RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Valdes Valens
tian is love. The Christian life should be constant prayer (though only for what is promised in the Bible), fasting, and feasting—a Christian Sabbath; and only those will be saved who have so accepted the Gospel that it becomes efficacious in their lives and who have taken refuge in baptism as Noah did in the ark. In his doctrine of the Trinity Valdés is perfectly orthodox, also holding that Christ is the Son of God through generation, while the Christian is the son of God through regeneration. Of confession he speaks at length in the Alfabeto, declaring that the sinner receives forgiveness not because he confesses, but because he believes in Christ. In commenting on I Cor. xi. Valdés sharply assailed the abuses then existing in the celebration of the mass, yet in the Alfabeto he maintained that the utmost spiritual benefit should be gained from the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and advocated the hearing of mass whenever possible. He professed the greatest faith in the Scriptures and in their divine inspiration, yet looked beyond the letter to the spirit from which the letter proceeded, finding his faith freed from the letter by the very inconsistencies in certain details which it seemed to him to have. In his treatise on penance, faith, and life, Juan set forth his views on preaching and on church discipline. Those of evil life and those who adhere to vain ceremonies and superstitious observances should be excommunicated after three warnings. Then there would be a Church very like that of apostolic times and almost a pattern of eternal life. He abstained from all criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. There was, however, at the time a strong tendency toward Evangelical principles in Italy. A general council was in prospect, and among the adherents of Valdés were papal theologians, bishops, and archbishops, while his personal circle included Vermigli, Ochino, and Carnesecchi (qq.v.). It was not till a number of years later that his books were forbidden. (K. BENRATH.) BIBLIOGRAPHY: FE. Boehmer affixed Cenni biografici sui fratelli . . . Valdés to the ed. of the Consideraziont of Halle, 1860, added a sketch also to the Germ. transl. of the same, ib. 1870, appearing in English as the Lives of Spanish Reformers, London, 1874. <A Life is also prefixed to the Eng. transl. of the Commentary on Romans, London, 1883. Further works on the subject are B. Wiffen, Life and Writings of Juan de Valdés, London, 1869; E. Stern, Alfonse et Juan de Valdés, Strasburg, 1869; W. Moller, in TSK, 1866, 1871; M. Carrasco, A. et J. de Valdés, Geneva, 1880; W. Schlatter, Die Briider A. und
J. de Valdés, Basel, 1901; J. Heep, Juan de Valdes, seine Religion, sein Werden, seine Bedeutung, Leipsic, 1909.
VALENS, va’lens: Roman emperor 364-378; b. about 328; d. in the battle of Adrianople Aug. 9, 378. He was the son of Gratian, a soldier who had won his way from a low to a high station in military circles, and was the brother and colleague of Valentinianus I. (q.v.). Both brothers had been brought up in the camp; as officers they had in the time of Julian made manly confession of Christian ‘aith (Socrates, Hist. eccl., iv. 1; Sozomen, Hist. ccl., vi. 1; both in Eng. transl. in NPNF, 1 ser., vol. ii.). Valentinian was called by the soldiers to the throne to succeed Jovian, and soon called as soruler Valens, to whom was assigned the Hast. Yonditions were difficult at the time. The Goths
on the Danube were awaiting the moment to assail the empire. While preparing for this emergency, Valens was confronted by the rebellion and usurpation of the throne by Procopius, who was at length overthrown and executed, and his partizans severely punished.
Valens was soon drawn into ecclesiastical affairs. The general trend had improved the conditions for adherents of Nicene orthodoxy, and the two parties of Homoousians and Homoiousians were drawing together in union against Arianism, under the leadership of such men as Athanasius, Basil the Great, Eusebius of Emesa, and Gregory Nazianzen (qq.v.). Valens was on the other side, though whether this was his early choice or was due to the influence of his consort Albia Dominica and of Bishop Eudoxius is not known. At any rate, Eudoxius was in high favor. Valens in an edict of 365 renewed the deposition by Constantius of the bishops who returned under Julian; among those affected adversely were Athanasius and Meletius of Antioch (qq.v.). There resulted new attacks upon orthodox leaders and churches, but little real harm came of them, as systematic direction was lacking, personal and local relations seeming to dominate. The Pretorian prefect Domitius Modestus was recognized as the enemy of the orthodox (Basil, MPG, xxxvi. 557). But Valens had no well-settled ecclesiastical policy, and practical and political cares crowded fast upon him. KEcclesiastical persecution took the form of deposition, banishment, and confiscation of goods; that matters went so far as the infliction of capital punishment is improbable, and such stories as the deliberate burning of a ship with thirty clerics on board seem unlikely. Yet the actions of Valens called up anticipations of evil and evoked courageous opposition—though even here exaggeration appears in the tradition (Socrates, iv. 26; Sozomen, vi. 16; Theodoret, iv. 19). The Novatians were involved in the danger because of their agreement in Christology with the Nicene party, but they escaped because of the influence of a certain Marcian, formerly a soldier of the palace and then instructor of the emperor’s daughter. An edict of 370 or 373 has been mistakenly interpreted as an attack upon the monks, but certainly had to do with political matters pure and simple. The relation of the emperor to orthodoxy seemed the more unpleasant because his toleration of paganism was apparently open. Theodoret (Hist. eccl., iv. 24) implies that the edict of Valens during his stay at Antioch in the winter of 373-374, giving general toleration, was responsible for an outburst of paganism. But in view of the fact that the population of Antioch was nearly entirely Christian, this information must be mistaken; yet the two rulers handled Hellenism with great care and were repressive only on special occasions. The reason for this was not religious indifference, but the certainty that the old religion was in its last stages.
