The text is
corrupt, but it is not probable that Hilary means that Paulinus was
first relegated to Phrygia and then to some pagan frontier district, if
such there was. It is quite in Hilary’s present vein to
assume that because the Montanists were usually called after the
province of their origin, in which they were still numerous, therefore
all Phrygians were heretics and outside the pale of Christendom.
If hordeo be read for horreo the passage is
improved. Paulinus had either to be satisfied with rations of
barley bread, the food of slaves, or else to beg from the
heretics. Such treatment is very improbable, when we remember
Hilary’s own comfort in exile. But passions were excited,
and men believed the worst of their opponents. We may compare the
falsehoods in Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy, and in
Neal’s Puritans, which were eagerly believed in and after
our own Civil War.