A Treatise
wherein are shown by Argument and by
Examples drawn from the Abandoned
Society of the Times the Ways of GOD
toward His Creatures
INDITED BY
Presbyter of Marseilles
and Master of Bishops
as a Warning and Counsel
This Fifth Century Polemic Done
into English by
New York
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
M · CM · XXX
Copyright 1930
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published December, 1930
Printed in the United States of America
The Torch Press, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
TO MY FATHER
EDGAR LEWIS SANFORD
AND TO THE LEWISES AND SANFORDS BEFORE HIM
WHO LIKE SALVIAN HAVE PREACHED CONCERNING THE
GOVERNMENT OF GOD AND HIS PRESENT JUDGMENT
| Introduction | |
I. A Fifth Century Tract for the Times |
3 |
II. The Life of Salvian |
5 |
III. Salvian’s Literary Work |
15 |
IV. On the Government of God |
18 |
V. Style and Latinity |
28 |
VI. The Editions of Salvian ‘s Works |
31 |
VII. Estimates of Salvian ‘s Work |
32 |
| On the Government of God | |
Preface, to Salonius.—That the salutary purpose of the present work should atone for its lack of the vain adornments of rhetoric |
37 |
Book I.—The government of God proved by the general conviction of mankind, and by his judgment recounted in the books of Moses |
39 |
1. On the general belief in God’s government. 2. That good Christians
cannot be wretched. 3. Of the infirmities of the saints. 4. God’s guidance and judgments
of the world. 5. On the meaning of prayer. 6. The earliest instances of God’s judgment.
7. God’s judgment shown in the Flood. 8. The examples of Abraham, of Sodom and Gomorrah.
9. The |
|
Book II.—The immediate judgment of God as seen in the history of King David |
66 |
1. Of the presence of God. 2. God’s watchful care. 3. His vengeance. 4. The punishment of David. 5. David’s exile. 6. The immediacy of God’s judgment. |
|
Book III.—On the obligations of the Christian life |
77 |
1. Divine authority and human reason. 2. Christian belief. 3. The obligations of the Christian life. 4. The apostle’s imitation of Christ. 5. The services due to God. 6. How men follow Christ’s precepts. 7. The necessity of impartial obedience. 8. The lesser commands of God. 9. The vices of Christians. 10. The guilt of rich men and nobles. 11. Their vain hope of salvation. |
|
Book IV.—On the oppressions wrought by the Roman nobles, and the guilt of Christians as compared with pagans |
98 |
1. The necessity of faith and good works. 2. Faith without works.
3. The sins of slaves compared with those of their masters. 4. The oppression of
the nobles. 5. The enormity of their crimes. 6. The rich compared with their slaves;
the burdens of taxation. 7. The penalties of conversion. 8. That men’s crimes are
the cause of their misfortunes. 9. The Father’s love for his creatures. 10. The
fulness |
|
Book V.—On heresy, and on the oppression of the poor by the powerful throughout the Roman Empire |
133 |
1. Men’s opposition to the law. 2. Heresy among the barbarians.
3. Heresy among the |
|
Book VI.—On the ruinous influence of circuses and spectacles |
157 |
1. The infection of evil. 2. The evil influence of the public games. 3. The circuses and theaters. 4. God’s hatred of the theaters. 5. The contrast between the circus and Christ’s precepts. 6. On renunciation of the devil and his pomps. 7. How men desert the churches for the spectacles. 8. On their folly in the midst of ruin. 9. How the disasters of Rome have failed to bring repentance. 10. That no dishonor to God can be trivial. 11. Men’s unworthiness of God’s gifts. 12. The failure of adversity to amend men’s lives. 13. The capture of Trèves. 14. The destruction of other cities. 15. Destruction and the circuses. 16. On the corrective of peace. 17. The gratitude due for peace. 18. The captivity of the Romans. |
|
Book VII.—Wherein Roman vice is contrasted with Vandal virtue |
189 |
1. On the wretched gayety of Rome. 2. On the corruption of southern Gaul. 3. On the lusts of its men. 4. The corruption of their households. 5. That their vices are increased by their distress. 6. On the chastity of the Goths. 7. The Vandals in Spain. 8. The punishment due to presumption. 9. Humility and pride. 10. God’s judgment in time of battle. 11. The judgment of God shown in the strength of the enemy. 12. On the invasions of the barbarians. 13. The Vandals in Africa. 14. Their devastation of Africa. 15. The wickedness of Africa. 16. Its obscenity. 17. The corruption of the African churches. 18. The continuance of their general guilt. 19. Their prevalent vice of effeminacy. 20. The contrast between the Romans and the Vandals. 21. On the discipline of the Vandals. 22. On the reform of Africa. 23. On the regulation of marriage. |
|
Book VIII.—That the sins of the Romans are alone responsible for their ruin |
224 |
1. The responsibility for Rome’s misfortunes. 2. The blasphemies of Africa. 31. Of their injury to God. 4. On persecution. 5. On the recompense due. |
|
| Bibliography | 233 |
| Index | 235 |
Salvus, incolumisque Salvianus,
Magnus Scriptor, Episcopus probatus,
Antiquum reparatus in decorem,
In lucem venit omine auspicato,
Vitae Regula, Episcopon Magister;
Dignus nomine, et hoc honore dignus.
Scriptorum decus elegantiorum;
Dignus, quem studiis, modisque cunctis
Mirentur, celebrent, legant frequentes
Quot sunt, aut aliis erunt in annis.
Hunc, lector, precor, accipe explicata
Fronte, hunc delicias tuas putabis.
Illum plus oculis tuis amabis,
Meras delicias, meros lepores,
Inscriptum simul, et tibi dicatum,
Salvum, incolumemque Salvianum.
—Brassicanus
“Be ashamed, ye Roman people everywhere, be ashamed of the lives you lead! . . .
It is neither the strength of their bodies that makes the barbarians conquer, nor
the weakness of our nature that makes us subject to defeat. Let no one think or
persuade himself otherwise—it is our vicious lives alone that have conquered
us.” Salvian De gubernatione Dei VII. 23.
These are the words which Salvian would have made echo throughout the Roman world,
had his human frailty permitted, the words which have earned him the title of the
“Jeremiah of his times.” The problem of the decline of the Roman power was not
relegated to the historians at that time, but was the chief concern of all thinking
men, and many solutions were proposed. Successive invasions and settlements of barbarian
tribes had ended Rome’s claim to rule the world, while at the same time the fiscal
difficulties of the central administration had increased taxation beyond endurance.
The world seemed to be dying of old age, and the Empire with it. The natural tendency
to glorify the past was intensified by the poignant wretchedness of the present,
and grave doubts arose in the minds even of faithful Christians. “The very people
who, as pagans, conquered and ruled the world, are being conquered and enslaved
now that they have become Christians. Is not this clear evidence of God’s neglect
of human affairs?” Ibid., VII. 1. Ad ecclesiam IV. 8.
The treatise On the Government of God, which is Salvian’s best known
work, is essentially an exposition of this thesis: that the decline of the Roman
power actually demonstrated God’s government and judgment of human actions, since
the sins of the Romans were such as had always, since the fall of Adam, been visited
with instant punishment. Consequently the first two books of Salvian’s discussion
are chiefly devoted to demonstrations of God’s judgment by examples drawn from the
authority of the Old Testament. The third book builds on this foundation a clear
exposition of the Christian obligation of an upright life in God’s service. On this
basis Salvian then proceeded to contrast the disgraceful actions of the Christian
Romans of his time with their duty toward God, and with the virtues of the victorious
barbarians. Yet the latter, being either heretics or pagans, were under less obligation
to a godly life than the orthodox Romans. To the author himself, and to his fellow
clergy, the first three books may well have seemed the essential portion of the
argument: to us the great interest of the work lies in the picture of the times
given in the last five. For here we have detailed accounts of the effects of the
burden of taxation on the poor, whom it ruined; on the rich, who managed to shift
their burden to weaker shoulders; and on the curials, who were forced into tyranny
by their responsibility to the agents of the central government for the sums due.
In this case as in others, reference to the imperial decrees collected in the
Codices proves the essential truth of Salvian’s account. Sidonius Apollinaris
has given us in his letters charming descriptions of the life of the
He showed, to be sure, only one side of life. The miseries of the time prompted the doubts that he undertook to resolve; with these alone he was directly concerned. He rarely admitted that there were exceptions to the prevailing corruption of his fellow Romans. It was hardly consistent with his thesis that he should do so, for his book was essentially a polemic. It is important, however, to note in this connection that his statements are very rarely in conflict with other contemporary evidence. Passages in the letters of Sidonius, in the sermons and letters of his friends at Lérins, and of other leaders of the church, as well as in the writings of pagans and in the laws of the empire, regularly corroborate his account of the times. And he, in turn, occasionally confirms their accounts of the beauty that still remained in life, by his glimpses of Provence, with its pleasant country life and rich harvests—“the one corner where the Roman power still lives.”
As we have seen, Salvian wrote “as one having authority.” That he had earned
the right to speak is fully proved by the chief
Salvian, presbyter of Marseilles, learned in human and divine letters, and,
if I may apply the title to him, master of bishops, wrote many books in a clear
and scholarly style. Of these I have read the following: four books addressed
to Marcellus the presbyter, On the Value of Virginity, and four Against
Avarice; five books On the Present Judgment, and one book For
the Satisfaction of These [Sins], addressed to Salonius the
bishop; one book in exposition of the last part of Ecclesiastes, addressed to
Claudius, bishop of Vienne; one book of letters; one book composed in verse
as a Hexameron after the Greek fashion, from the beginning of Genesis
to the creation of man; many homilies written for bishops; and on the sacraments,
books whose number I do not recall. He still lives today in a goodly old age. Gennadius, Catalogus virorum illustrium,
c.68; written about A.D. 490-495.
Salvian’s other names we do not know, due chiefly to the fact that fifth century
etiquette forbade the use of more than one name in friendly correspondence, See Symmachus Ep. II. 35. These
unfounded claims have a curious echo in the statement of a recent writer that
Salvian was “priest and probably bishop.” Holland, “The Crash of Empire,”
Dublin Review, CLXXVII (1925), 2.
Many have called him by another title, which in its present meaning we cannot
claim for him, but which he rightfully enjoyed in its fifth century use.
Sanctus
to him, as to all other Christians, before it seemed necessary to determine
fixed categories for the communion of saints, meant a devout Christian. The word
was applied to him by contemporaries, and recurs so often in his books that it is
small wonder that many of his editors have informally canonized him, others have
become involved in learned arguments to deprive him of sainthood, See, for example, the notes of Baluze,
Salviani opera (1742), p. 356. He regularly appears as “Saint Salvianus” in
the catalogue entries in the Harvard College Library.
Of his personal life we know little, though he contributes so much to our knowledge
of the general circumstances of his time. Gennadius described him in the last decade
of the fifth century as still living bona senectute. It is not possible for
us to fix the exact date of his birth, but the wide experience and ripe wisdom shown
in his treatise On the Government of God indicate at least that he had reached
maturity some time before it was written. As this book was evidently composed between
A.D. 439 and 450, it is natural to assume that he was born late in the fourth century
or early in the fifth. See Zschimmer, Salvianus (Halle, 1875),
p. 6. Paulinus of Pella, Eucharisticos, 11.520-521.
The place of Salvian’s birth has been much disputed. Some early editors assumed
that he was born in Africa—an assumption not unnatural in view of his graphic
description of the sins and the ruin of that province. See Book VII. 12-13 and note 44, infra.
His knowledge of Africa and his concern for it may be amply accounted for by
its recent tragic history and also by the prominence of the African church. The
Christian writers whose work chiefly influenced his were all connected with the
African church except those whom he knew at Lérins and Marseilles. He may well have
travelled in Africa.
Trèves was the place of all others in the western world where he could best have
studied the fatal magnificence of the higher Roman officials in the face of the
barbarian attacks. The praetorian prefect of the Gallic and Spanish provinces kept
his official residence there in such state as Constantius the emperor had scarcely
equalled when he fixed his capital in that city a century earlier. There Salvian
must have watched with growing anxiety the increasing power of the Franks. The author
of the twelfth century Gesta Treverorum tells us that they had conceived
a special hostility for this most splendid of Gallic cities from the time of their
first contact with it. This district also afforded excellent opportunities to observe
the increasing ravages of Goths, Vandals and Burgundians. The great amphitheater
of Trèves was the scene of many of those public spectacles against which Salvian
inveighed so bitterly, and Gesta Treverorum, ed. Waitz, MGH,
Scriptores, VIII, 157. Ep. 1. 5.
His knowledge of law was far more detailed, and his writings furnish a valuable
commentary on the Roman Codices, which in their turn serve as a check on
his statements. Rittershausen concluded that he had had regular legal training;
certainly he had a legal mind, and legal phraseology recurs constantly in his
See Book III. 10.
It seems probable that he himself was brought up in the orthodox faith; at
least he shows little of that bitterness toward pagans and heretics that recent
converts are wont to feel. For those who called themselves Christians but continued
heathen practices, however, his antipathy was very strong. His wife, Palladia, had
been brought up in paganism, but her parents, Hypatius and Quieta, seem to have
made no objection to the marriage. Later, however, they were alienated by the decision
of Salvian and Palladia to follow a course which was being adopted by many other
Christian couples. Unable either to endure Roman society as they found it, or to
reform it from within, they determined to give their property to the church, and
live no longer as man and wife, but as brother and sister in Christian fellowship.
Paulinus of Nola, the one contemporary to whose example Salvian clearly alludes, See Book VII. 3 and note 6. Paulinus of Nola Carmen XI. 11. 49-68,
in CSEL, XXX. 2.
After an estrangement from their parents that lasted nearly seven years, Salvian,
Palladia and the little daughter Auspiciola tried once more to effect a reconciliation.
Their letter, Ep. IV.
Of the issue of their suit we know nothing. They had withdrawn from the vicinity
of Trèves, probably shortly after that destruction of the city which Salvian saw
with his own eyes, and so graphically described. Book VI. 13. See Haemmerle, Studia Salviana I (Landshut,
1893), 7.
Lérins was that “earthly paradise” Vita S. Hilarii Arelatensis, 5 (Migne,
PL, L, col. 1226). Eucherius, in a letter to his son Salonius
prefaced to his Instructiones de quaestionibus difficilioribus veteris ac novi
testamenti (CSEL, XXXI. 1, pp. 65-66), recalling his sons’ teaching, wrote:
“When you had scarcely reached the age of ten, you entered the monastery and were
not only given training among that sacred brotherhood, but were reared up under
our father Honoratus, first father of the islands and afterwards also master of
the churches. There the teachings of the most blessed Hilarius, then a novice of
the island, but now a most reverend bishop, formed you in all branches of spiritual
study; a work completed by saints Salvian and Vincent, preëminent alike in eloquence
and knowledge.” Cooper-Marsdin, The History of the Islands
of the Lérins (Cambridge, 1913), p. 49.
Honoratus was abbot at Lérins in Salvian’s time and was called by Eucherius “master
of bishops, doctor of the churches,” being thus the prototype of Salvian. Shortly
after A.D. 429, Hilarius of Aries preached at Marseilles a sermon on the life of
Honoratus, in which he quoted from the writings of “a man of not unmerited distinction,
and most blessed in Christ, Salvian the presbyter, one of Honoratus’ dear associates.” Hilarius, Sermo de vita S. Honorati Arelatensis
(Migne, PL, L, col. 1260) : the passage which he quotes is not found in Salvian’s
extant works.
The years at Lérins must have exerted great influence on the development of Salvian’s thought and style. The close fellowship between the monks of the island is constantly demonstrated by likenesses of ideas and phrasing in the writings of the many great men who there received their early training. Parts of the homilies of Caesarius of Aries, of Valerius and Hilarius bear striking resemblances to passages in Salvian’s work. Vincent’s Commonitorium has been appropriately included in many editions of Salvian, thus continuing their ancient fellowship. The book On the Government of God, as well as a lost work, was dedicated to Salonius, whom Salvian addressed in his ninth letter as “master and most blessed pupil, father, and son, pupil by instruction, son by affection, and father by rank and honor.”
The life of Caesarius of Aries throws some light on the statement that Salvian composed many homilies for bishops. We read of Caesarius that:
He composed also appropriate sermons for feast days and other occasions, and
sermons against the evils of drunkenness and lust, against discord and hatred, against
anger and pride, against sacrilegious men and soothsayers, against pagan rites,
against augurs, the worshippers of woods and of springs, and against the vices of
divers men. He so prepared these homilies that if any visitors asked, far from refusing
to loan them, he offered them for copying at the slightest suggestion of a request,
and himself corrected them. He sent copies by priests to men far distant in the
Frankish land, in Gaul, Italy and Spain and divers provinces, to be preached in
their churches, that, casting aside frivolous and transitory interests, they might,
as the apostle preached, become followers of good works. Cyprianus Vita S. Caesarii I. 5. 42
(Migne, PL, LXVII, col. 1021).
Gennadius’ emphasis on the homilies of Salvian suggests that their composition may have been one of the major preoccupations of his life in Marseilles, and a chief ground for his title of “master of bishops.” That many of his sermons took the form of invectives against the vices of his day may be assumed from the extant books Against Avarice and On the Government of God. Both of these, indeed, have the air of having been compiled from actual sermons. The congregation is clearly visualized, which may account for the frequent use of the second person, and of a vivid colloquial tone.
That his attacks on the weaknesses of his contemporaries caused him serious difficulties
is indicated by his constant reiteration that his words are sure to give offence
to many, but even so they must be said. Larinus Amatius said in his eulogy of Salvian:
“For if wrath engenders hatred among all men, and begets it especially among the
wicked, who was ever more hated for the truth than Salvian, since no one ever set
forth more truths than he?” Salviani opera (Venice, 1696), p. 3.
From the time of his removal to Marseilles, all that we know of Salvian’s life
is summed up in Gennadius’ account. The few extant letters are chiefly of value
for the glimpses they afford of his regard for the deference due to those of higher
rank in the church, and their evidence of his continuing association with his former
friends and pupils at Lérins. An example is his letter to Eucherius, thanking him
for a copy of his Instructions on the More Difficult Questions of the Old and
New Testament, Ep. 8; cf. note 21, supra.
Gennadius’ list shows that, while much of Salvian’s work has been lost, the books
that remain are probably the most individual and the most interesting to us. The
writings of several other early Christians present such titles as On the Value
of Virginity, A Book in Exposition of the Last Part of Ecclesiastes, and books
On the Sacraments. One title is obscure, the book to Salonius Pro eorum
merito satisfactionis, or Pro eorum praemio satisfaciendo. The variants
in the text of Gennadius indicate that the obscurity is of long standing in the
manuscript tradition. In my translation I have followed Ebert’s conjecture of
peccatorum for eorum, which at least makes possible a conjectural translation
of the title—For the Satisfaction of These Sins, Brakman suggests reading Pro reorum merito
satisfactionis librum unum, which seems textually reasonable. He interprets
this title as meaning a “book teaching how praiseworthy are sinners who atone for
their sins to the satisfaction of God.” Gennadius’ account of Cassian’s
works contains one De satisfactione paenitentiae, which is a simpler statement
of the same subject. Mnemosyne, LII (1924), p. 181.
Of the homilies written for bishops, and the influence of sermon writing on Salvian’s
general style, I have already spoken. It is possible, as Peter Allix suggested,
that the anonymous poem on Genesis formerly ascribed to Tertullian may be part of
the lost Hexameron of Salvian; the poem is, however, of slight importance,
and its identification as the work of our author would be chiefly valuable as an
indication of his wisdom in not publishing other verses. See Peter Allix, “Dissertatio de Tertulliani
vita et scriptis,” in Oehler, Tertullianus, III (Leipzig, 1853), 76.
Like the Government of God, the invective Against Avarice was written
because of Salvian’s deep conviction of the dangers inherent in the persistent vices
of men who called themselves Christians. Avarice was a besetting sin of many Romans,
and had infected not only members of the church, but its clergy, even to the bishops
themselves. The resultant neglect of the true service of God, and of the spiritual
and material welfare of the church, led Salvian to “burst forth into words of lamentation”
addressed to the church to which the offenders belonged. His failure to attach his
own name to the book he explained not only by his desire to avoid vain glory in
a service to God, but also by his conviction that the obscurity of his name might
detract from the influence of his words. The pseudonym Timotheus (“Honoring God”)
was chosen to indicate the motive of the work: “Indeed, the writer thought it fitting
that, writing his books for the honor of God, he should consecrate the title to
his divine honor.” Ep. IX. 20.
In spite of this letter, and of Gennadius’ ascription of the work to Salvian, its anonymity was preserved in modern times, for it was published by Sichardus at Fol near Basel in 1528 as. the work of Bishop Timotheus, in a collection entitled An Antidote against the Heresies of All Ages.
While no one who reads the treatise Against Avarice can doubt the sincerity
and depth of feeling with which it was written, the work is a curious document of
the times. Avarice was considered one of the deadly sins. But it is hard now to
avoid seeing some self-interest on the part of the church in the constant exhortations
to the rich to give all their goods to the church in order to win remission of their
sins. In its simplest form, this is the admonition of Christ to the rich young man:
as it is elaborated to produce a surer conviction in the minds of fifth century
Midases it is perilously Zschimmer, pp. 77-79. Geschichte der römischen Literatur
(6th ed., Leipzig, 1913), III, 465.
That this work was written before the completion of the treatise On the Government
of God is shown by the quotation from it in the latter; it may with some probability
be assigned to the years 435-439. See H. K. Messenger, De temporum et modorum
apud Salvianum usu, Preface, p. 1. The quotation occurs in Book IV. 1. Valran,
Quare Salvianus magister episcoporum dictus sit (Paris, 1899), p. 5, suggests
that the two works may have been composed during the same period.
All human work is unworthy in comparison with the future glory. So nothing ought to seem hard and austere to Christians, because whatever they offer to Christ is in return for eternal blessings; what is given is vile when that which is received is so great. Nothing great is paid to God by men on earth, in comparison with the supreme gift of heaven. It is hard for misers to lavish their wealth. What is strange in this? Everything is hard that is demanded of the unwilling. Almost every divine word arouses animosity—there are as many hostile schools as there are teachers.
If the Lord orders men to be generous, the miser is angry; if he exacts parsimony, the prodigal curses. The wicked consider the sacred speeches their enemies; robbers shudder at what is written about justice, the proud at precepts of humility; the drunken oppose the request for sobriety and the shameless the command of chastity. So we must either say nothing, or expect that whatever is said will displease one man or another. Any wicked man would rather execrate the law than amend his character; he would rather hate precepts than vices.
Meanwhile, what do those men do who have been given by Christ the duty of
speaking? They displease God if they are silent, men if they speak. But, as
the apostles said to the Jews, it is better to obey God than man. This is the
advice I offer to all to whom the law of God seems heavy and onerous, even if
they do not entirely refuse to receive it, in order that those things may please
them, which God ordains. All who hate the sacred commandments have the cause
of their hatred within themselves. Every man’s dislike of the law is due not
to its precepts, but to his own life; the law indeed is good, but his habits
are bad. So men should change their attitude and their point of view. If they
make their habits worthy of approbation, nothing that the good law enjoins will
displease them. For when a man has begun to be good, he cannot fail to love
the law of God, which has within it that which holy men have in their lives. Ad ecclesiam IV. 9.
The work on which for us the real interest of Salvian’s life and thought depends,
is that which Gennadius cited as five books On the Present Judgment, but
which the manuscripts offer us as eight books On the Government of God. In
this treatise Salvian discusses the defeat of Litorius in A.D. 439, but fails to
mention the Vandal sack of Rome in 455, which must have profoundly impressed him.
In view of the description he gives of the Vandal capture of Carthage, he would
scarcely have omitted their raid on Rome. So we may reasonably suppose that the
book was published between A.D. 439 and 455. We may probably limit the period somewhat
more by the assumption that the great battle between the Romans and the Huns would
have been mentioned if the treatise had been finished after 451. The argument from
silence is less dangerous
It is evident that only the third and fifth books mark distinct developments
in the argument. Some claim that elsewhere the division into books is purely arbitrary
and does not betray any set intention on the part of the author. Since Gennadius
speaks of five, and not eight books it has been assumed that a new
division was made, perhaps as a matter of scribal convenience, after Gennadius wrote.
Brakman, however, suggested with some plausibility that Gennadius may actually have
written VIII, and a scribe mis-copied the letters as IIIII, which would be a natural
error, if the V were imperfect. And the length of the individual books varies
too much for a purely arbitrary division, whereas some case can be made out for
the logic of the present arrangement. “Appendix de Gennadii capite lxviii,” Mnemosyne,
LII (1924), 180.
For the modern reader the chief interest of Salvian’s work lies in the description
of the life of the times in his later books. The careful building up of the evidence
of the sacred authorities for God’s judgment of the world seems tedious and repetitious.
We are inclined to rebel at the constant reference to authority in the first three
books. It is not unnatural to prefer the Old Testament itself to Salvian’s reworking
of the same themes with abundance of quotation. The cento is no longer a favored
literary form, and overabundant quotation, at least when openly acknowledged, is
out of favor. Few of us are likely to be in the position of the men of the fifth
century who found it difficult to choose among various poor renderings of the Old
Testament, since Jerome’s version was just beginning to make its way into Gaul,
or to procure a complete copy even if the initial obstacle of choice were overcome.
The
But to avoid the risk of tedium by omitting the first three books is to lose
much of the essence of the work, and of the fifth-century manner of thought. Salvian
wrote not for us, but for his contemporaries. Historically, therefore, it is of
value to note how he built up his demonstration of a fundamental principle—God’s constant government and immediate judgment of his people. Not only pagans,
but men who called themselves Christians, were led by a faulty reading of their
times to question this tenet of the Christian faith. The Christians must be made
to realize that such doubts were directly contradictory to the testimony of the
Bible on which their faith rested. Hence the full evidence of the Scriptures was
brought into court before the witness of contemporary life was summoned. It is futile
to say that Salvian was merely attempting to prove God’s judgment by reiterating
his statement that God constantly sees and judges his people, or, as some put it,
that he cites the authority of the Scriptures in support of that authority. There
is no indication that his opponents had questioned the authority of the Biblical
narrative. They had, indeed, questioned a fundamental doctrine of Christianity,
having what would appear to be good reason for such doubts in the distress into
which they, though a Christian people, had fallen. The validity of their estimate
of God’s injustice to themselves was a secondary matter to Salvian. The first necessity
was to remind them that their doubts as to God’s complete and immediate justice
in the governance of the world were constantly disproved by the scriptural authority.
Like Augustine, Salvian was distressed by the “false opinion held by many” in
his time, that the contrast between the poverty and captivity of the Christian Roman
Empire and the prosperous domination of pagan Rome proved that God neither cared
for the world he had created nor governed and judged it, except by a judgment too
far in the future to afford any present satisfaction to the just or fear to the
wicked. Such attacks on Christianity Augustine had answered by his contrast, a generation
earlier, between the ephemeral city of this world and the eternal City of God. Another
portion of his answer had been assigned to Orosius, who undertook in his History
against the Pagans to prove that the evils into which the Christian Roman Empire
had fallen were less than those of past and pagan generations. He even dared to
remind his readers that the most glorious conquests of Rome had afforded far greater
misery, disgrace and suffering to her defeated enemies than the Romans themselves
now suffered, and to prophesy that those who now seemed barbarous destroyers of
a mighty empire would some day be honored as heroes of the nations they were founding.
Orosius’ minimizing of Rome’s dangers was possible, though
somewhat
See Book VI. 12-13.
Salvian’s own home in the Rhineland had been several times ravaged by the
Franks. The success of Aetius in checking disintegration during the years of his
leadership seemed due in no small part to his shrewdness in alliances and his discretion
in granting favorable terms to the Goths and Vandals for security against an aggression
with which he might not be able to cope directly. His success was more than once
endangered by the lack of prudence and coöperation among his subordinates. Book VII. 9-10.
Rome herself opened her gates to fur-clad satellites, Rutilius Namatianus De reditu suo II.
11. 49-50.
And was captive ere her capture.
Everywhere the growing disproportion between the expenses and the income of the
Empire led to taxation that would have been 38
Salvian’s sympathies for the poor and oppressed were very great, the greater because he had himself become poor, though oppression could not touch him personally in any respect for which he now cared. From his new point of view, the good men in the upper orders at Rome were too few to count. The best of those who still lived in the world were very far from following the teachings of Christ. That poor men and slaves might be quite as wicked as the rich, if a sudden access of fortune made it possible, did not alter the reality of the oppression they suffered. That lack of a sturdy middle class, the importance of which during the period of decline of the Roman power Rostovtzeff has so vividly emphasized, is abundantly illustrated in Salvian’s curious picture of the society of his time.
He undertook, at a time when the task was as difficult as at any period of the
world’s history, to justify the ways of God to man, to prove his constant government
of the world and his immediate judgment. This involved the proof not only that the
orthodox Romans deserved their misfortunes, but that the pagan and heretic
It is inappropriate to judge the proofs that Salvian gives of the just judgment
of God in the light of rational argument or historical criticism. He himself carefully
denned his audience; his words were addressed to Christian Romans, not to pagans,
heretics or barbarians. “For if I am addressing Christians, I do not doubt that
I shall prove my case. But if I speak to pagans, I should scorn the attempt, not
for any shortage of proofs, but because I despair of any profit in my discourse.
Surely it is fruitless and lost labor, when a perverted listener is not open to
conviction.” Book III. 1.
