St Mercurios Killing Julian the Apostate

I can’t top the excellent blog post about this painting, so I’ll just add a link.

http://blog.interiorpaintsecrets.info/st-mercurios-killing-king-oleonus-st-mercurios-killing-emperor-julian-the-apostate/

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn’t?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.

When Magic Still Made Sense: The History Books Review Guide to Neoplatonism

Imagine some people who had grown up and lived their entire lives chained to the wall of a cave. Their only view of the world comes from shadows cast into the cave. They would have some idea of what the world was like, but would be unable to fully experience and appreciate the full depth of the colours, the sounds and the smells of the world outside. They would have only the haziest notions of the motivations and passions of the people living there.

This is Plato’s allegory for the way we experience the world. We see only a reflection of a true ideal that exists in the mind of the One, the transcendent being who created the Universe. It is a familiar idea to mathematicians, who often study concepts like, say, circles.  They conceive of a perfect circle with precise mathematical properties, but which it is impossible to reproduce – any circle we can draw will have some deviation from perfection.  In a sense it could be said that there was an ideal form of circle which all other circles are simply reflections or images of. This idea can be extended to things like trees, and to abstract concepts like beauty.  Each of them has an ideal form created by the sublime thought  of the One.

Although it is tempting to equate the One with the Christian notion of God, there really is little in common between them. For a start the One is a lot more transcendent and remote than God. It is beyond gender for example. It is also beyond Good and Evil. And most significantly, it doesn’t have a direct personal relationship with the World.  Plato’s One is a much purer and more austere idea.  Despite it being the fundamental cornerstone of his philosophy, Plato doesn’t really go very far with this basic idea in his work, he is more interested in other questions. 

Plato was enormously influential in the ancient world and his ideas continued to be discussed and developed long after his death. The two biggest philosophical threads in the early Roman Empire were Epicureanism and Stoicism.  Both had some kind of debt to Plato, but neither treated the issues of the gods or the One as particularly significant.   Marcus Aurelius for instance, the Roman emperor who tried most consistently to practice stoic virtues, wonders if the gods even exist.  He concludes that they probably do, but that he has to work out the best way to live his life without taking them into account. His stoic philosophy was compatible with religious beliefs but didn’t depend upon them. The Epicureans were equally uninterested and even doubted life continued after death.

It wasn’t until around the First Century, some 500 years after his death, that the Neoplatonists started to look closely at the religious ideas of Plato and to forge a new interpretation that came to be known as Neoplatonism.

So who were the Neoplatonists and what is Neoplatonism? First off, the Neoplatonists themselves would have simply called themselves Platonists. They regarded themselves, quite rightly, simply as continuing the work of Plato himself.  It was later scholars, much later, that have named them the Neoplatonists in recognition of the originality of their philosophical ideas.

The easiest question to answer is who they were. The first Neoplatonist is usually acknowledged to be Ammonius Sachus, about whom we know very little. His student, Plotinus is the first member of the school to leave any of his own work behind. Even Plotinus is mainly known from what his student,Porphyry, wrote about him. It is fair to say that Porphyry was the person who really popularised Neoplatonism and it is his writing that tells us most about it. He also had students, the chief of whom was Iamblychus, often referred to as the Divine Iamblychus.  These men all had their own individual approaches, but were clearly a distinct and recognisable grouping.

What they had in common was an intense interest in the teachings of Plato about the mystical and religious.  They looked closely at the nature of the One, the nature of the soul and how the idea of forms could be used to understand the relationship between the One, the Gods, the world and the souls of the men inhabiting it.

The Neoplatonists were fascinated by the divine.  They were interested in the properties of the soul and regarded it as having the ability to connect with beings from higher planes. In fact Plotinus visited a temple where he found that he was inhabited by an actual god – though the priest officiating at the ceremony was so scared by the power of the being his art had revealed that he panicked and stopped the reading before its name was revealed.  It is hard to imagine Plato himself going along with something like that, not without at least challenging the basis behind it. But the Neoplatonists were interested in anything mystical.  They looked back before Plato to Pythagoras and resurrected his belief in magical numbers.  Plotinus was well versed in mathematics and music, though from a purely theoretical viewpoint.  He was interested in what that study could tell him about the nature of the divine, rather than counting things or playing an instrument.

