ges, not allowing the most violent storm to prevent him. Several times in a day, surrounded by priests and dancing women, he sacrificed a hundred bulls, himself furnishing the wood and kindling the flames. He used the knife himself, and, as haruspex, searched with his own hand the secrets of the future in the reeking entrails. But his zeal found no echo, and only made him ridiculous in the eyes of cultivated heathen themselves. He complains repeatedly of the indifference of his party, and accuses one of his priests of a secret league with Christian bishops. The spectators at his sacrifices came not from devotion, but from curiosity, and grieved the devout emperor by their rounds of applause, as if he were simply a theatrical actor of religion. Often there were no spectators at all. When he endeavored to restore the oracle of Apollo Daphneus in the famous cypress grove at Antioch, and arranged for a magnificent procession, with libation, dances, and incense, he found in the temple one solitary old priest, and this priest ominously offered in sacrifice-a goose. * At the same time, however, Julian sought to renovate and transform heathenism by incorporating with it the morals of Christianity; vainly thinking thus to bring it back to its original purity. In this he himself unwittingly and unwillingly bore witness to the poverty of the heathen religion, and paid the highest tribute to the Christian; and the Christians for this reason not inaptly called him an "ape of Christianity." In the first place he proposed to improve the irreclaimable *Misopog. p. 362 sq., where Julian himself relates this ludicrous scene, and vents his anger at the Antiochians for squandering the rich incomes of the temple upon Christianity and worldly pleasures. Dr. Baur, 1. c. p. 17, justly remarks on Julian's zeal for idolatry: "Seine ganze persönliche Erscheinung, der Mangel an innerer Haltung in seinem Benehmen gegen Heiden und Christen, die stete Unruhe und schwärmerische Aufregung, in welcher er sich befand, wenn er von Tempel zu Tempel eilte, auf allen Altären opferte und nichts unversucht liess, um den heidnischen Cultus, dessen höchstes Vorbild er selbst als Pontifex maximus sein sollte, in seinem vollen Glanz und Gepränge, mit allen seinen Ceremonien und Mysterien wiederherzustellen, macht einen Eindruck der es kaum verkennen lässt wie wenig er sich selbst das Unnatürliche und Erfolglose eines solchen Strebens verbergen konnte." The priesthood after the model of the Christian clergy. priests, as true mediators between the gods and men, should be constantly in the temples, should occupy themselves with holy things, should study no immoral or skeptical books of the school of Epicurus and Pyrrho, but the works of Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Chrysippus, Zeno; they should visit no taverns nor theatres, should pursue no dishonorable trade, should give alms, practise hospitality, live in strict chastity and temperance, wear simple clothing, but in their official functions always appear in the costliest garments and most imposing dignity. Then, he borrowed from the constitution and worship of the church a hierarchical system of orders and a sort of penitential discipline, with excommunication, absolution, and restoration, besides a fixed ritual embracing didactic and musical elements. Mitred priests in purple were to edify the people regularly with sermons; that is, with allegorical expositions and practical applications of absurd and immoral mythological stories. Every temple was to have a well-arranged choir, and the congregation its responses. And finally, Julian established in different provinces monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals for the sick, for orphans, and for foreigners without distinction of religion, appropriated to them considerable sums from the public treasury, and at the same time, though fruitlessly, invited voluntary contributions. He made the noteworthy concession, that the heathen did not help even their own brethren in faith; while the Jews never begged, and "the godless Galileans," as he malignantly styles the Christians, supplied not only their own, but even the heathen poor, and thus aided the worst of causes by a good life. But of course all these attempts to regenerate heathenism by foreign elements were utterly futile. They were like galvanizing a decaying corpse, or grafting fresh scions on a dead trunk, or sowing good seed on a rock, or pouring new wine into old bottles, bursting the bottles and wasting the wine. 2. The negative side of Julian's plan was the suppression and final extinction of Christianity. In this he proceeded with extraordinary sagacity. He ab stained from bloody persecution, because he would not forego the credit of philosophical toleration, nor give the church the credit of a new martyrdom. A history of three centuries also had proved that violent measures were fruitless. According to Libanius it was a principle with him, that fire and sword cannot change a man's faith, and that persecution only begets hypocrites and martyrs. Finally, he doubtless perceived, that the Christians were too numerous to be assailed by a general persecution without danger of a bloody civil war. Hence he oppressed the church "gently,"* under show of equity and universal toleration. He persecuted not so much the Christians, as Christianity, by endeavoring to draw off its confessors. He thought he could obtain this result of persecution without incurring the personal reproach and the public danger of persecution itself. His disappointments however increased his bitterness, and had he returned victorious from the Persian war, he would probably have resorted to open violence. In fact Gregory Nazianzen and Sozomen, and some heathen writers also, tell of local persecutions in the provinces, particularly at Anthusa