“Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism?" - Julian the Apostate in his letter to Arsacius
In this post, I want to look at the fascinating figure of Flavius Claudius Julianus, 331/332 - 363 CE, the last non-Christian emperor of Rome. This emperor is more well known as Julian the Apostate, a name given to him by his later Christian detractors because of his efforts to undermine imperial Christianity and return Rome to its former, pagan religious traditions. His two-year reign offers an intriguing window into the light and shadow, strengths and weaknesses of Christianity during this critical transition point as it was in the process of becoming the official religion of the Roman empire.The Christian bishop Gregory of Nazanius would later describe Julian’s reign and efforts to revive paganism - and curtail Christianity - as little more than a passing cloud. But what an interesting cloud. In the two years before his death-by-spear in 363 in a battle against Persia at a site near modern day Baghdad, Julian issued various edicts and wrote treatises against the Galileans - as he called the Christians - that reveal his intentions and plans. As brief as his two-year reign was, his efforts have remained a source of fascination because of the insight it offers about Christianity during this period, not to mention raising the question of what might have been had he lived longer and had he been successful in his efforts.
For the purposes of looking at issues of poverty and wealth in Christianity, I was especially struck by the fact that his efforts to restore Rome to its traditional religious traditions nevertheless reveal a begrudging respect for Christianity’s organizational structure and its traditions of charity. By his death, Julian had begun to restructure paganism into an organizational structure that closely resembled Christianity, even to the point of viewing himself as the head of the pagan church - a pagan pope, of sorts.[1] Further, as I will explore in some detail, he viewed Christian charity as one of the causes of its rapid spread and in a letter to Arsacius, the pagan high priest at Galatia, he insists that Hellenic temples should adopt Christians’ model of charity and that he is prepared to begin sending supplies of food and materials to enable them to do so. That this was written by an emperor seeking to undermine Christianity is revealing of how definitive and important charity was in the spread of Christianity.
Julian’s words in his letter to Arsacius have been a source of pride for Christians for millennia and I even think a line or two of this letter may have become well-known: “Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism?”[2] Before Christians exult too much, however, it’s worth exploring some of Julian’s other critiques of Christianity - particularly as it took on the trappings of imperial force - as they are remarkably on point.
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Julian’s life was framed by the violence of imperial Christianity. Julian was the nephew of the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, who decriminalized Christianity in 313 and presided over its transformation into Rome’s imperial religion before his final conversion and death in 337. Constantine’s decriminalization and conversion ultimately resulted in an alignment of faith and imperial power that would forever transform Christianity, and one that would cause immediate and obvious contradictions between the power, violence, and wealth of imperial catholic Christianity and the poverty and nonviolence of Jesus.
With the sole exception of Julian, Constantine and his successors would all be Christians from this point on. They would ultimately make Roman paganism illegal, would close down pagan temples, and would redirect the financial resources that once went to these temples toward the building of Christian churches and their support. In 357, just prior to Julian’s reign, the newly established imperial Christians removed the pagan Altar of Victory from the Roman senate - a sign of Christianity’s newfound strength.[3]
Julian, however, appears to have been repelled by Rome’s shift toward imperial Christianity. Born into a Christian family, he secretly converted from Christianity to Roman Neoplatonism in 351 at the age of 19, a detail that he kept hidden until becoming emperor ten years later. Although it’s not clear what exactly led to his conversion, I’m personally partial to the theory that having one’s father, brother, and many other family members murdered by people calling themselves Christians may have led to his having a dim view of the faith.[4] He also appears to have had a tutor/teacher who had not converted to Christianity who had a powerful influence on him. Whatever the reasons, Julian would go on to become a successful general in the Roman army, was declared Caesar over the western provinces of Rome by the emperor Constantius in 355, and after a key battle against Germanic armies was declared Augustus by his army in 360. This would likely have resulted in a civil war against the emperor Constantius had the emperor not died shortly after, naming Julian as his successor.
With Constantius’ death, Julian became sole emperor of Rome in 361. It is only at this point that Julian revealed himself to not be a Christian, a fact which may have come as a shock to the ruling classes who had seen the way the wind was blowing and had converted to Christianity during the reigns of the last emperors. Julian began acting rapidly at that point: he grew a controversial beard, defended said beard, declared his reign to be in the vein of Marcus Aurelius, and returned the Altar of Victory to the senate. He also began to devote a significant amount of what would be his very brief time as emperor to undermining imperial Christianity.
