"Of a cold disposition, inclined to enforce the laws and good order—no less severe to himself than to others—he was sober, upright, and chaste. Though a good soldier and a good speaker, he had not the slightest pretension to wit, nor even to glory. He was a plain matter-of-fact ruler, governing the empire just as he would have done a legion, with a simplicity and a roughness of character exclusively military; showing a harshness that bordered upon cruelty, when he deemed it necessary to the interests of the public service, and yet by no means prompt to avenge his own personal injuries; a man, in fact, having but few wants and no taste for pomp or display, though rigorous beyond measure to replenish the coffers of the state, and to balance the receipts with the outlays of the treasury," (pp. 8, 9.)
Valentinian was in the height of manhood when he was clothed with the imperial purple; but if he felt no exultation, he evinced a keen jealousy for the maintenance of his newly acquired power, hardly allowing a mere suggestion as to its use and exercise. That jealousy and mistrust were extended even to the high influence of the church itself. The very first year of his reign offers numerous traces of that spirit of universal toleration which has become the idol of our modern reformers, yet which was so repugnant to the ideas and feelings of the old Roman world.
Succeeding to Jovian, having witnessed the vagaries of Julian, under whom he had even suffered persecution, the new emperor indeed began by relieving his fellow-believers from their sundry disabilities, but at the same time he put every other form of religious belief on a footing of rigorous equality with Christianity. Thus, if he takes from the heathens the temples which the Apostate had bestowed upon them, these temples became state property, instead of being restored to the Christians—Valentinian so establishing, observes Prince de Broglie, a sort of neutral power between the two contending doctrines. Thus, again, the public schools are opened to all, the clerical immunities and privileges are kept within narrow bounds, the heathen sacrifices are scarcely prohibited; in fact, the most assiduous precautions were taken in order to prevent the very appearance of any subordination of the temporal government to sacerdotal influence. This was, doubtless, a new feature in the sovereign, which took every one by surprise, though many considered it to show a sound policy and practical wisdom. And yet, this very attitude of Valentinian toward the church was but a proof of his real weakness, as the general incidents of his reign were destined to show in strong colors. Valentinian's immediate object was to establish the full and total independence of the secular government. In reality, he rendered still more evident in the eyes of the world its utter helplessness to guard and defend its most important privileges. Thenceforward, to stand aloof from the church on the plea of state policy was an utter impossibility. On the contrary, an alliance with the church was a matter of positive necessity, for no other power in the world could, like her, play the part of a most useful and efficient auxiliary. Valentinian was to learn this at the outset of his reign.
He had hardly arrived at Milan, the capital of the western empire, when he had to encounter the insuperable difficulties of his finely balanced system. A contest had arisen between the Arian bishop Auxentius and the great Hilary of Poitiers. The latter used his utmost endeavors to correct the evils attendant upon the persecution lately raised by the Emperor Constans; but Hilary was by no means disposed to overlook the delinquencies of courtier prelates, who changed their belief according to the whim and will of every new sovereign. Such was Auxentius, who after showing himself a zealous Arian, now displayed no less zeal in his recantations, which did not, however, at all deceive his own flock. The Milanese were steadfast in their opposition to the ever-changing prelate, and Hilary no less staunchly encouraged them in their resistance.
According to Valentinian's system, he should and would have remained neutral between the two antagonists. But such an amount of indifference was not in the habits of the Roman administration. There was nothing so contrary to public order, said many an imperial adviser, as these conventicles of the flock against their pastor, above all when backed by the influence of a foreigner. Since Auxentius consented to sign the orthodox formula, and thus to do away with every vestige of past dissensions, why should others obstinately endeavor to perpetuate them? This was a matter of police regulations, not a question of belief. When people were all of the same opinion, why should not they meet together to pray in the same church?
We can almost imagine that we are reading a memoir sent up by a French prefect to his minister, for the purpose of playing the umpire between some priest and his bishop. At any rate, Valentinian found the advice so conformable to his own ideas, that he unwittingly issued an edict prohibiting the Christians to attend at any ceremony of their worship, except in such places as were subjected to the bishop's jurisdiction. Hilary immediately applied to the emperor himself, and soon showed him his error, which was, however, followed by another step of a still graver character. He ordered that the question should be examined by a committee of ten bishops and two secular magistrates. Auxentius, on being confronted with Hilary, made every admission that was required; yet the latter had scarcely turned his back when the equivocating prelate recanted once more his recantations, and maligned the Bishop of Poitiers to the emperor. His aspersions were but too successful, for Hilary was denied a second audience, and was commanded to leave the town immediately.
