Chapter IX.—Valens persecutes the Novatians, because they accepted the Orthodox Faith.
The emperor however did not cease his persecution of those who embraced the doctrine of the homoousion, but drove them away from Constantinople: and as the Novatians acknowledged the same faith, they also were subjected to similar treatment. He commanded that their churches should be shut up, also their bishop they sent into exile. His name was Agelius, a person that had presided over their churches from the time of Constantine, and had led an apostolic life: for he always walked barefoot, and used but one coat, observing the injunction of the gospel. 586 But the emperor’s displeasure against this sect was moderated by the efforts of a pious and eloquent man named Marcian, who had formerly been in military service at the imperial palace, but was at that time a presbyter in the Novatian church, and taught Anastasia and Carosa, the emperor’s daughters, grammar; from the former of whom the public baths yet standing, which Valens erected at Constantinople, were named. 587 From respect for this person therefore the Novatian churches which had been p. 100 for some time closed, were again opened. The Arians however would not suffer this people to remain undisturbed, for they disliked them on account of the sympathy and love the Novatians manifested toward the Homoousians, with whom they agreed in sentiment. Such was the state of affairs at that time. We may here remark that the war against the usurper Procopius was terminated about the end of May, in the consulate 588 of Gratian and Dagalaïfus.
Am. Marcellinus (Rerum Gestarum, XXVI. 4. 14), in speaking of Procopius, the usurper, says: ‘Procopius…resorted to the Anastasian baths, named from the sister of Constantine’; from which it appears that either (1) there were two baths of the same name, or (2) the baths here alluded to were named after Constantine’s sister and renamed on the occasion of their being repaired or altered, or (3) that Socrates is in error. From the improbabilities connected with (1) and (2) we may infer that (3) is the right view.
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