Page:History of Heresies (Liguori).djvu/95

Rh the while but enjoying himself in his capital. The people began to murmur loudly at this state of inaction, and he, at last, roused himself, and marched against the enemy. Theodoret relates, that, as he was leaving the city, a holy monk, called Isaac, who lived in the neighbourhood, thus addressed him:—"Where are you going to. Emperor, after having made war against God? Cease to war with the Almighty, and he will put an end to the war raging against you; but should you not do so, mark my words, you will go to battle, but the vengeance of God will pursue you—you will lose your army, and never return here again." "I will return," said Valens, in a rage, "and your life shall pay for your audacity;" and he immediately ordered that he should be sent to prison. The hermit's prophecy turned out too true. When Valens arrived in presence of the Goths, their king, Fritigern, sent him an embassy, asking for peace, and leave to establish himself and his people in Thrace. The Emperor rejected his offer; and, on the 9th of August, 378, both armies were drawn up in front of each other, and Fritigern again made proposals of peace. But while the Romans were deliberating on their answer, the division of Bacurius, Prince of the Iberians, was attacked, and the battle became general; and never, since the slaughter at Canne, did the Romans suffer such losses as on that day. When the night closed, Valens mixed himself up with some of his soldiers and fled, thinking thus to conceal himself; but he was wounded with an arrow, and fell from his horse, and was brought by his soldiers into the hut of a peasant by the way-side. He was scarcely there when a troop of Goths, looking for plunder, arrived, and, without knowing who was inside, endeavoured to break open the door; but when they could not succeed at once in doing so, they set fire to the hut, and went away, and the unhappy Valens was burned alive in the fifteenth year of his reign and the fiftieth of his age. This was, as Orosius writes, a just judgment of God: The Goths asked Valens for some bishops, to instruct them in the Christian religion, and he sent them Arians, to infect the poor people with their impious heresy; and so they were justly appointed afterwards, as ministers of the Divine justice, to punish him. On the death of Valens, Gratian became master of the whole empire, and this good prince gave liberty to the Catholics of the East, and peace to the Church.

59. We now have to treat of the persecution of the Catholics of Africa by Genseric, the Arian King of the Vandals. He commenced persecuting the Catholics in the year 437, with the intention of making Arianism the religion of all Africa, as St. Prosper writes. Immediately after conquering Carthage, he commenced a most cruel war against the Catholics, plundered the churches, and gave them as habitations to his vassals, after banishing the priests,