Christianity and rationalism were to him inconsistent and mutually exclusive
terms: “I am a man, I do not understand the secrets of God.” Ibid. Bury, in his appendix to Gibbon (The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire [London, 1901], III, 490), says: “So far as Salvian’s arguments
are concerned, there is nothing to add to Gibbon’s criticism (ch. xxxv, note 12)
that ‘Salvian has attempted to explain the moral government of the Deity; a task
which may be readily performed by supposing that the calamities of the wicked are
judgments, and those of the righteous trials.’ “I cannot feel that
this is a true summary of the case. Granted that Salvian wrote in complete acceptance
of the Christian faith and of scriptural authority, he has accomplished his purpose
very definitely; that we may not be convinced by the same means may be our
loss or our gain, according to the point of view, but can hardly affect his success;
it would seem likely that his discussion had a favorable effect in encouraging those
for whom it was written. A full discussion of Salvian’s theology will be found in
G. Bruni, Un apologista della Provvidenza (Rome, 1925).
The first two books formed the foundation for the whole, following Lactantius
closely in form and drawing most of their non-Biblical citations from him. This
preliminary portion of the work is largely homiletic in character, demonstrating
the government and judgment of God by examples drawn from the earlier books of the
Old Testament, and by “testimonies” from the Bible as a whole. In the third book
Salvian definitely undertook to answer the question “why we Christians, who believe
in God, are more wretched than all other men.” The answer in various forms occupied
the rest of his work, which became more and more a study of contemporary society
and events as he proceeded. For he saw the calamities and disasters of the world
as God’s judgments on the gross immorality of the Roman people. Not only were the
triumphant barbarians less wicked than the Romans, but, being either pagans or heretics,
they deserved indulgence for sins committed in ignorance, not in full knowledge
of the Christian law. As Matter ably pointed out, Salvian’s indictment of the Christians
furnished plentiful material to the pagans for attacks on Christianity, Histoire universelle de l’Eglise chrétienne,
I, 455. Paulinus of Pella, Eucharisticos. Poema coniugis ad uxorem (Migne, PL,
LI, coll. 611-615); Carmen de providentia divina (Ibid., 617-638).
Augustine had employed the same argument in his Sermo de tempore barbarico, a brief homily very closely akin to Salvian’s book, and with the same conclusion: the calamities of the world were due to the wrath of God, warning us that we should not neglect atonement for our sins. The theme is not infrequent elsewhere.
In his books Against Avarice Salvian dwelt constantly on the need of repentance
and charity because of the imminent danger
The violence of his feeling made him no respecter of persons; in spite of his
avowed desire to consider the priests of God as above reproach, he is so bitter
in his denunciations of wickedness within the church that Bellarmine said of him:
“His exaggeration of the vices of Christians and especially of the clergy of his
time would seem excessive, did his words not proceed from true zeal for the glory
of God and the salvation of souls.” De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (Brussels, 1719), p. 168. Bibliothèque choisie des Pères (Louvain,
1832), XXIV, 118.
Salvian’s irony is very marked, especially in the treatise Against Avarice.
The abbé de la Rue, in one of his Lenten sermons, followed a quotation from
Saivian by the words: “Voilà l’ironie de Salvien, mais discrète et
charitable.” Quoted by Guillon, op. cit., p. 203,
from de la Rue, Carême, II, 418. See H. K. Messenger, op. cit., sec.
48, and Book VIII. 5.
Salvian’s style justifies the praise of Gennadius. While it is not altogether
free from the faults of the rhetorical taste of his time, it is never obscure and
rarely overburdened. In his preface he stressed the importance of subject matter
as compared with style, and declared that his work was meant to be salutary rather
than eloquent. This emphasis on content rather than form did not produce crudeness
but served in general as a controlling element against the excesses of the rhetorician.
He is fond of antithesis, of figures of speech and series of balanced phrases; he
has a marked predilection for alliteration, assonance and rhyme, fostered by his
love of plays on words. See Wölfflin, “Allitteration und Reim bei Salvian,” Archiv für lat. Lexikographie, XIII (1902-4), 41-49. For example, Book VIII. 1. Grégoire et Collombet, Oeuvres de Salvien
(Paris, 1833), Introd., p. lix: Scaligerana (Amsterdam, 1740), p. 544.
Salvian’s vocabulary was the source of much discussion among
A recent thorough study of his use of moods and tenses resulted in the conclusion
that, in spite of frequent departures from the pure classical norm, Salvian cannot
be accused of negligence or lack of skill; that he followed fixed rules, though
not always those of the best classical Latinity. H. K. Messenger, op. cit.
A very large proportion of his material is drawn from the Bible or from his own
and contemporary experience. Aside from his direct and purposed use of Lactantius
in the first two books Zschimmer, pp. 61 ff.
The result of his method of allusion is very satisfactory; classical reminiscences
are readily apparent to the reader with a well stocked mind, but do not intrude
themselves on the less informed, to distract his attention from the argument. Nor
was there any risk of seeming to set pagan writers on a level with biblical authority.
The frequent biblical quotations are drawn most commonly from the old Itala
versions, but Salvian also used the translation of Jerome occasionally; indeed,
with his friend Eucherius he was among the first of the Christian writers in Gaul
to employ the new text. Fr. Kaulen, Geschichte der Vulgata
(Mayence, 1868), p. 197. The paper of Ulrich, De Salviani scripturae sacrae versionibus,
Neostadii ad H., 1892, I have not been able to consult.
Schoenemann distinguished three ages in the editions of Salvian; Bibliotheca historico-literaria Patrum,
II (Leipzig 1794), 826. Yet such is the infrequency of the present
demand for editions of Salvian, that Pithou’s original edition could be had recently
at a lower price than obscure editions with better bindings.
In the third period, as Schoenemann says, solus regnat Baluzius. Stephen
Baluze published his first edition of Salvian’s works together with the Commonitorium
of Vincent of Lérins in 1663, and this rapidly superseded the earlier editions.
Using the tenth century manuscript of Corbie (Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS Lat. 13385),
by
Here end Schoenemann’s three ages; but as far as the text is concerned, Baluze
has been dethroned in our present age, first by Halm in 1877 and then by Pauly in
1883. C. Halm, Salviani presbyteri Massiliensis
libri qui supersunt, MGH, Auctores Antiquissimi, I, 1, Berlin, 1877:
Fr. Pauly, Salviani presbyteri Massiliensis opera quae supersunt, CSEL, VIII,
Vienna 1883. I have used Pauly’s text throughout, except for occasional emendations
proposed by H. K. Messenger, De temporum et modorum apud Salvianum usu. For additions to the editions cited above,
see G. Bruni, Un apologista della Provvidenza (Rome, 1925), 68-79, or Schoenemann,
op. cit., pp. 825-833, reprinted in Migne, PL, LIII, cols. 13-24. For translations
see also Ceillier, Histoire générale des auteurs sacrés, XV (Paris, 1748),
p. 81, and Gregoire et Collombet, Introd. pp. lxiii-lxvii. The most useful of the
translations are: S. Carlo Borromeo, Libro di Salviano Vescovo di Marsiglia contra
gli Spettacoli ed altre Vanità del Mondo, Milan, 1579; Père Bonnet, Nouvelle
Traduction des Oeuvres de Salvien, et du Traité de Vincent de Lérins contre les
Hérésies, Paris, 1700; P. P. Grégoire et F. Z. Collombet, Oeuvres de Salvien,
Paris, 1833; A. Helf, Des Salvianus acht Bücher über die göttliche Regierung,
Kempten, 1877. In English, a part of the sixth book appeared in 1580 as “a second
blast of retrait from places and theaters”; a translation of the whole work which
I have been unable to consult, was published at London in 1700.
When Brassicanus published his first edition of Salvian’s treatise On the
Government of God, he found ready applause for his achievement in rescuing so
great a work from the dust and spider webs of a thousand years; the occasion was
a fitting one for those
Once printed, however, Salvian’s works enjoyed great popularity. Jurists, including
Sirmond, Cujas, Godefroi and Rittershausen, whose notes on Salvian are packed with
legal references, consulted his books and cited them extensively in their studies
of the Roman codes. The French clergy during four centuries found that he furnished
material so appropriate to the personal vices and social disorders of their own
times that they emulated the earlier bishops of Gaul in preaching Salvian’s sermons
instead of writing their own. Guillon, op. cit., cites Bossuet, Le
Jeune, Joli, Massillon, Saurin, Cheminais, de la Rue and others as having made extensive
use of Salvian. Grégoire and Collombet in their notes cite long passages from the
sermons of de la Rue which are taken bodily from Salvian’s works. Indeed,
Guillon says he “has transported them almost entire into his sermons” (p. 143). A. Helf, Des Salvianus acht Bücher über
die Göttliche Regierung (Kempten, 1877), p. 13. Cited among the elogia in Rittershausen’s
edition. Salvianus, p. 54, note 1.
That this neglect has been a distinct loss to students of the later days of the
Roman power in the west, will, I trust, be apparent even to those who make their
acquaintance with Salvian through the medium of a translation. Since, however, a
study of his works inevitably engenders the habit of reference to “authority,” I
shall not leave our author without this support. Know, then, that Pierre Pithou
called Salvian “a most excellent author,” Joseph Scaliger named him “the most Christian
writer.” Rittershausen, one of the most enthusiastic of editors, considered his
opinions not only wholesome and holy, Sanas et sanctas, the alliteration
lawfully born of much reading of Salvian.
Practically all men who have chosen some form of literary composition as a fitting
expression of their native genius have taken especial pains, whether they were writing
of useful and worthy matters, or of useless and unworthy, to lighten the order of
their discourse by the brilliance of their language and to illumine by their style
the questions under discussion. It is to style therefore that the majority of writers
on secular topics, whether in prose or verse, have paid most attention, not considering
sufficiently the necessity of choosing subjects worthy of approbation, provided
that whatever they said was either chanted in smooth and elegant verse, or narrated
in distinguished prose. As is usually the case with writers trained in
the later Roman rhetorical schools, Salvian’s disclaimer of any interest in rhetorical
style leads him to use an elaborate phraseology in his preface, somewhat at variance
with his usual simpler and more colloquial style.
These authors have sought their own ends, and looking toward their individual
praise rather than the benefit of others have not tried to be considered salutary
and helpful, but rhetorical and eloquent. Therefore their writings are swollen with
vanity, infamous for their falsehood, smeared with filth, or vicious because of
their obscene subjects. Trafficking in such unworthy fashion to purchase praise
for ingenuity seems to me less a glorification than a condemnation of one’s genius.
Since we, on the other hand, are lovers of deeds rather than words, See Seneca De tranquillitate vitae I.
1, and IV. 1, infra. In these notes, references without title are to Salvian,
De gubernatione Dei (On the Government of God):
Ad ecclesiamrefers to the treatise To the Church against Avarice; Ep. to the Letters.
It is not, then, for vain and worldly adornments that we solicit praise, but for salutary prescriptions. Our writings, trifling though they are, shall present no vain lures but actual remedies, calculated not to please idle ears but to benefit the minds of the sick. So do we hope to gain our full reward from heaven.
Now if this healing grace of ours cures the unfavorable opinion of our God held by certain men, it will be no small reward that I have thus aided many. But if no such benefit accrues, the very fact that I have tried to be of service may not be unfruitful. For a mind devoted to a good work and a charitable aim, though it has not achieved full success in its undertaking, is still rewarded for its good intent. At this point then I shall begin.
1. By certain men God is said to be careless and neglectful of human actions, on the ground that he neither protects good men nor restrains the wicked; and they claim that this is why at the present time the good are generally wretched and the wicked happy. Since we are dealing with Christians the Holy Scriptures alone should be sufficient to refute this charge. The many who are still somewhat infected by pagan unbelief may perhaps be convinced by the testimony of the greatest pagan philosophers. Let us, then, prove that not even these men had any conception of a God careless and neglectful of the world, though they had no means of really knowing God, since they were outside the true faith and were ignorant of the law through which he is apprehended.
Pythagoras the philosopher, whom Philosophy herself regarded as her master, said
in his discourse on the nature and beneficent works of God: “The Soul moves to and
fro and is diffused through all parts of the world, and from it all living creatures
receive their life. . . .” See Cicero De natura deorum I. 11. 27.
Salvian, however, cited the passage from Lactantius Institutiones divinae
I. 5. 17. The best discussion of Salvian’s borrowings from Lactantius will be found
in Zschimmer, Salvianus und seine Schriften, p. 62.
How then can God be said to neglect the world for which he so far shows his love
that he extends his own being through its whole mass? Plato and all the Platonic
school confess that God is the controller of all things. The Stoics testify that
he remains always as steersman within that which he guides. What truer or more religious
conception could they have had of the loving care of God than this comparison with
a helmsman? For they clearly understood that as the helmsman never takes his hand
from the tiller, so God Quoted by Lactantius op. cit. I. 5. 12 from Vergil Georgics IV. 221-222. Ibid. I. 5. 25, quoted from. Cicero
Disputationes Tusculanae I. 27. 66. Cited by Lactantius op. cit. I.
5. 24 as from Cicero De natura deorum, but the passage is not found there.
I have told you what men preeminent alike in philosophy and eloquence have thought
of the majesty and government of the most high God. Moreover, I have cited the noblest
masters of both these supreme arts expressly to facilitate my proof that all others
have either agreed, or, if they have disagreed, have done so without any authority.
And, in fact, I can find none who have differed from this
The early Christian attitude toward the Epicureans
was regularly hostile, in striking contrast to their ready recognition of the kinship
between the Stoic philosophy and Christianity. The Epicurean denial of any divine
government of the world was in itself sufficient to lead Salvian to condemn their
doctrines.
2. I do not think that we need also use the divine word to prove so obvious a case, especially since the sacred writings furnish such abundant and open refutation of all the claims of ungodly men that, in meeting those of their vile charges which follow, we shall be able to refute more fully those already mentioned. They say that God neglects us entirely, since he neither restrains the wicked nor protects the good, and therefore in this world the condition of the better men is substantially the worse. They contrast the poverty of good men with the wealth of the wicked, their weakness with the strength of the wicked, their constant grief with the others’ perpetual joy, their misery and mean estate with the honors and prosperity of sinners.
I wish at the outset to ask those who mourn this state of affairs, or base their
accusations on it, this one question: is their grief for the saints, that is, the
true and faithful Christians, or for the false impostors? If for the false, it is
a needless grief that mourns for the unhappiness of the wicked, since, to be sure,
all evil men are made worse by success in their undertakings, and rejoice at the
lucky turn of their folly. Yet they ought to be most wretched in order that they
may cease to be wicked, that they may cease to apply the name of religion to their
most evil gains and to bestow the title of sanctity on their sordid traffickings;
in such a case, indeed, a comparison of the misfortunes of sinners with their misdeeds
See Seneca De remediis fortuitorum XVI,
end: “The happy man is not he who seems such to others, but to himself.”
So those who are truly happy in their own estimation cannot be unhappy through
the false conception of any man; for none, I think, are more fortunate than those
who live and act according to their own determination and vows. Religious men are
lowly—they wish to be so; poor—they delight in poverty; without
ambition—they spurn it; unesteemed—they flee from honors; they mourn—but they seek
out occasion for mourning; they are weak—nay, they rejoice in weakness. For
the apostle said, “When I am weak, then am I strong.”
It is useless for us to bemoan this affliction of bodily illness, which we know
is the mother of strength. Therefore, whatever their sorrows may have been, any
who are truly religious should be called happy, since amid any hardships or difficulties
whatsoever none are happier than those who are what they wish to be. Although we
all know individuals whose aims are vile and shameful, who think themselves happy
in gaining their desires, yet in actual fact such men are not happy, because they
ought not to desire what A conception of the religious life common throughout
the Middle Ages, and mirroring for the saints in this life the future joys of paradise.
Compare the familiar line from the hymn of Peter Damiani: “Avidi et semper pleni, quod habent desiderant.” See Salvian Ad ecclesiam IV. 9. 49:
“Every command is hard that is given to unwilling men.”
Or are we perhaps to think that it was a burden to those ancient patterns of
virtue, the Fabii, Fabricii and Cincinnati, that they, who did not wish riches,
were poor? These were among the best-known examples of
early Roman virtue; cf. H. W. Litchfield, “National Exempla Virtutis in
Roman
Literature,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XXV (1914), 1-71. All
these are cited in Valerius Maximus IV. 3-4, as examples of abstinence, continence
and poverty, and were used by Christian writers from Augustine and Orosius to modern
times to illustrate the same virtues. The contrast between Roman and Greek ambition
which follows was also a commonplace before Salvian’s time, and has been since. See the story of Cornelius Rufinus in Valerius
Maximus II. 9. 4; Tertullian Apologeticum 6.
In those days, I think, men did not despise humble ways of life, when they wore only one short and shaggy garment, when they were summoned from the plow to the dictator’s fasces, and, on the point of winning fame in the consular robes, very likely wiped off their dusty sweat on those same imperial togas that they were about to don. In their time the magistrates were poor, but the state wealthy, whereas now the wealth of officials makes the state poor. What madness, I ask you, or what blindness, leads men to think that private fortunes can survive in the midst of the need and beggary of the state? Such were the ancient Romans; so they in their day scorned riches, though they knew not God, just as in ours men who follow the Lord still scorn them.
But why do I speak of those men who in their desire to extend the Roman power
turned their scorn of private means to the public enrichment, and while individually
poor still had abundance in the common wealth of the state? Even Greek philosophers
without any interest in public gain, through sheer greed of glory have been known
to strip themselves of almost all articles of common use, and, not content with
this, have exalted their creed to the lofty pinnacle of contempt of suffering and
death, saying that even in chains and punishment a wise man still is happy. A stock characteristic of the Stoic and the
Epicurean sage: cf. Seneca Epistulae morales lxvi. 18; Cicero Disputationes
Tusculanae II. 7. 17, De finibus 11. 27.
3. One of those of whom we complain said to a certain holy man who followed the true doctrine, that is, that God rules all things and tempers his governance and guidance according to his knowledge of human necessities: “Why then, I ask, are you yourself infirm?” His line of reasoning, I suppose, was as follows: “if God, as you think, rules everything in this present life, if he dispenses all fortunes, then how is it that a man whom I know to be a sinner is strong and healthy, whereas you, whose sanctity I do not question, are infirm?”
Who does not marvel at the depth of feeling of one who considers the merits and
virtues of a godly man worthy of such great recompense that he thinks they should
be rewarded in this present life by the fleshly strength of the body? I answer,
therefore, not in the name of any one saint but of them all: “Do you ask, then,
whoever you are, how it is that holy men come to be weak? My answer is brief: they
make themselves infirm for the express reason that if they are strong, they can
hardly be holy.” See Salvian Ep. V. 3: “Although I do
not think that even this infirmity of your earthly vessel has been harmful to you,
for its strength, as you know, is always hostile to the mind; so that I am right
in thinking you as much stronger now in spirit, as you have begun to be weaker in
the flesh.” In common with others of his time, Salvian
used the term “apostle” more loosely than we do now. See
It was not without insight that a certain author
Salvian, in Ep. V. 4, his letter to “sister Cattura,” in which he congratulates her not only on recovery from an illness but also on the illness itself, which had strengthened her soul at the expense of her body. See also note 14.
This, as I said, is the cause to which religious men ascribe their infirmities, and you, I think, can no longer deny its validity.
4. But perhaps they have, you say, other and greater sufferings, that is, they endure many hard and bitter trials in this life; they arc captured, tortured and butchered. That is true, but what are we to make of the fact that the prophets were led away into captivity and that the apostles also suffered torments? Surely we cannot doubt that God had the greatest concern for them, since it was for God that they bore these afflictions. But perhaps you claim this as an additional proof that God neglects everything that happens in this life and reserves his whole care for the judgment to come, since the good have always suffered, as the wicked have performed, all things evil. This idea does not seem to be that of an unbeliever, especially as it admits the future judgment of God. But we say that the human race is to be judged by Christ, while yet maintaining that now also God rules and ordains all things in accordance with his reason. While we declare that he will judge in the future, we also teach that he always has judged us in this life. As God always governs, so too he always judges, for his government is itself judgment.
In how many ways do you wish this proved, by reason, or by examples, or by authorities?
If you wish it proved by reason, who is so lacking in ordinary human intelligence
and so utterly averse to the truth of which we speak, that he does not recognize
and see that the surpassing beauty of the created world, the inestimable grandeur
of the heavens above and of the regions below are ruled by the same power that created
them? He who devised their elements will himself be their governor. He will guide
all things by a providence and reason consistent with the majestic power by which
he founded them. And certainly, since even in those matters that are conducted by
human activity, absolutely nothing exists without reason, and all things derive
their security from providence, even as the body derives its life from the soul;
so in this world not only
But, you suggest, in the beginning the governance of his creatures was so determined and arranged by God; yet after he had formed and perfected the whole scheme of things, he abdicated, and renounced the administration of earthly matters. I suppose you mean to imply that he fled from the idea of toil and repudiated it, that he sought to avoid the annoyance of constant effort. Or was it that, occupied with other business, he abandoned a part of his affairs, since he could not attend to the whole?
5. God then puts far from himself, you say, all thought of mortal men. In that case what rational ground is there for our belief in his divinity? What reason is there for worshipping Christ, or what hope of winning his favor? For if God in this life neglects the human race, why do we daily stretch out our hands toward heaven? Why do we pray so often for the mercy of God? Why do we hasten to the churches? Why kneel in prayer before the altars? There is no reason for praying if the hope of an answer to prayer is taken from us. You see what vain folly lies in the urging of this idea; truly, if it is accepted, nothing at all remains of our religion. But perhaps you take refuge in the argument that we honor God in the fear of a future judgment, and perform all the ritual of our daily worship to gain absolution on the judgment day hereafter. In that case, what was the meaning of the daily preaching of Paul the apostle in the church, and his command that we offer constantly to God our prayers, our entreaties, our requests and our thanksgivings?
What is the purpose of all this? What else than, as he himself says, “that we
may live a quiet and peaceable life in all chastity?”
Perhaps, to the end that the modesty of the request may win favor for the voice of the petitioner, we should rather pray thus: “Lord, we do not seek prosperity in this life, nor beseech you for immediate favors, for we know that your ears are closed to such petitions and that you do not listen to such prayers, but we ask only for those favors that shall be granted us after our death.”
Granted that such a petition is not without value, on what rational basis does it rest? For if God is without interest in this life, and closes his ears to the prayers of his suppliants, then doubtless he who does not hear our present pleas is deaf also to our prayers for the future. Are we to believe that Christ listens or denies his attention according to the diverse nature of our prayers, that lie closes his ears when we ask for present boons, and opens them when we ask for blessings to come? But enough of this. The arguments are so stupid and frivolous that one needs to beware lest what is said for the honor of God seem injurious to him. For so great and terrible is the reverence due to his sacred majesty that we should not only shudder at the arguments of our opponents, but should also make our defence of religion with due fear and circumspection.
If, therefore, it is stupid and impious to believe that the divine love despises
the care of human affairs, then God does not despise
6. Perhaps some one may think a proof too insecure that rests on reason alone without the support of authority. Let us see how God has ruled the world from the beginning; for by demonstrating that he has always ruled the universe, we shall prove that he has at the same time exercised judgment.
What is the testimony of the Scriptures? “Therefore God formed man of clay and
breathed into him the breath of life.” And what followed? “He placed him in a paradise
of pleasure.”
What of the second, the son? “In process of time it came to pass,” say the Holy
Scriptures, “that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.
And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.
And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and his offering
he had not respect.”
Before I speak of the more obvious judgment of God, I think that even in the
account just given there is a certain indication of
Whence I think he had this same idea that is now so prevalent, that God does not behold things done on earth and does not see any of the acts of wicked men. Nor is there any doubt of this, since, when he was admitted to speech with God after the commission of his crime, he answered that he knew nothing of his brother’s death. He was so sure of God’s ignorance of his deed, that he thought the most deadly wrong could be hidden by a mere lie.
But the event proved other than he anticipated. For though he thought his fratricide unseen by God, his condemnation taught him that God had seen. I now have one question to ask of those who deny that human affairs are regarded by God or ruled or judged by him: are all the circumstances different in these accounts that we have given? For I think that he is present who is concerned in the sacrifice; he rules who rebukes Cain after his sacrifice; he is anxious who requires the victim of the murderer; he judges who condemns the wicked slayer by a just verdict.
In this incident, indeed, there is yet another point convenient to our argument.
Surely we are not to wonder that holy men are now suffering certain hardships, since
we see that God even at that time permitted the first of his saints to be most wickedly
slain. As to the reason why he permits such actions, it is not within the power
of human weakness to discover fully, nor is this a fit occasion for such discussion.
For the present it is enough to prove that deeds
7. We have seen in the accounts already given that nothing is done without the care of God, but that some of these actions were so arranged by his divine wisdom, some endured by his forbearance, some punished by his sentence. Certain people, perhaps, think that these few cases do not sufficiently establish our contention; let us see if we can make it completely clear through the experience of all men.
When, therefore, the human race had increased and multiplied alike in numbers
and in wickedness, as the Holy Scripture says: “God seeing that the wickedness of
man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually, repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved
him at his heart, and he said: ‘I will destroy man whom. I have created, from the
face of the earth.’”
Let us consider how both the care of God and his severity are equally shown in
the whole account. For first we read, “moreover God seeing”; secondly, “it grieved
him at his heart”; and thirdly, “he said, ‘I will destroy man whom I have created.’”
In the first statement, that God sees all things, his care is shown; in the statement
that he grieves is shown the terror of his wrath; that he punishes, his severity
as a judge. “God therefore repented,” says the Holy Scripture, “that he had made
man on the earth”; this does not indicate that God is subject to repentance or any
other emotion, but rather that the divine word, to further our understanding of
the true meaning of the Scriptures, speaks to us in terms of human feeling and shows
the force of God’s anger under
What followed then? When God saw that the earth was corrupt he said to Noah:
“The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through
them: and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”
Now I wish to ask those who say that God neglects human fortunes whether they believe that at this time he cared for earthly matters and judged them? I think he not merely judged but gave a twofold judgment; for in preserving the good he proved himself a generous giver of rewards, and in destroying the wicked, a severe judge.
Perhaps these instances may seem to stupid wits to lack authority, since they happened before the Flood—in another age, as it were. As if we could assume that God was different at that time, and afterwards ceased to desire to exercise the same care for the world! Indeed, by the divine grace I could prove my statements by examples from all generations since the Flood, but their great number forbids. However, certain of the more important instances will suffice, for since God is undoubtedly the same in the greater and the lesser cases, the lesser may be inferred from the greater.
8. After the Flood God blessed
the generation of men, and when this blessing had brought forth an immeasurable
host of men, God spoke to Abraham from heaven, ordering him to leave his own land
and go to a strange country. He was called, he followed; he
What conclusion are we to draw? In all the events which we have recounted, is not God seen examining Abraham, inviting and leading him, anxious for him, his sponsor, protector, benefactor, testing and exalting him, at once his avenger and his judge? Surely he examined him, for he chose him as the one best man of them all; he invited him, for he called him; he was his guide, leading him through in safety to unknown lands; anxious for him, for he visited him by the oak tree; his sponsor, in promises of things to come; his protector, guarding him among barbarous races; his benefactor, in that he enriched him; his examiner, in that he wished to test him by harsh trials; his exalter, for he made him powerful beyond all men; his avenger, for he avenged him on his adversaries; his judge, for in avenging him he exercised judgment.
Moreover, God at once added another item to this history when he said: “The cry
of Sodom and Gomorrah is grown great, and their sin is increased overmuch.” Rittershausen, Salviani opera (Altdorf
1611), ad loc., cites a verse listing the five sins that were proverbially
said to cry for justice to heaven: “Clamitat in caelum vox sanguinis, et Sodomorum,
vox oppressorum, viduae, pretium famulorum.”
God showed how unwillingly he punishes even the worst of sinners, when he said that the cry of Sodom ascended to him. That is to say: “My mercy indeed persuades me to spare them; nevertheless the cry of their sins compels me to punish.” When he had said this, what resulted? Angels were sent to Sodom; they set out, and entered the city; they were treated hospitably by the good and injuriously by the wicked; the wicked were blinded and the good saved. Lot, with his dear ones who honored God, was led out of the city; Sodom itself was burned with its wicked inhabitants.
I ask at this point whether it was in accordance with justice or contrary to it that God burned these wicked men? He who says that the Sodomites were unjustly punished by God accuses him of injustice; if, on the other hand, God justly destroyed those evil men, he judged them.
Surely he judged them, and indeed his judgment clearly foreshadowed that which
is to come. For it is well known that in time to come Gehenna will be in flames
for the punishment of the wicked, just as flames from heaven then consumed the city
of Sodom and its neighbors. Moreover, God wished his immediate action to prefigure
that coming judgment, when he sent Gehenna down out of heaven upon an impious people.
So the apostle also says that God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by
their overthrow, making them an example to those that hereafter should live ungodly
lives,
9. I might mention countless further examples, but I am afraid that in my effort to give adequate proof I may seem to have composed a whole history. Moses pasturing his sheep in the desert saw a bush burning, heard God from the midst of the bush and received his commands. He was exalted in power and was sent to Pharaoh; he spoke with him, was scorned, but conquered. The Egyptian was struck down, Pharaoh’s disobedience was smitten, and not in one way alone, but many, to the end that he should be tortured by a diversity of punishments in consideration of the greatness of his sacrilege. What was the outcome? Ten times he rebelled; ten times he was smitten. What is our conclusion? I think you must recognize that in all these cases God shows equally his care for human affairs and his judgment of them.
In Egypt, indeed, the judgment of God at that time was evidently not single but manifold. For as often as he smote the rebellious Egyptians, so often he judged them. But after the events already told, what happened? Israel was dismissed; after celebrating the Passover they despoiled the Egyptians and departed in wealth. Pharaoh repented, gathered his army, overtook the fugitives, encamped beside them, was separated from them by the darkness; the sea was dried up, Israel crossed over and by the friendly withdrawal of the waves was set free. Pharaoh followed, the sea rolled over him, and he was drowned by the engulfing waves.
I think that the judgment of God has been made clear in these events, and indeed not merely his judgment but also his moderation and patience. For it was due to his patience that the Egyptians in their rebellion were often smitten, to his judgment that for their persistent stubbornness they were condemned to death. Therefore, after this series of adventures the race of the Hebrews, victorious without warfare, entered the desert. They followed an uncharted course, pathless wanderers, with God to lead the way, honored by his divine comradeship, powerful through their heavenly leader, following a moving column of cloud by day, of fire by night, which took on shifting changes of color to suit the changing skies, that its dull obscurity might stand out in contrast to the strong light of day and its flaming splendor illumine by its clear glow the mists of night.
Add to this the springs that suddenly gushed forth, add the bitter waters given
and changed, keeping their old appearance but changing their character. Add mountain
peaks cleft open by streams gushing forth, dusty fields foaming with new torrents.
