Julian's failure to reinstate Paganism - The Diigo Meta page

• 13 Mar 10
  

  Diana Carlisle
  • "Julian has always been something of an underground hero in Europe. His attempt to stop Christianity and revive Hellenism exerts still a romantic appeal."
      Gore Vidal's Julian
  • scholars have searched Julian's life and administration for clues to why the apostasy (which means the "standing away from" [Christianity]) failed.
  • was trained as a Christian, yet he is known as apostate because when he became emperor (A.D. 360) he opposed Christianity.
  • James J. O'Donnell suggests that the emperor's particularly vehement stance against Christianity (and support for the other monotheistic religion, Judaism) stems from his Christian upbringing.
  • pagans of the time generally held religion to be a private matter, while Christians behaved strangely in trying to convert others to their faith.
  • To be a pagan in the old tradition, Julian should have let everyone worship as he or she wished. Instead of letting each person worship in his own way, Julian stripped the Christians of their privileges, powers, and rights. And he did so from their own perspective: the intolerant attitude that one's private religion is of public concern.
  • "In summary, it is necessary to look upon the religious sociology of the fourth century with two separate (if often, and confusingly, overlapping) distinctions in mind: that between worshippers of Christ and worshippers of other gods; and that between men who could accept a plurality of worships and those who insisted on the validity of a single form of religious experience to the exclusion of all others."
  • mystical ascents of which Platonic philosophers wrote with such devotion
  • There were public cults indigenous to the various parts of the empire, certain generally (if often lukewarmly) accepted devotions such as that to the divinity of the emperors, and a vast array of private enthusiasms. That such a spectrum of religious experiences should produce a single-minded population capable of forming itself into a single pagan movement with which Christianity could struggle is simply not probable."
  • even though seventeen hundred years later, we are predominantly a Christian society in terms of our beliefs, it may have been the pagan attitude of religious tolerance that prevailed.
  • "Julian failed because he died.

  9 more annotations...

• 22 Feb 09
  

  Hannah Macaskill

  Briefly but accurately describes the reign of Julian and the changes he attempted to make. It also usefully gives a variety of views from historians.

  apostate Hellenism State Religion convert

• 05 Mar 08
  

  Jamie Wood

  describes the reasons why Julian's attemps to reinsate paganism was unsuccessful. fairly useful as a genereal overview

  imported history medieval HST114 teaching Bookmarks 3star emmalatham secondary source paganism_chrisitanity 2010 delicious

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