And as a former Christian, he did this very effectively and, seemingly, with an insider’s knowledge of all the problematic contradictions of the faith, some of which Christians are still wrestling with today. For instance, unlike his aversion to Christianity, Julian appears to have had a profound respect for Judaism - at one point even seeking to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem - and he saw Christianity as an offensive upstart that was disregarding the wisdom of both Jewish and Hellenic religious traditions. His criticism of Christianity’s anti-Judaism is just one of the many points where you realize Julian understood Christianity’s faults much more deeply than perhaps many Christians still today.
More broadly, Julian expelled Christians from the Roman army and also famously prohibited Christians from teaching Greek and Roman literature and philosophy. The latter occurred through an edict of 362 that ruled that Christian teachers should be disqualified on the grounds that “proper education entails not merely expertise in language and letters, but a ‘healthy disposition’” and that Christians who believe one thing while teaching another cannot be said to truly educate their pupils.[5] Like Constantine, he also recognized Christianity’s long associations with burial rites; in contrast to Constantine, however, he used this knowledge against them by decreeing in 363 that funerals could not be carried out in broad daylight as had been the Christian custom.[6]
Beyond this, there was also the critical issue of money. Under Constantine, “vast sums were spent on the building of basilicas, and there were grand endowments of land given to the Church. That land, moreover, was to be exempt from tax. Clerics were excused from the burden of costly public offices, even personally subsidized. There were food allowances for Christian widows and nuns.”[7] Constantine had also redirected the large amount of precious metals that had once been stored in the ancestral pagan temples toward the building up of Christian churches. Julian was aware of how this imperial funding, tax exemptions, and exemptions from civil service had played in strengthening imperial Christianity, and so he went about reversing the financial support that Christians had been receiving.
In February 362, “an edict decreed that temples of the gods that had been put to improper use should be rededicated, and that those which had been destroyed by the Christians should be rebuilt at the Church's expense. Owners of land which had formerly belonged to the temples were to give it back, and a special tax was levied on those who had used the fabric of sacred buildings in the construction of new ones.’ Christian clergy tax exemptions were revoked, and their judicial power and exemption from service withdrawn.”[8]
According to Philip Daileader, Ph.D. Professor of History The College of William and Mary, when bishops and clergy protested Julian’s removal of these privileges, Julian coyly replied that he’d heard Jesus’ statement that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; therefore the bishops and clergy should be thanking him for helping them get closer to their heavenly goal.[9] In this, it might be said that the “apostate” Julian perceived the internal contradiction between a Gospel of the poor and the wealth of an established imperial Church.
Perhaps Julian’s most deft - and embarrassing - strategy, however, was simply to step back and allow Christian factionalism to do the work of undermining Christianity for him. In 363, Julian proclaimed freedom of worship for all religions. This very intentionally included all forms of Christianity, thereby removing Roman support and sponsorship from catholic Christianity and thereby placing previously heretical factions such as Arianism on equal footing. Rather than being a strategy of multiculturalism, this decree is generally understood to have been a strategy for undermining Christian strength and unity, as he well-understood the viciousness of the internal divisions among Christians, and how such factionalism would lead to Christianity’s general weakening.
Julian’s efforts to revive paganism ended with his death in 363, at the age of 31, having been the emperor for a mere 20 months. While it is ultimately unclear who killed the emperor, Christians who were embittered by the emperor’s efforts to weaken imperial Christianity quickly claimed that it was a Christian soldier who had thrown the spear that pierced the emperor's liver and they widely celebrated his death. That spear killed the last pagan emperor of Rome. Julian’s successors were all Christian; his anti-Christian policies were rolled back; the Altar of Victory was once again removed from the senate; and the later emperor Theodosius (378-395) effectively outlawed paganism by making pagan sacrifices illegal and ordering the closing of all pagan temples.[10]
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Along with seeing and understanding Christianity’s various weaknesses - its anti-Judaism, factionalism, and internal theological contradictions - Julian also perceived its organizational strengths and in many ways his efforts to restore traditional religious traditions betray a begrudging respect for some aspects of the new faith. Among the strengths, Julian appears to have been especially interested in its organizational structure -- with deacons, priests and bishops overseeing a network of churches -- which allowed Christians to distribute resources from one community to another in times of need, a practice already evident in Paul’s Jerusalem collection and Justin Martyr’s emphasis on a collection for the poor.
