Note 1060 — Chapter II · THE ROMAN EMPIRE UNDER ANASTASIUS: THE INHERITANCE OF JUSTINIAN (continued 2)

See Gieseler (op. cit., i, 99), where the assimilation of heathenism is well summarized and instanced. Augustine (c. 400) draws a striking picture of the impostors, who, in the garb of monks, tramped the country selling sham relics, phylacteries, etc.; De Op. Monach., 28, 31, etc.; Epist. ad Jan. (118). Jerome, in his diatribe against Vigilantius, unwittingly makes a display of the gross superstition which that earnest reformer sought to suppress. Bayle’s article on Vigilantius (Dictionnaire, etc.) is a full and interesting account of the subject, but there is more still in Gilly’s V. and his Times, Lond., 1844.