The first part of the paper enquires into the possible survival of Julian’s work cited as Contra Galilaeos in a list in ms. London, BL, Egerton 602, which records Greek texts not published but still extant at the time of its composition. An examination of that list shows that its antigraph was written by Alfonso Cortona, secretary of Juan Vergara (1492-1557), who drew his information from printed books and used Reuchlin as his source for Julian (probably Reuchlin’s De arte cabalistica). Consequently this list provides no evidence that Julian’s anti-Christian work survived in an independent manuscript tradition until this period, and Reuchlin must be given the credit for entitling it Contra Galilaeos. The second part discusses a forgotten citation of Julian, stemming from Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola, which had a large circulation between the 16th and 19th centuries: Julian identified the star of the Magi with a star appearing every four hundred years named Asaph by the Egyptians, information that prompted an English writer in 1835 to define the star as “Julian’s comet” and to herald Julian as a predecessor of Halley. The citation, also discussed in connection with a Syriac fragment of the Contra Iulianum of Cyril, remains mysterious, because no sign has been found of the source, if any, from which Pico derived it.