Add flocks of birds sent into the camp of the wanderers, since God in his most indulgent
love catered not only to the needs but also to the palates of his people; the food
granted throughout forty years by the daily ministry of the stars, the dew of sweet
morsels shed from the poles, offering abundance not merely for nourishment but for
delight. Add that the men experienced in no part of their bodies the growth or losses
natural to human beings, their nails did not grow, nor their teeth decay, their
hair stayed always of one length, their feet were not worn by the march, their clothing
was not tattered, their shoes not broken, and thus the honor granted to the men
themselves was even sufficient to dignify their mean garments. Another instance of details added without
scriptural authority: in fact the instances of leprosy and death among the Israelites
during the march seem directly contradictory to Salvian’s statements. Again an addition not justified by the words
of the Old Testament. Salvian, in common with other early Christian writers, not
infrequently names Christ when we should expect the name of God instead. And the
“throngs of people” were expressly excluded from familiar intercourse with God;
cf.
Add to this the thunders, the lightnings, the terrifying blasts of celestial trumpets, the fearful crashing over the whole sky, the poles rumbling with a holy sound, the fires, mists and clouds filled with the very presence of God, God speaking to man face to face, the law resounding from his holy lips, the letters inscribed in minutest accuracy on the stone page by the finger of God, the stone become a written scroll, the people learning and God teaching in a school of heaven and earth commingled, almost a union of men and angels.
For it is written that when Moses had taken the words of the people to the Lord,
the Lord said to him: “Lo, now I come to thee in a thick cloud, that the people
may hear when I speak with thee.”
In view of all this, does God seem to take any thought for men, giving them such
great gifts, helping them so much, sharing his speech with a vile mortal, as if
admitting him to converse in his
10. Perhaps at this juncture
you may answer that God did once exercise such care for men, but now does not at
all. Why should we believe this? Because we do not now eat manna daily as the Israelites
did? But we reap fields full of grain at the harvest. Because we do not catch quails
that fly into our hands? But we devour all kinds of birds, cattle and beasts. Because
we are not granted waters gushing from clefts opened in the rocks? But we pour the
fruits of our vines into our wine cellars. I have more to add: we ourselves, who
say that the children of Israel at that time were cared for by God but that we are
neglected by him, would absolutely reject the choice of their condition if we could
receive their past favors in exchange for our present benefits. For we should not
be willing to lose what we now have in order to gain what they then enjoyed, not
that we are better off than the Israelites were, but that they too, who were then
daily fed by the ministry of the stars and of God, preferred the old accustomed
fodder for their bellies to the favors they enjoyed. They were actually sad at their
vile recollections of carnal foods, pining away with a vulgar yearning for onions
and garlic, not because their former diet was more wholesome, but because they acted
just as we do now. They loathed what they had and longed for what they lacked. We
would rather praise bygone days than the present, not that we should prefer to revive
the past if the choice were given us, but because it is a well-known failing of
the human mind always to desire what it lacks, and, as the proverb says, “Another’s
goods please us, and ours please others more.” Publilius Syrus, verse 28. Salvian’s text
here is influenced by Seneca De ira 3. 31. 1.
To this may be added a trait shared by almost all, of being forever ungrateful to God, and all in turn are bound by the deep-rooted and inborn vice of belittling the blessings God gives, in order that they may not feel obliged to look on themselves as his debtors.
But enough of this: let us at last return to our original proposition. I think
we have made no slight progress toward proving the point; still let me add one instance
more, if you please, since it is better to prove a matter more fully than is necessary
than to risk falling short of conviction. Rittershausen, ad loc., cites the proverb:
Superflua non nocent. The phrasing suggests a legal connotation, in connection
with which he cites Paulus and Ulpian on the value of more than the required number
of witnesses to a will, or more written evidence than is actually needed to prove
a case.
11. Freed from Pharaoh’s yoke
the people of the Hebrews transgressed near Mount Sinai, and were at once smitten
by the Lord for their transgression. For it is written: “And the Lord plagued the
people for their delusion concerning the calf which Aaron made.”
Surely then, since our most indulgent Lord shows himself always more prone to
mercy than to punishment, even though in punishing a part of the Jewish host by
his divine censure he gave some scope to judgment and severity, yet his love claimed
the greater portion of the people—a special and peculiar act of mercy to countless
Was not God’s judgment immediate and manifest and his sentence pronounced as if the heavenly decision followed the forms of our legal procedure? First the man who had sinned was arrested, then he was led, so to speak, before the judge’s seat, thirdly accused and then put into prison, lastly punished by the authority of the divine judgment; furthermore he was not only punished but punished in accordance with evidence given, so that God’s justice and not merely his power was seen to condemn his guilt. This truly was meant as an example working toward the correction of all men, so that none should commit thereafter the deed which all the people had punished in one person. For this reason and by this judgment the Lord does all things now and has always done them, that whatever penalties individuals have to bear should work toward the correction of all.
So it was also when Abihu and Nadab, men of priestly blood, were consumed by
fire from heaven, in whose case, to be sure, the Lord wished to show not merely
judgment but judgment immediately impending. For it is written that when the fire
sent by the Lord had consumed the burnt offering: “Nadab and Abihu, the sons of
Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein and put incense thereon,
and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there
went out fire from the Lord and devoured them and they died before the Lord.”
Yet not only this was accomplished in their case, but much else besides, For, as in these men not a wicked intention but only a misguided impulse was punished, the Lord surely made clear what punishment any one would deserve who committed a sin through contempt of the divine power, since even those who had sinned only through thoughtlessness were struck down by God—or how guilty they would be who acted contrary to his command, when those who merely acted without his command were thus stricken. God also wished to further our correction by a salutary example, that all laymen should understand how much they ought to fear the wrath of God, since neither did the high priest’s merits rescue his sons from instant punishment, nor did the privilege of the sacred ministry redeem them.
But why do I speak of men whose ill-advised action really did in some measure
affect God and work injury to his divinity? Mary spoke against Moses and was punished;
she was not only punished, but punished in due course of trial. For first she was
called to justice, then accused, and thirdly chastised. In the accusation she
Furthermore, that we might recognize in the individual cases that the form of the divine judgment is inexorable, God did not even yield to the intercession of the injured party. For we read that the Lord spoke thus to Aaron and Mary:
“Wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” And
the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed. And behold,
Mary became leprous, and white as snow: and Moses cried unto the Lord, saying:
“Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee.” And the Lord said unto Moses: “If her
father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? Let her
be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in
again.”
These things that we have told should be sufficient for this division of the argument and for this part of our work; for it is an endless task to discuss all the cases; indeed, it would be overlong merely to enumerate them without any discussion. But let me add one more instance.
12. The people of the Hebrews
repented having gone out of Egypt; they were struck down: then they grieved at the
weariness and toil of the journey, and were afflicted: they desired flesh-meat,
and were smitten. And because, eating manna daily, they desired to satiate the cravings
of their bellies with illicit foods, they were sated indeed in their passionate
greed, but tortured in that very satiety. “For while their food was still in their
mouths,” says the Scripture, “the wrath of God came upon them, and slew very many
of them and smote down the chosen men of Israel.”
Og rebelled against Moses: he was blotted out. Korah taunted him: he was overwhelmed.
Dathan and Abiram murmured against him: they were swallowed up. “For the earth opened
and swallowed Dathan, and covered the company of Abiram.”
When such deeds were committed, heavenly mercy was of no avail. Correction was
administered again and again, yet improvement did not follow. For just as we are
chastised again and again, and do not improve, so they too, though constantly struck
down, did not mend their ways. For what is written? “But on the morrow all the congregation
of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘Ye have killed
the people of the Lord.’”
What happened then? Fourteen thousand seven hundred men were struck down at once
and consumed by divine fire. Since all the multitude of the people sinned, why did
not the punishment fall on all alike? Especially since, as I said before, no one
escaped from Koran’s sedition. Why did God on the former occasion wish all the assemblage
of sinners to be killed, but at this time a portion only? Surely because the Lord
is full of justice and mercy and therefore his indulgence causes many concessions
to his love, and his discipline to his severity. And so on the one occasion he gave
first place
There is no doubt what their end was. Although the whole race of the Hebrews
went out of Egypt to enter the promised land, yet not one of them entered it save
two holy men alone. For it is written: “The Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron,
saying: ‘How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against
me? As truly as I live, saith the Lord, as ye have spoken in mine ears this day,
so will I do to you: your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness!’” What followed?
“Your little ones,” he said, “which you said would be a prey, them will I bring
in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised. But as for you, your carcasses,
they shall fall in this wilderness.” And what then? “All died and were struck down
in the sight of the Lord.”
What detail is lacking in this whole account? Would you see a ruler? Behold him, correcting present sins and disposing the future. Would you see a severe judge? Behold, he punishes the guilty. Would you see a just and loving judge? Behold, he spares the innocent. Would you see the judge of the whole world? Behold, his judgment is in all places. For as judge he accuses and as judge he rules; as judge he pronounces sentence; as judge he destroys the guilty, and as judge he rewards the innocent.
1. The examples given above are sufficient proof, therefore, that our God acts constantly as a most anxious watcher, a most tender ruler, and a most just judge. But perhaps one of my less enlightened readers is thinking: “If all things are now conducted by God as they were in those days, why is it that the evil prevail while the good are afflicted; and whereas in the past the evil felt God’s wrath, and the good his mercy, now by some strange reversal the good appear to experience his wrath and the evil his favor?” These questions I shall answer presently, but now since I have promised to prove three points, namely, God’s presence, his government and his judgment, by three methods, that is, by reason, by examples and by authority and since I have already given sufficient proof of them by reason and examples, it remains for me to verify them by authority. Yet the examples I have given should rank as authority, since that term is rightly applied to the means by which the truth of matters under discussion is established.
Which then of the above-mentioned points should first be proved by sacred authority—his presence, his government, or his judgment? His presence, I think, because he who is to rule or judge must surely be present, in order to be able to rule or judge anything whatever.
Speaking through the Sacred Books, the Divine Word says.: “The eyes of the Lord
are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” Note the converse of this statement already given in 1.7
supra: “The divine wrath is the punishment of the sinner.”
See with what gentle kindness the Scripture says the Lord treats his people. For when it says the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, his watchful love is shown; when it says that his ears are always open to their prayers, his readiness to hear is indicated. That his ears are always open to the prayers of the righteous proves not merely God’s attention, but one might almost say his obedience. For how are the ears of the Lord open to the prayers of the righteous? How, save that he always hears, always hears clearly, always grants readily the pleas he has heard, bestows on men at once what he has clearly heard them ask? So the ears of our Lord are always ready to listen to the prayers of his saints, always attentive. How happy should we all be if we ourselves were as ready to hearken to God as he is to hear us!
But perhaps you say that the proof of God’s guardianship of the just is useless
to our argument, since this is not a general watchfulness of the divine power but
merely a special favor granted to the righteous. Note, however, that the Sacred
Word testified above that the eyes of the Lord watch over both good and evil. If
you still wish to argue the point, consider this, for it follows in the text: “Moreover
the face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of
them from the earth.”
You see that you have no ground for complaint that God does not look upon the unjust also, since you know that he watches all men, but with different effect because of the inequality of their merits. The good indeed are watched by him that they may be preserved, the evil that they may be destroyed. You yourself, who deny that God watches men, have your place with these last; know then that you are not only clearly seen by God, but are without doubt in imminent peril. For since the face of the Lord is upon them that do evil, to cut off remembrance of them from the earth, you, who wickedly say that the eyes of the Lord do not see you, must learn by your destruction the wrath of an all-seeing God. These arguments, then, are sufficient to prove the presence and watchfulness of God.
2. Let us now see whether he who watches us also rules us, although, forsooth, his watchfulness in itself implies governance as its motive, unless he looks upon us in order to neglect us thereafter. Surely the fact that he deigns to look upon us is itself an indication of his care for us, especially since the Sacred Word has borne witness, as I have shown above, that the wicked are observed by God to their destruction, the good to their salvation. Certainly this very fact shows the divine guidance, for this is actually ruling by just government and dealing with men individually according to their several merits.
Listen, however, to fuller testimony on this point. The Holy Spirit spoke thus
to God the Father in a psalm: “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel.”
But if, as we suggested earlier, you are more interested in the case of men in
general, than of Christians alone, see how clearly the Holy Book says that all things
are daily ruled by the divine will and the whole world incessantly guided by God,
for it says: “He himself loves counsel and discipline.”
Here you have God constantly arranging, constantly governing; yet in the passage
cited not only his divine governance but also the high honor of man is declared.
For the words, “thou dost dispose us,” show the power of his divine government,
but the words, “with great reverence,” show the culmination of human honor. Elsewhere
also we read in the words of the prophet: “Do I not fill heaven and earth!”
The Savior himself said also in the Gospel: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto
the end of the world.”
But far be it from us to believe that our most loving and merciful God would
have wished to be always near us for the sake of increasing by his presence the
apparent contempt of his neglect: far be it from us even to say such a, wicked thing.
For I think there is no one in the whole human race who is so evil that he wishes
to be with any man on account of his dislike of him, or wishes to employ his presence
solely to achieve greater satisfaction of his hatred by scorning him face to face.
Let human nature itself teach and convince us that we wish to be with one man or
another because we love the one whose company we desire. And just because we
3. We have already proved by sacred testimony that all things are both watched and ruled by God; it remains now to show that the greater part are also judged by his divine power in this world.
When the blessed David had suffered the insulting scorn of Nabal the Carmelite,
since he himself postponed vengeance, he received his revenge at once at the hand
of God. So when, shortly after, his enemy had been overwhelmed and killed by the
hand of the Lord, he spoke thus: “Blessed be the Lord, that hath pleaded the cause
of my reproach from the hand of Nabal.”
God wished to show that the affliction of those who suffered injustice was greater
in his eyes than in their own. For when a man takes vengeance beyond the wish of
the injured person, what else can he mean than that he is acting on his own behalf
also? So when, for his attempted parricide, David’s son was being hung on a cross
not made with hands, the Divine Word tells us that the punishment divinely brought
upon him was thus reported: “I bring thee good tidings, my lord king; for the Lord
hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up against thee.”
4. You see how the sacred books prove through
divine witnesses that God judges not only by deeds, as we said above, and by examples,
but by the very name and terms of judgment, even in our present age. Perhaps you
think that it was as a special favor granted by God to a holy man, that he wrought
judgment forthwith on David’s enemies. The day will not suffice if I would tell
of That is, not a Hebrew.
What answer have you to this, you who believe that God not only fails to judge
our every action but does not regard us at all? Do you see that the eyes of the
Lord were in no wise withdrawn from the single secret sin which David once committed?
Wherefore do you also, who—as a consolation I suppose for your sins—think
that our acts are not observed by God, learn from this same instance that you are
always seen by Christ, and know that you must receive punishment, perhaps very shortly.
For you see that even the blessed David was unable to hide his own misdeed in the
secret places of his innermost chambers, and to claim exemption from instant punishment
by the undoubted merit of his great deeds. For what did the Lord say to him? “I
will take thy wives before
Therefore he did not say: “Because you have done this, know that the judgment of the Lord shall come and you shall be tortured hereafter by the flames of Gehenna.” No; he said: “You shall suffer torture at once, and shall feel the sword of divine justice already at your throat.”
And what followed? The guilty man acknowledged his fault, was humbled, stung
by remorse, confessed and mourned his sin. He repented and implored pardon, gave
up his royal jewels, laid aside his gold-wrought robes, put off the purple, resigned
the glory of his crown, changed his whole bodily habit, cast off every aspect of
kingship with its trappings, and put on the guise of a penitent fugitive, eagerly
assuming a squalor that should plead in his defence; he was wasted by fasting, withered
by thirst, exhausted by weeping, self-imprisoned in loneliness. And yet this king
of so great repute, greater in holiness than in mere temporal power, surpassing
all men in the favors earned by his former merits, although he sought pardon so
earnestly, did not escape punishment. The fruit of such great penitence was indeed
sufficient to win remission from eternal expiation, but not to earn pardon at the
moment. Finally, what did the prophet say to the penitent? “Because thou hast made
the enemies of the Lord blaspheme, the son that is born to thee shall die.”
5. This is the first instance of the divine punishment;
the first, to be sure, but not the only one, for a long series of great griefs followed
and an almost unending succession of misfortunes haunted his household. Thamar was
seduced by the mad act of Amnon, and Amnon slain by Absalom. A great crime indeed
was committed by the first brother, but its retribution by the other was worse.
In these actions David the father was punished alike by both sons’ crimes. Two children
sinned, but three were ruined by the sin of two; for Thamar suffered the loss of
her virginity, while in Amnon also the destruction of Absalom was mourned. And verily
you cannot tell for which of the two sons so loving a father mourned the more grievously,
the one slain in this world by his brother’s hand, or the other who by his own hand
was doomed forever. Here Salvian seems to overlook
Must we add to this the spectacle of David’s actual flight? Picture this mighty
king, so greatly renowned, higher in honor than all others, greater than the world
itself, fleeing his whole people with a tiny band of slaves. In comparison with
his former state he was needy indeed; in comparison with his wonted train I have followed here Pauly’s conjecture: in comparatione
comitatus sui soliti solus.
6. Who now denies that God watches over human
actions? Behold how often the Scriptures have shown in the case of one man that
God not only observed, but also judged his acts! And why? Why indeed, except that
we should understand that the Lord’s verdict and coercion are always to be exercised
in this world as they were then? So we read that even holy men were punished aforetime
by God’s judgment, to teach us that we too must always be judged in our present
life by God. For as God always is, so is his justice eternal. As God’s omnipotence
is never-failing, so is his verdict unchangeable. As long as his law endures, so
long also shall his justice remain. Therefore all his saints in their sacred books,
amid the imminent fear of martyrdom and the swords of the persecutors, demand that
the immediate judgment of God be established. For thus said the just man in a psalm:
“Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation.” And that this might
not be construed as a reference to some future judgment of God, he added at once:
“Deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.”
Certainly it is the immediate judgment of God that he demands who begs to be freed from the hands of the persecutor. In his consciousness of a just cause the psalmist did well to pray for God’s justice rather than for his favor, for the best verdict is always given to the righteous cause if the case is conducted with justice.
Elsewhere also the psalmist spoke most clearly, saying: “Judge, O Lord, them
that injure me; fight against them that fight against me; seize arms and shield
and stand up for mine help.”
For what are his words? “Take up the shield and seize the sword”—the shield, of course, for protection and the sword for vengeance—not that God’s judgment needs such weapons, but because in this world the names of dreaded arms are the instruments of dread judgments. Speaking to human intelligence in figures drawn from human life, since he was praying for judgment and for vengeance on his adversaries, he expressed the power of God’s punishment in terms of the instruments of earthly vengeance.
Lastly, the same prophet showed elsewhere the great difference between the present
and the future judgments of God. For what did he say to the Lord about his verdict
in the present trial? “Thou sittest on the throne and judgest.” And what about the
future and everlasting judgment of God? “He shall judge the world in righteousness;”
and again: “He shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness.”
Sufficient proof of God’s care for us and of his government and judgment has
now been given by reason, by examples and by authority, See II. 1 supra.
1. It is well: the foundations
have been laid See Lactantius op. cit. VII. 1.1:
Bene habet, iacta sunt fundamenta, ut ait eximius orator . . . ; where
Lactantius is quoting Cicero Pro Murena 6. 14.
As no one can tear down the walls of earthly houses without tearing apart their stones and mortar, so none can destroy this structure of ours unless he first destroys the materials of which it is composed. Since these certainly can in no way be weakened, we may safely assume the permanence of a building whose strength is insured by immortal aid.
The question is raised why, if everything in this world is controlled by the
care and governance and judgment of God, the condition of the barbarians is so much
better than ours, why among us the fortune of good men is harder than that of the
wicked. Why should upright men fall ill and reprobates recover? Why does the whole
world fall prey to powers for the most part unjust? Perhaps a rational and fairly
consistent answer would be: “I do not know.” For I do not know the secrets of God.
The oracle of
Moreover, I would not have you ask me to account for God’s actions in the cases
of which I speak. I am a man; I do not understand the secrets of God, The much quoted words of Terence (Heauton.
Timoroumenos 77) here take on a new significance, from the Christian connotation.
“I am a man, nothing human is alien to me”—Salvian’s wide sympathies echo the
spirit of these words many times, but the secrets of God, he says, pass man’s understanding.
Salvian’s acquaintance with Terence is indicated by his use of a line from the
Andria in Ad ecclesiam III. 12. See Lactantius op. cit. II. 5. 2-3; 8.
69, 71.
We are not at liberty to say that of the actions of the divine will one is just
and another unjust, because whatever you see is done by God, whatever you are sure
is done by him, you must confess is more than just. So much can be said of God’s
government and justice without further discussion and without uncertainty. I need
not prove by arguments what is proved by his very words. When we read that God says
he constantly sees all the earth, we have proof that he sees it, since he says so.
When we read that he
One thing, however, I should like to know before 1 begin—whether I am to address my words to Christians or to pagans. If to Christians, I do not doubt that I shall prove my case. But if I speak to pagans, I should scorn the attempt, not for any lack of proofs, but because I despair of profit from my discourse. Surely it is fruitless and lost labor when a perverse listener is not open to conviction. Yet because I think there is no one belonging to the Christian name who does not at least wish to seem a Christian, I shall address my words to Christians, However many pagans still adhere to their impious unbelief, it is enough for me to prove my contentions to a Christian audience.
2. So you keep airing the question
why we Christians who believe in God are more wretched than all other men. The words
of the apostle to the churches might have furnished me with a sufficient answer
to this: “That no man should be moved by these afflictions; for you yourself know
that we are appointed thereunto.”
Let us see what it means to believe firmly in God. We who wish our reward for
belief and faith in this life to be so great must consider what sort of belief and
faith we should have. What is belief and what is faith? I think it is that a man
believe in Christ faithfully, that he be faithful to God, that is, that he faithfully
keep God’s commandments. The definition is repeated in IV. 1 infra.
Perhaps you ask what the good is that God grants to Christian men? What else
but all the substance of our faith, all those things through which we are Christians?
First the law, then the prophets, thirdly the Gospels, fourthly the reading of the
apostles, finally the gift of fresh regeneration, the grace of holy baptism, the
unction of the divine chrism. You remember that of old among the Hebrews, the people
especially chosen of God, when the office of the judges had passed over into the
power of kings, God called the most approved and excellent men to reign through
the royal unction. So every Christian, having performed all God’s commands after
receiving the chrism of the church, shall be called to heaven to receive the reward
of his labors. Since these are the elements of our faith, let us see who keeps these
great sacraments in such a way as to be judged faithful, for, as I said, the unfaithful
must be those who do not keep their trust. And indeed I do not ask that a man perform
all the commands of the Old and New Testaments: I exempt him from the censorial
power of the old law, the threats of the prophets, even from the strictest interpretation
of the apostolic books or the full doctrine of the Gospels in their complete perfection,
though these last admit no exception. I only ask who lives in
For instance, who would deign even to listen to our Savior’s bidding not to take
thought for the morrow? Who obeys his order to be content with a single tunic? Who
thinks the command to walk unshod possible or even tolerable to follow? These precepts
then I pass over. For here our faith, in which we trust, falls short, so that we
judge superfluous the precepts the Lord intended for our benefit. “Love your enemies,”
said the Savior, “do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
use you and persecute you.”
To discuss all such cases would take too long; but one point I add, that we may
know that not only do we fail to accede to all God’s commands, but we actually obey
almost none of them. This is why the apostle cried: “For if a man think himself
to be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.”
3. Since this is true, and since
these commands of the Lord not only fail of being carried out by us, but are practically
all reversed, when shall we come to obey his greater precepts? The Savior said:
“Whosoever forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. . . . And he
that taketh not his cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.”
4. Perhaps certain men think the commands of the apostle are hard. Clearly they must be considered difficult, if the apostles exacted from others the performance of duties they did not lay upon themselves. But if, on the other hand, they enjoined upon others much lighter duties than on themselves, instead of being considered harsh teachers, they must be thought most indulgent parents, who, through their religious zeal, themselves in loving indulgence take the burdens their sons should bear.
What was it that one of them said to the people of the church? “My little children,
of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.” And again: “Be
ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.”
Since he so followed Christ, let us consider which of us seems to be a true follower
of the apostle. He writes of himself first of all that he never gave offence to
any, but in all things showed himself the minister of God, in much patience, in
affliction, in necessities, in blows, in imprisonments, in stripes.
Surely, even if we leave out of account the other apostolic virtues that he lists,
when the apostle says that he has suffered shipwreck three times, in this at least
we can outdo him. We have not merely been wrecked three times, but our whole life
is one continuous shipwreck; indeed all men are living such vicious lives that there
seems to be no Christian who is not wrecked constantly. Here Salvian makes use of his fundamental
thesis, that the disasters of the Romans are due to their sins. The first part of
this sentence would suggest to his readers the losses due to the barbarian invasions;
in the conclusion he reminds them of the real danger they face.
5. Some one may object that it
does not befit our present time to endure for Christ such sufferings as did the
apostles of old. It is true that there are no longer heathen princes, nor tyrannous
persecutors; the blood of the saints is not shed now nor their faith tried by tortures.
Our God is content with the service of our peace, that we please him simply by the
purity of our spotless acts and the holiness of an unstained life. Our faith and
devotion are the more due him because he demands lesser services from us and has
foregone the greater exactions. Since even our princes are Christians, there is
no persecution and religion is not disturbed, we who are not forced to test our
faith by harsher trials ought certainly to
6. Let us then pass over the trials of the most blessed Paul, let us even omit the accounts we read in the books later written about our faith, of the sufferings endured by almost all Christians, who, mounting to the doors of the heavenly palaces by their tortures, contrived steps for their ascent from the very racks and scaffolds. Let us see whether in those lesser and ordinary observances of religious devotion which we all as Christians can perform in utter peace at all times, we are really trying to accede to the Lord’s commands.
Christ orders us not to quarrel. Who obeys this order? He not only gives the
command, but insists on it so far that he bids us renounce those things about which
a dispute has arisen, provided we may thus end the suit. “For,” he says, “if any
man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.”
Moreover, there is a second similar commandment joined with this one, in which
the Lord says: “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also.”
The Savior said:
“What you wish that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” See
You see then how faithfully he performed the precepts of Christ when, as the Savior bade us take thought for others just as we do for ourselves, he ordered us to consult the welfare of others more than our own, proving himself, to be sure, a good servant of a good master, and a glorious disciple of an exemplary teacher. He so followed in the steps of the Lord, that his own footprints somehow made those of his Master more evident and more clearly formed.
Which of these do we Christians obey, the command of Christ or that of his apostle?
I think we obey neither one. For we are so far from doing anything that inconveniences
ourselves, that we choose
7. Perhaps you may think we are
choosing only the greater commandments, which no one follows, and which, as Christians
themselves think, cannot be followed in any case, and are passing over others which
can be and indeed are followed by all. But this point must be considered first,
that no slave is allowed to choose according to his own wishes which of his master’s
commands he will carry out and which he will not, nor by a most insolent abuse to
assume the task that pleases him and reject the rest. Certainly human masters think
it impossible to tolerate calmly slaves who hear part of their orders and despise
the rest, who, according to their own desires, carry out the commands they think
should be performed and trample under foot those they think deserve such treatment.
If slaves obey their masters according to their own free will alone, they are not
rendering true obedience even when they seem to obey. When a slave obeys only such
of his master’s orders as he pleases, he is no longer doing his master’s will but
his own. If then we, who are but weak little men, are still utterly unwilling that
our slaves, who are equal to us in their common humanity, though our inferiors in
their condition of servitude, should despise us, how unjustly, forsooth, do we scorn
our heavenly Master, since we, being ourselves men, yet think we ought not to be
despised by men of our own condition! See Cyprian Ad Demetrianum 8: “You
yourself exact servitude from your slave and, yourself a man, compel a man to obey
you, though you share in the same lot of birth, the same condition of death, like
bodily substance, the same mental frame, and by equal right and the same rule come
into this world and later leave it. Yet unless he serves you according to your will,
unless he is subservient to your whim, you act the imperious and over-exacting master,
afflicting and torturing him often with stripes, lashes, hunger, thirst, nakedness
and the sword, with chains and imprisonment. And do you not recognize your God and
master, who yourself exercise mastery in this fashion?”
For this reason, to return to our former topic, any who think that I am talking of the greater commands of God and omitting the lesser, must recognize the unreasonableness of their complaint. There is no just reason for preferring some commands, when all must be performed. As I have already said, just as the servants of carnal masters are by no means permitted to choose which of their master’s precepts they are to perform and which they are not, so we, who are the servants of our Lord, ought not to think it in any way permissible to humor ourselves by choosing those commands that please us, or by an abusive indulgence of our pride to trample under foot those that displease us.
8. Let us, however, come to an
agreement with those who do not wish us to tell of the greater commands of the Lord,
for the reason perhaps that they think they are fulfilling his lesser precepts,
though it is not sufficient for salvation to perform the lesser commandments while
scorning the greater. It is written: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and
yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.”
Our Savior ordered that Christian men should not swear. The men who perjure themselves
daily are more numerous than those who do not swear at all. He commanded that no
one should curse. Whose speech is not cursing? For curses are always the first instrument
of wrath; whatever in our weakness we cannot perform we ardently desire in our anger,
and thus in every impulse of our wrathful hearts we use evil wishes as our weapons. Rittershausen, commenting on the “elegant
phrasing” of this sentence, cites Petronius Carmen de bello civili 228:
Absentem votis interficit hostem.
Christ ordered that envy be far from us, but we, contrary to his teaching, envy
not merely outsiders but even our friends. This is the ruling vice in the hearts
of almost all: our greed for eating has its limits, but our greed for slandering
others has no end; our appetite for food becomes sated, but our appetite for spite
does not. Perchance the punishment for this fault is a slight one? “The slanderous
man,” says the Holy Scripture, “shall be rooted out.” See
I suppose I seem to be out of my mind in repeating these words, and I can easily
bear the appearance of madness in such a case. For the Lord was not speaking senselessly
when he enjoined us through his apostle: “Let all clamor be put away from you, with
all malice.”
Our God orders us also to live without murmuring and without complaints.
God bade his servants keep all scandal from their sight altogether, and so he
said: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with
her already in his heart,” See Lactantius De opificio Dei 8. 11:
“The mind is that which sees through the eyes, placed in front of it, as if through
windows covered with translucent glass or mica.” Among the parallels quoted by Rittershausen
ad loc., note especially Seneca De remediis fortuitorum 12. See
9. In all the points of which we have spoken our Lord has ordered us to obey him, but where are those who obey all his ordinances or even a very few of them? Where are those who love their enemies or do good to those that persecute them, or overcome evil by doing good, who turn their cheeks to those that strike them, who yield their property without a lawsuit to those that rob them? Who is there that permits himself no slander whatever, that injures no man by evil speaking, that keeps his lips silent that they may not break out in bitter curses? Who is there that keeps these least commandments, not to speak of those greater ones which I mentioned a short time ago?
