BOOK III.

FROM THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS I TO THE PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY THE GREAT.A.D. 395-590.

CHAPTER V.

FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE. CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS.

VANDAL PERSECUTION IN AFRICA.

 

WITHIN about twenty years from the death of Valentinian III the western empire had nine sovereigns. The first of these was Maximus, the senator whose vengeance had been fatal to his predecessor. His wife having died opportunely, he married the widowed empress Eudoxia; but his indiscretion in telling her that for her sake he had instigated the murder of her husband excited her disgust and indignation. In order to obtain revenge, she invited the Vandals from Africa; and her invitation was promptly answered. Within less than three months after Valentinian’s death, Genseric, whose fleet had long been the terror of the Mediterranean coasts, appeared at the mouth of the Tiber.

Maximus, in attempting to escape from Rome, was stoned to death by the populace; and three days later the invader was (June 12, 455) before the walls. Leo, at the head of his clergy, went forth to confront for the second time a barbarian conqueror; he obtained a promise that the city should not be burnt, that the lives of the inhabitants should be spared, and that they should not be tortured for the purpose of discovering their treasures. Thus the bishop's intercession mitigated in some degree the horrors of the sack which followed; but the Vandals for fourteen days gave a loose to their lust and rapacity, and they returned to Africa laden with plunder, and carrying with them a multitude of captives, among whom were Eudoxia and her two daughters. The charity of Deogratias, bishop of Carthage, on this occasion, may be related in the words of Gibbon. “He generously sold the gold and silver plate of the church to purchase the freedom of some, to alleviate the slavery of others, and to assist the wants and infirmities of a captive multitude, whose health was impaired by the hardships which they had suffered in their passage from Italy to Africa. By his order, two spacious churches were converted into hospitals : the sick were distributed in convenient beds, and liberally supplied with food and medicines; and the aged prelate repeated his visits both in the day and night, with an assiduity that surpassed his strength, and a tender sympathy which enhanced the value of his services. Compare this scene”, adds the historian, “with the field of Cannae, and judge between Hannibal and the successor of St. Cyprian”.

The loss of Africa involved that of the revenues which the Roman nobles had drawn from their estates in that country, and the cessation of the supplies of corn on which the community had in great measure depended for its support. With a view of recovering the province, the emperor Majorian, a man of character and energy worthy of a better time, made war on Genseric in 457; and eleven years later, a vast armament, chiefly supplied by the eastern emperor Leo, was sent against the Vandal king : but the first of these expeditions was defeated through the treachery of barbarian allies, and the second through the incapacity of its commander, the emperor’s brother-in-law, Basiliscus. Britain had already been abandoned by the Romans; Gaul and Spain were gradually occupied by barbarians of various races; and at length the imperial dominion was limited to a portion of the Italian peninsula. The last emperor of the west, Augustulus, was, in 476, compelled to resign his throne, and became a pensioner on the bounty of Odoacer, the first barbarian king of Italy.

In connection with the fall of the empire, the paganism of the west may be for the last time formally noticed.

Paganism had been combated in the east with severity and success. The younger Theodosius, as we have seen, professed to question whether any of his subjects continued to adhere to it; and, somewhat later, he ordered that the remaining temples should be dismantled, and purified by the sign of the cross. But in the west the old religion retained its hold longer. In cities, the pagans, when debarred from the public exercise of their worship, cultivated the household worship of the lares and penates, and celebrated their sacrifices privately, notwithstanding the imperial laws. And in the country the pagan rites were still performed without disguise, and without molestation on the part of those who were entrusted with the execution of the laws for their suppression. Maximus, bishop of Turin, about the middle of the century, remonstrates with Christian landowners for suffering their estates to be defiled with idolatry by the peasants; he describes and denounces the superstitious and disorderly celebration of the new year, which Christians had retained from the rites of Janus. Leo the Great speaks of some Christians who continued to worship the sun. Augury and other methods of divination continued to be practised. While Pagans ascribed the calamities of the empire to the suppression of their rites, Salvian, the Jeremiah of his age, and other Christians, regarded them as chastisements on account of the remains of idolatry which were still tolerated in Gaul, Africa, and elsewhere.

