Transcript Version 1

The Last Pagan Emperor: Why Julian Failed to Stop Christianity - Centre Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LqdLzXO0KM

Transcript Version 1

(00:02) Our topic this evening is the last pagan emperor. Why Julian failed to stop Christianity. Um it's an interesting I think topic and leads to a whole bunches of counterfactuals what what might have been in history. So I've previously argued in other lectures that Christianity as a world religion owes its place in history um you know as the dominant world religion, the largest one still today due to patronage in the 4th century by Roman emperors beginning with Constantine who ultimately made the religion

(00:50) uh the state religion of the empire. The last of the non-Christian emperors, Flavius Claudius Giulianis, who we know as the emperor Julian. It's almost always called Julian the apostate because he um was raised Christian and aposticized or less left Christianity uh and became an enthusiastic supporter of the old religions of what we sometimes call paganism.

(01:23) So Julian hoped to reverse this tide in history but of course he ultimately proved unsuccessful in his bid in his goals. And so that's the topic this evening. So there is an incredible transformation that takes place between the year 300 and the year 600 in the Roman world. We don't have great demographic breakdowns.

(01:45) But if we just, you know, say these are not therefore a census conducted where people are filling this out and we know what's happening. But let's say certainly around the year 300 that maybe less than 10% of the population of the empire are Christians. So in other words, it has been a a popular and growing concern for three centuries.

(02:11) But you know, in no way has it become um you know so critically important that it explains why Constantine you know had to become a Christian in order to get this really important support. still a um a minority and relatively unimportant religion although there are some wealthy people that have now started to become members of it.

(02:31) There were other of course other religions like Judaism and manism and so on that you know are world religions that don't count under this banner of what we're calling paganism but the overwhelming majority will have been what we lump together as pagans and then three centuries later after we go through that um prism of the uh imperial patronage where at first an emperor converts he starts patronizing um the Christian church and then later successors start to um put their thumb more and more on the scales until uh ultimately Christianity is uh is the only tolerated

(03:19) religion. uh then we get to the place where uh it's not just Rome because of the in the west uh Rome has uh Roman authority has passed to the successor states the kingdoms of the Ostrogoths the Visigos the Franks the Burgundians the Vandals and so forth but nevertheless um the people who continue to be adherence to paganism are now in the overwhelming majority three centuries a minority three centuries later.

(03:47) So, as we're going to start and and define our terms, I've been using the word paganism because it's the modern phrase that we have for the belief or the not belief, the practices of the uh of the old gods. And this is a word that Christians actually coined to apply to followers of the old religions.

(04:13) And so, Christianity at the end of the 4th century becomes the state religion under Theodosius the 1st, Theodosius the Great. And so, uh, temples to the old gods and the cities were destroyed or they were repurposed as churches. Um, a great example that I love is if you go to the uh cathedral in Syracuse, Sicily, this great ancient um Greek citystate uh that was part of the Pelpeneisian war and everything like that that later became uh a Roman metropolis.

(04:52) the um you can see the columns still of the old temple of Athena and the bricks had been built in between them in order to make a cathedral um that happened during the uh Roman period in late antiquity. It becomes the cathedral. Um it's later uh this cathedral, you know, the island is later uh uh conquered by Muslims and the cathedral is repurposed as a mosque.

(05:21) It then is conquered by the Normans and it becomes a Latin cathedral and you know continues to this day as a cathedral. So old temples are repurposed and what generally happened is that maintenance of the old religion became not a not a cosmopolitan thing, not a city thing, but something that people were doing off in the countryside. And the term for um the country peasantry are the Pagani. And that's where the word comes from from that Latin.

(05:49) And so effectively it's a um a disparaging term equivalent of like hick, yokal, redneck, rube, bumpkin. We have lots of words for people from the countryside because of the um uh the general bias that people who live in the downtowns of cities like like I do here in downtown Toronto um tend to have historically for people in the countryside. So pagan has that um origin that etmology.

(06:18) So we sometimes also now in modern times call pagans polytheists um you know because again the adherence themselves never called themselves pagans. And so polytheist is an update but the problem with this update in my view is that it also carries with it a anacronistic emphasis.

(06:42) So this is still looking at those um old religions through Christian lenses since it's Christians um and other Abrahamic religions, Islam and Judaism that are really obsessed with the idea of monotheism and really opposed to um the idea that there are multiple gods. And so referring to the previous religion as polytheism is really um again it's from the standpoint of a monotheist religion.

(07:10) It's the monotheists who are worried about that idea not um not the people who were adherence to the early religions. Indeed, in a theological sense, many later pagans, including the emperor Julian, who is the focus tonight, they were effectively monotheists. They're monist.

(07:36) They are not um polytheists in a theological sense. So, the traditional religions of the Roman world had already been subjected to reform by schools of philosophy for seven centuries or so. So schools that included stoicism and neoplatanism which had emerged as some of the more popular schools um by the Roman period.

(08:02) And so in stoicisms the stoics had a um a very particular and elaborated view of the cosmos, how the universe worked. And the universe was essentially um pantheus. The universe itself is God, a living a living God. But essentially one God of which then again the the gods may well exist but they are much lesser than the one God that is the cosmos itself.

(08:28) And likewise in Neoplatanism everything is about emanations from the one ultimate source. And so again the the gods may well exist and operate and all those kind of things but the gods are functionally in neoplanism they functionally are things like platonic forms.

(08:55) So they're ideas like eternal virtues and so forth as opposed to the way we think of uh the pagan gods of mythology for example. And so really in my view once you um once you already theologically are having like one source or um one overriding principle like the universe is is all oneness. Um the difference between populating your um your heavenly hierarchy with um beings that you call gods with a lowercase G or whether you're going to call them things like angels or even saints or so forth.

(09:33) Um it's somewhat semantic I would say because in both cases you're still acknowledging a supreme source which is monotheism or monism. We've talked many times before when we've looked at religion about how in modern times we we almost are in a unable to um understand what religion is because we are so fixated on um on the lenses that we've inherited from uh Christianity especially from um from Protestantism.

(10:08) And so we have a general sense of what religion is and we have a list of things that we consider to be religions. So it's almost always things like beliefs, beliefs in the god or gods, bunch of rituals that you do, having sacred spaces, revering sacred texts and teachings, teachings about moral morals and so forth.

(10:36) And yet um and yet that blueprint and that vision comes from our experience in the last many centuries with Christianity especially. And so that kind of a religion describes modern Christianity and to a lesser extent its um near neighbors Judaism and Islam. Um, but it doesn't describe well all of the other world religions and how they have operated uh throughout history.

(11:08) And it also doesn't really describe um the previous religion uh to Christianity, the old religion, paganism, polytheism, whatever we're calling the old religions. And so as religious studies have emerged as an academic discipline really scholars have concluded that most of the world's religions past and present don't fit into the construct that we think of.

(11:31) And it's really hard and we've talked about this a bunch of times and people still can hardly get past the idea that religion is about belief in things or about teaching doctrine or or sacred texts and so forth. But that's not what the focus was of the old religions. It's not about believing in Jupiter and the other gods.

(11:50) It's not about studying religious texts about God's activities or God's teaching or anything like that. That's what Christianity is about. This um this idea of belief in um I think especially arises in Christianity from uh from Paul who's the first uh Christian uh whose writings survive and who's incredibly influential.

(12:18) So Paul um does emphasize um belief and specifically what he's um what he feels is important for people to believe is to believe that Christ is um God's logos. Christ is Lord. And so the idea is that um there's an invisible source that can't be seen or understood or um comprehended, but that source, God um glory in creation can be sensed.

(12:57) And so God's glory which is sometimes called Lord uh Paul's um idea of belief is you have to believe that Christ is Lord. So it's not that there is not uh that that God's um glory is man manifest in creation. That's what you see when you look all around as far as ancient people understand.

(13:23) uh the idea of belief is added in Christianity so that you understand that Christ is that um is that glory made manifest in the world. Now in the same way Christians focus on text scripture and certainly um Judaism and Islam are even more focused on text and Christians also focused on correct teaching. That's what orthodoxy means.

