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Julian the Apostate in Byzantine Culture
Julian, the last pagan emperor of the Roman empire, died in war in 363. In the Byzantine (that is, the Eastern Roman) empire, the figure of Julian aroused conflicting reactions: antipathy towards his apostasy but also admiration for his accomplishments, particularly as an author writing in Greek. Julian died young, and his attempt to reinstate paganism was a failure, but, paradoxically, his brief and unsuccessful policy resonated for centuries.
This book analyses Julian from the perspectives of Byzantine Culture. The history of his posthumous reputation reveals differences in cultural perspectives and it is most intriguing with regard to the Eastern Roman empire which survived for almost a millennium after the fall of the Western empire. Byzantine culture viewed Julian in multiple ways, first as the legitimate emperor of the enduring Roman empire; second as the author of works written in Greek and handed down for generations in the language that scholars, the Church, and the state administration all continued to use; and third as an open enemy of Christianity.
Julian the Apostate in Byzantine Culture will appeal to both researchers and students of Byzantine perspectives on Julian, Greco-Roman Paganism, and the Later Roman Empire, as well as those interested in Byzantine Historiography.
Stefano Trovato is Director of the Biblioteca Universitaria (Ministero della Cultura) in Padua, Italy. His research focuses on the classical tradition, with a special interest in the perceptions of the ancient past in the medieval and modern worlds.
Foreword
Julian, Emperor Constantine’s nephew and successor, ascended the throne at the young age of 30, in 361, in the wake of his successful campaign in Gaul and of a military insurrection. He devoted his reign to an attempt to overthrow the religious policies towards Christians inaugurated by the Constantinian revolution and then consolidated by Constantius H. Within the short span of two years, the young emperor committed himself both to the reform of social and the structures of the Roman State and to the restoration and revitalisation of pagan traditions and forms of worship, in an effort to make them newly attractive. He surrounded himself with the most prominent intellectuals, including rhetoric teachers and the heads of philosophical schools, particularly the Neoplatonists, heirs to a kind of spirituality that could attract the most fervid minds and souls yearning for a new and direct relationship with the divine and its manifestations. Julian’s shocking death during the Persian campaign on 26 June 363 apparently confirmed a prophecy by the elderly Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, who had said of him: “This is only a small cloud; it will soon pass”.
However, the strength and vitality of the emperor’s attempted restoration and of the means and forces he had deployed were quite clear to St Augustine, who in De civitate Dei was to stress the Apostate’s egregia indoles. Forty years after the emperor’s death, he noted: “What would have happened, if Constantine hadn’t reigned so long, and if Julian hadn’t been stripped of his life so early?” Almost 70 years after the emperor’s death, the Bishop of Alexandria, Cyril, felt the need to compose a powerful and articulate refutation of Against the Galileans, noting that this work, which questioned Christianity’s doctrinal foundations with passionate and competent arguments, continued to elicit much interest and attention.
The deep mark left by Julian — whether it was only apparent or truly significant — was a question that needed exploring in relation to its endurance in the Byzantine world. But all we had were some partial, limited works by individual authors who provided glimpses of significant traces, yet did not draw a full assessment of the extent of the phenomenon that might make it possible to grasp the web of relations linking different ages and texts. Stefano Trovato’s research, which began during his doctorate at Udine,has been conducted with philological accuracy, critical competence, perseverance, and historical sensitivity and insight. It now provides a broad, in-depth picture of the testimonies from a wide range of Byzantine writers — chroniclers, historians, literary critics, hagiographers, philosophers, theologians, rhetoric teachers, and lexicographers. What is surprising about these authors is the varied way in which they approach Julian: while rejecting his religious views, they respect him as a legitimate representative of imperial authority, to the point of welcoming and honouring his remains in the mausoleum of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. They evaluated his skills as a politician, ruler, and general, and acknowledged and appreciated the literary quality of his writings: the Misopogon, Julian’s satire against the Christians of Antioch, was even included among the stylistic models to be imitated in the school of a rhetor from the Palaiologan period, Andreas Lopadiotes.
Trovato’s study, which is based on a vast range of printed texts as well as manuscripts and unpublished material, serves as a reliable and wellinformed guide in what is a complex area from a bibliographical point of view. Trovato has succeeded in identifying hitherto undetected quotes, including fragments of Against the Galileans preserved in a biblical commentary by Procopius of Gaza.
In this fascinating itinerary, the various testimonies are carefully analysed, decoded from a literary perspective, translated, commented on, and set in relation to one another so as to reveal borrowings and innovations. It starts with Julian’s contemporaries and ends with Gemistos Plethon, whose date of death, 26 June of a year shortly before the fall of Constantinople and the fall of the Byzantine empire, recalls —in a sinister and conscious way — the day on which the Neoplatonist emperor died.
Augusto Guida
Preface
“The dragon, the apostate, the great mind, the Assyrian, the common adversary and enemy of all, who has stormed the earth with wild threats and uttered and practices many iniquities against the Most High”: with these words St Gregory of Nazianzus celebrated the news of Julian’s death in 363.' The first emperor born in Constantinople, the city founded by his uncle Constantine in 363, Julian was raised in a Christian milieu. Upon attaining the highest authority in 363, however, he sought to bring the res publica back to the old polytheistic religion. This earned him the sobriquet of Apostate. Instead of declaring himself a persecutor, he chose to make a show of tolerance and to fan the divisions within Christianity. He also embarked on a tireless propaganda effort and personally penned various works, including a treatise Against the Galileans: this is what he used to call Christians, to deny their universalism. The emperor was a gifted writer, as the Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril, was to acknowledge when he set out to refute him in Against Julian. Wounded in battle against the Persians on 26 June 363, Julian died without having appointed a successor.” From that moment onwards, Roman emperors were to be Christians and paganism progressively disappeared from the Empire. However, Julian’s very short reign reverberated across the following centuries.
