hath spoken of the Rule which King Sigismond caused to be established there adds that this Rule was strictly observed there usque â—odie to this very day So that were it true that St. Eucherius was the Author of this Work he must of necessity not only have been contemporary to King Sigismond but more than that he must have out-lived him many Years But now it happens to be quitâ— contrary for St. Eucherius was dead when Sigismond was yet on the Throne Most Historians do reckon the Death of this King of Burgundy to have happen'd about the Year 520 and place that of St. Eucherius in the Year 441. 'T is true that Mr. Dupin refers it to the Year 454. upon the Authority of Prosper's Chronicle Some on the contrary carry it as far back as the Year 421. Amongst whom are Gennadius and Ado. But there is much reason to suspect in both these Authors the disingenuity of some Transcriber since it could not be unknown to Gennadius and Ado that St. Eucherius was present at the Council of Orange where his Name is found amongst the Subscribers and that it is agreed on by every Body that this Council was held about the Year of our Lord 441. Some indeed to save this Anachronism pretend that there have been two Eucherius's like the Jews who to mend their desperate Cause have invented two Messia's to reconcile in both the fulfilling of the Oracles which they cannot apply to one alone But in short 't is not possible that St. Eucherius Bishop of Lions should be the Author of the Passion of the Thebean Legion unless we allow him to have had the gift of Prophecy and make him speak Prophetically of those Rules which were to be settled in the Monastery of Agaunum several Ages after his Death Should some Person now put out any Writings under the Name of Monsieur de Marca or of Cardinal Duperron and mention therein the establishment and Foundation of St. Cyr. To shew that these Writings ought not to be ascribed to these two great Men it would suffice to make it appear that they were dead several Years before Lewis the 14 th made this Foundation Nevertheless this so plain a demonstration of Forgery hath not hindered Surius in his Relation of the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion on the 22. of September from confidently asserting that St. Eucherius was the Author of the Acts of their Passion 'T is very strange that Baronius should make the same blunder both in his Annals and in his Notes on the Roman Martyrology And indeed this would seem yet more strange were it not plain that this Learned Cardinal undertook in his Annals not so much to give us the History of the Church as to defend the prejudices and ambitious pretensions of the Church of Rome Therefore when it s an advantage to him to overlook some supposititious and Counterfeit Writing he pretends he sees neither contradiction nor Anchronism in it he is no longer that able Critick whose pierceing knowledge nothing can escape and who clears and extricates the most obscure and knotty things of Antiquity In a word he is no more Baronius Cardinal Bellarmine whose Zeal for the glory of the Roman Church did not yield to that of Baronius hath taken another way to save the â—ruth of the Passion of the Thebean Legion that it might not be objected to his Church that it worshipped some for Saints who never had so much as a being in the World For since Men would at the very first sight be startled to see so long an interval of time between St. Eucherius and St. Sigismond he hath endeavoured to cut it much shorter and to render it so little as that it might pass wholly unobserved or however be but very little minded He tells us that this Bishop of Lions lived till the Year 499. and he grounds his conjecture upon a place in the Life of St. Cesarius Bishop of Arles compos'd by Cyprian the Priest where it is said that these two Bishops being in company together restored a Woman to her former health who was afflicted with a very sore Distemper If there were any certainty in this Conjecture of Cardinal Bellarmine Eucherius would have been almost contemporary with King Sigismond For Messanius a Priest and Stephen a Deacon two other Disciples of St. Cesarius in the Book they have added to the Life of this Holy Prelate say that he dyed forty Years after he had been made a Bishop and since every body knows that he succeeded Ennoius about the Year 504. his Death should be placed in the Year 544 or 545. For it is certain that he was present at the Council of Arles in 524 and at the second Council of Orange in 529 And to prove that he was alive in 528. we have a Letter that Pope Vigil wrote to him under the Consulship of John and Volusian But though we should grant Cardinal Bellarmine's Conjecture not to be groundless yet he would be but little the better for it 'T is not enough to prolong St. Eucherius's Life to the Year 499. 