To browse Academia. Lilly, Marshall. Master of Arts History , August , pp. This thesis explores the life and reign of Julian the Apostate the man who ruled over the Roman Empire from A. The study of Julian the Apostate's reign has historically been eclipsed due to his clash with Christianity.
After the murder of his family in by his Christian cousin Constantius, Julian was sent into exile. These emotional experiences would impact his view of the Christian religion for the remainder of his life. Julian did have conflict with the Christians but his main goal in the end was the revival of ancient paganism and the restoration of the Empire back to her glory. The purpose of this study is to trace the education and experiences that Julian had undergone and the effects they it had on his reign.
Julian was able to have both a Christian and pagan education that would have a lifelong influence on his reign. Julian's career was a short but significant one. Julian restored the cities of the empire and made beneficial reforms to the legal, educational, political and religious institutions throughout the Empire. The pagan historians praised him for his public services to the empire while the Christians have focused on his apostasy and "persecution" of their faith.
With his untimely death in Persia, Julian's successor Jovian, reversed most of his previous reforms and as such left Julian as the last pagan emperor of the Roman Empire. It is my view that these different death narratives were used as literary loci to discuss the growing power of the church and the relations between church and state.
Analysis of these narratives, written by Gregory Nazianzus, Libanius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and the ecclesiastical historians of the fifth century Socrates of Constantinople, Sozomen of Gaza, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus allows the historians a more nuanced view of the religious and political history of late antiquity, specifically concerning Christianization in the empire and relations between bishop and emperor, church and state.
