Letters of Julian/Letter 40

by Julian

40. To Hecebolius^[1]

[End of 362 or early in 363, Antioch]

I have behaved to all the Galilaeans with such kindness and benevolence that none of them has suffered violence anywhere or been dragged into a temple or threatened into anything else of the sort against his own will. But the followers of the Arian church, in the insolence bred by their wealth, have attacked the followers of Valentine^[2] and have committed in Edessa such rash acts as could never occur in a well-ordered city. Therefore, since by their most admirable law they are bidden to sell all they have and give to the poor that so they may attain more easily to the kingdom of the skies, in order to aid those persons in that effort, I have ordered that all their funds, namely, that belong to the church of the people of Edessa, are to be taken over that they may be given to the soldiers, and that its property^[3] be confiscated to my private purse.^[4] This is in order that poverty may teach them to behave properly and that they may not be deprived of that heavenly kingdom for which they still hope. And I publicly command you citizens of Edessa to abstain from all feuds and rivalries, else will you provoke even my benevolence against yourselves, and being sentenced to the sword and to exile and to fire pay the penalty for disturbing the good order of the commonwealth.

Footnotes

1. This can hardly be the sophist to whom Julian addressed one of his most flowery and sophistic letters, for which see Letter 63. Probably he was some leading official of Edessa, the capital of Osroene in Northern Mesopotamia. Constantius had favoured the Arians there and encouraged their fanatical sectarianism by handing over to them the great basilica of St. Thomas. Sozomen 6. 1, says that on his way to Persia Julian hurried past Edessa because the city remained obstinately Christian; later he relates, 6. 18, that the Emperor Valens visited Edessa and persecuted the non-Arian Christians; cf. Socrates 4. 18.
2. Valentine founded one of the sects of the Gnostics in the first century A.D.; by the fourth century the Valentinian heresy had very few adherents.
3. Probably Julian means the valuables such as Church plate belonging to the various churches in Edessa; for his spoliation of the churches cf. Gregory Nazianzen, Against Julian 3. 86 D, and Sozomen 5. 5.
4. πριβάτοις=privatis; or "to lay uses."