'T is to no purpose likewise to prove that St. Eucherius might have seen St. Cesarius Bishop of Arles King Sigismond dyed about the Year 520. and they must make it appear that St. Eucherius out-lived him a great many Years to make good the usque hodie of the place we have before quoted Now it is so far from being true that St. Eucherius did out-live St. Sigismond that on the contrary there is no likely-hood that he liv'd till the Year 499. according to Cardinal Bellarmine's Conjecture It appears by the Subscriptions of the first Council of Orange that he was Bishop of Lions in 4â—1 and consequently he must have been then at least thirty or forty Years Old for at that time it was not usual to raise any person under that age to the Dignity of a Bishop Bishopricks being not yet bestowed as rewards upon Families and the Holiness of Canons holding yet out against the Vanity of the Clergy and the Usurpations of Kings Now since we are certain of this can we think it probable that St. Eucherius should live to see St. Cesarius Bishop of Arles who was not raised to that Dignity till after the Death of Ennoius about the Year 504 Indeed I think a Man must needs be very bold in his Conjectures who can allow St Eucherius to have lived above a Hundred Years if he have no other Warrant for it but that place of the Life of St. Cesarius Those who shall carefully examine this Life of St. Cesarius will agree that it ought not to be rely'd upon too much 'T is true it is polite and judicious enough for that Age and seems not unworthy of him who had been one of the Disciples of St. Cesarius and who for his great Piety and Merits was raised to the Dignity of a Bishop as appears by his Name found in the Subscriptions of the second Council of
fall'n in so pat to his Treatise of the death of the Persecutors That it cannot be imagin'd he would have left it out specially when he was describing the Cruelties of the Emperor Maximian and the dreadful Punishments which God inflicted upon him Whosoever therefore shall weigh with an unprejudiced Mind this silence of Lactantius will doubtless be perswaded that the Martydom of the Thebean Legion is nothing but a Fiction Though the Sufferings of Confessors in general do afford a rich Field of Eloquence to Preachers yet it must be granted that there is no Martyrdom more capable of receiving Ornament from the Pulpit and of elevating the genius and thoughts of a Christian Orator than the Martyrdom of this Legion How comes it then to pass that of so many Fathers who have writ Homilies in the praise of Martyrs none of them have ever made use of so pathetick and powerful an Example as this would have been Ephrem a Monk of Syria wrote Encomiums on all the Martyrs of Christ about the Year 360. Gregory of Nazianzen hath handled the same Subject much about the same time We have the Sermons of St. Chrysostom upon Martyrs in general Asterius Bishop of Amasia in Pontus who lived at the beginning of the Fifth Age hath made likewise a Panegyrick on all Martyrs but none of these Fathers nor any other who treated of the same Matter have made the least mention of the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion If any had mentioned it it must have been Maximus Bishop of Turin who died under the Reign of Honorius and Theodosius Junior For he wrote in the Country where it is supposed that this Martyrdom happened and the Memory of it would therefore have been fresh in his Days but in all his Works there is not one Word relating to it We read amongst his Writings that are yet extant a Sermon De Sanctis Martyribus which Gennadius hath taken notice of and call'd Generalem omnium Sanctorum Homiliam But in this Sermon there is not the least stroak in reference to the Thebean Legion 'T is true that amongst his Works there is another Sermon with this Title In Natali Sanctorum Taurinorum Octavii Aventitii Solutoris These are the same Saints whose Names are seen in Capital Letters on the Frontispiece of the Jesuites Church at Turin In which Church there is a Chappel where the Reliques of these Saints are kept in an Urn which Madam Chrestiene of France caused to be made on purpose with this Inscription ingraved on it Augustae Taurinorum Patronis Christiana à Francia These Saints have done many Miracles if we may believe the Vows and Offerings hung up in their Chappel but we may observe that this Sermon which we speak of is to be found amongst those of St. Ambrose of the impression of Basil in the Year 1555 with this Note in the Margent A Sermon of St. Maximus The Benedictines of Paris in their new Edition of St. Ambrose do likewise restore it to that Bishop of Turin and say that St. Maximus had been so conversant in the Works of St. Ambrose that he sometimes uttered long Passages out of them