For similar reasons, Porphyry was fascinated by the leading edge science of the time.

An astronomer in Alexandria called Ptolemy had pulled off what still counts as one of the big achievements of science.  He had constructed a working mathematical model of the solar system accurate enough to give excellent predictions of the future positions of the planets in the sky.  His picture of the Universe had the Earth at the centre of seven heavenly spheres each corresponding to the five visible planets, the Sun and the Moon.  This covered everything that could be seen to move in the sky before the invention of the telescope. This can still be considered as the starting point of the modern maths based approach to describing the Universe making Ptolemy the direct ancestor of Newton and Einstein and the men who are currently seeking the Higgs Boson in the tunnels under the Alps.  

But for the Neoplatonists it had a completely different significance. The seven heavens represented different aspects of the One.  Each sphere was presided over by a god with a particular character created directly by the One.  Astrology was already well established, but the ability to predict the positions of the planets using Ptolemy’s maths took it a stage further.  The idea that what happens in Heaven influences what happens on Earth was not really all that far fetched based on what the men of the First Century knew.  The influence of the Sun and the Moon is quite noticeable after all, and the seasons do move in step with what is happening in the sky.  It is a deep rooted idea, and we still have horoscopes in the newspapers today.  We use astrological metaphors in our language, often unconsciously.  Influenza for example, gets its name from the time when medical men attributed it to the influence of the skies.  But the Neoplatonists were really into astronomy in a big way.  Porphyry studied Ptolemy’s work closely and wrote a commentary on it.  Observing the sky could reveal the secrets of the Divine will, and also give practical day to day predictions as a guide to action.  The crystal ball still used today by people claiming knowledge of the future reminds me of Ptolemy’s heavenly spheres, and I don’t think it is a coincidence.

It’s an easy step from observing, to predicting, to trying to influence. Sacrifices to gods could steer things in the way you wanted.  You could even conceive that with a really detailed understanding of the movements of the celestial objects, the mood of the celestial being and knowing the right things to say, the right food to eat and auspicious moment to act you could bend the universe to your will.  It sounds like magic, but the Neoplatonsts coined the term theurgy.  Theurgy was very much the creation of Iamblichus, and was frowned on by Porphyry.  But the objection was not that it wouldn’t work, but that it was a distraction from the important business of reminding the soul of its true nature as part of the divine one.  

Theurgy did make perfect sense if you followed the logic behind it.  Plato’s idea of forms came into its own here.  If we can conceive of something like say beauty, this is because it exists as a form that has a reality in the mind of the One.  No man had created the concept of beauty, it is something we are born aware of. This is because our immortal souls remember it from before birth.  In a story like that of Helen of Troy, her beauty is another reflection or form from the divine will.  So the beauty in the story is also true, it is just another form of reflection.  Whether this meant that it must have actually happened is another matter, and something that might be open to debate.  But even if it was made up, it was still true enough to command respect.  The Neoplatonists were always interested in looking for metaphors and allegories in myths and in observations of nature as a way of seeking knowledge. Theurgy gave a practical way to apply this knowledge.

That it didn’t actually work was not really an issue. Neoplatonism failed to gain mass appeal mainly because it had a more efficient competitor rather than not delivering the goods.  But it was influential enough for the trappings of Neoplatonic mysticism to have stuck in our culture long after the philosophy behind them has been forgotten.  Magicians wear hats decorated with starry symbols and continue to cast spells, count out in magic numbers and concoct things using strange ingredients with astrological significance.

