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316 of the Catholics.—His commanding gifts and personality cannot be doubted. Even his bitterest enemy, Sidonius, speaks of his courage and capacity with unwilling admiration. "Pre-eminent in war, of fiery courage and vigorous youth," says Sidonius ("armis potens, acer animis, alacer annis," Ep. vii. 6), "he makes but one mistake—that of supposing that his successes are due to the correctness of his religion, when he owes them rather to a stroke of earthly good fortune." Euric was much interested in religious matters and a passionate Arian, not merely apparently from political motives, though his persecution of the Catholic bishops was dictated by sufficient political reasons. The letter of Sidonius quoted above throws great light upon Euric's relation to the Catholic church, and upon the state of the church under his government. "It must be confessed," he says, "that although this king of the Goths is terrible because of his power, I fear his attacks upon the Christian laws more than I dread his blows for the Roman walls. The mere name of Catholic, they say, curdles his countenance and heart like vinegar, so that you might almost doubt whether he was more the king of his people or of his sect. Lose no time," he adds, addressing his correspondent Basilius, bp. of Aix, "in ascertaining the hidden weakness of the Catholic state, that you may be able to apply prompt and public remedy. Bordeaux, Périgueux, Rodez, Limoges, Gabale, Eause, Bazas, Comminges, Auch, and many other towns, where death has cut off the bishops ["summis sacerdotibus ipsorum morte truncatis," a passage misunderstood later by Gregory of Tours, who speaks of the execution of bishops,Hist. Franc. ii. 25], and no new bishops have been appointed in their places . . . mark the wide boundary of spiritual ruin. The evil grows every day with the successive deaths of the bishops, and the heretics, both of the present and the past, might be moved by the suffering of congregations deprived of their bishops, and in despair for their lost faith." The churches were crumbling; thorns filled the open doorways; cattle browsed in the porches and on the grass round the altar. Even in town churches services were rare, and "when a priest dies, and no episcopal benediction gives him a successor in that church, not only the priest but the priest's office dies" ("sacerdotium moritur, non sacerdos"). Not only are vacancies caused by death: two bishops, Crocus and Simplicius, are mentioned as deposed and exiled by Euric. Finally, Sidonius implores the aid of Basilius, the position of whose bishopric made him diplomatically important ("per vos mala foederum currunt, per vos regni utriusque pacta conditionesque portantur") towards obtaining for the Catholics from the Gothic government the right of ordaining bishops, that "so we may keep our hold upon the people of the Gauls, if not ex foedere, at least ex fide."

Gregory of Tours in the next cent. echoed and exaggerated the account of Sidonius, and all succeeding Catholic writers have accused Euric of the same intolerant persecution of the church. The persecution must be looked upon, to a great extent, as political. The Catholic bishops and the provincial nobility were the natural leaders of the Romanized populations. The ecclesiastical organization made the bishops specially formidable (see Dahn's remarks on the Vandal king Huneric's persecutions, op. cit. i. 250). Their opposition threatened the work of Euric's life, and did, in fact, with the aid of the orthodox Franks, destroy it in the reign of his successor. But the persecution has a special interest as one of the earliest instances of that oppression in the name of religion, of which the later history of the Goths in conquered Spain is everywhere full (Dahn, v. 101). Euric, however, did not oppress the Romans as such. His minister Leo (Sid. Apoll. viii. 3), and count Victorius, to whom was entrusted the government of Auvergne after its surrender (ib. vii. 17; Greg. Tur. ii. 35), were of illustrious Roman families. It was probably by Leo's help that Euric drew up the code of laws of which Isidore and others speak (Hist. Goth. apud Esp. Sagr. vi. 486); Dahn, Könige der Germanen, Vte Abth. pp. 88-101, see list of sources and literature prefixed. For the ultra-Catholic view of the persecution, see Gams's ''Kirchengesch. von Spanien'', ii. 1, 484.

[M.A.W.]

Eusebius (1), succeeded Marcellus as bp. of Rome, 309 or 310. He was banished by Maxentius to Sicily, where he died after a pontificate of four months (Apr. 18 to Aug. 17). His body was brought back to Rome, and buried in the cemetery of Callistus on the Appian Way. Hardly anything was known with certainty about this bishop till the discoveries of de Rossi in the catacombs. That he was buried in the cemetery of Callistus rested on the authority of the Liberian ''Deposit. Episc.'' and the Felician catalogue. But ancient itineraries, written by persons who had visited these tombs, described his resting-place as not being the papal crypt in that cemetery, where all the popes (with two exceptions) since Pontianus had been laid, but in a separate one some distance from it. De Rossi found this crypt, and therein discovered, in 1852 and 1856, fragments of the inscription placed by pope Damasus over the grave, and known from copies taken before the closing of the catacombs. But it was previously uncertain whether it referred to Eusebius the pope or to some other Eusebius. All such doubt was now set at rest by the discovery, in the crypt referred to, of 46 fragments of a slab bearing a copy of the original inscription, and of the original slab, identified by the peculiar characters of Damasine inscriptions. The inscription is as follows:—

"Damasus Episcopus feci. Heraclius vetuit lapsos peccata dolere Eusebius miseros docuit sua crimina flere Scinditur in partes populus gliscente furore Seditio caedes bellum discordia lites Extemplo pariter pulsi feritate tyranni Integra cum rector servaret foedera pacis Pertulit exilium domino sub judice laetus Litore Trinacrio mundum vitamque reliquit. Eusebio Episcopo et martyri."

We thus have revealed a state of things at Rome of which no other record has been preserved. It would seem that, on the cessation of Diocletian’s persecution, the church there was rent into two parties on the subject of the terms of readmission of the lapsed to