in his own Sermons the doing whereof occasioned great Confusion in the Homilies of these Two Fathers and they likewise judge St. Maximus to have been the Author of the Book of Sacraments attributed to St. Ambrose However Gennadius does not mention that Sermon in his Catalogue of Maximus's Works And Father Mabillon publishing some new Pieces of this Father in his Musaeum Italicum says that we ought to consult Gennadius to distinguish the genuine Works of this Father from those which are spurious I should be very sorry that this Sermon should be disowned to belong to Maximus for it is so principal a support to the Cause we defend that if there was any ground for what we are told of the Thebean Legion this is the very work where we should find it But if we look for it in the Body of that Sermon we shall loose our labour I have read it several times over but never could find one word in it relating in the least to the Martyrdom in question Should any pretend to make his best of the Inscription In Natali Sanctorum Taurinorum Octavii Aventitii Solutoris this Title does not import these Three Saints to have been Thebean Souldiers For those People whom the ancient Geographers called Taurini were extended far into the Cottian Alps and into Liguria so that we ought not therefore to conclude that Octavius Aventitius and Solutor were Three Saints particular to the City of Turin because they are called Sancti Taurinorum In St. Ambrose's Works printed at Basil in the Year 1555 there is Sanctorum Tauricorum In the Geographical Manuscript of Selden there is likewise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and who can tell but St. Maximus might mean some Saints whose Zeal and constancy had been remarkable amongst those People called Taurisci who are placed by some Geographers in the Fifth Rhetia If we had that Manuscript of St. Maximus mentioned by the Benedictine Monks in their new Edition of St. Ambrose we might perhaps make some other Remarks on the Title of that Sermon But without examining whether the Titles of St. Maximus's Sermons be ancient and writ by himself here is a Proof that Octavius Aventitius and Solutor were not Thebean Souldiers and such a Proof that nothing can be replied against it The Counterfeit St. Eucherius does not mention any of those in his Relation but saith that in his time none of them were known by Name except them following viz. Mauritius Exuperius Candidus Victor and another Victor who suffered Death at Soleur with Vrsus adding that the Names of the others were unknown to him but were written in the Book of Life As we believe the Author of the Acts of the Thebean Souldiers more modern than St. Maximus this sufficeth to convince us that the Three Saints whose Piety this Bishop of Turin did formerly celebrate were not Thebean Souldiers But to prevent all cavilling about the time in which St. Eucherius might have written we shall produce other Writers who lived some Ages after St. Maximus Ado died about the Year of our Lord 875. This Ado who was Arch-bishop of Vienna hath collected all the Names of the Thebean Souldiers that were heard of in his Time thirteen whereof he reckons in his Martyrology to wit Mauritius Exuperius Candidus Molossus Victor Innocentius Vetalis Gerion Victor Orsus Alexander Secundus and Antoninus Amongst which we find not either Octavius Aventitius or Solutor Now Vienna being but fifty Leagues distant from Turin had these Saints whose Memory was celebrated in Piedmont been generally thought to have been Theb. Souldiers there is no Likelihood that Ado would have left them out of his Catalogue This reason is yet more confirmed by Vsuard's silence upon it who was a Monk of St. Germains and contemporary with Ado He formed the design of making a Martyrology both
one would think hardly any thing in Ecclesiastical Antiquity that hath escaped the strict Examination of judicious Criticks some Learned Men indeed have suspected the Passion of the Thebean Legion to have been a Fiction but none of them had the Courage to oppose an Opinion which they saw so Universally established If general Approbation might be admitted as a Proof there would be scarce any Opinion more Probable than that of the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion if we consider the great number of grave and Learned Authors who have all asserted it as an undoubted matter of Fact Rome Geneva the Lutherans the Church of England and generally all Christian Societies have given Credit to the History of this Legion and that no doubt upon account of the Honour which they imagined the Martyrdom of it did to the Christian Religion by the wonderfulness of the Action the greatness of Soul and the Glorious Characters of the Persons that suffered John Lewis Fabritius relates the Example of the Thebean