persians. But let this be said by us, so that it may not seem to have been passed over; and let each think of it as he pleases.

After the death of Constantius the church was in fear of persecutions; and the expectation was more fearful to the Christians than the experience, since the long interval had made them unused to such dangers, and there was the memory of the former punishments and the ruler’s hatred of the doctrine. For it is said that he at once so openly and shamelessly renounced faith in Christ that by certain sacrifices and invocations, which the pagans call “averting,” and by the blood of victims, he washed off our baptism, renouncing the initiation of the church; and from then on he used, privately and publicly, victims and sacrificial animals and everything that is customary among pagans. Once, at any rate, when he was inspecting the victims, a sign of a cross encircled by a crown is said to have appeared in the entrails; and it threw the others who shared in the divination into fear, for they inferred from it the future strength of the religion and the eternity of the doctrine, since the crown by which it was encircled is a sign of victory, and by the circuit of the circle, which begins everywhere and ends in itself, it is nowhere brought to an end. But the chief of the diviners told them to take courage, since the victims showed signs favourable to them, enclosing the symbol of the doctrine and pressing it together so that it could not spread and go freely where it wished, having the circumference of the circle as its limit. I have also learned that he once went down into one of the most celebrated and fearful sanctuaries, for an initiation or an oracle; and when the contrivances devised for these things suddenly assailed him, and phantoms appeared by sorcery, in confusion and fear he forgot where he was — for he came late in life to such learning — and from his former habit, like a Christian caught in desperate dangers, he unawares signed himself with the symbol of Christ. At once the phantoms vanished and the business in hand was thwarted. The mystagogue was at a loss over this; but when he learned the cause of the demons’ flight, he called the deed a pollution, urged him to be brave and to do or think nothing Christian, and led him again to the rite. The emperor’s zeal in these things grieved the Christians not a little and made them very fearful, especially because he had formerly been a Christian. For, born of parents pious in religion, he was initiated as a youth according to the rule of the church, was taught the sacred Scriptures, and was brought up under bishops and churchmen. For his father and that of Gallus was Constantius, the brother on the father’s side of Constantine who had reigned, and of Dalmatius. Dalmatius’s son of the same name, who had been proclaimed Caesar, was killed by the soldiers after Constantine’s death. Being then orphans themselves, they were in danger of perishing with Dalmatius. But Gallus was rescued from the plot because he happened to be ill and was expected to die of himself before long, and Julian by his youth, for he was still in his eighth year. Saved thus unexpectedly, they were ordered to live in Cappadocia at Macellum. This is an imperial estate near Mount Argaeus, not far from the city of Caesarea, having a magnificent palace, baths, gardens and perennial springs. There they were thought worthy of royal care and upbringing, and had lessons and exercises suited to their age, teachers of letters and guides in the holy Scriptures, so that they were even enrolled in the clergy and read the church’s books to the people. And not only so, but by their manners and deeds they displayed piety, holding in great honour priests and others who were good and zealous for doctrine, frequenting the houses of prayer, and honouring the tombs of the martyrs with fitting honours. At that time, at any rate, they say that, wishing to enclose the tomb of the martyr Mamas in a very large building, they divided the work between them. As each strove to outdo the other in zeal and honour, something astonishing and altogether incredible happened — it would be incredible were it not that many who heard it from eyewitnesses have survived even to our day. For Gallus’s part advanced and went forward as intended; but of Julian’s work, some