(13:51) But these are not the central themes in paganism. So Homer with the Iliad and the Odyssey, he seed the works and days. Um Virgil, the Aniad, these are all revered, but they are not um they're not quoted chapter and verse the way the Bible is. It isn't seen the same way. And so lived paganism the the religion or the tradition the inherited experience of people who are adherence of these traditions are much more than the mythology or the relationship with the pantheon or any such thing.

(14:35) um forces within the Hellenistic world and lighter the Roman world, the Grecoman world, forces like synretatism allowed um individual uh pagan cults that existed in every little place around the entire um Greo Roman world. It allowed them to um see their particular tradition. The uh the chief of the sky gods as he's known here in our little village.

(15:05) He is the equivalent of the Roman understanding of Jupiter or the Greek understanding of Zeus. So that's synratism. We understand them to all be different expressions of the same tradition. Um but in fact what's probably the most important thing for you is not the not the synratism but rather what is the individual practice that you've inherited in your village.

(15:35) What do you guys how do we understand um what rituals we need to do to maintain um our relationship with our variant of um this synretatized which is understood to be a synretatized uh god that exists elsewhere too. traditional Grecoman religious practices were really especially about ritual observances and they're performed especially legalistically. So you can't get any little one of the little steps wrong.

(16:07) You have to go back and redo it or even go through a whole bunch of other propitiating ceremonies in order to um not uh anger chaotic divine forces and instead to propitiate those. The formula of Roman religion is do which can be translated I give in order that you might give. And so this underlies the Roman understanding of why you perform all of these different rituals. why you're sure not to.

(16:40) Um, you know, we have a lot of these that are uh inherited traditional superstitions like knocking on wood or crossing fingers or um throwing salt over your shoulder or or or uh anyway, things like that. Uh in sports, wearing a special jersey for your so your team will win.

(17:06) All of those types of rituals are very similar to the um all the rituals and in traditions that really encapsulated everybody's life. And you do all of those things in order that you in turn receive something from uh all of the forces, the divine forces that are chaotically um affecting your world in otherwise unpredictable ways. And so this also like I say informs the thinking behind sacrifice.

(17:38) You maybe give up something uh expensive in order to because you have a particular need. You want to have uh a a son or something like that. But um it's also behind like I say all of those little ritualistic behavior that encompass all of lived activity. Um in terms of the word religion, um Romans had a word religio which broadly means duty, conscientiousness, obligations. But again, it's not used to refer to doctrines.

(18:11) It's not used to refer to interpretation of sacred texts. It's not about belief in gods. Everybody more or less acknowledges God's existence, the existence of the gods. even people who are accused of of being atheists because they um because they don't uh acknowledge the traditional gods as being gods in a particular way.

(18:36) So even Christians are accused of atheism because they consider often consider Zeus and so on to be demons as opposed to um gods. And so the traditional Roman religion was all-encompassing. So it involved everything from your house, your family, your job, recreation, uh all the things you do, the roads you walk down, every every single thing is encompassed by um paganism.

(19:04) So for example, as irreligious as gladiator battles may seem to us today, these are sacred games. They are part of religious festivals. They are put on by civic magistrates who are wanting to do that in order to show that um uh bring the people all together into uh a what is a religious ultimately a religious popular religious ritual. Uh things like chariot races are the same.

(19:34) plays, the whole invention of theater, comedies even uh are all um done and performed and sponsored in the name uh of the gods. And so as we just think about how paganism works, then it involves everything from personal rituals like keeping your fingers crossed, all the different things that you do in order to not uh displease the gods.

(20:02) There is huge amount of familial obligation that comes from for example reverence for ancestors. Piety uh uh to the gods is also connected to file piety that is piety directly to your father but also to all of your ancestors. You have to live dutifully to the family. The family structure is very controlling and u this pagan context. You want to do expeation for bad omens.

(20:36) So if something happens that's unexpected that may preage doom in some way. You need to perform all sorts of rituals or something else to uh propitiate the different gods so that doesn't happen to you. There is sacred civil law. What makes society function to be obedient to that that's part of the religion of course offering sacrifices to the gods is part of it prayer is part of it consulting opaces and oracles so people are always interested in divination what's going to happen in the future and there's all sorts of ways within

(21:17) ancient pagan religion to do that in Rome um they are constantly observing bird flight for example, or reading entrails and and livers of of animals and things like that. There is of course reverence to cult objects. So shrines exists where um where there'll be a cult statue. uh the statue is understood to have uh some of the genius of the divine being that is present there and so it is therefore treated with uh reverence all of these civic rights that occur.

(22:00) So having things like a parade, a great triumph celebration like Roman generals do. This is a moment when uh like all of the city comes together in this patriotic way that is also though very very religious. Um there are shrine cults and some of these as you are let's say uh part of it you can be initiated into that and have a um an individual experience.

(22:28) Um there are all kinds of other civic festivals that we mentioned festivals that involve u theater and other things. You may well be part of a confraternity. That is um be like part of a a crossworlds club where you and the other guys in your um you know your local neighborhood um band together.

(22:56) You operate uh a crossroads which you then maintain, but then you also have like a um a little pub that you have where you kind of go out drinking together and you also um take up collections. So you make sure that you can bury one another. These kind of a things that's part of the um the religion. Going to the marketplace, the forum, watching uh these kind of civic games, or in the case of uh if you're a magistrate, if you're the leader of a city, paying all the money to provide and put on those games.

(23:28) Um and so there isn't any separation in a lot of cases between people who are kind of the secular leaders, the senators or something like that and people who are also the priests. Um for uh Romans and a toga, you wear the toga the one way and you're a senator preaching from the steps. You pull the toga up over your head and now suddenly you've got the outfit of a priest on and you're gonna be acting uh as the pontifffects Maximus, the the one of the the title that um August one of the titles that Augustus has as chief priest uh of Rome

(24:02) in addition to being the first citizen of Rome. Uh again watching or providing plays. Uh they're also um emerging into it. You mentioned how divination is important. You can get that from the opaces but there is also practices like astrology uh which has continued on to this day. But also um important in later uh paganism and and philosophy is something called thy which is doing kind of divine work rituals that are trying to put you into communion with the divine.

(24:43) Certainly um the mythology, hearing poetry, writing poetry, composing poetry, that is part of it. philosophy. As philosophers attempt to reform the uh inherited religious tradition, um that becomes over the centuries part of the living tradition and that involves coming up with ethical behavior which uh can also be layered into this religion.

(25:11) And that also can inform let's say your personal morality things like uh austerity aestheticism those kind of values. So in all in all what I'm just trying to say is that this is not a limited little box thing that we can kind of draw around and say uh that a Greek temple is just like kind of a church and the only thing that you know that there's myths that are like the Bible. There's the ritual of animal sacrifice that is like communion.

(25:41) uh they're priests in both cases and largely everybody's just living in a sec secular society uh like we have now other than the little cordon around the church uh in this case the little temple for paganism. No, the whole that is merely one little component of the pagan religion within an all-encompassing tradition. So here's a picture of Augustus acting as a pont of pontifffects.

(26:07) So he has this uh toga up over his head and that as a civic magistrate now has become a priest. Um so like I say all of this is central to civic life in the empire and it's the local elites in all of the different cities. So in Rome it's the imperial elite that handle this but in all the other cities and towns across uh the empire it's local elites who originally compete to fill these magistrates magistrates and also priesthoods other words they at great expense for example will be the ones that will um will put on games or they will build an important

(26:52) public works project which is again uh a a sign of um fulfilling your duty to people and to the gods. Um but all of this inheritance everything like that really breaks down in the 3rd century when the Roman Empire goes through a very prolonged economic, military and also spiritual crisis. And in the course of this there's all kinds of instability at the top where just emperor after emperor is uh and usurpers are succeeding each other.

(27:34) Emperors are rarely um rarely dying in their sleep. They're in an old age in bed or something like that much less being able to retire or anything. Uh they are all you know being overthrown and killed. And in the meantime, local elites, you know, rather than, you know, having to expend all of this money uh in order to uh gain honors in the local cities, they prefer to, you know, maintain whatever they can still have left uh and avoid serving in these roles that are prohibitively expensive.

(28:04) And so um in the 3rd century in Rome which is known for all of these public buildings. All we think of as the Roman Empire is these giant basilas and forums and temples and aqueducts and everything like that. At the end of by the end of the third century there's almost a total collapse of public building for a while.

