Lecture 14: Constantine and the Established Church
o Trained in rhetoric and philosophy, Julian was lifted from
his life as a student in Athens when Constantius II made him
Caesar of the west in 355. He proved a more than adept soldier,
and in 360, when he was acclaimed Augustus by his troops, he
openly renounced Christianity.o When he became sole emperor in 361, Julian promoted a
syncretistic form of religion, in which Jesus was honored with
other great men who manifested the divine, and restored the
pagan temples to their full functioning.o He removed Christians from high office and sought to return
education to pagan standards. To please the Jews, he began the
project of restoring the Temple in Jerusalem, but he did not
persecute Christians in any active fashion.o It remains a fascinating historical question as to what might
have happened if Julian had not been cut down in battle and his
reign had lasted for decades.• Succeeding emperors quickly and decisively restored Christian
privileges but continued to allow a certain freedom of worship. In
contrast, the emperor Gratian (375–383) rejected emperor worship,
removed the altar of victory from the Roman forum, discontinued
state subsidy for pagan worship, and confiscated temple funds.• The decisive establishment of Christianity as the state religion
of the empire took place under Theodosius I, who ruled the East
from 379 to 392 and was sole ruler of both East and West from 392
to 395.
o His edict “On the Catholic Faith” (380) imposed Christianity
on all inhabitants of the empire.o He closed all temples, including the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Many of them he seized for Christian worship, and in 391, he
forbade any pagan worship. In 392, he declared sacrifice to the
gods to be high treason, punishable by death.