Elizabeth Finch: A novel

by Julian Barnes

All religions (well, almost all) hate the apostate much more than the ignorant misguided, idol-worshipping peasant who can usually, with a little stern persuasion, be hauled blinking to the light. Gibbon writes that the Jews at this time killed those who apostasised. Perhaps it’s true of all large unitary organisations: Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City for abandoning the one true political faith. But as well as hating apostates, such systems also need them: as negative exemplars, as warnings. Abandon the religion, preach against it, attack it, and see what you get: a spear in the liver, an ice pick in the skull. Had Julian been some dim and rollicking emperor, lustful and corrupt, cruel and duplicitous, he would have been easier to dismiss. But as one commentator put it, Julian was “at heart ... a Christian mystic gone wrong.”