Empire.--Part III.
But in the calmer moments of reflection, when the mind of Valens was not
agitated by fear, or that of Valentinian by rage, the tyrant resumed the
sentiments, or at least the conduct, of the father of his country. The
dispassionate judgment of the Western emperor could clearly perceive,
and accurately pursue, his own and the public interest; and the
sovereign of the East, who imitated with equal docility the various
examples which he received from his elder brother, was sometimes guided
by the wisdom and virtue of the prÊfect Sallust. Both princes invariably
retained, in the purple, the chaste and temperate simplicity which had
adorned their private life; and, under their reign, the pleasures of the
court never cost the people a blush or a sigh. They gradually reformed
many of the abuses of the times of Constantius; judiciously adopted and
improved the designs of Julian and his successor; and displayed a style
and spirit of legislation which might inspire posterity with the most
favorable opinion of their character and government. It is not from the
master of Innocence, that we should expect the tender regard for the
welfare of his subjects, which prompted Valentinian to condemn the
exposition of new-born infants; and to establish fourteen skilful
physicians, with stipends and privileges, in the fourteen quarters
of Rome. The good sense of an illiterate soldier founded a useful and
liberal institution for the education of youth, and the support of
declining science. It was his intention, that the arts of rhetoric
and grammar should be taught in the Greek and Latin languages, in the
metropolis of every province; and as the size and dignity of the school
was usually proportioned to the importance of the city, the academies
of Rome and Constantinople claimed a just and singular preeminence. The
fragments of the literary edicts of Valentinian imperfectly represent
the school of Constantinople, which was gradually improved by subsequent
regulations. That school consisted of thirty-one professors in different
branches of learning. One philosopher, and two lawyers; five sophists,
and ten grammarians for the Greek, and three orators, and ten
grammarians for the Latin tongue; besides seven scribes, or, as they
were then styled, antiquarians, whose laborious pens supplied the public
library with fair and correct copies of the classic writers. The rule of
conduct, which was prescribed to the students, is the more curious, as
it affords the first outlines of the form and discipline of a modern
university. It was required, that they should bring proper certificates
from the magistrates of their native province. Their names, professions,
and places of abode, were regularly entered in a public register. The
studious youth were severely prohibited from wasting their time in
feasts, or in the theatre; and the term of their education was limited
to the age of twenty. The prÊfect of the city was empowered to chastise
the idle and refractory by stripes or expulsion; and he was directed to
make an annual report to the master of the offices, that the knowledge
and abilities of the scholars might be usefully applied to the public
service. The institutions of Valentinian contributed to secure the
benefits of peace and plenty; and the cities were guarded by the
establishment of the Defensors; freely elected as the tribunes and
advocates of the people, to support their rights, and to expose their
grievances, before the tribunals of the civil magistrates, or even
at the foot of the Imperial throne. The finances were diligently
administered by two princes, who had been so long accustomed to the
rigid economy of a private fortune; but in the receipt and application
of the revenue, a discerning eye might observe some difference between
the government of the East and of the West. Valens was persuaded, that
royal liberality can be supplied only by public oppression, and his
ambition never aspired to secure, by their actual distress, the future
strength and prosperity of his people. Instead of increasing the
weight of taxes, which, in the space of forty years, had been gradually
doubled, he reduced, in the first years of his reign, one fourth of the
tribute of the East. Valentinian appears to have been less attentive and
less anxious to relieve the burdens of his people. He might reform the
abuses of the fiscal administration; but he exacted, without scruple, a
very large share of the private property; as he was convinced, that the
revenues, which supported the luxury of individuals, would be much more
advantageously employed for the defence and improvement of the state.
The subjects of the East, who enjoyed the present benefit, applauded
the indulgence of their prince. The solid but less splendid, merit of
Valentinian was felt and acknowledged by the subsequent generation.