Owing to its peculiar characteristics, Byzantine culture was able to approach Julian in varied and in certain cases surprising ways: it was the only post-Classical culture that spoke and wrote in Greek, was Orthodox, and retained a Roman identity.? The Byzantine Empire is what the Roman res publica became when the Christian element acquired an ideologically foundational role: “In Byzantium, Orthodoxy reserved the absolute claim to truth”.4 The figure of Julian — an established author in Greek literature, an enemy of Christianity, and a legitimate Roman emperor — therefore elicited different reactions in the 1,000-year history of Byzantium. He could be appreciated as a writer and emperor, yet never for his religious choices. Indeed, he was often made an object of censure in a way that became somewhat of a leitmotiv. In the passions of many saints, he is presented not as a sovereign who shows tolerance, but as a cruel persecutor who devises unspeakable tortures and lacks any of the peculiarities that make him a unique figure. He is “the devil’s son”, an emulator of Judas Iscariot, the perpetratorPreface
“The dragon, the apostate, the great mind, the Assyrian, the common adversary and enemy of all, who has stormed the earth with wild threats and uttered and practices many iniquities against the Most High”: with these words St Gregory of Nazianzus celebrated the news of Julian’s death in 363.' The first emperor born in Constantinople, the city founded by his uncle Constantine in 363, Julian was raised in a Christian milieu. Upon attaining the highest authority in 363, however, he sought to bring the res publica back to the old polytheistic religion. This earned him the sobriquet of Apostate. Instead of declaring himself a persecutor, he chose to make a show of tolerance and to fan the divisions within Christianity. He also embarked on a tireless propaganda effort and personally penned various works, including a treatise Against the Galileans: this is what he used to call Christians, to deny their universalism. The emperor was a gifted writer, as the Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril, was to acknowledge when he set out to refute him in Against Julian. Wounded in battle against the Persians on 26 June 363, Julian died without having appointed a successor.” From that moment onwards, Roman emperors were to be Christians and paganism progressively disappeared from the Empire. However, Julian’s very short reign reverberated across the following centuries.
Owing to its peculiar characteristics, Byzantine culture was able to approach Julian in varied and in certain cases surprising ways: it was the only post-Classical culture that spoke and wrote in Greek, was Orthodox, and retained a Roman identity.? The Byzantine Empire is what the Roman res publica became when the Christian element acquired an ideologically foundational role: “In Byzantium, Orthodoxy reserved the absolute claim to truth”.4 The figure of Julian — an established author in Greek literature, an enemy of Christianity, and a legitimate Roman emperor — therefore elicited different reactions in the 1,000-year history of Byzantium. He could be appreciated as a writer and emperor, yet never for his religious choices. Indeed, he was often made an object of censure in a way that became somewhat of a leitmotiv. In the passions of many saints, he is presented not as a sovereign who shows tolerance, but as a cruel persecutor who devises unspeakable tortures and lacks any of the peculiarities that make him a unique figure. He is “the devil’s son”, an emulator of Judas Iscariot, the perpetratorof a savage persecution, a “sophist of wickedness” (or “sophist of lies”) who is so skilled in his evil activities that several authors describe him through the word used for Ulysses in the first verse of the Odyssey: polytropos, 1.e. “versatile”. Sometimes heavenly wrath is presented as the sole salvation for Christians, who would otherwise be destined to succumb to such a stubborn, relentless, and skilled enemy whose actions are proving so successful both within the empire and beyond its borders, both on the religious and on the military level, as he is converting Christians back to paganism en masse and bringing home resounding victories against the Persians.
However, Julian is also the author of Greek literary works, which were largely read and transmitted by generations of Byzantine copyists. Nonhostile voices, while rare, are not entirely missing from Byzantium. Moreover, the presence of his tomb in the imperial mausoleum within the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Constantinople, which may seem paradoxical, made it quite evident to everyone that he belonged to the legitimate series of Roman emperors.
This book aims to present Julian’s many faces in the Orthodox Roman world. Chapter | is devoted to the influence of Gregory of Nazianzus’ invective and to the almost obsessive presence within it of the image of Julian as an enemy of Christianity, as witnessed for example by the recurrent phenomenon of “new Julians”. Chapter 2 concerns the Byzantines’ attitude to Julian as a writer and emperor who was sometimes appreciated, although this judgement never extends to his religious policies. Chapter 3 introduces the fictional Julian of hagiographers, historians, and chroniclers, authors who were very popular in Byzantium (as in the case of Symeon the Metaphrast) and hence prove crucial in order to understand how the Apostate was presented to the public at large. In the subsequent chapters, through individual hagiographical or historical works, we will follow the evolution of this fictional Julian: a sometimes skilled and shrewd (Chapter 4), but most often cruel and ruthless (Chapter 5), persecutor against whom deceased saints perform posthumous miracles (Chapter 6). Chapter 7 concerns hagiographical works that acquire further meaning by contrasting Julian and Constantine, and Chapter 8 liturgical books which in the 10th and 11th centuries summed up much of the previous hagiographical production. Chapter 9 deals with various chroniclers and historians who drew upon pagan sources: a particularly notable figure is Michael Psellus, who offers a remarkable and ambiguous portrayal of Julian. Chapter 10 is devoted to authors from the Komnenian period, and the Conclusion (Chapter 11) to Julian’s last traces in the Byzantine imagination, in the years leading up to the fall of Constantinople.
