Julien, l’immunitas Christi, les dieux et les cités

The future emperor Julian, educated as a Christian and soon a hidden pagan, associated during a period of time to the supreme power by Constantius II, had the opportunity to reflect about how the Church had become so successful. More specifically, the struggle between the mainstream Christians and the followers of Arius with its political and financial implications would not get lost to him, as he had to design a grand strategy of reconquest favouring the traditional gods. Julian tried to play the army and the intermediary curial classes against a ruling plutocracy he essentially viewed as financially and ethically corrupt. For that purpose, he logically emulated the various exemptions granted to the Church and to its clergy, favouring not only the ancient religio, but also the structure that had supported it for centuries: the classic and civic polis. Behind the supposed confiscation and restoration of the municipal properties that had been considered as granted by the classical historiography, lays hidden the cornerstone of Julian’s financial policy: the likely exemption of municipal and temples’ land from Imperial taxation. In doing so, he did not have to look much further than to his own predecessor and cousin who had tried to extricate himself from a religious conflict by playing with fiscal privileges. They both used taxation as a tool to promote their favoured ideology, a rather modern even if finally unsuccessful fiscal policy.