Since this is the case and since we keep none of the Lord’s commands, why do we complain of God, who has far more right to complain of us? Why should we grieve that he does not hear us, when we ourselves do not hear him? What right have we to whisper that God does not look upon the earth, when we ourselves do not look up to the heavens? What reason have we to be vexed that our prayers are despised by the Lord, whose commands we despise?
Suppose that we were equal to our Lord; what chance is there for just complaint
when each side receives the same treatment it gives? And this entirely overlooks
a point easily proved, that we are very far from receiving what we give, since God
really treats us much more kindly than we do him. For the moment, however, let us
act on the assumption that I proposed. The Lord himself spoke thus: “I cried unto
you and ye did not hear me: you too shall cry unto me and I shall not hear
you.” See
What more can I say? It is a heavy and sorrowful charge that I must bring: the
church itself, which should strive to appease God in all things—what else does
it do but arouse him to anger? Except a very few individuals who shun evil, what
else is the whole congregation of Christians but the very dregs of vice? How often
will you find a man in the church who is not a drunkard or glutton or adulterer
or fornicator or robber or wastrel or brigand or homicide? And what is worst of
all, they commit these crimes endlessly. I appeal to the conscience of all Christians;
of these crimes and Rittershausen cites this as a passage used
by Cujas and other jurists in their commentaries on the Corpus Juris. Cf.
Cod. Just. XII. 19 on those who have the right of access to the officials of the
highest grade. The slight lacuna in the MSS is here supplied
according to Pauly’s conjecture.
Go out, did I say? They are usually planning fresh crimes in the very midst of
their prayers and supplications. While men’s voices do one thing, their hearts do
another; while their words lament their past misdeeds their minds plan further wrongs,
and thus their prayers increase their guilt instead of winning pardon for it. So
the scriptural curse is truly fulfilled upon them, that from their very prayers
they go out condemned and their petition is turned into sin. See
Finally, if any one wishes to know what men of this sort are thinking in church, let him consider this. When their religious duties are accomplished they all hurry off at once to their accustomed pursuits—some, for instance, to steal, others to get drunk, others to commit fornication, others to commit highway robbery—so that it is perfectly clear that they have spent their time inside the temple in planning what they will do after leaving it.
10. Undoubtedly some men think
that all these evils and all the infamous vice of which I have spoken above may
be properly ascribed to slaves or to the lowest of men, whereas the freeman’s reputation
is not spotted by the stain of such disgraceful deeds. Yet what else is the life
of all business men but fraud and perjury, of the curials but injustice, On the curials cf. V. 4 infra. The
curials, once honored as the local aristocracy, making up the chief governing body
of the municipalities of the Empire, the curia, had now, through the financial
stringencies of the administration, become a class as much oppressed by the imperial
financial agents as they were hated by those from whom they themselves exacted payments.
The requirement that the curials of a district must make up from their own fortunes
any deficit in the payments due had made it increasingly difficult to keep up the
required number, and the injustice of which Salvian spoke worked in more than one
direction. The burdens and difficulties of the office are best illustrated by the
192 sections of Cod. Theod. XII. 1.
Perhaps you think that one need not object to such a charge against characters
of this sort. For, you say, their actions fit their professions, so it is no wonder
that they act according to their
Do you say that the nobles are free from these crimes? At best that is but a
small gain, for all the nobles in the world would seem no more than one man in a
great crowd of people. Is even this small group free from guilt? First let us consider
what the Divine Word says of men of this sort. You remember that the apostle, addressing
the people of God, spoke thus: “Hearken, my beloved brethren. Hath God not chosen
the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised
to them that love him? But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you
by their power? Do they not blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?”
The testimony of the apostle is potent, unless perhaps the nobles think that
they are exempt from his accusation because he named only the rich. The nobles,
however, are either identical with the rich, or, if there are rich men who are not
counted in their number, they are practically in the same category, for so great
is the misery of our times that no one is considered of higher rank than he who
has the greatest riches. It makes little difference which of these the apostle meant,
or if he was talking of both; since his words certainly apply to both the rich and
the noble, it does not signify which of the two he had in mind. What noble or what
rich man ever had any horror of crime? Yet my query was mistaken—many indeed
do fear it, but few avoid it. They fear in others the crimes they themselves constantly
commit, being in a strange manner both the accusers and doers of the same evils.
They denounce in public what
Let us overlook those men who have the greater guilt, and ask what single rich man or noble there is who preserves his innocence and keeps his hands clean of every sort of crime? It was foolish for me to say of every sort—would God they were clean of the greatest! Great men seem to consider it their personal prerogative to commit the lesser crimes as a matter of course. So I shall say nothing of their more ordinary misdoings. Let us see if any one of them is free from the two which we consider capital offences, that is, homicide and sexual vice. Which of them is not either reeking with human blood or smeared with the filth of an impure life? Either one of these is enough to render him liable to eternal punishment, but there is hardly a wealthy man who has not committed both.
11. Perhaps one of this number
is thinking to himself: “I am not doing such things now.” I commend you if you are
not, yet probably you did in the past, and to have stopped is not equivalent to
never having done them at all. But if it were, what value would there be in one
man’s desisting from wickedness when so many persist in their crime? The conversion
of one man does not atone for the sins of the many, nor is it enough to appease
God that one man should leave off sinning, while the whole human race offends him.
Consider too that he who is converted for the sake of escaping eternal death certainly
gains a great reward for his conversion in this escape. By no means could he succeed
in turning away the punishment of damnation from others. It is a mark of intolerable
presumption, and an enormous wickedness, for a man to think himself so holy that
he even supposes wicked men can find salvation through him. God spoke thus of a
certain land and a sinful people: “Though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job,
were in
No one, I think, will be so shameless as to dare compare himself with such men as these. However much a man may now try to please God, yet to assert one’s own morality is an example of the greatest unrighteousness. Thus is destroyed our confidence in the false notion that an innumerable host of sinners can be saved from the evils that threaten them by the intercession of a few good men. For since no one is equal to the three men named above, what hope can any have that countless wicked, men unrelated to them can be saved by a very few good men, when those saints, who were close to God, did not deserve of the Lord that their very members, in the persons of their children,” should be saved? It is right that this should be so. Though all sons seem to be members of their parents, yet they must not be considered members of those whose love they have begun to cast aside, inasmuch as the wickedness of their degenerate lives has degraded their natural endowments. So it happens that even we who are said to be Christians lose the virtue of so great a name by our evil vices. It is of no possible benefit to have a holy name without morality, for a life that denies our Christian profession cancels the honor of a glorious rank by the baseness of unworthy actions.
Since then we see practically no group among all the Christians, no corner in all the churches, that is not full of all manner of offence and stained with every deadly sin, why should we beguile ourselves with the name of Christian? Assuredly our guilt is made the greater by this most sacred name, if we belie it by our conduct. The name of Christian aggravates our offences against God, since we continue our sins in the very bosom of the church.
1. Let us then give up that prerogative of the Christian name, of which I spoke
above, by which we consider that because we are more religious than other people,
we ought also to be stronger. For since, as I have said, the faith of a Christian
is to believe faithfully in Christ, See III. 2, supra. Salvian Ad ecclesiam II. 37; a work issued anonymously
as the address of Timothy to the church on avarice, but accepted by Salvian as his
in Ep. IX, to Salonius. The anonymous publication explains the manner of
his reference in this case. On this passage cf. also Ep. IX. 9: “The names
of things are of no avail without the substance, and the words for virtues are nothing
without their active strength.”
So, to use the same phrase ourselves, what else is a sacred name without merit
but an ornament in the midst of filth? The sacred word bore witness to this in the
divine writings, saying: “As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman
which is without discretion.”
Finally, whoever wishes fuller proof that mere words are nothing without actions
should consider how countless peoples, by failing in
For this reason on another occasion our God spoke of the people of the Hebrews
to the prophet, saying: “Call his name, Not Beloved.” And speaking to the Jews themselves:
“You are not my people and I am not your God.”
But indeed I am afraid that this is true of us now no less than it was of them, since we do not obey the words of the Lord, and our disobedience certainly shows that there is no wisdom in us. Unless perhaps we believe that we act wisely in scorning God, and consider it as a sign of the greatest prudence that we despise Christ’s commandments. There is some reason why we should be thought to hold this opinion, for we all sin with as much accord as if we were doing it in pursuit of an elaborately planned policy.
Since this is the case, what logical reason have we for deluding ourselves by
a false notion into the belief that the good name of Christian can be of any possible
help to us in the evils we commit? The Holy Spirit says that not even faith, without
good works, can
2. “Yea, a man may say: ‘Thou hast faith and I
have works; show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by
my works.’” Rittershausen suggests that Salvian here alluded to the saying
of the jurisconsults: “Not to be, and not to appear, or not to be susceptible of
proof, are one and the same thing.”
I know only too well that we are ungrateful for the blows we receive. But why
do we wonder that God strikes us for our sins, when we ourselves strike our slaves
for theirs? Like unjust judges we petty men are unwilling to be scourged by God,
though we scourge men of our own condition. I am not surprised that we are so unjust
in this case, for our very nature and wickedness are of a servile sort. We wish
to do wrong and not be beaten for it. In this we have the same characteristics as
our poor slaves. We all wish to sin without punishment. I call all men to witness
whether I lie: I The MS reading incontumaciae, the single occurrence
of this word, was formerly questioned, but Pauly now accepts it, following Hartel,
as equivalent to obsequium.
3. But some rich man may say: “We do not do the same things, not at all the same things, that slaves do; for slaves turn into thieves and runaways; slaves live only for their greedy appetites.” It is true that these are vices characteristic of slaves, but their masters, though not all of them, have more and greater faults. Certain of them must indeed be excepted, though very few, whom I do not name for fear that in so doing I may appear less to praise them than to libel those whom I do not name.
First then, slaves, if they are thieves, are usually forced into robbery by need,
since even though the customary allowances are furnished them, these conform better
to custom than to sufficiency and so fulfill the canon That is, the usual slave allowance. The language seems to
be borrowed from Cod. Just. XII. 23: De canone frumentario urbis Romae. Cf.
Grégoire et Collombet ad. loc.
They are called liars also. None the less, they are driven to falsehood by the brutality of the impending punishment—they lie in the hope of escaping torture. Why is it strange that a terrified slave would rather lie than be flogged? They are charged with having greedy mouths and stomachs, but this is nothing new; the man who has often endured hunger has the greater desire for satiety. Even supposing that he does not lack dry bread, he still hungers for delicacies, and so must be pardoned if he seeks more greedily that which is constantly lacking.
But you who are noble, you who are rich, who have an abundance of all good things,
who ought to honor God the more because you enjoy his benefits endlessly, let us
see whether your actions are, I
To recount first the vices characteristic of slaves: if a slave is a runaway,
so are you also, rich and noble though you are; for all men who abandon the law
of the Lord are running away from their master. What fault can you rightly find
in the slave? You are doing as he does. He flees from his master, and you from yours;
but in this you incur more blame than he, for in all likelihood he is running away
from a bad master, while you flee from a good one. In the slave you criticize incontinent
greed. This is a rare fault in him, for want of means to satisfy it, but a daily
one in you because of your abundance. Hence you see that the words of the apostle
censure you more than him; nay, they censure you alone, for “wherein thou judgest
another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things”;
4. Why do I dwell on these petty details and speak
in a sort of allegorical fashion, when absolutely unconcealed crimes make it clear
that the wealthy commit not mere thefts but highway robbery Even the imperial estates suffered from such encroachments;
cf. the decree of Arcadius and Honorius, A.D. 399, providing for restitution of
property unjustly seized on the imperial estates, and for a double penalty if restitution
was delayed beyond a period of three months, applying also to those who had fled,
unless they returned to restore the property stolen. The penalty applied to judges
also if they did not give evidence against the exactores and
conpulsores
who were guilty. It is noteworthy that the decree claimed that but for the imperial
clemency a fourfold penalty should have been exacted; one suspects impotence rather
than clemency as the reason for the lighter fine (Cod. Theod. X. 1.10). On the general
situation, cf. V. 8. infra. Compare the description of Arvandus, praetorian prefect of
Gaul, given by Sidonius Apollinaris Ep. I. 7.3, “He governed his first prefecture
with great distinction, and his second with great destruction.” Again, in Ep.
V. 13 Sidonius described the “monster” Seronatus, “exhausting the individuals
scattered outside the towns by unheard of forms of inflictions, and ensnaring them
by the sinuous deceits of his calumnies.” The same Seronatus (Ep. II. 1)
“levies taxes as a master, exacts payments like a judge, slanders like a barbarian
. . , fills the woods daily with fugitives, the villas with enemies, the altars
with accused men, the prisons with clergy.” We learn, however, from Ep. VII.
7. 2 that he was at last brought to justice and put to death, though the government
hesitated to act against him. So Sidonius, Ep. V. 13, said of Seronatus: “Some are
freed by his venality, others by his vanity, none by his mercy.” On this whole passage cf. Haemmerle, Studia Salviana,
I. 4, pp. 29-33.
To conclude, the Spanish provinces know whereof I speak, for they have nothing
left them but their name; Since Gaul was overrun by the barbarians earlier than Spain,
the latter province suffered heavier taxation at the hands of the imperial prefects,
who tried to make up the Gallic deficit in the imperial taxation from this source.
Cf. Orosius VII. 41. 7: “There are certain Romans among them who prefer to sustain
poverty in freedom among the barbarians than the constant oppression of taxation
among the Romans.” Africa, being under the praetorian prefect of Italy, as Spain
was under that of Gaul, also suffered from the increase of taxation to make up for
losses in Italy. See Sidonius Ep. III. 6. 3: “Certainly the provinces
are much discussed; a good year depends less on the crops than the officials.” Again,
in Ep. IV. 24. 5, Sidonius illustrated the “integrity of a few” by
persuading an official friend to grant a year’s immunity from taxes, and cancellation
of the interest due, to a more straitened taxpayer, to free him “from the barbarous
demands of the collectors yapping around him.”
5. But my sorrow has led me to wander too far afield. To return to my former topic: is there any respect in which even the nobles are not contaminated by servile vices, or have they, forsooth, a right to commit sins they punish in their slaves? A slave may not even dream of such ravages as these nobles perform. This, however, is not quite true, for certain of the slaves, gaining noble rank, commit like sins, or even worse. Still the remaining slaves can hardly be held responsible for the fact that some few have so blessedly lost the condition of servitude.
Homicide is rare among slaves because of their dread and fear of
This attitude, however, was in defiance of a decree of Constantine
of A.D. 319 (Cod. Just. IX. 14. 1), which made a master who intentionally killed
a slave guilty of homicide, whatever was the method used. The increase of concubinage in the fourth century led
to progressive legalization of the institution. Constantine in A.D. 326 forbade
it unconditionally (Cod. Just. V. 26) ; Arcadius and Honorius in 405 strictly limited
the inheritance of concubines and their children (Ibid. 27. 2) ; Theodosius
and Valentinian in 443 (Ibid. 27. 3) provided that natural sons might have
full inheritance rights if they entered the curial class, and natural daughters
if they married curials. The last decree illustrates also how fiscal necessities
led to increasing leniency on the part of the government toward the frailties of
the propertied class, especially when direct benefit to the treasury would result.
6. Doubtless many of those who either are or wish
to be nobles listened with lofty scorn to my statement that some slaves are less
reprehensible than their masters. But since I made this remark not about all of
them but only those whom it fits, no one has any cause for anger if he thinks himself
a very different sort of man, for his anger would be enough to betray his membership
in the group of which I spoke. See Jerome Adv. Rufinum I. 11: “When vice is attacked
anonymously, the man who is angry at the attack accuses himself. It were the part
of a prudent man, therefore, though annoyed, to hide his guilt and cover his clouded
heart by a bright front.”
Take for example this crime, a very great one indeed, of which almost the whole
mass of slaves is guiltless. Has any slave throngs of concubines, is any one of
them denied by the stain of polygamy or do they think they can live like dogs or
swine with as many wives as they have been able to subject to their lust? The answer,
I suppose, is obvious, that slaves have no such opportunities, for they surely would
take them if they had. I believe this, but I cannot consider actions I do not see
performed as having taken place. However dishonorable his intentions are, however
evil his desires may be, no one is punishable for the crimes that he does not commit.
It is generally agreed that slaves are wicked and worthy of our
Who can find words to describe the enormity of our present situation? Now when
the Roman commonwealth, already extinct or at least drawing its last breath in that
one corner where it still seems to retain some life, is dying, This mention of the notion, prevalent in the fifth century,
of the old age of the Roman power, is somewhat at variance with Salviun’s usual
point of view. Sidonius used “the old age of the world” as a commonplace (cf.
Ep. VIII. 6. 3); Cyprian (Ad Demetrianum 4) made it the chief answer to
the usual charges against the Christians: “You blame the Christians because as the
world grows old its parts are weakened.” Salvian, on the other hand, saw the old
regime as continuing with new vigor, gained from the barbarians, to take the place
of the old vices. The efforts of the central government to do away with such
inequalities are illustrated by the decree of Gratian, Theodosius and Valentinian,
a.d. 383 (Cod. Theod. XI. 13. 1) : “Let all the privileges granted to a few individuals
to the destruction of the many be annulled, and all who have received immunities
of this sort by any means be reduced to an equal lot with the other provincials
. . . “; by the decree of the same emperors in 385 (Ibid. I. 20) providing
that all be bound “by the same equal form of levy”; and by that of Arcadius and
Honorius in 399 (Ibid. I. 26) removing all privilege, making all men equally
subject to taxation, especially in “those provinces from which the complaint arises.”
The repetition of such provisions illustrates clearly enough the futility of enacting
them, which increased in the fifth century.
Think a minute: the remedies recently given to some cities.—what have they
done but make all the rich immune and heap up See V. 8 infra. We are reminded, however, how
much the rich also had to complain of the burdens of taxation, by the description
(Sidonius Ep. V. 17. 5) of a church festival of which the crowning pleasure
was the conversation of Sidonius and his wealthy friends with “no mention of the
imperial officers or of the taxes, not a word to be betrayed, and no one to betray
it.”
7. Then what a state of things it is, what a holy
condition of affairs, that, if a noble begins to be converted to God, he at once
loses his noble rank! What honor is paid to Christ among a Christian people in whose
eyes religion makes a man ignoble? For as soon as a man has made an attempt to improve
himself, he meets the abusive scorn of worse men, and thus all are compelled to
some degree of evil living that they may not be considered contemptible. Not without
cause did the apostle cry out: “The whole world lieth in wickedness.” See V. 10, infra: “Thinking the service of God depends
more on costume than on actions, they have changed their garments but not their
hearts.” Caesarius of Arles, who is said by Cyprian (Vita I. 1. 11) never
to have given up in the slightest degree the customs of the brothers at Lérins,
said in the first chapter of his Regula ad monachos (Migne, PL, LXVII, col.
1099) : “In the first place if any man come to conversion . . . let his lay garments
not be changed, unless he have first made bills of sale for his possessions.” Elsewhere
he said (Epistola ad germanos, ibid. col. 1155): “To lay aside secular garments
and put on religious ones is the work of a moment. . . . Let him not be wont to
wear a style of clothing either too mean, or displaying pride by frequent change,
or of a ruinous elegance.” Evidently, then, his idea of a religious habit was not
a set uniform, but one distinguished from secular clothing chiefly by its simplicity.
The emphasis laid by this prominent alumnus of the monastery at Lérins on the change
in clothing as an indication of the adoption of a religious life seems adequate
to settle the question much mooted among editors of Salvian, whether the change
of garments in the present passage is to be taken literally or figuratively.
Yet certain worldly men and unbelievers wonder why they endure the wrath of God
and his hatred, when they persecute him in the persons of all his saints; for all
things are perverse and at variance with the ways of the past. If there is any good
man, he is scorned as though he were evil: if a man is evil, he is honored as though
he were good. Is it then strange that we who daily grow worse, endure worse tortures
daily? See Cyprian Ad Demetrianum 10: “And do you wonder
that the wrath of God increasingly punishes the human race, when the sins to be
punished increase daily?”
8. Is there any room for further discussion? However
hard and bitter our lot, we still suffer less than we deserve. Why should we complain
that God deals harshly with us? We treat him much more rudely. We anger him by our
impure acts and force him, unwilling though he is, to punish us. And although the
spirit and majesty of God are such that he is not moved by any passion or anger,
yet such is the aggravation of our sins that they drive him to wrath.
This is why the prophet said to us: “Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that
have added fuel to the flame; walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that
ye have kindled.” That is, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah; cf. I. 8, supra.
9. But, you say, none now deserve the end of those
men, for none are to be compared with them, in evil doing. Perhaps that is true,
still what do we make of the fact that the Savior himself said that all who have
spurned his Gospel are worse than they? And at Capernaum he said: “If the mighty
works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained
until this day. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land
of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee.”
To such men this prophetic saying may well be applied: “The fool hath said in
his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
Although no evil deed has any rational foundation, In the classical period this was already a popular proverb:
Scelera non habent consilium; cf. Quintilian Institutio oratoria VII.
2. 44.
Yet why should I speak of man alone, when even the smallest sorts of animals
do all things with a view to future use? Cf. Lactantius De ira Dei 10. 44: “Nor is it probable
that the smaller and humbler creatures should have a rule of life, while the larger
and chief ones lack it.” There appears to be a slight lacuna in the text, unless,
as Hartel conjectures (cf. Pauly’s note ad loc.), the preposition
ex, for which an object is here supplied, has crept into the MS text from a marginal
notation, ex standing for
exempla. See Vergil Georgics IV. 200.
Has God then instilled this love of their own functions into even the least of
living things, and deprived himself alone of the love of his works? Have you considered
that all our love of good things has come down to us from his good love? He himself
is the fount and source of all our benefits, and since, as it is written: “In him
we live and move and have our being,”
Therefore by that very love he has caused us to feel for our sons he wished us
to know how greatly he loved his own. For we read, just as “the invisible things
of him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,”
10. This confirms my former statement, that God
loves us more than a father loves his son. It is clear that his love surpasses a
man’s love for his sons, since for our sake he did not spare his own child. Nay,
I add more, he did not spare his righteous Son, his only begotten Son, his Son who
is himself God. What more can be said? And this was done for us, that is for wicked,
unjust and most irreverent men. Who can justify this love of God toward us, save
that his justice is so great that no shadow of injustice can fall on him? As far
as human reason is concerned, any man would have acted most unjustly if he had had
his good son put to death for his worst slaves. But for this very reason the love
of God is the more surpassing and his goodness the more marvellous, that, as far
as human weakness is concerned, the greatness of his justice almost bears the appearance
of injustice. Therefore the apostle, to indicate as far as he might the boundless
mercy of God, said: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ
died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die.”
So he says: “God commends his love toward us.” How does he commend it? Surely in that he bestows it on the undeserving. If he had given it to holy men who deserved well of him, he would not seem to have given what was not due, but what he owed them.
What then have we given in return for this great boon, or what return ought we
to make for it? First of all, what the most blessed prophet testifies that he owes
and will give, saying: “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward
me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.”
The second is, if we do not pay our debt by death, to pay it by love. The Savior
himself, as the apostle says, by his death wished to commend his love to us all,
to lead us by the example of his loving care to make a fitting return for such great
affection. And just as certain marvellous natural gems, when one brings them into
contact with iron, though it be of the hardest kind, hold it in suspense by an attraction
that seems actually possessed of life, so also he, the greatest and most glorious
gem of the heavenly kingdom, wished to come down from heaven to approach more closely
to us, to draw us, in spite of our hardness, to his care as if by the hands of his
love, that recognizing his gifts and benefits we might come to know what it befitted
us to do for so good a master when he had
11. Since our indebtedness to God is clearly established,
let us see what return we make him for all that we owe. What return, indeed, but
all the actions of which I have spoken before, namely, whatever is indecent, whatever
is unworthy, whatever leads to injury of God, wicked deeds, disgraceful habits,
drunken feasts, bloodstained hands, vile lusts, mad passions and whatever else can
better be reckoned up by the conscience than in words! “For,” said the apostle,
“it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.”
12. If God does regard human affairs, some one
may say, if he cares for us, loves and guides us, why does he allow us to be weaker
and more miserable than all nations? Why does he suffer us to be
This question is answered in a similar way in Augustine’s
homily, De tempore barbarico.
We, of course, do not think we deserve them, and consequently are the more guilty and blameworthy for failing to recognize our deserts. The chief accusation of wrongdoers is their proud assertion of innocence. Among a number of men charged with the selfsame crime none is more guilty than he who does not acknowledge his guilt even in his own thoughts. We have, therefore, this single addition to make to our wrongdoings, that we consider ourselves guiltless.
But, you may object, grant that we are sinners and wicked men, certainly you
cannot deny that we are better than the barbarians, and this alone makes it clear
that God does not watch over human affairs, because we, who are better, are subject
to men worse than ourselves. Whether we are better than the barbarians, we shall
now consider; certainly there can be no doubt that we ought to be better. And for
this very reason, we are worse than they, unless we See Juvenal Sat. 8. 141-142.
13. I know it seems to most men intolerable that
we should be called worse than barbarians. What possible good does it do us to have
this seem intolerable? Our condition is made so much the more serious if we are
worse than they and yet insist on believing ourselves better. “For if a man think
himself to be something,” the apostle said, “when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.
But let every man prove his own work.”
Since, then, some men think it unsupportable that we should The Goths and Vandals had been converted to Arianism; cf.
Book IV. 14, 17 infra, for Salvian’s account of the pagans among the barbarians.
Therefore, since some men think it irrational and absurd that we should be judged
as worse, or even not much better than the barbarians, let us see, as I said, how
we are worse, and in relation to which barbarians. Now I say that except for those
Romans alone, whom I mentioned just now, the others are all or almost all more guilty
than the barbarians, and more criminal in their lives. You who read these words
are perhaps vexed and condemn what you read. I do not shrink from your censure;
condemn me if I do not succeed in proving my words; condemn me if I do not show
that the Sacred Scriptures also have said what 1 now claim. I myself who say that
we Romans, who judge ourselves far superior to all other nations on earth, are worse
in many respects, do not deny that in certain ways we are superior. For while we
are, as I have said, worse in our way of life and in our sins, yet in living under
the catholic law we are incomparably superior. But we must consider this, that while
it is not our merit that the law is good, it is our fault that we live badly. Surely
it profits us nothing that
14. Disregarding, therefore, the privilege of the law, which either does not help us or even brings just condemnation upon us, let us compare the lives, the aims, the customs and the vices of the barbarians with our own. The barbarians are unjust and we are also; they are avaricious and so are we; they are faithless and so are we; to sum up, the barbarians and ourselves are alike guilty of all evils and impurities.
Perhaps the answer may be made: if we are equal to them in viciousness, why are
we not also equal to them in strength? Inasmuch as their wickedness is like ours
and their guilt identical, either we should be as strong as they, or they as weak
as we. That is true, and the natural conclusion is that we who are weaker are the
more guilty. What proof have we? The proof is, of course, inherent in my demonstration
that God does everything in accordance with judgment. For if, as it is written:
“The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good:”
If a Hun or Gepid is deceitful what wonder is it in one who is utterly ignorant of the guilt involved in falsehood? If a Frank swears falsely, what is strange in his action, since he thinks perjury a figure of speech, and not a crime? And why is it strange that the barbarians have this degree of vice, since they know not the law and God, when a majority of the Romans, who know that they are sinning, take the same attitude?
Not to speak of any other type of man, let us consider only the throngs of Syrian
merchants who have seized the greater part of all our towns—is their life anything
else than plotting, trickery and wearing falsehood threadbare? Salvian’s estimate of their numbers seems justified by the
numerous inscriptions of Syrian and other orientals, found in Gaul; cf. Corpus
Inscriptionum Latinarum XII, XIII.
15. Lastly, to say nothing of our other sins,
who is there among laymen, except a very few, that does not constantly have the
name of Christ on his lips to swear by it? Hence this is the oath most commonly
used by nobles and baseborn men alike: “By Christ I do this . . . ; by Christ I act
thus . . . ; by Christ I am not going to say anything else . . . ; by Christ I am not
going to do anything else.” And what results? The abuse has been carried so far
that, as we said before about heathen barbarians, Christ’s name seems now to be
not a binding oath but a mere expletive. For among the great majority this name
is held to be so trivial that men never have less intention of doing a thing than
when they swear by Christ to do it. Although it is written: “Thou shalt not take
the name of the Lord thy God in vain,”
Then many swear by the name of Christ to do things not merely trivial and foolish but even criminal. For this is their usual manner of speaking: “By Christ I’ll steal that . . . ; by Christ I’ll wound that man . . . ; by Christ I’ll murder him.” It has come to such a pass that they feel themselves bound by religion to commit the crimes they have sworn in Christ’s name.
Finally, let me tell an experience of my own. A short time ago, won over by the
pleas of a certain poor man, I besought a man of considerable influence not to take
from the poor wretch his property and substance, not to remove the sole prop and
help that supported his poverty. Then he, who had swallowed the poor man’s goods
in ravenous haste, and had already devoured his prey with most ardent ambition and
greed, glared at me with eyes blazing as if he thought I might take from him something
he had not succeeded in
16. At this point I ask all who are of sound mind: who would ever believe that human covetousness would reach such a pitch of audacity, would ever scorn God so openly that men should say it is for Christ’s sake they intend to do a deed the very performance of which is an insult to Christ? “What an unthinkable and monstrous crime! Of what daring are the wicked minds of men not capable? They arm themselves for robbery in God’s name; they make him somehow responsible for their crimes, and although Christ forbids and punishes all sin they claim that they perform their wicked deeds for his sake.
Yet we, complaining of the injustice of the enemy, say that the heathen barbarians
are guilty of perjury. How much less guilty are they who swear falsely by demons,
than we who swear by Christ! How much less serious a crime it is to take the name
of Jove in vain than that of Christ! In the one case it is a dead man by whom they
swear, A characteristic example of Christian euhemerism.
