How Valens Exiled the Good Bishops

At the very time Valens was baptized, Eudoxius bound the unhappy man by an oath to remain in the impiety of his doctrine, and to expel from every see those who held the opposite opinions. So Valens abandoned the teaching of the apostles and went over to the opposing party. Nor was it long before he carried out the rest of his oath. From Antioch he expelled the great Meletius, from Samosata the divine Eusebius, and he robbed Laodicea of her admirable shepherd Pelagius. Pelagius had taken on himself the yoke of marriage as a very young man. In the bridal chamber itself, on the first day of the wedding, he persuaded his bride to prefer chastity to married relations, and taught her to accept a brother’s love in place of the union of marriage. In this way he gave all honor to self-control, and he also possessed within himself the sister virtues that move in harmony with it. For these reasons he was chosen bishop unanimously. [a]

Yet not even the bright beams of his life and conduct overawed the enemy of the truth. Valens banished him too, to Arabia; the divine Meletius to Armenia; and Eusebius, that tireless laborer in the apostles’ work, to Thrace. Tireless he truly was. For when he learned that many churches were now without their shepherds, he traveled about Syria, Phoenicia and Palestine wearing a soldier’s dress and covering his head with a tiara, ordaining presbyters and deacons and filling up the other ranks of the church. And if he happened to come upon bishops who thought as he did, he appointed them to the empty churches.