Saint Babylas
The Saint who defied three Emperors
Join me today to meet a saint who encountered three emperors, and defied them all.
Name: Babylas
Life: died c. 250 AD
Status: Saint
Feast: January 24
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In 362 AD, the Emperor Julian, or Julian the Apostate as we remember him, was in the city of Antioch, modern Antakya in the South of Turkey. Julian was there to fight the Persians - as so many emperors had done before him. He was also persecuting the Christians of the Roman Empire. The pagans of Antioch, like Julian’s friend the orator and sophist Libanius, were delighted. The Christians who had imagined that persecutions were a thing of the past, were crushed. And in Antioch, it turned out that Julian’s targets extended beyond living Christians, to include some of the saints as well.
The relics of Saint Babylas were in a church in a suburb West of Antioch, an area filled with old pagan temples. The Emperor Julian’s half-brother, a Christian, had heard the story of Babylas and decided to move the saint’s relics out of Antioch into the suburb. It seemed appropriate, as the place had long been used for building temples. Right across from the church was a temple of Apollo that was renowned for its prophecies, and an underground shrine to the witch goddess Hecate.
But now Julian’s half brother was dead and Julian was in charge. During his stay in Antioch, the emperor visited the temple of Apollo and climbed into the upper shrine where the idol of the god stood, hoping to receive a prophecy. But the temple had fallen silent of late. Eventually, the priests of Apollo whispered a message from the god to the Emperor Julian. Apollo was silent because of the dead man. It did not take Julian long to guess who the problematic dead man was. It was Saint Babylas.
When Julian looked into the story of Saint Babylas, he learned that the dead man had something of a reputation for defying emperors. Well, things would go differently this time. Julian forced the Christians to come and get the body and relics of Babylas, and carry them back into the city of Antioch. The emperor watched sourly, noting the size of the procession that emerged from the city for the purpose. Still, he let them get on with the job. That night, he regretted his lenience, and in the morning he rounded up the Christians whose presence had been especially noteworthy, for punishment.
Soon, the oracle of Apollo was back in business, and that seemed to be that.
The story that the emperor Julian learned had really begun a century before in the gardens of Persia. Agriculture is never easy, not even in the Roman Middle East where Babylas probably grew up. But agriculture had always been especially difficult in the dry, desert lands ruled by the Persian king of kings. That was why the Persians experimented with gardening, and under the dynasty of the House of Sasan, when Babylas was a young man, those experiments began to pay off. Persian gardeners developed new methods of irrigation, and the land bloomed. The Persians had more food, which meant the Persians had more wealth, which meant the Persians could pay more taxes, which meant the Persian King of Kings could raise a bigger army, which threw off the balance of power that had long existed on the Eastern Roman frontier.
Still, Antioch was thriving. The political structure of the Roman Empire might be crumbling away, but here in the third largest city of the Empire, the base for Roman control of the Middle East, things were not too bad. Antioch was filled with temples and Roman baths. Philosophers and sophists walked the streets of the city. And in Antioch, as across the empire, the Church was growing, unofficially tolerated by the authorities.
Babylas was likely settling into his life as a priest when the the Emperor Severus Alexander arrived in Antioch in 231. The provocations of the Sassanid Persians could no longer be tolerated, and the emperor was going to put these upstarts in their place. The Roman propaganda machine blasted out slogans, some of which survive on the coins from this period, invoking the gods and goddesses of battle. Victoria, the goddess of victory had her own coins, as did the god of the sky: “Jupiter who fights for us!”, and the god of war: “Mars the avenger!”.
Unfortunately, by this time, Rome was better at war propaganda than at war itself. The citizens of Antioch noted with some concern that the men in the army of Severus Alexander were raw recruits. The emperor marched them into Persia. He found it hard to come to grips with the Persians. Severus Alexander’s legionary recruits would attack the Persian horse archers, who pretended to scatter, only to reassemble in a predetermined location and attack the legionaries again. In the end, Severus Alexander accomplished very little before going home. Even so, Rome’s propagandists ensured that Severus Alexander followed the Roman tradition of victors taking the name of the defeated territory as a personal cognomen. And so the emperor adopted the cognomen Persicus, and just for good measure, tacked on the Latin word for “the greatest”, to make it Severus Alexander Persicus Maximus.
