History of the Vandal Persecution 1

In former times the ancients, out of zeal for wisdom, by no means ceased constantly to examine and to inquire what things, and of what kind, had befallen the provinces, places, or regions—whether prosperously or otherwise—upon which, or in which, they might whet the pen of their genius, and offer to those ignorant of history the fragrant flowers of their teaching, served up as a freely given gift from baskets; and they took pains that what had perhaps been done in part should by no means lie wholly hidden. But they, puffed up with the haughtiness of worldly love, were eager that the glory of their own self-exaltation should be praised and spread far and wide. But your venerable studiousness, desiring to weave together a history, inquires indeed with a like fervor, yet with a different love;

and they that they might be praised in the world, but you that you may appear illustrious in the age to come, and may say: 'In the Lord shall my soul be praised: let the meek hear and rejoice' (Ps. 34:2-3). You will be able, as you have wished, because every best gift and every perfect gift you have received from heaven, having been instructed by so great a bishop, and by the blessed Diadochus, worthy of every kind of praise for his preaching, of whose sayings there stand, like shining stars, very many monuments of catholic doctrine. And it is enough for you that you should equal the teaching of your teacher, since it is enough for the disciple that he be as his master. I see another Timothy, instructed in the sacred Scriptures from the cradle of infancy, and likewise, among others, Luke, exalted and ready in the teaching of the nations, a physician by art, a disciple of the apostle Paul.

For I, bowing the neck of obedience to the command of him who orders it, will try to set forth gradually and briefly the things that befell the African regions while the Arians raged; and like a rustic laborer gathering gold with weary arms out of hidden caverns, I will not hesitate to hand over the ore — still soiled and unrefined in appearance — to be tested by the skilled judgment of the fire, that he who is a master of the mint may stamp it into solid coins. (I, 1) It is now, as is well known, the sixtieth year —

— that is, the sixtieth year is now reckoned since that cruel and savage people of the Vandal nation reached the borders of wretched Africa, crossing over by an easy passage through the straits of the sea, where this great and broad expanse between Spain and Africa narrows itself to a strait of barely twelve miles. When therefore the whole multitude had crossed over, Geiseric their leader, with all his cunning — so as to make the report of his people terrible — at once ordered the whole multitude to be counted, down to the child whom the womb had brought forth into this light up to that very day. Those who were found — old men, young men, little children, slaves and masters — were numbered at eighty thousand. This report, once spread abroad, causes such a great number of armed men to be reckoned even to this day by those who do not know the truth, though their force is now small and weak.

Finding therefore a peaceful and quiet province, the beauty of all that flourishing land, wherever they pressed forward with their bands of impiety, they laid it waste by devastation, exterminating everything with fire and slaughter. Nor did they spare at all the fruit-bearing trees, lest perchance those whom the caves of the mountains or the crags of the earth or any secluded places had hidden might, after their passing, be nourished by such fodder; and thus, raging again and again with such cruelty, no place remained immune from their contagion. Above all they raged the more wickedly against the churches and the basilicas of the saints, the cemeteries and the monasteries, so that with greater fires they burned down the houses of prayer rather than the cities and all the towns.

Where by chance they found the doors of some venerable hall shut, they vied with one another in opening the entrance with strokes of their axes, so that it might then rightly be said: as in a forest of trees they cut down its gates with axes; together they struck it down with hatchet and axe. They have set fire to your sanctuary; they have defiled on the earth the tabernacle of your name. (I, 2) How many distinguished bishops and noble priests were then put to death by them with various kinds of torments, that they might hand over whatever gold or silver they had, whether their own or the church's! And while, under the pressure of torments, what they had was the more readily produced, they again pressed the offerers with cruel torments, supposing that they had handed over a part and not the whole;

and the more was given, the more they believed someone still had. Prying open the mouths of others with bars of stakes, they crammed foul filth into their throats for the sake of confessing where their money was; some they tortured by twisting cords on their foreheads and shins until the cords roared; very often they poured sea-water, into others vinegar, dregs of oil, fish-brine, and many other cruel things, placed to the mouth as into soaked wineskins, without mercy. Neither the weaker sex, nor regard for nobility, nor reverence for the priesthood softened their cruel hearts; but rather there the wrath of their fury was heaped up the higher, where they had beheld the honor of dignity.

How great burdens they laid on great priests and on so many illustrious men, as if upon camels or other kinds of beasts of burden, I cannot fully tell; they drove them with iron goads to keep walking, and some of these, beneath their loads, miserably gave up their souls. Aged maturity and venerable gray hairs, which had whitened the hair of the head like white wool, claimed for itself no mercy from these guests. But the barbarian fury, seizing even little ones from their mothers' breasts, dashed the innocent infancy to the ground; others, holding them by the feet from the opposite side, tore them apart from the natural passage clear up to the crown of the head; when then perhaps captive Zion sang:

the enemy said: I will burn my borders, I will slay my infants, and I will dash my little ones to the ground. (I, 3) In some buildings — great mansions or houses — where the work of the fire availed less, having despised the roofs they leveled the beauty of the walls to the ground, so that now that ancient splendor of the cities does not even appear to have existed at all. And very many towns are inhabited either by few or by no dwellers. For even today, if any remain, they are by degrees being made desolate, just as there at Carthage they utterly destroyed the Odeon, the theater, the temple of Memory, and the street which they used to call Caelestis.

And to speak of what is essential: the greater basilica, where the bodies of the holy martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas are buried, that of Celerina or of the Scillitans, and others which they did not destroy, they appropriated for their own religion by tyrannical license. But where any fortifications appeared which the hostility of barbaric fury could not storm, gathering countless throngs around the encampments, they tortured them with deadly swords, so that, the corpses rotting, they might kill by the stench of the decaying bodies those whom they could not reach because the defense of the walls held them off. How many and how numerous priests were then tortured by them, who could explain?

For then also Pampinianus, the venerable bishop of our own city, was burned over his whole body with plates of glowing iron. Likewise Mansuetus of Urica was burned in the Fornitan gate. At which storm the city of Hippo Regius was besieged, which the blessed Augustine — worthy of all praise, the composer of many books — governed as bishop. Then that river of eloquence, which used to run abundantly through all the fields of the church, was dried up by that very fear, and the sweetness of its delight, once poured forth more sweetly, was turned into the bitterness of wormwood, so that the saying of David might fit: while the sinner stood against me, I was dumb and was humbled, and I kept silence even from good things.

