He commanded blessed Eugenius to be beheaded, but on this condition: that if, in the very hour when the sword was poised over his neck, he did not return to the heretics' sect, he should not be killed—lest the Christians should honour him as a martyr—but should be condemned to exile; and it is manifest that so it came to pass. For when, with death imminent, he was asked whether he was resolved to die for the Catholic faith, he answered: 'For this is eternal life, to die for righteousness.' Then, the sword being withheld, he was condemned to exile at the city of Albi in Gaul, where he also made the end of his present life. At his tomb now many miracles are very frequently shown. But Saint Vindemialis he ordered to be smitten with the sword, which was thus accomplished in this contest.
Octavianus the archdeacon, too, and many thousands of men and women who confessed this faith, were slain and maimed. But for the love of glory these tortures were as nothing to the holy confessors, who knew that, being chastened in a few things, they would be well dealt with in many (Wis. 3:5), according to that saying of the Apostle: 'For the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in the saints' (Rom. 8:18). Many then, straying from the faith and receiving riches, plunged themselves into many sorrows—like that unhappy bishop named Revocatus, who at that time was recalled from the Catholic faith. Then also the sun appeared darkened, so that scarcely a third part of it shone forth:
I believe it was on account of such great crimes and the shedding of innocent blood. But Honoric, after so great an outrage, was seized by a demon which had long fed upon the blood of the saints, and he tore himself with his own bites; and in this very torment he ended his unworthy life by a just death. Childeric succeeded him, and when he died, Gelesimir took up the kingdom. He too, overcome by the commonwealth, ended his life and his rule; and so the kingdom of the Vandals fell. IV. For many heresies at that time assailed the Churches of God, upon which divine vengeance was for the most part inflicted. For Athanaric, king of the Goths, also stirred up a great persecution: he struck off with the sword many of the Christians, afflicting them with various punishments;
but some he sent into exile, and killed off with hunger and various torments. Whence it came to pass that, by the judgment of God impending, for the shedding of just blood he was driven out of his kingdom and became an exile from his fatherland—he who had assailed the Churches of God. But now let us return to higher matters. V. So then a rumour spread that the Huns wished to burst into the Gauls. Now at that time there was at the town of Tongres a bishop named Aravatius, of eminent holiness, who, giving himself to vigils and fasts and bathed in frequent showers of tears, kept entreating the mercy of the Lord, that He would never permit this unbelieving people, ever unworthy of itself, to come into the Gauls.
But perceiving in the spirit that, on account of the sins of the people, this was not granted him, he formed the plan of seeking out the city of Rome; namely, that with the patronage of apostolic power joined to himself—which he was humbly imploring of the Lord—he might more easily obtain his request. Coming therefore to the tomb of the blessed Apostle, he besought the aid of his goodness, consuming himself in much abstinence and the utmost fasting, so that he remained two and three days without any food or drink, nor was there any interval in which he ceased from prayer. And when he had remained there for the space of many days in such affliction, he is said to have received this answer from the blessed Apostle: 'Why, most holy man, do you disturb me?'
'For behold, in the deliberation of the Lord it is utterly decreed that the Huns shall come into the Gauls and shall lay them waste with a most mighty storm. Take counsel therefore no further, but hasten swiftly, set your house in order, prepare your tomb, seek out clean linen shrouds. For behold, you shall depart from the body, and your eyes shall not see the evils which the Huns are about to do in the Gauls, even as the Lord our God has spoken.' Having received this answer from the holy Apostle, the bishop hastened his journey and swiftly sought again the Gauls; and coming to the city of Tongres he quickly took up with him the things necessary for his burial.
And bidding farewell to the clergy and the rest of the citizens of the city, he announced to them, with weeping and lamentation, that they would not see his face any more. But they, following him with great wailing and tears, entreated him with humble prayer, saying: 'Do not forsake us, holy father; do not forget us, good shepherd.' But when they could not recall him by their weeping, having received his blessing, they returned with kisses. He, however, coming to the city of Maastricht, was stricken with a slight fever and departed from the body; and being washed by the faithful, he was buried beside the public causeway itself. How his blessed body, after the space of many ages, was translated, we have written in the book of Miracles. VI.
