Valentinian and Valens Become Emperors

The emperor Jovian died, as we have said, at Dadastana, on the seventeenth of February, in the consulship of Jovian himself and his son Varronian. The army left Galatia and reached Nicaea in Bithynia in seven days’ march, and there, on the twenty-fifth of February in the same consulship, they unanimously proclaimed Valentinian emperor. He was a Pannonian by race, a native of the city of Cibalis. He had been entrusted with a military command and had shown great skill in tactics. He also had such greatness of mind that he always seemed to stand above whatever rank of honor he reached. As soon as they had made him emperor, he went straight to Constantinople, and thirty days after taking the imperial dignity himself he made his brother Valens his colleague in the empire. [a]

Both of them professed Christianity, but they did not hold the same Christian creed. Valentinian respected the Nicene Creed, but Valens was already inclined toward the Arian opinions. This leaning came from his having been baptized by Eudoxius, bishop of Constantinople. Each was zealous for the views of his own party, but once they had gained sovereign power they showed very different dispositions. Earlier, in the reign of Julian, when Valentinian was a military tribune and Valens held a command in the emperor’s guards, they had both proved their zeal for the faith: when they were pressed to sacrifice, they chose to give up their military rank rather than do it and renounce Christianity. Julian, however, knowing how much the state needed the men, kept them in their places, and so did Jovian, his successor in the empire. Later, when they were invested with imperial authority, they agreed in managing public affairs; but as regards Christianity, as I have said, they behaved very differently. Valentinian favored those who shared his views but offered no violence to the Arians. Valens, eager to advance the Arian cause, gravely troubled those who differed from them, as the course of our history will show.

At that time Liberius presided over the Roman church. At Alexandria Athanasius was bishop of the Homoousians, while the Arians had made Lucius the successor of George. At Antioch Euzoius was at the head of the Arians, but the Homoousians there were divided into two parties, one led by Paulinus and the other by Meletius. Cyril had again been put over the church at Jerusalem. The churches at Constantinople were under the government of Eudoxius, who openly taught the doctrines of Arianism, while the Homoousians had only one small building in the city in which to hold their assemblies. Those of the Macedonian heresy who had broken with the Acacians at Seleucia still kept their churches in every city. Such was the state of the church’s affairs at that time.