[4] He was certainly a Christian when he married Palladia, the daughter of pagan parents, Hypatius and Quieta, whose displeasure he incurred by persuading his wife to retire with him to a distant monastery, which is almost certainly that founded by St Honoratus at Lerins.
For seven years there was no communication between the two branches of the family, till at last, when Hypatius had become a Christian, Salvian wrote him a most touching letter in his own name, his wife's, and that of his little daughter Auspiciola, begging for the renewal of the old affection.
[5] This whole letter is a most curious illustration of Salvian's reproach against his age that the noblest man at once forfeited all esteem if he became a monk.
[3][8] Salvian continued his friendly intercourse with both father and sons long after the latter had left his care; it was to Salonius (then a bishop) that he wrote his explanatory letter just after the publication of his treatise Ad ecclesiam; and to the same prelate a few years later he dedicated his great work, the De gubernatione Dei ("The Government of God").
If French scholars are right in assigning Hilary's Vita Honorati to 430, Salvian, who is there called a priest, had probably already left Lyons for Marseilles, where he is known to have spent the last years of his life (Gennadius, ap.
It was probably from Marseilles that he wrote his first letter — presumably to Lerins — begging the community there to receive his kinsman, the son of a widow of Cologne, who had been reduced to poverty by the barbarian invasions.
It seems a fair inference that Salvian had divested himself of all his property in favour of that society and sent his relative to Lerins for assistance (Ep.
It has been conjectured that Salvian paid a visit to Carthage; but this is a mere inference based on the minute details he gives of the state of this city just before its fall to the Vandals (De gub.
Several works mentioned by Gennadius, notably a poem "in morem Graecorum" on the six days of creation (hexaemeron), and certain homilies composed for bishops, are now lost (Genn.
[3] De gubernatione Dei (On the Governance of God), Salvian's greatest work, was published after the capture of Litorius at Toulouse (439), to which he plainly alludes in vii.40.
12), but before Attila's invasion (451), as Salvian speaks of the Huns, not as enemies of the empire, but as serving in the Roman armies (vii.
[3] In this work, which furnishes a valuable if prejudiced description of life in 5th century Gaul, Salvian deals with the same problem that had moved the eloquence of Augustine and Orosius: why were these miseries falling on the empire?
Salvian sets himself to prove God's constant guidance, first by the facts of Scripture history, and secondly by the enumeration of special texts declaring this truth.
that the misery of the Roman world is all due to the neglect of God's commandments and the terrible sins of every class of society.
[3] Treves was almost destroyed by the barbarians; yet the first petition of its few surviving nobles was that the emperor would re-establish the circus games as a remedy for the ruined city (vi.
And this was the prayer of Christians, whose baptismal oath pledged them to renounce "the devil and his works ... the pomps and shows (spectacula)" of this wicked world (vi.
[3] With this iniquity of the Romans Salvian contrasts the chastity of the Vandals, the piety of the Goths, and the ruder virtues of the Franks, the Saxons, and the other tribes to whom, though heretic Arians or unbelievers, God is giving in reward the inheritance of the empire[9] (vii.
It is curious that Salvian shows no such hatred of the heterodox barbarians as was rife in Gaul seventy years later.
It is difficult to credit the universal wickedness adduced by Salvian, especially in face of the contemporary testimony of Symmachus, Ausonius and Sidonius Apollinaris.
Salvian is very clear on the duty of absolute self-denial in the case of sacred virgins, priests and monks (ii.
[3] Numerous other editions appeared from the 16th to the 18th century, all of which are now superseded by those of Karl Felix Halm (Berlin, 1877) and F. Pauly (Vienna, 1883).