xile of Marcellus, whose prudence seems to have been
less eminent than his zeal, was found to be the only measure capable of
restoring peace to the distracted church of Rome. [169] The behavior
of Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, appears to have been still more
reprehensible. A deacon of that city had published a libel against the
emperor. The offender took refuge in the episcopal palace; and though it
was somewhat early to advance any claims of ecclesiastical immunities,
the bishop refused to deliver him up to the officers of justice. For
this treasonable resistance, Mensurius was summoned to court, and
instead of receiving a legal sentence of death or banishment, he was
permitted, after a short examination, to return to his diocese. [170]
Such was the happy condition of the Christian subjects of Maxentius,
that whenever they were desirous of procuring for their own use any
bodies of martyrs, they were obliged to purchase them from the most
distant provinces of the East. A story is related of Aglae, a Roman
lady, descended from a consular family, and possessed of so ample an
estate, that it required the management of seventy-three stewards. Among
these Boniface was the favorite of his mistress; and as Aglae mixed love
with devotion, it is reported that he was admitted to share her bed. Her
fortune enabled her to gratify the pious desire of obtaining some sacred
relics from the East. She intrusted Boniface with a considerable sum
of gold, and a large quantity of aromatics; and her lover, attended
by twelve horsemen and three covered chariots, undertook a remote
pilgrimage, as far as Tarsus in Cilicia. [171]

[Footnote 168: Eusebius, l. viii. c. 14. But as Maxentius was vanquished
by Constantine, it suited the purpose of Lactantius to place his death
among those of the persecutors. * Note: M. Guizot directly contradicts
this statement of Gibbon, and appeals to Eusebius. Maxentius, who
assumed the power in Italy, pretended at first to be a Christian, to
gain the favor of the Roman people; he ordered his ministers to cease
to persecute the Christians, affecting a hypocritical piety, in order to
appear more mild than his predecessors; but his actions soon proved that
he was very different from what they had at first hoped. The actions
of Maxentius were those of a cruel tyrant, but not those of a persecutor:
the Christians, like the rest of his subjects, suffered from his vices,
but they were not oppressed as a sect. Christian