So then the Huns, having set out from Pannonia, as some report, on the very vigil of holy Easter, came to the city of Metz, laying waste the rest along the way; they gave the city to the flames and slaughtered the people by the edge of the sword, slaying even the priests of the Lord before the holy altars. Nor did any place remain unburned in it, save the oratory of blessed Stephen, the first martyr and Levite. Concerning that oratory, what I have heard from certain persons I have not delayed to relate. For they say that, before these enemies came, a faithful man saw in a vision the blessed Levite Stephen, as it were conferring with the holy Apostles Peter and Paul about this destruction, and saying:
'I beseech you, my lords, that you do not by your intercession permit the city of Metz to be burned by the enemy, for in it is a place wherein the relics of my littleness are contained; but rather let the people perceive that I have some power with the Lord. But if the wickedness of the people has so overflowed that nothing else can be done unless the city be given to the flames, at least let not this oratory be burned.' They said to him: 'Go in peace, most beloved brother; your oratory alone shall be spared from the burning. But for the city we shall not prevail, because the sentence of the Lord's decree against it has already gone forth. For the sin of the people has prevailed, and the cry of their malice has ascended before God: therefore this city shall be burned with fire.'
Whence it is beyond doubt that, by their intercession, while the city was laid waste, the oratory remained unharmed. VII. But Attila, king of the Huns, departing from the city of Metz, while he was oppressing many cities of the Gauls, assailed Orléans and strove to take it by storm with a mighty battering of rams. Now at that time the most blessed Anianus was bishop in the aforesaid city, a man of eminent prudence and praiseworthy holiness, the record of whose mighty deeds is faithfully preserved among us. And when the besieged people cried out to their bishop, asking what they should do, he, trusting in God, urged all to prostrate themselves in prayer and with tears to implore the Lord's help, ever present in time of need. At length, while they were praying as he had bidden, the priest said:
'Look out from the wall of the city, whether the mercy of God is now coming to our aid.' For he suspected that, through the Lord's mercy, Aëtius was approaching, to whom he had earlier gone to Arles, apprehensive of what was to come. But looking out from the wall, they saw no one. And he said: 'Pray faithfully, for the Lord will deliver you this day.' But while they prayed, he said: 'Look again.' And when they had looked, they saw no one who brought help. He said to them a third time: 'If you ask faithfully, the Lord is swiftly at hand.' But they with weeping and great wailing implored the mercy of the Lord. And the prayer being completed, looking out from the wall a third time at the old man's command, they saw afar off as it were a mist rising up from the ground. Reporting this, the priest said:
'It is the help of the Lord.' Meanwhile, the walls now trembling under the assault of the rams and on the point of collapse, behold, Aëtius came, and Theodore, king of the Goths, and Thorismund his son, hastened with their armies to the city, and drove out and repelled the enemy. And so the city, being delivered through the intercession of the blessed prelate, they put Attila to flight; who, going to the Catalaunian plain, girded himself for battle. Hearing this, they manfully prepared themselves against him. In those days a report reached Rome that Aëtius was labouring in the utmost peril amid the enemy's phalanxes. On hearing which, his wife, anxious and grief-stricken, constantly visited the basilica of the holy Apostles, and prayed that she might receive her husband back safe from this campaign.
While she was doing this day and night, on a certain night a poor little man, overcome with wine, fell asleep in a corner of the basilica of the blessed Apostle Peter. The doors being closed as usual, he was not ejected by the keepers; but rising in the night, with lamps shining throughout the whole space of the building, terrified with fear, he sought a way out that he might escape. But when he knocked at the bolts of the first and of the other door, and found everything barred, he lay down on the floor, anxiously awaiting the moment when, the people gathering for the morning hymns, he might depart freely. Meanwhile he saw two persons reverently greeting one another and being solicitous about their own affairs. Then the one who was the elder began thus:
'I can no longer endure the tears of Aëtius's wife. For she begs unceasingly that I bring her husband back unharmed from the Gauls, although otherwise it had been determined before the divine judgment; yet nevertheless I have obtained His immeasurable mercy for his life. And behold, now I hasten thither to bring him back alive from there. But I adjure you, that whoever hears these things keep silence, and dare not divulge the secret of God, lest he swiftly perish from the earth.' But that man, hearing these things, could not keep silence; rather, as soon as the sky grew light, he disclosed all that he had heard to the mistress of the household; and when his words were finished, he was deprived of the light of his eyes. So then Aëtius, joined with the Goths and Franks, did battle against Attila.
But he, seeing his army being laid waste to utter destruction, slipped away in flight. Theodore, king of the Goths, however, fell in this contest. For let no one doubt that the army of the Huns was put to flight through the intercession of the aforementioned prelate. Yet Aëtius the patrician, together with Thorismund, obtained the victory and destroyed the enemy. And the war being finished, Aëtius said to Thorismund: 'Hasten swiftly to return to your fatherland, lest, with your brother pressing on, you be deprived of your father's kingdom.' Hearing this, he departed with speed, as though to forestall his brother and to be the first to attain his father's throne. By a like stratagem he also put to flight the king of the Franks. And as they withdrew, Aëtius, having despoiled the field, returned a victor to his fatherland with great spoil.