Pagans are occasionally mentioned as holding important positions in the state; even the emperor Anthemius (A.D. 467-472) is suspected of having favoured the old religion. Genseric’s expedition against Rome was in one respect favourable to Christianity, inasmuch as, by carrying off a number of statues, and by stripping the capitol of its thickly-gilt bronze roof, he removed from the sight of the Romans objects which recalled to mind the religion of their forefathers. But in the very last years of the century, Gelasius, bishop of Rome, had to argue against the celebration of the lupercalia, which, although only the lowest of the people took part in it, found apologists among men of senatorial rank.

Theodoric the Goth, the conqueror of Odoacer, enacted the punishment of death against all who should practise any pagan rites. There is no evidence that this law was ever executed, nor perhaps was any pagan so firmly convinced of the truth of his religion as to brave death for the assertion of it; but from that time paganism ceases to appear in the light of history. Remnants of it, however, continued to lurk in most of the western countries; although both particular actions and popular customs which have been characterized as pagan are generally to be referred to a mixture of superstition with Christianity rather than to any intentional preference of heathenism; and although much confusion has been introduced by writers who speak of the deities of barbarous nations under the names of the Greek and Roman mythology.

(1.) As the empire of old Rome disappears from view, we begin to discern, not only the great spiritual power which will hereafter so largely engage our attention, but the origin of modern European states; and the appearance of the northern nations in civil history brings them into connection with the history of the church. The hosts which in succession poured down on the provinces of the empire soon embraced Christianity; but their creed was generally not that of the orthodox community. The missionaries who wrought on the Teutonic nations appear to have gone forth from among the Visigoths, whose lapse into Arianism has already been related; and in some cases, where the conversion was originally to the catholic faith, Arianism was afterwards adopted in its stead, as less perplexing to rude minds, as recommended by matrimonial or political alliances, and perhaps also because of its difference from the system professed by the rulers of Rome and Constantinople. Thus the Burgundians, on the Rhine, who, in consequence of having settled in a territory where Christianity had before prevailed, had become Christians about the year 413, exchanged Catholicism for Arianism half a century later; and the Suevi, in Spain, originally converted by the orthodox bishops of Lusitania, became Arians in 469. Genseric has been charged with having effected a similar change among the Vandals; but it would seem that the accusation was invented for the purpose of making his name more odious, and that the Christianity of his nation was in reality Arian from the first. The conversion of barbarian tribes, unlike that of the Romans, usually began with the prince; and after his example the multitude pressed to the font. Among those who had been converted by such a process, it will be readily conceived that there was very little understanding of their new profession; that their Christianity was of a rude kind, and long retained a mixture of ideas derived from their old superstitions. Yet, with all its defects, both in doctrine and in morality, and although it held but a very imperfect control over the conduct of those who professed it, the Christianity of those nations did much to soften their ferocity, and greatly mitigated the sufferings of the more civilized races which they subdued.

(2.) The religious story of Britain is entitled to our especial attention. Yet a writer who undertakes a general compendium of church-history is bound, instead of exaggerating the proportion which that of his own country would rightly bear to the whole, to endeavour to preserve uniformity of scale, while he must refer his readers for further information to works which are expressly devoted to this portion of his subject.

During the fourth century, we find mention of British bishops as having attended the councils of Arles, Sardica, and Rimini; at the last of these it is said that three of them were compelled by poverty to accept an allowance from the emperor, which their brethren and the bishops of Gaul declined, lest it might interfere with the independence of their judgment. It is also argued (but perhaps with more of patriotism than of plausibility), that there were British bishops at the council of Nicaea. Although it would appear that Arianism was not unknown in our island, the orthodoxy of the British bishops throughout the Arian controversy is attested by the weighty evidence of Athanasius and Hilary.

