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| Valens persecutes the Novatians, because they accepted the Orthodox Faith.
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Chapter IX.—Valens
persecutes the Novatians, because they accepted the Orthodox
Faith.
The emperor however did not
cease his persecution of those who embraced the doctrine of the
homoousion, but drove them away from Constantinople: and as the
Novatians acknowledged the same faith, they also were subjected to
similar treatment. He commanded that their churches should be shut up,
also their bishop they sent into exile. His name was Agelius, a person
that had presided over their churches from the time of Constantine, and
had led an apostolic life: for he always walked barefoot, and used but
one coat, observing the injunction of the gospel.586
But the emperor’s displeasure against this sect was moderated by
the efforts of a pious and eloquent man named Marcian, who had formerly
been in military service at the imperial palace, but was at that time a
presbyter in the Novatian church, and taught Anastasia and Carosa, the
emperor’s daughters, grammar; from the former of whom the public
baths yet standing, which Valens erected at Constantinople, were
named.587
| 587Am. Marcellinus (Rerum Gestarum, XXVI. 4.
14), in speaking of Procopius, the usurper, says:
‘Procopius…resorted to the Anastasian baths, named from the
sister of Constantine’; from which it appears that either (1)
there were two baths of the same name, or (2) the baths here alluded to
were named after Constantine’s sister and renamed on the occasion
of their being repaired or altered, or (3) that Socrates is in error.
From the improbabilities connected with (1) and (2) we may infer that
(3) is the right view.
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From respect for this person therefore the Novatian churches which had
been for some time closed, were
again opened. The Arians however would not suffer this people to remain
undisturbed, for they disliked them on account of the sympathy and love
the Novatians manifested toward the Homoousians, with whom they agreed
in sentiment. Such was the state of affairs at that time. We may here
remark that the war against the usurper Procopius was terminated about
the end of May, in the consulate588
of Gratian and Dagalaïfus.
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