Attila, however, returned with a few men, and not long after Aquileia was taken by the Huns, burned and demolished, and Italy was overrun and overthrown. Thorismund, of whom we made mention above, subdued the Alans in war; afterward he himself, after many quarrels and wars, was overpowered by his brothers and perished, having his throat cut. VIII. So then, these things having been thus arranged and set forth in order, I have deemed it a sin to pass over in silence what the History of Renatus Frigeridus relates concerning the aforementioned Aëtius.
For in the twelfth book of his Histories he relates that, after the death of the divine Honorius, the boy Valentinian, when only one lustrum had passed, was made emperor by his cousin Theodosius, and that at the city of Rome the tyrant John rose up to the imperial power, and he says that John's envoys were treated with contempt by Caesar; and he adds: 'While these things were thus being done, the envoys returned to the tyrant, bearing harsher demands; stirred by which, John sent Aëtius—who at that time was conducting the charge of the palace—with a vast weight of gold to the Huns, known to him from the time of his being a hostage among them and bound to him in close friendship, with instructions of this kind:'
that as soon as the opposing party had entered Italy, they themselves should attack from the rear, while he would come from the front. And since much that is memorable must consequently be told of this man, it is fitting to set forth his lineage and character. His father Gaudentius, a man of the foremost rank in the province of Scythia, beginning from service in the household troops, was advanced even to the summit of Master of the Cavalry. His mother was an Italian woman, noble and wealthy. Aëtius the son, from boyhood a praetorian, was for three years a hostage of Alaric, then of the Huns; afterward son-in-law of Carpilio, and from Count of the Household, he began to conduct the charge of John's palace.
Of middle stature, fittingly formed in a manly build, such that he was neither subject to weakness nor a burden; brisk in spirit, vigorous in limb, a most ready horseman, skilled in shooting arrows, untiring with the lance, most apt for wars, renowned in the arts of peace; of no greed, of the least cupidity, endowed with the good qualities of the soul, not even deviating from his own purpose at the prompting of wicked instigators; most patient of injuries, eager for toil, fearless of dangers, most tolerant of hunger, thirst, and sleeplessness. To him from his earliest age it was clearly foretold to how great a power he was destined by the fates, to be celebrated in his own times and places. These things the aforesaid historiographer relates concerning Aëtius.
But the grown Emperor Valentinian, fearing lest Aëtius should crush him by usurpation, slew him with no existing causes. He himself afterward, while as Augustus he was sitting on the tribunal in the Field of Mars and addressing the people, Occila, a retainer of Aëtius, coming from the opposite side, ran him through with a sword. Such was the end of each of them. IX. Now concerning the kings of the Franks, who was the first is generally unknown. For although the History of Sulpicius Alexander relates many things about them, it nevertheless in no way names their first king, but says that they had dukes; yet what he relates concerning them seems worth recording. For when he says that Maximus, within Aquileia, having lost all hope of empire, sat as it were out of his mind, he adds:
'At that time, under the dukes Genobaud, Marcomer, and Sunno, the Franks burst into Germania, and, the frontier being broken through, with many mortals slain, they laid waste the most fertile districts and struck terror even into the colony of Cologne. When this was reported at Trier, Nannenus and Quintinus, masters of the soldiery, to whom Maximus had committed his son's infancy and the defence of the Gauls, having gathered an army, assembled at Cologne. But the enemy, laden with booty, having plundered the richest of the provinces, crossed the Rhine, leaving many of their own on Roman soil, ready to renew the devastation; engaging with these proved advantageous to the Romans, many of the Franks being slain by the sword at Carbonaria.'
And when it was being deliberated about the outcome, whether they ought to cross over into Frankland, Nannenus declined, because he knew that they would undoubtedly be unprepared and, in their own places, stronger. When this displeased Quintinus and the rest of the military men, and Nannenus had returned to Mainz, Quintinus with his army crossed the Rhine near the fort of Neuss, and, two camps' distance from the river, came upon dwellings empty of inhabitants and enormous villages left deserted. For the Franks, feigning fear, had withdrawn into the more remote forest passes, with barricades prepared along the edges of the woods. And so, all the houses being burned down—against which the cowardly stupidity was raging, supposing it laid up the consummation of victory—the soldiers spent an anxious night under the weight of their arms.