Up to that time he had already completed two hundred and thirty-two books, besides countless letters, the exposition of the whole Psalter and of the Gospels, and the popular treatises which the Greeks call homilies, the number of which it is quite impossible to grasp. (I, 4) Why say more? After these savage acts of impiety and madness, Geiseric held and entered Carthage itself, the greatest city, and reduced that ancient, freeborn, and noble liberty into servitude; for he also took captive no small multitude of the city's senators. Then he set forth a decree, that each one should offer up whatever he had of gold, silver, gems, and precious garments;

and thus in a short time the rapacious man, by such diligence, stripped away their ancestral and paternal wealth. Apportioning also each of the several provinces, he reserved for himself Byzacena, Abaritana, and Getulia and part of Numidia, but divided to his army Zeugitana and the Proconsular province by the cord of inheritance, while Valentinian, still emperor, was defending the remaining provinces, though already devastated; after whose death he obtained the whole compass of Africa, and with his accustomed pride also held the greatest islands — Sardinia, Sicily, Corsica, Ebusus, Majorca, Minorca, and many others. One of these, namely Sicily, he afterward granted to Odoacer, king of Italy, by right of tribute;

from which Odoacer paid him tribute at various times as to a lord, while reserving some part for himself. Moreover, he did not in the least hesitate to command the Vandals to drive bishops and noble laymen utterly stripped from their own churches or seats: and if, when the choice was set before them, they delayed to depart, they should remain perpetual slaves. This too was done in very many cases. For we have known many bishops and laymen, distinguished and honored men, to be slaves of the Vandals. (I, 5) But then he commanded that the bishop of the said city, that is of Carthage, manifest to God and men, by name Quodvultdeus, and a very great throng of clergy, placed on broken ships, naked and despoiled, be expelled.

Whom the Lord, by the compassion of his goodness, deigned to bring by prosperous voyage to Naples, a city of Campania. He crushed the multitude of senators and honored men first by cruel exile, then cast them out into a region beyond the sea. For when the bishop had been driven out, as we said before, with his venerable clergy, he at once appropriated for his own religion the church named Restituta, in which the bishops always used to reside, and took away all the churches that were within the walls of the city, together with their riches. But also outside the wall he seized whatever he wished, and especially two excellent and spacious churches of the holy martyr Cyprian — one where he shed his blood, the other where his body is buried, which place is called Mappalia.

But who could endure, and be able to recall without tears, that he commanded the bodies of our dead to be carried to burial in silence, without the solemnity of hymns? He added further that even the part of the clergy which had remained should be handed over to penal exile. And while these things were going on, the great priests and distinguished men who survived in the aforementioned provinces, which he had divided among the Vandals, resolved to approach the king for the sake of supplication. When he had gone out, as is the custom, to the Maxulitan shore, which by common speech is called Ligula, having already lost their churches and goods, they came as suppliants, asking that, for the consolation of God's people, at least the means of dwelling might be granted, now that the Vandals were already in power.

To whom, it is attested, he replied through an interpreter with raving mouth: I have decreed to dismiss none of your name and race, and do you dare to demand such things? He even wished to drown them in the nearby sea at that very hour, had he not been long begged by his own men not to do so. Withdrawing, worn out with sadness and grief, they began, as best they could and where they could, to celebrate the divine mysteries, their churches having been taken away. But thereafter, as the kingdom grew in wealth, greater pride too began to spread. (I, 6) I will relate a deed which was done at that very time. There was a certain count, Sebastian, son-in-law of that famous count Boniface, keen in counsel and vigorous in war; whose counsels Geiseric found necessary, even as he dreaded his presence.

But desiring to destroy him, he sought an occasion for his death from religion. The king devised that, in the presence of his bishops and his household, he would approach Sebastian thus. 'Sebastian,' he said, 'I know that you have sworn to have cleaved to us faithfully, the truth of which oath your labors and vigilance demonstrate. But that your friendship may remain ever joined and continual with us, it has pleased our priests here present that you become a worshiper of that religion which both we and our people venerate.' To whom Sebastian, finding the matter wonderful and necessary in many ways, answered shrewdly for the occasion: 'I ask, my lord king, that now a single loaf of the purest and finest flour be brought.'

And since Geiseric had not perceived Sebastian's victory, he at once ordered it to be brought. So Sebastian, taking the purest loaf, spoke thus: 'For this loaf, that it might come to such adornment of splendor and be deemed fit for the royal table, after the foulness of the bran had been sifted away, the lump was sprinkled with the finest flour and passed through water and fire; therefore it is held both bright to look upon and pleasant to eat. So I too, ground by the mill of the Catholic Mother and purified by the sieve of examination like clean fine flour, was watered with the water of baptism and baked by the fire of the Holy Spirit. And as this loaf came from the oven, so I too, through the offices of the divine sacraments, came up clean from the font, God being the craftsman. But let it be, if you will, as I myself propose.'

'Let this loaf be broken into pieces, soaked with water and sprinkled again, and put into the oven: if it comes out better, I will do what you urge.' When Geiseric, with all who were present, had heard this proposal, he was so bound that he could not free himself at all. Whom he afterward, by an argument of another kind, killed as a warlike man. (I, 7) And to return to the point from which we digressed: he terrified them with deadly commands, that in the midst of the Vandals our people should by no means draw breath, nor anywhere be granted a place to the groaning for praying or offering sacrifice, so that then the oracle of the prophecy might be manifestly fulfilled: there is in this time no prince or prophet or leader, nor any place for sacrificing to your name.

For also various false accusations were not lacking daily even against those priests who lived in those regions which paid tribute to the palace. So that if perchance anyone, as is the custom, while admonishing God's people, had named Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Holofernes, or some such, it was thrown at him that he had said these things in the person of the king, and he was at once thrust into exile. For this kind of persecution was carried on here openly, elsewhere secretly, so that the name of the godly might perish by such snares. Wherefore we have known very many of the priests to have then been banished:

such as Urbanus of Girba, Crescens metropolitan of the city of Aquitana, who presided over a hundred and twenty bishops, Habetdeus of Teudala, Eustratius of Sufetula, and two Tripolitans — Vicis of Sabrata and Cresconius of Oea — and Felix bishop of the city of Adrumetum, for this reason, that he had received a certain John, a monk from overseas; and many others besides, whom it would be tedious to recount. Yet while these were placed in exile, when death befell them, it was not permitted to ordain others in their cities. Amid these things, however, God's people, standing firm in the faith, like swarms of bees building their waxen dwellings, by growing were strengthened with the honeyed reckonings of faith, so that that saying might be fulfilled:

the more they afflicted them, the more they were multiplied and grew exceedingly strong. (I, 8) After these things it came about, at the supplication of Valentinian Augustus, that after a long silence of desolation a bishop named Deogratias was ordained for the church of Carthage; of whom, if anyone should strive to run through little by little the things the Lord did through him, words would begin to fail before he could explain anything. So when that bishop had been appointed, it came to pass, our sins pressing hard, that Geiseric captured Rome, that once most noble and famous city, in the fifteenth year of his reign; and from there at the same time he took captive the riches of many kings together with their peoples.

