The Correspondence of Pope Julius I trans. by Glen L. Thompson (review)

Julius of Rome is a figure about whom we would wish to know more. Presiding over the Roman see in the crucial years that followed the death of Constantine the Great, Julius was the friend and supporter of Athanasius of Alexandria and Marcel-lus of Ancyra during their exile in the west and was the first Roman prelate to play a major role in the so-called “Arian” theological controversies. In this excellent contribution to the Library of Early Christianity series, Glen L. Thompson has performed an essential service in providing the first modern edition and translation of Julius’s correspondence with extensive prefaces and notation. The complex problems of textual transmission and false attribution are laid out clearly in the general introduction, with the manuscript descriptions and the numerous pseudonymous works falsely associated with Julius’s name conveniently catalogued in two extensive appendices. The six surviving letters are then presented in chronological order with facing text and translation: Julius’s letters to the Eastern bishops at Antioch (II) and to the Alexandrian church (V); as well as the letters to Julius from Marcellus of Ancyra (I), from Hosius of Cordova and Protogenes of Sardica (III), from the Western council of Sardica (IV), and from Valens of Mursa and Ursacius of Singidunum (VI).

These six letters offer a unique insight into the conflicts dividing the Christian Church in the late 330s and 340s and their impact on the see of Rome. Athanasius and Marcellus, exiled to the West following their condemnation by repeated Eastern councils, both appealed successfully to Julius for support. Julius’s reception of the exiles, and his insistence in his letter to the Eastern bishops in 341 upon his authority as the bishop of Rome to do so, led directly to the disputes that culminated in the abortive council of Sardica in 343, where the estranged Eastern and Western delegations were reduced to holding separate synods for mutual denunciation. Yet Julius’s claims to authority were accepted by the Western bishops gathered at Sardica, as we see acknowledged in the letters that Julius received from those bishops and in the canons issued by the Western council of Sardica, which were frequently cited in later papal arguments. Julius rejoiced in Athanasius’s eventual return to Alexandria in 346 and not long afterward received the short-lived repentance of Athanasius’s old enemies Valens and Ursacius.

There are, inevitably, questions raised by these letters that might have received more in-depth exploration than Thompson’s short commentaries permit. The theological issues under debate in this period demand more careful treatment, whereas the complex relationships between Julius, Athanasius, and Marcellus still divide scholarly opinion today just as they divided the contemporary Church. Julius’s characterization of the Eastern opponents of Athanasius and Marcellus as a small hostile faction (“the Eusebians,” named after Eusebius of Nicomedia-Constantinople) followed the polemic of his new allies and ignored the legitimate claim of that alleged “faction” to represent a considerable majority within the wider Eastern Church. Nor did the Eastern bishops recognize Julius’s self-proclaimed right to re-examine their conciliar verdicts, which remained a matter of contention for centuries to come. All these questions are touched upon in Thompson’s introductions and notes, however, and further arguments would have far exceeded the remit for his volume.

Thompson has earned the gratitude of scholars and students alike. He has produced a work that is both valuable in itself and will, it is hoped, draw new attention to Julius of Rome and his crucial and yet often neglected role in the history of the papacy and of the fourth-century Christian Roman Empire.