had collapsed, some was thrown up out of the ground, and some would not stay joined to the foundation at once, as though driven back by some resisting and violent force pushing against it from below. All naturally thought the thing a portent, but most judged it by the outcome. Some inferred from that time that the man was not sound in religion but pretended to be pious, feigning to be a Christian because the ruler of the time was one, and not thinking it safe to bring his opinion into the open. He betrayed his ancestral religion, it is said, first led astray by associating with diviners. For after some time, when Constantius’s anger had ceased, Gallus went to Asia and lived at Ephesus, where he had most of his property; and Julian returned to Constantinople and attended the teachers there. Being well endowed by nature and advancing easily in learning, he did not go unnoticed; for he went about in the dress of a private person and associated with many. But since, as tends to happen in a crowd and in the imperial city, being the ruler’s kinsman and appearing able to manage affairs, he was expected to reign, and such talk about him prevailed, he was ordered to live at Nicomedia. There Maximus the philosopher of Ephesus met him and became his teacher in philosophical doctrines and in hatred of the Christian religion; and, as a diviner, he assured him that the rumour about him was true. Julian, as happens to many, distressed by apprehension of hard circumstances and beguiled by favourable hopes, made Maximus his friend. When this was reported to the emperor, in fear he shaved his head to the skin and pretended to follow the monastic life, but secretly held to the other religion. As he came to manhood he was more readily drawn on and was excited about these things. Wondering whether there is an art that foretells the future, and thinking the learning of it necessary, he was led to make trial of things that Christians must not; and from then on he used those who pursued them as friends. In this frame of mind he came from Nicomedia to Asia; and associating with such people there, he became more eager about these things. When his brother Gallus, who had been made Caesar, was accused of plotting revolt and was killed, Constantius, suspecting that Julian too was possessed by love of rule, kept him under guard. When Eusebia, the wife of Constantius, begged for him, Constantius released him, and he went away to Athens, ostensibly for pagan studies and schooling, but, as they say, to consult the diviners there about his own affairs. Constantius summoned him from there and made him Caesar; and having betrothed his own sister Constantia to him in marriage, he sent him to the western Gauls. For the barbarians whom he had formerly hired as allies against Magnentius, having been of no use for that purpose, were ravaging Gaul. Since he was still young, he entrusted what had to be done to the generals who accompanied him. When they were slack, the Caesar himself took thought for the war as far as he could, made the soldiers more eager for battle, both urging them to run risks and fixing a set reward for each who killed a barbarian. Having thereby won the soldiers’ favour, he informed Constantius of the generals’ slackness. When another general was sent, he engaged the barbarians and fared well. When they sent envoys about a treaty, holding out letters of Constantius that summoned them into Roman territory, he deliberately delayed sending back the envoy, attacked the mass of the enemy unexpectedly, and conquered. It is said that Constantius, plotting against him, entrusted this war to him. But this does not seem plausible to me. For when he was free not to make him Caesar at all, why did he make him so, give him his sister as wife, listen to him when he complained about the slack generals, and send a zealous one in their place so that they might bring the war to success, if he was not his friend? But, as I conjecture, Constantius was at first well disposed to him and made him Caesar; but when he was proclaimed Augustus against his wishes, either fearing because of the wrongs he had done him and his brother when they were young, or, as is natural, envious of the equal honour, he plotted against him through the barbarians on the Rhine. But on these things some think one way and some another.