Neoplatonism was initially an alternative to Christianity, but somehow never became an effective organised force.  For all its elegance, it was perhaps just a bit too clever.  To understand it took some effort which limited its appeal to men with the time and the inclination to study it carefully.  But while it failed to compete on the practical level, it was still able to exert an influence on its rival.  As Christianity grew in strength its weakness as a philosophy became more apparent.  Many of the ideas of the Neoplatonists were adapted and incorporated into mainstream Christianity by thinkers like Augustine and Boethius – a debt that is rarely acknowledged.  And it is a pretty big debt.  If you follow the arguments between atheists and Christians on Youtube and in internet forums, you sometimes see Christians, I assume unknowingly, using Neoplatonic arguments about the nature of God.  And they are good arguments.  Atheists much prefer quoting the Bible – its easier meat.  

Despite ransacking their ideas for anything that might be useful to them, the Christian elites did not look favourably on Neoplatonism, and after the emperor Justinian closed the Academy in Athens it went underground.  Sorcery and magic became objects of suspicion, and have remained so.  Despite this or maybe because of it a tradition of sorts has continued in shady corners.  Elements of Neoplatonism have continued to surface in various forms over the centuries and still pops up from time to time even today.  The works of C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien for example both draw on the ideas of the Neoplatonists.  A magic ring that imposing a particular form on the wearer?  That would have made perfect sense to Iamblychus.  Lewis goes even further with Bacchus himself turning up in Narnia.  

But the biggest blow to Neoplatonism probably wasn’t suppression by the authorities but the advance of natural science.  Everything we have learned about the Universe tells us that it is random and unplanned, and that our role in it is down to pure chance.  There is no sign of anyone having given much thought to its creation. In contrast, Ptolemy’s cosmology of concentric spheres really does look a lot like the conception of a divine mind with a mathematical bent.  Combining this picture of the world with Plato’s concepts creates a beautiful and consistent concept that is hard to resist.  It enables you to believe, literally, in magic.   I find it tempting to look up into the night sky and imagine how it would feel to be indeed looking at a series of vast crystal heavens full of meaning and significance, and created by a sublime being far beyond imagination.

Tribute to Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens showed great stoicism in his last year as the cancer in his throat slowly killed him.  He continued to live as he had lived before with no hint of self pity or even much sign of inconvenience.  As he pointed out, we are all dying, he was just doing it a bit more quickly.  

It was this stoicism that made me realise that if you want a label for him, Stoic was about as close as  you are going to get.  He started off professing to be on the left, like his hero Orwell.  This was never an accurate portrayal of his views or his attitudes, and as the years went by it became harder and harder to discern anything remotely socialist about Hitchens.  But it was not really true to say that he drifted to the right either.  He seemed supremely uninterested in social progress, either to support it or oppose it.  He was much happier in the realm of ethics and ideas.

Ultimately, the only way to really describe him is to use out of date language.  The cause that seemed to stir him was virtue, and what repelled him was villainy. But what made him unique was not so much the things he was passionate about, but the depths of that passion.  The righteous indignation he can summon has become so famous it even has a name, the Hitchslap.  Fans have collected prime examples on Youtube.

In the end, his interests were just too wide to fit into any pigeonhole.  He loved life, and loved the freedom to live that life how he wanted.  But it was ultimately the literature that freedom produced that he loved the most.  His many enemies were the people who stifled greatness – tyrants, corrupt politicians, religious hucksters and theocratic bullies.  They earned his contempt and he paid them in a way nobody will ever come close to.  He didn’t believe in immortality, but his work will live on making it just that much harder for rogues to get away with it.  It is the legacy he would have wanted to leave.

Julian and the Christians

Athanasius – nemesis of the apostate

Alexandria was one of the major cities of the Roman empire, and one that would have appealed to Julian.  It was founded by Alexander the Great, who was one of Julian’s heroes.   It was also the centre of a major pagan cult, that of Serapis.  (If you are wondering who Serapis was, he was created by the Greek founders of Alexandria as an amalgam of Greek and Egyptian elements so as to appeal to both ethnic groups.  Cynical manipulation of religion for political purposes has a long history.)  And the intellectual achievements of the Alexandrians rivaled those of Athens.  Basically it was his kind of place, or rather it would have been had it not also been an important centre of Christian thought as well.  