And when that multitude of captivity reached the African shore, the Vandals and Moors, dividing the huge quantity of people as is the custom of barbarians, husbands were separated from wives, children from parents. At once the man full of God and dear to him set about selling off all the vessels of ministry, gold and silver, and freeing them from barbarian servitude into liberty, so that the wedded pairs might remain joined and the children be restored to their parents. And because no places were sufficient to receive so great a multitude, he assigned two named and spacious basilicas, of Faustus and of Novae, with couches and bedding, decreeing for each single day how much each should receive according to his need.

And because the unfamiliarity of the voyage and the cruelty of captivity had afflicted very many, there was among them no small number of the sick, whom that blessed bishop, like a devoted nurse, went round at every moment with physicians following, accompanied by food, so that, the vein being examined, whatever each needed might be given in his presence. Nor did he rest from this work of mercy even in the night hours, but kept going, running through the individual beds, inquiring how each one fared. He had given himself over so wholly to labor that he spared neither his weary limbs nor his now decaying old age. Kindled with envy at this, the Arians wished often to kill him by very many treacheries. Which the Lord, I believe, foreseeing, willed quickly to free his sparrow from the hands of the hawks.

His departure the city's captives so bewailed that they then thought themselves rather handed over into the hands of the barbarians, when he went forth to heaven. He held the priesthood for three years. Through love and longing for him the eager people might have snatched the limbs of that worthy body, had he not, by prudent counsel, while attention was drawn away, been buried without the multitude's knowledge. (I, 9) And because one must not always keep silence about the impieties of the heretics, nor can it be unseemly which tends to the praise of the one who endures, the ordainer of the aforementioned priest, a man named Thomas, while he was often hard-pressed by their various snares, on a certain occasion they beat the venerable old man with rods on his bared body in public.

But he, reckoning this not for reproach but for the reward of his glory, rejoiced in the Lord. Hence it came about that, after the death of the bishop of Carthage, he forbade bishops to be ordained for the Zeugitan and Proconsular province; of whom the number was a hundred and sixty-four. This number, gradually diminishing, now — if indeed they themselves survive — only three appear to be: Vincentius of Gigita, Paulus of Sinna (truly Paul in merit and in name), and another, Quintianus, who now, fleeing the persecution, dwells as a stranger at Edessa, a city of Macedonia. (I, 10) But also very many martyrdoms are proved to have occurred, and an immense and very great multitude of confessors; of which I will attempt to narrate some.

There were then the slaves of a certain Vandal — this Vandal was one of those whom they call millenarii — Martinianus, Saturianus, and their two brothers. And there was also a fellow-slave of theirs, an excellent handmaid of Christ, by name Maxima, comely in body and in heart alike. And because Martinianus was an armorer and seemed quite acceptable to his master, and Maxima had charge of the whole household, the Vandal believed that, to make the said servants more loyal to himself, he should join Martinianus and Maxima in the bond of marriage. Martinianus, after the manner of worldly young men, desired marriage, but Maxima, already consecrated to God, refused human nuptials.

But when it came about that the secret silences of the bedchamber were entered, and Martinianus, not knowing what God had decreed concerning him, with a husband's confidence desired to lie down as with a wife, the said handmaid of Christ answered him with a living voice: 'I, O Martinianus my brother, have dedicated the members of my body to Christ, nor can I obtain a human marriage, having already a heavenly and true bridegroom. But I will give counsel: if you will, you too can grant it to yourself, since you may — that you also delight to serve him to whom I have desired to be wedded.' So it came to pass, the Lord providing, that the young man too, obeying the virgin, gained his own soul.

The Vandal, then, not knowing the commerce of the spiritual secret, Martinianus, pricked in heart and changed, persuaded even his own brothers that they should hold the treasure he had found in common, as brothers. So, converted together with his three brothers, with God's maiden also accompanying them, going out secretly by night, they joined themselves to the monastery of Tabraca, over which the noble shepherd Andreas then presided. But she dwelt not far off in a monastery of maidens. When therefore the barbarian inquired with searchings and frequent gifts, what had been done could not be concealed.

Finding therefore that they were now not his own but Christ's possessions, he cast them into chains and harassed God's servants with various torments, dealing with them not only that they might be coupled together, but, what is more grievous, that through the filth of rebaptism they might befoul the ornaments of their faith. This very thing came even to the notice of Geiseric: the king decreed that the implacable wild man should afflict the slaves as long as they yielded to his will. He orders stout clubs to be made in the manner of saws, as if palmed, with stumps, which by shaking the backs would not only break the bones but also leave the boring spikes within.

And when the blood flowed out and the flesh was torn apart so that the entrails were laid bare, on the following day, Christ healing them, they were always restored unharmed. This was done very often and over a long time, and no traces of the wounds were seen, the Holy Spirit constantly healing them. After this Maxima is constrained to harsh custody and stretched on a cruel spike: and since the frequent visitation of God's servants did not fail her, in the sight of all the rotting strength of the huge timbers was loosened. This miracle is celebrated by the voice of all, and to us, to whom the custody pertained, he testified under oath that it had been so. (I, 11) But when the Vandal neglected to acknowledge the divine power, avenging wrath began to rage in his house. He himself dies, and his sons together;

the household and whatever of the animals was best perished together, and the mistress remained a widow, bereft of husband, sons, and substance. She offers Christ's servants to Sesao, a kinsman of the king, as a gift of favor; who, when he had received them as gifts with exceeding rejoicing, the demon, by the merit of the saints, began to torment his sons or domestics with various convulsions. In turn that kinsman, as it had happened, suggested it to the king. At once the king decreed that they should be handed over to a certain pagan king of the Moors, whose name was Capsur, to be banished. But Maxima, Christ's handmaid, confounded and conquered, he dismissed to her own will; she now survives as a virgin, mother of many virgins of God, by no means unknown even to us.

