1. That emperors and the princes of the age, as defenders of the sacred laws and of the Catholic religion, ought to furnish help and protection to the afflicted affairs of the Church, lest a tyrant and the raging fury of heretics should drag the divine mysteries to ruin, has long been sincerely proclaimed by all learned men. Wherefore it is no wonder if the Roman pontiffs, as soon as they understood that someone had been declared emperor, demanded of them with all zeal a confession of the Catholic faith, without which they would have refused to hold communion with them. Among the most ancient examples of this manner of proceeding, this one has been supplied to us by St.
Siricius, who in the year 385, after the death of Damasus, was raised to the pontificate. When he demanded of Maximus this confession of the Catholic faith, that prince did not refuse to make it willingly in his own letter, as was ever the custom of Christian princes who dealt fairly with him. Wherefore he first makes mention of the pontifical letters he had received, and then subjoins praises both of the greatness of the priestly office and of the dignity of the most splendid city of Rome:
「As for the Catholic faith, concerning which you have wished to consult our clemency—so that I may the more experience the special judgment of the divine power toward me—this I confess: that I have the greater care of it, seeing that I ascended to the empire straightway from that saving font itself, and that God has been my helper in all my endeavours and successes, and that He deigns today and, as I hope, perpetually to be my protector and guardian, most dear Father.」 He promises moreover that he will take care that the priests of that Church deal with ecclesiastical causes, since the chief matter then being treated was that of Agricius, whom the holy pontiff had noted as having improperly ascended to the grade of the presbyterate; and therefore Maximus himself, affecting the example of lawful emperors, says:
「What can I render more reverently to our Catholic religion than that Catholic priests should judge concerning this very matter, of what nature it may appear to be?」 And that the bishops of the Gauls and the rest who dwelt within the five provinces might conveniently be present at this inquiry, he decrees that an assembly is to be established in whatever city they shall have chosen, so that, with the same sitting and taking cognizance, it may be judged what custom holds and what the law is.
Finally, about to give a signal testimony of the sincerity of his faith, he relates to the pontiff how he himself, arriving at Trier from Britain, found and detected religion so defiled and polluted by the stain of many wicked men, that (he says) 「unless our provision and remedy, which came from the fear of the most high God, had swiftly brought help to them, a vast rending asunder and destruction would assuredly have arisen, and vices scarcely afterward to be healed would have grown together.」
But as to what impiety and superstition the Priscillianists—whom Maximus there calls Manichaeans—had committed, he subjoins that it was disclosed not by arguments nor by uncertain suspicions, but by their own confession brought forth amid the proceedings: 「I would rather your Holiness learn from the acts themselves than from our mouth, since such things are not only shameful in the doing but also foul in the telling, and we cannot utter them without blushing.」 That by this letter, then, Maximus the tyrant sent to Siricius the Acts of the safer inquiry and investigation of the question, is altogether certain. 2. But what he wrote back to these things, or what the holy pontiff judged from those Acts, can hitherto be drawn out from no monument of the Christian record.
This one thing only we understand as most certain, against certain more recent dogmatizers: namely, that the Roman pontiffs exercised at least an indirect power over Catholic kings. For Siricius the pope would not have inquired concerning the faith of the emperor Maximus, nor would he have sought a written profession from him, unless he had obtained from the supreme office of the priesthood the authority of judging whether Maximus ruled the empire by right, or by wrong, or tyrannically. But let others discourse on that matter.
We meanwhile observe that in this same year the bishops of the Ithacian faction met in council at Trier, where—other bishops of sounder counsel also arriving—those men were urging with Maximus that, the sentence of anathema and deposition formerly pronounced against Ithacius by bishop Theognostus being rendered void, they should absolve this man as though innocent, and that it should be lawful for no one to deny communion to him. His authority compelled Martin to attend the synod; and he, encircled by the officials of the magistracy, first pledged that he had come to Trier in the peace of Christ.
