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The Death of Julian the Apostate in a Christian Legend
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
The Emperor Julian stood to the Roman world of the fourth century as the personification of the older faith, and with him died the hopes of a pagan restoration. His death came at a critical moment, and both pagan and Christian felt that it could have been no human hand which dealt the fatal blow. To Kallistos Julian was the victim of a demon : Κάλλιστος δέ, writes Socrates, ὁ ἐν τοῖς οἰϰείοις τοῦ βασιλέως στρατευόμενος (i.e. as one of the imperial domestici), ἱστορήσας τὰ ϰατ᾿ αὐτὸν ἐν ἡρωιϰῷ μέτρῳ, τὸν τότε πόλεμον διηγούμενος ὑπὸ δαίμονος βληθέντα τελευτῆσαι ϕηαίν. The comment of the Christian historian is interesting : ὅπερ τυχὸν μὲν ὡς ποιητὴς ἔπλασε, τυχὸν δὲ ϰαί οὕτως ἔχει· πολλοὺσς γὰρ ἐριννύες μετῆλθον. Libanius pictures the blessings which men anticipated under Julian's rule and adds ταῦτα ϰαὶ ἔτι πλείω προσδοϰώμενα χορὸς φθονερῶν ἀφείλετο δαιμόνων. To the Christian similarly it was the saints who had fulfilled the will of Heaven in removing the Apostate persecutor of the Church, though a human assassin could hardly have been condemned—σχολῇ γε ἄν τις ϰαὶ αὐτῷ μέμψαιτο διὰ Θεόν ϰαὶ θρησϰείαν ἣν ἐπῄνεσεν ἀνδρείῳ γενομένῳ.
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- Research Article
- Information
- The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1: Papers Presented to Sir Henry Stuart Jones , 1937 , pp. 22 - 29
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- Copyright ©Norman H. Baynes 1937. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
References
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21 For the Syriac text of the romance cf. Hoffmann, G., Julianos der Abtrünnige. Syrische Erzählungen (Kiel, 1887)Google Scholar; for dating, Nöldeke, Th., ‘Überden syrischen Roman von Kaiser Julian,’ Zeitschr. d. deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft xxviii (1874), 263–292Google Scholar. Translation: Gollancz, H., Julian the Apostate now translated for the first time from the Syriac original, etc. (London, 1928)Google Scholar; for the visions of Marcur cf. pp. 153–155, 190–192. Latin translation of the visions, Peeters, P. in Anal. Boll. xxxix (1921), 79 ffGoogle Scholar. See also Förster, R., ‘Kaiser Julian in der Dichtung alter und neuer Zeit,’ Studien zur vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte v (1905), 1–120Google Scholar at pp. 9 ff. For the Mercurius legend see in particular H. Delehaye, Légendes grecques des saints militaires, 92–101 (with references to the sources which are not repeated here), Nostitz-Rieneck (supra p. 22, note 1) and for modern versions of the legend Halliday (ibid.). For a representation of the death of Julian in a Byzantine miniature of the ninth century, cf. Büttner-Wobst (ibid.), 577–578. For an acute Byzantine criticism of the legend cf. Glycas (Bonn ed.) 471.
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31 By Delehaye, H. in Anal Boll. xxxi (1912), 239Google Scholar.
32 Patria Cp. ed. Preger, fasc. 2, p. 23521. For the Oxeia cf. the documents published by A. Papadopoulo-Keramevs on the miracles of Artemius, St., Sbornik grecheskikh neizdannuikh bogoslovskikh Tekstov iv-xv vyekov (St. Peterburg, 1909)Google Scholar, pp. 53, 65, 819, 133, 2619, 4228, 4615, 6130, 6610 7611-13.
33 Printed in Mai, A., Spicilegium Romanum, iv, 340 ff.Google Scholar; AASS, October viii, pp. 856 ff.; Migne, PG xcvi, coll. 1252 ffGoogle Scholar. and see the better text of the beginning of the Passio in Philostorgius (ed. Bidez), 151 ff. On the Passio and its sources ibid., pp. xliv-xviii.
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35 Cf. Th. Büttner-Wobst (supra, p. 22, note 1), 576, n. 40
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37 Anal. Boll. xxxix, 74.
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