Arriving, they are handed over to the said king of the Moors, who dwelt in a part of the desert which is called Caprapicti. Christ's disciples, therefore, seeing among the pagans many unlawful sacrileges of sacrifices, began by their preaching and conduct to invite the barbarians to the knowledge of the Lord our God; and in this way they won for Christ the Lord an immense multitude of pagan barbarians, where before the report of the Christian name had been spread abroad by no one. Then it was considered what should be done, that the land now tilled and broken by the plowshare of preaching might receive the evangelical seed and be watered by the rain of holy baptism. They send legates by the long roads of the desert;

at length they reach the city of Rome, and the bishop is asked to appoint a presbyter and ministers for the believing people. The bishop of God fulfills with joy what was asked: a church is built, a very great multitude of barbarians is baptized, and from wolves a fruitful flock of lambs is multiplied. This Capsur reports and announces to Geiseric. At which matter, rising up in envy, he orders God's servants, with their feet bound behind the backs of running chariots, to perish together amid the thorny places of the woods, so that, dragged and dragged back, the bodies of the innocents might be torn by the brambly spikes of the wood, thus destroying them so that they should see in turn one another's end.

When they, near one another by reason of the untamed running horses, while the Moors lamented, beheld each other, each said farewell to the other in the narrow strait of flight thus: 'Brother, pray for me; God has fulfilled our desire: in this way one reaches the kingdom of heaven.' And so, praying and singing psalms, the angels rejoicing, they sent forth their holy souls: where to this very day Jesus Christ our Lord does not cease to work mighty wonders. For the blessed Faustus, once bishop of Boronita, testified to us that a certain blind woman had been given sight there, where he himself was present. (I, 12) From here Geiseric is inflamed against the church of God.

He sends a certain Proculus into the province of Zeugitana, to constrain all the Lord's priests to hand over the divine ministries or the books, that he might first strip them of arms and so the more easily, as a crafty enemy, take them captive unarmed. When they cried out that they could not hand them over, with rapacious hand they laid waste everything, and out of the palls of the altar — O wickedness! — they made themselves shirts and breeches. Yet that Proculus, the executor of this affair, eating his own tongue bit by bit, was in a short time consumed by a most shameful death. For then the holy Valerian, bishop of the city of Abensa, while he had manfully contended not to hand over the divine sacraments, was ordered to be driven alone outside the city;

and it was so commanded that no one should let him dwell either in house or in field. He lay for a long time naked in the public street under the open sky: he was more than sixty-nine years of age, whom we then, unworthy though we were, were counted worthy to greet in such an exile. (I, 13) On a certain occasion the Paschal solemnity was being celebrated; and while in a certain place which is called Regia, on account of the day of Paschal honor, our people were opening the church that had been shut against them, the Arians discovered it. At once a certain presbyter of theirs, Anduit by name, gathering a band of armed men with him, is inflamed to assault the throng of the innocent. They enter with drawn swords, snatch up weapons; others too climb the roofs and through the windows of the church scatter arrows.

And then, while the people of God were by chance listening and singing, one lector, standing at the pulpit, was singing the alleluia melody; at which moment, struck by an arrow in the throat, the book falling from his hands, he himself fell down dead afterward. For very many others also are proved to have been killed by arrows and javelins in the very midst of the edge of the altar; for those who were not then slain by the swords, afterward, worn down by punishments at the king's command, were almost all put to death, especially those of riper age. For elsewhere too — as happened at Tunuzuda, at Galiba, at Vicus Ammoniae, and in other places — at the time when the sacraments of God were being given to the people, entering with the greatest fury, they scattered the body and blood of Christ on the pavements and trampled it with polluted feet.

(I, 14) For Geiseric himself had commanded at that time, his bishops urging him, that within his own hall and that of his sons none but Arians should be placed in the various ministries. Among others, it then came to our Armogast. When for a long time and often, by twisting his shins, they bound with ringing cords his heart and his forehead — on which Christ had fixed the standard of his cross — and, cutting and bellowing, showed it wrinkled and more furrowed, the cords burst like spiders' threads while the saint looked up to heaven. But when the torturers saw that the sinewy cords had been broken, having more often brought stronger cords and ones of hemp, while he invoked nothing but the name of Christ, all those things vanished away.

But also, while he hung head downward by one foot, he seemed to all to be sleeping as if on a bed strewn with feathers. When Theoderic, the king's son, who was his master, since the punishments availed nothing, had ordered him to be beheaded, he is prevented by his own presbyter Iucundus, who said to him: 'You can kill him by various afflictions; for if you slay him by the sword, the Romans will begin to proclaim him a martyr.' Then Theoderic condemned him to dig pits in the province of Byzacena. Afterward, as if for greater reproach, not far from Carthage, where he might be seen by all, he commanded him to be a herder of cows.

Amid these things, when by the Lord's revelation he discerned the day of his falling asleep to be near, he summons a certain Felix, a venerable Christian, the steward of the house of the king's son, who venerated Armogast as an apostle, and says to him: 'The time of my dissolution has come; I beseech you, by the faith which we both hold, that you deign to bury me under this carob tree, being about to render an account to our Lord if you do not.' Not that he cared where or how his body should be buried, but that what God had revealed to his servant might be made manifest. Felix answered and says: 'Far be it from us, venerable confessor; rather I will bury you in one of the basilicas with the triumph and grace which you merit.' To whom the blessed Armogast:

'No, but you will do what I have said.' Fearing to grieve the man of God, he truthfully promised to do what had been commanded. At once, within a very few days, that companion of good confession departed from this life. Felix hastened to dig the grave assigned to him beneath a tree. As the interwoven roots and the hardness of the dry earth caused delay and toil, he was distressed that the limbs of the holy body were being buried too slowly. At last, when the roots had been cut away and they were hollowing out the earth much deeper, they beheld a sarcophagus of most splendid marble made ready, such as perhaps no king at all had ever possessed. (I, 15) But neither ought I to pass over a certain mime, by name Masculan.

When he was hard-pressed by many snares, that he might lose the Catholic faith, the king himself afterwards sought to entice him with flattering worldly speeches, promising that he would be heaped with great riches if he would lend a ready ear to the king's will. But since he remained strong and unconquered, the king ordered him to undergo capital sentence — yet cunningly commanding in secret that, if in that hour of the brandished sword he should dread the blow, then they should rather kill him, lest he be made a glorious martyr; but if they should see him steadfast in confession, then they should hold back the sword. But he, like an immovable column, made strong by Christ who upheld him, returned a glorious confessor.