Son of the devil and sophist of wickedness
The black legend
1.1 Julian and the reception of Gregory
After Arius’ condemnation for heresy at the first ecumenical council of 325, Constantius II, Constantine’s son, chose to support the Homoean Church, which was described as “Arian” by her adversaries.! Upon Constantius II’s death, Julian allowed the bishops exiled by his predecessor to return to their cities in order to exploit Christian infighting.* Orthodox and other nonHomoean Christians (such as Homoeousians Anomoeans) took advantage of the Apostate’s anti-Homoean policies. As Philostorgius recalls in his History (IX.4), the emperor aided the Anomoean Aetius, and there are no signs of concern in the letters written in Julian’s day by the future champions of Orthodoxy, Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great.? The Orthodox tradition of the Patriarchate of Alexandria presents Julian’s rise to power in favourable terms: “when Julian was sole ruler, there was a break in the persecution of the Orthodox, and indeed everywhere orders [were given] by Emperor Julian that Orthodox priests persecuted in the age of Constantius II be pardoned”.4
This policy of the Apostate in favour of non-Homoean Christians was never entirely forgotten over the following centuries. The Orthodox Socrates, in his Ecclesiastical History (11.38.23—25 and III.11.3), bears witness to the fact that Julian ordered the reconstruction of two churches used not by Orthodox Christians, but by Novatianists.° In the Constantinopolitan Synaxarion (a 10th-century liturgical book, cf. Chapter VII) we read that Cyril of Constantinople, who had been exiled by Constantius IH, was able to reclaim his episcopal see thanks to Julian, who sought to “earn everyone’s goodwill”.®
As late as the beginning of the 14th century, Niketas Choniates does not stress Julian’s anti-Christian policy in the Thesaurus orthodoxae fidei at all. In fact, in book 5, describing the Arian heresy, the Apostate is presented as someone who gave the Orthodox some respite after Constantius II’s persecution. The tone here is reminiscent of the Alexandrian tradition centuries before (although the text adds that Julian acted in such a way in order to discredit the deceased emperor): “Julian seized power and, censuring and condemning Constantius IT’s cruelty towards his subjects, ordered all bishops to be recalled from exile, not without calumnies”.’
However, this was not the dominant representation of Julian’s religious policy during the Byzantine millennium. Upon the news of the emperor’s death, Gregory of Nazianzus — who, along with his friend Basil the Great, had been a fellow student of Julian’s in Athens — wrote a lengthy and violent tirade against the deceased. This was soon followed by a second, equally virulent invective.’ This polemic may have been intended to make people forget about the compromising friendly relations between the author, his brother Caesarius, his friend Basil, and the emperor.’ The attack was a success. After their death, Basil and Gregory were to be honoured as saints and Church Fathers. They enjoyed huge popularity in Byzantium:!° Gregory of Nazianzus has been described as the most widely quoted authority after the Bible.!! At the end of his second invective against Julian (or. 5.42), the saint wrote that he hoped to have erected a stele establishing the Apostate’s infamy for everyone to see: this goal too was met in the Byzantine world.
The effects of Gregory’s popularity were varied and often paradoxical, on account of his contradictory attitude with regard to the importance to be assigned to the Apostate. On the one hand, as illustrated by the cry of jubilation that opens the first invective,!* Gregory did not regard a figure such as Julian and the threat he posed as secondary. On the other, in open conflict with the length and vehemence of these tirades, Gregory seeks to dismiss the emperor’s importance. His condescension and mockery are evident, for instance, in or. 4.67: “Who are you, and what are you worth, and where do you come from?”!3
The first and most obvious effect of Gregory of Nazianzus’ vast popularity in the Byzantine world is the demonising of the figure of the Apostate. Insults,'4 fanciful inventions, and distortions of his reign that appear in Gregory for the first time occur almost as topoi in the portrayal of the Apostate in Byzantine literature. In an oration delivered in 362 (Apologeticus), Gregory already declares that he is ready to die for Christianity, even though his unnamed enemy (evidently, Julian), described asa “beast”, is “the most savage of all frenzied madmen” (or. 2.87).!° His “persecution” is defined as “the most savage” (or. 21.32).'
