Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/51

V A L V A L 37 who had commanded a Roman army in Britain, and had in 383 (the year of Gratian s death) made himself master of the northern provinces, crossed the Alps into the valley of the Po and threatened Milan. The emperor and his mother fled to Thessalonica, to Theodosius, the emperor of the East and husband of Galla, Valentinian s sister. At their entreaty he marched into Italy with an army, de cisively defeated Maximus, and set Valentinian once more on the throne (388). He also converted the lad to orthodox Catholicism. Four years later Valentinian was dead. A barbarian warrior, a Frank named Arbogast, who had fought for Gratian and Theodosius, so presumed on his .services that Valentinian was provoked into giving him a letter of dismissal. But Arbogast tore the letter up before the emperor s face and openly defied him. Soon after wards Valentinian was slain, no doubt by Arbogast s order, at Vienne in Gaul, while taking part in some athletic sports. Eugenius, a humble dependent of the barbarian, succeeded to the empire of the West, a disgrace noted by the poet Claudian (De Tertio Consulatu Honorii, Ixvi.). VALENTINIAN III., emperor of the West from 425 to 455, the son of Constantius and Placidia, daughter of the great Theodosius, was declared Caesar at Thessalonica under the auspices of Theodosius II., and again the follow ing year at Rome, in the seventh year of his age. His reign of thirty years was a period of great and terrible events associated with the names of Attila, Genseric, and Aetius, the "last of the Romans." This period is marked by the dismemberment of the Western empire, the con quest of the province of Africa by the Vandals in 439, the final abandonment of Britain in 446, the loss of great portions of Spain and Gaul, in which the barbarians had established themselves, and the ravaging of Sicily and of the western coasts of the Mediterranean by the fleets of Genseric. As a set-off against these calamities there was the great victory of Aetius over Attila in 451 in the neighbourhood of Chalons. (See ROME, vol. xx. p. 781.) The burden of taxation became more and more intolerable as the power of Rome decreased, although there were a partial remission of taxes in 450 and a cancelling of arrears in consequence of the general impoverishment of Rome s .subjects. Ravenna was Valentinian s usual residence ; but he fled to Rome in 452 on the approach of Attila, who, after ravaging the north of Italy, died in the following year. In 454 Aetius, between whose son and a daughter of the emperor a marriage had been arranged, was treacher ously murdered by Valentinian. Next year, however, the crime was avenged by the assassination of the emperor as he was looking on at some games in the Campus Martius. He was a contemptible creature, cowardly, self-indulgent, without spirit, and without ability. With Valentinian III. the family of Theodosius became extinct. Our chief original sources for the reign of Valentinian III. are .lordanes, Prosper s Chronicles, written in the 6th century and end ing with the year 455, and the poet Sidonius Apollinaris. See also (iihbon s history of the period (Decline and Fall, c. xxxiii.-xxxv.) and Hodgkin s Italy and her Invaders (1880). VALEXTINUS AND VALENTINIANS. Valentinus was the most important Christian theologian before Origen. Clement and Origen both were his pupils. In his school all those problems were started which afterwards engrossed the Greek fathers, and a large proportion of the solutions given by him and his followers subsequently became, though in a modified form, accepted doctrines. The dog matic of Origen lies at the foundation of the orthodox dogmatic of the church, and it in its turn had its prototype in that of the Valentinian school. Valentinus was the first man in Christendom who for other than merely apologetic purposes sought to fuse together the results of Greek philosophy with the substance of the Gospel, combined the exalted ethic of the Platonic and Neopythagorean schools with the preaching of the evangelical pulpit, and treated the manifestation of Jesus as the keystone in the great structure of thought which Greek science had reared. His theology is, so to speak, the central pier of the bridge con necting the Jewish with the Christian Alexandrians. He may perhaps be regarded as superior to Philo in sober- mindedness and in acuteness, and as having excelled Origen at once in delicacy of religious and moral perception and in vigour of language, though he was far behind him in learning and in extent of knowledge. 1 His success as a teacher was brilliant. Tertullian tells us that among all the Christian "collegia" that of Valentinus was the most crowded, 2 and the numerous branches into which his scholars soon divided are evidence of the wealth of his influence. Even his enemies have praised his " ingenium et eloquium" (Adv. Valent., 4). Tertullian, Clement, Origen, Jerome, and Adamantius agree in testifying that he was a man of singular gifts. The few extant fragments of his writings fully confirm this : there is not one of them that is not marked by originality and depth. And his disciples, although they have partly deteriorated his teachings by undisciplined fancies and inappropriate mytho- logizing, have, every one of them, something particular and valuable to say. Their influence did not cease until in the catechetical school of Alexandria the church found teachers of her own who were at once scientific theologians and de fenders of the church of orthodoxy. Valentinus. Of Valentinus himself almost nothing is known. That he was an Egyptian by birth and received his education in Alexandria is probable but not certain. 8 He came to Rome under Hyginus about 138, flourished under Pius (140-155), and was still there in the time of Anicetus (c. 155-166). This we learn from Irenaeus (iii. 4, 3), who lets us see that his main activity was in Rome. He further tells us that Poly carp during his sojourn in that city was the means of converting some Valentinians. Tertullian supplements (De Prsescr., 30) Irenaeus with the information that Valentinus originally attached himself in Rome to the main body of the church, but " ob inquietam semper curiositatem qua fratres quoque vitiabat," after having been twice temporarily suspended from communion, he was ultimately cut off. This statement shows that the Roman Church did not, to begin with, possess the standards by which to try Valentinus. The sections of the Shepherd of Hernias which treat of the Gnostics represent them as still continuing to exist within the church, although their dangerous character was already known. It was not, then, until the bishopric of Anicetus that the Roman Church suc ceeded in ridding itself of the Valentinian collegia. It seems very doubtful whether there is any good foundation for Tertullian s further allegation (Adv. Valent., 4) that Valentinus was ambitious of obtaining the episcopate of Rome and that his failure in this caused him to break with the church. Hippolytus will have it (see Epiphanius and Philaster) that Valentinus afterwards went to Cyprus as a declared heretic. We are not in a position to control this statement ; but the words of Irena;us would almost lead to the conclusion that he died in Rome. At any rate there is no reason to suppose that he was alive much later than 160. Tertullian, in spite of a disposition to bring him down to as recent a period as possible, does not seem to think of him as living in the time of Marcus Aurelius. But in the school of Valentinus it was asserted that their master had been a pupil of Theodas, a yvw/n/xos ZlauAov; 4 in that case he must have been a very old man in 1GO. 1 Jerome nevertheless calls him "doctissimus" (Comm. in Osee, ii. 10). 2 Tert., Adv. Valent. ; </. Origen, Horn., ii. 5, and Comm., xiv. p. 40, " robustissima secta." 3 Epiph., User., 31 ; Mur. Fragm., fin.

4 Clem., Strom., vii. 17, 106.