and Alexandria, with which the emperor is, at least indirectly, to be charged. His officials acted in those cases not under public orders, indeed, but according to the secret wish of Julian, who ignored their illegal proceedings as long as he could, and then revealed his real views by lenient censure and substantial acquittal of the offending magistrates. He first, therefore, employed against the Christians of all parties and sects the policy of toleration, in hope of their destroying each other by internal controversies. He permitted the orthodox bishops and all other clergy, who had been banished under Constantius, to return to their dioceses, and left Arians, Apollinarians, Novatians, Macedonians, Donatists, and so on, to themselves. He affected compassion for the "poor, blind, deluded Galileans, who forsook the most glorious privilege of man, the worship of the immortal gods, and instead of them worshipped dead men and dead men's bones." He once even suffered himself to be insulted by a blind bishop, * 'Emiɛike ¿ẞiážero, as Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. IV, expresses it. Maris of Chalcedon, who, when reminded by him, that the Galilean God could not restore his eyesight, answered: "I thank my God for my blindness, which spares me the painful sight of such an impious apostate as thou art." He afterwards, however, caused the bishop to be severely punished.* So in Antioch, also, he bore with philosophic equanimity the ridicule of the Christian populace, but avenged himself on the inhabitants of the city by unsparing satire in the Misopogon. His whole bearing towards the Christians was instinct with bitter hatred and accompanied with sarcastic mockery. This be trays itself even in the contemptuous term, Galileans, which he constantly applies to them after the fashion of the Jews, and which he probably also commanded to be given them by others. He considered them a sect of fanatics, contemptible to men and hateful to the gods, and as atheists in open war with all that was sacred and divine in the world.§ He sometimes had representatives of different parties dispute in his presence, and then exclaimed: "No wild beasts are so fierce and irreconcilable as the Galilean sectarians." When he found, that toleration was rather profitable than hurtful to the church, and tended to soften the vehemence of doctrinal controversies, he proceeded, for example, to banish Athanasius, who was particularly offensive to him, from Alexandria, and even from Egypt, calling this greatest man of his age an insignificant manikin,| and reviling him with vulgar language, because through his influence many prominent heathen, especially heathen women, passed over to Christianity. His toleration, therefore, was neither that of genuine humanity, nor that of religious indiffer *Socrates: H. E. III, 12. ... + Gibbon well says, ch. XXIII: "He affected to pity the unhappy Christians, but his pity was degraded by contempt, his contempt was imbittered by hatred ; and the sentiments of Julian were expressed in a style of sarcastic wit, which inflicts a deep and deadly wound whenever it issues from the mouth of a sovereign." Perhaps there also lay at the bottom of this a secret fear of the name of Christ, as Warburton (p. 35) suggests; since the Neo-Platonists believed in the mysterious virtue of names. § ἀσεβεῖς, δυσσεβεῖς, ἄθεοι. Their religion he calls a μωρία or ἀπόνοια. Comp. Ep. 7 (ap. Heyler p. 190). [ Ανδρωπίσκος εὐτελής. entism, but a hypocritical mask for a fanatical love of heathenism and a bitter hatred of Christianity. This appears in his open partiality and injustice against the Christians. His liberal patronage of heathenism was in itself an injury to Christianity. Nothing gave him greater joy than an apostasy, and he held out the temptation of splendid reward; thus himself employing the impure means of proselyting, with which he reproached the Christians. Once he even advocated conversion by violent measures. While he called the heathen to all the higher offices, and, in case of their palpable disobedience, inflicted very mild punishment, if any at all, the Christians were every where disregarded, and their complaints dismissed from the tribunal with a mocking reference to their Master's precept, to give their enemy their cloak also with their coat, and turn the other cheek to his blows. They were removed from military and civil office, deprived of all their former privileges, oppressed with taxes, and compelled to restore without indemnity the temple property with all their own improvements on it, and to contribute to the support of the public idolatry. Upon occasion of a controversy between the Arians and the orthodox at Edessa, Julian divided the church among his soldiers, and confiscated the property, under the sarcastic pretence of facilitating the entrance of Christians into the kingdom of heaven, from which, according to the doctrine of their religion, riches might exclude them. Equally unjust and tyrannical was the law, which placed all the state schools under the direction of heathen, and prohibited Christians to teach the sciences and the arts.* Julian would thus deny the Christian youth the advantages of education, and compel them either to sink into ignorance and * Gregory of Naz., Orat. IV, censures the emperor bitterly for forbidding the Christians what was the common property of all rational men, as if it were the exclusive possession of the Greeks. Even the heathen Ammianus Marcellinus, XXII, 10, condemns this measure: "Illud autem erat inclemens, obruendum perenni silentio, quod arcebat docere magistros rhetoricos et grammaticos, ritus Christiani cultores." Gibbon is equally decided. Directly, Julian forbade Christians only to teach, but indirectly also to learn classical literature; as they were of course unwilling to go to heathen schools. |