The emperor is described as the most cruel and impious of all in other passages by Gregory, as well as in those by subsequent authors, including John Chrysostom, who in turn was imitated by other writers.!’ Gregory sees Julian as “wise in wickedness”, and this verdict too was taken up by later authors.'’ Sometimes Gregory is borrowed verbatim, as in the Passion of Manuel, Sabel, and Ishmael (BHG 1024), in which Symeon the Metaphrast emphasises how the Apostate’s sharp mind is second to none when it comes to plotting evil,!? an evident allusion to a very similar passage by Gregory of Nazianzus: “There has never been a more ingenious mind in inventing and contriving mischief” (or. 5.3).?° In other hagiographical texts as well (those on Arthemius and Theodore the Tyro), the Metaphrast repeats Gregory’s opinion with a few variations.”! Likewise, the news about Theodore the Tyro in the Jmperial Menologion, derived from the Metaphrast, is an example of the indirect popularity of Gregory’s opinion.2? Theognostos, the author of Thesaurus, a handbook on the Christian faith written between 1204 and 1252, documents this opinion’s endurance even in a late age.”? Another example of a hagiographical text influenced by Gregory is the Passion of Elpidius, Marcellus, and Eustochius (only known through the summary of it included in the Constantinopolitan Synaxarion), in which Elpidius in the end denounces Julian as an apostate with words alluding to Gregory’s invectives.*4
Events described by Gregory for the first time are later repeated within Byzantine literature. For example, the immediate collapse of a votive shrine erected by the teenage Julian, who was apparently still a Christian at the time (or. 4.2526), is described by various Church historians between the 5th and the 7th centuries, and later by various Byzantine chroniclers.2° This episode also reflects a tendency to demonise the Apostate: sometimes, just as the cruel actions performed by the emperor are exaggerated, so the degree of his involvement in Christianity prior to his apostasy is inflated in such a way as to make his anti-Christian behaviour seem even more ghastly.?° According to Gregory (or. 4.23 and 4.52), Julian was baptised and then made a /ector, one of the first steps in the priestly hierarchy. This information is found —in amplified form — in later authors, including Socrates (H.E. II1.1.19) and Sozomen (H.E. II.1.19) in the Sth century, according to whom the Apostate had been a monk.”’ These authors are the source of an Epitome of Ecclesiastical Histories (CHAP 593), whose description of Julian as a monk and Jector?® either directly or indirectly influenced many Byzantine chronicles, including the widely-read ones by Theophanes, George the Monk, and the Logothete, which in turn were used by later authors. In Quaestio 79 Anastasius Sinaita goes so far as to emphasise that Julian was one of the many people who “for almost the whole of their lives distinguished themselves positively, only to fall into sin towards the end of their lives”.??
Another piece of information first found in Gregory later occurs in various Byzantine chroniclers. Gregory states (or. 21.26) that on his deathbed Constantius II was repentant for the massacre of his relatives in 337, for Julian’s appointment as Caesar in 355, and — finally — for having left Orthodoxy.*° This repentance is also mentioned by Theophanes (on whom other authors, such as Constantine Manasses, depend)*! at the beginning of the 9th century,*” by Zonaras in the 12th,*? and in Theodore Skoutariotes’ Synopsis.** An anonymous commentary on Gregory’s orations against Julian, who is called “thrice wretched”, “tyrant”, and “most impious tyrant”, further documents that the emperor’s terrible repute in Byzantium (including in art)*® is often associated with the popularity enjoyed by Gregory. Likewise, John Sikeliotes attacks the Apostate in the commentary on Hermogenes he wrote after 1025, and in which — among other things — he states his preference for Gregory of Nazianzus over Demosthenes.*”
The very figure of Gregory is involved in this process of distortion, since he is sometimes presented as the Apostate’s main opponent.
Towards the end of his second invective (or. 5.39), Gregory presents himself as destined, along with Basil, to become a victim of the last and harshest persecution planned by the Apostate. The next step was taken in the 5th century by Sozomen (H.E. V.18.2), according to whom Julian chose to expel Christians from rhetoric schools because he felt that his plans were being thwarted by Christian scholars such as Apollinaris and the Cappadocians Basil and Gregory, who “surpassed the orators of their day in fame”.*® Later, in the 14th century, Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos was to draw upon Sozomen’s passage, altering it in such a way as to lend Gregory greater prestige. Sozomen omits Apollinaris’ name and argues that the reason behind the anti-Christian school legislation was the fame enjoyed by Gregory and Basil, but especially — Nikephoros emphasises — by the former (Historia ecclesiastica X.25).*? Likewise, the hagiographical tradition on Gregory tends to omit Basil’s name in such a way as to highlight the opposition between the emperor and Gregory. For example, Gregory the Presbyter, in Chapter 8 of a biography of the saint whose name he bears,” presents this Cappadocian Father alone as a key opponent of the Apostate’s religious policies, by virtue of his literary production.*! In his verses on Gregory, Theodore Prodromos emphasises his poetic output, which is seen as a response to the Apostate’s attempt to monopolise Greek culture: “O Julian, why do you censor culture and deprive me of Homer’s Muse? [...] I shall recite Gregory — you go ahead and hide the whole of Homer!”
In the commentary Ad Carmina Gregorii Theologi (CPG 3043, attributed to Cosmas of Jerusalem), a lengthy presentation of the apostate and persecuting emperor ends with praise of Gregory of Nazianzus as the author who most “wounded God’s enemy with countless arrows, both when Julian was still alive and after his death”. Gregory’s most prolific commentator, Basilius Minimus, who was writing in the age of Constantine VII, seems more interested in the rhetorical and formal aspects of the invectives,** yet repeats the same hearsay about Christians having been secretly killed and thrown into Antioch’s river.*° Symeon the Metaphrast, who later drew upon Gregory in his hostility towards the Apostate, may have been a pupil of Basilius’.*°
Another widespread Christian tradition that appears in embryonic form in Gregory’s first invective relates to the discovery of the remains of human sacrifices after the Apostate’s death. In the first invective (or. 4.92) this tradition is not assigned much prominence: it is only mentioned along with other unconfirmed hearsay, as though Gregory himself did not find the information he was reporting very trustworthy. In the second invective (or. 5.13), the blow that kills the Apostate is defined as the blow by which “he pays the penalty for the many entrails from the sacrifices which he had wrongly trusted”.4” These are unspecified victims: ambiguously, Gregory does not seem to rule out that Julian may have performed human sacrifices. In the 5th century, Historia ecclesiastica U11.26, Theodoret instead for the first time reports the news of a pregnant woman’s disembowelment upon Julian’s departure for the war against Persia, presenting it as a certain piece of information that has been confirmed by reliable witnesses. According to George the Monk,*® one of the most popular Byzantine chroniclers, countless women were disembowelled. This tendency towards demonisation is carried so far that in a Byzantine exorcism (BHG 461) attributed to St Cyprian in the textual tradition, among the saints invoked, after the Maccabees and before the victims of the Massacre of the Innocents, we find 12,660 martyrs from Julian’s reign,” a figure which may allude to the numbers in Revelation.» Another outcome of this demonisation process is the epithet “devil’s son” that is sometimes associated with Julian.>!
