§ 4. JTJLIAi^ -HE APOSTATE. 53
were removed from military and civil office, deprived of all their former privileges, oppressed with taxes, and compelled to restore without indemnity the temple property, with all their own improvements on it, and to contribute to the suppoit of the public idolatry. Upon occasion of a controversy between the Arians and the orthodox at Edessa, Julian confiscated the church property and distributed it among his soldiers, under the sarcastic pretence of facilitating the Christians' entrance into the kingdom of heaven, from v*^hich, according to the doctrine of their religion (comp. Matt. xix. 23, 24), riches might exclude them.
Equally unjust and tyrannical was the law, which placed all the state schools under the direction of heathens, and prohibited the Christians teacliing the sciences and the arts.' Julian would thus deny Christian youth the advantages of education, and compel them either to sink in ignorance and barbarism, or to imbibe with the study of the classics in the heathen schools the principles of idolatry. In his view the Hellenic writings, especially the works of the poets, were not only literary, but also religious documents to which the lieathens had an exclusive claim, and he regarded Christianity irreconcilable with genuine human culture. The Galileans, says he in ridicule, should content theniselves with expounding Matthew and Luke in their churches, instead of profaning the glorious Greek authors. For it is preposterous and ungrateful, that they should study the writings of the classics, and yet despise the gods, whom the authors revered ; since the gods were in fact the authors and guides of the minds of a Homer, a Hesiod, a Demosthenes, a Tliucydides, an Isocrates, and a Lysias, and these writers consecrated their works to Mercury
' Gregory of Naz., Orat. iv., censures the emperor bitterly for forbidding tho Christians what was the common property of all rational men, as if U were the exclusive possession of the Greeks. Even the heathen Ammianus Marceilinus, xxii. 10, condemns this measure : " Illud autem erat inclemens, obruendum perenni silentio, quod arcebat docere magistros rhetoricos et grammaticos, ritus Christiani cultores." Gibbon is equally decided. Directly, Juliar forbade the Christiana only to teach, but indirectly also to learn, the classical literature ; as they were of course unmlliug to go to heathen schools
54 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
or the muses/ Hence he hated especially the learned churol teachers, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzen, Apollinaris of Laodicea^ who applied the classical culture to the refutation of heathenism and the defence of Christianity. To evade his interdict, the two Apollinaris produced with all haste Christian imitations of nomer, Pindar, Euripides, and Menander, which were considered by Sozomen equal to the originals, but soon passed into oblivion. Gregory also wrote the tragedy of "The Suffering Christ," and several hymns, which still exist. Thus these fathers bore witness to the indispensableness of classical literature for a higher Christian education, and the church liaa ever since maintained the same view.'
Julian further sought to promote his cause by literary assaults upon the Christian religion ; himself writing, shortly before his death, and in the midst of his preparations for the Persian campaign, a bitter work against it, of which w^e shall speak more fully in a subsequent section.'
3. To the same hostile design against Christianity is to be referred the favor of Julian to its old hereditary enemy, Judaism.
The emperor, in an official document, affected reverence for that ancient popular religion, and sympathy w^ith its adherents, praised their firmness under misfortune, and condemned their oppressors. He exempted the Jews from burdensome taxation, and encouraged them even to return to the holy land and to rebuild the temple on Moriah in its original splendor. He appropriated considerable sums to this object fr-om the public treasury, intrusted his accomplished minister
* Epist. 42.
' Dr. Baur (1. c. p. 42) unjustly charges the fathers with the contrailiction of making use of the classics as nojessary means of education, and yet of condemning heathenism as a work of Satan. But tliis was only the one side, which has its element of truth, especially as applied to the heathen reliction ; while on the other side they acknowlcdf^ed, with Justin M., Clement and Origen, the working of the divine Logos in the Hellenic philosophy and poetry preparing the way for Christianity. The indiscriminate condemnation of classical literature dates from a later period, from Gregory L
• See l>.;lo^v, ^ 9.