In The Last Pagan Emperor, H.C. Teitler notes, “By his own pious and modest way of life Julian hoped to be a shining example for his subjects, but he realized that more needed to be done to halt the progress of Christianity. For that reason he developed means to found a pagan church. He himself would be its leader, as pontifex maximus. Under him high priests would be in charge of the priests consigned to them. For priests there was a key role in store (the comparison with the organizational structure of the Christian church urges itself upon us), and Julian devised guidelines for them. Their conduct must be impeccable; banal pleasures (races, circus, theater) should be avoided. The reading of frivolous poetry was prohibited. Priests should bury themselves in philosophical works, preferably those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Their most important duty was of course to conduct the service of the gods, but—and this was new—the care for the poor and the sick should concern them, too, for it was through poor relief and charity that the ‘Galilaeans’ had won many adherents.”[11]
This speaks to the history of Christian charity and how it contrasted with that of Rome’s understanding of philanthropy; one of the most important things that Julian was attempting to do was transform Roman philanthropy in light of the Christian model. In fourth century Rome, philanthropy was about the drama - or liturgia - of the elite’s giving of gifts of entertainment, circuses, baths, aqueducts, and more to the wider public. These gifts almost always involved patrons adding their name in huge letters as an inscription. This unabashedly self-serving version of philanthropy was a key component of the Roman patronage system and represented the dramatic transaction of material benefits from the wealthy in exchange for loyalty and safety from the wider public, though here the ‘public’ was narrowly defined and primarily applied to those who had resources and influence to offer in exchange.
In contrast, Christian charity - with its roots of sending aid to communities hit hard by famine, regular collections for the poor, as burial and mutual aid societies, and with the public role of bishops as “lovers of the poor” - was coming from a different place. Even as it incorporated elements of Roman philanthropy and the patronage system, Christians had expanded the obligation of Christian charity to require giving of every member - rich and poor alike - and directed this to aid the destitute, including orphans, widows, and those who were in desperate straits such as through famine.
Historian John McManners notes that the Roman Empire was far from being a welfare state and care for the destitute was rare prior to Christianity. It is in this bleak environment that Christian charity flourished, often as a point of contrast. “In the mid-third century the Roman church was feeding 155 church officials of various grades, and more than 1,500 widows and distressed persons. At Antioch in Syria late in the fourth century, the number of destitute persons being fed by the church had reached 3,000. It became common for a register or matricula of names to be kept.” In some rare cases, church funds even appear to have been used for the purchase of the emancipation of slaves, although unfortunately this doesn’t seem to have been a general practice.[12] Further, over time, Christian charity went beyond being an insular model of Christians only serving other Christians. “The principle long continued to be agreed that Christian aid to the destitute should not discriminate in favour of church members, but had no criterion other than need. When the plague struck Carthage in 252, Bishop Cyprian sent his people out to nurse the sick and bury the dead.”[13] In many respects, this would culminate in bishops like Basil of Cesarea seeing one of their primary public roles as being that of making visible the needs of the poor, which he did to great effect around 370 as I’ve written about here.
Christian charity was - and remains - a genuine strength and it was possibly the prospect of an even minimal safety net that resulted in it becoming a cause for many conversions. Thus, in a remarkable letter to Arsacius, high priest of Galatia, Julian expresses frustration that paganism isn’t recovering in popularity and insists that pagan temples develop philanthropic structures for serving the destitute in the same way Christians had, and he pledges imperial support to enable such aid. He especially appears to be referring to the way bishops had used imperial grain allowances to create charitable provisions for local communities - an allowance he would now be ending and redirecting toward the Hellenic temples.[14]
Referring to Christians as both atheists and Galileans, Julian writes, “Why, then, do we think that this is enough, why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism? I believe that we ought really and truly to practice every one of these virtues. I have but now made a plan by which you may be well provided for this; for I have given directions that 30,000 modii of corn shall be assigned every year for the whole of Galatia, and 60,000 pints of wine. I order that one-fifth of this be used for the poor who serve the priests, and the remainder be distributed by us to strangers and beggars. For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. Teach those of the Hellenic faith to contribute to public service of this sort, and the Hellenic villages to offer their first fruits to the gods; and accustom those who love the Hellenic religion to these good works by teaching them that this was our practice of old. Then let us not, by allowing others to outdo us in good works, disgrace by such remissness, or rather, utterly abandon, the reverence due to the gods. If I hear that you are carrying out these orders I shall be filled with joy.”[15]
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There are many reasons why I have found Julian’s efforts to undermine Christianity fascinating but perhaps the most important has to do with his perceptive understanding of its various weaknesses and, despite this, his begrudging respect for how the Christian organizational model enabled its charitable care for the poor. Obviously, this is something that I also consider a strength, and it calls to mind how time and time again Christian churches are far more effective as distribution points for localized aid than charity models that sweep in during times of disaster with little to no relationship to the community they are serving.
