Perceiving that it would be necessary to combine all the forces directed against the Church, he showed favour to the heresies and the schools of philosophy which, after obtaining a certain notoriety under Plotinus and Porphyrius, had lapsed into the ridiculous fancies of evocations and of demonology. But, under the protection of the emperor, matters assumed a different aspect, as is pointed out by M. Jules Simon in his “Histoire de l’Ecole d’Alexandrie.” This school, “humiliated by the triumphs of Christianity, reduced to silence and obscurity, without any fixed purpose, devoid of credit and influence, all at once took up a fresh attitude at the accession of Julian, and attempted to employ the sovereign power, with which one of its followers was clothed, for extinguishing Christianity.” The struggle was a terrible one, and the Church seemed to have lost all human means of defence. Her children implored for help from on high, and the premature death of Julian was attributed to the divine intervention. Ecclesiastical writers relate that St. Basilius the Great, while praying God to protect his Church against the persecutor, was transported in a dream: he saw Christ in heaven and heard him say to St. Mercurius (the martyr of Cesarea, in Cappadocia), “Go and smite the enemy of those who believe in me.” The holy martyr at once sped on his mission, and, returning in a short space of time, said to his Divine Master, “Your orders are executed, Julian is no more.” St. Basilius had this vision on the night of the emperor’s death. Several writers assert that the emperor, knowing whence came the blow which was to prove fatal to him, collected in the palm of his hand the blood which issued from the wound, and scattering it towards the heavens, exclaimed, “Thou hast vanquished, Galilean.” These stories, popularised by the Byzantine art (Fig. 308), testify to the importance attached by the Christians to the struggle in which they were engaged with Julian. The fathers of the Church endeavoured to oppose to the schools of philosophy, which had done so much harm to religion, purely ecclesiastical schools, for the teaching of the faithful and in order to protect them from the seductions of heretical learning. The school of Edessa was the most flourishing of these Eastern schools during the third and fourth centuries. [Illustration: Fig. 308.--Dream of St. Basilius the Great.--The Martyr of Cesarea, St. Mercurius, sent from heaven by Christ, is in the act of stabbing the Emperor Julian the Apostate, whom he has thrown to the ground (see the text, p. 399).--After a Greek Painting of the Sixteenth Century, though the style is that of the Eleventh, in the Library of M. Firmin-Didot. The matters relating to this subject will be found collected in the “Mélanges d’Archéologie” of P. Cahier, vol. i., p. 39 _et seq._]