As we have seen, one particular aspect of Gregory’s polemic is his eagerness to undermine the image of Julian as a charismatic figure created by pagan propaganda. In the second invective, Gregory belittles and ridicules the circumstances of Julian’s death. Hence, he does not mention any divine intervention, saints striking Christianity’s enemy from the heavens, or prophecies foretelling his death in a climate of religious fervour, although in all likelihood rumours of this sort were already circulating.** This choice not to assign any greatness — albeit of a negative sort — to the emperor’s final moments is not followed in many historical and hagiographical texts. Already, by the 5th century, we find Sozomen reporting the news of the Apostate’s miraculous death, while in the Middle Ages the news started circulating that St Mercury had been entrusted by the Virgin with the task of mortally wounding the enemy of the Christian faith.*? Even hagiographical texts which do not mention St Mercury nonetheless recall that a mortal blow was delivered from the heavens.** Another formula of this sort (“heavenly spear”) is used in the notice on St Theodoret of Antioch in the Constantinopolitan Synaxarion.>> However, Gregory’s influence is substantial with regard to this particular aspect too since, in rewriting the passion of Manuel, Sabel, and Ismael in the 10th century, a highly popular author such as Symeon the Metaphrast omitted the reference to the heavenly origin of the deadly blow and followed — in the form as much as the content of his work — Gregory’s belittling of Julian.”
Likewise, Gregory employs the epithet “Apostate” which was to become widespread in the Middle Ages, when it competed with parabates (“Trasgressore”), which would appear to have made its first appearance in Syria in the 6th century, if we consider only authors whose writing can be dated with certainty.”
Gregory’s influence is also noticeable in readers’ annotations in an important manuscript: codex Vat. gr. 156, to which we owe the transmission of the New History (CHAP 501) written by the last pagan historian, Zosimus, an admirer of Julian. Indeed, of the three annotators who mention Julian, two are clearly influenced by Gregory’s polemic.>* One hand (so-called hand B), possibly John Xiphilinus, is responsible for two annotations on passages about Julian that clearly follow Gregory. In the first (on Zosimus ITI.1.3) the Apostate is described (as in or. 4.62 and 4.82) as even more changeable and deceptive than the mythological Proteus: “He is naive, yet certainly more cunning and deceptive than Proteus himself”. In the second annotation (on Zosimus III.32.6), with regard to the polemic about the peace between Jovian and the Persians, the ironic nickname “Idolian” (i.e. idol-worshipper) is used, which was originally coined by Gregory in or. 4.77. Xiphilinus is willing to acknowledge that the Empire was “revived”, albeit in a temporary and not stable way, by the Apostate’s reforms, but this observation too may derive from Gregory, who with reference to Julian’s reforms in or. 4.75 states that they have brought only a passing happiness.*”
Hand B concludes that “the impious one is not worthy of being exhumed, less still praised”, which confirms the influence of Gregory’s animus.°° Even hand C is influenced by Gregory in its only annotation, which concerns precisely Julian and, more specifically, Zosimus III.3.3 (the passage in which the last pagan historian refers to the number of barbarians who died in the battle of Strassbourg of 357 — 60,000). This anonymous hand from the late 12th century accuses Zosimus of having inflated the figure to attribute “hyperbolical feats” to Julian, since even “those who greatly admire him and lavish praise on his actions say that 6,000 barbarians fell in that battle”.°! The reference to those who praise Julian is an evident allusion to Gregory, who in many passages of his invectives denounces the existence of the Apostate’s admirers.
Another example of Gregory’s reception in the Byzantine Middle Ages is the spread of his caustic physical portrayal of the future Apostate among several authors (in or. 5.23—24).® It is quoted by Socrates (H.E. III.23.18-26), Gregory the Presbyter in Chapter 8 of his Vita S. Gregorii Theologi (CPG 7975 = BHG 723-723c), and Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos (H.E. X.37); an echo of it is also to be found in Michael Psellos’ Historia Syntomos 57. Gregory’s polemic (in or. 4.107-109) against the law prohibiting Christians from teaching in rhetoric schools is taken up by George the Monk and in a Quaestio that used to be attributed to Anastasius Sinaita.®
The direct and indirect borrowing of information critical of Julian from Gregory is not limited to his two invectives. For example, in a subsequent oration (or. 21.33) Gregory describes the fate of the Apostate’s grave in Tarsus, which was wrecked by earthquakes. This passage is drawn upon by George the Monk and, centuries later, by Michael Glykas and Theognostus,’ either directly or indirectly via George the Monk.®
Paradoxically, Gregory’s influence is also detectable in relation to certain assessments that go in Julian’s favour: while hostile and polemical towards him, Gregory, who was writing just after the emperor’s death, could not present him as an open persecutor, but chose to describe him as a hypocrite (e.g. in or. 4.57 and 4.79) who had left the task of acting violently to others.