I need to wind this blog post down so I’ll only choose one of many stories to illustrate this point. In 2014, I traveled with the Episcopal Church Foundation to Cuba and visited, among many other sites, a tiny Episcopal congregation in a rural village. The church building had burned down thirty years prior but the small congregation continued to meet weekly for prayer services in the narthex, which was the one part of the building that remained standing. There was no regularly visiting priest but there was a vestry composed of six elderly women that kept ministries going. This vestry still met monthly and they shared with me their plans for one day reopening. Their congregation also continued various ministries to their community, including a children’s ministry and visiting the sick. As I recall, at one point children filled the small narthex - not hard given that it was very small - and sang a song of welcome. Even in its burned-down state, it was clear we were visiting a living community with a strong connection to the wider community.
In supporting the bishop of Cuba, we were also offering support to rural churches like the one we visited, which in turn supported their ministries to the most vulnerable in that wider community. To put it in slightly different terms, one of the strengths of Christianity still has to do with the fact that despite all odds, including fire and a repressive regime, in an incredibly remote part of Cuba, there is an organized ecclesiastical structure with a relationship to the bishop and, more importantly, with a sound reputation in the wider community, that can serve as an effective distribution point for aid and resources as needed. To this day, I know the somewhat circuitous - and legal - route by which I, even as an individual, can send aid to such parts of rural Cuba and this is done through a network of church-to-church relationships. Let's acknowledge that this distributive network is an organizational wonder - a miracle, really - in and of its own right. On an even more basic level, I continue to find it amazing that I - a Brooklynite - can travel to a place like rural Cuba and immediately have access to churches and people’s homes simply on the grounds that we both share a faith tradition. This sustained network of institutional structures, relationships and trust, is an incredible asset, especially in times of hardship and disaster.
It may be that I’m giving Julian too much credit here, but it strikes me that he perceived the strength of this alignment of organizational structure and charity even as he viewed these as threats to his own reforming efforts. Amidst all the weaknesses of institutional Christianity - and there are many - it is easy to forget the importance of this alignment of organizational structure and emphasis on charity and distribution of resources, and I believe it is something we must continue to emphasize and strengthen.
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[1] A Companion to Julian the Apostate] Introduction_ Approaching Julian.pdf / Stefan Rebenich and Hans-Ulrich Wiemer - 9789004416314 Downloaded from Brill.com11/20/2020 10:40:33AM via free access. “
[2] The Works of the Emperor Julian, volume III (1913) Loeb Classical Library
[3] From Great Courses Companion:file:///C:/Users/mescobar/Desktop/bk_tcco_000291.pdf
[4] CONTRIBUTORS: Stewart Henry Perowne and E. Christian Kopff / TITLE Julian / PUBLISHER Encyclopædia Britannica DATE PUBLISHED September 24, 2009 URL https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julian-Roman-emperor ACCESS DATE November 18, 2020
[5] Smith, Rowland (1995). Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate. London: Routledge. Page 199
[6] Teitler, H. C.. The Last Pagan Emperor . Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition. Pages 67-68
[7] Rowland B. E. Smith.Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate, 211.
[8] Rowland B. E. Smith.Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate, 211.
[9] Great Courses - The Early Middle Ages. Lecture # by Philip Daileader
[10] From Great Courses Companion:file:///C:/Users/mescobar/Desktop/bk_tcco_000291.pdf
[11] Teitler, H. C.. The Last Pagan Emperor (pp. 28-29). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
[12] McManners, John. The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity. Pages 37-39
[13] McManners, John. The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity. Pages 38-39
[14] Rowland B. E. Smith.Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate, 212
[15] The Works of the Emperor Julian, volume III (1913) Loeb Classical Library
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