Saint Babylas of Antioch

Emperor Philip was L'empereur Philippe Roman emperor who maintained a correspondence with Origen. born in the Arab province of Trachonitis, in the small village of Pulpuden, not far from the city of Bosra. Raised for his services to the most important ranks of the military hierarchy, he was appointed by Gordian the Pious as Praetorian Prefect, replacing Timesitheus, the emperor's father-in-law, who was said to have been poisoned by Philip. The latter was imposed as Caesar upon Gordian, who associated him with the empire. Philip's partisans wanted more; war broke out, Gordian the Pious was killed in the fighting, and Philip reigned alone (244). Having concluded an inglorious peace with Shapur I, King of Persia, the new Augustus set off for Rome.

The testimony of ecclesiastical antiquity affirms that Philip was a Christian, as was Empress Severa, his wife. If he practiced the worship of the true religion, this concerns his private conscience; but as emperor and officially, he did nothing for the triumph of the truth. Before returning to Rome with his army, Philip put to death a child of Gordian the Pious, whom the latter had entrusted to him as a pledge of union and peace when associating his Praetorian Prefect with the empire. It was a notorious attack, a proven crime. When the emperor arrived in Antioch, "it was," says Eusebius, "the eve of the great solemnity of Easter. Bishop Babylas was celebrating, with all the faithful, the famous night of the Resurrection, when Philip presented himself to the assembly and asked to be admitted to the prayers, because he was a Christian. But the pontiff, with truly episcopal courage, did not permit him entry to the holy place. He demanded that he first make confession of his crimes, and he placed him among the other penitents who were awaiting absolution on this Easter feast. Without this reparation, the holy bishop would have inflexibly banished him from the assembly. It is said that the emperor humbly submitted to this reparation." What this piously accepted humiliation contained in the way of salutary expiations for the culprit is the secret of God.

During the short reign of Philip (244-249), the number of Christians multiplied; entire cities converted; on all sides rose temples where Jesus Christ was publicly worshipped. But we also see in the works of Saint Cyprian and in the life of Saint Gregory the Wonderworker that this peace was, for a great number of the faithful, an occasion for laxity. God permitted a general persecution, which was the seventh, to purify His Saints and reawaken the fervor of lukewarm souls. It was ignited in 250 by the Emperor Decius, who overthrew the two Ph ilips, father a l'empereur Dèce Roman emperor responsible for the persecution of Christians in 250. nd son, from the throne just as they had ascended it: by revolt. The pastors of the Churches were attacked first; Saint Babylas, who was one of the most esteemed among them, both by the dignity of his see and by the merit of his person, was arrested towards the end of the year 250 and thrown into a prison, where he died from the mistreatment he was made to endure. Before his death, he asked to be buried with the chains that he regarded as the instrument of his triumph. The Christians built a church over his tomb.

Caesar Gallus, brother of Julian the Apostate, made his usual residence in Antioch: this very religious prince, who had a particular veneration for the holy Martyrs, with the intention of purifying a place famous for the superstitions of paganism, Daphne, w hich w Daphné Suburb of Antioch housing a temple of Apollo. as regarded as a suburb of Antioch, although it was two leagues distant, consecrated opposite the temple of Apollo a church to the true God, under the invocation of Saint Babylas, and placed there the relics of the Saint enclosed in a shrine which was raised above the ground. Immediately the demon remained mute in his temple. The pagans attributed the silence of their god to the fact that, since the presence of Gallus in this country, the sacrifices and ceremonies of their cult had ceased.