When he was established in sole rule, he opened the pagan temples throughout the East and ordered some to be repaired, those that had been destroyed to be restored, and the altars to be set up again. He found many revenues for them; he renewed the old customs, the ancestral rites of the cities, and the sacrifices. He himself openly and publicly poured libations and sacrificed, and held in great honour those who were zealous for these things. To the initiates, priests, hierophants and attendants of the images he restored their old honours, confirmed the privileges enacted for them by the earlier emperors, and decreed their exemption from public services and from the other burdens from which they had formerly been free. He restored to the temple-wardens the allowances of food that had been taken from them, and ordered them to keep pure from the foods from which one appointed, as the pagans say, to sacred service ought to abstain. He also ordered the cubit of the Nile, the symbols … and the old ancestral objects to be brought to Serapis; for by order of Constantine it had been brought to the church. He wrote often to the councils of the cities: if he learned that they had turned to paganism, he urged them to ask for whatever gifts they wished; but to those that were Christian he openly showed hatred, neither consenting to visit them himself nor receiving their embassies when they sent envoys about their grievances. Thus, when the Persians were then expected to invade, and the people of Nisibis sent envoys about this, he threatened, since they were wholly Christian and neither opened the temples nor went to the shrines, not to help them nor receive their embassy, and not to set foot in their city, as polluted, until he learned that they had turned to paganism. Bringing similar charges against the people of Constantia in Palestine, he assigned their city to the people of Gaza. For this Constantia, as we have learned before, was the port of Gaza and was called Maiuma; Constantine, learning that it was above all devoted to the Christian religion, honoured it with the rank of a city, named it after his son Constantius, and ordered it to have its own civic government, reckoning it unjust that it should be subject to the people of Gaza, who were extremely pagan. When Julian came to the throne, the people of Gaza went to law against the Constantians; and sitting as judge himself, he assigned Constantia, which lies about twenty stadia away, to Gaza; and from then on, stripped of its former name, it is called the seaside quarter of the city of Gaza. They have common civil magistrates and generals and public affairs. Only in church matters do they still today appear as two cities; for each has its own bishop and clergy, festivals of martyrs, commemorations of the priests who have served among them, and boundaries of the surrounding lands by which the altars belonging to each episcopate are marked out. In our own time a bishop of the city of Gaza, when the head of the church of the Maiumites had died, tried to bring both clergies under himself, saying it was not lawful for two bishops to preside over one city. When the Maiumites objected, the synod of the province decided the case and ordained another bishop, judging that those who for their piety had been thought worthy of the rights of a city, and had been treated otherwise through the judgment of a pagan emperor, ought by no means to be deprived of the privileges given them in priesthoods and the order of churches. But this turned out so later.

About the same time the emperor struck from the list of cities Caesarea by Mount Argaeus, great and prosperous, the metropolis of the Cappadocian province, and took from it the name of Caesar, which it had obtained long before under Claudius Caesar, having first been called Mazaca. For he had long hated its inhabitants with an extraordinary hatred, because they were Christians to a man and had long since destroyed their temples of Zeus, guardian of the city, and of ancestral Apollo. And when the temple of Fortune, which alone was left, was overturned by the Christians during his reign, he was violently hostile to the whole city and indignant. He blamed the pagans, who were very few, for not having come to its defence and willingly suffered for Fortune, if suffer they must. He ordered all the estates and money of the churches in Caesarea and within its territory to be searched out under torture and brought into the open; at once three hundred pounds of gold to be paid to the treasury; all clerics to be enrolled in the list of soldiers under the governor of the province, which in the Roman armies is considered very burdensome and most disgraceful; and the multitude of the Christians, with wives and children, to be registered and to pay taxes as in the villages. He threatened under oath that, unless they quickly raised up the temples again, he would not cease from his wrath, harassing the city, and would not even let the Galileans keep their heads — for so he was accustomed to call the Christians in mockery. The threat might perhaps have been carried out had he not died so soon. For at the beginning he seemed more humane than the earlier persecutors of the church, not out of pity for the Christians, but because he had found that the punishments of his predecessors had done nothing to establish paganism, and that by this especially Christianity had grown and become more glorious through the courage of those who chose to die for the doctrine. So, grudging them their glory, he did not think fire or sword or tortures of the body, or drowning, or burying alive — what had been practised before — necessary to change their minds; he thought to persuade the multitudes by speech and exhortation to change over to paganism, and that he would easily achieve his aim if, not deigning to use force, he should unexpectedly appear humane toward them. At any rate it is said that, when he was sacrificing in the temple of Fortune at Constantinople, Maris the bishop of Chalcedon came up to him, publicly insulted him as impious, and called him atheist and apostate; and Julian reproached him only with his blindness, for he had come with a guide, being old and having cataracts in his eyes. And when, mocking as was his habit and blaspheming Christ, he said, “Not even your Galilean God will heal you,” Maris answered, “But I thank my God for my blindness, so that I may not see you fallen from piety.” And the emperor passed on without answering. For he thought that he would strengthen paganism more in this way, showing himself unexpectedly forbearing and gentle to the multitude of the Christians.