Gregory’s influence is evident in an ethopoeia by Nikephoros Chrysoberges that pictures a Christian teacher’s reaction to Julian’s edict on schools. The author practically ransacks Gregory’s invectives” and is therefore very hostile towards the Apostate; however, he does not depict him as a persecutor. The respect due to an author whose texts were considered almost holy writ thus produces contradictory effects: on the one hand, Gregory contributes to the development of Julian’s black legend; on the other, he sometimes prevents the Apostate from being portrayed in all passions of saints as a persecutor who tortured countless Christians to death.”
1.2 Different Julians across many ages and places
For many Byzantines throughout the ages Julian was an obsessive presence, just as he was for Gregory. After the lengthy series of insults and sarcastic expressions contained in Gregory’s two invectives, the predominance of this markedly negative image is documented by the many examples in which the “villain” or enemy of the day is compared to the Apostate, or even labelled as a “new Julian”. Compromising one’s personal opponents through this charge was a strategy that could conveniently be deployed against anyone (emperors or patriarchs, dignitaries or literati, clergymen or laymen).”!
The epithet “new Julian” is especially associated with iconoclast emperors. Leo II is compared to the Apostate in one of the several redactions of a letter which, according to tradition, was addressed to Theophilus — the last iconoclast emperor — by the Orthodox patriarchs.’” Likewise, according to Theophanes, Leo III’s son, Constantine V Copronymus, was described as the “new Valens and Julian” by Andrew of Crete,’ and in the Vita Stephani iunioris (Chapter 65) by Stephen the Deacon BHG 1666 he is called the “new Julian”.’4 This comparison with the last pagan emperor is taken up by George the Monk, who throws the following accusation at Constantine V: “The damned and impious one, the new Julian, having walked away from the Virgin and all the saints, adored Aphrodite and Dionysus, and offered them human sacrifices”.
Similarly, Leo V, another iconoclast emperor, is compared to the Apostate in a letter (ep. 417) of January 821 by Theodore the Studite, which begins with an allusion to the opening of Gregory’s first invective and ends by accusing Leo V of being an enemy of all the saints.”
Centuries later, the same accusation was hurled at Michael VIII, who had first brought about a schism within the Orthodox Church (the Arsenite schism) and then championed the unification of the Orthodox and the Catholics. Meletius, who according to the historian George Pachymeres (Historia V1I.3) did not hesitate to address Michael VIII in person using the slanderous name of Julian,’” was punished by having his tongue cut out.
The same hostility towards the Latin Church led an anonymous 13thcentury poet to compare the Italians to the Apostate because of their use of unleavened bread, which was permitted to the Catholics but not the Orthodox: “these Italians are Julians”.’8 The rest of the poem is addressed to a single person: an “apostate Satan” who is accused of wishing to pollute the food that the Orthodox eat,” i.e. of using unleavened bread for the liturgy.®°
One Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, was accused of being like Julian in one specific respect. In an oration penned in 1058 but never delivered, Michael Psellos, alluding to Gregory of Nazianzus, compared Cerularius’ hypocritical and rebellious attitude towards Michael VI to that of Julian towards Constantius II.*! In another passage from the same oration, Psellos goes so far as to compare Cerularius to the sacrilegious “Julians”, in contrast to pagans (“Hellenes”) before Julian, whom he regards as having been more humane.**
The Vita Euthymii Sardensis (BHG 2145) draws an analogy between the last iconoclast emperor Theophilus’ policies and one aspect of Julian’s antiChristian policy: namely, his concern to strike out against religious enemies by invoking motivations not formally connected to their religious choices, so as to avoid the charge of persecution.**
The very same charge of carrying out a hidden persecution is directed against the Monothelite emperors, who are compared to Julian in a 7thcentury Orthodox text, the so-called Hypomnesticon written by Theodore Spudaeus sometime after 668.°4
However, the accusation of imitating Julian was not addressed against emperors and patriarchs alone, but also against high officials. One wellknown case is that of Leo Choirosphaktes, who served as a diplomat under Leo VI before being exiled. Aretas wrote a pamphlet against him titled Misogoes — an allusion to Julian’s Misopogon — and partly influenced by Gregory of Nazianzus’ invectives.®° Choirosphaktes is accused of impiety and compared to Julian,*° whom he is invited to join in hell on the grounds of his being an imitator of Porphyry and the Apostate.®” Aretas also compares other opponents of his to Porphyry and Julian (in scr. 15 Westerink), accusing them of imitating the quibbles of Christianity’s enemies through their sophisms, in contrast to the Gospel’s straightforwardness.*®
In the first half of the 7th century, Strategius, who had witnessed the fall of Jerusalem to the Persian army, wrote an account of this event in Greek (CPG 7846) that is only known in full via later Georgian and Arabic versions.*? In this text he lambastes the imperial authorities and presents Bonosus (comes Orientis in the years 609-610) as the main person responsible for the misfortunes which have occurred. Chapter 4 describes the divine punishment meted out to Bonosus after his death: the comes’ soul ends up in a well which had not been opened “since the time of the wicked Julian”, to whom the deceased is therefore compared.”
In the cases examined so far the comparison is explicit, but there are also some instances in which the polemic against Julian conceals a harsh attack on easily identifiable contemporary people. Conversely, a violent attack on a prominent Byzantine personality may sometimes be seen to conceal an implicit comparison with the Apostate.
