The Reign of Jovian and His Laws

After Julian’s death the troops unanimously offered the government of the empire to Jovian. When the army was about to proclaim him emperor, he declared that he was a Christian, refused to rule, and would not accept the emblems of imperial power. But when the soldiers found out why he was refusing, they shouted aloud that they themselves were Christians. [a]

The dangerous and unsettled state in which Julian’s generalship had left affairs, and the army’s suffering from famine in enemy country, forced Jovian to make peace with the Persians and to hand over to them some territories that had formerly paid tribute to the Romans. He had learned from experience that the ungodliness of the emperor before him had stirred up the wrath of God and brought on public disasters. So he wrote without delay to the governors of the provinces, directing that the people should gather in the churches without fear, that they should serve God with reverence, and that they should accept the Christian faith as the only true religion. To the churches and the clergy, to the widows and the virgins, he gave back the same exemptions and all the former grants made for the benefit and honor of religion, which Constantine and his sons had granted and Julian had afterward taken away. He ordered Secundus, then praetorian prefect, to make it a capital crime to marry any of the holy virgins, or even to look at them with unchaste desire and carry them off. [b] He made this law because of the wickedness that had gone on during Julian’s reign. Many had taken wives from among the holy virgins and had utterly corrupted them, either by force or by deceit; and from this came that unpunished indulgence of shameful lusts which always follows when religion is abused.