With this aim he ended the exile of all who had been banished for religion under Constantius and restored their property to those whose goods had been confiscated by law. He proclaimed to the populace that no one was to wrong the Christians or insult them or drag them unwilling to sacrifice; but those who came to the altars willingly must first propitiate those whom the pagans call averting deities and be cleansed with the purifications customary among them. From the clergy, however, he took away all the exemption, honour and allowances of food granted under Constantine, repealed the laws enacted in their favour, and returned them to the city councils. He ordered that even virgins and widows enrolled in the lists of the clergy because of their poverty should have exacted from them what they had formerly received from the public treasury. For when Constantine was regulating the affairs of the churches, he assigned from the taxes of each city enough for the provision of necessities to the clergy everywhere, and confirmed this by a law, which still holds, having been carefully observed since Julian died. They say this exaction was most cruel and harsh. The receipts given then by the collectors to those from whom they exacted, as proof of the repayment of what they had received under Constantine’s law, also bear witness to it. Nor did the ruler’s hostility to religion stop at this; in the zeal of his hatred of the doctrine he left no means untried for the destruction of the church. He took away its money, offerings and sacred vessels, and forced those who had demolished temples under the rule of Constantine and Constantius to rebuild them or pay their assessed value. As a result, being able to do neither, and being further subject to the search for the sacred funds, priests and clerics and many other Christians were cruelly tortured and thrown into prison. So from everything one may infer that as regards killings and the devising of bodily punishments he was milder than those who had earlier persecuted the church, but in other respects harsher. For he plainly did it harm in every way, except that he recalled the priests who under Constantius’s reign had been condemned to live in exile. It is said that he did not order this out of consideration for them, but so that the church might be fought in civil war through their strife with each other and fall away from its own laws; or else to discredit Constantius. For he thought that he would rouse hatred against him, though dead, among almost all his subjects, by courting the pagans as like-minded and by pitying, as wronged, those who had suffered for Christ under him. Accordingly he also drove the eunuchs from the palace, as having been dear to Constantius, and punished with death Eusebius, the chief of the imperial household; for he had also a private grievance against him, since he suspected that his brother Gallus had been killed by his plotting. Aetius, the founder of the heresy of Eunomius, who had been condemned by Constantius to exile beyond the frontier and was otherwise suspect because of his association with Gallus, he summoned to himself, writing to him very kindly and giving him the use of the public post. For the same reason he then ordered Eleusius, bishop of Cyzicus, under a very heavy penalty, to rebuild within two months at his own expense the church of the Novatians, which he had destroyed under Constantius. And one could find many other things which, from hatred of his predecessor, he either did himself or allowed others to do.

At this time Athanasius too, who had been hiding all the time before this no one knew where, when the death of Constantius was announced, appeared by night in the church of the Alexandrians. This was naturally astonishing, happening so suddenly and against expectation. For when, through the plotting of George’s associates, the commander of the troops in Egypt, at the emperor’s order, tried to seize him and failed, as was told earlier, he escaped and until the present reign was hidden in Alexandria with a holy virgin. We have heard that she so surpassed the women of that time in beauty that she was a marvel to those who saw her, but was avoided by men who professed propriety and chastity, so that suspicion might not bring blame on them. For she was in the bloom of her youth, and exceedingly modest and chaste — a virtue which, even when nature does not help, is wont to adorn the body into comeliness. For truly it is not, as some think, that as bodies are, so is the soul; rather, the character of the body is portrayed in the pursuits of the soul, and a person shows himself to be such as the pursuit he follows at any time. If anyone examines this argument carefully, no one, I think, will gainsay it. Athanasius, the story goes, took refuge with this virgin in accordance with a divine vision that suggested to him that he would be saved there. And looking at the outcome, it seems to me that this was not arranged without God, but so that the associates of Athanasius should have no trouble, if anyone tried to question them about him or forced them to swear an oath; and so that he himself would escape notice, hidden with her, since her beauty did not allow anyone to suspect that the priest was staying there. She received him out of courage and saved him by prudence, becoming so faithful a guardian and zealous servant that she washed his feet and she alone served him in food and all other matters, and in whatever nature is compelled to endure in its pressing needs; and moreover she fetched from others the books he needed. And though this went on for a long time, none of the inhabitants of the city of Alexandria learned of it.