Pelagius did not attempt to propagate his opinions in his native country; but, when proscribed elsewhere, they were introduced into Britain by one Agricola, and found so much acceptance that the clergy resolved to call in foreign aid, much in the same manner as their countrymen had been accustomed to invoke the help of the Roman legions for protection against the attacks of their northern neighbours. In consequence of an application from Britain, German, bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, bishop of Troyes, were deputed by a synod of Gaulish bishops to combat the growing heresy. Their preaching and their sanctity produced a great effect, which was seconded by an abundance of miracles. In a conference at St. Alban's they defeated the heretical teachers; and it is said that German obtained for the Britons a victory over the Picts and Saxons by directing an army, mostly composed of newly-baptized converts, to raise a loud shout of “Hallelujah!”. About eighteen years later, German was again invited to visit Britain, for the purpose of eradicating the remains of Pelagianism, which had begun to revive; and his labours were again successful.

The Romans, finding themselves unable to spare the forces necessary for a military establishment in Britain, had abandoned the island in the year 409. After their withdrawal, the government became gradually vested in the hands of a multitude of petty princes, and the moral condition of the inhabitants was such that the calamities which followed are represented as a righteous judgment on it. In 449, the Jutes Hengist and Horsa are said to have landed in the isle of Thanet. The Jutes, Angles, and Saxons poured in on the country, and by degrees got possession of all except the mountainous districts of the west. “Public and private buildings were alike destroyed”, says Bede; “priests were everywhere murdered at the altar; bishops and their people were indiscriminately slaughtered with fire and sword, and there was no one to bury the victims of such cruelty. Some of the wretched remnant were seized on the mountains, and were butchered by heaps; others, worn out with hunger, surrendered themselves, and on condition that they should not be immediately put to death, embraced perpetual slavery for the sake of sustenance; some sorrowfully made for regions beyond the sea; others remained in their country, and, in continual trembling and anxiety, led a life of poverty among mountains, forests, and lofty rocks”.

Some of the Britons found a refuge among the kindred inhabitants of Armorica; such of them as became serfs to the conquerors gradually lapsed into heathenism; while those who maintained their independence in Cornwall, Wales, or Cumberland, although they preserved their Christianity, lost their Roman civilization and the use of the Latin tongue. Britain was withdrawn from the view of the Roman world, and was for a time regarded as a land of mystery and fable.

(3.) Amid the fictions with which the early history of Scotland is overlaid, it appears to be pretty certain that Ninian preached in the beginning of the fifth century among the southern Picts, who inhabited the country between the Frith of Forth and the Grampians. This missionary is said to have been the son of a British chief, to have received his education at Rome, and to have afterwards visited St. Martin at Tours. Returning to his native country, he fixed his see in Galloway, where, with the aid of masons whom he had brought with him from Tours, he erected a church in honour of St. Martin. This building, being of white stone (whereas the British churches were usually of less durable materials), was distinguished by the name of Candida Casa, which became that of the see. Ninian’s labours may probably be dated between the years 412 and 432.

(4.) It is to the earlier half of the fifth century that the conversion of Ireland is usually referred. Although there had probably been some Christians in the island before that time, the accounts of bishops who are said to have previously flourished there are rejected as fabulous. Patrick, the “apostle of Ireland”, speaks of himself as having been born at a place called Bonaven, which by some writers is identified with Boulogne, while others suppose it to be a village which from him is called Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton. His original name is said to have been Succath. His father, Calphurnius, was of curial rank, and a deacon of the church; his grandfather, Potitus, was a presbyter. At the age of sixteen the youth was carried off as a captive to Ireland, where he was employed in tending sheep or cattle amid the loneliness of forests and mountains. In this occupation he was exposed to great miseries, but his soul was visited by thoughts to which it had before been a stranger; he prayed often, and his inward fervour rendered him insensible to the frost, the snow, and the rain. After six years of captivity he was delivered by means in which, according to his narrative, Providence takes the aspect of miracle, and returned to his native country. Years passed on; Patrick, according to some accounts, had travelled widely, and had studied under Martin of Tours and German of Auxerre; and he had been ordained a presbyter, when he felt himself called by visions to preach the Gospel in the land where he had been a captive. His friends opposed his design of casting himself among its savage people; one of them, who was most familiar with him, endeavoured to prevent his consecration by divulging some act which Patrick had confided to him as having been committed under the age of fifteen thirty years before; but he resolutely broke through all hindrances, and was consecrated bishop of the Irish (A.D. 431)

