Ἅγιος ὁ Θεός, Ἅγιος ἰσχυρός, Ἅγιος ἀθάνατος, ἐλέησον ἡμᾶςKatholikon

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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 1, 41. Of the Death of Valens the Emperor

After the death of Valentinian, Valens succeeded as ruler of the whole empire; he commanded the enforcement of military service upon all monks, ordering those who refused to be flogged. The Romans later waged a most bloody war in Thrace; so great was the slaughter that the cavalry lost their horses and escaped on foot. They were smitten by the Goths with terrible carnage; Valens fled, wounded by an arrow, and made his way into a poor hovel where the enemy came upon him and burned the hut down over his head, so that he was deprived of the burial which is the common desire of man. Such was the course of the divine vengeance, launched at length for the blood of the saints which he had shed.

So far Jerome; the events from this time onward are written by the priest Orosius.

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