When we last looked at Alexandria, the popular but wily and politically motivated Athanasius had been banished and replaced as archbishop by somebody willing to go along with the Arian sympathies of the then emperor Constantius. That person was George of Cappadocia who was just as unsuitable but for totally different reasons.

George had come from a poor background and made his fortune, or the start of it, supplying the army with bacon. When Athanasius was banished by Constantius George became the patriarch in his place with the support of the Arian faction. His exact position on the divinity of Christ hasn’t been recorded, but his businesslike approach to maximising his income has.   In an age where honesty was a rare commodity, he took corruption to a degree which earned the contempt of just about everyone.  His targets had included the pagans as well as his co-religionists, coming up with the claim that the church actually owned the land in the city and so everyone with any property was liable to pay him ground rent.  Even people with a complete disinterest in the theological disputes of the time – which was probably most people – would not have failed to have an opinion on that kind of thing.   He clearly needed to be sorted out, and the removal of George from his post was announced in Alexandria at the same time as Julian’s accession to the throne. 

So George ended up in prison.  But as is often the case in these kinds of situation, events went at their own pace, not the one the authorities tried to set.   With the removal of the Arian appointee who should turn up and reclaim the vacant seat but Athanasius.  This was definitely not what Julian had in mind and he had to send a rapid clarification explaining that when he had said that dissident bishops were restored to their seats, that didn’t include known criminals like Athanasius.  

Julian was well aware of the abilities of Athanasius and the last thing he wanted to do was to let him loose to provide the church with effective leadership.  Meanwhile developments in the crisis continued.  The pagans who had suffered badly at the hands of George’s extortion could not wait for the natural course of justice. They stormed the jail and killed George themselves.  Gibbon suggests that after his death George became the origin of the famous St George, dragon slayer, paragon of knightly virtue and patron saint of a great many places including of course England.  This was a reasonable enough idea in the light of what Gibbon knew, as this was then the earliest use of the name George.  Since then a couple of churches dedicated to a St George that predate George of Cappadocia’s death – one by 16 years – have been discovered.  This clears St George of being a dodgy bacon trader, which for a patriotic Englishman like myself is a relief, though it does mean that we have no idea who he actually was or whether he even existed.  But potential non-existance has not harmed his career as a saint and he continues to attract fans from most Christian denominations and even some Muslims. 

Getting back to Alexandria, it is hard not to sympathise with the pagans, but no state can tolerate people taking the law into their own hands no matter how provoked they might be.  And Athanasius had prudently kept the Christian faction out of the action, enabling the episode to be portrayed, quite accurately, as one where a Christian had been killed by a pagan mob.   This was a potentially dangerous situation.  Julian’s response was self indulgent and inflammatory.  He mildly rebuked the pagans saying that although they had good cause they should not have behaved in such a way.  But given their Grecian heritage and their love of the gods he generously pardoned them.  Having given his own side a license to kill, he then moved against the man who might have been able to diffuse the situation.  Athanasius was banished again – though he must have been getting used to it by now.  

Athanasius was a tricky character and was just about the polar opposite of Julian. Where Julian was full of intellectual curiosity, Athanasius was unimaginative but effective.  Julian cared about ideas, Athanasius was a political operator.  Above all, Athanasius was intent on destroying everything Julian wanted to save.  It is no wonder that Julian wanted him out of the way and preferably dead.

But Athanasius was at least able to deliver some kind of peace deal, so it might well have been better to have at least tried to negotiate with him.  Much might have been gained by a more measured approach trading a degree of acceptance for the Church for the promise of good behaviour by its members.  But compromise was not the spirit of the time and Julian was set on confrontation.  

