Julian of Dalmatia
The Holy Martyr Julian of Dalmatia, who suffered in Campania
Martyr · d. between 138 and 161, in Campania
Commemorated 28 July — Beheading on the site of the ruined temple of Serapis
Julian was a young Christian of Dalmatia who came into the Italian province of Campania during the persecution conducted there by the governor Flavian under Antoninus Pius (138–161). Challenged by soldiers, he declared himself a Christian without being asked twice; was shut for seven days in a pit called the Cold Prison without food; and was scourged bound to a tree. His words to the crowd who had gathered to watch — a plain warning not to trust gods made with their own hands — are said to have converted more than thirty of them; and in the night the temple of Serapis and its images fell in ruins, which the pagans laid to his sorcery. He was beheaded on the site of the fallen temple, and is kept on July 28.
From Dalmatia into Campania
Dalmatia — the Adriatic province whose churches looked to Salona and, in the language of the New Testament, the region to which Titus went (2 Timothy 4:10) — had received the Gospel early. Julian, a young man of that country, travelled into Campania, the rich province south of Rome. The account gives no reason for the journey, and does not describe him as a missionary; he seems to have been simply a traveller who arrived in a place where Christians were being hunted.
The governor is named Flavian, and the persecution is placed under Antoninus Pius (138–161) — one of the emperors under whom no general edict is known, but under whom local persecutions on the initiative of governors and mobs are amply attested, and to which the apologies of Justin and the martyrdom of Polycarp belong. When the soldiers met him and put the question, Julian answered at once that he was a Christian, knowing what the answer would cost.
The Cold Prison
He was thrown into a pit which the account calls the Cold Prison (carcer frigidus), and left there seven days without food or drink. Brought out and interrogated, he was mocked by the governor for the poverty of a faith that had not saved him; he answered steadily. Ordered to worship the idols, he refused, and was bound to a tree and beaten. Through the beating, the passion says, he heard a voice: "Fear not, Julian; I am with thee, and I will give thee strength and courage."
The thirty, and the fall of the Serapeum
Afterwards, still bound, he turned and spoke to the crowd — the one speech the passion preserves: "Hear me, you wretched people: do not put your trust in your gods, which you have made with your own hands." More than thirty of those standing by are said to have believed and confessed Christ on the spot.
That night the temple of Serapis in the city, with the idols in it, was thrown down; the Christians read the collapse as the answer to Julian's word, and the pagans as the work of his magic. Since sorcery was a capital charge in Roman law, and one much easier to press than religious dissent, the accusation settled his case.
Martyrdom
He was led out to the ruins of the temple and beheaded there — executed, that is, on the ground of his supposed crime, in the Roman manner. Before the sword fell he gave thanks aloud, and (the passion adds) heard a voice from heaven calling him up. The date kept for him is July 28.
Feast and commemoration
July 28 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 10), a notice of the day rather than its office, which belongs to the four deacons of Acts 6. The day falls in the open season between the Apostles' Fast and the Dormition Fast, so that only the ordinary Wednesday and Friday rule applies. Greek, Slavonic and OCA usage; no proper hymns are appointed and the common of a martyr is sung.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Julian, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Julian is shown as a young lay martyr: beardless or with the first down of a beard, in a belted tunic and a mantle fastened at the shoulder, holding the cross in his right hand, the left palm open in confession. The scenes that a vita icon would give him are those of his passion — the pit, the tree to which he is bound under the scourges, and, most distinctively, the fallen temple of Serapis with its broken idols on the ground and the martyr kneeling for the sword among the rubble. No pre-1900 image identified as this Julian has been located for this collection; the name is shared by so many martyrs that no image should be adopted without a legible inscription. The Menologion of Basil II, the standard resort for minor martyrs, covers only September to February and cannot serve a July commemoration.
Disputed questions
- The city is not named. The passion says only "the Italian province of Campania" and "the city," and no Campanian church has left a claim to his tomb. Julian is one of a considerable group of Latin martyrs whose acts reached the Byzantine synaxarion in Greek translation, lost their local anchorage on the way, and survive now chiefly in the Eastern calendars — the Slavonic and OCA books carry him; the Western martyrologies of July 28 do not obviously preserve the same man.
- The dating. Antoninus Pius is the only chronological marker, and it is the marker most often supplied by later editors of passions that had none. It is retained here because there is nothing to set against it, and the entry indexes under the second century on that basis.
- Not to be confused with the very numerous other martyrs named Julian — Julian of Tarsus (June 21), Julian of Emesa (February 6), Julian, Basilissa and companions of Antinoë (January 8), Julian of Anazarbus, and the Julian who is one of the three governors in the passion of Christina of Tyre — and least of all with the emperor Julian the Apostate, whose name recurs on the other side of nearly every fourth-century passion.