Palladius, a deacon of the Roman church, but probably a native of Britain, had lately been consecrated by Celestine, and sent to labour among that nation, although rather with a view to the suppression of Pelagianism than to the conversion of the heathen as the primary object of his mission; but after a short stay he had withdrawn, and apparently had died in Scotland. Patrick was more persevering and more successful. He devoted the remainder of his life to the Irish denying himself the satisfaction of revisiting his country and his kindred, and labouring with great effect, although often exposed to perils from the hostility of the druids, and of the heathen princes, who slew many of his converts. The date usually assigned for the commencement of his mission is the same with that of Ninian’s death A.D. 432; the time of his own death has been a subject of dispute, but is most probably referred to the year 493.

(5.) In Southern Germany, where the church had been regularly organized in the time of the Roman dominion, the preservation of the faith through the changes and troubles of the age, and the conversion of the new masters of the country, were mainly due to the exertions of Severin, the “apostle of Noricum”. The origin of this missionary is unknown; he himself, as if from a feeling of humility, took pains to conceal it; but, although he came immediately from the east, the purity of his Latin was supposed to prove that he was a man of Italian birth, who, for the sake of spiritual perfection, had betaken himself to some oriental solitude.

Severin appeared in the region of Bavaria and Austria, shortly after the death of Attila (A.D. 454), and declared that he felt himself called by visions to forego his taste for a contemplative life, in order that he might labour among the people of those countries, which were then desolated by the barbarian invasions. The sight of his voluntary austerities encouraged the wretched inhabitants to endure the privations and other evils which for them were unavoidable; he gained a vast influence over all classes, and obtained from the richer the means of relieving those whose distress was greatest.

Severin declined consecration as a bishop, on the ground that he was sufficiently employed in the ministration to which he had dedicated himself; and in this he was aided by monks of whom he founded communities at Vienna, Juvavium (now Salzburg), Passau, and elsewhere. His venerable character and life awed the rude invaders, who at his suit often showed mercy to the helpless population; his presence was supposed to be a protection to the place of his abode, so that the inhabitants of the Roman towns on the Danube entreated him to reside among them by turns. His prayers were believed to prevail with heaven; the gifts of prophecy and miracles were ascribed to him. Among the instances of his prophetic foresight, it is related that, when visited by Odoacer, who had lately enlisted in the imperial guard, he discerned in the meanly dressed recruit the future king of Italy; and that he foretold the day of his own death, which took place in 482.