And confrontation there was.  Temples were attacked by the Christians even though they no longer had any official blessing to do so.  There is something uniquely horrible about the deliberate destruction of other people’s religious images.  The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Afghan Taliban in 2001 is recent enough to recall just how horrific such behaviour is.  These huge monuments were dynamited on the orders of extreme muslim clerics in a triumph of righteous indignation over fellow feeling and respect for others. The statues were 1500 years old and can never now be replaced.  The classical world was full of monuments as old in their time as the Budhhas were in ours. The destruction of many of these by the Christians must have been profoundly shocking for the sincere pagans and non-believers alike.  With a pagan back on the throne the Churches were now attacked.  If Church sources are to be believed, which they generally aren’t, the Christians themselves were attacked too.  But the attacks on pagan monuments continued as well.  In Pessinus the alter of Cybele was overturned almost in the presence of Julian himself.

We are familiar with the pattern of sectarian violence from so many places around the world. In fact as I am working on this piece, from Egypt itself comes a transparent attempt by somebody to convert a political crisis into a religious one by carrying out attacks against the Coptic Christians.  The Egyptians seem unwilling to go along with this and their pro-democracy protestors are remaining non-factional.  This is greatly to their credit.  It is impossible to give the same credit to Julian.  This was his reaction to trouble breaking out in Edessa. The Arian Christians had attacked the Valentinian Christans and the magistrates had struggled to restore order.  Rather than follow judicial procedure to identify and punish the specific wrong doers, Julian simply confiscated the Church’s property in Edessa. The money was distributed among the soldiers.   Meanwhile Julian engaged in the sort of thing that many democratic politicians probably wish they could get away with by telling his opponents exactly what he thought.   “I show myself,” says Julian, “the true friend of the Galilaeans. Their admirable law has promised the kingdom of heaven to the poor; and they will advance with more diligence in the paths of virtue and salvation, when they are relieved by my assistance from the load of temporal possessions.”  His light tone did not continue. “Take care, how you provoke my patience and humanity. If these disorders continue, I will revenge on the magistrates the crimes of the people; and you will have reason to dread, not only confiscation and exile, but fire and the sword.”

The Roman Empire wasn’t a cuddly place and being equally ferocious to all parties would probably have been tolerated, and even approved of.  But pagan atrocities were indulged while Christian ones were not.  It is hard not to interpret this as indicating that Julian was quite prepared to use violence to achieve his religious ends.  I suspect he did not have any plans for a widespread violent crackdown on Christianity, but I think that was not for any other reason than that he thought it wouldn’t be the most effective means of achieving his ends.  At the same time as handling day to day politicking with his opponents he also brought in a policy that would have had a long term weakening effect.  He banned the use of the classical Greek texts by teachers unwilling to accept that the Gods in those texts were true.  This had the effect of preventing Christians from teaching.  This was a serious blow against the propagation of Christianity.  Getting them young is still one of the main strategies used to keep the faith going. It rankles with me that my taxes subsidise what are known as ‘faith based schools’, or schools which promote irrational nonsense as I like to think of them.  Julian’s move was a subtle one, because the study of the great works of ancient literature was a passport into the civil service, so passing up on it would be a tough thing to do. 

Julian also applied financial pressure, again using what looked like a long term strategy to starve out Christianity rather than directly confront it.  The Church had already lost the patronage of the state more or less from day one of his reign, and this was bad enough. He also stopped people leaving their property to it – which cut off another major source of income.  

His third prong was a very clever one.  Individual Christian leaders were made liable for repairing the damage done to pagan places of worship.  It was hard to argue with the justice of this.  It also had the effect of hitting the Christian leadership without offering them the chance of martyrdom.  Perishing by the sword for refusing to renounce your beliefs has a certain romantic appeal.  Ending up potless due to criminal damage charges doesn’t have the same resonance.  

So Julian’s campaign against the Christians was well thought out and implemented with energy.  If it had a weakness it was that Julian was sincere in his paganism.  He was intelligent and worldly wise, but he underestimated the strength of his opponents, probably because he thought he actually had the heavens on his side.  He also grossly overestimated the strength of his own faction.  Converts are often very zealous.