And at first dawn, with Quintinus as commander of the battle, having entered the forest passes, until nearly midday entangling themselves in the wanderings of the roads, they roamed about the whole region; at length, when they found everything entirely closed off with huge barricades, they burst out into marshy plains that adjoined the woods. As they struggled, a few of the enemy appeared; who, standing upon joined tree-trunks or upon the barricades, as it were from the tops of towers, poured forth arrows after the manner of artillery, smeared with the poisons of herbs, so that, even when wounds were inflicted upon the surface of the skin and not in lethal places, undoubted deaths followed. Thereafter, the army being surrounded by a greater multitude of the enemy, it poured out eagerly into the open plains which the Franks had left free:
and the foremost horsemen, sunk in the quagmires, with the bodies of men and beasts mingled together, were crushed by the collapse of one another. The foot-soldiers too, whom no weight of horses had trodden down, entangled in the mire, scarcely extricating their steps, again hid themselves trembling in the woods—those who a little before had hardly emerged. The ranks therefore being thrown into confusion, the legions were cut down, with Heraclius, tribune of the Joviani, and almost all who commanded the soldiers, being slain; to a few the night and the hiding-places of the woods afforded safe escape.' These things he related in the third book of his History. But in the fourth book, when he was relating the killing of Victor, son of the tyrant Maximus, he said:
'At that time Carietto and Syrus, substituted in the place of Nannenus, were stationed in Germania with an army drawn up against the Franks.' And after a few words, when the Franks had carried off booty from Germania, he added: 'Arbogast, wishing to delay nothing, admonished Caesar that the due penalties were to be exacted from the Franks, unless they immediately restored everything which the previous year they had plundered when the legions were slain, and handed over the authors of the war, upon whom the treachery of the violated peace might be punished.' He related that these things were done while they were dukes, and then said: 'After a very few days, with Marcomer and Sunno, the Frankish royals, a conference being hastily concluded and hostages obtained according to custom, he withdrew to Trier to winter.'
But when he calls them royals, we do not know whether they were kings or held the place of kings. The same writer, however, when he recounts the difficulties of Valentinian Augustus, adds this: 'While various things were being done in the East throughout Thrace, in Gaul the public state was thrown into disorder. The prince Valentinian being shut up in the buildings of the palace at Vienne, and reduced almost below the measure of a private man, the care of military affairs was handed over to Frankish retainers; the civil offices too had passed over into the conspiracy of Arbogast: nor was anyone found among all those bound by the oaths of military service who dared to obey the prince's familiar speech or his commands.'
Thereafter he relates that in the same year Arbogast, pursuing Sunno and Marcomer, the under-kings of the Franks, with kindred hatreds, in the depth of a most rigid winter sought out Cologne, reckoning that all the recesses of Frankland could safely be penetrated and burned, since the woods, bare and dry with their foliage shaken off, could not conceal the lurkers. So then, having gathered an army and crossed the Rhine, he laid waste the Bructeri nearest to the bank, and also the district which the Chamavi inhabit, with no one ever opposing, except that a few of the Ampsivarii and the Chatti, under the leadership of Marcomer, appeared on the more distant ridges of the hills.' Here again, leaving aside both the dukes and the royals, he plainly designates that the Franks have a king, and omitting his name, he says:
'Thereafter the tyrant Eugenius, having undertaken the array of an expedition, sought the frontier of the Rhine, that with the kings of the Alamanni and the Franks—the ancient treaties being renewed according to custom—he might display to the savage peoples the immense army he had raised at that time.' These things the above-written historiographer discoursed concerning the Franks. Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, of whom we have already made mention, when he relates that Rome was captured and overthrown by the Goths, says: 'Meanwhile Respendial, king of the Alamanni, after Goar had gone over to the Romans, turned the column of his men back from the Rhine, while the Vandals were hard-pressed by the war of the Franks—Godigisel the king having been slain and nearly twenty thousand cut down by the sword—and all the Vandals would have been destroyed to extermination, had not the force of the Alans come to their aid in time.'
This matter moves us: that when he names the kings of other peoples, why he does not also name those of the Franks. Yet when he says that Constantine, having assumed the tyranny, had ordered his son Constans to come to him from Spain, he discoursed thus: 'Constantine the tyrant, having summoned his son Constans—himself likewise a tyrant—from Spain, that they being present might consult about the sum of affairs, it came to pass that Constans, dismissing the equipment of the court and his own wife Caesar-augusta, and entrusting all things within Spain to Gerontius, hastened by a continuous journey to his father. When they had come together, after very many days had passed, with no fear from Italy, Constantine, given over to his gullet and belly, advises his son to return to Spain.'