Julian the Apost Julien l'Apostat Roman emperor and persecutor of Christians. ate, having come to Antioch in 362, restored the cult of Apollo with great pomp. He slaughtered hundreds of victims, imploring the god to continue his oracles, or at least to state the cause of his silence. The demon took great care not to admit the virtue of the relics of Saint Babylas: he said only that the town of Daphne was filled with corpses, and that he would speak if they were removed. Julian understood the hint, as noted by Saint John Chrysostom, who was present (only eight years old at the time). Instead of having all the dead buried in the suburb exhumed, he ordered the Christians to remove the reliquary containing the body of Saint Babylas. This was done with great ceremony. The reliquary of the holy Martyr was placed on a chariot and led as if in triumph to Antioch. During the procession, they sang psalms that depict the inanity and impotence of idols, and the crowd of the faithful repeated as a refrain after each verse: "Let all those who worship carved images and glory in their idols be put to shame!". Three months later, lightning from heaven fell upon this famous temple of Apollo and set it on fire, precisely at the time when Julian had sent to consult the oracle regarding the outcome of the Persian war for which he was preparing. An earthquake having followed the thunder finished ruining this beautiful edifice: the ornaments and the idol disappeared; only the walls remained to serve as a monument to divine vengeance.

At this news, Julian, uncle of the emperor and governor of the East, rushed to Daphne and subjected the priests to cruel tortures to discover if the fire came from their negligence or from the Christians. They consistently said that one should only blame the fire from heaven; and peasants from the surrounding area came to attest that they had seen the lightning fall.

The Apostate was furious against the inhabitants of Antioch; he had the city's great church closed and had some individuals put to the question. But the sudden death of his uncle Julian and of Felix, the treasurer-general of finances, his ministers in profanation as well as in administration, frightened him: he did not dare to burn the bones of Saint Babylas, as he had resolved to do.

The Greeks honor Saint Babylas on September 4. It is said that his body is now in Crem ona, wh Crémone City of monastic formation and first place of exile. ere it was brought from the East during the Crusades; this saint is the patron of several churches in France, Spain, and Italy.

He is represented beheaded with three young children, his disciples: the youngest was twelve years old.

[APPENDIX: NOTE ON JULIAN THE APOSTATE.]

Julian the Apostate was so nicknamed because he abjured the Christian religion to embrace paganism. His real name was Flavius Claudius Julianus. Son of Julius Constantius and nephew of Constantine the Great, he was born in Constantinople on November 6, 331. He had the good fortune to escape, with his brother Gallus, the massacre that destroyed his entire family after the death of Constantine. The care of his education was entrusted to the famous Eusebius of Nicomedia. Mardonius, his tutor, also worked to form his mind and heart. His scientific progress was very rapid; he entered the clergy and exercised the function of reader in the Church. He made a trip to Athens, where he applied himself to astrology, magic, and all the vain illusions of paganism; he became especially attached to the philosopher Maximus, who was the principal cause of his ruin. He was made Caesar in 355, and placed in command of the troops in Gaul. The numerous victories he won over the enemies of the empire proved his great capacity for the profession of war. After the death of Constantius, which occurred on November 3, 361, he went to the East, where he was recognized as emperor, just as he had already been in the West. As he had always had a violent inclination toward idolatry, he no longer concealed it: he ordered the temples of the idols to be reopened, he worshipped them publicly, and by a trait of fanaticism that causes horror, he undertook to erase the character of baptism from himself by receiving on all parts of his body the impure blood of victims.

The entire life of the Apostate was nothing but an intimate, effective, real commerce with what he called his gods, that is to say with what modern spiritism calls spirits, and what the Holy Scriptures call demons. He gave in to all the extravagances and cruelties of the haruspices, even to the point of sacrificing human victims several times to interrogate their entrails. All these facts are reported by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and by Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan historian and great admirer of the prince. The magician Maximus and other men just as despicable were his principal confidants.

However, the miracles of Jesus Christ greatly bothered him, and it was not easy to take away from the Christians the proof they drew from them in favor of their religion. Instead of attacking their truth, therefore, he tried, by means of magic, to procure similar ones for paganism: all his efforts turned to his confusion.