(6.) The most important conversion of the fifth century was that of Chlodowig or Clovis, who, from being king of the Salian Franks, with a narrow territory in the neighbourhood of Tournay and Cambray, became the founder of the great French monarchy. Clovis, who succeeded to his hereditary kingdom in 482, married in 493 Chrotochild or Clotilda, the daughter of Chilperic, a Burgundian prince who had adhered to the catholic faith while the rest of his family fell into Arianism, and having been deprived of his inheritance and of life by his Arian brother Gundobald, was popularly regarded by the catholics of Gaul as a martyr for the orthodox faith. Clotilda long and zealously urged her husband to embrace Christianity; but although, among other evidences, she represented to him the miracles for which the shrine of St. Martin, at Tours, was then famous, Clovis remained obstinate measuring the power of a deity by the prosperity of his worshippers, and supposing that the downfall of the Roman empire was a sufficient disproof of the religion which it had professed. The queen, however, prevailed with him to let their firstborn son be baptized, and, in the hope of producing an impression on Clovis, the rite was administered with extraordinary pomp; but the death of the child, which took place within a few days, furnished the king with a new argument against a change of religion. A second son was also baptized, and, as he too fell sick, Clovis expected the vengeance of the gods to show itself in a repetition of the elder brother’s fate; but at the earnest prayer of Clotilda, the prince recovered. The queen continued her attempts to convert her husband, but without success, until at length, when engaged with the Alemanni in the battle of Tolbiac, Clovis, finding himself in danger, invoked the aid of Christ, declaring that his old gods had failed him, and vowing to become a Christian if he should obtain the victory. The Alemanni were defeated; and at Christmas, 496, Clovis with three thousand of his warriors was baptized at Reims by the bishop, Remigius. The cathedral was sumptuously adorned, brilliant with the light of innumerable tapers, and filled with perfumes of such sweetness that (as we are told) those who were present supposed themselves to be breathing the odours of paradise. As the king entered, amid the solemn chant of hymns, he was struck with awe, and, turning to Remigius, who held him by the hand, he asked whether this were the kingdom of heaven that had been promised to him?. “No”, replied the bishop; “but it is the beginning of the way thither”. The words of Remigius at the administration of the sacrament are famous “Sicambrian, gently bow thy neck; worship that which thou hast burnt, and burn that which thou hast worshipped”. And no less celebrated is the exclamation of Clovis when the bishop one day read to him the story of the Redeemer's passion : “Had I been there with my Franks, I would have avenged his wrongs!”

There is no reason for doubting that the conversion of Clovis was sincere, although it was certainly of no enlightened kind, and although, like that of Constantine (with whom the father of French history compares him), it failed to produce in him a consistent Christian life. Nor is its sincerity to be impeached because it proved favourable to the advance of his power; although in this respect the profession of catholic Christianity, as distinguished from Arianism, involved advantages which he was not slow to discern and to profit by. It secured for him the weighty influence of the clergy, who were bound to him by the tie of mutual interest; those of the south of Gaul, who had been persecuted by the Arian Euric, king of the Visigoths of Toulouse, with a bitterness in which the barbaric hatred of them as Romans was combined with religious intolerance, were ready to welcome an orthodox invader. When he was determined to make war on Euric’s successor, Alaric, in the year 507, he gave the attack a character of religion, by declaring himself indignant that Arians should possess a part of the Gaulish soil; and the story of the war thus undertaken for the faith is embellished by the chroniclers with an abundance of miracles in his favour. While unscrupulous in the use of treachery and in profusion of blood for the removal of all who stood in the way of his ambition, he preserved the favour of the clergy by his liberality towards churches and monasteries.

His religious policy was chiefly directed by Remigius, who having been consecrated to the see of Reims in 461, at the age of twenty-two, retained it for seventy-two years; and by his advice Clovis, in the last year of his own life, summoned the first Frankish council to meet at Orleans.

At the time of his conversion Clovis was the only sovereign who professed the orthodox creed; for the other princes of the west were Arians, while the emperor Anastasius favoured the monophysites. Hence the kings of France derived the title of “Eldest Son of the Church”.