And though the envious enemy was unwilling to make him a martyr, yet he could not violate our confessor. (I, 16) We know also of another in that storm, by name Saturus. Since he was a shining member of the Church of Christ and with Catholic freedom frequently rebuked the depravity of the Arians — he was steward of the household of Huneric — he was confronted, on the accusation of a certain deacon Mariuadus whom the ill-omened Huneric singularly honored, that Saturus should become an Arian.

Honors and great riches were promised him if he would do it; dire torments were prepared if he would not — this choice being set before him: that if he would not obey the royal commands, first by a measuring inquiry his house and substance would be lost, all his slaves and children sold off, and his wife, in his very presence, handed over in marriage to a camel-driver. But he, full of God, rather provoked the impious to bring this about more swiftly. For this reason his wife was seen — without her husband's knowledge — to have begged a respite from those who were carrying out the sentence. Then another Eve, schooled by the serpent's counsel, approached her husband.

But he was not an Adam who would touch the alluring fruits of the forbidden tree, for he was not called 'Needy' but 'Saturus' — sated by the abundance of the house of God and made to drink of the torrent of his delights. The woman came to the place where her singular husband was praying, her garments torn and her hair loosed, her children accompanying her, and carrying in her hands a baby girl who was then still nursing. This child she cast, all unknowing, at her husband's feet; and she herself embraced his knees with her arms, hissing with the dragon's cry: 'Have mercy on me, sweetest one, and upon yourself together; have mercy on our common children, whom you yourself behold. Let them not be subjected to servile condition, whom the noble lineage of our family has made illustrious;'

'let me not, while my husband yet lives, be subjected to an unworthy and shameful marriage — I who always boasted of my Saturus among women of my own age. God knows that you would do this unwillingly, which perhaps some have done willingly.' To her he answered with the voice of holy Job: 'You speak like one of the foolish women. I would be afraid, woman, if the bitter sweetness of this life were the only one there is. By the devil's craft, my wife, you are made his minister. If you loved your husband, you would never drag your own man to the second death. Let them sell off my children, let them part me from my wife, let them carry off my substance: I, secure of my Lord's promises, will hold fast to his words: if anyone does not forsake wife, children, fields, or house, he cannot be my disciple.' What more?

The woman departed with her children, rebuffed; Saturus was strengthened for his crown, examined, stripped, worn down with punishments, dismissed a beggar, and forbidden any means of advancement. They took everything from him, yet they could not take away the robe of his baptism. (I, 17) After this Geiseric ordered the church of Carthage to be closed, the presbyters and ministers being scattered and dispersed through various places of exile — because there was no bishop. The church was scarcely reopened when the emperor Zeno made supplication through the patrician Severus; and so all returned from exile.

But what things he did in Hispania, Italy, Dalmatia, Campania, Calabria, Apulia, Sicily, Sardinia, Bruttium, Lucania, Old Epirus, and Hellas — these the very ones who suffered them, with miserable lament, will better recount there. But let this now be the end of our persecution, carried out by Geiseric as cruelly as it was loftily. He lasted in his reign thirty-seven years and three months. (II, 1) Geiseric being therefore dead, Huneric, his elder son, succeeded his father. He, in the beginnings of his reign, as is the subtlety of barbarians, began to act more mildly and moderately, especially regarding our religion;

so that even where it had previously been pronounced under king Geiseric that there should be no spiritual assemblies, the gatherings of the people now flocked together. And to show himself religious, he resolved that the Manichaean heretics should be more diligently sought out; of these he burned many, but most he sold off on ships bound overseas. Almost all of these Manichaeans he found to be of his own religion, and especially presbyters and deacons of the Arian heresy; whence, the more ashamed, he blazed against them all the more. Among them was found one, by name Clementianus, a monk of theirs, having written on his thigh: 'A Manichaean, disciple of Christ Jesus.'

On account of this the aforesaid tyrant seemed all the more praiseworthy, displeasing in one thing only: that he gaped with insatiable greed more vehemently, and burdened the provinces of his kingdom with various extortions and exactions, so that of him especially it might be said: 'A king in want of revenues is a great extortioner.' Yet he gave permission — the emperor Zeno and Placidia, widow of Olybrius, making request — that the church of Carthage might ordain for itself whatever bishop it wished; which church had now for twenty-four years been bereft of such an ornament.

(II, 2) He therefore now sends to the church the illustrious Alexander, bearing an embassy of this kind: that in his presence the Catholic people should request for themselves a worthy priest. He also appointed, through his notary by name Vitarit, an edict which was to be read publicly, containing this purport: 'The lord has commanded us to say:

since the emperor Zeno and the most noble Placidia have written through Alexander, the illustrious man, requesting that the church of Carthage might have its own bishop of your religion, he has commanded this to be done and has written back to them, and ordered it to be said to the legates sent by them, that, just as they requested, you may ordain for us whatever bishop you wish — on this condition: that the bishops of our religion who are in Constantinople and throughout the other provinces of the East may, by his command, our bishops, have free authority to preach to the people in their churches in whatever languages they wish and to practice the Christian law, in the same manner as you here, or in the other churches established in the African provinces, have free authority in your churches to celebrate Mass or to preach, and to do whatever pertains to your law as you wish.

For if this be not observed concerning them, then both the bishop who is ordained and the clergy, and also the other bishops with their clergy who are in the African provinces, are commanded to be sent among the Moors.' When this edict was read to the universal church on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of July, in our presence, we began to groan, muttering, because a persecution was being prepared for the future by those plotting the wiles of evil men; and so we are attested to have said to the legate: 'If it is so, with these perilous conditions interposed, this church takes no delight in having a bishop. Christ governs it, who always deigns to govern.' This representation the legate neglected to receive.

At the same time the people too, as then happened, blazed up like fire, whose clamor was unbearable and could by no means be calmed. (II, 3) And so, when Eugenius had been ordained bishop — a holy man, acceptable to God — exalted gladness arose, and joy was heaped upon the church of God. The Catholic multitude under barbarian domination exulted over the ordination of a restored pontiff: for the greatest number of young men and maidens, rejoicing together among themselves, bore witness that they had never seen a bishop sitting on his throne.

Moreover that man of God, the priest Eugenius, by his conversation in good works began to be held venerable and reverend even by those who are without, and to be so pleasing to all that, were it lawful, all would have delighted to lay down their own souls for him. The Lord deigned to perform such almsgiving through him that it seemed incredible he could expend so much, where the church — all being held by the barbarians — is known to have no means even of one coin. If anyone should begin to set forth the humility in him, the charity, the piety divinely bestowed, he could not unfold it. Money is proved never to have remained with him, save perhaps when it was offered at such an hour as when the sun, completing its course, was already giving order and place to the shades of night.