(28:25) Uh and and again local elites are then also running away for magistracies. And so there is um less of these great festivals that had been the center for what we maybe think of as as paganism. So the emperor Diolesian who reigned from 284 to 305 successfully ended the instability that he had inherited.

(28:53) And he did that in part by being able to just have a long continuous reign. uh and he became the first emperor who was actually able to, you know, go through his whole uh plan and and just retire and and leave the empire stable. Part of the way he did that was by completely refounding the provincial system. Um, he also created a very extensive imperial bureaucracy, much bigger than it had ever existed before, to replace all of those kind of local officials, magistrates, and things like that that were no longer fulfilling their jobs in all of the different towns kind of as a

(29:29) as a semi-autonomous system that used to exist. And and then kind of most famously um he also institutes this tetrarchy system which is dividing the the top job of emperor uh between four people. And so this is where the emperor empire is kind of formally divided east and west.

(29:58) And in both the east and the west um there is a senior emperor called an Augustus and then there is a junior emperor called a Caesar. And so each one is uh given a portion of the empire to kind of oversee. And this is especially deemed necessary because um it's too much for any one person to be able to defend this entire length of frontier that exists from the Dianube and I'm sorry the Rine all the way across the Danube and then in the east against the Persians.

(30:33) So, Dialesian also sought to revitalize traditional Greco Roman festivals and practices after the breakdown of civic life and activities that had happened in the 3rd century. And so, he's seen also as a or he saw himself also as a great um restorer of traditional religion, religion that had had lapsed.

(30:59) And so part of refounding traditional religion was also suppressing um the kind of the pluralistic and what were seen as alien religions minority religions that had grown up in the 3rd century and had become popular. And so religion religions people who adhereed to religions like Christianity along with manarchism, Judaism, other minority religions uh rejected these civic festivals.

(31:31) They didn't participate with the imperial cult. um in all of these cases they found that um there's a again they don't agree that the the that the don't agree with the same kind of gods. And so as as monotheists they reject um polytheism worshiping the the multiple gods and especially also um uh what they think of as idol worship.

(32:04) And so by rejecting these civic festivals, by rejecting the main traditions, including um the imperial cult, which is worshiping the genius of the emperor, so after each emperor's death, they're deified and understood to be part of that. And so again, it's at the heart of patriotism. These are all kind of considered threats to Rome's traditional mores.

(32:27) And so beginning in 303, Diolesian issued a series of edicts where he rescended a bunch of legal rights that Christians had gathered and he began demanding that they participate in traditional rituals like performing um a sacrifice before the genius of the emperor and so forth. And um when they refused to do that, there were um pretty serious persecutions where this is the era, the great era of Christians being thrown to the the lions and so forth.

(32:59) Um this whole kind of period of Christian persecution, there's been a um I think there's been a different recalibrations about this. So So Christians um have talked about this ever since. And so certainly um in all of the um Christian hoggraphies of of saints lives, saints that are martyrs, martyologies um you know pretty much at a certain point um Christians are writing and and every early um early apostle every early church member without you know without actually having any historical memory of this are all assumed to have died

(33:37) martyr's deaths which is you know very likely a false assumption. Um, and so as a result, um, you know, there's been a sort of a sense that, well, you know, the persecutions weren't as bad as all that. The Christians have kind of made a lot of this up and so forth.

(33:56) Well, there it was not by any means a general persecution that was going on from the first century on through Dialesian's day. In general, Christians were getting along just fine. But there were moments when there are um kind of these universal uh persecutions uh and under Dialesian this is one of them.

(34:22) Although again because Dialesian has established his tetrarchy system um and he and his kind of co-emperor in the east are more interested in in this um objective than the people in the west. Um again it's not it's not being universally um uh it's not being not everybody is is facing the same kind of persecution. Nevertheless there is a bunch um of Christians who die as martyrs in this time period under Dialesian.

(34:51) So after all of that, after those reforms, Dialesian successfully retires in the year 305 and he happily lives on in retirement until 311 312 in an amazing uh retirement palace that he builds in what's now split in Croatia. And um the palace is reconstructed in the lower picture there, the upper picture is uh I think a picture of the medieval city.

(35:18) The medieval city center is more or less just as people continued to live in the old palace that becomes the city. It's a really cool place. Um it's made I think it's Game of Thrones is often filmed there. So lots of other places, lots of other shows of um Diolesian's reforms um things like stability, the bureaucracy, all of that um put the empire on new footing.

(35:45) But things like the tetrarchy itself began to unravel pretty quickly because um you know the personality of individual emperors are people um are rivals with each other. So you you have an you you're an emperor and there's another emperor. You um you're the type of person who wants to be dominant on on top.

(36:12) And in a lot of cases, emperors also would rather instead of give um power over to uh the next person in line, the next Caesar or something like that, they might prefer to give their power to a son. And so for example when Constantius died, one of the emperors in the west, his army unilaterally acclaims his son Constantine as the new Augustus instead of going through the normal uh uh what would have been the tetrarchy system.

(36:41) Constantine then ends up defeating a rival emperor Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge in the year 312. an event that had massive ramifications for history because um Constantine himself later explained that he had had a vision and he had a vision of a Christian symbol and he understood it to mean that in this symbol he will find victory.

(37:16) And so when he wins, he attributes that to the power of Christ, the power of this what he maybe thinks of still as a new god, a god that is doing things that he would have understood in his pagan context that other pagan gods do. Um I give in order that you give. He makes certain sacrifices to this new promises to this new god. This new god gives him victory.

(37:42) That's um what an regular Capagan would have understood religion to be. So um that brings us to the Roman Empire in this format. It looks very similar to the Roman Empire under Augustus, but things have pretty radically changed. You can see the um the four major um sections that the empire is divided into east and west and then um between the subsections under the dialesian system.

(38:16) Um so Constantine begins reigning from 306 as part of the tetrarchy system but after 324 he becomes the sole Augustus. And so like I say the empire had nearly collapsed. um Dialesian set it on a firm foundation again and Constantine then is able to inherit um that new rejuvenated and much transformed Roman Empire uh in the 4th century.

(38:48) So when Constantine first um has this vision, he may not have initially understood, like I say, Christ is anything more than a new God who gives victory in battle. Um but one of the things that he does in response is officially end anti-Christian persecutions that um Dialesian and the other emperors had enacted with the edict of Milan in the year 313. And this is a imperial edict that um asserts religious toleration.

(39:19) So Christians are no longer going to be forced to do all those things. They're able to have freedom of their own religion. But that's alongside everyone else as well. So the is not making um Christianity the new state religion or anything like it. Um and indeed the old gods and the old shrines and and cults and temples and things like that continued to be uh supported and indeed um Constantine himself continues to be portrayed the way um emperors had been.

(39:55) So there's this reconstruction of this colossus where Constantine is not, you know, he's, you know, regular toga. He's looking um like Jupiter as opposed to um you know, like like some kind of a a Christian emperor. And that's also true for example um he wins this victory uh over Maxentius and they build a triumphal arch or the Roman Senate builds a triumphal arch in Rome in the forum which you can still see to this day.

(40:29) The triumphal arch includes all sorts of pagan imagery uh the goddess victory and so forth not Christian imagery. So in other words, it's not like there's some kind of an immediate sea change that happens uh as Constantine takes over initially, but slowly over time, Constantine does come to realize what he's signed up for.

(40:56) And that um happens as he um comes into contact with and is advised by different Christian leaders. And as he becomes a patron of the Christian church and indeed as he begins to organize it into um a coherent body that can be called the church for the very first time. Um before this, Christians may have all thought of their religion as the church, but they did so as sort of an a a spiritual or aspirational sense. There was really no formal um anything structure that's linking it all together.

(41:28) It's a collection of independent semi-autonomous uh Christian communities that are founded in all of the different towns and cities across the empire and beyond. So among the different things that show Constantine's patronage is in 3:21 he legislates that Sunday should be a day of rest.