This was made most clear in his visit to Antioch.  He went to Syria to visit the famous temple of Apollo.  This had been founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals and was renowned as a beautiful location five miles outside the city itself.  The vast statue of Apollo filled a huge portion of the temple overawing worshippers.  It was located in a shady grove of laurels and cypresses offering shade from the harsh Syrian sun, with numerous streams flowing through keeping the leaves in the trees green and making it even more idyllic.  The laurel tree was sacred to Daphne, who in legend had been loved by Apollo, but who got herself turned into a laurel to escape his clutches. There was also a spring which supported a shrine to Daphne and which was famous as an oracle that rivalled that of Delphi. The situating of places of worship for Apollo and Daphne so close together had an obvious romantic attraction for young couples.  Gibbon manages to put it decorously.

“the senses were gratified with harmonious sounds and aromatic odors; and the peaceful grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love. The vigorous youth pursued, like Apollo, the object of his desires; and the blushing maid was warned, by the fate of Daphne, to shun the folly of unseasonable coyness.”   

Julian knew all about this famous religious centre and was anxious to see it.  No doubt he imagined white robed youths celebrating with music and dancing overseen by a cadre of priests presenting burnt offerings to the beneficent deities in heaven.  And where better to get council on the momentous events in which he was playing a part than in the prophetic springs of Daphne.  But his information was out of date.  When he arrived he found that it had fallen into disrepair and neglect.  There was only one priest in attendance.  And he could only rustle up a single goose as a sacrifice.  For the devout Julian it must have been a heart breaking visit.  And there was worse to come.  The site had been desecrated by having a Christian saint interred on the holy ground.  Rebuilding the temple would be a long job, but the sacrilegious burial at least could be dealt with quickly.  He ordered the body to be removed and sent to a church in the city of Antioch.

The saint in question was Saint Babylos who was supposed to have been killed during the persecution of Decius.  The return of his body was turned into a major demonstration by the Christians who turned out in great numbers to accompany the bones and sing hymns leaving Julian in no doubt that they had a very high level of support in the city.  That night a huge fire broke out destroying the temple of Apollo.  There is some doubt raised by some accounts as to whether the Christians were indeed responsible for the fire.  Right.  If it was an accident, you have to say that was one heck of a coincidence.  Julian at any rate had no doubt that his religion had suffered a terrorist attack and reacted.  

Or to be more accurate, overreacted.

The cathedral in Antioch was closed and its wealth was seized.  To try and find the culprits – and some valuables that had been hidden – a few church officials were tortured and one of them beheaded.  Torture was standard legal procedure at the time, so nobody thought much about that, but the beheading was a bit harsh.

It was not ordered by Julian and he later condemned it.  There are a number of martyrs in the Catholic canon who are supposed to have been killed by Julian, but this is the closest he got to ever actually killing a Christian simply for his faith.  Having said that, Julian’s actions raised the temperature of the issue. This led to many avoidable deaths.

But although Julian was not the monster his enemies later portrayed him as, it has to be said that his time in Antioch was the low point of his career.  He had been popular in Gaul, where Christianity had not yet made much progress and his paganism was not much of an issue.   In Constantinople and Egypt faction fighting was already in progress and so he had ready made adherents and supporters simply by choosing a side. Antioch wasn’t like that.  Religious change had been a bit more steady and organic there.  It had been a haven of peaceful coexistence of pagans and Christians before Julian’s visit.  He was probably unconcerned about upsetting the Christians, though even on the narrowest of tactical considerations provoking a group that posed no threat while there was already trouble elsewhere was hardly a good move. But he didn’t really hit it off with the pagans either.  Being traditionalists they didn’t really take to his novel brand of paganism and he ended up arguing with them as well.  In turn they mocked his beard, which given his power was a braver mover than it sounds.  When Julian finally left on his way to Persia he left made a promise never to return. I doubt many were too disappointed.  

Julian never did return to Antioch as we’ll see in the next episode.

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn’t?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.