But the most honorable circumstance of the character of Valentinian, is
the firm and temperate impartiality which he uniformly preserved in
an age of religious contention. His strong sense, unenlightened, but
uncorrupted, by study, declined, with respectful indifference, the
subtle questions of theological debate. The government of the Earth
claimed his vigilance, and satisfied his ambition; and while he
remembered that he was the disciple of the church, he never forgot that
he was the sovereign of the clergy. Under the reign of an apostate, he
had signalized his zeal for the honor of Christianity: he allowed to his
subjects the privilege which he had assumed for himself; and they might
accept, with gratitude and confidence, the general toleration which was
granted by a prince addicted to passion, but incapable of fear or
of disguise. The Pagans, the Jews, and all the various sects which
acknowledged the divine authority of Christ, were protected by the laws
from arbitrary power or popular insult; nor was any mode of worship
prohibited by Valentinian, except those secret and criminal practices,
which abused the name of religion for the dark purposes of vice and
disorder. The art of magic, as it was more cruelly punished, was more
strictly proscribed: but the emperor admitted a formal distinction to
protect the ancient methods of divination, which were approved by the
senate, and exercised by the Tuscan haruspices. He had condemned,
with the consent of the most rational Pagans, the license of nocturnal
sacrifices; but he immediately admitted the petition of PrÊtextatus,
proconsul of Achaia, who represented, that the life of the Greeks would
become dreary and comfortless, if they were deprived of the invaluable
blessing of the Eleusinian mysteries. Philosophy alone can boast, (and
perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy,) that her gentle
hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly
principle of fanaticism. But this truce of twelve years, which was
enforced by the wise and vigorous government of Valentinian, by
suspending the repetition of mutual injuries, contributed to soften the
manners, and abate the prejudices, of the religious factions.
The friend of toleration was unfortunately placed at a distance from the
scene of the fiercest controversies. As soon as the Christians of the
West had extricated themselves from the snares of the creed of Rimini,
they happily relapsed into the slumber of orthodoxy; and the small
remains of the Arian party, that still subsisted at Sirmium or Milan,
might be considered rather as objects of contempt than of resentment.
But in the provinces of the East, from the Euxine to the extremity of
Thebais, the strength and numbers of the hostile factions were more
equally balanced; and this equality, instead of recommending the
counsels of peace, served only to perpetuate the horrors of religious
war. The monks and bishops supported their arguments by invectives;
and their invectives were sometimes followed by blows. Athanasius still
reigned at Alexandria; the thrones of Constantinople and Antioch were
occupied by Arian prelates, and every episcopal vacancy was the
occasion of a popular tumult. The Homoousians were fortified by the
reconciliation of fifty-nine Macedonian, or Semi-Arian, bishops; but
their secret reluctance to embrace the divinity of the Holy Ghost,
clouded the splendor of the triumph; and the declaration of Valens, who,
in the first years of his reign, had imitated the impartial conduct of
his brother, was an important victory on the side of Arianism. The two
brothers had passed their private life in the condition of catechumens;
but the piety of Valens prompted him to solicit the sacrament of
baptism, before he exposed his person to the dangers of a Gothic war. He
naturally addressed himself to Eudoxus, * bishop of the Imperial city;
and if the ignorant monarch was instructed by that Arian pastor in the
principles of heterodox theology, his misfortune, rather than his guilt,
was the inevitable consequence of his erroneous choice. Whatever had
been the determination of the emperor, he must have offended a numerous
party of his Christian subjects; as the leaders both of the Homoousians
and of the Arians believed, that, if they were not suffered to reign,
they were most cruelly injured and oppressed. After he had taken this
decisive step, it was extremely difficult for him to preserve either
the virtue, or the reputation of impartiality. He never aspired,
like Constantius, to the fame of a profound theologian; but as he had
received with simplicity and respect the tenets of Eudoxus, Valens
resigned his conscience to the direction of his ecclesiastical guides,
and promoted, by the influence of his authority, the reunion of the
Athanasian heretics to the body of the Catholic church. At first, he
pitied their blindness; by degrees he was provoked at their obstinacy;
and he insensibly hated those sectaries to whom he was an object of
hatred. The feeble mind of Valens was always swayed by the persons with
whom he familiarly conversed; and the exile or imprisonment of a private
citizen are the favors the most readily granted in a despotic court.
Such punishments were frequently inflicted on the leaders of the
Homoousian party; and the misfortune of fourscore ecclesiastics of
Constantinople, who, perhaps accidentally, were burned on shipboard,
was imputed to the cruel and premeditated malice of the emperor, and his
Arian ministers. In every contest, the Catholics (if we may anticipate
that name) were obliged to pay the penalty of their own faults, and of
those of their adversaries. In every election, the claims of the Arian
candidate obtained the preference; and if they were opposed by the
majority of the people, he was usually supported by the authority of
the civil magistrate, or even by the terrors of a military force.
