Julian’s Anger, and Theodore the Confessor

Then indeed the emperor’s real temper and character, which until now he had kept hidden as far as he could, came fully into view. For the man who had boasted so much of his philosophy could no longer control himself. Driven almost to madness by these reproachful hymns, he was ready to inflict on the Christians the same cruelties Diocletian’s agents had once dealt them. But since his concern for the Persian expedition left him no time to carry out his wishes in person, he ordered Sallust, the praetorian prefect, to arrest those who had been most prominent in their zeal for singing psalms, so as to make examples of them. [a]

The prefect, though a pagan, was far from pleased with this assignment. But since he did not dare go against it, he had several of the Christians arrested, and some of them put in prison. One young man named Theodore, whom the pagans brought before him, he put through a variety of tortures. He had his body so badly torn that he released him from further punishment only when he thought he could not possibly survive the torments. Yet God preserved this sufferer, so that he lived on for a long time after that confession. Rufinus, who wrote the Church History in Latin, says that he himself talked with this same Theodore a good while afterwards. He asked him whether, while he was being scourged and racked, he had not felt the most intense pain. Theodore answered that he felt the pain of the tortures he underwent only for a very short time, and that a young man stood beside him who wiped away the sweat brought on by the severity of his ordeal and at the same time strengthened his mind, so that he made that time of trial a season of rapture rather than of suffering. Let this be enough about the most wonderful Theodore.

About this time Persian ambassadors came to the emperor, asking him to end the war on certain stated terms. But Julian dismissed them abruptly, saying, “You will very soon see me in person, so there will be no need for an embassy.”