For instance, after the 451 schism between the Orthodox and monophysites, Juvenal, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who had sided with the former, came to be referred to as “Juvenal the apostate” by the monophysites.”! Another implicit comparison between Julian and theological opponents in Late Antiquity may be found in the Georgian account of Gregory the Thaumaturge’s martyrdom, written under Emperor Zeno (474-491). The Apostate and the saint do not champion theses associated, respectively, with paganism and Christianity, but rather views that can be traced back to the theological disputes of the late 5th century: the saint upholds views close to those of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Acacius, who supported the (so-called Henotikon) edict issued by Zeno in 482 in an attempt to settle the controversies between dyophysites and monophysites through some kind of compromise. Julian instead upholds theses reminiscent of those of Acacius’ opponents; hence, in this case too his name is used against enemies within the Christian ranks.°” Moreover, the Julian featured in this hagiographical text also defends theses that seem typical of the Jews;”? and this is another attack on Acacius’ opponents.
Another implicit comparison associated with religious polemics is owed to Bishop John of Thessaloniki, who was active in the first half of the 7th century. In his homily De Christi resurrectione (CPG 7922), while not explicitly mentioning Julian and the source from which he draws his quote, John reports the emperor’s criticisms of the Gospel. In several passages of a redaction of another work of his (Dormitio Virginis), the bishop repeatedly asserts the primacy of St Peter, and hence of the Church of Rome. This redaction (known as the “Praecipua lectio interpolata”) of the Dormitio virginis, found in a menologion within the 11th-century cod. Vind. Hist. gr. 45 (olim 14), was drastically censored as a result of the growing enmity between Catholics and Orthodox, and of the tendency to regard both Christian heretics and the followers of other religions as enemies of the true faith. To justify the censoring of the Dormitio virginis and facilitate its author’s demotion from the rank of Christian (albeit a heretical one) to that of pagan, Julian’s name was exploited, as is attested in an annotation — probably from the Palaeologan age — in c. 139v of the codex:
The thirteen leaves that have been excised from this book contained Julian the Apostate’s speeches. Having read these speeches and realised that they were dangerous, the kathegoumenos and protosyncellus of the venerable monastery of St John the Forerunner excised the thirteen leaves and cast them into the sea. The remaining leaf I will leave, as it marks the beginning of the chapter.
Instrumental equation with the Apostate was therefore a convenient way to justify the condemnation — and hence removal from a menologion — of a text regarded as problematic on account of the primacy it assigned to the bishopric of Rome. The execration and condemnation of the last pagan emperor are so strong as to extend even to one of the many authors who have criticised him, and who in the end is paradoxically compared to Julian.*4
The instrumental use of the Apostate’s figure in contexts internal to Christianity is also illustrated by an apocryphal letter to Julian by Basil the Great which was presented at the Second Council of Nicaea of 789, condemning iconoclasm.”° This forgery defends the veneration of images: it therefore appears to be an attack against the iconoclast emperors, seen as new Julians.
In the same period, according to Kedrenos, Emperor Constantine VI threatened to reopen the idols’ temples and hence, implicitly, to follow the Apostate, if the Patriarch of Constantinople, Tarasios, opposed his marriage plans. This piece of information may be a justification that Tarasios later came up with in an attempt to clear himself of the blame of having yielded to Constantine VI’s claims.”° But the fact remains that the emperor who, during the Council of Nicaea of 787, had been acclaimed as the “new Constantine”?’ was rumoured to have been ready to play the role of a new Julian.
An implicit comparison between Julian and Emperor Alexius Comnenus has been detected in a treatise that Theophylact of Ohrid wrote in defence of eunuchs, certainly after 1089 (and perhaps after 1107-1108).?® Among those hostile to eunuchs Theophylact also lists Julian, who opposed them because most of them were Christians.°? According to Spadaro, Theophylact displays possibly even greater enmity towards Justinian, another emperor who did not like eunuchs; hence, “Theophylact essentially pretends to be targeting Justinian and his management of the State apparatus: in reality, what he has in mind is a present equally discriminatory and bitter for eunuchs”.!° However, Julian’s hatred for eunuchs, which is associated with his hatred for Christianity, is mentioned, and therefore the invitation addressed to Comnenus not to follow in the Apostate’s footsteps is in any case evident.
Furthermore, the aforementioned ethopoeia by Nikephoros Chrysoberges — which pictures a Christian school teacher complaining after being prevented from teaching by the Apostate’s edict — might conceal a criticism of the Comnenian emperors’ school policies.!°!
By contrast, in the speech which, according to tradition, the Humanist bishop John Mauropous delivered in 1083 to celebrate the establishment of the feast of the Three Hierarchs (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom), the unnamed target reminiscent of Julian would not appear to be an emperor or ecclesiastical dignitary (it may instead by Michael Psellos).!
The charge of imitatio Iuliani may also be levelled in paradoxical ways: sometimes, what we find is someone being accused not of being a “new Julian” but, on the contrary, of having slandered a prominent individual by comparing him to the Apostate.
According to John of Ephesus (Historia ecclesiastica H1.9), the faction of the Greens acclaimed Tiberius II’s wife by the name of Helen, that of the Blues by the name of Anastasia: reportedly, this divergence led to a riot.! Tiberius II had taken the name of Constantine, and therefore the name Helen spoken by the Greens sounded like an allusion to a woman traditionally associated with Constantine: his mother, St Helen. The Blues, however,!°4 presented the Greens’ acclamation as an allusion to the last pagan emperor (and therefore as an insult to Tiberius II), since Helen was also the name of the Apostate’s wife. Through his malicious interpretation, the Blues would thus appear to have accused the Greens of presenting Tiberius II as a new Julian.!
