Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/1015

 influential bishop from 332 (cf. Socr. H. E. i. 27). The activity and influence of Valens was confined to the East. The West was always hostile to him, and frequently excommunicated him, the last occasion being at a council held at Rome in 369. He probably died some time prior to 375.

[.]

Valens (5), emperor, 364–378, the brother of Valentinian I. and born c. 328. By his wife, Albia Dominica, he had a son, Galates, and two daughters, Anastasia and Carosa. Made emperor of the East in Mar. 364, he immediately displayed sympathy with Arian doctrines, and was actively hostile to the Athanasian party. For his secular history see D. of G. and R. Biogr. He was baptized in 368 by the Arian Eudoxius, patriarch of Constantinople. In 370 he is credited by all the historians (Socr. iv. 16; Soz. vi. 14; Theod. iv. 24) with an act of atrocious cruelty. Eighty ecclesiastics, led by Urbanus, Theodorus, and Mendemus, were sent by the orthodox party of Constantinople to protest against the conduct of the Arians there. Valens is said to have sent them all to sea, ordering the sailors to set fire to the ship and then to abandon it. They all perished off the coast of Bithynia, and are celebrated as martyrs on Sept. 5 (Mart. Rom.). In 371 he made a tour through his Asiatic province. At Caesarea in Cappadocia he came into conflict with St. Basil, whose letters (Migne, Patr. Gk. t. xxxii.) afford a very lively picture of the persecution of Valens. He proposed to send St. Basil into exile. Just then his only son fell sick. Valens had recourse to the saint, who promised to heal him if he received orthodox baptism. The Arians were, however, allowed to baptize the young prince, who thereupon died. Basil and the orthodox attributed his death to the judgment of heaven on the imperial obstinacy. In 374 Valens raised a persecution against the neo-Platonic philosophers, and put to death several of their leaders, among them (25) of Ephesus, the tutor and friend of the emperor Julian, Hilarius, Simonides, and Andronicus. His anger was excited at this period against magical practices by a conspiracy at Antioch (Socr. H. E. iv. 19; Soz. vi. 35) for securing the succession of Theodorus, one of the principal court officials. Numerous acts of persecution at Edessa, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople are attributed to Valens, in all of which, the pretorian prefect, was his most active agent, save in Egypt, where Lucius, the Arian successor of Athanasius, endeavoured in vain to terrify the monks into conformity. The last year of Valens's life was marked by a striking manifestation of monkish courage. In 378 he was leaving Constantinople for his fatal struggle with the Goths at Adrianople. As he rode out of the city an anchorite, Isaac, who lived there, met the emperor and boldly predicted his death. The emperor ordered his imprisonment till his return, when he would punish him—a threat at which the monk laughed. See Clinton's Fasti, i. 476, ii. 119, for the chronology of Valens. Tillemont's Emp. (t. v.) and De Broglie's L’Eglise et l’Empire Romain (t. v.) give good accounts of the career and violence of Valens.

[G.T.S.]

Valentinlanus (1) I., emperor A.D. 364-375, a native of Cibalis in Pannonia. Having served in the army with distinction, he was captain of the guards during the reign of Julian, when he boldly confessed Christ. Theodoret tells us (H. E. iii. 16) that when Julian was one day entering the temple of Fortune with great pomp, Valentinian was marching in the procession before him. Two priests were at the gate to sprinkle all who entered with lustral water. Some fell upon Valentinian's robe, whereupon, crying out that he was defiled, not purified, he struck the priest and banished him to a desert fortress. When Jovian died, Valentinian was elected, Feb. 26, 364, and reigned till his death, Nov. 17, 375- For an account of his civil history see D. of G. and R. Biogr. He presents the rare phenomenon of an emperor who, sincerely attached to orthodoxy, was yet tolerant of the Arians and other heretical sects. He published an edict at the very beginning of his reign, giving complete toleration in religious opinion. To this fact we have the most opposite testimonies. The emperor refers to it in ''Cod. Theod.'' ix. 16. 9, in a law directed against the practices of the haruspices. Ammianus Marcellinus (xxx. 9) praises him for it, and St. Ambrose, in his oration ''de Obitu Valent. Junioris, implicitly censures him (cf. Hilar. Pictav. Cont. Auxent. Opp.'' t. iii. p. 64). His toleration did not, however, extend to practices. Thus in Sept. 364 he issued a law (Cod. Theod. ix. 16. 7) prohibiting nocturnal sacrifices and magical incantations, and further enforced it by legg. viii. and ix. of the same title. These edicts seem to have been issued more from a moral and social than religious point of view. They were directed against immorality, not paganism, as is evident from the fact, which Ambrose (l.c.) laments, that he tolerated the public profession and practices of paganism in the Roman senate-house. One circumstance demonstrates his tolerance towards the followers of the ancient religion. There is not a single edict in the Theodosian code, lib. xvi. tit. x.—the celebrated title de Paganis, which is filled with persecuting laws—dating from any year between 356 and 381; while the same remark will also apply with one exception to the titles de Haeretici and de Judaeis, lib. xvi. tit. v. and viii. The one exception is the Manichean heresy, which he strictly prohibited by a law of 372 (Cod. Theod. xvi. v. 3), ordering the punishment of their teachers and the confiscation of the houses where they instructed their pupils in Rome; for Manicheism seems at that time to have assumed the character of a philosophy rather than of a religion. That this tolerant spirit of the emperor was helpful to true religion appears from the fact that, under Valentinian heathenism began first to be called the peasant's religion ("religio paganorum"), a name first so applied in a law of 368 (ib. xvi. ii. 18). Valentinian legislated also for the clergy (ib. xv. ii. 17-22), restraining the tendency of rich men to take holy orders for escape of civil duties (legg. 17, 18, 19); and rendering illegal the bequests to clergy and monks from widows and virgins by a celebrated law (leg. 20) addressed in 370 to Damasus, bp. of Rome, under the descriptions "De Vita,