Some Christians led Valerius, hitherto persecuted by the wicked presbyter Flainus [778], to the church in the estate called Ebronanto in the Castro Pedroso. He erects a cell nearby, lives there as a hermit, and suffers there under the attacks of Satan.
5. The savage adversary, seeing that his perfidious efforts were exerted in vain and that he had by no means succeeded, through a hidden trick of his deceptive treachery approached the illustrious man, Ricimer by name, whom he knew to be the owner of that very estate. And when he had disclosed that approaching death threatened him, he incited him (Ricimer) to destroy my little dwelling; and this at once he did. For he, forthwith tearing down the hut, hurled me as if falling from heaven, rushing into hell, out again into the theater of the world. And when on the very site of my expulsion he strove to erect a sacred altar of a church, this clearly he decided with cunning thought at the instigation of the persecuting enemy that he might make me the presbyter of that church for a more ruinous downfall, ensnared as it were by many worldly attractions, enriched by many fat offerings. [...]
Valerius proclaims the necessity of avoiding the riches and any pride of the world.
And - that we may go through in orderly fashion the account begun - while Ricimer was trying to finish the church, the uncompleted building falling suddenly in ruin, he violently lost this present life. And he left me behind miserable in my often repeated catastrophes.
(trans. M.C. Aherne 1949: 80, 82, 84)