Then, having entered the imperial palace and being terrified by the threats of Maximus himself, and finally when he both ought to and wished to present himself for the ordination of Felix, bishop of Trier, he was compelled for the space of an hour to communicate with the heretics who favoured Ithacius. But to confirm that communion in writing, by no terror or threats could he be induced. On the following day, hurrying away from there (says Severus in the Dialogues), as he was returning on the road and lamenting sorrowfully that he had, even for an hour, been mingled with a noxious communion, he sat down, and turning over in his thought the cause of his grief and deed—his reflection now accusing, now defending in turn—suddenly an angel stood by him: 「Deservedly, Martin,」 he said, 「are you pricked with remorse; but you could not have escaped otherwise.」
「Repair your virtue, resume your constancy, lest you now incur peril not of glory, but of salvation.」 And so from that time he took sufficient care not to be mingled with that communion of the Ithacian party. Moreover, that on account of the noxious cause of that communion he obtained the divine help and protection for the working of miracles more slowly than he was wont, he himself now experienced, when he desired to heal certain persons seized by a demon. He lived sixteen years afterward, attended no synod, and withdrew himself from all assemblies of bishops. Thus Severus Sulpicius closes that chapter in the aforesaid dialogue. 3.
But before we speak of the year of his death, we can by no means pass over in silence that calamity which the emperor Maximus, following the sentence of the Council of Trier, stirred up against the heretics prowling throughout the Spains, when he decreed to send there tribunes armed with the highest power, who should both search out those tainted with the heretical stain and, when they were apprehended, take away their life and goods. But that decree, utterly repugnant to ecclesiastical mildness and abounding with the greatest wrath and hatred, tormented Martin's soul with inward tortures.
For without any hesitation he understood that, through the utmost avarice and lust of the tribunes, not only the wicked and sacrilegious were to be harried, punished, and put to death, but that the Catholics themselves and even the throng of the saints would be ravaged, since there is altogether little distinction between the two kinds of men. For (says Severus Sulpicius) at that time judgment was passed by the eyes alone, when someone was reckoned a heretic rather by his pallor or his garment. These things, then, greatly displeased Martin as he came to the council. Therefore it is no wonder if, after the Synod of Trier, he religiously resolved to keep himself away from such assemblies thenceforth, and refused to be present at them for as long as he lived. 4.
但關於這位聖者去世之年，古代作者間存在著（迪奧尼修斯·佩塔維烏斯〔Dionysius Petavius〕說）極大的分歧。都爾的額我略（Gregory of Tours）在第四十六章敘述說，他死於凱撒里烏斯（Caesarius）與阿提庫斯（Atticus）任執政官之年，在那將被視為主日之日的午夜。此外，這一年（同一位佩塔維烏斯補充）乃是三九七年。但在那一年主日字母是D，故十一月二日是週四，而非主日。西吉伯特（Sigebert）——《教會編年史》所依從者——定為四〇二年。但在那一年字母是E，而十一月二日是週三；故此，他要嘛死於四〇〇年，那年主日字母是AC，十一月二日是週一，要嘛死於四〇一年，那年是週二。若我們採取前者，他便是死於主日之前的那一夜；
But concerning the year of this holy man's death there is (says Dionysius Petavius) the utmost disagreement among the ancient writers. Gregory of Tours, chapter 46, relates that he died in the consulship of Caesarius and Atticus, at midnight of the day that would be held as the Lord's Day. This year, moreover (the same Petavius subjoins), is 397. But in that year the Dominical letter was D; accordingly the second of November was a fourth weekday, not the Lord's Day. Sigebert, whom the Ecclesiastical Annals follow, assigns the year 402. But in that year the letter was E, and the second of November a third weekday; therefore either he died in the year 400, in which the Dominical letter was AC and the second of November a first weekday, or in the year 401, in which it was a second weekday. If we embrace the former, he will have died on that night which preceded the Lord's Day;
if the latter pleases, on that night which followed the Lord's Day. The year 401 is urged by Severus Sulpicius, who writes in the aforesaid dialogue, as we have seen, that Martin lived sixteen years after the consulship of Evodius, which fell in the year 386, from which the sixteenth year is 401 of Christ. But Gregory of Tours, book II chapter 43, designates the year 400, when he writes that Clovis died in the 112th year from the death of Martin—Clovis who departed in the year of Christ 511. Thus does the most learned Dionysius Petavius describe it, in the second part of the Rationarium Temporum, chapter 13, to whose conjectures nothing has been added by our study. But that already at that time Maximus the tyrant had perished by an evil end at Aquileia is most certain.
For he, overcome by Theodosius and Valentinian, was stripped (as Prosper says in the Chronicle) of his royal garments, presented, and condemned to death. His son Victor was in the same year, a few days later, slain by Arbogastes in the Gauls. But Andragathius (Petavius subjoins) hurled himself into the sea. Idatius and the aforesaid Prosper refer their deaths to the consulship of Theodosius the younger and of Cynegius, which according to the tables of the Church is the year of Christ three hundred and eighty-eight.