The enemies of Athanasius attempted to disturb the last years of his
venerable age; and his temporary retreat to his father's sepulchre has
been celebrated as a fifth exile. But the zeal of a great people, who
instantly flew to arms, intimidated the prÊfect: and the archbishop
was permitted to end his life in peace and in glory, after a reign
of forty-seven years. The death of Athanasius was the signal of the
persecution of Egypt; and the Pagan minister of Valens, who forcibly
seated the worthless Lucius on the archiepiscopal throne, purchased
the favor of the reigning party, by the blood and sufferings of their
Christian brethren. The free toleration of the heathen and Jewish
worship was bitterly lamented, as a circumstance which aggravated the
misery of the Catholics, and the guilt of the impious tyrant of the
East.
The triumph of the orthodox party has left a deep stain of persecution
on the memory of Valens; and the character of a prince who derived
his virtues, as well as his vices, from a feeble understanding and a
pusillanimous temper, scarcely deserves the labor of an apology. Yet
candor may discover some reasons to suspect that the ecclesiastical
ministers of Valens often exceeded the orders, or even the intentions,
of their master; and that the real measure of facts has been very
liberally magnified by the vehement declamation and easy credulity of
his antagonists. 1. The silence of Valentinian may suggest a probable
argument that the partial severities, which were exercised in the
name and provinces of his colleague, amounted only to some obscure
and inconsiderable deviations from the established system of religious
toleration: and the judicious historian, who has praised the equal
temper of the elder brother, has not thought himself obliged to contrast
the tranquillity of the West with the cruel persecution of the East.
2. Whatever credit may be allowed to vague and distant reports, the
character, or at least the behavior, of Valens, may be most distinctly
seen in his personal transactions with the eloquent Basil, archbishop
of CÊsarea, who had succeeded Athanasius in the management of the
Trinitarian cause. The circumstantial narrative has been composed by the
friends and admirers of Basil; and as soon as we have stripped away
a thick coat of rhetoric and miracle, we shall be astonished by the
unexpected mildness of the Arian tyrant, who admired the firmness of his
character, or was apprehensive, if he employed violence, of a general
revolt in the province of Cappadocia. The archbishop, who asserted,
with inflexible pride, the truth of his opinions, and the dignity of his
rank, was left in the free possession of his conscience and his throne.
The emperor devoutly assisted at the solemn service of the cathedral;
and, instead of a sentence of banishment, subscribed the donation of
a valuable estate for the use of a hospital, which Basil had lately
founded in the neighborhood of CÊsarea. 3. I am not able to discover,
that any law (such as Theodosius afterwards enacted against the Arians)
was published by Valens against the Athanasian sectaries; and the edict
which excited the most violent clamors, may not appear so extremely
reprehensible. The emperor had observed, that several of his subjects,
gratifying their lazy disposition under the pretence of religion, had
associated themselves with the monks of Egypt; and he directed the
count of the East to drag them from their solitude; and to compel these
deserters of society to accept the fair alternative of renouncing their
temporal possessions, or of discharging the public duties of men and
citizens. The ministers of Valens seem to have extended the sense of
this penal statute, since they claimed a right of enlisting the young
and able-bodied monks in the Imperial armies. A detachment of cavalry
and infantry, consisting of three thousand men, marched from Alexandria
into the adjacent desert of Nitria, which was peopled by five thousand
monks. The soldiers were conducted by Arian priests; and it is reported,
that a considerable slaughter was made in the monasteries which
disobeyed the commands of their sovereign.