In the 9th century, the same accusation was directed against Constantine the Philosopher, who attacked his deceased teacher Leo the Philosopher and was in turn criticised for having compared the latter to the Apostate, as Constantine himself relates in his verses alluding to Gregory’s polemic against Julian.!°°
A similar accusation is attested in the 14th century, at the beginning of the hesychasm controversy. In his first text against Gregory Palamas, Barlaam of Calabria denounces his lack of education, yet without mentioning Julian.!°” In his response, Palamas skilfully distorts his opponent’s words, so as to accuse him — through allusions to passages by Gregory of Nazianzus — of having compared him to Julian.!°* The same accusation crops up later on in the polemic to stress how unbearable this comparison with the Apostate was,!° despite the fact it is actually nowhere to be found in Barlaam’s words.
On the other hand, Palamas was to direct the traditional accusation of imitating Julian (in the Prima confutatio Acindyni 7.17 and the Prima confutatio Gregorae 35) against his later opponents in the hesychast controversy (Gregory Akyndinos and Nikephoros Gregoras). The charge levelled against Akyndinos is followed by the quotation of a passage from Julian’s speech Jn Helium regem 20, where Palamas sets out to prove that Akyndinos’ opinions are the same as the Apostate’s. This is an important quotation: it shows that the hesychast theologian was familiar with Julian’s literary work, and it is quite accurate (although, significantly, Palamas omits a “by Jove”). The attack against Gregoras is instead followed by a quotation from Cyril of Alexandria's Contra Iulianum I1.40. At the same time, a verb (steliteuo) is used that clearly reflects the influence of Gregory of Nazianzus’ invectives. In attempting to discredit his opponent as a new Julian, Palamas therefore alludes to two authors who are largely responsible for the last pagan emperor’s negative reputation in Byzantium.!!”
The Apostate’s name crops up again in a work by a follower of Palamas, the Patriarch of Constantinople Philoteus Kokkinos, who accuses Gregoras of having dishonoured and offended Christianity as various enemies of the Gospel had done before him, including Celsus and Julian.!!!
On the other side of the polemic, the anti-hesychast Dexius in turn accused his opponent of being a new Julian, if only implicitly, in an Appellatio addressed to Emperor John Kantakouzenos between 1351 and 1354.!!? To refer to his opponent, Dexius employs the very words that Gregory had used (in or. 4.112) to describe Julian.!?
The accusation of following in Julian’s footsteps was sometimes directed against rulers who were the enemies of Byzantium. For example, Liutprand of Cremona, who visited Constantinople on a diplomatic mission in 949, reports that Symeon of Bulgaria was called an imitator of Julian for having quit his monastic habit out of a thirst for power (Antapodosis II.29). This information about Symeon springs from Liutprand’s contact with the Byzantine court and administration; therefore, the comparison between the Bulgar sovereign and Julian must have emerged and spread in Byzantine milieus close to Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus!!* who in those very years (in De administrando imperio 13) was criticising his predecessor Romanos Lekapenos for having given his granddaughter in marriage to Symeon’s son.!!> This comparison between the czar and the Apostate is apparently already attested in an oration from 927 attributed to the ambassador and man of letters Theodore Daphnopates. When negotiating with Symeon in 924, Theodore himself had invited him to drop any further claims, reproaching him for having made instrumental use — concealing his desire for conquest — of a Gospel passage that may have been the focus of the anti-Julian polemics formulated by other Byzantine scholars of that period.!!®
This obsessive presence of the Apostate as an enemy of Christianity and persecutor in the Byzantines’ minds takes a more concrete form through the mention, in medieval mirabilia, of Julian statues, which at the same time also highlight his imperial status.
For example, in Chapter 42 of the Parastaseis syntomoi khronikai (Short Historical Remarks), probably dating from the iconoclastic period,!!” the Apostate is described in relation to his persecutions in Constantinople as a new Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas famously associated with the metal bull he used to torture his enemies: many Christians are said to have been roasted in such a bull.!!® The same text also mentions Julian’s destruction of Christian cult objects!!° and, after his death, the moving of his statues: most prominently (in Parastaseis 11), a statue of “Caesar Julian” is mentioned among the statues of Christian emperors that Justinian scattered throughout the city during his rebuilding of Hagia Sophia.!”° In mirabilia, therefore, as in the hagiographical literature, we still find traces of the Christian Julian. The Apostate is repeatedly evoked in relation to the struggle between paganism and Christianity:!7! significant episodes include the destruction of the statue of Jesus at Paneas and the death of Bishop Martyrius, burned alive by the Apostate as a sacrifice to the gods (Parastaseis 48).!?* The episode of the profanation at Paneas is attested by numerous Byzantine sources, starting from the 5th-century Church historians; but the fanciful description of Bishop Martyrius’ ghastly martyrdom is typical of the Parastaseis: this martyr bearing an eloquent name would appear to have been modelled after the historical Bishop Maris. The main difference between Maris and Martyrius is that the former publicly insulted the Apostate to his face, yet was not charged with /ése-majesté and was not punished for his words:!?? this episode is an example of the kind of distortions of the figure of Julian with which the Byzantine tradition is replete.!*4
In the Vita Petri Hiberi (a monophysite saint who died in 491), which was originally written in Greek by John Rufus but is only known to us via a Syriac translation (BHO 955), the protagonist, on a visit to Alexandria, uses his miraculous powers to vanquish a demonic apparition that has become embodied in a statue of Julian and is running towards him.!
This episode too confirms the ambiguity of Julian’s presence in the Byzantine world: an object of hostility right from the start, condemned as an enemy of Christianity, yet at the same time acknowledged as a legitimate emperor, to the point of remaining before everyone’s eyes in official monuments.!*°
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