Eight years passed. They were bad years for Rome. Rome was deep in the period we remember as the Crisis of the Third Century, when the empire seemed likely to shake itself to pieces. Severus Alexander Persicus Maximus had been assassinated, and then the man who replaced him had been murdered as well. In 238 AD, Rome juddered through the terrible year of the six emperors, when claimants to the purple rose and fell in rapid succession. After that, the last man, or rather the last boy left standing was the 13 year old Gordian III. The young emperor was led by his advisors, who pointed him East, toward the as-yet-unresolved problem of Persia.
Meanwhile, the bishop of Antioch, Zebinus, had died. The man chosen to replace him was Babylas. And so Bishop Babylas settled into his new role as bishop, guiding the Church in Antioch with diplomacy and care. Bishop Babylas was leading the Christians of the city when the boy emperor Gordian III brought his army East. Again, the Roman propaganda machine sprang into action, although this time it seemed slightly less optimistic about total Persian defeat, with coins that read “The Peace of Mars”, “The Loyalty of Soldiers”, and of course, “Victory!”.
At first, the Romans did well. Gordian III was guided by his father in law, Timesitheus, the powerful lord who served as head of the Praetorian guard. The Romans drove the Persians back in a victory at Rhesaina, modern Ceylanpınar in Southeast Turkey. But then Timesitheus died, and a Syrian named Philip took his place as Praetorian Prefect. The trouble was that Philip was ambitious, and considered that the only thing better than coming back as the second most powerful man in Rome would be to come back as the most powerful man in Rome. He seems to have contrived to put young Gordian III out on the front lines where he would be killed. Philip had probably not anticipated that the death of the emperor would lead to to military defeat, and now the Roman army was stuck in Persia. The new Emperor Philip, Philip the Arab has we remember him today, paid King Shapur I half a million gold pieces, with the promise of annual tribute to come, and the Persians let the Romans go home.
It was not exactly a victory, but Rome’s propagandists worked with what they had, minting coins that depicted Pax, the goddess of peace, and reading “Peace Achieved with Persia!” They went ahead and awarded Philip the title of Persicus Maximus too.
As good as it was to have some sort of peace, the new emperor Philip may not have thanked the goddess Pax for it. There were persistent rumours that he was a Christian, or at least that he was interested in Christianity. One reason for thinking this is that, as he and his army returned from Persia, the new Emperor Philip expressed interest in coming to Bishop Babylas’ church in Antioch, intending to come in and perhaps receive the Eucharist with the other believers. And this presented Bishop Babylas with a dilemma.
Should Bishop Babylas welcome the new emperor? Babylas’ political instincts said yes. The Emperors of Rome had not acknowledged Christianity before. This was the first time an emperor had reached out to the Church, and it seemed utter madness to greet that gesture with anything but welcome. But, then again, Babylas was a shepherd of souls, not a politician. It was generally acknowledged that Philip had murdered Gordian III, and perhaps Gordian’s young heir too. He had not shown any remorse. Could Babylas pretend not to know?
By the time Philip arrived at the Church, Babylas had made his decision. He met the emperor at the door and told him he was not welcome, at least not as long as he was in a state that scandalized the Church. Philip was welcome, Babylas explained, to enter the Church as a sinner, seeking forgiveness, but he couldn’t just walk in as though nothing had happened. Philip’s men were shocked, though according to one tradition, Philip nodded, and entered the church not as the emperor of Rome, but as a repentant sinner.
After this encounter, we lose track of Babylas for a few years. We can follow the story of the Emperor Philip, who travelled to Rome to secure the backing of the Roman Senate. In all the Senate, no one was more supportive than Senator Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius. Philip was so delighted that he entrusted Senator Decius with an army. Decius proved to be a talented general. Too talented. His troops proclaimed him Emperor, and Decius accepted their proclamation, heading back South at the head of what was now a rebel army.
Philip marched out to meet the man who had betrayed him, and Philip lost. Now Decius was emperor. Unlike the Emperor Philip, Decius would not prove a friend to the Christians. He initiated the Decian persecutions, compelling all Romans of every religion except Judaism to sacrifice to the Emperor or be put to death. Many Christians died, some apostatized, and saints like Saint Cyprian and Saint Dionysius the Great and Saint Gregory the Wonderworker tried to steer the Church through the storm.
