VALENS (F. Valens Augustus), Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. - Born in 328 at Cibalae in Pannonia to the military tribune Gratian, who from a humble condition rose to the high offices of the imperial hierarchy.
He completed his military apprenticeship first in the armies of Julian the Apostate and was then designated by his brother Valentinian I to govern the fortunes of the Eastern Empire. At the beginning of his reign he had to struggle against Procopius, a usurper who claimed to be a relative of Constantine and who had obtained the support of the Goths. The revolt was put down, but V. raged cruelly with a sequel of vendettas and massacres, which was followed by a war against the insurrection of the Goths who had helped Procopius, lasting three years. A palace conspiracy headed by a certain Theodore, together with practices of magic, gave him the occasion to issue various capital sentences, and among the persons implicated was also the philosopher Maximus of Ephesus. He was fighting the Persians and their king Shapur II when the Goths, who previously, pressed by the Huns, had poured across the borders of the Empire, harassed in every way by Roman officials, rebelled. Under the leadership of their chief Fritigern they invaded Thrace with a sequel of mourning and ruin and pushed as far as Adrianople. V. hastened to conclude a truce with the Persians (Ammianus, XXXI, 7) and wished to confront the Goths without waiting for the reinforcements that his nephew Gratian, the new Roman emperor of the West, was preparing. But he was defeated precisely at Adrianople (cf. F. Runkel, Die Schlacht bei Adrianopel, Berlin 1903) and perished in that battle on 9 Aug. 378. V. was a good administrator (Ammianus, XXXI, 14, 2), but of coarse nature (ibid., 6). A follower of the moderate current of Arianism, he wished to intervene in the polemics and religious controversies of the time but was courageously opposed by St. Basil. Nevertheless he also persecuted the Christians (Gregory of Nazianzus, Or., XX, 49-52; v. Fliche-Martin-Frutz, III, pp. 266-69). At Antioch he had several drowned in the Orontes, striking various bishops of the place with exile; at Nicomedia he permitted eighty priests to be burned in a boat (Gregory of Nazianzus, Or., XLIII, 46). If he was somewhat tolerant toward cults in general (Cassiodorus, Hist. trip., VIII, 3), he prohibited the bloody sacrifices and the magical practices of the surviving pagan religion.
Bibliography2 works
Lanfranco Fiore