(41:52) So the Lord's day uh on the other hand he's also been a patron of uh the cult of the inviable son and so that is also one of the you know one of the coincidences or one of the two things that he's that is also could be read both ways. um he in the 320s starts removing images of the gods from Roman coinage and in some of the coins uh images of Constantine are showing being showing wearing a cairo on his on his hat so a Christian symbol the emperor's patronage of the church led to its reorganization and the most important um way it did that was with

(42:32) the creation of a brand new um institution within the church, the institution of the ecumenical council of bishops, that is the um the ecumenoi, the the the inhabited world. All the bishops from all the world come together in a universal council. Constantine presides over the first of these in the city of Nika 1700 years ago this year in the year 325.

(42:59) Um and so that irons out together what doctrine should be um and creates famously a creed although the nying creed that we have uh is a later version of it. Um Constantine also then donates all kinds of money and property to build churches and shrines.

(43:27) He gives stipens to uh to bishops and he also um gives various rights and privileges. So as the um you know the person who's in charge of the imperial government, he is able to uh his patronage means that he's able to give lots and lots of large s. So the emperor is only baptized at the end of his life. So he falls seriously ill in the year 337 and is baptized uh soon thereafter.

(43:54) This is sometimes portrayed or viewed as a sign that you know he hadn't really converted that he continued to be sort of a a crypto pagan but delaying baptism was a very very common practice uh in contemporary Christianity. Um, and so Christians at different times have a more or less literalistic idea that over the course of your life, every single thing that you do and you know ends up um you end up sinning even if you don't mean to and you do it um because you you fall into all kinds of things. And certainly if you are in a position like an emperor who has to um make decisions that

(44:33) involve war and violence and and uh killing um you know you're maybe more likely to um have sins acrue. And so the idea um for literalists is that baptism washes that all away as a one-time only event. you can't just keep getting baptized again and again and keep washing it away. And so the focus for people in um this time period, the 4th century, was like Constantine tried to do, delay baptism until as close to the death as possible um in order to have as few sins on you still in your account book um when you die and approach the judgment seat. So

(45:21) I think it does seem pretty clear that Constantine over the course of his life became you know more committed to Christianity and that uh that this was you know that he died as an adherent. Um so because the importance that Christianity achieved at the end of the 4th century due to this imperial patronage I think people naturally presume that it was more important earlier.

(45:51) And so often I think people say, "Well, well, why did Constantine do this? Did he have to do it? Because the Christians were giving him all of this um you know, kind of this additional power base or something like that." Um and I think that at best for Constantine um himself that this is a wash that he is getting a bunch of loyal supporters uh Christians who had been facing all this persecution who are now um really happy that he is uh patronizing them.

(46:19) On the other hand, he's pissing a lot of people off who don't like Christians, people who uh are adherence of the old gods, including, for example, the the traditional senatorial elite in Rome itself, which continues to be kind of a um you know, a bastion of the old religion. And so I think that at at best he's, you know, it's a wash. he's probably actually uh taking more of a loss than what he's gaining as opposed to people who think he's making I think some kind of a you know like a Mchavellian decision that he's gaining some incredible thing to do this.

(46:53) Um and and again this the fact that Christianity is important later and it's not really important at Constantine's time when he becomes it that then encourages even things like conspiracy theories like this um Caesar's Messiah book where where you know the idea is that um that Christianity itself is a was a is a conspiracy that the um that the earlier Roman Empire emperors even made on purpose which is um just preposterous. So this is not there's no evidence for any of this. It's not a not a legitimate position. You can't

(47:33) conclude this from the historical evidence, but it's something that people um once you kind of go down this path. Um people like to have conspiracy theories. So let's look at the 4th century and ground ourselves in the time frame of what we're talking about here. And so at the very um the very beginning the year 300 we're at the tail end of Dialesian's reign and the reign of the other tetrarchs and so this is that period of the Diolesian tetrarchy and that continues to function for a little while into the beginning of the 4th century with people like Gallerius

(48:15) being one of the emperors in the east along with lasinius. uh Constantius and then later his son Constantine um being emperors in the west simultaneously to those other emperors existing and then ultimately um Constantine after fighting civil wars with his rivals emerges after 324 as the sole emperor and then after that very long reign that Constantine I has He is succeeded by three of his sons, Constantine II, Constance, and Constantius II.

(48:58) This dynasty loves that constant name, and they're all kind of called either Constans or Constantius or Constantine. Uh, all except for Julian. So, so those three sons initially rule together. Um, ultimately the two of them die off and Constantius II is the last one remaining. uh when he uh is brings uh his nephew I'm sorry his cousin on Constantine's nephew Constantius's cousin Julian on first as a Caesar and then Julian succeeds him as sole emperor and so then that brings us past the middle point of the 4th century we can see that Julian's reign here is very very short he is

(49:44) succeeded by Jovian and then there are additional dynasties that are found. And we don't have all the emperors here, but I have Valentinian the first and Theodosius I who represent those two later dynasties, the Valentinian dynasty and the Theodosian dynasty.

(50:02) Theodosius the first being the last of the Roman emperors to briefly rule both halves of the empire. After that um the uh empire is permanently split west and east and within a century the uh imperial order in the west is collapsed. So that grounds us in the time frame. So Constantine like I say is succeeded by three of his sons who all uh have the title of Augustus and they all share the empire.

(50:35) Those three also take the precaution of massacring the other members of the Constantinian family in order to avoid additional rivals. While Constantine's policy had been religious tolerance, while he patronizes Christianity, his son Constantius II, the one that ruled, you know, on after the other ones died, began to oversee state uh to end the policy of state sponsorship of the different cults of the old gods.

(51:06) So began to suppress aspects of the pagan religion. So for example, animal sacrifice had been very central to traditional worship. And in the 350s, Constantius II made sacrifice and also the worship of idols punishable by death. And so this is intolerance essentially for some of the anyway the most um central or the most obvious anyway aspects of the adherence to the old gods.

(51:38) Even though he did that, many local governors and provincial officials sort of quietly resisted enforcing these edicts. So, um this wasn't universally, you know, there wasn't like a huge crackdown and everybody was suddenly suddenly killed and lots of other things continued to function. So, uh colleges like the college of the vestal virgins continued to exist. Uh pagan schools continued to exist.

(52:05) um elite Romans of the Senate uh continue to you know not be Christian and indeed when Constantius uh dies he the Senate duly uh you know votes as apathiosis he becomes a god even though he himself is no longer an adherent of gods in that in that understanding.

(52:33) So the imperial patronage um encouraged more and more elite Romans to convert to Christianity. Um they also began to fill ecclesiastical offices. So it became um being a bishop in a town, bishop of um the bishop of Milan for example becomes a really important official who has all sorts of rights, privileges, ultimately wealth um and people are attracted important people are attracted to um to the church in order to compete for positions like that at a local level.

(53:12) Um also one of the things that happens to individual pagan shrines and temples is that um Christians let's say warrior monks people who have um a lot of uh zeal will attack those shrines and essentially they'll come up to a a holy tree and chop it down or they will you know topple a statue. Uh essentially they're saying if if uh whatever this god that has been here all of this time if this if they are so powerful why would they why wouldn't they just kill me with a lightning bolt for taking an ax and chopping uh this sacred shrine down and so um this impresses lots of people that kind of an argument uh they say yeah that that

(53:57) makes sense we've done all these things where we didn't want to um you know cross the gods in all these ways and Now here these Christians, they show that nothing happens to them when when they go after the shrine itself. Um, and it left whoever the pagans were who who didn't want to see that happen and who are sad that their sacred tree got uh chopped down, they don't really have any legal recourse because the Christian emperors failed to punish vigilantes and essentially the victims would just have to take it. traditional

(54:30) pagan sites were then often replaced with Christian churches and shrines. Um, and so that is the environment into which Constantine's nephew Julian is born. So Julian, who is the focus of the lecture, is born into this Roman world where Christianity is slowly edging out paganism. Um, and maybe it's not quite when he's born. It hasn't reached the tipping point, but by the time he comes of age is already getting to be the tipping point.

(55:04) So, Constantine is actually born in I'm sorry, Julian is actually born in Constantine's new capital, Constantinople. Um, I think he's the earliest person that we have that's attested into it in attested as being born there after it's refounded. Um he's the son of a younger half-brother of Constantine who of course is named something like Constantine.

(55:31) So Julius Constantius is uh is Julian's father's name. So as a member of the imperial family, Julian is raised Christian and he's actually raised under the guardianship of various Christian bishops. So when Constantine himself, Constantine the Great dies in 337, we mentioned that his three of his sons take over uh as emperor and they massacre all of their male relatives to avoid rivals.

