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De la mort des persécuteurs de l'église

XXXIII.

L'an dix-huitième de son règne, Dieu le frappa d'une plaie absolument incurable. Il se forma un abcès dans les parties sexuelles. Les chirurgiens coupent, tranchent; mais un nouvel ulcère perce la cicatrice; une veine se rompt, et il en sort une telle quantité de sang qu'il en court risque de la vie. On arrête le sang. Il s'échappe encore une fois. La cicatrice se ferme pourtant. Un accident survient, qui fait couler le sang en plus grande abondance que jamais. Il devient pâle, et ses forces s'affaiblissent. Enfin ce ruisseau de sang se tarit; mais le mal se révolte contre les remèdes. Un cancer gagne les parties voisines. Plus on coupe pour l'empêcher de faire des progrès, plus il s'étend ; les remèdes l'aigrissent loin de l'adoucir. On appelle de tous côtés les plus fameux médecins; mais tous les secours humains sont inutiles. On a recours aux idoles, on implore l'assistance d'Apollon et d'Esculape. Apollon enseigne un remède : on s'en sert; le mal en devient pire. La mort approchait, elle s'était déjà saisie de toutes les parties basses ; ses entrailles étaient gâtées, et tout le siège tombait en pourriture. Les médecins infortunés, quoique sans espérance, ne laissaient pas de travailler, d'attaquer le mal qu'ils ne pouvaient vaincre : l'opposition que trouve le mal le fait rentrer en dedans. Il s'attache aux parties internes, les vers s'y engendrent. Le palais et la ville sont infectés de cette pernicieuse odeur ; les conduits de l'urine et des excréments n'étaient plus séparés ; les vers le rongeaient; son corps se fondait en pourriture avec des douleurs insupportables. De temps en temps il lui échappait des mugissements horribles. On lui appliquait des animaux vivants ou de la viande chaude, afin que la chaleur attirât la vermine en dehors; mais quand on en avait nettoyé ses plaies, il en ressortait une fourmilière, ses entrailles étant une source inépuisable de cette peste. Les parties de son corps avaient perdu leur forme ordinaire. Le haut jusqu'à son ulcère n'était qu'un squelette. Une maigreur affreuse avait attaché sa peau à ses os. Ses pieds par leur enflure excessive avaient perdu la forme de pieds. Cette maladie horrible le consuma un an tout entier. Mais enfin, vaincu par ses souffrances, il revint à Dieu, et durant les intervalles d'une douleur toute nouvelle, il promit de rétablir l'Église qu'il avait ruinée, et d'en réparer le dommage. Il était à l'extrémité quand, par son ordre, on publia cet édit.

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Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died

Chap. XXXIII.

And now, when Galerius was in the eighteenth year of his reign, God struck him with an incurable plague. A malignant ulcer formed itself low down in his secret parts, and spread by degrees. The physicians attempted to eradicate it, and healed up the place affected. But the sore, after having been skinned over, broke out again; a vein burst, and the blood flowed in such quantity as to endanger his life. The blood, however, was stopped, although with difficulty. The physicians had to undertake their operations anew, and at length they cicatrized the wound. In consequence of some slight motion of his body, Galerius received a hurt, and the blood streamed more abundantly than before. He grew emaciated, pallid, and feeble, and the bleeding then stanched. The ulcer began to be insensible to the remedies applied, and a gangrene seized all the neighbouring parts. It diffused itself the wider the more the corrupted flesh was cut away, and everything employed as the means of cure served but to aggravate the disease.

"The masters of the healing art withdrew."

Then famous physicians were brought in from all quarters; but no human means had any success. Apollo and Aesculapius were besought importunately for remedies: Apollo did prescribe, and the distemper augmented. Already approaching to its deadly crisis, it had occupied the lower regions of his body: his bowels came out, and his whole seat putrefied. The luckless physicians, although without hope of overcoming the malady, ceased not to apply fomentations and administer medicines. The humours having been repelled, the distemper attacked his intestines, and worms were generated in his body. The stench was so foul as to pervade not only the palace, but even the whole city; and no wonder, for by that time the passages from his bladder and bowels, having been devoured by the worms, became indiscriminate, and his body, with intolerable anguish, was dissolved into one mass of corruption. ¹

"Stung to the soul, he bellowed with the pain,

So roars the wounded bull."--Pitt

They applied warm flesh of animals to the chief seat of the disease, that the warmth might draw out those minute worms; and accordingly, when the dressings were removed, there issued forth an innumerable swarm: nevertheless the prolific disease had hatched swarms much more abundant to prey upon and consume his intestines. Already, through a complication of distempers, the different parts of his body had lost their natural form: the superior part was dry, meagre, and haggard, and his ghastly-looking skin had settled itself deep amongst his bones while the inferior, distended like bladders, retained no appearance of joints. These things happened in the course of a complete year; and at length, overcome by calamities, he was obliged to acknowledge God, and he cried aloud, in the intervals of raging pain, that he would re-edify the Church which he had demolished, and make atonement for his misdeeds; and when he was near his end, he published an edict of the tenor following:--