Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/235

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 217 ample an estate, that it required the management of CHAP. seventy-three stewards. Among these, Boniface was ! — the favourite of his mistress ; and as Aglae mixed love with devotion, it is reported that he was admitted to share her bed. Her fortune enabled her to gratify the pious desire of obtaining some sacred relics from the east. She intrusted Boniface with a considerable sum of gold, and a large quantity of aromatics; and her lover, attended by twelve horsemen and three covered chariots, undertook a remote pilgrimage, as far as Tarsus in Cilicia''. The sanguinary temper of Galerius, the first and inlllyricum principal author of the persecution, was formidable to g^^j^^ y„^jgj. those christians whom their misfortunes had placed Ciakrius within the limits of his dominions ; and it may fairly be imin. presumed, that many persons of a middle rank, who were not confined by the chains either of wealth or of poverty, very frequently deserted their native country, and sought a refuge in the milder climate of the west. As long as he commanded only the armies and pro- vinces of Illyricum, he could with difficulty either find or make a considerable number of martyrs, in a warlike country, which had entertained the missionaries of the gospel with more coldness and reluctance than any other part of the empire'. But when Galerius had obtained the supreme power and the government of the east, he indulged in their fullest extent his zeal and cruelty, not only in the provinces of Thrace and Asia, which acknowledged his immediate jurisdiction, but in those of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, where INIaximin gratified his own inclination, by yielding a rigorous obedience to the stern commands of his bene- factor '". The frequent disappointments of his ambi- ^ The acts of the passion of St. Boniface, which abound in miracles and declamation, are published by Ruinart, (p. 283 — 291.) both in Greek and Latin, from the authority of very ancient manuscripts. ' During the four first centuries, there exist few traces of either bishops or bishoprics in the western Illyricum. It has been thought probable that the primate of ^lilan extended his jurisdiction over Sirmium, the capital of that great province. See the Geographia Sacra of Charles de St. Paul, p. 68 — 7f), with the observations of Lucas Ilolstenius. ■" The eighth book of Eusebius, as well as the supplement concerning