(56:02) And so the only people that are spared are Julian himself and his half-brother, a guy named Constantius Gallas. Um and it's likely because they were just so young that they they escaped getting killed. They weren't seen as a threat because they were just little boys. So uh Julian is educated like I say by Christian bishops and as a result he became very well-versed in the Bible and around the age of 18 he um ended up being uh filling the role of lector or a reader in the church as one of a um a minor sub office of the priesthood.

(56:37) Um Julian though ends up rejecting Christianity for plonism. So one of uh his teachers, the Christian bishop George of Capidosius um exposed Julian to a bunch of books from the classical tradition. And this would not be unusual because Christians um continued to use uh uh all sorts of classical texts even though they are pagan sources in order to uh teach for example rhetoric and uh philosophy and other things.

(57:10) And so that continues on through the middle ages and into the present. Um um but nevertheless uh that exposed Julian to this other tradition. And at the age of 20 around the year 351, Julian begins to study Neoplatanism, one of the popular Grecoman moral philosophies under a philosopher named Idius and later a different philosopher named Ucius of Mendus.

(57:39) He also studied in Athens and while he was in Athens he was initiated into the Ilinian mysteries and these are kind of the most famous secret pagan rights and they are about you're initiated into them as you are essentially um comm uh elevating the human to the divine level of the divine ultimately um connecting yourself to that which is eternal potentially achieving you know, or or immortality or a promise of immortality.

(58:18) So although um Julian is technically himself returning to faith in the old gods, um his paganism was nevertheless very highly reformed. He has a very philosophical form of the old religions. So for example, Julian understood traditional gods like Zeus and Deiter and Aphrodite and so on to be manifestations of the one God.

(58:45) That is there is one God who is the source from which everything emanates, the one in the neoplatonic conception. uh and of which then we c we have this understanding of all of the gods but this is a kind of a convention. These are names that we we give to different forms but ultimately um the divine comes from emanates from the one and he further interprets for example all the traditional myths everything Homer and and Virgil and so forth um those are all to be interpreted as allegorories.

(59:24) They're not literal accounts. They're not things that happened. You're not supposed to look at um the behavior of of Zeus as he's philandering or raping various women and that kind of thing. That's not something that an actual literal physical fleshy being did in history.

(59:50) rather these are stories that have some sort of deeper allegorical meaning that relates to platonic ideals to the one. So for example um when he's just talking about God uh he has written a treatise on the sovereign son and of God Julian writes this being whether properly to be called that which is above comprehension or the type the form in a platonic sense of things existing or the one in as much as unity appears to be the most ancient of all things or the good, the form of the good as Plato regularly designates this being designates him. This then is the single

(1:00:37) principle of all things and which serves to the universe as a model of indescribable beauty, perfection, unity and power. And after the pattern of the primary substance that dwells within the principle, he hath sent forth out of himself.

(1:01:02) And like in all things unto himself, he sent forth into our physical universe the son, which is a mighty God made up of equal parts of intelligible and creative causes. And for this reason, Julian says,"I believe that the light of the sun bears the same relation to things visible as truth does to things intelligible." And so that's very directly we've we've had um lectures on on Plato.

(1:01:30) So for example, we did um uh Plato's Republic where he talks about this allegory of the sun and um Plato essentially says that as incredible and important as the sun is in our physical universe as a source of light and heat and everything else. Other words in the sensible material world that is analogous to the way in the intelligible world in the spiritual world in the internal world that cannot be seen the form of the good what Julian is calling the one source um that is an how we can have an allegory for it. So, so based on that um

(1:02:14) idea of Plato's um Julian is interested in worshiping the true source, the spiritual invisible one. But uh but that can be done by allegory or analogy here on earth through a focus on on Helios the sun worship of uh the god that is here in the sensible world. So in addition to um this idea that Julian has about uh about monotheism about uh about platonic ideals and so forth by the 4th century philosophy had also become very intertwined with a belief in what we now think of as magic.

(1:03:05) So neoplatonist philosophers often practice rituals called theergy and this is means divine working and the these rituals attempted to invoke or evoke the presence of a deity or of deities. So in its highest form this um practice has the goal of achieving henosis that is to say unity with the divine and that is properly achieved through reason alone.

(1:03:37) And so this is a medieval diagram or illustration of the uh ancient neoplatinist philosophers Pfirius and Platinus discussing um how souls can be um uh cleansed and made uh uh one with the divine through the so's neoplatanist teacher Ucius of Mendus that we mentioned before taught that truth AOG um involved purification of the soul which is attained by reason but not all contemporary philosophers limited their activities.

(1:04:23) So Ucius further warned Julian against quote impostures of witchcraft and magic that chief the senses and the work of conjurers who are insane men led astray into the exercise of earthly and material powers. But nevertheless, that kind of hands-on magic also intrigued Julian who uh brought into his circle theist practitioners including um the neoplatonist Maximus of Ephesus.

(1:04:53) So uh after his brothers had died um Constantius II who has been uh the emperor here in Julian's uh into a Julian's adulthood he faced further rebellions by usurpers like a guy named Magnentius whose troops elevated him to be Augustus in the west in the year 350. This is something that can happen all the time.

(1:05:18) anybody where you have a general who is in charge of troops at a certain point if there's a vacuum the troops can all say you're the emperor and this is one of the causes of instability throughout all of Roman history as there is no um simple succession uh system and dialesian succession system didn't didn't work um so in 355 uh Constantius I summons Julian to the capital in the western empire medolanum that is Milan on and he makes Julian uh a Caesar in order to have somebody in his family to have that position so that um there aren't local generals who keep getting made rival emperors in the west. Julian is then left to govern the Rine

(1:06:04) front frontier in the the provinces of uh Germany and Gaul and Constantius as the senior emperor um goes back to the east where he's facing off against the increasingly aggressive Persian Empire um which has been a threat throughout this entire uh century.

(1:06:30) Constantine himself is making preparations against the uh Persians when he uh is approaching death and uh gets baptized and dies. So um Constantius off in the east in the year 360 is having trouble against the Persians who have crossed the frontier and conquered late siege to cities and conquered them. And so he orders sends orders to the legions that um Julian is uh commanding in Gaul.

(1:06:58) And he wants half of them to come to the east so that he has more troops to fight the Persians. But the uh legions in Gaul refuse to go to the east. They want to stay in in Gaul on the Ryan frontier. And when they had that rebellion, they declared Julian to be now an Augustus, not to be a Caesar. And so that kind of a um disobedience to the senior emperor, you know, would have uh inevitably resulted probably in a civil war.

(1:07:30) But uh Constantius ended up dying that later that year, which allowed uh Julian to enter Constantinople in the year 361 and be recognized as the sole emperor. So, as sole emperor now, Julian is in a position where he can, you know, do what he's been wanting to maybe dreaming about doing since he was little or since he came of age, when he became an adult, which is remove imperial patronage for Christianity and to begin to restore the worship of the old gods. And so in the year 362 he issues a renewed edict of religious

(1:08:10) tolerance. Sort of like how um the system had been under Constantine before Constantine's sons had had made uh some of the practices of the old uh worships of the old gods, animal sacrifice, worshiping statues and so forth illegal. And this new edict makes all religions equal before the law. um that returns the empire to its previous religious eclecticism.

(1:08:38) Uh but it also um I think which didn't happen under Constantine's uh edict. It also ends persecution of um those Christians that are perceived by the imperial church to be heretics um which have been being treated very harshly under imperial patronage and also persecution of Jews who have also not fared well under these Christian emperors.

(1:09:06) And so just Julian now says no we're going to tolerate everybody. And so for example, Bishop Surirel of Jerusalem who had been considered a heretic by Constantius II, he is restored under Julian's reign. So the controversy that's happening in the 4th century even though um even though the idea of Aryanism and Aras uh himself is condemned at the council of Nika nevertheless some of the ideas of Aryanism have continued to be very popular and so Constantius I um is what historians now call a semi-aran. So he had somewhat of a compromised position between um the anti-Aryan position, the

(1:09:51) Athanasian position and the ar the full-on Aryan position. And so Sirill who was an Aanasian is um you know considered a heretic by Constantius. Now all of that is done. Julian says, "You Christians can't persecute uh have no authority to persecute uh other heretics because we're going to all have um uh everyone can believe according to their conscience.

