The Roman provinces in Africa were for a long time one of the richest
and most noble portions of the empire. The Carthaginian barbarism
and perfidy had given place to the most flourishing reign of the
sciences, arts, and religion. The nobles of this country were all
princes, and for riches and state, seemed to vie with kings; its
peace seemed on every side secure. But the strongest cities and
empires are often nearest a fall; they are founded, to be again
sooner or later torn to pieces. Every state has even within itself
the seeds of its own destruction; these will occasion the dissolution
of every body politic no less certainly than the internal weakness
of the animal body must bring it to a fatal period. This was the
condition of the Roman empire in its decline, when its rulers, to
preserve Italy which they regarded as its heart or head, abandoned
its extremities to the Goths and Vandals. At a time when Africa
thought of no danger, in the reign of the emperor Valentinian III.
in 428, Genseric, king of the Vandals and Alans, having lately
made a settlement in part of Spain,[118] passed into this country,
and in a short time became master of those fertile provinces. This
politic barbarian king kept great armies perpetually prepared for
any expedition, by which he prevented the vigilance of his enemies,
and astonished all the world with the rapidity of his enterprises.
The Vandals, who were mostly Christians, but infected with the Arian
heresy, laid the whole country waste by fire and sword, plundered all
places, even churches and monasteries; burned alive two bishops, and
tortured others to extort from them the treasures of their churches;
razed the public buildings at Carthage, and banished Quodvultdeus,
bishop of that city, with many others. But in 454, at the request of
the emperor Valentinian, Genseric allowed the Catholics to choose a
bishop of Carthage, and St. Deogratias was raised to that dignity,
who died soon after Genseric was returned from the plunder of Rome.
The persecution growing hotter, many suffered torments for the
faith, and several received the crown of martyrdom. The Arians, by a
sacrilege never before heard of, made themselves shirts and breeches
of the altar-cloths, and at Tinuzuda spilt and scattered the body and
blood of Christ on the pavement.[119] Catholics being by an edict
disqualified for bearing any office in the government, Armogastes,
a nobleman who held an honorable post in the household of Theodoric
the king’s son, was condemned by the tyrant to keep cattle. Genseric
dying after a reign of thirty-seven years, was succeeded by his son
Huneric, a more barbarous persecutor than his father had ever been.
The episcopal see of Carthage had remained vacant twenty-four years,
when in 481, Huneric permitted the Catholics on certain conditions
to choose one who should fill it. The people, impatient to enjoy the
comfort of a pastor, pitched upon Eugenius, a citizen of Carthage,
eminent for his learning, zeal, piety, and prudence; and such was
his deportment in this dignity, that he was venerable to the very
heretics, and so dear to the Catholics that every one of them would
have thought it a happiness to lay down his life for him. His
charities to the distressed were excessive, especially considering
his poverty. But he always found resources for their necessities in
the hearts of his people; and he refused himself everything that he
might give all to the poor. When others put him in mind that he ought
to reserve something for his own necessaries, his answer was: “If the
good pastor must lay down his life for his flock, can it be excusable
for me to be solicitous for the necessities of my body?” He fasted
every day, and often allowed himself only a most slender evening
refection of bread and water. His virtue gained him the respect and
esteem even of the Arians; but at length envy and blind zeal got the
ascendant in their breasts, and the king sent him an order never to
sit in the episcopal throne, preach to the people, or admit into
his chapel any Vandals among whom several were Catholics. The saint
boldly answered the messenger, that the laws of God commanded him
not to shut the door of his church to any that desired to serve him
in it. Huneric, enraged at this answer, persecuted the Catholics
many ways, especially the Vandals who had embraced the faith. He
commanded guards to be placed at the doors of the Catholic churches,
who when they saw any man or woman going in clothed in the habit
of the Vandals, struck them on the head with short staffs jagged
and indented, which being twisted into their hair, and drawn back
with great violence, tore off the hair and skin together. Some lost
their eyes by this means, and others died with the extreme pain;
but many lived a long time after. Women with their heads flayed in
this manner, were publicly led through the streets, with a crier
going before them to show them to the people. But this barbarous
usage did not cause any one to forsake the true religion. Next, the
tyrant deprived the Catholics who were at court of their pensions,
and sent them to work in the country. He also ordered that none
should be admitted to bear any office in his palace, or any public
charge, who was not an Arian. He afterward turned them out of their
houses, stripped them of all their wealth, and sent them to Sicily,
or Sardinia. After this, his persecution fell on all Catholics. One
edict followed another against them, and the cloud thickened every
day over their heads. Many nuns were so cruelly tortured that several
died on the rack. Great numbers of bishops, priests, deacons, and
eminent Catholic laymen were banished to the number of four thousand
nine hundred and seventy-six, all of whom the tyrant sent into a
desert, where they were fed with barley like horses. This desert
was filled with scorpions and venomous serpents; but they did not
destroy any of the servants of God. The people followed their bishops
and priests with lighted tapers in their hands, and mothers carried
their little babes in their arms, and laid them at the feet of the
confessors, all crying out with tears,--“Going yourselves to your
crowns, to whom do you leave us? Who will baptize our children? Who
will impart to us the benefit of penance, and discharge us from the
bonds of sins by the favor of reconciliation and pardon? Who will
bury us with solemn supplications at our death? By whom will divine
sacrifices be made?”[120]
The bishop Eugenius was spared in the first storm, probably that the
inhabitants of the capital might seem to be somewhat considered. But
in May, 483, the king sent him a summons requiring the Catholics,
whom he called Homoousians, to hold a conference or disputation with
his Arian bishops at Carthage on the 1st day of February ensuing.