Who then are outside the law of Christ? Who but pagans ignorant of the Lord’s law? Therefore it is of these that he says: “Where no law is, there is no transgression.” By this one word he shows that only Christians transgress the law when they sin, but the pagans who do not know the law sin without transgression, since no one can transgress in a matter of which he is ignorant. We alone therefore are transgressors of the divine law, we who, as it is written, read the law and do not follow it. Hence our knowledge brings us nothing but guilt, since its result is only that we give the more offence by our sins, for what we know from our reading and in our hearts, we spurn in our wantonness and scorn.
So the words of the apostle to every Christian man were most justly spoken: “Thou
that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonorest thou God?
For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you.”
Of what crimes the Christians are guilty may be learned from this one fact, that
they defame the name of God. And although we have been charged to “do all things
for the glory of God”
17. This being the case, we may indeed beguile
ourselves with the great prerogatives of the name of Christian, we who so act and
live that by the very fact that we are said to be a Christian people we seem to
be a reproach to Christ. On the other hand, what do we find of this sort among the
pagans? Can it be said of the Huns: “See what sort of men these are who are called
Christians?” Can it be said of the Saxons or the Franks: “See what these men do
who claim to worship Christ?” Can the sacred law be blamed for the savage customs
of the Moors? Do the most inhuman rites of Scythians or Gepids bring curses and
blasphemy on the name of the Lord our Savior? Can it be said of any of these: “Where
is the catholic law that they believe? Where are the commandments of piety and chastity
that they learn? They read the Gospel, and are unchaste; they listen to the apostles,
and get drunk; they follow Christ, and plunder; they lead dishonorable lives, and
say that they follow an honorable law.” Can such things be said of any of these
nations? Certainly not, but they are all truly said of us: in us Christ suffers
reproach; in us the Christian law is accursed. Of us are said the words quoted above:
“See what sort of men these are who worship Christ. They are plainly lying when
they say that they learn good things, and boast that they keep the commandments
of the sacred law. For if they learned good things they would be good. Their religion
must be like its followers: doubtless they are what they are taught to be. Thus
it appears that the prophets they have teach impurity; and the apostles they read
have sanctioned wickedness; and the Gospel which they have learned preaches the
actions that they perform; in fine, the lives of the Christians would be holy, if
Christ had taught holiness. So the object of their
Finally, what distorted and wicked notions the pagans have always had about the sacraments of the Lord is shown by the bloody inquisitions of brutal persecutors, who believed that at Christian services only vile and abominable rites were performed. Even the origins of our religion were thought to spring from two great crimes, the first being murder and the second incest, which is worse than murder. Nor were these mere murder and incest, but a more wicked thing than the bare commission of either of these crimes, the incest of holy mothers, and the murder of innocent infants, whom, they thought, the Christians not only murdered, but—which is more abominable—devoured.
All this was supposed to be done to appease God, as if any evil would cause him greater offence! as an offering to atone for sin, as if any sin could be greater! to make him look with favor on sacrifices, as if any act could better arouse his aversion and horror! to win the right to eternal life, as if indeed, even supposing it could be won by such actions, it were worth while to attain it by such atrocious crimes!
18. We may understand from this what the pagans
have come to believe about the character of Christians, who worship God in such
sacrifices, and what sort of God they think could have taught such things as sacred
rites. Yet how did this belief arise? How else but through those who are called
Christians, but are not; who by their shameful and disgraceful lives sully the name
of their religion; who, as it is written, “profess that they know God, but in works
deny him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate”;
How very difficult it is to atone for subjecting the name of divinity to the
evil-speaking of the heathen, we are taught by the example of the most blessed David.
By the suffrage of his former acts of justice he deserved to win release by a single
act of confession, from eternal punishment for his offences. Yet even the penitence
that pleaded for him did not avail to win pardon for, this grievous sin. For when
Nathan the prophet had heard him confess his fault, and said to him: “The Lord hath
put away thy sin, thou shalt not die,” he added at once: “Howbeit, because by this
deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the
child also that is born of thee shall surely die.”
What followed? He laid aside his diadem, cast off his jewels, doffed the purple,
gave up all the splendor of his royal state, and instead shut himself up alone in
mourning, foully clad in sackcloth, drenched with his tears and besmirched with
ashes. Yet though he sought the life of his little child with such lamentations
and entreaties, and strove to move the tender heart of God with such fervent prayers,
all his pleas and protests could not obtain his pardon, even though he had firmly
believed that he should gain what he sought from God—which is the greatest
aid to those who pray. From this we learn that there is absolutely no sin for which
it is harder to atone than that of giving the heathen occasion to blaspheme. For
whoever has gravely sinned without causing others to blaspheme brings condemnation
only on himself, but he who has made others blaspheme drags many men down to death
with him, and must be held answerable for all whom he has implicated in his guilt.
Nor is this all; whenever a man sins; in such a way that his action does not give
others occasion for blasphemy, his sin injures only him who has committed it, but
does not insult the holy name of
19. Moreover, as I have said, this evil is peculiar
to us Christians, because God is blasphemed only through the agency of those who
know the good and do evil; who, as it is written: “Profess that they know God,
but in works deny him”;
The Christians are worse than other men for the very reason that they ought to
be better. They do not justify their profession of faith, but light against it by
their evil lives. For evil doing is the more damnable in contrast with an honorable
title; and a holy name becomes a crime in an impious man. Therefore our Savior also
says in the Apocalypse to a lukewarm Christian: “I would thou wert hot or cold;
so then because thou art lukewarm, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
The Lord commanded every Christian to be fervent in faith and spirit. For it
is written: “That we may be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”
The blessed apostle Peter also made this plain when he said of the lukewarm and
vicious Christians, that is, those who live wicked lives: “For it had been better
for them not to have known the truth, than after they had known it, to turn from
the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according
to the true proverb, ‘The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that
was washed to her wallowing in the mire.’”
To make clear that this was said of those who live under the name of Christian
in the vileness and filth of the world, hear what he says of such men in the same
passage: “For if, after they had escaped the pollutions of the world through the
knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein,
and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.”
From this we learn, as I said before, that we are much more blameworthy, who
have the law and reject it, than those who neither have it at all nor know it, for
no one despises what he does not know. “I had not known lust,” the apostle says,
“except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet,”
We, therefore, are alike scorners and transgressors of the law, and thus we are worse than the pagans, because they do not know the ordinances of God, but we know them; they do not possess them, but we do; they do not perform precepts they have not heard, but we read and trample them under our feet. Hence what with them is ignorance is in us transgression, since there is less guilt in ignorance of the law than in contempt of it.
1. I know that there are men, utterly lacking in faith and void of the divine truth, who think they have an easy answer to my arguments. They say that if the guilt of unfaithful Christians is so great that they sin more in disregarding the commands of the Lord which they know, than do the heathen tribes in their ignorance, then ignorance has proved of more benefit to the pagans than knowledge, and knowledge of the truth is only an obstacle to the Christians.
My answer must be this: it is not the truth that stands in our way, but our own
vices; not the law that does us injury, but our evil ways. In brief, give us good
ways of living and the decrees of the law are in our favor; take away our vices
and the law helps us. “For we know,” the apostle said, “that the law is good, if
a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man.”
Therefore, begin to be just, and you shall be free from the law, because the law
cannot act against the holy life, in which it consists. “For we know,” he said,
“that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not
made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the unholy, for
the ungodly and for sinners, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to
sound doctrine.”
Now in our case the law is the antidote, the poison our wickedness. The antidote of the law cannot cure us who are being killed by the poison of our own vice. But of these matters I have said enough before, and if occasion arises shall speak again later with God’s help.
2. Meanwhile, since I mentioned above that there are two classes or sects of barbarians, namely, pagans and heretics, and I have already, I think, said enough of the pagans, let me now add what is necessary about the heretics. For my opponent may say: “Even if the divine law does not exact of the pagans that they keep commandments they do not know, it certainly does exact this of the heretics who know them; for they read the same books we do; they have the same prophets, the same apostles, the same evangelists, and therefore they are no less guilty than we are of neglect of the law. Really their neglect is much worse than ours, for although their Scriptures are the same, their actions are much worse.”
Let us consider both points. You say that they read the same books we do. How
can their books be the same, being badly interpolated and falsified by unscrupulous
men? They are not the same at all, for they cannot be said to keep their identity
unchanged if they are corrupted in any part. Having lost their full
completeness
If there are any among the barbarians who seem in their books to possess the Sacred Scriptures less interpolated and torn to pieces than the rest, still the corruptions in their texts are due to the tradition of their first teachers, whose disciples hold rather to their tradition than to the Scripture itself. For they do not abide by the instructions of the true law, but by the interpolations of an evil and distorted interpretation.
The barbarians, indeed, lacking the Roman training or any other sort of civilized
education, knowing nothing whatever unless they have heard it from their teachers,
follow blindly what they hear. Such men, completely ignorant of literature and wisdom,
are sure to learn the mysteries of the divine law through instruction rather than
reading, and to retain their masters’ doctrines rather than the law itself. Thus
the interpretation and doctrine of their teachers have usurped the authority of
the law among them, since they know only what they are taught. So they are heretics,
but unwittingly. The rest of this chapter is quoted in an abridged
translation by Voltaire in his Dictionnaire philosophique, s.v. “Hérésie,”
with the prefatory remark that it is the most sensible attack on the spirit of intolerance
that can be found. Voltaire had apparently forgotten or not read Augustine’s treatise
Contra epistolam Manichaei (Migne, PL, XLII, col. 173), in which (c. 1) he
prays for “a mind calm and tranquil, thinking rather of your correction than your
subversion. For although the Lord through his servants overturns the realms of error,
yet he bids the men themselves, in so far as they are men, be amended rather than
destroyed.” See
3. Let us not wonder that we
are beaten with many stripes, since we err not through ignorance but through rebellion.
For knowing
But he is just, however unjust we may be; for he punishes those he thinks deserve
punishment, and bears with those he thinks deserve his patience. In each case his
end is the same, that his chastisement of the orthodox may restrain their lust for
sinning, and his forbearance at length bring the heretics to recognize the full
truth of the faith, especially since he knows that those men are not apt to be unworthy
of the catholic faith whom he sees superior to the orthodox in their way of living.
All those of whom I speak are either Vandals or Goths, Orosius’ account of the conversion of the Goths,
while agreeing with Salvian’s on the responsibility of the Romans for the heresy
of the Goths, illuminates by contrast the comprehension and sympathy with which
Salvian states the absence of moral responsibility on the part of the barbarians
for a heresy that appeared to them orthodox. Salvian’s attitude is the more remarkable
in one whose devotion to Christ is so strong that at times he has Christ overshadow
the other Persons of the Trinity. Orosius says (VII. 33. 19): “Before this the
Goths sent ambassadors to ask that bishops be sent from whom they might learn the
precepts of the Christian faith. Valens the emperor, with damnable perversity, sent
teachers of the Arian creed. The Goths have held to the instructions of the first
faith that they received. So by a just judgment of God they burned alive the man
through whose fault they, when they die, are doomed to burn for their vicious error.” See IV. 2 supra. As Zschimmer (op.
cit., 58 n.l.) points out, this is a very notable statement. Salvian clearly
understands the historical connection of Roman Arianism with that of the Germans;
either he actually knew that Ulfilas in his translation of the Bible made alterations
to suit the Arian doctrines, or he is merely repeating some of the usual charges
brought against Ulfilas and other Arian missionaries by contemporaries of the orthodox
faith.
4. But as for the way of life
among the Goths and Vandals, in what single respect can we consider ourselves superior
to them, or even worthy of comparison? Let me speak first of their affection and
charity, which the Lord teaches us are the chief of virtues, and which he commends
not only through the Sacred Scriptures but also in his own words, when he says:
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.” For the efforts of the state to prevent such
injustice, cf. especially Cod. Theod. XI. 1. 20, 26. See Cod. Theod. XI. 7. 16, 20; 11. 1, for the
penalties for undue aggression by minor officials.
For what cities are there, or even what municipalities and villages, in which
there are not as many tyrants as curials? See III. 5 supra. For the reverse of the
picture, note the text of the contemporary decree of Theodosius and Valentinian
issued a.d. 443 (Cod. Just. V. 27. 2) beginning: “If any man whether free or bound
in the toils of the curia . . . “ In his own eyes the curial had become a slave rather
than a tyrant, and in those of the government as well, but the necessity of tyranny
toward the taxpayers was thereby increased. For the obligations of the office and
the difficulty of filling it at this time, see Cod. Theod. XII. 1, De decurionibus. That similar conditions prevailed also in
the eastern portion of the empire at this time is shown by the account of the Roman
regime given by the Greek whom Priscus found at Attila’s court (Priscus, “Historia
Gothica,” in De Boor, Excerpta Constantiniana I, 135-138; see also Bury,
History of the Later Roman Empire, I, 213-223): “Their oppressions in time
of peace are much more bitter than the calamities due to war, both on account of
the harsh tributes and on account of the oppression of the wicked, since the laws
are not enforced for all alike. If a rich or powerful man transgresses them, he
does not pay the penalty for his misdeed; but if a needy man, who does not know
how to conduct his affairs, transgresses, he must expect the penalty ordained by
law; unless perhaps, before the sentence is decided, when much time has been spent
in continual litigation and great amounts of money expended beside, his life ends.
But the worst injustice of all is that law and justice are to be obtained only by
bargaining and bribery. For no one will open the courts to any injured man before
he turns over his money to the use of the judge and his assistants.” Priseus countered
with a description of the general justice of the Roman law and government, to which
the exile replied that the laws of the Roman state were indeed good and the empire
gloriously constituted, but the magistrates, less public-spirited than of old, were
weakening and perverting it.
5. But certainly, you object,
even though there are so many who persecute good men, there must be some who come
to the rescue of those in distress, and, as it is written, “deliver the poor and
needy out of the hand of the wicked.” Elsewhere Salvian speaks in the same vein
(Ad ecclesiam IV. 8): “In such a situation what do those men do whom Christ
has appointed to speak? They displease God, if they are silent; men, if they speak.
But, as the apostle said in answer to the Jews, it is more expedient to obey God
than men.”
Meanwhile the poor are being robbed, widows groan, orphans are trodden down,
so that many, even persons of good birth, who have enjoyed a liberal education,
seek refuge with the enemy An important bit of contemporary evidence
for a fundamental step in the transition from the Roman regime in the country districts
to feudalism. Orosius’ similar statement in the case of
Spain has already been cited; cf. IV. 4 supra. Sidonius (Ep. V. 7)
speaks of the officials whose oppression of Gaul stands out in marked contrast to
the clemency of the surrounding barbarians. The account given by Paulinus of Pella
of Roman life among the Gothic invaders corroborates Salvian’s statements, in a
situation in which the victory of the Goths and the plundering before their departure
made, his favorable account the more remarkable. He lamented (Eucharisticos
285-290) the disadvantage of having had no Goths quartered in his house to protect
him from the ravages when their tribe withdrew: “for we know that certain of the
Goths worked with the greatest humanity to benefit their hosts by their protection.”
Later his prayer (Ibid. 424-425) that “some share of my ancestral fortune
might remain from the barbarian plundering by right of war, and from the Roman crime,
which has at various seasons fattened freely on my losses, against all justice”
was answered by a Goth’s payment to him for a part of his old estate, which had
fallen to the honest barbarian as part of his booty.
Although these men differ in customs and language from those with whom they have
taken refuge, and are unaccustomed too, if I may say so, to the nauseous odor of
the bodies and clothing of the barbarians, A similar distaste is expressed by Sidonius
(Carmen XII) in his description of the difficulties of composing six-foot
verses when seven-foot barbarians breathe onions and garlic into your face at daybreak. Strictly speaking the Bagaudae were not barbarians,
but revolted peasants from among the Roman citizenry, whose long-continued revolts
had invested them in Roman eyes with a quasi-barbarian character; for the other
barbarians note that in VII. 15 the Franks are described as especially hospitable. So the tribune of the soldiers at Jerusalem
said to Paul: “With a great price obtained I this freedom,” i.e., Roman citizenship.
(
The result is that even those who do not take refuge with the barbarians are yet compelled to be barbarians themselves; for this is the case with the greater part of the Spaniards, no small proportion of the Gauls, and, in fine, all those throughout the Roman world whose Roman citizenship has been brought to nothing by Roman extortion.
6. I must now speak of the Bagaudae, The revolt of the Bagaudae, analogous in many
respects to that of the Jacquerie in the 14th century, broke out in Gaul in A.D.
283-4 because of oppression in that province, due especially to overheavy taxation.
The empire was engaged in war against usurpers, and the revolt spread rapidly. Maximian
won great praise for suppressing it, but the Bagaudae continued to plunder the country
districts and towns, and spread through Gaul and Spain, adding seriously to the
difficulty of guarding the frontiers. In the 5th century their revolt again assumed
serious proportions; their troops were now regular armies and their local units
closely equivalent to the individual German states in menace to the unity of the
empire, breeding increasing discontent with the official oppression. The last mention
of the Bagaudae in the Chronicle of Idatius is in the year A.D. 449, and the movement
seems to have come to an end not long after this. For the contemporary references,
of which Salvian’s account is the most detailed, cf. Seeck, s.v. “Bagaudae,”
in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie. That a man should not be held responsible
for a crime committed under compulsion is recognized by a decree of Honorius and
Theodosius in A.D. 416 (Cod. Theod. XV. 14. 14) prohibiting suits for crimes committed
during the barbarian raids, “either through flight or through the herding together
of refugees . . . for an act done to escape death is not considered a crime.” Salvian uses the term Bagaudae, apparently
a word of Celtic origin, for which Seeck suggests the meaning “warlike,” as equivalent
to “outlawed rebels.” The ten chief men of each town were
responsible for handing over to the agents of the central government all that was
due from their district in payment of the indiction, the term used from the
time of Diocletian for the general provincial taxation on the basis of the amount
of arable land, cattle and laborers in each locality. The periodical revisions of
the taxable property also depended largely on the town officers, and usually caused
much oppression of the poorer taxpayers, as Salvian here says. In this case, also,
as in so many others, the rich could more easily gain substantial relief by bribery
than the poor could do.
Like wild beasts, instead of governing those put under their power, the officials
have devoured them, feeding not only on their belongings
How does our present situation differ from theirs? Those who have not before joined the Bagaudae are now being compelled to join them. The overwhelming injuries poor men suffer compel them to wish to become Bagaudae, but their weakness prevents them. So they are like captives oppressed by the yoke of an enemy, enduring their torture of necessity, not of their own choice; in their hearts they long for freedom, while they suffer the extremes of slavery.
7. Such is the case among almost
all the lower classes, for the same circumstances force them to two very different
alternatives. They are most strongly compelled to wish for freedom, but the compulsion
they suffer deprives them of power to carry out their wish. Perhaps it may be asserted
that the very men who have these desires would wish for nothing better than to be
free of any occasion to feel them, for what they wish is the greatest misfortune.
They would be much better off if they had no need for such ambitions. But what other
wish can these poor wretches have? They must endure the frequent, even continuous,
ruin of state requisitions, always menaced by severe and unremitting proscription;
they desert their homes to avoid being tortured in them, and go into voluntary exile
to escape heavy punishment. To such men the enemy are kinder than the tax collectors.
This is proved by their actions, for they flee to the enemy to avoid the oppression
of the levies. See Cod. Theod. XI. 1. 7 for the decree of
Constantius and Constans in A.D. 361 relieving of payments
pro his qui aufugerint any senators who could prove that they possessed none of the property of fugitive
holders; and XI. 1. 31 for the similar decree of Honorius and Theodosius in A.D.
412. Salvian’s description is closely paralleled by the passage from Priscus quoted
in note 10.
My next point is still more serious. The rich themselves from time to time make additions to the amount of taxation demanded from the poor. You may ask how it is, when their assessment has already reached a maximum figure, and the payments due from them are very large, that the rich can possibly wish to increase the total. But I did not say that they increase their own payments, for they permit the increase simply because it does not cost them anything additional.
Let me explain. Frequently there come from the highest imperial officials new
envoys, new bearers of dispatches, sent under recommendation to a few men of note,
for the ruin of the many. In their honor new contributions and tax levies are decreed.
The mighty determine what sums the poor shall pay; the favor of the rich decrees
what the masses of the lowly shall lose; for they themselves are not at all involved
in these exactions. The contrast between these practices and the
imperial theory is shown by the five decrees in Cod. Theod. VIII. 11: “That the
heralds of public good fortune are to receive no gifts from public levies or from
forced payments.”
The poor, indeed, in the extremes of their misery, pay all the exactions of which I have spoken, in utter ignorance of the object or reason of the payments. For who is allowed to discuss the payments, or inquire into the reasons for the amounts due? The sum is openly published only when the rich fall out with one another, and some of them feel slighted because they learn that assessments have been passed without their advice and management. Then you will hear some among them say: “What an unconscionable crime! Two or three decide the ruin of the many; a few powerful men determine what is to be paid for by many poor wretches!” For each individual rich man thinks it due to his honor to object to any decree passed in his absence, but he does not consider it due to justice to object to any wrong being enacted in his presence.
Finally, what they have criticized in others they themselves afterward establish in law, either in requital for the earlier contempt, or as proof of their power. As a result the most unhappy poor are like men far out at sea, buffeted by conflicting winds; they are overwhelmed by the billows that break over them now from one side, now from the other.
8. But surely, you say, those
who are unjust in this respect are known to be moderate and just in another, and
atone for their
But this is not the case, for the injustice is alike in both the exactions and
the remedies. As the poor are the first to receive the burden, they are the last
to obtain relief. For whenever, as happened lately, See IV. 6 supra. No writer gives further
details on these measures, and they are not mentioned in the Codex. Salvian’s description
of the profit made by the rich out of attempts at relief is confirmed by phrases
in Cod. Theod. XII. 1. 173, of A.D. 410: “For relieving the fortunes of the poorer curials and restraining the oppression of the powerful.
. . . Let them fear the
knowledge of your power and dare make no attempt at relieving the rich and destroying
the needy.”
Under such circumstances can we think ourselves undeserving of God’s severe punishment
when we ourselves continually so punish the poor? Can we believe that God ought
not to exercise his judgment against us all, when we are constantly unjust? For
where, or among what people, do these evils exist save only among the Romans? Who
commit such grave acts of injustice as ours? Take the Franks, they are ignorant
of this wrong; the Huns are immune to it; there is nothing of the sort among the
Vandals, nothing among the Goths. For in the Gothic country the barbarians are so
far from tolerating this sort of oppression that not even
Yet we are surprised that the Goths are not conquered by our resistance, when
the Romans would rather live among them than at home. Not only have our kinsmen
no desire at all to escape from them to us, but they even leave us to take refuge
with them. I could find occasion to wonder why all the poor and needy
taxpayers That is, free farmers, not coloni,
for the latter would not be liable to direct taxation. The constant use of diminutives
in reference to their property—agelli, resculae, habitatiunculae—shows
the type of small farmer meant. The passage is an important one as an indication
of the existence of independent small landholders in Gaul in Salvian’s time. See Cod. Theod. XII. 1. 146 of A.D. 395: “We
have noted that many hide under the shadow of the powerful to defraud their country
of the payments due”; and, in general, Cod. Theod. XI. 24;
De patrociniis vicorum.
A decree of A.D. 319 (ibid. XI. 3. 1) recognized as the cause of many
arrears in the taxes that “some men, taking advantage of the temporary needs of
others, get possession of the best farms on condition of holding them tax free without
making up their arrears to the fiscus.” In Cod. Just. XI. 54. 1, A.D. 468, an attempt
is made to prevent patronage by making testaments in such eases invalid; in Cod.
Theod. XI. 24. 4 such patronage is made subject to very heavy fines.
What an intolerable and monstrous thing it is, one that human hearts can hardly
endure, that one can hardly bear to hear spoken of, that many of the wretched poor,
despoiled of their tiny holdings, after they have completely lost their property,
must still pay taxes for what they have lost! Though possession has been forfeited,
the Salvian uses the word
capitatio, winch,
as Haemmerle (op. cit. II. 11) points out, must be here equivalent to
iugatio, not to the poll tax. For attempts to remedy this wrong, ef. Cod.
Theod. XI. 3. 1-5, providing for proper registration and payment of arrears on land
acquired “in any way whatsoever.”
Therefore some of those of whom I speak, who are either shrewder than the rest
or have been sharpened by necessity, have lost their homes and farms by such encroachments,
or have fled before the taxgatherers, because they cannot hold their property, and
seek out the farms of the rich and great, to become their coloni. That is, they give up their full citizen
status, and become bound to the soil, being no longer subject to direct
taxation. This would seem a harsher alternative than the preceding, yet actual
conditions lead Salvian to reckon it as the wiser course.
Those who are driven by the terror of the enemy flee to the forts, Castella had already become frequent
sanctuaries in exposed territories. Churches had taken the right of sanctuary
formerly held by pagan temples; cf. Cod. Theod. IX. 45. Compare the commentary on their status in Haemmerle,
op. cit. II. 19-25, where Salvian’s use of the terms
coloni and inquilini as interchangeable is discussed.
9. Even this might through sheer
necessity seem somehow tolerable, if there were not further misfortune to follow.
Their lot is made more bitter by a worse injustice still. For they are received
as strangers; they become natives only on the terms of their present condition.
Recalling the example of that evil sorceress of old who is said to have changed
men into beasts, we might say that all who are received on the farms of the rich
are transformed as if by Circe’s potions. For the owners begin to count those whom
they have received as outsiders and aliens, as their own property; they turn into
slaves men known to be free-born. Do we wonder that the barbarians are able to capture
us, when we take our brothers captive? It is not at all strange that our states
are being devastated and destroyed. We have long been providing by the oppression
of the multitude for our own eventual capture, falling into captivity by our enslavement
of others. Much later than we deserve, do we now at length suffer the treatment
that we have meted out to others, and in the words of the Holy Scripture, eat the
labor of our own hands.
How great is the deceptive blindness of sinful minds! We are suffering from the
condemnation of God’s judgment and still do not acknowledge that we are being judged.
Some of the saints wonder that the others who have thus far not endured any such
In truth our actions suit the words of the apostle, for God calls us to repentance, but we treasure up wrath; he invites us to receive pardon, but we daily heap up our offences. We bring force to bear on him by our iniquities; we ourselves arm the divine wrath against us. We compel God against his will to take vengeance on our monstrous crimes; we give him scarcely any opportunity to spare us. For although no token of injustice can ever light on him or appear in him, our actions are such that if he did not take vengeance on our sins he would seem to be unjust.
10. Surely, you say, a man who
has once been a sinner may have ceased to do wrong. Is there any end to wrongdoing?
Do not men give up life sooner than iniquity? What man does not die in his evil
pursuits, to be buried with his sins and crimes? Truly, one might apply to such
men the words of the prophet: “Their
Many men know that I am speaking the truth, and can even bear witness to my words in their own conscience. Chief among these are the religious who have gained some reputation by a general repentance and now seek after new honors, and buy powers they formerly lacked. They are so anxious to be not merely men of the world, but more than worldly, that what they were before their repentance does not now suffice them unless they may become greater than they were in the past. Do they not repent of their conversion?
So also do those men repent of their conversion and their brief
What vain delusion is this? Sins were forbidden us by God, not marriage. Your deeds do not suit your convictions; you who call yourselves adherents of virtue should not consort with crime. What you are doing is utterly absurd; this is not conversion to God but aversion from him. If, as is rumored, you have left off long since the functions even of lawful wedlock, now at last give up your sin. It is indeed just that you should refrain from crime of all sorts, but if you think this impossibly difficult, at least give up your greatest and most monstrous sins. Grant, whoever you are, that the neighbors whose land adjoins yours cannot remain prosperous; grant that the poor cannot support life near you; grant that you persecute the indigent and plunder the wretched; grant that you cause affliction to all men, provided that they are outside your own circle: still, I beg, at least spare your own family. And if you think it too hard and burdensome to spare all who are yours, then spare those who have preferred you not only to their other relatives and kinsmen, but even to those most closely bound to them and their dearly loved children. Yet why should I speak of their loved ones and their children, when they have preferred you almost to their very life and hope? There is nothing praiseworthy in this, as everyone who has committed the error now recognizes. But what has that to do with you, whom even their mistakes have advantaged? Your debt to such men is the greater because they have erred from too great trust in you. They were indeed blinded by devotion, and consequently are branded and censured by all; but even so you are under greater obligations to them because they have incurred the blame of all for love of you.
11. What is there to compare
with this among the barbarous Goths? Who among them injures those who love him,
attacks his friends, and cuts the throats of his dear ones with his own dagger?
You attack those who love you, you cut off the hands of those who offer gifts, you
kill your closest friends, and do you not fear and tremble? What would you do if
you had not felt the present judgment of God in the scourging you have just received?
You increase the count and constantly add new crimes to your former misdeeds. Think
what punishment awaits your worse deeds, when even lesser faults are regularly punished
by demons. Be content now, I pray, with robbing your friends and companions. Let
it be enough that the poor have been harried and beggars despoiled by you, that
hardly any one can keep from trembling in your presence, no one can feel secure.
Torrents rushing down from Alpine crags, or flames driven by the wind, are more
easily borne. No such death as this—to use a well known figure—do sailors
die, devoured by the engulfing whirlpool or by Scylla’s proverbial dogs. You evict
your neighbors from their little farms, those nearest you from their houses and
property. Would you “be placed alone in the midst of the earth,”
But suppose that you do not wish to win praise; tell me, why do you wish to be
worthy of condemnation? Why is nothing dearer
Pliny Panegyric 49: “In vain has he
girded himself with terror, who was not fenced about with charity; for arms are
stirred up by arms.”
So your delusions lead you astray; the wickedness of your blind and evil heart
deceives you. If you wish to be upright, to be powerful, to be great, you ought
to surpass other men not in ill will but in honor. I once read somewhere: “No one
is wicked but a fool; for if he were wise, he would prefer to be good.” Do you,
therefore, if you can at last return to sanity, put off your wickedness, if you
wish wisdom. For if you hope to be at all wise or sane, you must discard all that
you have been and change completely. Deny yourself that you may not be denied by
Christ; cast yourself off that you may be received by him; lose yourself, that you
may not perish. For the Savior says: “Whosoever will lose his life for my sake
shall find it.”
1. I have been dealing with personalities for a long time now, and seem to have exceeded the rules of argument. For undoubtedly the reader (if anyone for Christ’s sake does read these words written from love of Christ) is thinking or saying of me: “Since the subject he is pursuing is a general one, of what use is it to heap up so many accusations against a single person? Suppose —for it is credible—that the man of whom he speaks is as he describes him; still how can one man’s goodness be blocked by another’s guilt, or—a point of much greater importance—how is the general cause injured by one individual’s crime?”