The prelate obeyed as a subject, but as a bishop he had a right to speak, and he spoke with a freedom worthy of such a man. His letter, apparently addressed to the public, in reality was a bold protest against the emperor's interference in religious affairs. We doubt whether Constantine would have submitted to such language, which, however, is a landmark showing the progress of Christian ideas as to the relations of the spiritual and the temporal power. But it was the last episcopal act of the great pontiff, who died shortly after.
It is not merely in this direction that we see Christianity gradually asserting its ascendency in the Roman world. Slowly, but surely, the patriciate was yielding to its influence. Accustomed, as we are, to consider the Roman aristocracy as totally effete during the latter period previous to the fall of the empire, we can hardly fancy to ourselves that its grandees were anything else but the degenerate posterity of the Cornelii, the Anicii, and other illustrious gentes, of ancient Rome. There were, indeed, so many links connecting them with olden forms and idolatrous ordinances, that to couple them with the new belief seems something bordering on anachronism. And yet the fact really stands thus: Partly through the effect of example, partly through ambition, and partly through an imperious conviction, whole races had embraced the doctrines and practices of Christianity, and soon found out, to their own astonishment, that they recovered at once an unexpected share of illustration and power.
"Christianity, says Prince de Broglie, renewed their influence, by throwing over it a sort of second youth. The day before their baptism, they were wont to squander away their wealth among a motley plebs to gain the bauble of a useless title; on the morrow their charities, scarcely more abundant, but distributed by the discerning hand of the priest, insured them, on the part of the less degraded Christians, a prouder yet more lasting gratitude. Their slaves being gradually emancipated, and prepared for freedom by a pious education, soon formed around them a devoted army. They were no more that vile race of freed-men, a true scourge to the empire, ever ready to pass from an abject servility to the basest treachery. They were all the children of Adam, redeemed by Jesus Christ, in whom their masters revered the remembrance of a primitive equality and the stamp of a newly restored dignity. Within a short time, the authority of the Christian patricians extended far beyond Rome. Having once become members of an association the most extensive and, indeed, the only one then organized throughout the empire, they found themselves by the very fact placed at the head of a powerful party. Since Athanasius, in the days of his exile, had found an asylum in the dwellings of the Roman senators, the Christians of every country were in the habit of applying from the depths of Egypt or of distant Asia to the illustrious families in the capital, whenever they had a church to build, a convent to establish, some ruin to prevent, or some disaster to retrieve; and the alms which usually followed the application were abundantly repaid in popularity and thankfulness. One might compare them to some old trunks falling into decay through the effect of time; should their roots, whilst shooting forth, meet with a rich vein of alluvial soil, they send up a youthful sap, which adorns with a wreath of verdure their dying branches and their blackening limbs." (pp. 23, 24.)
Such was the society in which an Ambrose and a Jerome were formed and brought up—the one learning all those arts and traditions that made him hereafter such an attractive compound (if we may be allowed the term) of sanctity and statesmanship; the other of a more ardent and restless disposition, as if he had brought from his native forests of Dalmatia something of the fierce wildness of the barbarian. Jerome, though a sincere Christian, did not then conform his conduct to his belief; he rather yielded alternately to the allurements of pleasure or to the suggestions of a repentant spirit. He himself tells us that be thirsted for knowledge, being ever on the wing, passing from the Capitol to the Catacombs; almost equally impassioned for the Gospel or for Homer; reading by turns the Scriptures with the fervor of an anchoret or the disdain of an Athenian orator. But still he clung with fondness to the best Roman society, where he was an habitual guest and companion. There is hardly any part of the empire, or any one of its institutions, in which we do not find this all-pervading influence of Christianity. But nowhere, perhaps, is it more evident than in the laws. Volumes have been written upon this subject, and the most lamentable pictures have been drawn of the wretched state of the Roman population, ground down at once by heavy taxation, by the oppression of local governors, and exposed to all the horrors of repeated invasions. Their condition was so melancholy that they fled to the barbarians, among whom they enjoyed more real freedom and greater security than under the rule of their lawful sovereign. Valentinian distinguished himself among many other princes by his extreme severity in the enforcement of the fiscal laws; he hardly admitted any plea or excuse when the treasury was to be replenished; far better than anyone he felt the difficulties of his position, when he had to encounter the numberless enemies of his empire. But he had hardly secured by the most severe measures the public resources in men and money when a reaction ensued. An immense complaint and wailing, says our author, ascended to the throne from every region, and the prince was obliged to bind the very wounds he had inflicted—nay, to countermand the measures which he had adopted under the imperious claims of the public security.