Legion in his Learned Dissertation concerning the just Limits of humane obedience in order to establish this so important a Maxim in Morality That we ought always to side with God whenever there is more certainty and evidence in the Prohibitions of God than in the Ordinances of Princes Archbishop Usher a Man of so vast a knowledge in Ecclesiastical Antiquity fell into the same common opinion And the Martyrdom of the Thebean Souldiers making for him in his Book of Regal Power he lays as great a stress upon it as if it were a thing of unquestionable certainty The famous Grotius speaks twice of it in his Learned Book de jure Pacis Belli and makes use of it as that which of all things he least doubted the Truth of And though since the death of these two great Men the exactness of Criticism upon the Works of the Fathers hath been much improved yet the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion is still cryed up amongst those other popular Errours the World is fallen in Love with Edward Fuller Bishop of Glocester hath made it one of the Ornaments of a very fine Treatise composed by him upon the great Design of Christianity which is the Sanctification of Men. And Doctor Cave one of the Prebends of Windsor brings in with great great Pomp the History of this Legion in that Work of his in which he gives us a very fine Representation both of the Religion and Manners of the Primitive Christians There is scarcely I confess any Divine who hath out-done him in the Study of Church History as may appear by the great Volume he hath given us upon the Writings of the Fathers Now how great a respect soever we have for the extraordinary merit of these Learned Authors we ought to reject their Errours be they never so Ancient There is no prescription against Truth and a long prepossession gives no right at all to Errour I have seen saith one of our Old Writers the Birth of many Miracles in my time and though they no sooner saw the Light but they were stifled we do however foresee the course they would have taken had they happened to have lived to their full Age. For the main business is to find out out the end of the thread then you may wind as much as you please and there is a greater distance from nothing to the least thing that may be than there is from that least to the greatest that can be imagined A private Errour first causeth a publick one and then that publick Errour occasions other private ones Thus the whole work goes on patch'd up and fashioned by a succession of several hands so that the remotest witness knows more of the matter than the nearest and the last inform'd is better perswaded of it than the first This was exactly the way the Passion of the Thebean Souldiers first crept into the World and then insensibly got credit in the Church And they have been for these Eight or Nine Hundred Years in a quiet Possession of the glory of their Martyrdom and do enjoy it peacably to this day under the shadow and Authority of the greatest Names and the most renowned Doctors of all Christian Communions Now that we may distinguish the Romance from the History we must remove all the Mists which the Legendaries and Martyrology-makers have spread over it For the support of so much of it as is purely Romantick there are alledged Manuscripts and Old Writings and we must shew that those who do pretend the greatest skill in Antiquities are lyable to mistakes CHAP. IV. That the most skilful Men are sometimes mistaken in the Judgments they make upon the Works of the Ancients IT will Evidently appear from what shall be said hereafter that Baronius Peter Francis Chifflet Archbishop Usher and Grotius have been mistaken in their Judgments concerning the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion and the Relation Fathered upon Eucherius For Criticks are not always in the right Though they have contributed much to the reviving of Learning yet it does not thence follow that even the most skilful Men in that Science are infallible It hath very often happened that they have taken false Copies for Originals and set upon Modern Writings the worth and value due to those of Antiquity Those who have any skill in Medals know that the most understanding Men themselves are apt sometimes to be mistaken If one Examines the first Edition of the Praestantiora Imperatorum Numismata of Mr. Vaillant Printed at Paris in the Year 1682 there one will find the Medals of Germanicus of Nero Drusus his Father of the Emperour Claudius of Julia Wife to Severus and of Gordianus Affricanus the Son the Price and Rarity whereof this Medalist does mightily Extol But if you cast your Eye upon the Second Edition of 1692. there you will find the same Medals very much debased Mr. Vaillant acknowleging the three first to be suspicious and the two last absolutely