the history of heresies, and their refutation - Catholic Apologetics ...

should be sent to prison. The hermit’s prophecy turned out too true. When Valens arrived in presence of
the Goths, their king, Fritigern, sent him an embassy, asking for peace, and leave to establish himself and
his people in Thrace. The Emperor rejected his offer; and, on the 9th of August, 378, both armies were
drawn up in front of each other, and Fritigern again made proposals of peace. But while the Romans were
deliberating on their answer, the division of Bacurius, Prince of the Iberians, was attacked, and the battle
became general; and never, since the slaughter at Canne, did the Romans suffer such losses as on that
day. When the night closed, Valens mixed himself up with some of his soldiers and fled, thinking thus to
conceal himself; but he was wounded with an arrow, and fell from his horse, and was brought by his
soldiers into the hut of a peasant by the way-side.
(6) St. Hieron. Chron.; St. Taulin. Ep. 29; Auetor. antea. cit.
He was scarcely there when a troop of Goths, looking for plunder, arrived, and, without knowing who
was inside, endeavoured to break open the door; but when they could not succeed at once in doing so,
they set fire to the hut, and went away, and the unhappy Valens was burned alive in the fifteenth year of
his reign and the fiftieth of his age. This was, as Orosius writes, a just judgment of God : the Goths asked
Valens for some bishops, to instruct them in the Christian religion, and he sent them Arians, to infect the
poor people with their impious heresy; and so they were justly appointed afterwards, as ministers of the
Divine justice, to punish him. On the death of Valens, Gratian became master of the whole empire, and
this good prince gave liberty to the Catholics of the East, and peace to the Church (7).
59. We now have to treat of the persecution of the Catholics of Africa by Genseric, the Arian King of the
Vandals. He commenced persecuting the Catholics in the year 437, with the intention of making Arianism
the religion of all Africa, as St. Prosper writes. Immediately after conquering Carthage, he commenced a
most cruel war against the Catholics, plundered the churches, and gave them as habitations to his vassals,
after banishing the priests, and taking away the sacred vessels; and, intending to have no religion but
Arianism, he drove the bishops, not alone out of their churches, but out of the cities, and put many to
death. He would not permit the Catholics, on the death of St. Deogratias, to elect another Bishop of
Carthage, and he prohibited all ordinations in the province of Zeugitania, and in the Pro-consulate, where
there were sixty -four bishoprics; the effect of this order was, that, at the end of thirty years, there were
only three bishops in the province, and two of these were banished, and the third fled to Edessa. Cardinal
Orsi, following the historian of the Vandalic persecution, says that the number of martyrs was very great.
(7) Orsi, cit.; St. Pros, in Chron.
The history of four brothers, in particular, slaves of one of Genseric’s officers, is very interesting : These
martyrs, finding it impossible to serve God according to their wishes in the house of their Vandal master,
fled, and took refuge in a monastery near the city of Trabacca; but their master never ceased till he found
them out, and brought them back to his house, where he loaded them with chains, put them in prison,
and never ceased to torture them. When Genseric heard of it, instead of blaming the master for his
cruelty, he only encouraged him to continue it, and the tyrant beat them with branches of the palm tree to
that pitch, that their bones and entrails were laid bare; but, though this was done many days in
succession, the following days they were always found miraculously healed. He next shut them up in a
narrow prison, with their feet in stocks made of heavy timber; but the beams of the instrument were
broken in pieces, like twigs, the next day. When this was told to Genseric, he banished them to the
territories of a Pagan king, in the deserts of Africa. The inhabitants of their place of exile were all Pagans,
but these holy brothers became apostles among them, and converted a great number; but, as they had no
priest, some of them made their way to Rome, and the Pope yielded to their wishes, and sent a priest
among them, who baptized a great number. When Genseric heard this, he ordered that each of the
brothers should be tied to a car by the feet, and dragged through the woods till dead, and the barbarous
sentence was executed. The very barbarians wept when they saw these innocent men thus torn to pieces,
but they expired praying and praising God in the midst of their torments. They are commemorated in the
Roman Martyrology, on the 14th of October (8).
60. Genseric was daily becoming more inimical to the Church, and he sent a person called Proculus into
the province of Zeugitania, to force the bishops to deliver up the holy Books and all the sacred vessels,
with the intention of more easily undermining their faith, when deprived, as it were, of their arms. The
bishops refused to give them up, and so the Vandals took everything by force, and even stripped the
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