'He, sending his columns ahead, while he was staying with his father, messengers came from Spain: that by Gerontius, Maximus, one of his own clients, had been invested with imperial power and was preparing himself, girt about with a retinue of barbarian peoples, against them. Terrified by this, Edobech being sent ahead to the German peoples, Constans, and Decimus Rusticus—already prefect, formerly master of the offices—seek the Gauls with the Franks and Alamanni and all the band of soldiers, intending presently to return to Constantine.' Likewise, when he writes that Constantine was besieged, he says:
'When the fourth month of the siege of Constantine was being conducted, suddenly from farther Gaul messengers came, saying that Jovinus had assumed the royal regalia and, with the Burgundians, Alamanni, Franks, Alans, and all his army, was threatening the besiegers. Thus, with the delays hastened, the city being opened, Constantine surrendered. And being immediately sent off to Italy, with executioners sent to meet him by the prince, he was beheaded above the river Mincius.' And after a few words the same author relates: 'In those same days Decimus Rusticus, prefect of the tyrants, Agroetius, formerly chief of the notaries of Jovinus, and many nobles, were captured at Auvergne by the Honorian commanders and cruelly slain.'
'The city of Trier was seized and burned by the Franks in a second irruption.' But when Asterius had obtained the patriciate by imperial codicils, he adds this: 'At the same time Castinus, count of the household, an expedition against the Franks being undertaken, is sent to the Gauls.' These things they said concerning the Franks. But Orosius, himself also a historiographer, in the seventh book of his work thus records: 'Stilicho, having gathered peoples, crushes the Franks, crosses the Rhine, overruns the Gauls, and is carried as far as the Pyrenees.' This information about the Franks the aforementioned historians have left us, the kings not being named. For many relate that these same people departed from Pannonia, and first indeed inhabited the shores of the river Rhine:
thereafter, the Rhine being crossed, they passed over into Thuringia; and there, near the villages or cities, they set up over themselves long-haired kings, from the first and, so to speak, more noble of their families. That this was so was afterwards proved by the victories of Clovis, as we shall set forth in what follows. For also in the consular records we read that Theodomer, king of the Franks, son of the late Richimer, together with Ascyla his mother, was slain by the sword. They report too that at that time Chlogio, a man useful and most noble among his people, was king of the Franks, who dwelt at the fort of Dispargum, which is in the territory of the Thuringians. But in these parts, that is, toward the southern region, dwelt the Romans as far as the river Loire.
But beyond the Loire the Goths held dominion. The Burgundians too, following the sect of the Arians, dwelt across the Rhône, which adjoins the city of Lyons. But Chlogio, having sent scouts to the city of Cambrai, when everything had been thoroughly explored, followed himself, crushed the Romans, and seized the city; remaining there a short time, he occupied the land as far as the river Somme. From his stock certain men assert that Merovech was king, whose son was Childeric. X. But this generation was ever seen to have yielded obedience to fanatical cults, nor did they at all acknowledge God:
and for themselves they fashioned forms of forests and waters, of birds and beasts and of the other elements as well, and were accustomed to worship these as God and to offer sacrifice to them. O if only that terrible voice had touched the fibres of their hearts, which spoke to the people through Moses, saying: 'You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, nor shall you adore any likeness which is in heaven, and which is in earth, and those which dwell in the waters: you shall not make them, nor shall you worship them' (Exod. 20:3-5). And that other word: 'You shall adore the Lord your God, and shall serve Him alone, and shall swear by His name' (Deut. 6:13).
What if they had been able to understand what vengeance overtook and crushed the people of Israel for the veneration of the molten calf, when, after the feast and songs, after the revelries and dancings, with unclean mouth they declared concerning that same graven image: 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt' (Exod. 32:4): there fell of them twenty-four thousand men. What of those who, imitating Beelphegor, having mingled with the Moabite harlots, were cut down by their kinsmen and laid low? In which plague Phinehas the priest, the adulterers being slain, stilled the wrath of God (Num. 25:1 and 5), and it was reputed to him unto righteousness (Ps. 105:31).
What if those words also had been brought to their ears, which the Lord thunders forth through David, saying: 'For all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens' (Ps. 95:5). And: 'The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of men's hands: let them that make them become like unto them, and all such as trust in them' (Ps. 113:4, 8, and Ps. 134:15, 18). Or this: 'Let them all be confounded that adore graven things, and that glory in their idols' (Ps. 96:7). And again, what the prophet Habakkuk attests, saying: 'What doth the graven thing avail, because the maker thereof hath graven it? They have fashioned it; it is a molten thing, a false imagination of the mind. But this is the bringing forth of gold and of silver, and there is no spirit in them.'