WI: Julian survived

[Mort the Reaper]

The Roman Emperor Julian, known to history as "the Apostate", was the last pagan emperor, and the last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty. He reigned for less than two years before dying from a spear wound at the 363 Battle of Samarra. The wound was probably dealt by a Lakhmid auxiliary in the Sasanian army, but some have claimed he was killed by a Christian soldier in his own army, or even by Saint Mercurius in response to a prayer by Basil of Caesarea.

What if this hadn't happened, and he instead had a reign of significant length?

 

[Ood Bnar]

The Roman Emperor Julian, known to history as "the Apostate", was the last pagan emperor, and the last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty. He reigned for less than two years before dying from a spear wound at the 363 Battle of Samarra. The wound was probably dealt by a Lakhmid auxiliary in the Sasanian army, but some have claimed he was killed by a Christian soldier in his own army, or even by Saint Mercurius in response to a prayer by Basil of Caesarea.

What if this hadn't happened, and he instead had a reign of significant length?

As Edward Gibbon said of him (and I'm probably butchering this quote, so forgive me)

"He would not have been able to extirpate the well-established Christian religion without involving the empire in the horrors of civil war."

I don't think the empire survives this if he did.

IMO

Best case scenario: the empire permanently balkanizes. Various sects (Arianism,etc) take various parts. Julian MIGHT be able to rule a united pagan Italy.

Worst case? Early arrival of what happened OTL in the 400s AD. Maybe even bad enough to tempt the Sassanians to take a serious shot at Anatolia.

 

[SlyDessertFox]

"He would not have been able to extirpate the well-established Christian religion without involving the empire in the horrors of civil war."

Julian's goal was not to forcibly crush Christianity, otherwise it would be quite perplexing why he was leaving some of the most important military positions (like, say, the commander of the Scholae, Jovian) to Christians. He never really went into outright persecution.

 

[Gloss]

In terms of mid 4th century conversion to Christianity an interesting example is the of Pegasius, supposedly a Christian bishop, that before Julian came into power was supposed to destroy pagan temples in Western Anatolia, not only he preserved them when Julian visited Troy but when Julian came to power he was ready to "switch", or at least formally became part of Julian's revival project.
Another example was of a bishop Synesius, a late 4th century bishop that was largely a neo-platonist and yet despite the fact he was not particularly inclined to accept Christian doctrine he became a bishop.

In terms of Christian demographics, Peter Heather argues that even Antioch in the 370s was not yet majority Christian, rather around 1/4 to 1/3 Christian. He also argues that Christianity in 300 CE was more like 2% of the Roman population rather than 5% or 10%, that might be too low but at the very least he says that 2/3 of Civitates had no organized Christian community by 325 CE.

So around 360 CE there is a lot of work to be done in terms of Christianization. Obviously the most direct way in the 4th century to deal with the rise of Christianity is removing Constantine but the second best is shortening the reign of Constantius II and make Julian's and any of his chosen successor's rule long enough to create a parallel pagan movement able to resist Christianization, especially in the West.

Julian will certainly support the decentralization of the Christian community, the fact that there will be some amounts of people "converting" back to paganism could also re-ignite the Donatist problem.
What Julian and the pagan community in the empire has going for it is that the Germanic and Celtic peoples in the north that are in the position to takeover if the empire falls would be largely polytheist and without having Christian emperors for decades or ever actually could mean that they would never convert themselves.

 

[SlyDessertFox]

Another example was of a bishop Synesius, a late 4th century bishop that was largely a neo-platonist and yet despite the fact he was not particularly inclined to accept Christian doctrine he became a bishop.

This is honestly a good example of the real benefits for Christianity Constantine's conversion had-suddenly, being Christian was a good way to get preference for advancement in imperial administration, or to at the very least, gain influence via the clergy. The biggest effect of a pagan emperor is the incentives for ambitious Romans is now reversed.

 

[Gloss]

This is honestly a good example of the real benefits for Christianity Constantine's conversion had-suddenly, being Christian was a good way to get preference for advancement in imperial administration, or to at the very least, gain influence via the clergy. The biggest effect of a pagan emperor is the incentives for ambitious Romans is now reversed.

Yep, clergy gained a lot of secular power pretty quickly.

 

[UnaiB]

We seems to forget that Julian failed because he died barely two years after he rose to the throne. That hardly had anything to do with Paganism being doomed from the start. I’m pretty sure Constantine himself would be considered a rather inconsequential emperor, had he ruled for the same of amount of time as his nephew had. Furthermore it has not even been proved that the empire, let alone the army, was completely or even majority Christian by the end of the IV century (after almost a century of Christian emperors, with a year or two of pagan leadership here and there). Even long after Christianity’s triumph, the Church was busy trying to eradicate pagan beliefs from superficially christianized communities around the empire, since Christianity and paganism were able to coexist for a long time among people who were not aware that the two of them were incompatible. And I’m willing to bet the army (at least the Christian portion of it) had an understanding of Christianity closer to that of the rural communities of the empire rather than the perception the clergy or even the lay elites of the empire had of it. So no the army would not be furious in my opinion.

@Flavius Iulius Nepos

 

[Flavius Iulius Nepos]

@Flavius Iulius Nepos

I remember a similar discussion taking place a year ago more or less. @Gloss and @SlyDessertFox pretty much already nailed it. Everyone seems to think that the big success of Christianity during the IV century can only be attributed to it being inherently a better religion than anything else humanity came up with. While conveniently ignoring a few points:
a) The IV century was almost totally dominated by Christian emperors;
b) Being of the correct faith could great aid one’s career. We have already seen some examples in this thread and it shouldn’t be hard to link the conversion of part of the elite of the empire with the conversion of the common people. After all those were the people who supposedly were more involved in the maintenance of pagan temple, who now were more interested in financing the building of new churches.
c) The increasing powers granted to the clergy like being exempted from taxes, military service or the burdens of the Curiales, not to mention shared power with the provincial governors.
d) How to many so called Christians, Christ himself was another god added to their own collection. But that was enough to count them as Christians and Christians only.
e) Age of crisis can prompt people to find new ways: after all iconoclasm was just a movement that tried to solve the issues of why the Christian world was losing ground against Islam, and the answer more or less was that the old ways were wrong. And if I remember it correctly during the age of Justinian himself we had a small boots to the Monophysite creed in the heart of the empire itself, Constantinople. Nothing to ensure that the capital would become majority Monophysite mind you, but the plague had challenged the faith of many and led some of them to reject the way of the past.
So to go back to the OP, nope I don’t think paganism was doomed, not with an emperor like Julian living longer and sponsoring it. I’m not sure his reform of the religion would work out well, but him living long enough would go a long way to ensure pagans would remain pagans instead of being forced (or enticed) to convert to Christianity.

 

[Miguel Lanius]

I still think Christianity will win out if there's no organized reaction from paganism. Christianity is a missionary religion. The only way to beat missionary religions is either with immense violence (has been tried, didn't work) or another missionary religion.

 

[Philip]

Paganism was not doomed, but keep in mind that Julian was not your typical pagan. He wanted to redefine and control the pagan system. It is not clear that his reforms would be accepted by the pagan establishment. If the reforms do go through, there could be theological disputes rivaling OTL's but pagan in flavor.

That being said, Julian strikes me as the type of guy who doesn't play well with others and will attract challengers and assassins.