false He praiseth likewise in the same Work one of Trajan's Medals with a Pillar and an Owl on the top of it And in his Remarks upon Scelecta Numismata Seguini Published at Paris in the Year 1684. he confesseth ingenuously that the same was Counterfeit 'T is no less usual to be deceived in matter of Statues and Basso-Relievos then in Medals We have a great many Examples of this kind but it will suffice to give here only one single instance Vazari tells us that Michael Angelo to convince some Vertuosos and Antiquaries who valued nothing but what was Ancient of the rashness of their Judgment in such cases made a Cupid and buried it under the ruines of an Old Building having first broken off one of its Arms which he kept at home All the Lovers of the Art came immediately to look upon it and no Body did so much as question the Antiquity of the piece till Michael Angelo shewed them the Arm which he had kept by
which the Romans called Comitatenses But our business is to Examine which was that Thebean Legion whereof it is spoken in the Acts of the Agaunians Martyrs The Copies both of Surius and Chifflet do agree that Maximian caused this Legion to come from the East So that according to the pretended St. Eucherius it cannot be either Prima Maximiana Thebaeorum or Tertia Dioclesiana Thebaeorum these two Legions remaining in Thracia appointed to Guard those Frontiers of the Empire This Legion then must have been one of those which were under the Command of the General of the Foot in the East But it is not very likely that the Emperour should have sent for a Legion so far to persecute the Christians in Gaul or to quell a Sedition raised there The Legions on the Rhine on the Danube in Moesia and in Illyria were much nearer at hand No Example can be shewed in History that to make War against the Gauls Garrisons were drawn out of the Frontier places of Egypt or Mesopotamia Should it be replyed that the Romans were at peace with the Persians and that all things were quiet upon the Confines of Africa and Asia that the danger was pressing in Gaul that Rome did tremble at the first news of a Mutiny in those parts and at the bare naming of Tumultus Gallicus and therefore that it ought not to appear so strange that Legions were called from the utmost parts of the East And should it be added in confirmation of this Conjecture that the danger ought to have been very great since the Historians do observe that this was one of the reasons which induced Dioclesian to divide the Empire with Maximian to the end that being invested in the Imperial Dignity and having a greater Authority he might sooner make an end of this business All these replies make for us by lessening the probability of the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion For the War which Maximian was to undertake being of so great importance it is not likely he would wilfully have deprived himself of a Legion which he had sent for from the extremities of the Empire But suppose Maximian had been as Zealous as ever Emperour was for the Service of his Gods and as implacable an Enemy and persecutor of Jesus Christ and his Disciples yet after all we ought not without good reasons to make a mad Man of him and so bad a Politician as to imagine he would have commanded one of his best Legions to be Massacred in the very face as I may say of the Enemy and at the beginning of a War the success whereof ought to have commended to the World the choice which Dioclesian had made of him And by so much the rather for what Aurelius Victor saith of him viz. That though he was but half a Courtier yet he was a brave and skilful Warriour Besides this if with Father Labbe we refer the Martyrdom of the Thebean Legion to the Year 286. 't is like that at that time the State of Affairs did not permit that the Frontiers of Egypt and of the Eastern Provinces should be unguarded since it was not long after that Achilleus took the Purple upon him and that the Quingentians or Inhabitants of the Five Towns joyned their Forces against the Empire And if this Martyrdom be placed in the Year 297. with Cardinal Baronius I question very much whether the War was not then raging upon the Frontiers of Persia and whether the Emperour Galerius had by that time repaired the Loss of that unfortunate day in which all his Army was defeated and he himself had much ado to escape But now I come to something more positive The very Names which in the Book of the Dignities of the Empire are given to those Thebean Legions which were in the East may suffice to shew that the Martyrdom here mentioned cannot be applied to any of them For one of these Legions is called Secunda Flavia Constantia Thebaeorum Where we are to take Notice that the Romans gave different Names to their Legions for distinction sake as Princes do now