He kept back only as much as would suffice for the day, not as much as greed would have demanded — our God thereupon daily granting things vast and ever greater. But when his fame became celebrated and manifest, the Arian bishops thereupon began to be racked with grievous envy, hounding him with daily calumnies, and Cyrila especially. What more? They suggested concerning him that he should by no means sit upon his throne nor address the customary word to the people of God; and further, that he should forbid whatever men or women he saw walking into the church in barbarian dress. He answered as was fitting: 'The house of God lies open to all; none can drive away those who enter';

especially because a great multitude of our Catholics walked about in their dress, because they served the royal household. (II, 4) But when he received such an answer from the man of God, the king set torturers to be stationed at the gates of the church. These, seeing a woman or a man walking in the garb of their nation, at once thrust small toothed stakes into the head, and fastening the hair to these and pulling violently, would tear off the whole skin of the head together with the hair. Some, while this was being done, immediately lost their eyes; others died of the very pain. The women, after this punishment, with their heads stripped of skin, were led with a herald going before through the streets, for the spectacle of the whole city.

This very thing which they suffered they reckoned to themselves as the greatest gain. Very many of these we knew, nor do we know any of them then to have departed from the right path, even when the punishments were pressing upon them. But when in this way he could not breach the wall of the faith, he plans that the men of our religion stationed in his court should obtain neither their rations nor their customary stipends. He added also that they should be worn down with rustic labors; he sends men of free birth and quite delicate to the Utican plain, that under the burning of the blazing sun they might cut the turf of the harvests; whither all, proceeding with gladness, rejoiced in the Lord. In their company was a certain man having a withered hand, which for very many years had rendered him no service.

When he truthfully excused himself, saying that he could not work, he was the more violently ordered to go. But when they came to the place, and especially when all groaned in prayer for him, by divine compassion that withered hand of the confessor was restored whole. From here now the persecution of Huneric took the beginning of our sorrow and travail. (II, 5) But he himself, who long since had shown himself gentle to all, desiring after his death to establish the kingdom for his sons (which did not come to pass), began cruelly to pursue his brother Theoderic and his sons, and likewise the sons of his brother Gento. Of these he would let none go free, unless death took from him the will of his desire.

First, knowing the wife of his brother Theoderic to be shrewd — I believe lest perchance she should arm her husband, or the elder son, who seemed prudent and wise, with sharper counsels against the tyrant — he ordered her to be cut off by the sword on a trumped-up charge. Afterward that son too was killed, a man instructed in great learning, to whom, according to Geiseric's ordinance — because he was the eldest of all — the kingdom among the grandsons was chiefly owed. He was kindled to perpetrate something yet more cruelly. With the crowd standing in the midst of the city before the steps of the ninth quarter, he commanded a bishop of his own religion, by name Iucundus, whom they used to call patriarch, to be burned in the fire — for this reason, that he was held most acceptable in the house of Theoderic, the king's brother;

by whose favor, perhaps, the said house could obtain the kingdom. In this crime of impiety we foresaw evil coming upon us, each one saying to one another in turn: 'He who has been made so cruel toward his own priest — when will he spare our religion or us?' Then he also consigned the elder son of Gento, by name Godagis, with his wife, without the solace of manservant or maidservant, to cruel exile; and his brother Theoderic, after the slaying of his wife and son, he likewise exiled naked and destitute; after whose death he afflicted from afar and cast away the infant son who survived, and his two grown daughters, set upon asses.

Moreover, hounding very many counts and nobles of his own nation with false accusations — for this reason, that they favored his brother — some he burned, others he slaughtered, showing himself an imitator of his father Geiseric, who cast his own brother's wife, with a weight of stones bound to her, into the famous river Ampsaga of Cirta by hurling her in, and after the death of the mother killed even the sons. And many also his father Geiseric, when dying, had commended to him with an oath interposed; whom he, unmindful of faith and a violator of the oath, butchered with various punishments and burnings. For Heldica of old, whom his father had made chief steward of the kingdom, now aged and a veteran, he beheaded with disgrace, and his wife together with another, by name Teucharia, he burned in the midst of the city.

He commanded their bodies to be dragged through the lanes and streets; and these, lying all day, he scarcely permitted at evening to be buried, at the entreaty of his own bishops. As for Gamuth, Heldica's brother, because he had taken refuge in their church, he could not kill him; yet he shut him up in the foul place of the latrines and decreed that he should live there a long time. Afterward he condemned him, with a certain goatherd and rustic, to making trenches that would profit the vineyards; and these men also, twelve times a year — that is, every single month — he would ravage with cruel scourgings, scarcely granting a little water and a barley loaf. This they endured for five years or more;

to whom these torments could have profited toward an eternal reward, had they been Catholics and endured these things by the merit of their faith. But for this reason we could not be silent about this, that we might in no way pass over in silence the impiety of the king even against his own people — he who not only consumed his own bishop Iucundus with flames, as we showed above, but also burned very many of his own presbyters and deacons, that is, Arians, and even handed them over to the beasts. (II, 6) Therefore, having in short order cut off all whom he feared, and making firm to himself, as he supposed, the kingdom — which was brief and fleeting — being on every side at leisure and secure, he turned all the weapons of his fury, roaring like a lion, against the persecution of the Catholic Church.

Yet before the storm of persecution, by many foregoing visions and signs the impending evil had been shown. For about two years before it happened, a certain man saw the church of Faustus shining in its accustomed adornment, glittering also with bright candles, with veils of hangings and with gleaming lamps; and while he rejoiced in the brightness of so great a splendor, suddenly, he said, the brilliance of that desirable light was extinguished, and as darkness followed, an enemy's stench arose from the nostrils; and all that throng of the blessed was driven outdoors by certain Ethiopians who were expelling them, lamenting continually for this, that he never saw it restored again to its former brightness. This vision he related to holy Eugenius in our presence.

A certain presbyter also saw that same church of Faustus crammed with throngs of innumerable peoples, and after a little while emptied and filled with a multitude of pigs and goats. Likewise another saw a threshing-floor of wheat made ready for winnowing, the grains as yet, in the winnower's judgment, not separated from the chaff. And while he marveled at the magnitude of the great mass, though confused, suddenly behold, a whirlwind of tempest coming with a sound-roaming blast began to make its arrival known by the rising dust; by whose force all that chaff flew entirely away, the grains remaining. After this came a certain tall man, shining with splendid countenance and gleaming garb, and began, in purifying, to cast aside the empty, meager, and reprobate husk-like grains.