(1:10:19) " So even though Christianity continued to be tolerated under Julian, you can imagine that Christian authorities, the ones that had previously been enjoying patronage, who had been able to use imperial power to go after their enemies were not happy. And so Julian observes this. He says they that he's speaking of the Christians.

(1:10:42) You know, Christians are irrelevant to the gods and they're disobedient to our edicts even though our Julian's edicts he says are very lenient. So we allow none of them to be dragged to the altars unwillingly. So this is not what happened in Dialesian's realm. The emperor Dialesian forced Christians to be dragged to the altars to perform u a sacrifice before the genius of the emperor and if not they had to be thrown to the lions. I'm not doing that.

(1:11:11) He says it is therefore my pleasure to announce and publish to all people by this edict that they must not abet the seditions of the clergy. They may hold their meetings if they wish and offer prayers according to their established use and for the future let all people live in harmony. Men should be taught and won over by reason, not by blows, insults, and corporal punishments.

(1:11:37) I therefore most earnestly admonish the adherence of the true religion, that is to say, my religion, the old worship of the old gods, paganism. I admonish them not to injure or insult the Galileans. This is the shortand that Julian uses for Christians. He calls them the Galileans. U don't insult the Galileans in any way.

(1:12:02) Those like those guys who are wrong in matters of supreme importance. They should be objects of pity rather than of hate. So lacking imperial patronage um you know individuals continue to be Christian or not as a matter of personal conscience according to Julian. Nevertheless, even though he's saying that in his uh in his edicts, he's nevertheless putting his thumb on the scale in some other ways.

(1:12:32) So for example, Christian leaders who previously enjoyed uh patronage, they saw Julian's tolerance for Christians that they saw as heretics as an attempt to ferment sism. So now that you're letting all of the different Aryans, semi-arans, and Aanasians return to their different seas, their different uh bishop bricks.

(1:12:56) Now they don't agree with each other. it's possible that the whole church will fracture apart. Um Julian also uh in addition to having tolerance for Judaism, he also apparently planned to allow Jews to rebuild the Jerusalem temple. So that had been destroyed uh under by you know by uh Titus under uh Vespasian and so on.

(1:13:22) Uh and it had been the city had been entirely rebuilt as a pagan city under Hadrien. Um, now Julian was more or less saying, "Well, we can let the Jews go back and rebuild the temple." Not necessarily because he is a great Judeaile, but presumably he did that, like I say, to um, you know, put stick it in the eyes of the Christians.

(1:13:46) um one of the reasons why Christians left the uh the temple mount vacant and didn't put a big want to put a big church there even when Christians controlled uh uh Jerusalem later or under Constantine is because uh leaving the the temple mount destroyed uh is a fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy that the the temple is going to have in the future be destroyed the way it was.

(1:14:10) Julian uh that doesn't end up happening. So he doesn't even though he maybe makes some plans to let the Jews do that that doesn't actually get rebuilt. Julian also repealed the stipens that Constantine had awarded to Christian bishops. He removes other privileges. So they had the right for example to be consulted on certain appointments in the imperial government, the right of bishops to act as private courts and so on.

(1:14:40) In a another very serious blow, Julian banned Christian teachers from using pagan text in their curriculum. And like I say, that had continued to be the core of uh a classical rhetorical education. Julian quips, you know, if they want to learn literature, you know, they have the Gospel of Luke, they have the Gospel of Mark, they can read that.

(1:15:03) Um and so in this way is sort of undercutting the ability for Christians to be able to be elite teachers and sophisticated teachers. Um you know like the teacher for example the bishop who had actually given uh Julian all of these classical books as he is uh having his own kind of Christian education when he was a kid.

(1:15:27) So Julian also decreed that pagan temples that had been closed uh that had been either appropriated by local lead and so forth to be reopened. Lost properties should be restored. Um nevertheless this proved more easy to decree than to bring to pass in some ways. Um it's like when in the reformation uh when Henry VIII despoils all the monasteries um you know you once you loot all the property once you once you destroy the building once all the libraries are are are carted away and uh and the farms and everything like that are all sold off. It's it's you can't just have monasteries again just because

(1:16:08) you make a decree because all of this wealth has already been dissipated. Um and so the old financial debase that had once supported those kind of vast civic festivals, games, sacrifices, that was all gone and it was very difficult to kind of re redo that. Um and even when um when that happened, you know, in the in the first century or the second century when um when local decurans when the leaders of these different local Roman cities were putting on festivals like that, those were those were unifying. Everybody came together and they all felt, you know, one. Now, um,

(1:16:53) local officials, if they put those on, those are divisive. Half the people, um, if they put it on in a very explicitly pagan way, uh, all of these Christians will sit it out and they there will be, um, you know, this sense of division.

(1:17:11) And so instead, festivals are th are thrown in a very religiously neutral way, which goes against what Julian wanted to do. So part of the problem with Julian's game plan was that paganism had really never had a unified institutional form like the Christian church had begun to have under his uncle Constantine and his his cousins Constantine's sons. So promoting the old gods, promoting the old religion was therefore not as simple as simply removing the patronage from one institution and giving it to another. In order to give it to another, Julian would have to reorganize all of

(1:17:52) um paganism, which has already been now on its back foot. He has to reorganize it into something that looks an awful lot like the church that he is is depatronizing, that he's defunding. And so Julian starts attempting to form such a pagan institution. Um and so for example he says he looks at the Christian clergy that he's intimately familiar with and he says well um there are Christians are supposed to live a certain way and certainly the priests and the bishops are are supposed to even live more morally and they have uh that

(1:18:31) reputation within the communities. So we really need to start imposing those kinds of moral strictctures, purity and so forth on pagan priests that had never h been the case before as it was just part of your regular civic magistr. Now this priesthood is going to look a lot more like Christian priesthood.

(1:18:58) Similarly, he noted the Christian church had gained all of this just popular support because of the charity that um the churches did for the poor. And so um they would dispense alms to the poor in the city. And this was dispensed to all regardless of religious affiliation. So they're not just um taking care of poor Christians, they're also um providing charity to poor pagans.

(1:19:24) And so Julian sees that and attempts to compete with this ministry that Christians are doing by creating new pagan charities. And so for example, he writes to the pagan high priests in Galatia in the year 362 uh Arsius and he says to him, "The helenic religion, that is to say, our pagan pagan religion that we're trying to restore here does not yet prosper as I desire, and it is the fault of those who profess it.

(1:19:54) For the worship of the gods is on a splendid and magnificent scale surpassing every prayer and every hope. But we haven't all lived up to that. So I have given directions that 30,000 modi of corn shall be assigned every year to the whole of Galatia and 60,000 pints of wine. And I order that oneif of this should be used for the poor who serve the priests and the remainder should be distributed by us to strangers and beggars.

(1:20:25) For it's disgraceful that when no Jew ever has to beg because the Jews take care of their own. So the Jewish poor are taken care of by the Jewish community. And the impetus Galileans, that is to say the Christians as Julian calls them. They support not only their own poor but ours as well. So they're also giving alms to all of the poor pagan beggars.

(1:20:50) All men see that our people, our pagans lack any aid aid from us. teach those of the helenic faith to contribute to public service of this source and the helenic villages to offer the first fruit to the gods and accustomed to those who love the helenic religion to these good works by teaching them that this was our practice of old.

(1:21:19) So, so he's saying, look, we've got to we've got to start doing the same thing that Christ the Christians are doing. And when we do that, uh, we also can say or pretend that this is what we always doing in the past. So, we're restoring things the way they used to be, but we're doing that by imitating Christians. So, like I say, the Jews take care of their own.

(1:21:37) Christians give charity. Pagans need to do the same if we're going to win hearts and minds in Julian's perspective. And so, um, as Julian is kind of putting that program together, you know, it gives us a sense of maybe what might have been. So of course the old gods he sees as emanations from the one.