With the design of annihilating the religion of Jesus Christ, he chose a path different from that of the ancient persecutors. He did not wish to personally shed blood, although his provincial governors did not always have scruples in this regard; as for him, he contented himself with declaring Christians ineligible to hold state offices, and he forbade them to teach and study the liberal arts, the knowledge of which provided them with weapons against paganism. The pagans themselves, among others Ammianus Marcellinus, disapproved of this measure, the impatience of which is easily noticed. Julian did not stop there; he ordered by an edict that the disciples of Jesus Christ would no longer bear the name of Christians, but that of Galileans. He burdened them with taxes and stripped them of their property, saying in derision that he had to make them practice the poverty recommended by the Gospel. At other times he had recourse to traps and caresses. Although he professed tolerance, he did not fail to condemn several Christians to death, but secretly, and under other pretexts than that of religion. His goal in this was to rob them of the glory of martyrdom. This artifice could have served his project if it had been a question of those proud philosophers who seek only to satisfy their self-love, but the disciples of Jesus Christ have no need of witnesses; they cherish above all the sufferings whose sight and motives are hidden from men. This remark is by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. It must be admitted, however, that the conduct of Julian was very prejudicial to a great number of Christians, who allowed themselves to be seduced by the fear of incurring the emperor's disgrace, of being excluded from offices, and of losing their fortune.

Finally, he imagined that he would deal a harsh blow to Christianity if he could prove the prediction of Jesus Christ regarding the Temple of Jerusalem to be false. He therefore undertook to have it rebuilt about three hundred years after its demolition by Titus: but no sooner had the workmen dug the foundations than whirlwinds of flame issued from them, by which they were consumed. This fact is attested by all the authors of the time, and even by Ammianus Marcellinus, who was a pagan, and who is known to have been entirely devoted to Julian. One may see the excellent dissertation by Warburton on the project formed by the Emperor Julian to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. A good French translation of it was published in Paris in 1754.

Julian, being in Antioch, did not find there all the zeal he would have desired for the restoration of paganism; they even made jests about his short stature, his beard, and his sacrifices. He resolved to take revenge after his return from the Persian war. He flattered himself that he would succeed in this enterprise on the faith of the oracles of Delos, Delphi, Dodona, etc., etc., as we learn from Theodoret, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Philostorgius, and Libanius. This prince himself says, in his second letter, that the divinities of all the places through which he passed had promised him a happy success; but he soon had occasion to know the little power of these gods. Indeed, his army, which he had had the imprudence to lead into the deserts, was cut to pieces in the month of June of the year 363; he himself lost his life on the battlefield. Ammianus Marcellinus says that having been dangerously wounded, he was carried to his tent, where he died the same day before noon (June 26, 363). We read in Theodoret, in Sozomen, and in the Acts of the holy martyr Theodoret, that Julian, feeling himself mortally wounded, filled his hands with his blood and threw it toward heaven, vomiting this blasphemy: Thou hast conquered, Galilean, thou hast conquered. Several holy solitaries learned by revelation that God had delivered the world from this apostate, in order to restore peace to His Church. Such was the end of the wretched Julian. His character was a monstrous compound of artifice, levity, inconstancy, pettiness, fanaticism, hypocrisy, and a few good qualities. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, having seen him in Athens in 355, was extremely struck by his unsteady gait, the restlessness and wandering of his eyes, his irrelevant questions, and his inaccurate answers. He predicted from that moment that the empire was nursing a monster in its bosom.

There remain to us some writings of Julian: 1st, the Misop ogon or th Missopogon A satire written by Julian the Apostate against the inhabitants of Antioch. e Beard-Hater; it is a satire against the inhabitants of Antioch who had mocked him; 2nd, discourses and letters; 3rd, the satire of the Caesars. Julian composed this work to criticize his predecessors in the empire and to make himself regarded as the only great prince; 4th, several other pieces published in Greek and Latin by Father Petau, in 1630, in-4°. Ezechiel Spanheim gave a fine edition of the works of Julian, in 1696, in-fol. The Abbé de la Bletterie translated a part of them: he also provided an excellent life of the Emperor Julian.

Consult on Julian the Apostate M. de Broglie: The Church and the Roman Empire in the 4th Century; and M. Darras: General History of the Church.