The injury indeed I can prove by clear examples. For instance, Achar See
Since this is the case, it was useless, useless indeed, to speak so long of one
evil man, useless to weep for one man’s crimes, since all or almost all require
our tears and lamentations. There are many who are of this sort or who wish to be
so, which is no less incriminating, and who strive by their zeal for evil to seem
guilty of the charge. On this account, even if their lesser capacity accomplishes
less evil, they are themselves as wicked as the rest, for it is
2. Yet what hope of betterment
is there in us, I ask, who are not led into evil by mistaken opinion, but strive
with all the eagerness of our perverted natures to appear constantly worse and worse?
This is the reason why I have long lamented that we are much worse than the barbarians,
for ignorance of the law excuses them, whereas our knowledge of it accuses us. They
prefer the evil to the good through inexperience of the truth, because they do not
know what things are good; we, by our knowledge of the truth, know very
Here there is a lacuna in the MSS. I have
followed Pauly’s conjecture to fill out the sense, but am inclined to agree with
Zschimmer, op. cit., p. 35, that the abrupt introduction of the subject of
the games indicates a more substantial loss in the text.
In the first place, there is almost no crime or vice that does not accompany
the games. Salvian’s diatribe against the games has been
one of the most quoted portions of his work as Grégoire and Collombet note (Oeuvres
de Salvien, II, 476), it was much used by the French clergy in the 18 th century,
especially as a source for Lenten sermons. The Italian translation by S. Carlo Borromeo
(Milan, 1579) is actually entitled Libro di Salviano Vescovo di Marsiglia contra,
gli spettacoli ed altre vanità del mondo. The subject was one on which the majority
of the Fathers wrote with vehemence, and there is naturally a considerable degree
of similarity in their attacks. Salvian’s chapters on the spectacles are perhaps
closest to Tertullian, De spectaculis, and to what Lactantius has to say
on the subject in various sections of his Institutiones divinae. This sentence shows that in spite of all attempts
to check the custom, men were still being “thrown to the lions” in the middle of
the 5th century. Constantine in A.D. 325 decreed (Cod. Just. XI. 44) : “Bloody spectacles
in a time of civil peace and domestic quiet do not meet with our favor, wherefore
we absolutely prohibit the existence of gladiators.” Rittershausen aptly queries
whether the spectacle of men torn and devoured by wild beasts was more suited to
civil peace and quiet than were gladiatorial combats.
My opponents object that this is not done all the time. True,
Nor is this the only possible example of our sins, but there are still greater
ones. For instance, do not the consuls even now have hens fed after the custom of
the sacrilegious pagans? Are not auguries still sought from the flight of birds,
and almost all those superstitions kept up which even pagan writers of old thought
laughable? See Minucius Felix Octavius 26. Already in the fourth century the chief functions
of the consuls at Rome had come to be the giving of their names to the official
year, and giving games to the people; this example therefore has an added pertinence
in the discussion of the games. See Seneca De ira III. 31, in the importance
of the consul ordinarius as compared with the consuls later in the year,
who were deprived of that immortality for their names, which until the general adoption
of the Christian era was really considerable.
3. Let this much suffice about the games, seeing that they are, as you say, not performed all the time. We shall speak, instead, of everyday obscenities. These the hosts of demons have contrived of such a sort and so innumerable that even honest and upright hearts, though they can scorn and tread down some among them, yet can scarcely find a way to overcome them all completely. Armies about to engage in battle are said either to intersect with pitfalls the places through which they expect the troops of the enemy to march, or plant them with stakes, or fill them with caltrops, so that even if some of their snares fail to entrap a victim, none of the enemy can fail to be caught. In like manner the demons have prepared so many treacherous lures in this life for the human race that even though one escapes many of them, he is finally caught by one or another.
And since indeed it would take too long to tell of all these snares, that is,
the amphitheaters, the concert halls, games, parades, athletes, rope dancers, pantomimes
and other monstrosities of which one is ashamed to speak, since it is shameful even
to know of such wickedness, I shall describe only the vices of the circuses and
theaters. For the evils that are performed in these are such that no one can mention
them, or even think of them without being polluted. See Seneca Ep. VII. 2: “Nothing is
so ruinous to good character as to spend time at any spectacle.”
Who without injuring his modesty can tell of those representations of base acts,
those obscenities of words and voice, those
Therefore in these pictures of vice the whole people commits fornication mentally, and any who happen to come to the spectacle chaste go home from it adulterers. They are guilty of this fornication not only when they go home, but also when they come to the theater, for the very desire of the obscene makes a man unchaste who is hurrying toward an impure spectacle.
4. You see then in what actions
all or the majority of Romans participate. None the less, we who do such things
say we are forsaken by God, though we ourselves are forsaking him. Let us suppose
that our Lord would like to watch us even though we do not deserve it: can he do
so? See countless thousands of Christians daily
In spite of this, without interruption we continue to do those things of which
I speak. Do we perhaps suppose that, like the ancient pagans, we have a god of theaters
and circuses? For they built the theaters and circuses long ago because they believed
that such vanities were a delight to their idols. See Lactantius Inst. div. VI. 20.
Therefore we offer up to Christ—O monstrous folly!—to Christ we offer
up circuses and mimes, and we do this chiefly when we receive some benefit from
him, when some mark of prosperity is
5. To Christ then—O monstrous
folly!—we offer circuses and mimes, to Christ in return for his benefits,
we offer the obscenities of the theaters, to Christ we dedicate the vilest shows
as sacrificial offerings. Was this the teaching given us by the Savior, incarnate
for our sake? Was this his preaching, or that of his apostles? For this did he endure
the humiliation of human nativity and take upon himself a shameful origin in his
mortal birth? For this he lay in a manger, whom angels served as he lay there. For
this he willed to be wrapped in swaddling clothes, and wearing them ruled heaven;
for this he hung upon the cross, whom the world feared as he hung there. “Who though
he was rich,” the apostle said, “yet for your sakes became poor, that ye through
his poverty might become rich.”
These then are the precepts that Christ gave us at the time of
his passion. A glorious return we are making for his suffering, who, having received
redemption by his death, offer him in return
Where are men who do those things for which the apostle says Christ came? Where
are those who flee from worldly lusts? Where are those who live righteous and godly
lives, who show in their good works that they hold the blessed hope, and by living
immaculate lives prove that they await the kingdom of God, since they deserve to
receive it? “The Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul said, “came to purify unto himself a people
worthy of acceptance, zealous of good works.” Where is that pure people, that acceptable
people, that people of good works, that people of righteousness? “Christ,” the Scripture
says, “suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow his
steps.”
6. Who can describe this delusion
of ours, this folly? Are we really unable to enjoy ourselves day by day, and to
laugh, without turning our laughter and joy into crime? or do we perhaps
consider
Tertullian makes a similar connection
between spectacula and pompa diaboli in De spectaculis 4. On
his other uses of the phrase, and its generally symbolic meaning at this time, cf.
P. de Labriolle’s article, “Pompa Diaboli,” Bulletin du Cange,
II (1926), 170-181. The actual word spectacula was not included in the baptismal
vow, but in Salvian’s interpretation was inherent in the pomp and works of the devil.
So Tertullian, in the passage cited above, says: “If then the whole apparatus of
the spectacles is proven to consist of idolatry, there is no doubt that our vow
of renunciation at the font refers also to the spectacles, which are by their idolatry
in the service of the devil and his pomp and angels.” See Isidore, Etymologiae XVIII. 59:
“These spectacles of cruelty and vanity were instituted not only by the vices of
men but by the orders of demons also. Therefore a Christian should have nothing
to do with the insanity of the circus, with the indecency of the theater, with the
cruelty of the amphitheater, with the atrocities of the arena, with the voluptuousness
of the games. For he who prefers such sights denies God, being made a traitor to
the Christian faith, who seeks again what he once renounced at the font; that is,
the devil, his pomps and works.”
Furthermore, the devil is present in his spectacles and pomps, and therefore when we return to the devil’s spectacles, we abandon our Christian faith. Thus all the sacraments of our belief are broken, and all that follows in the creed is shaken and totters; for nothing that follows remains intact if the chief clause has fallen. Tell me then, you who are a Christian, how you think you are keeping the latter portions of the creed, whose first clauses you have abandoned? The limbs without the head are worth nothing, and everything depends on its own first principles; these surely, if they perish, will drag all the rest down with them to destruction. If the main stock is removed, the other parts either cease to exist or if they continue are useless, for without its head nothing can subsist.
If any one thinks the wickedness of the spectacles a trivial matter, let him consider well all that I have said, and he will see that in them is not pleasure but death. For what else is it but death, to have lost the source of life? When the foundations of our creed are overthrown, life itself is strangled.
7. I must return again to my oft-repeated contention, what have the barbarians like this? Where in their lands are circuses, where are theaters, where those other wicked vices that are the ruin of our hope and salvation? Even if they had such things, being pagans, their error would involve less offence to what is sacred, and less guilt, for though such sights as these are impure, still they would not involve violation of a sacrament.
But as for us, how can we answer in our own behalf? We hold the creed and overthrow
it. We are equally ready to confess the That is, baptism.
One case in itself proves the truth of my contention, disregarding all the rest.
Whenever it happens, as it does only too often, that on the same day we are celebrating
a feast of the church and the public games, Another instance of popular disregard for
imperial edicts. Cod. Theod. II. 8. 20, in A.D. 392, forbade circuses on Sunday
except when the emperor’s birthday fell on that day. Another decree, ibid.
II. 8. 23, of A.D. 399, forbade theaters and races and all sorts of public shows,
with the same exception. In A.D. 409 (ibid. II. 8. 25), the prohibition hold
even for the emperor’s birthday and the anniversaries of his rule. A few years after
Salvian’s book was published, the emperors Leo and Anthemius in the East (Cod. Just.
III. 12. 9, A.D. 469) inflicted heavy penalties for presence at the spectacles on
Sunday, and on any officials who should authorize such performances “on the pretext
of public business.” Sources? Compare
8. At least, you say, this answer
can be made, that such things are not done in all the cities of the Romans. True,
and I shall even go so far as to say that they are not now being done in all places
where they have been hitherto. For instance, no shows are given now in Mayence,
but this is because the city has been destroyed and blotted out; Haemmerle, op. cit., I. 27-28, puts
the destruction of Mayence in A.D. 405-406 (see Jerome, Ep. 123; Migne, PL,
XXII, col. 1057), and that of Cologne between 438 and 440, as it is here connected
with the fourth sack of Trèves. Salvian, Ep. I, agrees with this in his account
of the effect on his relatives of the recent sack of the city. The dates of the four destructions of Trèves
here mentioned have been much discussed with widely differing conclusions. The 12th
century Gesta Treverorum described four captures of the city, but, ranging
as they do from that of the “Greeks” under the Arian Constans in A.D. 380 to that
of the Franks in 463, they do not suit the conditions required by Salvian’s text.
The recent tendency has been to ascribe all four captures of the city to the Franks,
and to set them fairly close together, emphasizing the phrase
ter continuatis
vicibus in VI. 15 infra. Rudolph and Kenterich (Quellen zur Rechts-
und Wirtschaftsgebiete der rheinischen Städte: kurtrierische Städte: I. Trier,
Bonn 1915, 5-6) incline to date the first capture in A.D. 411-412, the second
and third in the period from 412 to 416, and the fourth in 427-428, dates that connect
well with Salvian’s account and with local conditions. The earlier and later dates
assigned by some commentators, while suitable as far as the history of Trèves is
concerned, are less consistent with the conditions required by Salvian’s account.
For summaries of various opinions on this point, see Haemmerle, Studia Salviana
I, 19-26. Haemmerle himself suggests the date 406 as that of a sack by the Vandals,
and 411-413, 418, 438-439 or earlier, as Frankish destructions of the city. This
conjecture is not far from that of Rudolph and Kenterich.
So we must now consider the question, why those cities still seem to be the haunts of the games, whereas the games have ceased. They are still the homes and abiding places of disgraceful vice because all sorts of vile deeds have hitherto been enacted in them. Moreover, the only reason for the cessation of the games themselves is that they cannot be given at the present time because of the misery and poverty in which we live. That they were presented before was due to our depravity; that they are not given now, to our necessity. For the collapse of the imperial fiscus and the beggary of the Roman treasury do not permit money to be lavished on trifling matters that make no return. Let men squander as much as they please, casting their money into the mire; they cannot lose as much as they could formerly, for they have not as much to lose. In respect of our lustful desires and our base pleasures we should certainly like to have more abundance, if only that we might be able to transmute our wealth into disgraceful filth. The amounts squandered in our beggary are an indication of what we should like to spend if we were rich and magnificent. The bane and ruin of our present depraved condition is that though our poverty has nothing left to lose, our sinful souls yearn for more wealth to cast away.
We cannot therefore console ourselves at all on these grounds, that is, by saying
that the former extravagances are not now being
done, [means are lacking] The text is badly corrupted, and no satisfactory
emendation has been proposed. The bracketed words are supplied on the basis of the
preceding sentence.
9. Would that these abominations
had only been committed of old and that Roman depravity would at length cease such
performances! Then perhaps, as it is written, God would be merciful to our sins.
But we do not so act as to propitiate him. We constantly add evils to evils and
pile sins upon sins, and though many of us have already perished we seek to complete
our own destruction. Who, tell me, seeing another man killed beside him is not in
terror for himself? Who can see his neighbor’s house burn and not try by every means
in his power to keep his own from being set on fire? But we not only see our neighbors
burning Baluze, referring this phrase to the
burning of Trèves, somewhat gratuitously concluded that Salvian could not have been
a native of that city.
This is easily proved; only give back our former prosperity and
Why should I mention desire? Most men actually do these things whenever they can. When the inhabitants of other cities come to Ravenna or Rome they join the Roman plebs in the circus, and the people of Ravenna in the theater. Therefore let no one consider himself acquitted on the ground of his distance from the spectacles. All are united in the turpitude of their actions who join one another in their desire for disgraceful deeds.
Yet we flatter ourselves on the uprightness of our ways, the rarity of our vices.
So I shall carry my charges farther: not only do men still yield as of old to the
pollution of those infamous games but their guilt in this is much greater than before.
For in the past the various members of the Roman world flourished unimpaired; the
public wealth had made the storehouses inadequate; the citizens of all the towns
had abundance of riches and delights, and amid such overflowing prosperity the authority
of religion could hardly exercise due censorship of conduct. Then indeed those who
exploited base desires found rich grazing on all sides, but there was no lack of
wealth to satisfy their greed; no one worried about the public disbursements and
expenses, for the cost was not felt. The state indeed seemed in a way to seek an
opportunity to squander
But of the present situation what can we say? Our old abundance has deserted
us; the resources of former times are gone, and we are in a wretched state, but
do not cease our frivolities. Although even orphan wastrels are usually benefited
by poverty, leaving off the error of their ways as soon as they have squandered
their wealth, we seem to be a new class of profligates, in whom opulence has ceased
to dwell, but dissipation persists. The causes of our corruption lie not as with
other men in outside enticements, but in our hearts, and our minds are the source
of our depravity, so that [we] are not [moved] to amend our ways by the loss of
our wealth, but [go on] The corrupt text is here emended according
to Pauly’s conjectures.
10. Although I may have shown
sufficiently what serious vices the Romans have, from which the barbarian tribes
are free, still I shall add many points that I have omitted. But before I continue,
let me remind you that a fault of any sort which dishonors God should in no sense
seem a trivial matter to anyone. It is never permissible to dishonor an illustrious
and powerful man, and anyone who dishonors such a one is held guilty in the eyes
of the law and is condemned in due course as responsible for the injurious action.
How much more difficult of atonement is the accusation of injury to God! The fault
of the wrongdoer always increases in proportion to the position of the person injured,
since necessarily the greater the person of the man who suffers abusive action,
the greater is the guilt of the man who commits such action. Wherefore we read in
the law that even those who seem to have committed only slight offence against the
sacred ordinances have nevertheless been most severely punished; to the end that
we might know that nothing pertaining to God should be considered unimportant. Even
What did Oza, the Levite of God, do against the divine commandment, when he tried
to steady the ark of the Lord? There was no law laid down regarding this. Yet immediately
he took hold of it, he was struck down, apparently not because he did anything in
an impudent fashion or with an undutiful intention, but his very service was undutiful
because he exceeded his orders.
When a man of the Israelites had gathered wood on the Sabbath, he was struck
down and killed by the judgment and command of God, who is truly a most gentle and
merciful judge, who would doubtless have preferred to spare rather than to kill,
if the consideration of severity had not outweighed consideration of mercy. For
one incautious man perished to save many from perishing thereafter through lack
of caution.
But why do I speak of single individuals? The children of Israel in their journey
through the desert, because they longed for their accustomed meat, lost a part of
their number. The desire for meat had not yet been forbidden them, but God, I think,
wished to further the observance of the law by the suppression of rebellious desires.
He intended the whole people to learn the more easily how earnestly one should avoid
what God forbade in his divine writings, since even those acts injured him which
he had not yet forbidden by law.
The same people also murmured at the hardships they underwent, and for this reason
were punished by the Lord’s rods, not because it is forbidden a man to groan at
hardships, but because their murmurs were displeasing to God, inasmuch as they seemed
to accuse him of causing them too much labor. From this we should learn how much
a man enjoying the blessings of good fortune ought
11. What is the purpose of these
examples? What else than that nothing should seem trivial that causes injury to
God? For we were talking of the public games, which are truly mockeries of our hopes,
mockeries of our life. While we sport in the theaters and circuses, we perish, according
to the Sacred Word which says: “It is as sport to a fool to do mischief.” See Tertullian De spectaculis 10-11.
How, do you ask? Listen. First, if won over by his own mercy—for we never
so live that we deserve his favor—if, as I say, at any time won over by his
own mercy God gives us peaceful seasons, plentiful crops, tranquillity rich in all
good things and abundance increasing beyond our hopes, we let ourselves be so corrupted
by great prosperity and fortune, we let ourselves be so depraved by insolent manners
that we altogether forget God and ourselves. Although the apostle says that every
benefit of the peace given by God depends on this: “That we lead a quiet and peaceable
life in all godliness and honesty,”
Therefore we are unworthy of heavenly gifts, who make no good use of God’s kindness, and see in the means of good works only material for vice. Hence it comes that the peace which we so abuse itself works against us, and is actually harmful to us, since we use it to our detriment. Is this worthy of belief? We change nature itself by our wickedness, and the good things that God has made as his loving gift to us are turned to evil by our wanton lives.
12. We who are corrupted by
prosperity, you say, are corrected
Italy has already been devastated by many disasters: have the vices of the Italians
therefore ended? The city of Rome has been besieged and taken by storm: That the reference here is to the sack of
Rome by Alaric in A.D. 410 is clearly shown by the order of events cited; if it
had been intended, as those who use this passage to prove that Salvian’s book was
written after A.D. 455 assume, to refer to the Vandal sack, it would hardly have
been made the first of a series of events ending with the Vandal destruction of
Carthage some years before their sack of Rome. Gaiseric captured Carthage in A.D. 439, after
ten years of general Vandal control in Africa. The orthodox clergy were given their
choice of slavery or exile, as were the nobles. Church property was given over to
the Arians.
Or do we perhaps believe that those men were not captive in soul, who then rejoiced in the time of their people’s captivity? Was he not captive in mind and heart, who laughed amid the punishments of his people, who did not know that his throat was being cut along with theirs, that in their deaths he also died? Outside the walls, as I have said, and inside them too, was heard the din of battle and of the games; the voices of dying men mingled with the voices of revellers; the outcry of the people slain in the war could scarcely be distinguished from the clamor of those who shouted in the circus. What was accomplished by this but the hastening of the destruction of the people who chose such a course, though God perhaps did not yet wish to destroy them?
13. These places, however, are
far away, almost removed to another world, and seem irrelevant to the discussion
when I consider that even in my own country, This phrase was overlooked by those commentators
who held that Salvian was born in the province of Africa. That is, in the first sack of the city
of Trèves. The reference to Trèves is obvious. This estimate
of the city is supported by the general testimony of the writers of the early empire. Ausonius puts
Trèves in the fourth place in his Ordo urbium clarissimarum,
the first being assigned to Rome, the second to Constantinople and Carthage,
and third to Antioch, so that Trèves is second only to Rome in western Europe. The
choice of the city as the seat of the praetorian prefect of Gaul is a significant
indication of its preeminence. See also Cod. Theod. XIII. 3. 11, De medicis et
professoribus (A.D. 376): “For the most glorious city of Trèves we have thought
best to make a somewhat more ample allowance, that thirty annonae be paid
to a teacher of rhetoric, twenty to a teacher of Latin grammar, and twelve to one
of Greek, if a worthy one can be found.” That is, the Lernaean hydra. The labors of Heracles were a popular subject for light verse; cf. Ausonius Monosticha de XII aerumnis Herculis.
So much then for this city. What of another not far distant but of almost equal
magnificence? Brouwer, Antiquitatum et Annalium Treverensium
libri XXV (1671), V. 14, p. 275, identified this city as Mayence, which seems
to fit better than Metz or Cologne, the description of utter ruin. In VI. 8 supra,
Salvian mentioned Mayence especially as having been destroyed, while Cologne
was only spoken of as being full of the enemy. Haemmerle, op. cit., I. 18,
follows Baluze in identifying the city here mentioned with Cologne instead.
14. I have told the fate of
the most famous cities. What of the many others in various parts of Gaul? Have they
not fallen, too, because of like vices on the part of their citizens? All were so
completely possessed by their crimes that they did not fear any danger they had
foreknowledge of captivity and did not dread it. Fear indeed was taken away from
these sinful men to prevent them from the exercise of caution. Therefore, though
the barbarians were settled almost within their sight, men felt no fear, the cities
remained unguarded. Such was the blindness of their hearts, or rather of their sins,
that although doubtless no one wished to die, no one did anything to ward off death.
Everything was in the grip of carelessness and sloth, negligence and gluttony, drunkenness
and sleep, as has been written of such men: “Because a deep sleep from the Lord
was fallen upon them.”
15. Perhaps such things have
occurred in the past, but have now come to an end, or will do so at some future
time. Yes, forsooth, if today any city or province that has been smitten by God’s
scourge or devastated by the enemy appears humbled, converted and amended, if practically
all who bear the Roman name do not This phrase offers some support for
the adoption of dates for the first three captures of the city close to each other
in point of time: c.f. note 29 supra.
Worse than all this, other cities suffered from the destruction of this single town. There lay all about the torn and naked bodies of both sexes, a sight that I myself endured. These were a pollution to the eyes of the city, as they lay there lacerated by birds and dogs. The stench of the dead brought pestilence on the living: death breathed out death. Thus even those who had escaped the destruction of the city suffered the evils that sprang from the fate of the rest.
What followed these calamities? Who can assay such utter folly? The few men of
rank who had survived destruction demanded of the emperors Haemmerle, op. cit., I. 22-23,
pointed out the importance of this plural for dating the third sack of Trèves, since
the joint rule of Honorius and Constantius, A.D. 420-421, was the only possible
date before Salvian’s withdrawal to Lérins, when there could have been two
imperatores in the West to whom such an appeal could have been made. Hence the third sack
of the city must have taken place at about 420. He suggests further that the people
of Trèves hoped by the circuses to attract more residents for the rebuilding of
the city.
Among these, however, insanity is the least culpable, for the will is not at fault when sin is committed through sheer madness. Therefore those of whom I speak deserved the greater blame, because, though sane, they acted senselessly. Do you, O citizens of Trèves, long for circuses when you have been plundered and captured, after slaughter and bloodshed, after stripes and captivity, and the repeated destruction of your ruined city? What is more lamentable than this stupidity, more grievous than this folly? I confess I thought you most miserable when you were suffering destruction, but I see that you are now more miserable when you demand public shows. At first I thought you had lost only your material property in the capture of your city; I did not know that you had lost also your intelligence and control of your senses. Do you then ask for theaters, and demand a circus from our emperors? For what condition, I ask, what people and what city? A city burned and destroyed, a people captive and killed, who have perished, or mourn their dead; a city of which nothing survives but sheer calamity, whose people are altogether anxious in their grief, worn out by tears, prostrate in bereavement, so that it is hard to say whether the lot of the living or the dead is worse to bear. So great are the miseries of the survivors that they surpass the ill fortune of the dead.
Do you then seek public shows, O citizen of Trèves? Where, pray, are they to
be given? Over the pyres and ashes, the bodies and blood of the dead? For what part
of your city is free from these? Where The Vergilian phrase, imago mortis (Aeneid II. 360).
16. I have given the above account in somewhat full detail to prove that we have borne all our sufferings not through the failure of God’s providence or through his neglect, but because of his justice and judgment—a most just dispensation and worthy retribution—and that no portion whatever of the Roman world and Roman name, however greatly chastised by afflictions sent from heaven, has ever been corrected. Thus we prove that we do not deserve to enjoy prosperity, since we are not corrected by adversity.
Good gifts are given us from time to time, however, unworthy though we are. The
good God, like a most indulgent father, sometimes lets us be humbled for our sins,
but does not suffer us to be afflicted long. So at one time he chastises his children
by adversity, in accordance with his discipline, and again favors them with peace,
according to his mercy. As the best and most skilful doctors give different cures
for various diseases and succor some by sweet, others by bitter drugs; cure certain
ills by cautery, others by soothing poultices; employ ruthless surgery for some,
but pour healing oil on others; seeking the same good health by utterly different
cures: so also our God, when he restrains us by harsher blows, is seeking to cure
us by cautery and surgery; when he favors us with good fortune he is offering us
soothing oil and poultices—for by means
Gentle treatment usually corrects even the most incorrigible slaves whom punishment has failed to reform, and kindness subdues those whom the lash failed to make submissive to their masters. Babies, too, and almost all stubborn children, whom threats and blows do not make amenable, are often led to obedience by goodies and endearments. Hence we should realize that we are more worthless than the worst slaves, and more stupid than foolish children, since torments do not correct us as they do bad slaves, nor coaxings win us over as they do naughty children.
17. I think I have now proved adequately that punishment has not corrected any part of the Roman people; it remains to prove that neither the gifts nor the gentle words of God correct us. What then are the gifts and gentle words of God? What indeed but our peace and quiet, the calmness of prosperity that attends on our hopes and wishes? Let me give you a particular instance, since the case demands it.
Whenever we are in fear, distress and danger, when cities are besieged by the enemy or provinces devastated, or the members of the state wounded by any other adversities, and we offer prayers and vows to the heavenly hosts for help, then if by the aid of the divine mercy our cities are saved, the devastation ended, the hostile armies routed and all fear removed by God’s grace, what do we immediately do? Do we endeavor to recompense our Lord God by our worship, honor and reverence for the benefits we have received at his hands? For this is the fitting action and in accordance with human custom, that those who give us gifts may receive due return for them. This then perhaps we do, giving God recompense in human fashion, and making a good return for the good we have received of him.
So we run at once to the Lord’s house, and prostrate ourselves on the ground,
we supplicate him, our joy mixed with tears, and
18. Although all that I have
described should be given to God for his recent benefits, let us consider what we
actually do. Men run at once to the games, fly off to their old insanity, the folk
pour into the theaters, the whole people riot madly at the circuses. God gives us
good gifts to assure our merit, but we, as often as we receive his benefits, multiply
our crimes. He by his mercies calls us to righteousness, but we rush headlong into
wickedness; he by his mercies calls us to repentance, but we rush to destruction; he calls us to chastity,
but we rush into impurity. A noble response we make to his holy favors, nobly do
we recognize and honor his gifts, who repay the kindness we have received from him
by an equal measure of injustice! Is this not injury to our God, or can any injury
be less deserved, [when] great and frequent [gratitude] is needed instead? The lacuna indicated by Halm is supplied
according to Pauly’s conjecture.
But since by the taint of wickedness ingrained in our nature we cannot fail to
be prey to vice except by ceasing to live at all, what hope of good is there in
us? Those who sin through ignorance correct themselves when they learn their error;
those who do not know the true religion begin to change their way of life when they
change their faith. Lastly, those who are spoiled by excessive abundance and security,
as I said, cease their depravity when they are no longer secure. We do not err
through ignorance, nor are we
Where are now the old
resources and honors of Rome? The Romans were of old the mightiest of men, now they
are without strength; of old they were feared, but now they live in fear; barbarous
nations paid tribute to them, but to these same nations they are now tributary. Tribute had been paid to barbarians in return
for guarantees of the integrity of the frontier since the early empire: beginning
with the fourth century such tributes came to be due more and more to weakness,
rather than to policy, till the condition was reached which Salvian here describes.
1. My description, at the end of the previous book, of the weakness and misery of the Romans, may seem to be at variance with my general proposition. I admitted that the very people who, as pagans, conquered and ruled the world, are being conquered and enslaved, now that they have become Christians. Is not this clear evidence of God’s neglect of human affairs? The charge is easily refuted by what I said long ago about the pagan nations. Those who know the law of God and neglect it are more guilty than those who fail to observe it through lack of knowledge.
However, if God is willing, since we have reached the point in our undertaking
at which something should be said of the old Romans, we shall, with God’s help,
prove that his favor to them in the past was as just as is his present severity
toward us, and that his help to them in former times was as fully deserved as is
our punishment now. Since this promise is not carried out, we have
here a clear indication that Salvian’s book either was not finished, or has since
been mutilated. The manner of his projected proof of the point raised may be surmised
from his description in Book I. 10 of the virtues of the early Romans.
Would that this same punishment were of benefit to us! Much harder and more grievous
than punishment is the fact that no amendment follows. The Lord wishes to cure us
by his chastisement, but improvement does not result. How can we explain this evil?
Cattle and flocks are cured by surgery; when the diseased organs of mules, asses
and swine have been cauterized they acknowledge the healing effect of the fire,
and at once when the corruption of the infected parts has been burned away or cut
out, living flesh grows in place of the dead tissue. But we are burned and cut,
yet are not healed by the surgeon’s tools or the burning of the cautery.
The whole Roman world is at once wretched and voluptuous. What poor man is also
wanton? What man awaiting captivity thinks of the circus? Who laughs in the shadow
of death? Yet we, in the fear of captivity, continue to frequent the games, and
shadowed by the fear of death, we laugh. You would think the whole Roman people
had been steeped in Sardonic herbs: One of the best known of ancient proverbial expressions;
cf. Isidore, Etymologiae XIV. 6. 40: “the herb recalled by many writers and
poets, which, contracts men’s jaws and kills them while they seem to laugh.”