From the first invasion of Africa, the Arian Vandals cruelly oppressed the Catholics. When a deputation of bishops and clergy waited on Genseric for the purpose of representing the sufferings of their party, and of entreating that, although deprived of their churches, they might be allowed to live under the Vandal rule and to minister to the consolation of their brethren, he burst into a fury, told them that he did not wish to leave one of their name or race alive, and was with difficulty dissuaded from ordering them to be thrown into the sea. Many bishops and others were banished among the savage tribes of Africa; and here, as had often happened in similar cases, their exile became the occasion of spreading the Gospel to quarters which it had not before reached. After the death of Deogratias whose charity towards Genseric’s Roman captives is rendered the more admirable by the depression which his own church was suffering no consecration of bishops was allowed in the province of Africa; and it is said that, in consequence of this prohibition, only three out of a hundred and sixty-four sees were found to be occupied thirty years after (A.D. 487). But Genseric, whose time and thoughts were chiefly employed on plundering expeditions abroad, was a less terrible scourge to the catholics than his son, Hunneric, who succeeded him in 477. In the beginning of his reign, Hunneric affected lenity towards them, and directed his severity against the Manicheans. These sectaries were in the habit of disguising themselves under the profession of less obnoxious forms of religion; and the king had the mortification of finding that most of those whom he detected had professed to be members, and some of them even clergy, of his own sect having naturally preferred the safest communion as that to which they should ostensibly attach themselves. Hunneric was connected with the imperial family, by having married the captive Eudocia, daughter of Valentinian III and Eudoxia. At the intercession of her sister Placidia. and of the eastern emperor Zeno, he intimated to the Catholics of Carthage, in 481, that they were at liberty to choose a bishop : but he added the condition that the same privileges which he allowed them should be granted in the east to the Arians, with liberty to perform their services and to preach in whatever language they pleased; and he threatened that, if these terms were not observed, the new bishop and his brethren should be sent into banishment among the Moors. The elder Catholics dreaded such conditions, and declared themselves resolved rather to live still under the immediate government of Him who had hitherto protected them. But the eagerness of the younger brethren, who had never seen a bishop of Carthage, prevailed, and Eugenius was consecrated to the see.

The virtues of the new prelate made a general impression, which alarmed the Arian clergy; and at their suggestion, Hunneric issued an order that no person in a Vandal dress should be allowed to enter the churches of the Catholics. Eugenius declared that he could not comply with this order that God’s house was open to all; whereupon officers of the government were stationed at the doors of churches, with instructions to scalp all Vandals of either sex who should attempt to enter. For a time, the king’s attention was diverted from the persecution by anxiety to secure the succession to the throne for his son. With a view to this, he executed some of his nearest relations, burnt the patriarch of his own sect for the crime of being intimate with the objects of his jealousy, and put many others of the Arian clergy to the same horrible death. The Catholics in the meanwhile apprehended that his fury might probably be next turned on themselves; and visions and other omens are related as having foreshown the approaching trials.

An edict was issued that no one who did not profess Arianism should be employed about the court, or in the public service. The recusants were deprived of all their property, and were banished to Sicily and Sardinia; the possessions of bishops were confiscated; the virgins of the church were seized, and were savagely tortured in the hope of forcing from them an avowal of licentious intercourse with the bishops and clergy. Four thousand nine hundred and seventy-six Catholics bishops, clergy, and laity were condemned to banishment into Mauritania. Hunneric was entreated to spare one aged bishop, who was paralytic in body and imbecile in mind; but he replied that, if the old man could not ride to the place of exile, he should be dragged by wild oxen. The victims, after attempts had in vain been made to cajole them by a show of kindness, were treated with atrocious and loathsome barbarity. Many died on the way in consequence of the cruelty of their Moorish guards; and the survivors found their place of exile pestilential, and infested by venomous serpents.

The king now summoned both parties to a disputation at Carthage. Eugenius professed his willingness to argue, but said that, as the question concerned the whole church, he was not at liberty to engage in a conference without the consent of his brethren in other countries. The objection was advanced in the hope that the Catholics might thus have an opportunity of making their sufferings generally known, and that they might obtain the aid of disputants who not being subjects of Hunneric, might argue without fear of his vengeance; but the tyrant answered it by saying, "Make me master of all the world, and I will grant what you require"; and he banished many of the bishops and other Catholics who had the highest reputation for learning. The first of February, 484, was fixed on for the opening of the conference. At the Epiphany, it is said, a blind man was thrice charged by visions to go to Eugenius, when the bishop should be engaged in the benediction of the font, and to beg for the recovery of his sight. Eugenius after some hesitation performed the cure, by applying the baptismal water in the form of the cross; and the miracle, displayed in the presence of a large congregation, was hailed by the orthodox with enthusiasm. The Arians, however, ascribed it to magic, and Hunneric, in order at once to terrify the Catholics and to weaken them for the intended disputation, burnt Laetus, one of the most learned members of their party, who had been long confined in prison.