Eugenius answered the terms were not equal, seeing their enemies were
to be judges; and that as it was the common cause of all churches,
other foreign churches ought to be invited and consulted, “especially
the church of Rome, which is the head of all churches.”[121] About
that time one Felix, who had been long blind, addressed himself to
St. Eugenius desiring him to pray that he might recover his sight,
saying he had been admonished by a vision so to do. The bishop showed
great reluctance and confusion, alleging that he was a base sinner;
but at length, after blessing the font for the solemn administration
of baptism on the Epiphany, he said to the blind man,--“I have told
you that I am a sinner, and the last of all men; but I pray God
that he show you mercy according to your faith, and restore to you
your sight.” Then he made the sign of the cross on his eyes, and
the blind man saw; the whole city was witness to the triumph of
the faith. The king sent for Felix, and examined himself all the
circumstances of the miracle, which he found too evident to be called
in question. However, the Arian bishops told him that Eugenius had
performed it by recourse to art magic. The Catholics made choice of
ten disputants for the conference, which was opened on the 5th of
February. Cyrila, patriarch of the Arians, was seated on a throne;
the Catholics who were standing, asked who were the commissaries to
take down in writing what should pass in the disputation; and were
answered that Cyrila would perform that office. The Catholics asked
by what authority he claimed the jurisdiction and rank of patriarch.
The Arians not being able to produce any sufficient warrant for his
usurpation, filled the hall with noise and tumult and obtained an
order that every lay Catholic there present should receive a hundred
bastinadoes. Cyrila sought various pretences to defer the conference.
The Catholics, however, presented a written confession of their
faith. This takes up the whole third book of Victor’s history, though
he has only inserted the first part, in which the consubstantiality
of God the Son is proved from the scriptures. The second part, which
confirmed the same from the writings of the fathers, is lost. This
confession seems to have been drawn up by St. Eugenius, to whom
Gennadius ascribes a confession of faith against the Arians.[122]
When this was read the Arians quarrelled that the orthodox took
the name of Catholics, though this was given them by the whole
world, even by the heretics themselves, as St. Austin observed a
little before this time in that very country. Upon this, however,
the Arians abruptly broke up the conference, and the king, on the
25th of February in 484, published a severe edict for a general
persecution, which he had already prepared for that purpose. By this
all the Catholic clergy were banished out of towns, and forbidden
to perform any functions even in the country; all Catholics were
declared incapable of inheriting, or disposing of any estates real or
personal, with other such articles. Executioners were despatched to
all parts of the kingdom, and many Catholics were put to barbarous
deaths, and many more inhumanly tormented. One Dionysia, after having
been herself cruelly scourged, seeing her son Majoricus, a tender
youth, tremble at the sign of the torments prepared for him, she
looked on him with a stern countenance, and said,--“Remember, son,
we were baptized in the name of the Trinity, and in the bosom of
our mother the Church.” The young man, encouraged by these words,
suffered martyrdom with undaunted resolution, and his mother buried
him within her own house, that she might every day offer to the holy
Trinity her prayers over his grave, in the lively hope of a glorious
resurrection with him at the last day. Her cousin Emilius, her sister
Dativa, and innumerable others in different parts of Africa, received
the like crowns. At Typasus, in Mauritania Cæsariensis, certain
Catholics who had assisted at the celebration of the divine mysteries
in a private house, were informed against; and by the king’s order
had their tongues plucked out, and their right hands cut off; yet
they spoke as well as ever, as St. Victor Vitensis, an eye-witness,
assures us.[123] He says, Reparatus, a subdeacon, one of this number,
was entertained when he wrote, in the court of the emperor Zena at
Constantinople, and was there highly honored, especially by the
empress; and that though entirely deprived of his tongue, he spoke
gracefully, and without the least defect or imperfection. Æneas of
Gaza, a Platonic philosopher, who was then at Constantinople, and
wrote in 533,[124] says, he himself had seen them in that city, and
had heard them speak distinctly; and not being able to believe his
own ears, he had examined their mouths, and seen that their tongues
were plucked out to the very roots, so that he wondered they could
have survived so cruel a torment. Procopius, who wrote soon after,
says also[125] that he had seen these persons at Constantinople,
and had heard them speak freely, without feeling anything of their
punishment; but that two of them, by falling into a grievous sin of
the flesh, lost the use of their speech, which they had till then
enjoyed.