Examining these for a long time, he scarcely brought the magnitude of that mass — though it had been proved — to a small heap. Likewise another said: A certain man stood lofty upon a mountain which is called Ziquensis, and he kept crying out to right and left: 'Migrate, migrate!' Another beholds, with the heavens roaring and troubled, sulphurous clouds, which began to hurl forth huge stones; which stones, when they had fallen to the earth, were kindled the more and burned with greater flames, and entering into the inner chambers of houses, set fire to those whom they found. But he who saw it said that, when he had hidden himself in a certain bedchamber, by divine compassion the flame could not reach him; I think that thereby that prophetic word might be fulfilled:

'Shut your door and hide yourself for a very little while, until the wrath of God passes by.' The venerable bishop Paul also saw a tree stretched out up to the heavens with flowering branches, which by its spreading also overshadowed almost all of Africa. And when all rejoiced at its magnitude and beauty, behold, suddenly, he said, there came a violent ass, which, rubbing its neck against the trunk of its roots, by its thrust dashed that wondrous tree to the ground with an immense crash. And Quintianus too, the honorable bishop, saw himself standing upon a certain mountain, from which he beheld a flock of his innumerable sheep, and in the midst of the flock there were two pots boiling exceedingly.

There were present also slaughterers of the sheep, whose flesh they kept plunging into the boiling pots; and when this was being done, all that great magnitude of the flock was consumed. I think therefore that those two pots are two cities, Sicca Veneria and Lares, in which the first multitude had been gathered together, from which the burning took its beginning — or else they are king Huneric and Cyrila his bishop. But concerning the many visions, since brevity had to be consulted, let it suffice to have said these things. (II, 7) What more? First the tyrant decrees, by a terrible command, that no one should serve in his palace nor conduct public affairs unless he had made himself an Arian. A great number of these, by the vigor of the unconquered, lest they lose the faith, cast away their temporal service;

whom afterward, cast out of their houses and stripped of all substance, he banished to the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. At a certain time he hastened to establish throughout all Africa that the treasury should claim for itself the substance of our deceased bishops; and that whoever could succeed a deceased one should not be ordained beforehand, unless he had offered five hundred solidi to the royal treasury. But where the devil strove to construct this edifice, at once Christ deigned to destroy it. His own domestics suggested to him, saying: 'If your decree confirm this, our bishops established in the regions of Thrace and other countries will begin to suffer worse.'

He then commanded the sacred virgins to be gathered, directing the Vandals with the midwives of their own nation to inspect and handle, against the laws of modesty, the chaste parts of their purity, where neither mothers nor any of the matrons were present. Suspending them with grievous hanging and binding immense weights to their feet, they applied red-hot plates of iron to their backs, bellies, breasts, and sides. To whom amid the torments it was said: 'Say that the bishops lie with you, and your clergy.' By the bitterness of these punishments we know that very many then perished; the others who remained, their skins drying up, were made bent. For he was striving to find a path, by whose entrance he might make, as he did, a public persecution.

And acting thus, he could by no means find out how to defile the Church of Christ. (II, 8) But with what rivers of plates shall I follow him, when he consigned to the exile of the desert bishops, presbyters, deacons, and other members of the church — that is, four thousand nine hundred and sixty-six? Among whom were very many gout-stricken, and others deprived by the years of their age of the temporal light. In their number was the blessed Felix, bishop of Abbir, having now forty-four years in the episcopate, who, struck by the disease of paralysis, neither felt anything nor spoke at all.

Especially considering about him that he could not be carried by a beast, we suggested that the king be petitioned by his own men, that at least, since he was about to die soon, he might order him to be in Carthage — because to exile he could by no means be conducted. The tyrant is reported thus to have said in fury: 'If he cannot sit upon a beast, let untamed oxen be yoked, which, by dragging her with bound ropes, may conduct her where I have commanded.' Him, bound crosswise upon a mule like some kind of log of wood, we carried the whole way. (II, 9) All are gathered into the cities of Sicca and Lares, that the Moors, meeting them there, might conduct those handed over to them to the desert.

Two counts therefore, coming up with damnable subtlety, began to deal with God's confessors in flattering words. 'What seems good to you,' they say, 'that you should be so obstinate and in no way obey the commands of our lord — you who could be honorable in the king's sight, if you would hasten to do his will?' At once, as they cried out and said with a mighty shout: 'We are Christians, we are Catholics, we confess the inviolable Trinity, one God,' they are shut up in a custody indeed more grievous, yet still more spacious, where opportunity was given us both to enter and to speak a word of admonition to the brethren and to celebrate the divine mysteries.

There too were very many little infants, whom their mothers followed with maternal affection, some rejoicing, others holding back: some rejoiced that they had borne martyrs, others strove to recall from the confession of faith those about to die by the deluge of re-baptism. Yet at that time no flatteries conquered any, nor did carnal tenderness incline anyone to the ground. For it delights me to relate briefly what a certain old woman then did. While we were journeying, accompanying God's army, and chanced to advance rather by night because of the sun's heat, we beheld a poor little woman carrying a small sack and other garments, holding by the hand one little infant, and consoling it in these words: 'Run, my little lord;

you see all the saints, how they proceed and hasten cheerfully to their crowns.' When we rebuked her, that she seemed importunate either to join men, against her sex, or to associate with the army of Christ, she answered: 'Bless me, bless me, and pray for me and for this my little grandson, because, though a sinner, I am the daughter of one who was once bishop of the city of Zura.' To her we said: 'And why do you walk so abjectly, or for what reason do you show yourself to be proceeding this way over so long a journey?' She answered: 'With this your little servant I go to exile, lest the enemy find him alone and call him back from the way of truth to death.' At these words, filled with tears, we could say nothing except that the will of God be done.