to their Regiments These Names are sometimes taken from the Order or time of their Creation as the First Second Third and Fourth Legion And sometimes they were given upon the Account of some remarkable Action whereby they had signalized themselves accordingly one was called the Victorious another the Conquering the Iron Legion c. Now and then they took their Names from the Countries and Frontiers that were committed to their charge as the Germanick and the Pannonick Legions appointed to Guard the Empire in Hungary and Germany Some of them had also their Names from the Countries where they had been raised as the Nervian and Isaurian Legions Mezeray in his History of France before Clovis's time gives this very same reason for the Name of the Thebean Legion Maximian saith he having also taken upon himself the defence of Gaul departed from Nicomedia and took with him some Legions and amongst them that of the Thebeans so called from its having been raised in Thebais of Egypt But most commonly the Legions bore the Names of the Emperours who had raised them such were the Ulpian Trajan Claudian Dioclesian and Maximian Legions And it is most likely the two Thebean Legions which were in the East were of this last Order For one of them was called Flavia Constantia Thebaeorum from the Name of the Emperour Constantius Pancirollus observes judiciously that this ought to be understood of Canstantius Son to the Emperour Constantine and not of Constantius his Father only the Reason he gives for it is false He supposes then that Constantine the Great was the First Emperour who added to his Titles that of Flavius and that most of his Successors after him took the same likewise as a mark of the esteem they had for his Virtues and of their desire to bear some resemblance with him Mr. du Cange in his Byzantine Families speaks of some Medals of Constantius Father to Constantine with the Name Flavius upon them And Mr. Baluze in his Notes on Lactantius's Book of the Deaths of the Persecutors produces an Inscription which he had from Mr. Vaillant where this Emperour is inscribed FLAVIUS VALERIUS CONSTANTINUS so that we should rather think that at the time when Maximian was raised to the Empire and when he undertook his Expedition into Gaul Constantius Father to Constantine had not sufficient Authority to raise Legions in the East and to give them his own Name And since the other Legion was called Secunda Felix Valentis Thebaeorum from the Emperour Valens his Name it follows that neither the one nor the other could possibly suffer Martyrdom by the Order of Maximian who was taken into a Partner-ship of the Government several Years before Constantius and Valens came to the Throne Pancirollus seems to have been sensible of this difficulty but finding no way to evade it he falls with all his knowledge into pitiful
the Gospel in Gaule Viz. Gatian at Tours Trophimus at Arles Paul at Narbonne Dionysius at Paris Astremonicus at lermont and Martial at Limoges These are then the new Evangelists sent in the time of Decius to re-kindle the Light of the Gospel in Gaule which had been so long extinguished there From whence it may be gathered that the Christian Religion had not then made any great progress amongst the Gauls since in the Year of our Lord two hundred and fifty there was need to preach it a fresh there and even at Narbonne and Arles Citys rather belonging to Italy then to Gaule and which Sulpitius meant not to speak of if we may believe Father Pagi How is it possible then to imagin that four Years after the Reign of Decius the Christians should be so multiply'd in Gaule as to be in a condition to make up vast Armys and those so formidable as to strike a terrour into Rome it self and to perplex its Emperours This they would fain perswade us by Asserting peremptorily that the Bagauds were Christians and that Maximian destroy'd the Theb. Legion for no other reason but because he was afraid They should joyn with them But Thirdly They are at a very great loss for Arguments to prove the Martyrdom of their Theb. Legion when they are forced to this shift of supposing those Bagauds to have been Christians For they cast no small blemish upon the Ancient Gallican Church who fix such a Character upon her Sons besides they are very much unacquainted with the Morals of the Christians of those Primitive Ages who think they were capable of such injustice and violences as the Bagauds stand charg'd with in History Therefore Mezeray receiving the Bagauds into the Church thought fit to clear them from these odious Aspersions and to justify their proceedings Who knows saith he but that having suffer'd so many horrible Persecutions their Patience turn'd at last into a just Fury in arming themselves both against the Torments and the Tormentors Bucherius endeavours