(1:22:03) You know the old gods then might have continued on in this new neopagan state religion state church uh of Justinian and maintained a role that is pretty similar to what angels and saints ended up having in the Christian church. that is maybe they're intercessors in some what degree between humanity and the one between humanity and God and in the same way that um uh you know the Christian church ended up um having biblical stories biblical mythology as the sacred story of the Roman state religion in actual history if things had gone the other way and Justinian I'm

(1:22:44) sorry and Julian had won out um Greco Roman mythology might have been interpreted allegorically as he said in order to replace the Bible, but it would have had actually more emphasis than it had ever had before because again this new religion is taking on characteristics of the religion that uh that Julian uh is leaving.

(1:23:09) So this religion that Julian would have been founded I would say does not leave supernaturalism and superstition behind. So Julian himself has interest in magic and there is in general an overlap in late antiquity between philosophy and the means really that this pagan state religion that if it had emerged wouldn't I think be any less likely to focus on perceived supernatural wonders than Christianity was.

(1:23:38) And so despite enlightenment era ideas that Christianity was the source of superstition, I think people in this era were very much excited about these ideas regardless of their affiliation. And this is also true I think for another common thing that people associate with paganism which is um you know like free love.

(1:24:06) So although paganism today is associated with being sex positive, aestheticism including renouncing physical desires that was pretty embedded in lots of different Greco Roman philosophical practice including a lot of neoplatanism that and stoicism that were influencing um uh Julian and and I actually think that that trend uh among Greo Roman moral philosophy is actually what influenced Christianity be to be sex negative rather than vice versa. Julian himself was an aesthetic. He was a vegetarian.

(1:24:41) There were all sorts of things that he was not um you know he's not a u epicurian you know and Epicurans even um are uh they're they're not hedonists either. So anyway, his neopagan state religion I think would very unlikely to promote uh free love. And finally, although Julian began his program with an edict of toleration, I just want to say that that was also true for what Constantine the way Constantine started in 313.

(1:25:20) And so had a neopagan church become Rome's state religion, I think by the time we get to the fifth century, it also would have become intolerant. the way uh Christianity became intolerant and in that case it would not only have stamped out like manachism like Christianity did but would stand out stamp out also what whatever was left of Christianity in the Roman Empire in the fifth century and I think it also would have stamped out Judaism which had a space of special privilege in a Christian Roman Empire because of the related status of Judaism to

(1:25:57) Christianity. So, Jews didn't have um you know a great time and they often faced a bunch of persecution and problems. But um but intolerant empires often destroy minority religions and certainly Christianity and Judaism didn't survive manarchism and those didn't survive in medieval China and there was not it may well not have survived a neopagan uh religion either.

(1:26:25) And so there would have been a very different path had Julian been able to establish this different state religion. But it wouldn't be altogether different and it wouldn't look I think the way a lot of people imagine a pagan or neopagan Roman Empire looking. Obviously there would be so many cascading additional effects on history that we can even say what would happen.

(1:26:47) So there would be no reason for Islam. Islam is a a reaction to the fact that um the Arab world is living on the edge of a um a Roman Empire that has a very uh strong um state religion of Christianity uh of which Islam is a variant. Um, and so who knows if there is a a neopagan Roman Empire and a um Zorastrian empire that uh that the Arab world is on a periphery of what what would have what would have happened? So um nevertheless all of those possible futures are counterfactual because um you know one of the the question we had at the very beginning of this is why uh

(1:27:35) Julian failed to um stop Christianity and the answer can be seen right here on this chart very easily. So this entire um growth and tipping point of Christianity taking over can be very well seen in the incredibly long reign of Constantine himself and then of Constantius you know his sons to all three sons but Constantius especially and that contrasts with Julian.

(1:28:06) So if Julian had had a bar that was at least as long as Constantines and as and he produced a son and successor that lasted as long as Constantius I who knows what would have happened. Um but that's not what happened. And so Julian um in 363 um this uh major u this major threat that has been on Rome's eastern frontier this revived Persian Empire of the Cisanians.

(1:28:40) Um Julian musters his forces unlike his u cousin who had tried to get uh Julian's forces from the Rine and also the eastern armies together. Julian is now in charge of both of those and so he's able to have a big army which he fields against the Persians. He goes to the capital he has a battles and is initially successful but but as he starts to rampage around Persia he faces supply problems and as they're marching around at Samara which is in Mesopotamia which is in Iraq.

(1:29:15) Um he fights a battle with the Persians and Julian himself is mortally wounded in the battle. And so because he dies, his reign is very brief. He's only able to set a couple things in motion. And all of the reforms that he initiates are ultimately undone by his successors, every one of whom ends up being a Christian. And so this is why uh Julian failed to stop Christianity uh as the last pagan Roman Empire.

(1:29:43) All right. Well, I want to start out by thanking people for their support. Thanks so much to JM, to Laura Alexander, to Dave Anderson, to Fire Ever Living, to Anders, and Alistister. Anders says, um, the putting off of Constantine's baptism makes me think, uh, the evolution of baptism in the various Christianities would, uh, make a great Hammer lecture unless one already exists. No, I haven't done that before.

(1:30:15) And I do think it's um I think it's interesting and important because there is so many different ideas about baptism and um and you know our own my own church has its own you know its own weird inherited traditions about baptism and so you know we we should probably do that. Yeah. I think we we could do um but versus Ziana Baptist for example. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that would be very good. I like that idea. Thanks, Anders.

(1:30:44) Um, Julie Bazooki says, "What role, if any, do you think Christian charity played in its winning? I've read arguments ranging from central to victory to almost none." Um, I think Julian, as we read in that quote, Julie, Julian actually thought it played a pretty major role. Um he and which is why he himself said in order to win hearts and minds we're going to have to you know you know we who have the the true religion the religion of the old gods we pagans are going to have to play this game and and play this game to win it too because uh people find you know

(1:31:18) we it's embarrassing because our you know pagan beggars or whatever are going to the Christian churches and getting getting alms and and being able to receive charity. So, I would say that Julian thinks it's a very big deal. And so, I I agree that it's hard to um quantify any one of those things.

(1:31:41) Uh but it's a big enough deal as a factor that Julian feels that he needs to replicate it. Um Normative says, "Curious to whether um John has read Gorid Doll's Julian for which I was named, and if so, what he thinks of it. I have not read Corvid Doll's Jewel.

(1:32:06) So that's an interesting I should have obviously it's something I should have looked up for this but um but yeah anyway that's interesting and it's an interesting fact. So hi Julian. Um Jason uh Culo says isn't 380s too late regardless of what Julian did to reverse Roman imperial Christianization within the const of his lifespan. Julian the apostate would have needed a longer lifespan and role. Absolutely.

(1:32:30) That's um you probably wrote that before we got to the end slide. But but as I was kind of saying is the re the answer to the question is is found um you the question that the lecture posed was found in that timeline graphic which is one of the reasons why I made that timeline graphic.

(1:32:46) So because Julian was like you know like had this little brief reign instead of a big long reign like Constantine it's impossible for him to accomplish anything like that. So he would have needed a full long rain and then produced a sun or air that that follows in his footsteps and then he possibly I mean then he could have did it done it.

(1:33:03) Um Todd Radmaker says is it fair to say that because of his patronage uh Constantine chose which brand of Christianity survived? Um I think that the answer to that is kind of no because actually um Constantine the brand that he picked kind of changed and so and so in Nika um there is a a consensus essentially that's an anti-Aryan consensus where Aras is condemned and they have what we think of as the the Athanasian or the proto the protoorthodox the orthodox position as it comes to be known. But um but Constantine himself

(1:33:49) starts to be attracted to the Aryan position. He um is baptized by either an Aryan or a um a a semi-Aryan bishop as I recall and um and certainly his some of his sons are are semi-arans. And so the area in question continues to be alive uh during the the Constantinian um dynasty.

(1:34:21) And so and so we've had a whole lecture on Aryanism, but essentially Aryanism is um as opposed to tr standard trinitarianism which became the the the doctrine of Christianity until modern times where there are non-nine Christians again. Um the Aryan tradition is that um that Jesus while divine is not is not one with God is not God doesn't have the same essence or being or essence of God um and instead is uh the very first creation of God as um as kind of explained in the in the book of Proverbs where God creates wisdom Holy wisdom as the first of God's creations and then wisdom was ever with

(1:35:09) God from the beginning. Nevertheless, the the difference between infinity and the most important thing created is is vast. And so um that's kind of the Aryan position as opposed to the trinitarian position. And um and so it wasn't fixed until until later until after Julian.