(II, 10) But when the adversary, who perchance was already saying: 'I will divide the spoils, I will fill my soul, I will slay with my sword, my hand shall have dominion,' could catch no one, he seeks out narrow and most foul places, in whose confines he might cram God's army. Then even the consolation of human visitation was denied them: guards too are set at the doorposts, and they are grievously afflicted; the confessors of Christ are thrown one upon another, the narrowness crowding them, one above another, like swarms of locusts, and — to speak properly — like the most precious grains of corn. In that crush there was no room at all for withdrawing to the natural office;

but, urged by necessity, they relieved themselves of excrement and urine in that same place, so that then that stench and horror surpassed all kinds of punishments. To whom, on a certain occasion — huge gifts having been given to the Moors, while the Vandals slept — we were scarcely admitted secretly to enter. Entering, as if into a whirlpool of mud, we began to sink up to our knees, beholding that then to have been fulfilled which Jeremiah said: 'Those who were nourished in saffron robes have embraced their own dung.' What more? They are commanded — the Moors making an uproar on all sides — to make ready for the journey to where they had been appointed. (II, 11) Going forth therefore on the Lord's day, having their garments, faces, and heads alike smeared with dung, yet cruelly threatened by the Moors, they chanted a hymn to the Lord with exultation:

'This is the glory of all his saints.' For there was then present the blessed pontiff Cyprianus, bishop of Unizibir, an excellent consoler, who cherished each one with pious and fatherly affection, not without rivers of running tears, ready to lay down his soul for the brethren and to give himself voluntarily, if he were permitted, to such sufferings — who spent all that he had on the needy brethren in that time of necessity; for he sought an occasion how he might be associated with the confessors, himself a confessor in soul and virtue. He afterward, through many struggles and the squalors of prison, proceeded with exultation to the exile that he desired.

How great then were the multitudes of peoples who hastened from various regions and cities to visit God's martyrs, the roads and pathways bear witness; which, in no way containing the throngs of those coming, the inestimable crowd of the faithful, streaming together over the summits of mountains and tracks, came down, carrying candles in their hands, and casting their little infants at the footsteps of the martyrs, they cried with this voice: 'To whom do you leave us wretched ones, while you proceed to your crowns? Who will baptize these little ones with the water of the everlasting font? Who will confer on us the gift of penance and loose us, bound by the chains of sins, by the indulgence of reconciliation? For it has been said to us: Whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, they shall be loosed also in heaven.'

'Who will bury us with the solemn prayers, who will admonish us, by whom the customary rite of the divine sacrifice ought to be performed? Gladly would we too go on with you, if it were permitted, that in such a way no necessity might separate the sons from the fathers.' Amid these cries and tears no comforter was any longer allowed to go on with them; rather the multitude was driven to run, so that where the hut had been prepared they might take up a toilsome lodging. And when the old men gave out, and others perhaps as well, even if they were tender young men, they began to be struck with the points of spears and with stones to make them run; whereupon, fainting all the more, they were the more exhausted.

(II, 12) Afterward indeed it was commanded by the Moors that those who could not walk should be dragged with bound feet, like the carcasses of dead beasts, over the hard and rough places of stones, where first their garments and then their limbs one by one were torn away; for here the head was crushed against the sharp edges of the rocks, there the sides were split open, and so they breathed out their spirit in the hands of those dragging them. Their number we were by no means able to reckon, the multitude hindering us; yet the lowly burial of the saints, along the whole public causeway, exalts them with their speaking tombs. The rest, being more able-bodied, reach the places of the wilderness, where, settled there, they receive barley to eat like beasts of burden.

There too is said to be so great a multitude of venomous beasts and scorpions that to those who do not know it it might seem incredible, beasts which by their mere breath pour out the poison of their venom even upon those set far off; and from the sting of the scorpion they say none ever escaped. Yet their venomous fierceness, even to the present time, by Christ's protection, is shown to have harmed none of His servants. But although they were there sustained with grains of barley, afterward even this was taken away; as if God, who had rained down manna for the fathers, could not also now feed those consigned to such an exile. (II, 13) He plots harsher measures against the Church of God, so that he who had cut off certain members might, by tearing it, destroy the whole body.

For on the day of the Lord's Ascension, in the presence of Regmus, the envoy of the emperor Zeno, he had a decree read aloud in the midst of the church to bishop Eugenius, drawn up in the following terms, which he also dispatched throughout all Africa by swift couriers: 'King Huneric of the Vandals and Alans, to all the Homoousian bishops. It is established that it has been forbidden, not once but often, that your priests should hold any assemblies in the territories of the Vandals, lest by their seduction they should subvert Christian souls. Spurning this, very many have been found to have celebrated Masses in the Vandal territories against the prohibition, asserting that they hold the whole rule of the Christian faith intact. And because in the provinces granted to us by God.

we do not wish there to be scandal; therefore know that, by God's providence and with the consent of our holy bishops, we have decreed this: that on the day of the coming Kalends of February, every excuse of fear being laid aside, you all come to Carthage, so that you may be able to enter into a disputation concerning the rule of faith with our venerable bishops, and that concerning the faith of the Homoousians, which you defend, you may prove it properly from the divine Scriptures, so that it may be recognized whether you hold the faith intact. The tenor of this edict we have directed to all your fellow-bishops appointed throughout all Africa. Given on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of June, in the seventh year of Huneric.'

(II, 14) When therefore we who were present, reading it together, understood it, our heart was at once crushed and our eyes were darkened; and truly then our feast days were turned into mourning and our songs into lamentation, while the tenor of the edict revealed the fury of the persecution to come, and especially where it said, 'in our provinces granted to us by God we do not wish there to be scandal,' as though it said, 'in our provinces we do not wish there to be Catholics.' It was deliberated what should be done. The looming calamity found no remedy, save that by the holy Eugenius a reasonable plea, in case the barbarian heart might be softened, should be offered, drawn up in the following text.

'As often as the cause of the soul, or of eternal life, or of the Christian faith is treated, it is necessary that, fearlessly and as the royal providence has promised, what is fitting be set forth. Recently the royal power, through the notary Vitarit, deigned to admonish my littleness; and he, on account of religion and faith, read out His precept to us in the church, in the presence of the clergy and people. From its tenor we learned that the royal precept had likewise gone forth to all my fellow-bishops, that on the appointed day they should come for a disputation of the faith; which we have suggested that we received with reverence.

To the aforesaid notary my humility suggested that all from across the seas as well, who are with us partners in one religion and communion, ought to take cognizance, since everywhere all submit to His reign; especially because it is a cause of the whole world, not of the African provinces only in particular. And because in a second reply I promised that I would present what should be suggested, I rightly and humbly beg your Magnificence that you deign to bring my aforesaid suggestion to the ears of our lord the most clement king, so that his clemency may graciously recognize that we in no way decline or flee the disputation of the law with God's help, but that without the consent of the whole body we ought not to undertake the pleading of the causes of our faith.