Julian the Apostate

Yeah.

Who was your favorite martyr? Well, if I can include him among the ranks of the martyrs, I would say John Chrysostom, because effectively he was put to death by the emperor and the empress of the time.

The empress was Eudoxia.

I can't remember the name of the emperor.

He was under Eudoxia's thumb anyways.

He was a kind of puppet emperor.

They sent Chrysostom into exile, and they deliberately marched him from place to place, exposed to all the elements, and it killed him.

And I think that was quite deliberate.

Now, what happened? Well, people started comparing them to the Empire, and the Empire looked really selfish compared to the generosity of this movement, and suddenly the prestige and favor of the Christian community and their leaders rose up as an alternative to Roman empirical power.

Julian the Apostate, this is one of the most fascinating historical moments.

Julian attempted to revive pagan religion, but he observed the effectiveness of Christian charity, and his complaint was this.

Christians are caring for people who are not even Christians.

Well, it's great to be here and to be able to share a word that's close to my heart.

And so for those who are online and for those here, let's begin by me introducing you to Emperor Julian.

Julian was emperor of the entire Roman Empire for only two years in the middle of the fourth century.

He died at the age of 32, so his reign didn't last very long.

But Julian is remembered in history because of his hostility towards Christianity.

He completely rejected the Christian faith.

He publicly converted to paganism.

And so he went down in history with the title Julian the Apostate.

The Romans did meld some attributes of the Greek Helios, and Roman writers do equate Helios and Sol.

The Emperor Julian, for example, who is called the Apostate because he tried to reinstitute traditional Roman religion during the Christianization of the Roman Empire, simply refers to the sun god as Helios in Greek, though it's pretty obvious he's referring to what Latin speakers would have called Sol Invictus because he explicitly says Helios, nicknamed Invincible.

So this is our first example of the sun god being a multi-valent character.

Helios in the Greek-speaking world, Sol in the Latin-speaking world.

The calendar also includes dates on when to celebrate Christmas and lists December 25th as Jesus's birth So this calendar makes me doubt that most Christians were all that threatened by pagan festivals in general or Seoul in particular.

So our best and clearest evidence of a supposedly very popular pagan festival, a festival so important that Christian authorities felt threatened or at least compelled to declare it the birthday of Jesus, comes from a single line in a Christian document dating 40 years after Christianity had already been legalized in the Roman Empire.

Another source that explicitly mentions a solar festival in late December is Emperor Julian, nicknamed the Apostate for his rejection of Christianity.

In 362, in a text on Helios, he writes, Before the new month, immediately after the end of the month of Kronos, we celebrate the most splendid public game in honor of Helios, the feast for Helios nicknamed Invincible.