Meanwhile the Gothic danger had grown, and in the defeat and death of the emperor in the battle of Adrianople the orthodox saw the judgment of God. Yet Valens had performed his royal duties with great conscientiousness and constant regard for the
Valens of Mursa Valentinus
right as he saw it. He was earnest in seeking the welfare of the populace and in maintaining order, and his life was one of fidelity to the morality of Christianity and the Church. He was hampered by lack of education. But the Church saw in him only an anti-Christian persecutor, and has left a tradition of him which is far from the truth. (Victor SCHULTZE.) BrsiioGRaPHy: Besides the sources named in the text in the ecclesiastical histories by Sozomen, Socrates, and Theodoret, a valuable source is Ammianus Marcellinus’ ‘‘ Roman History,” xxvi. 4sqq., Eng. transl. in'Bohn’s Classical Library, London, 1887. Consult further: L. S. Le Nain de Tillemont, Hist. des empereurs, vol. v., 6 vols., Paris, 1720-38; H. F. Clinton, Fasti Romani. The civil and literary, Chronology of Rome and Constantinople, i. 476, ii. 119, Oxford, 1845-50; J. V. A. de Broglie, L’Eglise et UV empire romain, au iv. siécle, 6 vols., Paris, 1856-66; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xxv.; H. Richter, Das westromische Reich, Berlin, 1865; H. Schiller, Geschichte der rémischen Kaiserzett, ii. 348 sqq., Gotha, 1887; V. Schultze, Geschichte des Unterganges des griechisch-rémischen Heidentums, i. 186 sqq., Jena, 1887; Schaff, Christian Church, ili, 60-61, 638; Neander, Christian Church, vol. iii. passim; W. Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, iii. 1202-05, London, 1890; and in general the works on the history, secular and ecclesiastical, of the period.
VALENS OF MURSA. See Ursacivs.
VALENTINE, val’en-tain: The name of several saints honored as martyrs in the early Church and in the Middle Ages.
1. Near Rome, on the Via Flaminia, is the cemetery of St. Valentine, a Roman priest, whose name is found under Feb. 14 in medieval martyrologies. He was confused, if not originally identical, with Valentine, bishop of Spoleto, or with Valentine, bishop of Terni, though the Bern manuscript of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum places the latter under Apr. 14, and does not designate him bishop. The acts of both’the priest and the bishop Valentine are late and untrustworthy.
2. The oldest Carthaginian martyrology records a Valentine under Nov. 13, but of this martyr, who was apparently an African, nothing more is known, except that the Bern manuscript already mentioned places him under Feb. 14.
8. There is mention of another Bishop Valentine, who labored in Rhetia in the first half of the fifth century. According to Eugipius (Vita Severini, xli.), he was abbot and bishop of the Rheetians and died on Jan. 6 of an unknown year. Churches were dedicated to him in Noricum, and his grave was at Mais, near Meran in Rhetia. In 768 his remains were brought to Passau. The “‘ Acts ”’ of this saint, which date from about the beginning of the eleventh century, describe him as coming from the east to the vicinity of Passau, where he long labored as a missionary bishop. Since his sermons here made scant impression, he besought Leo I. to translate him to some other sphere of activity. The pope twice refused, but at length permitted Valentine to retire to the Tyrolese Alps, where he died shortly afterward. Such is the gist of a lead tablet which, claimed for the fifth century, can scarcely be older than the twelfth. (A. Havcx.) BiptiocrapHy: On 1 ASB, Feb., ii. 753-754, cf. ib.
Jan., i. 368, and 369-372; A. Roschmann, Glaubwiirdige Nachrichten von ... Valentin, Ulm, 1746; K. Schanz-