2. The great length at which
I have spoken of the disgraceful character of the public spectacles may have led
you to assume that the abstinence of the barbarians from this particular vice of
No one questions that the Aquitanians and the Nine Peoples The inhabitants of Novem Populana, the southwestern
province of Gaul, between Aquitania and Spain.
So we see that the Lord calls us not to labor but to rest. What does he exact of us, what does he order us to offer him, save only faith, chastity, humility, sobriety, mercy and sanctity? All these assuredly do not burden but adorn us. Nor is this all; they adorn our present life to the end that they may adorn even more the life to come. O good and loving master, of inestimable mercy! He has given us the gifts of religion at the present time that he may later reward us for the gifts he now gives! These virtues, then, all the Aquitanians should have cultivated, and indeed, as I said before, they should have made more especial efforts in this direction, since they had received the especial gifts of God. What resulted from their prosperity? What was bound to result? Was it not the exact reverse of what should have happened? In all the provinces of Gaul these men who are first in wealth, are first also in vice: nowhere is pleasure more shameless, life more vicious, or moral standards more corrupt. This is the return they have given God for his sacred gifts, that as far as by his generosity he had drawn them to his favor, so far they by their abuse have labored to arouse his anger.
3. Or is this perhaps false,
and are all my statements due to envy rather than truth? I shall not use the method
of proof some men employ in the courts, bringing in as witnesses outsiders or persons
unsuitable to testify for some other reason. I shall cross-question the very men
by whom these things have been done. I have spoken falsely if they deny me. They
confess, and indeed, which is much more serious, they confess without any apparent
grief. For now in their confession they have the same attitude as in their commission
of the fault. Just as then they were not ashamed to perform disgraceful acts, so
now they do not in the least repent having
performed See Paulinus of Nola Ep. 33. 3. The passage
was identified by C. Weyman, “Salvianus und Paulinus von Nola,” Historisches
Jahrbuch XV (1894), 372-373. This is the only case in which Salvian gives a
clue to the personal identity of the rare exceptions he makes to the general vice
of prominent men; he could scarcely have chosen a more appropriate one.
The rest, however, at least the great majority and the most noble, are all very
nearly of a kind: the intemperance of all is a devouring whirlpool, their life a
brothel. Why should I speak of brothels? Even those I think are less wicked than
the men of whom I spoke. For the prostitutes in them have not experienced the marriage
bond, and so do not defile what they do not know; their shameless lives require
atonement, it is true, but they are not liable to the charge of adultery. Add to
this that such haunts are few, and few the prostitutes who have condemned themselves
to a most unhappy life in them. Among the Aquitanians, on the other hand, what city
in its richest and most elegant quarters was not practically a brothel? What rich
and powerful man did not live in lustful vice? Who among them did not plunge into
the pit of the most sordid associations? Who honored his wife by a faithful observance
of his marriage vows? Nay, as far as passive endurance of their lust is concerned,
who among them did not reduce his wife to the status of his maidservants and degrade
the sacrament of holy matrimony so far that no woman in the house was made to seem
more
4. Perhaps some one is thinking
that what I say is not strictly accurate; for the matrons of southern Gaul did continue
to exercise their rights and to hold honor and power as mistresses of their households.
That is true. Many of them indeed did keep unimpaired their right of government,
but scarcely one kept her marriage rights unpolluted. Our present object of investigation
is not the power of women, but the infamous conduct of their husbands. However,
I should not even say that the matrons kept their power uninjured, since a wife
who has not kept her connubial rights safe and inviolate has not kept her full rights
of domination. When the master of the house acts as husband of the maidservants,
the mistress is not far removed from the mean position of the slave. Who among the
rich men of Aquitania did not so act? Who among them has not been considered by
his shameless maids, and with good, reason, as either adulterer or husband? For,
as the prophet said: “They were as fed horses in the morning; everyone neighed
after his neighbor’s wife.”
5. It may be difficult, you think, to prove this, and no traces are likely to be found remaining of the past debauchery and lust. See, then, how many of these men, even though they no longer have any country, and are living as paupers in comparison with their past wealth, are really worse than before. They are worse not only in that they continue to live as they did formerly, but in the very fact that their crimes never cease. Indeed their evil deeds, though not worse than before in character, are more numerous; thus, even though no new devices lend novelty to their sins, the number of their misdoings is increased.
Add to this that, as I have said, it is old men, and poor ones, who live in such
a fashion; for each of these points increases the evil. Surely it is less shocking
for young men and rich to sin. But what hope of cure is there for men who are not
recalled from their wonted vice either by miserable poverty or by extreme age? Some
of them, I suppose, are relying on a foolish assurance of long life or the intention
of eventual penitence; is it not a strange prodigy that men should be given over
to vice even at the very time of
6. Perhaps those among whom they
now live are of such a character that these vices please them, and they would be
most grievously offended if they were to see the Romans living chastely in the midst
of their vices. If this were the ease, still the wickedness of others ought not
to make us wicked. It should be of more importance in every man’s eyes to be good
on his own account than to be wicked for another. We should strive to please God
by our uprightness rather than men by our vices. Consequently, even if a man lives
among unchaste barbarians, he ought to seek chastity, which is of service to him,
rather than lewdness, which pleases his lustful enemies. But note a point that serves
to increase our guilt: among chaste barbarians we ourselves are unchaste. The chastity of the Germans had long been a Roman
tradition; cf. Tacitus Germania 19.
7. Is this the case in Aquitania
alone? Let us pass under review other parts of the world also, and not speak exclusively
of the Gauls. Have not the same crimes or greater ones destroyed the provinces of
Spain? Even if the divine wrath had handed these lands over to any other barbarians
you might name, the enemies of chastity in them would have suffered tortures worthy
of their vices. But as an added evidence of the condemnation of their shamelessness
they were delivered into the hands of the Vandals, the most shamefast of barbarians.
In the captivity of Spain God wished to give a twofold evidence of his hatred of
carnal lust and love of chastity, when he put the Vandals in command solely on account
of their preeminent chastity and subjected the Spaniards to them solely on account
of their surpassing lewdness. What do I mean by this? Were there not anywhere in
the world stronger barbarians to whom the Spanish lands might be surrendered? Many,
without doubt, nay, all of them were stronger, if I am not mistaken. It was not until Gaiseric’s capture and sack
of Carthage and later of Rome that the Vandals took on in the eyes of the Romans
the character that has since made their name proverbial.
So all that the Lord said has been fulfilled in us, and our punishment has vindicated the force of his divine words.
8. Since the majority of barbarian nations have drunk Roman blood and torn our flesh, we may ask why it is especially into the power of those once considered the most cowardly of the enemy that the Lord has delivered the greatest resources of the state and the wealthiest people who bear the Roman name. Why else indeed, except to make us recognize, as I said before, that the outcome depended on merit, not on strength, and that this should serve to confound and punish us, that we were given into the power of the weakest, and must recognize the correction of God’s hand in the fact that not the bravest but the most despised of our enemies overcame us. For we read that whenever God has willed that men should clearly see his great works, the action has been performed through the medium of a few men, of men of the lowest sort, so that his divine handwork might not be ascribed to human power.
Thus indeed Sisera, the captain before whom the Hebrew army trembled, was laid
low by a woman;
Let all the wicked hearken, I say, let all the presumptuous hearken, and all who excel in power; let all men hear what the Lord says: “Lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, ‘Mine own hand hath saved me.’”
9. Let all men hear, I repeat, who utter blasphemies against the Lord, let all hear who put their trust in man. God declares that all men speak against him who presume to think that they can be freed by their own might. Who is there among the Romans who does not hold this opinion? Who is there in our number who does not blaspheme in this respect almost constantly? It is common knowledge that the state has no longer any strength, yet not even now do we acknowledge to whose favor we owe it that we still live. Whenever God gives us a degree of prosperity beyond our hopes and deserts, one man ascribes it to fate, another to chance, another to the strategy of our leaders, another to their foresight, another to the administration, another to his patron, but none to God.
Yet we wonder that his divine hand fails to give us some things for which we
wish, though we deny him credit for what he has given in the past. What else are
we doing, when we ascribe the good things he gives us to the blind workings of chance,
the ability of our leaders, or any other minor agencies? Following such
arguments
Not so do the Goths or the Vandals regard him, being better in this respect than
ourselves, though trained by heretical teachers. However, I have grounds to suspect
that certain men are offended by what I say. Since the truth must outweigh the fear
of giving offence I shall say it nevertheless, and say it repeatedly: not so do
the Goths or the Vandals act, for when they are in danger they beg help of God and
they call their prosperity the gift of his divine love. In fact our misfortune in
the last war furnished proof of this difference between us. For the Goths through
fear put their hope in God, and we through presumption put ours in the Huns. The
Goths sought peace and we denied it; they sent bishops to make terms and we rejected
them; they honored God even in the person of alien priests and we despised him in
our own. Was not the outcome of these events consonant with the actions of each
side? To them in the depths of fear was given the palm of victory; to us in the
height of confidence was given confusion, so that the words of our Lord were clearly
exemplified in us and in them: “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased,
and he that
10. This the general of our
forces learned when he entered as a captive the same city of the enemy that he had
boasted he would enter that same day as victor. Litorius had been put in command in Gaul by
Aetius. Made overconfident by his success at Narbonne, he undertook in A.D. 439
to besiege Toulouse, then the Gothic capital, with the aid of Hunnish auxiliaries,
but was defeated and captured. See
What clearer proof, I ask, could there have been of the judgment of God, than
that the general who boasted of plundering should be counted as booty; that he who
counted his triumph already won should be led in another’s triumph—be surrounded,
seized, and bound, his arms twisted behind his back; that he should see those hands
tied whose prowess he vaunted; that he should become a spectacle for women and children,
see barbarians making sport of him, endure the derision of both sexes, and though
he had Idatius (Chronicon A.D. 439) gives
a different version: “He himself was wounded and captured, and after a few days
was put to death.” His notorious paganism and dependence on soothsayers made Litorius
a particularly apt contrast to the piety of the barbarian king. Theodoric I, king of the Visigoths.
11. Moreover, the experience
of the Vandals was not dissimilar: when our people went against them in Spain and
had as much confidence in a complete victory as they had recently against the Goths,
the same overweening pride engulfed them in the same disastrous ruin. In A.D. 432 when Boniface and Castinus were
conducting the war in Spain against the Vandals with an army largely Gothic, the
jealousy of the two leaders led to a disastrous defeat of the Romans in battle,
when the Vandals had been almost at the point of surrender due to famine. The defeat
ended the Roman rule in Spain.
For we trusted in our own wisdom and strength against the
So we have not been conquered undeservedly, for the enemy sought better aid than
we did. While we prided ourselves on arms and auxiliaries, on the side of the enemy
the Book of the Divine Law opposed us. To its help most of all the fear and terror
of the Vandals then resorted, to oppose to us the Divine Word and to open up to
those who came against them in rivalry the writings of the Sacred Book which may
be called the very voice of God. At this point I ask: who of our number ever did
this, or who would not have been derided if he had thought it should be done? He
would have been scorned indeed, as almost all religious acts are derided among us.
Then what value can our claim to a religious title have for us, what use is it to
say we are catholic, to boast that we possess the true faith, to despise the Goths
and Vandals, reviling them as heretics, when we are living in a truly heretical
depravity? The words of the Divine Scripture addressed to the Jews who trusted in
the law are most fittingly applied to us: “How do you say, ‘We are wise and the
law of the Lord is with us?’ . . . Trust ye not in lying words, saying, ‘The temple
of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these.’ For if
ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye oppress not the stranger and
the fatherless and the widow and shed not innocent blood in this place, then will
I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers for
ever and ever.”
Enough of this has been said already, and more must perhaps be said later, though
there seems little need to discuss the point
further,
12. We are judged by the ever-present
judgment of God, and thus a most slothful race has been aroused to accomplish our
destruction and shame. They go from place to place, from city to city, and destroy
everything. First they poured out from their native land into Germany, which lay
nearest them, a country called barbarous, but under Roman control. After its destruction,
the country of the Belgae burst into flames, then the rich estates of the luxurious
Aquitanians, and after these the whole body of the Gallic provinces. This ruin spread
gradually, however, in order that while one part was being visited with destruction,
another might be reformed by its example. The Germany of this account was,
of course, the Roman military district along the Rhine. The pauses in the course
of the invasion are naturally explained by the custom of the Germanic tribes of
“following up with the plow their conquests by the sword.”
How truly this applies to us the present situation shows. Gaul long endured devastation;
did Spain, her near neighbor, mend her ways? Not undeservedly, since they showed
no fear whatever, and no reform, the people of Spain began to catch fire from the
flames by which the Gauls were consumed. Orosius’ account of the Vandal conquest of
Spain furnishes a parallel for Salvian’s estimate of the barbarians (Historia
adv. paganos VII. 40. 10): “After grave destruction of property and men, of
which they themselves now repent, they drew lots and distributed the land and still
live in possession of it.”
Thus God has been compelled by our crimes to scatter the enemy’s forces as a scourge for our sins, from place to place, from city to city, and to send nations aroused almost from the very ends of the earth even across the sea, to punish the crimes of our people in Africa. Why was this? Having been led forth from their own country, could the Vandals not have remained within the Gallic states? Could fear have prevented these tribes from abiding there, who had already devastated all the land without injury from us? But suppose they had cause for alarm in Gaul, why should they have feared to settle and stay in Spain, where they had completely crushed our armies in battle, where they were already triumphantly victorious, having reached such a height of valor as to learn that after trial in a war long anticipated, the strength of the Roman state, even with barbarian reinforcements, could not equal theirs?
13. They could have stayed there,
then, and were not afraid, but surely the heavenly hand that had dragged them thither
to punish the vices of the Spanish compelled them also to cross the straits to devastate
Africa. In fact, they themselves confessed that they did not act of their own volition,
for they were driven and urged on by a divine command. From this we may learn how
great are our misdoings, since to destroy and punish us the barbarians are compelled
That is, Nebuchadnezzar.
From this we may know that all things which are afflicted are indeed smitten
by the judgment of God; their overthrow, however, as I have often remarked, is due
to sin. So whatever is done on account of sin is not to be ascribed to God, since
a deed is rightly ascribed to that cause which has made it unavoidable. For example,
a murderer sentenced to death by the judge is actually punished by his own crime;
a thief or a man who has committed sacrilege is consumed not by the flames that
burn his body, but by his own sin. Whence we see that the Vandals did not cross
to Africa because of God’s severity but because of the sins of the Romans in that
country. By their grave and long continued iniquity these people were forcing the
Vandals to come before they actually left their native land. Therefore we must understand
that only God’s mercy postponed the punishment so long due, and their misdeeds and
crimes at length brought upon these sinful people the chastisement they deserved.
Or are we to believe that they did not deserve their fate? Have any people better
deserved ruin than these, in whom all sorts of shameful and indecent lust have flourished
at once? For the rest of the world, though bound by some disgraceful vices, has
some virtue still remaining: men who are subject to drunkenness are free from malevolence;
those who live in a fever of lust do not suffer from raging greed; finally, many
who are
14. Indeed, aside from a very
few servants of God, what was the whole territory of Africa but one house of vice,
like that bronze vessel of which the prophet said: “Woe to the bloody city! to the
bronze vessel whose scum is therein, and whose scum hath not gone out from it, because
the blood shall not go out from it!”
How are the very dissimilar metals that the Scriptures have named melted together
in one furnace? Surely in the diversity of metals the unlike qualities of men are
figured. Thus even silver, that is, metal of the nobler sort, is cast in the same
fires as the rest because men have debased the gifts of their nobler natures by
their degenerate lives. Even so we read that the Lord spoke also of the king of
Tyre through his prophet: “Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus,
and say unto him, ‘Thus saith the Lord God: thou hast been the seal of likeness,
and a crown of beauty in the delights of paradise; every precious stone was
thy covering, the sardius and topaz and emerald.’”
What did the prophet say next? “Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty,
because of the multitude of thine iniquities have I cast thee to the ground.”
15. May God in his merciful
kindness not permit this! Indeed, as far us the deserts of our crimes are concerned,
there is no reason
16. To speak first of their
impurity—who does not know that all Africa has always flamed with the torches
of obscenity, so that you would think it not a land and abiding place of men, but
an Aetna of unclean fires? As Aetna has always seethed with certain inner flames
of heat implanted in it by nature, so also has Africa with the abominable fires
of fornication. I do not wish you to believe my words alone in this matter, but
to seek the corroboration of the whole human race. Who can fail to recognize that
all the people of Africa are unchaste unless they happen to have been converted
to God, and changed by their religious faith? This however is as rare and strange
as to see a Gaius who is not a Gaius or a Seius who is not a Seius. Gaius and Seius appear frequently as the John
Doe and Richard Roe of Latin authors. Gaius is most commonly used, perhaps because
of the Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia, of the marriage ceremony. In Cod. Just. Titius
is used instead of Seius. Tertullian uses Gaius Seius and Lucius Titius; cf.
Ad nationes I. 4.
So general is the vice of impurity among them that whoever ceases to be indecent seems to be no longer an African. I shall not discuss the individual cities nor mention all the different localities, for fear of seeming to search out examples too curiously. I shall content myself with one city instead, the chief of all the cities of that land, and in a way the mother of them all, the eternal rival of Rome’s citadel, of old in arms and courage, afterwards in splendor and dignity. It is Carthage of which I speak, the greatest rival of the city of Rome, and a sort of Rome in the African world; she alone suffices as an example and witness of my words, since she has contained within herself all the resources and governance of statecraft in the world.
There you would find all the appurtenances of the public offices, schools of
the liberal arts, the studies of the philosophers, training schools in languages
and ethics; there also were military forces and the powers that control the army,
there was the office of the
At this point I almost repent of my promise made above, to omit almost all the vices of the people of this province and to speak chiefly of their obscenities and blasphemies. For I see the city overflowing with vice, boiling over with every sort of iniquity—full indeed of people, but even fuller of dishonor, full of riches but fuller still of vice; men striving to outdo one another in depravity and lust, some vying with their mates in rapacity, others in indecency. Some are languid with wine, others distended with feasting, some garlanded with flowers, others smeared with unguents, all wasted by various forms of dissipation, but sunk in the same mortal error. Not all, indeed, were intoxicated with winebibbing, but all were drunk with their sins.
You would judge such a people lacking in sanity, not in full possession of their
senses, steady neither in mind nor in gait, attacking each other in a mob like drunken
men. Now we must consider also another charge of a serious kind, unlike this in
its nature but not unlike it in gravity, unless its greatness sets it in a different
class. I mean the proscriptions of orphans, the afflictions of widows and the crucifixion
of the poor. All these made their moan daily to God, and prayed for an end of their
sufferings. Nay, what is worse, they were sometimes driven by their bitter woes
even to pray for the arrival of the enemy. These have now at last obtained from
17. But let us pass over these matters, for they may be paralleled in practically every part of the Roman world, and I promised to mention them only briefly. As to the unchastity and impurity which I have been discussing, would these not have been sufficient of themselves to destroy Africa? What part of the state was not full of indecency, what street or bypath was not a place of shame? Lust had so cut off most of the crossroads and streets with its snares, and entangled them with its nets, that even those who utterly abhorred such vices could scarcely avoid them. You might compare them to brigands lurking in ambush and snatching their spoils from passers-by; they so hedged in the paths, the winding roads and byways with their close-set traps, that scarcely anyone could be cautious enough not to fall into some of their treacherous snares, however many he escaped. All the citizens reeked, if I may use the expression, with the stench of lust, all inhaled the fetid odors of their mutual impurity. Yet this horrid condition inspired no loathing in them, for the same plague had infected them all. You would think the city a sinkpot of lust and fornication, like the muck collected from the offscourings of all the streets and sewers. What hope could there be in such a place, where, except for the temple of the Lord, there was nothing to be seen but filth?
Yet why should I except the temple of God? The church was, to be sure, completely
under the care of the priests and clergy, whom I prefer not to discuss. I am bound
by reverence for my Lord’s ministry, and think that those men who served at the
altars alone preserved their purity, as we read that Lot stood alone on the mountain
when the people of Sodom perished. As for the people, however, who among such countless
numbers was chaste? Chaste, did I say? Who was not guilty of fornication, or adultery,
and that too without ceasing? Therefore must I cry out again—what hope could
there be in that people? One adulterer sometimes pollutes
I have much more than this to say. Would that what I have said included the whole
accusation, and that these men in their indecency had been content to satisfy their
lust with fornication of fallen women only! Their fault was still more serious and
wicked than this, for nearly all the vices of which the blessed apostle Paul complained
so bitterly existed in Africa. “The men leaving the natural use of women burned
in their lust toward one another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and
receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even
as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate
mind, to do those things which are not convenient.”
18. Perhaps the vices of which
I spoke were hidden, or the men in charge of the public morals in different places
took care that the diffusion of such crimes should not sully the eyes of the people.
If this had been done, however many had been defiled by the actions themselves,
all would not have been injured by the sight and thought of them. However disgraceful
a vice is, it does not as a rule deserve full credence when it is committed secretly.
But to commit the greatest sins and feel no shame for what one has done, demands
censure passing that of the sins themselves. What more prodigious wrong could have
been performed there? In a Christian
Tertullian, himself a native of Africa, does
not include Carthage in the list of apostolic churches (Liber de praescriptionibus
32), but in Salvian’s time the orthodox church of Africa claimed an apostolic
origin in their controversy with the Donatists, and it was natural that Salvian
should accept their claim. See Tertullian De idololatria 16: “Finally
I find no type of clothing censured by God, save the feminine when worn by a man.”
19. You may argue that this
disgrace was that of a few men only, and what was not perpetrated by the majority
could not injure all. Indeed, I have said before that very often among the people
of God the crime even of one man has been the ruin of many, as the people were betrayed
by the theft of Achar, a pestilence arose from the jealousy of Saul, and a plague
came from the numbering of the people by the blessed David. For the church of God
is like an eye. If even a little mote fall into the eye, it blinds the whole sight;
so, if even a few men in the body of the church
Nor do I know which of them are worse in the sight of God, since in the Sacred
Scriptures they are condemned by one and the same decree. “Neither effeminate, nor
abusers of themselves with mankind, shall inherit the kingdom of God,”
20. Once again, impelled by
my grief, I ask those who are angry at my words in what barbarian nations such things
have at any time been done or permitted with general impunity? Finally, to save
the necessity of longer discussion or investigation of this point, let us compare
the actual devastators of Africa with the people whom they conquered. What actions
of this sort have been performed by the Vandals? Surely barbarians, swollen with
pride, puffed up with victory, rendered lax by the abundance of riches and luxuries,
would have been changed by their unusual good fortune and prosperity, however chaste
and continent they had always been before. They had, as it is written in the Scriptures,
entered “a land flowing with milk and honey,”
21. This vice began among the
Romans before Christ’s Gospel, but that it did not cease after the Gospel was preached
among them is still more grievous. After recalling this fact, who can help admiring
the Vandals? They entered the wealthiest cities, where such vices were common, and
took over the riches of dissolute men in such a way that they rejected their corrupting
customs and now possess and use those things that are good, and avoid the degrading
influence of those that are evil. That Salvian spoke too soon is suggested by
Procopius De Bello Vandalico II. 6. His description of the habits of the
Vandals ‘’since the time when they gained possession of Libya” includes all the
luxuries and vices that Salvian thinks they rejected.
What I have said is a great point, surely, great and of preeminent importance. Who could believe that the Vandals in the Roman cities committed such sins? Sexual vice has been completely abolished by them. How was it removed? Not as some crimes are wont to be prohibited by the Romans, who decree that there shall be no theft, and go on thieving; who decree that there shall be no adultery, and are first to commit it. Yet I should scarcely say that they commit theft, for theirs is no mere theft but highway robbery. A judge punishes a petty theft in another though he is himself a robber: he punishes rapine, though he is himself guilty of the same crime; he punishes the cutthroat, though he himself wields a sword; he punishes those who break down bars and doors, though he himself destroys cities; he punishes those who burglarize houses, though he himself robs the provinces. Would that this were true only of those who are set in positions of power and to whom the very honor conferred on them gives some right to carry on their robberies; it is worse and more intolerable that even private citizens do the same, that is, men who have previously held high office. The honor once given them affords them this much advantage, that they may keep forever the legal right to plunder. So even when they have ceased to wield public administrative power, they do not cease to enjoy the private right of plundering. Thus the power they had as judges is slighter than that they have as private citizens, for in the former case successors were sure to be appointed for them, but now they have no successors.
See then how much legal decrees are worth, what profit we gain from the passage
of ordinances which those men most scorn who administer them! The humble and lowly
are forced to obey, the poor are compelled to accede to the orders of their superiors,
and if
22. Indignation has led me to
exceed somewhat the appointed order of my discourse; let me now return to the original
topic. I said that the cities of Africa were full of monstrous vices, and especially
the queen and mistress of them all, but that the Vandals were not polluted. How
unlike the Romans: did these barbarians prove themselves, in cleansing the stains
of our disgrace! For they have removed from every part of Africa the vice of effeminacy,
they have even abhorred intercourse with harlots, and have not only shunned or done
away with it for the time being, but have made it absolutely cease to exist. O kindly
Master, O good Savior! How much the desire of discipline accomplishes with your
help, through which the vices of nature can be changed, as they have been by the
Vandals! Let us see how they have been changed, since it is important to show not
only the results of this action, but also the method by which it was made effective.
It is difficult to have lewdness removed by a word or order, unless it has been
done away in fact, and to have decency required by a command unless it has been
enjoined before. Knowing this to be true, they removed unchastity while preserving
the unchaste; they did not kill the unfortunate women, lest they should stain their
prevention of vice with cruelty, and sin themselves in the very act of destroying
the sins they desired to abolish. But they corrected the erring in such a way that
the change should be a medicine, not a penalty. They ordered and compelled all prostitutes
to marry; they transformed harlots into wives, fulfilling the word and command of
the apostle that every woman should have her husband and every man his wife, Note the phrasing in Cod. Theod. IX. 7.1 (A.D.
326): “ . . . those women, the vileness of whose lives has proved them unworthy
of the protection of the law.”
23. I know that what I say may
seem to some intolerable, but With this chapter compare Lactantius
Inst. div. III. 21.
Socrates said: “Let no man have a wife of his own, for marriage should be common
to all; for so there will be greater harmony among the states, if all men have intercourse
indiscriminately with all women, and all women with all men, and if all men become
husbands of all women, and all women wives of all men.”
The ultimate source of this passage
is of course Plato Republic V. 457; it is not clear through what channel
Salvian derived it. He does not appear to have read Greek, and the Latin of the
paragraph does not suggest Cicero’s De re publica as a direct source. It
was, however, a well-known topic, and may have been the subject of rhetorical exercises
in the schools. The locus classicus for this
is Lucan De bello civili II. 329-333, from which Augustine (Bon. coniug.
21) clearly drew his example of the Younger Cato, handing his wife Marcia to
a friend “to fill another’s house with sons.” See Souter, Classical Review,
XIV (1900), 164. This was a popular exemplum, especially among Christian
writers, as is shown by H. Kohl, De scholasticarum declamationum argumentis ex historia petitis (Paderborn, 1915), p. 104. Salvian here confused Socrates with the “Socratic
dialogues” of Plato.
Let us now compare with his statutes those of the men whom God has recently ordered to rule in Africa. Socrates decreed that no one should have a wife of his own, they that no one should have one not his own. He wished every woman to be subject to all men, they that no woman should know any man but her husband. He wished a mixed and promiscuous generation, they one purely born and regulated. He ordained that all houses should be of evil reputation, and they that there should be none such. He tried to build evil resorts in every dwelling, they removed them even from entire cities. He wished to prostitute all maidens, they made the prostitutes chaste.
Would that Socrates’ error had been his alone, and not that of many, or even
the majority of Romans! These follow Socrates’ precepts in this matter even if they
accept his teachings in nothing else, for many men have more than one wife apiece,
and countless women have many husbands each. Are not all our cities full of dens
of vice, and reeking with houses of ill fame? When I said all, I meant of course
the noblest and loftiest, for such is the
prerogative
What hope, I ask you, can there be for the Roman state when barbarians are more chaste and pure than the Romans? What I say is all too little: what hope of life or pardon, I ask, can we have in the sight of God when we see chastity in the barbarians and even so are not willing to be chaste ourselves? Should we not feel shame and confusion at this? Already among the Goths you will find none impure except the Romans, none unchaste among the Vandals except the Romans. So much has the desire for chastity accomplished for the barbarians, so much has the severity of their moral code gained, that not only are they themselves chaste, but—though it is so new and strange an event as to be almost incredible—they have even made some Romans chaste.
If my human frailty permitted, I should wish to shout beyond my strength, to
make my voice ring through the whole world: Be ashamed, ye Roman people everywhere,
be ashamed of the lives you lead. No cities are free of evil haunts, no cities anywhere
are free from indecency, except those in which barbarians have begun to live. Do
we then wonder that we are wretched who are so impure, that we are conquered by
the enemy who are outdone by them in honor, that they possess our properties who
abjure our wickedness? It is neither the natural strength of their bodies that makes
them conquer nor the weakness of our nature that makes us subject to defeat. Let
no one think or persuade himself otherwise—it is our vicious lives alone that
have conquered us. Compare Augustine Sermo de tempore barbarico
(Migne, PL, XL, col. 703): “Neither by the enemy, nor by the barbarians, but
by their own action are all men slain in their souls by seeing, consenting and not
preventing. We have all abided in quiet, and as long as we do not wish the perverse
peace of our state disturbed, we do not receive the true peace that we deserve.
We scorn to preserve the peace of a good life, and so the peace of our times has
come to an end.”