(1:35:36) Ron Wagner says, "Muslims consider Jews and Christians people of the book. Is this because most religions of the time did not have written scriptures like the Abrahamic religions?" Um, and so it's because they are very aware of the the common origin. So um so Judaism and Christianity are related religions and Islam is also related to those.

(1:36:03) And so the um when you go to the Quran, the Quran has all sorts of figures um like you know how we call them anyway, Abraham and Mary and Jesus who are um also important prophets and figures in the religion of Islam. And so that's why um you know they're they're people of the book in the sense that the the Christians and and Jews revere the Bible uh and Muslims revere uh the Quran.

(1:36:38) Um there are other peoples that get added to that list and so sometimes um I think sometimes the Zarastrians are ruled to be on that list and that's certainly helpful to them when when uh Islam conquers all of Persia and so forth. But it's not as immediately identifiable because um although Zoroastrians do have holy texts that go all the way back um very very early um it's not as directly a related religion there are many similarities between Zoroastrianism because Zoroastrianism massively uh influenced second temple Judaism in the Persian period. Ricky Palasio says um this was around

(1:37:22) the time of the Byzantine Empire and the last part of the Roman Empire. This is um so this is still what historians call the Roman Empire. It is a um a reformed and refounded Roman Empire because coming out of the crisis of the 3rd century the Roman Empire was you know remarkably or marketkedly very different from the empire as it had existed in the time of Augustus.

(1:37:48) But it's still put on a new firm footing. It survives all through the 4th century. Um at that point these um this tendency and this need to have multiple emperors uh continues. And so after Theodosius the great which is the end of the 4th century um there the two the empire is divided and the west and east are never have the same ruler again.

(1:38:17) And in the west as things uh collapse in the um with the onslaught of uh barbarian migrations, the coming of the Huns and so forth, uh that state has successors when the when military affiliates, the Germanic uh tribes replace essentially the imperial government. Uh and so and so that's when the east we start to think of it as the Byzantine Empire because the capital now they they don't own Rome the city of Rome anymore and the capital is is now Bzantium Constantinople and so and so even though um even though this is sometimes thought of as a modern construct since the people in the east

(1:38:58) continue to think of themselves as Romans um some ancient historians already were using that phrase is um of Bzant of of Bzantium because they are aware that the capital now is Bzantium, not Rome. Um designer Hart says, "If Julian succeeded, would you foresee that increased neoplatonic influence would have countered the influence of Arisilian scholasticism and fundamentalism in our own timeline?" um it's impossible designer heart I think to um to play out you know all of the counterfactuals that would have happened and so um huge

(1:39:41) components of um you know platonism were absorbed into Christianity especially Latin Christianity because of um Augustine so because Augustine is the the great thinker of uh the end of late anti Christianity and all Christian thought gets you know in the west gets uh funneled through him. Um plonism neoplatonism is is has a huge influence on Christianity.

(1:40:14) Um but that didn't um that didn't stop uh a huge um you know a huge takeover in the later middle ages when Aristotle was rediscovered. And so, um, it's hard to know what would have happened, you know, so would the West have fallen? Would, you know, what would the whole thing have looked like? We don't I mean, would Aristotle have ever been lost? We don't know any of those things. So, it's hard to know.

(1:40:39) Um, you know, those are all counterfactuals that go way beyond the variables that you can uh plug in, I think. So, Fire Ever Living says, um, how did Julian's reign influence the Christians at the time? Did they become more united and anti-pagan or did Julian succeed in causing sism? Um so they continued to um fight about christoologgical controversies. That's all early Christians, you know, were really arguing about.

(1:41:08) And so um the Aryanism and Athanasian debate that was still very heated. And even when that ends, you know, it doesn't end everything because um uh in the next um you know, in the next century, there's there's additional christoologgical um concerns that come up. So So I don't think that they become more united and and they might have gotten more anti-pagan.

(1:41:32) They might not have liked the the revival at all, but um but they I don't think that that stopped them from um having sism. Um K. Tempest Bradford says, "Has John seen the Caesar's Messiah documentary or Creating Christ? How far did he get into it before rage quitting?" I have not seen them. I've read summaries of it.

(1:41:57) And so um the Caesar's Messiah I conspiracy theory is just um is is preposterous. So I don't I think we have a very difficult time of of watching this. There's no there's no historical basis for this idea. It can't be it can't be um maintained from historical methodology using source and evidence. It is entirely a a fantasy fiction created without out method or methodology or sources.

(1:42:25) Uh Kasumi Reena says question about Romans persecuting pagan religions before Christianity. They u bragged about weeding out human sacrifice and were very anti-polyamy. How much uh Germanics eating babies was propaganda. So yeah. So um so this is one of the things about you know using the word paganism or polytheism. It is not one thing.

(1:42:54) So these are um inherited traditions that are wildly different. Some of which um the Romans already in antiquity while they were still technically pagans they other pagans um that they encountered were doing things that they don't they don't like.

(1:43:19) And so one of the things in their great rivalry with with Carthage um the Romans accused the Carthaginians of infant sacrifice for example and and and indeed that does seem to have been a practice that the Carthaginians had at times. Uh and so the Romans were considered that to be you know anathema and like you say they also are anti anti-polygamy. um sometimes you know so so polygamy is uh is again a social practice uh the um Judaism and Islam have you know ancient Judaism anyway where in allowed for polygamy even though they're monotheists Islam continues to allow for polygamy as a monotheist religion um so you could

(1:44:01) have moral um exceptions or take moral exception to something like that uh the way the Romans did who were very interested in monogamy even though they were um even though they were you know polytheists even though they were pagans. Um a lot of these things certainly about people eating babies so cannibalism is is propaganda.

(1:44:27) And so one of the um one of the ways that when you're trying to talk about people who are beyond the pale, when you're talking about um people on, you know, who are not even known, but they're they're inhuman, um one of the things cannibalism is one of the things that is ascribed to people.

(1:44:48) And so one of the things that we always have to look at when we're looking at sources and we're talking about um people writing about foreigners, especially for far away foreigners, um they will ascribe to them uh horrific customs that are the the fantasy of the people that are writing it to show how alien the other is. And so some of that is propaganda, but some practices did exist. So human sacrifice has existed in places.

(1:45:16) And like I say, the Carthaginians seem to have continued to do it. We have some evidence of that, not like constantly, but for important things. And the Romans were opposed to that kind of thing. Even though they're broadly speaking, you know, now in our perspective, they're both pagans. They have very different views on that.

(1:45:35) So, Lra says, "If Julian's reforms caught on and continued, would it have caused a civil war?" uh the Christian church being already organized and with many Christians in the army. So it could have led to a civil war because um because yes what would could have happened at any time.

(1:45:54) So let's say Julian did start having a long reign and he was controlling let's say part the eastern empire where he was like maybe having his camp um in in Constantinople. Um, it could be that then the a Christian Roman general on the German frontier in Gaul could get acclaimed by his troops and become a rival Augustus. And there could have then been a civil war between that guy and his uh maybe pro-Christian legions and Julian and his anti-Christian legions.

(1:46:28) And and that could have also fought out been fought out. And that could have also um either continued or ended Julian's experiment had Julian lived on to have a long enough reign in order to have a um a usurper try to overthrow him. Fire Ever Living has a thought I've thought for a long time you could revive neoplatanism as a new religion which could unite most of the world's religions under one framework.

(1:46:58) But it probably wouldn't catch on just like uh it didn't under Julian. So yeah, there have been also um you know kind of modern syncritic um religions. Bahigh is a um an attempt to unite you know religions into like one kind of common framework. Um but like you say it's continued on as its own thing, but it hasn't necessarily caught on.

(1:47:25) There's also been um lots of work on accuminism within Christianity trying to bring um Christian sects together. Uh and then there's also interfaith work. But like you say um it seems very unlikely that everything would ever bring everybody together. The the tendency has the the main trend is always been to to sism and to fracture. All right. Well, thank you very much.

(1:47:50) Um, I want to remind you that next week we are going to have a let there be answers. So you can think of your questions on any topic and Leander and I will field those next week. And uh the following week we're going to talk about stoicism and Christianity.