READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
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 “Allelujah!”. 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 favorable 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.
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