So Athanasius, saved in this way, appeared unexpectedly in the church, and no one knew where he had come from. The people of Alexandria, overjoyed, handed the churches over to him. The followers of Arius, driven out, held their assemblies by themselves in private houses, putting forward Lucius as bishop of their heresy in place of George. George had already been killed. For as soon as the magistrates publicly announced that Constantius was dead and that Julian was emperor, the pagan multitude of the Alexandrians rose in riot. Shouting and reviling, they rushed at him as if to kill him on the spot; but checked in their first onset, they kept him for the time in chains. Not long afterwards they ran to the prison at dawn, killed him, set him on a camel, spent the whole day in outrages on him, and towards evening gave him to the fire. I am not unaware that those of the Arian heresy say that George suffered this at the hands of Athanasius’s partisans. But I think the deed was rather the pagans’, reckoning that they had more and greater grounds for hatred against him, above all his outrages against the images and the temples and his prohibition of the sacrifices and ancestral rites. Their hostility toward him was increased by the power he had at the palace, … which, as a populace tends to feel toward those in power, they thought intolerable. Besides this, the following happened at that time at what they call the Mithraeum. Constantius had given this place, long since deserted, to the church of the Alexandrians; and when George was clearing it to build a house of prayer, an inner shrine came to light, in which were found images, perhaps, and certain implements of those who had once been initiated or performed rites there, which seemed ridiculous and strange to those who saw them. The Christians displayed these publicly and paraded them, mocking the pagans. The pagans, gathering together in a mass, attacked the Christians, some armed with swords or stones, others with whatever came to hand; they killed many, crucified some in mockery of the religion, and left most wounded. Because of this the Christians left unfinished the work they had begun; and the pagans, when Julian’s reign came, killed George. The emperor himself bears witness that this was so. He would not have admitted it unless forced by the truth; for he would have wished, I think, the murderers of George to be Christians of any sort rather than pagans. Nevertheless he did not conceal it; at any rate in his letter to the Alexandrians about this he appears to be angry. He blamed them only in writing, and remitted the punishment, out of reverence, he says, for Serapis their guardian god, for Alexander their founder, and for Julian his own uncle, who had earlier governed Egypt and Alexandria itself — a man who delighted in paganism above all and hated the Christians beyond measure, so that, as far as it lay with him, contrary to the ruler’s intention, the Christians suffered evil even to bloodshed.

It is said, at any rate, that when this Julian was then eager to seize the offerings of the church of the Antiochenes, which were very many and very costly, and to transfer them to the imperial treasury, and to shut the places of prayer, all the clergy fled, and only Theodore the presbyter did not withdraw from the city. Julian arrested him, as the keeper of the treasures who could disclose them, tortured him terribly, and at last ordered him to be put to death by the sword, after he had answered bravely through every torture and won renown in his confessions for the doctrine. When he had plundered the sacred vessels, he threw them on the ground and mocked them; and having blasphemed Christ as much as he pleased, he sat on them and so increased the outrage. At once his private parts and the passages needed about them were corrupted; the flesh there rotted and turned to worms, and the disease overcame the physicians’ art; and yet, out of respect and fear of the emperor, they had tried every kind of remedy. Sacrificing many costly birds, they plastered the decayed parts with their fat and drew the worms to the surface. But it was of no use: for, hidden in the depth, they crept into the living flesh, and did not stop gnawing him until they had killed him. He seemed to have met such a calamity by the wrath of God; for the keeper of the imperial treasuries too, and some others of those entrusted with authority in the palace, who had behaved insolently toward the church, ended their lives strangely and pitiably, as though condemned by the divine anger.