On the appointed day, the Catholics, at their entrance into the place of conference, discovered the Arian patriarch, Cyrila, seated on a lofty throne; an arrangement of which they reasonably complained, as inconsistent with the equality and impartiality which ought to be observed at such meetings. Cyrila, finding them better prepared than he had expected, declined a disputation, on the plea that he could not speak Latin; Eugenius handed in a long profession of faith; and the meeting ended without any discussion.

Hunneric followed up the conference by ordering that all the churches of the Catholics should be shut up in one day, and that their funds should be transferred to the Arians. He also issued an edict in which he charged the Catholics with disorderly behaviour at the late meeting, and, after a recital of the penalties to which the Arians had been subjected by the imperial laws, he enacted that the Catholics within his dominions should be liable to the like. It was forbidden that any one should give them food or lodging, under pain of being burnt, with his house and family.

The bishops were then required to swear to the succession of the king's son Hilderic. Forty-six who refused, on the plea that Christians ought not to swear a plea which, as the historian of the persecution acknowledges, was intended only to serve as an excuse were sent to cut wood in Corsica; while those who complied, three hundred and two in number, were banished, and obliged to work in agriculture, as having broken the scriptural prohibition against oaths. Eighty-eight bishops were terrified or flattered into an abandonment of the catholic faith.

The barbarities which followed need not be here detailed. Victor of Vite states that the Arian clergy were more cruel than even the officers of the government; he tells us that they used to break into houses, sword in hand, and to force their baptism on the inmates of all ages, often during the night, and while the recipients of this strange sacrament were asleep. The most celebrated incident in the story of the persecution is the case of the confessors of Typasa. The Catholics of that town steadfastly refused to acknowledge an Arian bishop, and persisted in celebrating their rites; whereupon, by Hunneric’s command, a number of them sixty, according to some accounts had their right hands amputated and their tongues cut out by the roots. Yet it is related that, by a miracle, they continued to speak as before; and Victor mentions, as a particularly well known member of their company, a subdeacon named Reparatus, who found a home in the palace of Constantinople.

While the persecution was at its height, Africa was laid waste by famine and pestilence, and Hunneric, after a reign of seven years and ten mouths, died by the same loathsome disease as Herod and other persecutors.

Amid the inconsistent accounts which are given of Hunneric’s nephew and successor, Gundamund, it would appear that at first he followed the policy of the preceding reign, but that afterwards he allowed the Catholics to enjoy toleration. His brother, Thrasimund, who reigned from 496 to 523, was the ablest of the Vandal kings, and, unlike his race in general, was distinguished by a love of literature; but he was a bigoted Arian, and, after having in vain attempted to gain the catholics by bribery, laid snares for them, in order to obtain a pretext for persecution. Their sufferings were great during this reign. Thrasimund forbade the consecration of bishops, and sent two hundred and twenty members of the order into banishment for a breach of his prohibition. Among his victims was Eugenius of Carthage, who died in exile at Albi.

On the death of Thrasimund, Hilderic, the same to whom an oath of fidelity had been exacted by his father Hunneric, succeeded to the throne, after an exclusion of nearly forty years. His predecessor had compelled him to swear that he would make no change in the state of religion; but Hilderic, a prince of gentle temper, thought it less sinful to break than to keep such an engagement, and granted the Catholics the free exercise of their religion.

The usurper Gelimer, in 530, revived the persecuting spirit of Arianism, but within four years the Vandal dominion was overthrown by the arms of Justinian’s general, Belisarius. During the contest with the Vandals the most eminent controversialists on the catholic side were Vigilius, bishop of Tapsus (to whom some have ascribed the authorship of the Athanasian creed), and Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe. 

 

CHAPTER VI.

MONOPHYSITISM.—JUSTINIAN.—THE THREE ARTICLES. A.D. 451-566.