likewise to excuse them saying That the Bagauds were moved to a Rebellion which was in a manner just by reason of the Crueltys and Tyranical Impositions of their Governours Salvianus did the same before them whom perhaps they have both followed He saith That the Bagauds oppressed by their unjust Judges lost all respect for the Majesty of the Empire because they had been Stript of the Rights and Priviledges of Roman Liberty In short the Emperor Augustus the better to procure himself the good Affection of the Gauls had granted to some of them the Roman to others the Latine and to others again the Italic Laws and Liberties Whence Salvian took occasion to say We call the Bagauds Rebels and Profligate Villains when 't is we that have hurried them into these Outrages For how came they to be Bagauds but by our own injustice by our proscriptions of their Persons and violent Vsurpations of their Estates and this is the effect of their being condemned to death and hang'd for the Robberies of their Judges That they are now become like Barbarians because they were not suffered before to live like Romans That Priest of Marseilles who wrote about the year of Our Lord 495 adds several other things whereby the Crimes and Violences which were imputed to the Bagauds are laid to the Charge of the Governours of the Gauls of their Judges and of the Collectors of the Taxes But he never speaks the least Word from whence we may conclude that the Bagauds were Christians but on the contrary his way of speaking on their behalf shews plaingly enough that they did not profess the Christian Religion we need only compare his Apology with those of Athenagoras of St. Austin of Tertullian and especially of Arnobius who lived at the time of the Bagaudian Revolt These Fathers speak of nothing so much as of the Piety Meekness Charity and Innocence of those happy Ages of the Church Whereas Salvian Apologizes for the Bagauds by excusing their Crimes of Injustice Violence and Rebellion Were that true which Mezeray saith of them perhaps Eutropius and Aurelius Victor would have told us something concerning their Religion Prosper might also have taken some notice of it since he makes mention of them in his Chronology so likewise Eumenius in his Panegyrick wherein he informs us that the Bagauds having besieged Autun that City implored the Emperour's Assistance But it is most incredible that Marmertine would have been silent in this Matter in the Panegyrick which he made at Treves in praise of the Emperour Maximian Mr. Cuper saith that he made it in the year 288. The Learned Henry Norris puts it a year later in his curious Dissertations upon the Medal of Dioclesian and Maximian Howsoever it be Mamertine made this publick Speech but few years after the defeat of the Bagauds wherein he endeavours to quicken his discourse by drolling upon their Army and makes a meer jest of it That a Crew of ignorant Rusticks should pretend to the Exercise of Arms and Military Discipline that the Plowman should change his Goad for a Pike the Shepherd leave his Flock to turn Trouper and that the Husband man should plunder and waste his own Estate and destroy the Fruits of his own Labour with as little concern as the most Barbarous Enemy would have done From which sharp and pungent Expressions One may give a shrewd Guess at what he would have added had the Bagauds professed the Christian Religion President Fauchet is One of the French Writers who hath made the greatest discoveries in the Gallick Antiquities But it does not appear that he was of Opinion that the Bagauds were Christians for he saith of them The Gauls being overburdened with publick Subsidies and Taxes rose up in Arms in the year of our Lord 290 or thereabouts under the conduct of Amandus and Aelianus and took the Name of Bagauds which some say signifies in the old Gallick Language Forced Rebels or Traitors and some are of Opinion that they were all Peasants and will have it That the VVord Bagaud signifies Tribute the heavy Taxes being in some parts of France not many years ago called Bagoges These troubles were appeased by Maximian Dioclesians Partner in the Empire Joseph Scaliger saith That Bagaud is not a French VVord but the Name of a Faction or People and that ever since the time of Dioclesian the Highway-men and Robbers were call'd Bagauds Which agrees with what Aurelius Victor saith That Amandus and Aelianus gathered together great numbers of Peasants and Robbers And that which shews it to be the Name of a Faction or Party according to Joseph Scaliger's Observation is that Idacius in his Chronology speaks of the Bagauds who mutined in Spain in the Province of Tarragonia under the Kings Rechila and Theodoricus 'T is also very likely that they wandred from one Countrey to another as the Hordes of the Tartars do