Though I personally don’t like the word ‘neopagans’ often used to mean modern pagans, opposite to the ancient ones, I’ll use it in this work to define a particular trait of the emperor Julian’s life and thought, a feature that resembles those of us modern pagans.
Like us, Julian never tried an allover restoration of the ancient religious thought, which is probably far from his worldview. Like any contemporary pagan is forced to do (let alone those who think they can completely restore the true ancient paganism, very unlikely to happen because of the difference of minds between them and us and the fact that religious matter is nowadays a personal thing, but a social one in ancient times), Julian reconstruct a paganism related to his worldview and to his role in society.
Actually, Julian was born in a Christian environment and what a nice one! When he was six, at the burial ceremony for his uncle Constantine I, some soldiers on behalf of Constantius killed all Julian’s relatives who could eventually stand between Constantius and the throne. Only Julian and his older half-brother, Gallus, survived and together they lived in exile in Nicomedia and then in Macellum, in Cappadocia; only when he was twenty Julian was allowed to return to Constantinople, but soon dismissed again because Constantius was afraid he could become too popular.
When he criticizes Christianity and its myths, Julian shows a deep knowledge of them, coming from its education not only in classical texts (which haven’t been banned from school programs yet), but also in old and new Testament. His growth in a Christian environment is also a part of his being ‘neopagan’: not because he’s a converted, but because he was forced to look for paganism, since he couldn’t absorb it from the world around as it had been for centuries, and then make it fit to himself. It’s in the 4th century, at the time of Julian, that pagans began to consider themselves pagans (and this is one of the reasons I don’t like to use the word ‘neopagan’ for today paganism): only in contrast to christianity.
One can’t apply the institute of the interpretation to Christianity: it was easy to match Apollo to the Celtic god Lugh and continue everyone on his own way, calling the god whatever he wanted to, but this can’t be done toward the Christian god. Christianity wasn’t even an ethnic religion, so limited to a certain people even if it showed meaningless to others (so was considered Judaism by Romans). From contrast with Christianity, the idea of a paganism as a religion different from Christianity was born, especially in Neoplatonist circles. They certainly didn’t use the world ‘paganism’ but ‘Hellenism’ and some practices, unfamiliar to ancient greek and roman religions, fell often within Neoplatonist Hellenism, while other cults, whose meaning had been lost, stayed outside it.
So even Julian’s renewal of paganism, like all the following renewals of paganism, began from a selection of cults and ideas of paganism in those times. The Chaldaean Oracles were a pillar of Julian’s religious thought: according to Rowland Smith (see references at the bottom of the page) Julian owed many of the ideas expressed in the Hymn to King Helios to these Oracles and not to Mithras’s mysteries. This doesn’t mean that Julian didn’t practice the cult of Mithras, that was, together with the Sol Invictus, already part of imperial ideology before being replaced with Christianity from Constantine on. It’s not easy to understand where is the line between religious worship and philosophic interest in Julian’s thought; he dealt with the Mother of Gods’ (Cybele’s) mysteries to whom he dedicates another hymn, and knew Dionysian and Eleusinian mysteries, we don’t know how much or if he was actually an initiated and at which level.
Besides his personal worldview, there’s Julian’s role in society: he didn’t think he was divine just because he became emperor, but as emperor he felt was his duty to honour the gods of the whole empire and therefore to restore their temples and promote their cult in local forms. He stressed many times that pagan priests should keep a correct behavior, so being an example; he knew that Christian offers of charity could attract people in trouble, who were once helped by the state and the cities.
Though he actually considered some pagan practices fit for him while others weren’t, Julian never tried to create a unique paganism for everyone, not even a masked monotheism as some scholars said. Like Libanius wrote, he worshipped different Gods in different times and he didn’t celebrate some Gods to ignore others, but paid honour to all.
Manuela Simeoni
16.07.2012
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