The tyrant wreaked his impotent vengeance on many others, especially
on Vandals who had been converted to the Catholic faith; but was not
able to overcome their heroic constancy. The streets of Carthage were
filled with spectacles of his cruelty; and one was there meeting
continually some without hands, others without eyes, nose, or ears,
others whose heads appeared sunk in between their shoulders by having
been hung up by the hands on the tops of houses for sights to the
people. Above four hundred and sixty bishops were brought to Carthage
in order to be sent into banishment: of this number eighty-eight died
under great hardships at Carthage, some few made their escape, and
the rest were banished. St. Eugenius after having long encouraged
others to the conflict was himself at length on a sudden carried
into exile, without being allowed to take leave of his friends. He
found means, however, to write a letter to his flock, which St.
Gregory of Tours has preserved.[126] In it he says,--“I with tears
beg, exhort, and conjure you by the dreadful day of judgment, and the
awful light of the coming of Christ, that you hold fast the Catholic
faith. Preserve the grace of the holy baptism, and the unction of
the chrism. Let no man born again of water return to the water.”
This he mentions, because the Arians in Africa, like the Donatists,
rebaptized those that came over to their sect. St. Eugenius protests
to his flock that if they remain constant, no distance nor death
could separate him from them in spirit; but that he was innocent of
the blood of those that should perish, and that this his letter would
be read before the tribunal of Christ at the last day for severer
condemnation of such base apostates. “If I return to Carthage,” says
he, “I shall see you in this life; if not, I shall meet you in the
other. Pray for us, and fast; fasting and alms have never failed to
move God to mercy. Above all things remember that we are not to fear
those who can only kill the body.”
We have a catalogue of all the bishops of the provinces of Africa
who came to the conference, and were sent into banishment;[127]
namely, fifty-four of the proconsular province, one hundred and
twenty-five of Numidia, one hundred and seven of the province of
Byzacena, one hundred and twenty of the province of Mauritania
Cæsariensis, forty-four from the province of Sitifi, five from that
of Tripolis, besides ten from Sardinia and other places; in all
four hundred and sixty-four bishops, of which number eighty-eight
died at Carthage before their departure into exile, forty-six were
banished to Corsica, three hundred and three to other places, and
twenty-eight made their escape. St. Eugenius was carried into the
uninhabited desert country in the province of Tripolis, and committed
to the guard of Antony, an inhuman Arian bishop, who treated him with
the utmost barbarity. The saint added to his sufferings voluntary
austerities, wore a rough hair-shirt, lay on the ground, and passed
great part of the night in prayer and tears. When he was afflicted
with a palsy, Antony, because vinegar was contrary to his distemper,
obliged him to drink it in large quantities. Yet God was pleased to
restore his servant to his health. It is observed by our historian,
that the Arian bishops were all cruel persecutors, and went through
the cities and provinces, filling all places with scenes of horror,
rebaptizing persons by force and violence, scourging, mangling,
torturing, and banishing even women and children. The fifth book
of the history of this persecution is filled with examples. The
apostates signalized themselves above others by the cruelties which
they exercised upon the orthodox. Elpidophorus, one of this number,
was appointed judge at Carthage to condemn the more zealous to be
tortured. Muritta, the deacon who had assisted when he was baptized
in the bosom of the Catholic Church, being brought before him, took
with him the chrismale or white garment, with which at the time he
received the apostate coming out of the font he had clothed him, as
an emblem of that innocence which he engaged himself to preserve
always unspotted; and producing it before the whole assembly, he
says,--“This robe will accuse you when the judge shall appear in
majesty at the last day. It will bear testimony against you to your
condemnation.”[128] This relation is gathered from Saint Victor,
bishop of Vita, in the province of Byzacena; who being banished by
king Huneric for the faith in 487, retired to Constantinople, and
