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It has been always and most justly held in high esteem, as one great authority of the state of Gaul when conquered by the Franks and Goths and Vandals. Salvian was a Christian gentleman, born somewhere near Treves. He married a Pagan lady of Cologne, converted her, had by her a daughter, and then persuaded her to devote herself to celibacy, while he did the like.
But neither there, nor in Spain, could the Vandals cure the evil. 'Now-a- days, says Salvian, 'there are no profligates among the Goths, save Romans; none among the Vandals, save Romans. Blush, Roman people, everywhere, blush for your morals. There is hardly a city free from dens of sin, and none at all from impurity, save those which the barbarians have begun to occupy.
The Alans unchaste, but less perfidious. The Franks are liars, but hospitable; the Saxons ferociously cruel, but venerable for their chastity. In Africa, if we are to believe Salvian, things stood even worse, at the time of the invasion of the Vandals. In his violent invectives against the Africans, however, allowance must be made.
The voice of the Church was found in that of its doctors; the famous rule of faith, "quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus," is the rule of Vincent of Lerins; its monk Salvian painted the agony of the dying Empire in his book on the government of God; the long fight of semi-Pelagianism against the sterner doctrines of Augustin was chiefly waged within its bounds.
Then the earlier books of Procopius De Bello Gothico, and the Chronicle of Zosimus. Salvian, Ennodius and Sidonius Apollinaris, as Christians, will give you curious details, especially as to South France and North Italy; while many particulars of the first sack of Rome, with comments thereon which express the highest intellects of that day, you will find in St. Jerome's Letters, and St.
The Goths, Salvian says, were the most ignavi of all of them; great lazy lourdans; apt to be cruel, too, the Visigoths at least, as their Spanish descendants proved to the horror of the world: but men of honour withal, as those old Spaniards were.
Eucherius, himself a good man, speaks in terms of passionate admiration of Salvian, his goodness, sanctity, learning, talents. So that we may trust fully that we have hold of an authentic contemporaneous work, written by a good man and true. Let me first say a few words on the fact of his having as many good men did then separated from his wife in order to lead what was called a religious life.
Salvian, also, the "Master of Bishops," as he was called, though himself only a priest, was held to be the most eloquent man of his day, only second to S. Augustine. S. Eucherius of Lyons, S. Lupus of Troyes, who had married the sister of S. Hilary, were other prelates trained in this holy isle. When Troyes was threatened by Attila and his Huns, Lupus boldly went forth to meet him.
We know in detail the abominations, as shameless and ridiculous, which went on a century after Salvian, in the theatres of Constantinople, under the eyes of the most Christian Emperor Justinian, and which won for that most infamous woman, Theodora, a share in his imperial crown, and the right to dictate doctrine to the Christian Bishops of the East, and to condemn the soul of Origen to everlasting damnation, for having exprest hopes of the final pardon of sinners.
Salvian was a great lover of monks; and the Africans used, he says, to detest them, and mob them wherever they appeared; for which offence, of course, he can find no words too strong. St.
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