Near the beginning of these persecutions, it seems, Decius or one of his close associates, Numerius, found himself in Antioch. Our records make the strange claim that Decius or perhaps Numerius tried to attend the church in Antioch. But why? Why would Decius, who clearly loathed Christians, try to enter a Church? Why would the Christians of Antioch even tell Decius where they were worshipping? It’s a strange story, and some readers think that Babylas’ second meeting with an emperor is merely a garbled version of the encounter with the Emperor Philip. Maybe. A more interesting possibility, I think, is that history was quite intentionally repeating itself, that Decius or his representative had heard about the mouthy Christian Bishop Babylas and decided to see what he would say to a pagan. Babylas had risked a great deal for his principles. Was he willing to die for them?
And so, in the story, Babylas meets the second emperor at the door of the Church, and turns him away. This emperor has no intention of repenting. He has Babylas taken into custody, chained, and thrown into a prison.
As usually happened during the Decian persecutions, Babylas was offered the chance to sacrifice to the gods. He refused. He was taken from prison, along with three young Christian men who had likewise refused to sacrifice. On the way to his execution, Babylas told those secret Christians who had dared to come and watch to keep his chains: he was honoured to have worn them for Christ. The old bishop was visibly moved at the sacrifice of his young companions. In the end, his last words were not of fear, or anger, but of deep gratitude:
“Turn homeward now, my soul, for the Lord has done great things for you.” (My translation)
And so Bishop Babylas died.
Saint Babylas’ body and the chains he had worn were kept as relics, and those who prayed for his intercession found help and healing. Saint Babylas was soon acknowledged as a saint by the Church in Antioch, first in secret, and then openly. The world was changing. The Emperor Decius fell in battle with the migrating warbands of the Goths. The Church grew back stronger after the Decian persecutions. Soon Christianity was officially tolerated, and then made the official religion of the empire. And so it was that in the reign of the Emperor Constantius, the emperor’s cousin, Gallus was sent to Antioch on a military mission where he heard the story of Saint Babylas, who had died seventy years before. Gallus built the Church of Saint Babylas in among the pagan temples near the city.
In time, the Emperor Constantius would turn on his cousin Gallus and execute him. He might have done the same thing to Gallus’ half-brother, Julian, if he had lived long enough. But as it happened, Constantius died and Julian became Emperor in his place. And then Julian shocked the Christians of the empire by revealing that he was a secret pagan. Now he would initiate yet another persecution of the Christians in the empire, and for much of the time that he did so, he happened to be in Antioch.
And so it was that the Emperor Julian found himself at the temple of Apollo, after removing the relics of Saint Babylas. The god was no longer silent, although Julian was not quite sure what to make of what he later swore had been Apollo’s prediction, that the god would not be in this place for long. Afterwards, Julian returned to his lodgings in Antioch.
The lighting came out of a clear sky and hit the temple of Apollo on the roof, directly over the room that housed the idol of the god. The temple burned from the inside out. The initial lightning strike had been noticed by passersby precisely because it came out of a clear sky directly down on the temple, a detail which pagans and Christians alike would later confirm to the emperor’s torturers. As the temple burned, the locals sent word to the Emperor Julian, who hurried to the scene. The horrified emperor got there just in time to watch the idol of Apollo topple out of the burning rafters and smash apart on the stone floor below.
The world of the pagans was passing away. The seeds of the new world were already in the ground. The orator Libanius, Emperor Julian’s friend in Antioch, didn’t know it yet, but he was training the man who would preserve this story, and who would become one of the greatest saints of his age, Saint John Chrysostom. Julian himself was headed into the desert and toward the mysterious, symbolic defeat that awaited him there. And with that, the Roman persecutions of the Church would finally be at an end.
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So interesting why and how the tradition allowed manliness with its attendant courage and humble service and how so much of that seems hidden now. Of course it's still living and breathing, strong as it ever was. Your faithfulness in continuing to reveal those strengths is beautiful to see. When and if the time is right I'd be interested in your reflections on how you see reconnection and recovery.