A.D. 429 Germanus goes to Britain to suppress the Pelagian heresy;
A.D. 431 Palladius consecrated bishop for the Irish Church;
A.D. 432 Patrick consecrated bishop by Germanus.
6. The Escape to Gaul. The State of Gaul, A.D. 409-416
The Vandals, Sueves, and Alans, who entered Gaul at the end of A.D. 406, remained in the land, devastating, slaying, and burning until A.D. 409, in which year they crossed the Pyrenees, to find homes in Spain. The extent of their ravages is indicated by Jerome, in a letter of A.D. 411, in which he mentions the devastation of Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Narbonensis, and the destruction of Mainz, Rheims, and Speyer.[385] It is also described by Salvian, writing at a much later date,[386] in the De Gubernatione Dei, who tells[387] how the Vandals, gens ignavissima, de loco ad locum pergens de urbe in urbem transiens laid all things waste. Arsit regio Belgarum deinde opes Aquitanorum luxuriantium et posthaec corpus omnium Galliarum. But more valuable as genuine pictures by eye-witnesses, men who had themselves suffered with the sufferings of Gaul, are the Commonitorium of Orientius, and an anonymous poem entitled De Providentia Divina. Both these poems can be approximately dated to A.D. 415-416, and they describe the condition of the country at the time, enabling us to realise the long misery and desolation produced by the scourge of the years A.D. 407-409 Nor had Gaul, at least southern Gaul, been allowed a respite of peace to recover from the effects of that scourge, for the provincials had hardly become conscious that the Vandals had passed into Spain when Athaulf and his Visigoths entered Gaul. Moreover, a large body of Alans had remained behind, instead of accompanying their fellows across the Pyrenees. We derive a vivid picture of the unsettled state of Aquitaine from the Eucharisticon of Paulinus of Pella.[388]
Some passages in Orientius, the De Providentia Divina, and another anonymous poem Ad Uxorem, of the same period, illustrate the condition of the Gallic provinces.[389]
(1) Orientius (ed. Ellis, in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum), ii. 165 sqq.:—
Non castella locis, non tutae moenibus urbes,
invia non pelago, tristia non heremo,
non cava, non etiam nudis[390] sub rupibus antra