wrote (probably in that city) in five books, the history of the
Vandalic persecution.[129]
St. Victor relates that Huneric, the great persecutor of the Church,
died miserably, being devoured by worms, in December, 484, having
reigned almost eight years. Nor was he succeeded, as he had earnestly
desired, by his son Hilderic, but by Gontamund, a nephew, whom the
maturity of his age rendered better able to bear the burden of the
state. This prince, in the year 488, which was the fourth of his
reign, recalled St. Eugenius to Carthage, and at his request opened
the churches of the Catholics, and permitted the exiled priests also
to return. Gontamund died in 496, and his brother Thrasimund was
called to the crown, of whom mention hath been made in the life of
St. Fulgentius. Though this king often affected a show of moderation,
he sometimes used the sword and every other violent measure to
depress the cause of truth, which at other times he pretended to
seek after. But his inconstancy betrayed his want of sincerity. True
virtue is steady, but the fool changeth like the moon; he who is
governed by his passions, is everything by fits, and if he one day
pretends to condemn his vices, he by relapses soon repents again
of this very repentance, which frequently springs rather from a
disgust of sin, than from any principle of true virtue. Thrasimund
by this levity or hypocrisy never deserved to arrive at the light
of the true faith, and often persecuted its most holy champions,
of which among many others the sufferings of St. Eugenius are an
instance. St. Gregory of Tours relates[130] that by his authority
the judges condemned our saint, one Longinus, and St. Vindemial,
bishop of Capsa, in Africa, to be beheaded. St. Vindemial died by the
sword; but the tyrant commanded St. Eugenius to be led to the place
of execution, and though he protested under the axe that he would
rather lose his life than depart from the Catholic faith, he was
again brought back to Carthage, and banished into Languedoc, which
country was then subject to Alaric, king of the Visigoths, who was
also an Arian. He died in his exile in a monastery which he built and
governed at Viance (since called St. Amaranth’s from the tomb of that
martyr), about a mile from Albi. He passed to a better life in 505,
on the 13th of July. King Hilderic afterward recalled the surviving
exiled prelates; but peace was not perfectly restored to that church
before the year 534, when Belisarius, a general who was master of
all the maxims of the first Romans with regard to the art of war,
vanquished Gelimer, the last Vandal king in Africa, and sent him
prisoner to Constantinople.[131]
* * * * *
The saints chose to suffer every temporal loss, torment, or death
with which the world could threaten them rather than lose the holy
treasure of faith. This gift is a light which shineth upon us[132]
from God, to direct us amidst our darkness in the path to eternal
life, as the pillar of fire conducted the Israelites through the
wilderness. It is the seed, or rather the root of a spiritual life,
and of every virtue that is meritorious of everlasting glory. “Faith
is the solid foundation of all virtues,” says St. Ambrose.[133]
And in another place he cries out:[134] “O faith, richer than all
treasures! more healing and sovereign than all medicines!” Our faith
if true must have three conditions or qualities. 1. It must be
firm, admitting no doubt or wavering; ready to brave all dangers,
torments, and death; thus it filled the martyrs with joy under the
most affrighting trials, and made them triumph over fires and the
sword.[135] 2. It must be entire; for the least wilful obstinate
error concerning one article destroys the whole fabric of faith,
by rejecting its motive which is everywhere the same testimony of
divine revelation. “You who believe what you please, and reject what
you please, believe yourselves or your own fancy, rather than the
gospel,” as St. Austin says. 3. Faith must be active, animated by
charity, fruitful in good works. A dead or a barren faith is compared
by St. James to a carcass without a soul, and to the faith of the
devils who believe and tremble. How active and animated was faith in
the souls of all the saints! the eminent virtues which we admire in
them were all the fruit of their faith, and sprang from this root.
With what care ought we to nourish and improve this holy seed in our
breasts? Gardeners cultivate most diligently those seeds which are
most precious.