History of the Vandal Persecution 1 part 2/7

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;