1. I think, nay, I am certain, that the great
length of my argument will arouse distaste in many, especially since it upbraids
our vicious lives. For most men wish praise, and no one enjoys censure. Worse than
this, however evil a man is, however profligate, he would rather be falsely praised
than rightly reproved, and prefers to be deceived by the mockery of false praise
than healed by the most salutary admonitions. Since this is true, what are we to
do? Must we accede to the will of wicked men? Or if they wish even empty praise
conferred on them, is it fitting to proffer silly and meaningless eulogies? Surely
we must consider that, as men of honor should not mock even those who wish to make
themselves ridiculous, so they should not laud in lying phrases those who yearn
to be adorned by praise, however false. Compare Sidonius Ep. VIII. 10: “If you had had any consideration
for my modesty you would have kept in mind the saying of Symmachus: ‘as true praise
adorns, so false praise reproves.’ “The saying is not found in Symmachus’ writings,
but Grégoire and Collombet cite it as used by Caesarius of Arles in his 25th homily
to the monks of Lérins, which I have been unable to trace, and by Pope Pelagius
I in a letter to Sapaudus, bishop of Aries, as the saying of a vir doctissimus.
We must by every means hold fast to the truth, so that what a thing is in fact,
it may also be in words, and those that contain sweetness be called sweet, and those
that contain bitterness, bitter. This is the more obligatory in the present discussion
of a sacred matter, when our iniquities are made by many a cause of wrath against
God, and men try to avoid seeming themselves worthy of
But, forsooth, I seem to be contradicting myself; whereas I said before that
we are punished by God on account of our sins, now I say that we are punishing ourselves.
Both are true; we are indeed punished by God, but we ourselves force him to punish
us. Inasmuch as we cause our own punishment, who can doubt that we are chastising
ourselves by our crimes? For whoever gives cause for his punishment chastises himself,
according to the saying: “Every one is bound by the chains of his sins.” See
2. Since I have already spoken at length of the
unchastity of Africa, let me now briefly discuss its blasphemies, for the paganism
of the majority has had no interruption. They have indeed confined within their
own walls their native crime, by which of course I mean that “Celestial” demon of
the Africans, That is, the goddess Tanit, frequently called
Dea Caelestisby Latin authors.
3. But, you say, they do not all do these things—only the highest and most powerful are guilty of these wrongs. Suppose
Suppose for the sake of the argument that what we said was true only of all the
most powerful and noble. Were the vices that were common to noble and ignoble alike
less serious? I mean the hatred and abuse of all holy men, for surely it is a sort
of sacrilege to hate those who worship God. Just as the man who injures our slaves
thereby harms us, and the man who flogs another’s sons tortures the father’s affection
by his children’s suffering, so anyone who injures a servant of God violates the
divine majesty, as the Lord said to his apostle: “He that receiveth you, receiveth
me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth me.”
4. But perhaps the question will be asked: “In
what ways was
Whether they killed or not, I do not know; I make no claims of that, but yet
how great a defence is it that the only element of pagan persecution lacking was
the very end of persecution? Let us assume that the saints were not killed there;
what then shall we make of the fact that they are not far from killing who hate
with the desire to kill, especially as the Lord himself says: “Whosoever hateth
his brother without a cause is a murderer?”
Yet it was not without cause that they persecuted the servants of God. For who
can say that it was without a cause, seeing that these men differed from them in
all the characteristics of their life and habits, that in them they saw nothing
that was theirs, since all was God’s? The greatest cause of discord is diversity
of interests, because it is nearly or quite impossible that a man should love in
another that with which he himself is at variance. So it was
5. Consider the faith of the Africans and especially
the people of Carthage. It was safer for the apostles of old to enter the cities
of the pagans, and those wild and barbarous assemblies had less hatred of their
arrival and presence. The holy vessel of election, Paul the apostle, spoke of the
worship and majesty of one God, and the people of the Athenians, most superstitious
though they were, heard him patiently. See Cicero Or. Philippica II. 3. 5.
So God is just and his judgments are righteous, for, as the Scripture says: “What
men have sowed, that shall they also reap.” Here Pauly inserted the negative
minime, for which the
MSS give no authority. I have omitted it as unnecessary; without it the sentence
furnishes a characteristic example of Salvian’s irony. See H. K. Messenger, op.
cit., sec. 48. Here ends the text as it is preserved in the MSS. Whether the
succeeding chapters have been lost, or the author left his work unfinished, cannot
now be determined. In view, however, of the many years between the composition of
the book and Salvian’s death, the former alternative seems the more probable.
For the chief editions and translations of Salvian's works see Introduction, pp. 29 ff. and note 57. I have included in this bibliography only books and articles relating especially to Salvian. A fuller list will be found in Bruni, Un apologista della Provvidenza (Rome, 1925), 79-82, which includes some studies not accessible to me. General discussions of conditions in the Roman world in the fifth century are too numerous and too well-known to require listing here. For readers desiring an initial acquaintance with the subject, however, the following brief list may be of service:
Bury, J. B. The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians, New York, 1928.
Cambridge Medieval History, I: The Christian Roman Empire and the Founding of the Teutonic Kingdoms. Cambridge, 1911.
Dill, Samuel. Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, 2d ed. Cambridge, 1898.
Halphen, Louis. Les Barbares, des grandes invasions aux conquêtes turques du Xe siècle. Paris, 1926.
Hodgkin, Thomas. Italy and Her Invaders, I, 2d ed. Oxford, 1892.
Lot, Ferdinand. La Fin du monde antique et le début du moyen age. Paris, 1927.
In references in the footnotes, Migne, PL refers to the Patrologia Latina, CSEL to the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, MGH to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
Brakman, C. J. “Observationes grammaticae et criticae in Salvianum: accedit appendix de Gennadii capite lxviii,” Mnemolsyne, LII (1924), 113-185.
Brakman, C. J. Opstellen over Onderwerpen uit de Latijnsche Letterkunde, II, ch. 17. Leyden, 1926.
Bruni, G. Un apololgista della Provvidenza fra le invasioni barbariche del sec. V d. C. Rome, 1925.
Ceillier, R. Histoire générale des a,uteurs sacrés et ecclésiastiques, XV (Paris, 1748), 46-81.
Cooper-Marsdin, A. C. The History of the Islands of the Lérins. Cambridge, 1913.
Geffcken, J. “Stimmungen im untergehenden Weströmerreich,” Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, XXIII (1920), 256-269.
Giraud, I. De Salviano dissertatio. Montpellier, 1849.
Haemmerle, Alois. Studia Salviana. Landshut and Neuberg, 1891- 1899.
Halm, K. “Über die handschriftliche Überlieferung des Salvianus,” Sitzungsberichte der Münchener Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1876, 390-412.
Hirner, F. X. Commentatio de Salviano eiusque libellis. Freising, 1869.
Histoire littéraire de la France, II (1735), 517-535.
Méry, L. Étude sur Salvien, prêtre de Marseille. Marseille, 1849.
Messenger, H. K. De temporum et modorum apud Salvianum usu, unpublished dissertation in the Harvard College Library, 1924. Summary published in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XXXVI (1925), 180-182.
Moricca, U. “Salviano e la data del De gubernatione Dei,” Rivista di filologia classica, XLTI (1918), 241-255.
Pauly, Fr. “Die handschriftliche Überlieferung des Salvianus,” Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.- hist. Klasse, XCVIII (1881), 3-41.
Schmalz, J. H. “Zu Salvian,” Berliner philologische Wochenschrift, XXXV (1915), cols. 1041-1047.
Sternberg, G. “Das Christentum des fünften Jahrhunderts im Spiegel des Salvianus von Massilia,” Theololgische Studien und Kritiken, LXXXII (1909), 29-78, 163-205.
Thouvenot, R. “Salvien et la ruine de l’Empire romain,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, XXXVII (1918-1919), 145-163.
Valran, G. Quare Salvianus presbyter Massiliensis magister episcoporum a Gennadio dictus sit. Paris, 1899.
Waltzing, J. P. “Tertullien et Salvien,” Musée Belge, XIX- XXIV (1920), 39-43.
Weston, A. H. Latin Satirical Writing Subsequent to Juvenal, Yale dissertation, 1915, 143-154.
WEYMANN, C. “Salvianus und Paulinus von Nola,' Historisches Jahrbuch, XV (1894), 372-373.
Wolfflin, Ed. “Allitteration und Reim bei Salvian,” Archiv für lateinische Lexikographie, XIII (1902-4), 41-49.
Zschimmer, W. Salvianus der Presbyter von Massilia und seine Schriften. Halle, 1875.
Aaron, 60, 63
Abel, 50
Abihu, 62
Abiron, 62
Abraham 's life as proof of God 's judgment, 53 f.
Absalom, 71, 74
Achar, 157, 214
Adam, 50
Aëtius, 22, 201n
Aetna, 210
Africa, 179n; commerce and wealth of, 208; interest of Salvian in, 8; Vandal conquest of, 106, 178, 205 ff.; wickedness of, 207 ff.
Alans, characteristics of, 123, 209
Alaric, 178n
Alemanni, drunkenness of, 123
Allix, Peter, 15
Alps, 155, 160
Amnon, 74
Amphitheaters, 162
Ananias, 158
Animal fights, 160 f.
Anthemius, Emperor, 169n
Aquitanians, wealth and vices of, 191 ff., 204
Arcadius, Emperor, 105n, 109n
Arians, 121n, 136 ff., 178
Arvandus, 105n
Assyrians, 198, 206
Asylum, 150
Athens, 230
Athletes, 162
Attic wisdom, 221
Attila, 140
Augury, 161
Augustine, St., 21, 22, 43; Bon. coniug., 221n; Contra ep. Manichaei, 135n; Sermo de tempore barbarico, 26, 119n, 223n
Ausonius, 10, 23
Auspiciola, daughter of Salvian, 11
Authority of God superior to reason, 24, 78
Avarice, attack of Salvian on, 16; characteristic vice of Romans, 209
Bagaudae, rebellion of, 122 ff.
Baluze, Stephen, 7, 31 f., 82n, 172n, 181n
Baptismal vows, renunciation of spectacles in, 167 f.
Barbarians, chastity of, 196 ff., 223; classification of as heretics and pagans, 121; compared with Romans, 77, 119 ff., 147 f., 191 ff.; invasions of as occasion for denial of God's government, 3; Roman responsibility for heresy of, 138; tribute exacted by, 188; vices of, 122 f.
Belgae invaded by Vandals, 204
Bellarmine, 27
Benedad, king of Syria, 198
Blasphemy, punishment for causing, 129-130
Boniface, Roman general, 202n
Bonnet, Père, 27, 32n
Borromeo, St. Carlo, 32n, 160n
Bossuet, 33
Brakman, C. J., 15, 19, 233
Brassicanus, 31, 32
Brouwer, 181n
Asylum, 150
Bruni, G., 25n, 32n, 233
Bury, J. B., 24n, 140n, 233
Caesarius of Arles, 12, 13, 224n; Ep. ad germanos, 111n; Regula ad monachos, 111n; Vita, 13
Cain, 50 f.
Cambridge Medieval History, 233
Capernaum, 113
Capitatio, 150n
Carmen de providentia divina, 26
Carthage, apostolic origin claimed for church in, 214; captured by Vandals, 18, 178, 197n; magnificence and wickedness of, 210 ff.; mistreatmnent of clergy in, 230 f.
Castinus, Roman general, 202n
Cato the Younger, 221
Ceillier, R., 32n, 233
Celestial goddess of Africa, 226
Charges of God's neglect of the world brought by ungodly men, 41
Cheminais, 33
Christ, attention of to men's prayers, 49; name of confused with that of God, 49, 72; perjury in name of, 124 f.
Christianity, answers to attacks on, 21; blamed for decline of Roman power, 3; false conception of prerogatives of, 97 f.
Christians, addressed by Salvian, 79; benefits of God's law to, 133 ff.; complaints of, 90; conceptions of among barbarians, 127 ff.; continual shipwreck of, 84; disobedience of, 92; envy of, 89; general guilt of, 97, 157 ff.; greater responsibility of, 97 f., 119 ff., 137, 159; ingratitude of, 118, 177; licentiousness of, 90; obedience required from, 99; oaths of, 88, 124-125; obligations of to God's law, 126; punished by their own crimes, 112, 137, 223; true happiness of, 41 ff.; why more wretched than other men, 79; worse than barbarians, 120 ff., 132
Churches, irreverent use of, 93
Cicero, 30; De fin., 44n; De nat. deorum, 39 f.; De re publica, 221n; Disp. Tusc., 40, 44n; Pro Murena, 77n
Cincinnati, examples of Roman virtue, 43
Circe, 151
Cireuses, demanded after ruin of Tréves, 183; indecencies of, 162 ff.
Cirta, taken by Vandals, 178
Clergy, silence of, 140 f.
Codex Justinianus, cited in notes, 93, 102, 107, 139, 149, 160, 169, 210
Codex Theodosianus, cited in notes, 94, 105, 109, 139, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 169, 220
Codices, Roman 4
Collombet, F. Z., see Grégoire and Collombet
Cologne, 8, 9, 170, 181n
Coloni 148n, 150, 151n
Commands of God disobeyed by Christians 82 f.
Concubinage, 107 f., 194 f.; laws concerning, 107n
Constans, Emperor, 144n, 170n
Constantine, Emperor, 107n, 160n
Constantius, Emperor, 144n, 183n
Consuls, Roman, 161
Cooper-Marsdin, A. C., 12, 233
Cornelius Rufinus, 44n
Cornelius Rufinus, 44n
Corruption of Roman life, 5; attacks of Salvian on, 14
Corvinus, Matthew, 33
Creation of world a proof of God 's care, 114 ff.
Crocus the Vandal, 9
Cry of men's sins, 54 f.
Cujas, 33
Curials, injustice of, 4, 94, 139; law for relief of, 147n
Cyprian, St., of Carthage, 22, 29; Ad Demetrianum, 87n, 109n, 111n
Cyprian of Toulon, Vita S. Caesarii, 13, 111n
Daniel, 96
Dathan, 64
David, instances of God's government in life of, 71ff., 129, 157, 204, 214
De la Rue, Abbé, 27, 33
Delphic demon, the prince of philosophers, 221
Dill, Samuel, 233
Discontent as a common human failing, 59
Doctors, cures used by, 185, 189
Ebert, 15
Effeminacy of men in Africa, 214 ff.
Egypt, exodus of Hebrews from, 63 ff.; monasteries of, 230
Egyptians, 56
Epicureans, 41, 44n
Eucherius, Bishop, 12, 30; Instructiones, 12n, 14; sons of, 6
Euhemerism, 125
Exempla of Roman virtue, 43
Exodus, miraculous guidance of God in, 57
Fabii, examples of ancient virtue, 43
Fabricii, examples of ancient virtue, 43
Faith, and works, 100; definition of, 80 ff.; fervency required in, 130 f.
Faustus of Riez, 12
Flight of Romans to barbarians, 5, 141
Flood as a proof of God's judgment, 52 f.; remoteness of events preceding, 53
Franks, characteristics of, 22, 123, 127, 147, 170n
Gaiseric, 178n, 197n
Gaius, 210
Gallic cities, vices prevalent in, 179 ff.
Games, desertion of churches for, 169; forbidden on Sunday 169n; persistence of after destruction of cities, 171 ff.; wickedness of, 160 ff., 176 ff.
Gaul, devastation of, 106, 178, 204; southern, conditions in, 5
Geffcken, J., 233
Gehenna, 55
Gennadius, account of Salvian by, 6, 15, 19; source of later accounts of Salvian, 33
Gepids, characteristics of, 123, 127
Germany, invaded by Vandals, 204
Gesta Treverorum, 8, 9n, 170n
Gibbon, Edward, 24n, 34
Gideon, 198 f.
Giraud, I., 233
Gladiators, 160n
Godefroi, 33
Gomorrah, see Sodom
Goths, characteristics of, 138, 141n, 196; compared with Romans, 138, 147, 155, 196; flight of Romans to, 142; heresy of, 137, 200, 203; use of in Roman armies, 202n; victories of, 22, 200, 201n
Government of God, 3, 20, 23; proved by authority of pagan philosophers, 39 f.; proved by reason, 47 ff.; proved by scriptural examples, 50 ff.
Gratian, Emperor, 109n
Gratitude due to God, 199 f.
Greek philosophers, 44
Greeks, capture of Tréves by, 170n; vices imitated by Romans, 217
Grégoire and Collombet, 28, 32n, 33, 102n, 160n, 224n
Gregory, Moralia, 82n
Guidance of the world by God compared with that of a steersman, 39 f.
Guillon, 27, 33
Guizot, 34
Haemmerle, Alois, 9n, 106n, 150n, 151n, 170n, 181n, 183n, 233
Halm, C., 36, 187n, 234
Halphen, Louis, 233
Hartel, 102n
Heitland, A. E., 23
Helf, A., 32n, 33n
Heretic barbarians, 121; false instruction of, 134 ff.; guilt less than that of Christians, 135
Heretics, Roman, 137
Hilarius of Arles, l1n, 12, 29; Sermo de vita S. Honorati, 12n
Hirner, F. X., 234
Histoire littéraire de la France, 234
Hodgkin, Thomas, 233
Holland, 6n
Homilies of Salvian, 6, 13 f.; of Caesarius of Arles, 13
Honoratus of Arles, 12
Honorius, Emperor, 105n, 109n, 143n, 145n, 183n
Huns, characteristics of, 18, 123, 127, 147, 200, 201n
Hypatius, father-in-law of Salvian, 10; conversion of, 11
Idatius, Chronicon, 143n, 202n
Immediacy of God's judgment, 75 f.
Imperial estates, encroachments on, 105
Incarnation, doctrine of, 136
Incest of effeminate Romans, 216
Indiction, 143
Infirmities of Christians, 45 ff.
Inquilini, 151n.
Interpolation of Scripture, 134 f.
Isidore, St., Etymologiae, 167n, 190n
Israel, meaning of name, 68, 99
Israel, Children of, 56; rebellion, 63, 64, 175 f.
Itala versions of Bible, 30
Italy, invasions of, 178
Iugatio, 150n
Jerome, Adv. Rufinum, 108n; Ep., 170n; translation of Bible, 19, 30
Job, 96
Joli, 33
Judgment of God, immediate, 3, 20, 23; proved by scriptural authority, 71 ff.
Judgment, the Last, 55
Jurists, citations of Salvian by, 33, 93n.
Justice of God's punishment of Romans, 224 ff.
Juvenal, 120n
Kaulen, Fr., 30
Kohl, R., 222n
Korah, 64
Labriolle, P., 167n
Lactantius, 21, 22, 24, 29, 30; De ira Dei, 115n; De opificio Dei, 90n; Inst. div. 24, 39, 40, 77n, 78n, 160n, 221n
Larinus Amatius, 14
Law, Roman, Salvian's knowledge of, 4 f.
Le Jeune, 33
Leo, Emperor, 169n
Lérins, 5, 6, 12, 111n; “earthly paradise,” 11; influence of on Salvian's work, 13; withdrawal of Salvian to, 11
Litchfield, H. W, 43n
Litorius, Roman general, 18, 201 f.
Lot, 55
Lot, Ferdinand, 233
Love of God proved by Christ's death, 116 f.
Lucan, De bello civili, 221n
Lupus of Troyes, 12
Lycaonians, 230
Magistrates, restricted access to, 93
Magnets, 117
Marcia, wife of Cato, 222n
Maro (Vergil), 40
Mars, 176
Marseilles, 6, 8, 12
Mary (Miriam), 61f.
Massillon, 33
Matrons, position of in Aquitania, 194, ff.
Matter, 25
Maximian, 143n
Maximus of Riez, 12
Mayence, destruction of, 170, 181n
Mercury, 176
Méry, L., 36
Messenger, H. K., 17n, 28n, 32n, 231n, 234
Metz, 181n
Midianites, 198 f.
Mimes, 164 f.
Minerva, 176
Minucius Felix, 30, 161n
Misfortunes of good men, 77
Monastic garments, 110 f.
Monks in Africa, 229 f.
Moors, 127
Moricca, U., 234
Moses, 56, 58, 61, 62, 64
Nabuchodonosor, 206
Nadab, 62
Narbonne, 201n
Nathan the prophet, 129
Neptune, 176
Nine Peoples (Novem Populana), 191
Noah, 53, 97
Nobles, aggression of, 5, 23, 103 ff.; conversion of, 110; guilt of, 95 ff.; lenience of government toward, 107n, 109; licentiousness of, 106 ff.
Officials, compared to brigands, 139 f.; immunity of, 174; oppression of the poor by, 105, 139 ff., 218 f.
Og, 64
Old Testament, Salvian's use of, 19
Orosius, Historia adv. paganos, 21, 43n, 106n, 137n, 141n, 205n
Oza the Levite, 175
Pagans, Christians compared with, 125 ff.; impossibility of persuading, 79
Palladia, wife of Salvian, 10 f.
Patronage of the rich, injustice of, 10, 148 ff.
Paul, St. (often cited as “the apostle”), 42, 45 f., 69, 83 f., 86, 100, 116 ff., 120, 126, 132 f., 157 f., 163, 227, 230
Paulinus of Nola, 10, 193n
Paulinus of Pella 8, 26, 141n
Paulus, the jurist, 60n
Pauly, Fr., 32, 93n, 102n, 115n, 160n, 174n, 187n, 231n, 234
Pelagius I, 224n.
Peter, St., 131, 158
Peter Damiani, 43n
Petronius, De bello civili, 88n
Pharaoh's disobedience and destruction, 56
Philosophers, pagan, cited in support of Salvian's thesis, 39 f.
Pithou, Pierre, 31, 34
Plato, 39, 221n, 222n
Pliny, Panegyricus, 156
Poema coniugis ad uxorem, 26
Pompa diaboli, 167n
Pontanus, 34
Poverty, examples of from Roman history, 43
Prayers as proof of God's government, 49
Presence of God proved by scriptural authority, 66 ff.
Priscus, 140
Procopius, De bello Vandalico, 217n
Prosper of Aquitaine, 26
Provence, 5
Publilius Syrus, 59n
Pythagoras, 39
Quieta, mother-in-law of Salvian, 10; conversion of, 11
Quintilian, Inst. or., 114n
Rapsaces, 157
Ravenna, 173
Repentance, feigned by Romans, 152 ff.
Rittershausen, Conrad, 9, 30 f., 31 f., 55n, 60n, 88n, 90n, 93n, 100n, 160n
Roman citizenship, loss of, 142, 150 ff.
Roman Empire, extinction of, 109
Romans, compared with barbarians, 119 ff.; condition compared with that of Israelites, 59; disasters due to sins of, 84 f., 19 f, 189 ff., 223 ff.; former virtues of, 43 ff.; former wealth of, 173
Rome, circus in, 173; problems of decline, 3, 21; sacked by Goths, 178; sacked by Vandals, 18, 197n
Rostovtzeff, 23
Rudolph and Kenterich, 170n
Rutilius Namatianus, De reditu, 22
Salonius, son of Eucherius, 12 f.; dedication of Salvian's works to, 13, 15, 37
Salvian, birthplace of, 8; education of, 9; family position of, 9; influence of Lérins on, 13; legal knowledge of, 9 f; “master of bishops,” 6; presbyter at Marseilles, 6, 12; “St. Salvianus,” 7; sympathy for the poor, 23; withdrawal from the world, 10
Writings, 15 ff.; attacks on wickedness of church, 27; criticism of profane authors, 37; dependence on authority, 19; inaccuracies, 46n, 57n, 58n; inconsistencies, 27; influence on jurists, 33; influence on French sermons, 33; irony, 27, 231n; Latinity of, 28f.; listed by Gennadius, 6; neglect of in recent times, 34; reticence in quotation, 29 f.; style of, 28 ff.; translations of, 32; use of diminutives in, 29
Against Avarice, 15 f., 98; date of composition of, 17; edition of Sichardus, 16; purpose and content of, 16; quoted by Salvian, 43, 98, 141
Epistles, 9 ff., 45n, 46n, 98n
For the Satisfaction of these Sins, 15
Hexameron, 15
Homilies
Letters, see Epistles
On the Government of God, 18 ff.; date of composition, 7, 18 f.; division into books, 19; editions of, 31 f.; manuscripts of, 33, Paris BN lat. 13385, 31, Vindobonensis lat. 826, 31; outline of contents of, 4; purpose of, 20, 23, 37 f.; title of, 18; underlying thesis of, 3 f.; value of Books I-III, 20; unfinished condition of, 189n, 231n
Sanctuary, right of, held by churches, 150n
Sapaudus of Arles, 224n
Sapphira, 158
Sardinia, Vandal capture of, 178
Sardonic herbs, 190
Saul, 204, 214
Saurin, 33
Saxons, characteristics of, 123, 127, 209
Scaliger, Joseph, 28, 34
Schmalz, J. H., 334
Schoenemann, 31 f.
Scylla, 155
Scythians, 127
Seeck, 143n
Seius, 210
Seneca, 30; De ira, 59n, 161n; De rem. fort., 42n, 90n; De tranq. vitae, 37n; Epistulae, 44n, 162n
Serfdom, 5, 150
Seronatus, prefect in Gaul, 105n, 106n
Shimei, 75
Sichardus, 16, 31, 33
Sicily, captured by Vandals, 178
Sidonius Apollinaris, 4, 23, 29, 105n, 106n, 109n, 110n, 141n, 142n, 224n
Sinai, Mt., 60
Sirmond, 33
Sisera, 198
Slaves, 27; characteristic vices of, 102 ff.; corrected by kind treatment, 186; food allowance of, 102; free Christians compared with, 87, 101 ff.; influence of masters' vices on, 194 f., 228; noble rank gained by, 106; nobles compared with, 108 f.; obedience required of, 87
Socrates, 221 f.
Sodom and Gomorrah, 54 ff., 113
Souter, 222n
Spain, defeat of Romans in, 202, 205; devastation of, 106, 178, 197
Spectacles, abstention of barbarians from, 168, 190; renounced in baptism, 167 f.; Salvian's attacks on, 8, 160 ff.
Sternberg, G., 234
Stoics, 39, 44n
Symmachus, 4n, 224n
Syrian merchants, 123
Tacitus, Germania, 196
Tanit, 226n
Taxation in the Roman Empire, 3 f., 22 f., 106, 109, 142 if.; extra levies from poor, 145 f.; failure of attempts to lessen, 109f., 147; of poor for lands taken over by rich, 150
Terence, Heauton Timoroumenos, 78n
Tertullian, 15, 22, 29; Ad nationes, 210n; Apologeticum, 44n; De idololatria, 214n; De spectaculis, 160n, 167n, 176n; Liber de praescriptionibus, 214n
Teuffel, 17
Thamar, 74
Theaters, pervasive wickedness of, 162 ff., 176 ff.
Theodoric I, king of Visigoths, 202n
Theodosius, Emperor, 107n, 109n, 139n, 143n, 145n
Thouvenot, R., 234
Timotheus, pseudonym of Salvian, 16
Timothy, “apostle,” 15, 46
Toulouse, 201n
Trèves, 8; burning of, 172n; capture 44 f. of by Vandals, 9; demand for circuses in, 183; repeated destruction of, 170, 179, 183 ff.; withdrawal of prefect from, 11
Tribute paid to barbarians, 188
Tully (Cicero), 40
Twelve Tables, laws of, 231
Tyre, 207
Ulfilas, 138n
Ulpian, 60n
Valens, Emperor, 137
Valentinian, Emperor, 107n, 109n, 139n
Valerius Maximus, 43n, 44n
Valran, G., 17, 234
Vandals, 5, 9, 137 f., 147, 170n, 178, 197 ff., 200, 202 ff.; divine mission of, 205; reform of Africa by, 216 ff.; sack of Rome by, 18
Venus, 176
Veranus, son of Eucherius, 12
Vergil, 30, 40; Aeneid, 185n; Georgics, 40, 115n
Vincent of Lérins, 12; Commonitorium, 13, 31
Virgilius of Arles, 12
Virtue as the source of happiness, 44 f.
Visigoths, 202n
Voltaire, 135n
Waltzing, J. P., 234
Weston, A. H., 234
Weymann, C., 193n, 234
Wölfflin, Ed., 28n, 234
Ziba, 75
Zschimmer, W., 17n, 29n, 34, 39, 130n, 160n, 234
Genesis
2:7-8 4:3-5 6:5-7 6:13 7:11-12 7:21 7:23 15:16 18:20 19:12-13
Exodus
10 13:5 19:9 19:16 19:20 19:21-24 20:7 24:1-2 32:35
Leviticus
Numbers
12:8-15 14:26-29 14:31-32 14:37 15:11 15:32-36 16:3 16:35 16:41
Deuteronomy
Joshua
Judges
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
3:1 6:6-7 12:9-12 12:13-14 12:14 13:39 15:30 18:31 24:1-25
1 Kings
Psalms
9:4 9:8 14:3 14:3 18:41 22:7 33:18-19 34:15 34:16 35:1-2 35:16 43:1 49:11-12 50:7 53:1 53:3 58:7 73:9 73:11 78:30-31 80:1 81:8 82:4 94:7 106:17 107:40 109:7 116:12-13 119:137 128:2 140:11
Proverbs
1:24 5:22 6:30 10:23 11:22 15:3 15:3 16:9 20:24 21:28
Isaiah
1:3 5:8 5:20 16:4 16:10 36:10 37:36 50:11 50:11
Jeremiah
2:37 5:3 5:8 5:8 7:4-7 8:8 8:9 9:23-24 11:11 17:13 20:7 23:24 25:8-9 42:11 43:11 44:21-22 50:29
Ezekiel
14:14 14:16 22:18-20 24:6 26:11 28:4-5 28:12-13 28:17 28:18 28:19 28:19 39:24
Hosea
Micah
Zechariah
Matthew
5:16 5:22 5:22 5:28 5:28 5:39 5:40 5:44 6:22-23 7:12 7:25 10 10:40 11:23-24 11:28-30 18:8-9 23:32-33 28:20
Mark
Luke
2:47-48 6:21 6:25 6:25 9:24 9:24-25 10:12-25 10:16 12:47-48 14 14:11
John
Acts
5:1 14:11-12 17 17:28 17:28 22:28
Romans
1:20 1:27-28 1:28 1:30-32 1:32 2:1 2:1 2:2 2:4-5 2:17-23 2:23-24 2:25 2:26-27 4 4:15 5:6-7 5:8-9 7:17 8:32 8:35-36 8:39 9:25 12:11
1 Corinthians
1:19 3:18 5:1-13 5:6 5:6 6:9-10 6:10 7:2 9:21 9:27 10:21 10:24 10:31 11:1
2 Corinthians
6:4-5 8:9 11:21 11:23-25 12:9 12:10
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
1 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
James
2:5-7 2:10 2:18 2:19 2:20 2:26
1 Peter
2 Peter
1 John
Revelation
Wisdom of Solomon
Sirach
iii iv v vi vii viii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 241 241