The strict regulations which have been framed by the wisdom of modern
legislators to restrain the wealth and avarice of the clergy, may be
originally deduced from the example of the emperor Valentinian. His
edict, addressed to Damasus, bishop of Rome, was publicly read in the
churches of the city. He admonished the ecclesiastics and monks not
to frequent the houses of widows and virgins; and menaced their
disobedience with the animadversion of the civil judge. The director was
no longer permitted to receive any gift, or legacy, or inheritance, from
the liberality of his spiritual-daughter: every testament contrary to
this edict was declared null and void; and the illegal donation was
confiscated for the use of the treasury. By a subsequent regulation, it
should seem, that the same provisions were extended to nuns and bishops;
and that all persons of the ecclesiastical order were rendered incapable
of receiving any testamentary gifts, and strictly confined to the
natural and legal rights of inheritance. As the guardian of domestic
happiness and virtue, Valentinian applied this severe remedy to the
growing evil. In the capital of the empire, the females of noble and
opulent houses possessed a very ample share of independent property: and
many of those devout females had embraced the doctrines of Christianity,
not only with the cold assent of the understanding, but with the warmth
of affection, and perhaps with the eagerness of fashion. They sacrificed
the pleasures of dress and luxury; and renounced, for the praise of
chastity, the soft endearments of conjugal society. Some ecclesiastic,
of real or apparent sanctity, was chosen to direct their timorous
conscience, and to amuse the vacant tenderness of their heart: and the
unbounded confidence, which they hastily bestowed, was often abused by
knaves and enthusiasts; who hastened from the extremities of the
East, to enjoy, on a splendid theatre, the privileges of the monastic
profession. By their contempt of the world, they insensibly acquired its
most desirable advantages; the lively attachment, perhaps of a young and
beautiful woman, the delicate plenty of an opulent household, and the
respectful homage of the slaves, the freedmen, and the clients of
a senatorial family. The immense fortunes of the Roman ladies were
gradually consumed in lavish alms and expensive pilgrimages; and the
artful monk, who had assigned himself the first, or possibly the sole
place, in the testament of his spiritual daughter, still presumed
to declare, with the smooth face of hypocrisy, that he was only the
instrument of charity, and the steward of the poor. The lucrative, but
disgraceful, trade, which was exercised by the clergy to defraud the
expectations of the natural heirs, had provoked the indignation of a
superstitious age: and two of the most respectable of the Latin fathers
very honestly confess, that the ignominious edict of Valentinian was
just and necessary; and that the Christian priests had deserved to lose
a privilege, which was still enjoyed by comedians, charioteers, and the
ministers of idols. But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are
seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private
interest; and Jerom, or Ambrose, might patiently acquiesce in the
justice of an ineffectual or salutary law. If the ecclesiastics were
checked in the pursuit of personal emolument, they would exert a more
laudable industry to increase the wealth of the church; and dignify
their covetousness with the specious names of piety and patriotism.
Damasus, bishop of Rome, who was constrained to stigmatize the avarice
of his clergy by the publication of the law of Valentinian, had the
good sense, or the good fortune, to engage in his service the zeal and
abilities of the learned Jerom; and the grateful saint has celebrated
the merit and purity of a very ambiguous character. But the splendid
vices of the church of Rome, under the reign of Valentinian and Damasus,
have been curiously observed by the historian Ammianus, who delivers his
impartial sense in these expressive words: "The prÊfecture of Juventius
was accompanied with peace and plenty, but the tranquillity of his
government was soon disturbed by a bloody sedition of the distracted
people. The ardor of Damasus and Ursinus, to seize the episcopal seat,
surpassed the ordinary measure of human ambition. They contended with
the rage of party; the quarrel was maintained by the wounds and death
of their followers; and the prÊfect, unable to resist or appease the
tumult, was constrained, by superior violence, to retire into the
suburbs. Damasus prevailed: the well-disputed victory remained on the
side of his faction; one hundred and thirty-seven dead bodies were found
in the Basilica of Sicininus, where the Christians hold their religious
assemblies; and it was long before the angry minds of the people resumed
their accustomed tranquillity. When I consider the splendor of the
capital, I am not astonished that so valuable a prize should inflame the
desires of ambitious men, and produce the fiercest and most obstinate
contests. The successful candidate is secure, that he will be enriched
by the offerings of matrons; that, as soon as his dress is composed with
becoming care and elegance, he may proceed, in his chariot, through the
streets of Rome; and that the sumptuousness of the Imperial table will
not equal the profuse and delicate entertainments provided by the taste,
and at the expense, of the Roman pontiffs. How much more rationally
(continues the honest Pagan) would those pontiffs consult their true
happiness, if, instead of alleging the greatness of the city as an
excuse for their manners, they would imitate the exemplary life of some
provincial bishops, whose temperance and sobriety, whose mean apparel
and downcast looks, recommend their pure and modest virtue to the
Deity and his true worshippers!" The schism of Damasus and Ursinus was
extinguished by the exile of the latter; and the wisdom of the prÊfect
PrÊtextatus restored the tranquillity of the city. PrÊtextatus was a
philosophic Pagan, a man of learning, of taste, and politeness; who
disguised a reproach in the form of a jest, when he assured Damasus,
that if he could obtain the bishopric of Rome, he himself would
immediately embrace the Christian religion. This lively picture of the
wealth and luxury of the popes in the fourth century becomes the more
curious, as it represents the intermediate degree between the humble
poverty of the apostolic fishermen, and the royal state of a temporal
prince, whose dominions extend from the confines of Naples to the banks
of the Po.