Yes during the years of Julian I (361-364). Julian was a pagan, also instructed in Arianism. From p 68 of the book Triumph by HW Crocker III, “Julian enjoined popular pagan resentment to end Christianity’s status as the official imperial religion and renewed, though in a comparatively mild way, anti-Christian persecutions.”
If I could add, Julian I, also called the Apostate, had been influenced by the Pagan Mystery religions since his youth and bred contempt to what he called “the fabrication of the Galileans … composed by wickedness.” He also called the Resurrection “a monstrous tale.”
It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind
the reasons by which I was convinced that
the fabrication of the Galilaeans
is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.
Though it has in it nothing divine,
by making full use of that part of the soul
which loves fable and is childish and foolish,
it has induced men to believe
that the monstrous tale is truth.
He also wrote tracts condemning the Christians, especally the 3-volume work ‘Against the Galileans’ where he ‘refutes’ Christian beliefs by using the Bible itself against them.(
tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm)
Here’s one example of his abhorrence of the practice of preserving the Relics of the Saints:
“However this evil doctrine (The Divinity of Jesus) did originate with John; but who could detest as they deserve all those doctrines that you have invented as a sequel, while you keep adding many corpses newly dead to the corpse of long ago?
You have filled the whole world with tombs and sepulchres, and yet in your Scriptures it is nowhere said that you must grovel among tombs and pay them honor.”
Some other quotes,
But you are so misguided that you have not even remained faithful to the teachings that were handed down to you by the apostles. And these also have been altered., so as to be worse and more impious, by those who came after. At any rate neither Paul nor Matthew nor Luke nor Mark ventured to call Jesus God. But the worthy John, since he perceived that a great number of people in many of the towns of Greece and Italy had already been infected by this disease, and because he heard, I suppose, that even the tombs of Peter and Paul were being worshipped ----secretly, it is true, but still he did hear this,----he, I say, was the first to venture to call Jesus God.
Plus there was this story about the Emperor which happened in Antioch.
There was a church there built near a pagan temple, and a rivalry ensued then between the Christians and Pagans that the oracle of a pagan temple stopped giving oracles.
Julian was dismayed and asked for the reason. The oracle blamed the the nearby Church which contains the body of the martyrs, especially that of St. Babilas, contaminated the area that the gods stopped giving prophecies. Promptly, Julian unceremoniously ordered the relics to be taken out of the Church and carted into the cemetery.
While St. Babilas’ relics was taken out and placed into the wagon, an angry mob of Christians singing the Psalms followed it. Julian had many of them arrested.
A bit later, the temple caught fire (perhaps by accident) and burned to the ground.
Julian blamed it on the Christians and started what promised to be a full-scale persecution. He had the Chapels with the bodies of the martyrs destroyed, and closed the principal Church of Antioch after desecrating the Altar and the Sacred Vessels. Shortly thereafter he went to battle, where he died within six months.
