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

could be consecrated to any deceased bishop, until he paid five hundred golden crowns. He had all the
nuns collected together, and caused them to be tormented with burning plates of iron, and to be hung up
with great weights to their feet, to force them to accuse the bishops and priests of having had criminal
intercourse with them; many of them died in these torments, and those who survived, having their skin
burned up, were crooked all their lives after.
63. He banished to the desert, between bishops, priests, deacons, and lay people, altogether four
thousand nine hundred and seventy-six Catholics, and many among them were afflicted with gout, and
many blind with age; Felix, of Abbitirus, a bishop, was for forty-four years paralyzed, and deprived of all
power of moving, and even speechless. The Catholic bishops, not knowing how to bring him along with
them, begged of the King to allow him to wear out the few days he had to live, in Carthage; but the
barbarian answered : if he cannot go on horseback let him be tied with a rope, and dragged on by oxen;
and they were obliged to carry him, thrown across a mule, like a log of wood. In the commencement of
their journey they had some little liberty, but in a little while they were treated with the greatest cruelty;
they were shut up together in a very narrow prison, no one allowed to visit them, crowded together one
almost over the other, and no egress allowed for a moment, so that the state of the prison soon became
horribly infectious; and, as Victor the historian relates, no torment could equal what they suffered up to
their knees in the most horrible filth, and there alone could they sit down, sleep, and eat the little quantity
of barley given to them for food, without any preparation, as if they were horses. At length they were
taken out of that prison, or rather sink, and conveyed to their destination; the aged, and those who were
too weak to walk, were driven on with blows of stones, and prodded with lances, and when nature failed
them, and they could not move on any longer, the Moors tied them by the feet, and dragged them on
through stones and briars, as if they were carcases of beasts, and thus an immense number of them died,
leaving the road covered with their blood.
(9) Orsi. t. 15. Fluery. t. 5. l. 30. N. Alex. t. 10.
64. In the year 483, according to Fleury and N. Alexander, Hunneric, wishing to destroy Catholicity
altogether in Africa, commanded that there should be a conference held in Carthage between the
Catholics and the Arians. The bishops, not alone of Africa, but of the Islands subject to the Vandals,
assembled there, but as Cyril, the Arian Patriarch, dreaded that his sect would be ruined by the
conference, it did not take place. The King was now highly incensed against the Catholics, and he
privately sent an edict to all the provinces, while he had the bishops in Carthage, and on one and the
same day all the churches of Africa were closed, and all the property belonging both to the churches and
the Catholic bishops was given over to the Arians, following in that the decree, laid down for the
punishment of heretics in the laws of the Emperors. This barbarous decree was put into execution, and
the bishops, despoiled of all they possessed, were driven out of Carthage, and all persons were ordered to
give them neither food nor shelter, under pain of being burned themselves, and their houses along with
them. Hunneric, at last, in the year 484, after committing so many acts of tyranny, and killing so many
Catholics, closed his reign and his life by a most horrible death he died rotten, and eaten up alive by a
swarm of worms; all his entrails fell out, and he tore his own flesh in a rage with his teeth, so that he was
even buried in pieces. He was not altogether eight years on the throne when he died, and he had not even
the satisfaction to leave the throne to his son Hilderic, for whom he had committed such slaughter in his
family, because, according to the will of his father, Genseric, the crown descended to Guntamond, the son
of his brother Genton; and he was succeeded, in 496, by Trasamond, who endeavoured to extirpate
Catholicity totally in Africa, about the year 504. Among his other acts, he banished two hundred and
twenty-four bishops, and among them was the glorious St. Fulgentius. On the death of Trasamond, in
523, he was succeeded by Hilderic, a prince, as Procopius writes, affable to his subjects, and of a mild
disposition. This good King, Graveson tells us, was favourable to the Catholic Religion, and he recalled
St. Fulgentius and the other exiled bishops, and granted the free exercise of their religion to all the
Catholics of his kingdom; but in the year 530, he was driven out of his kingdom by Glimere, an Arian,
and then it was that the Emperor Justinian, to revenge his intimate friend, Hilderic, declared war against
Glimere; and his general, Belisarius, having conquered Carthage and the principal cities, and subjected all
Africa once more to the Roman Emperor, the Arians were banished, and the churches restored to the
Catholics (10).
65. There were other persecutions by the Arians, after the death of Hunneric. Theodoric, King of Italy,
and son of Theodomire, King of the Ostrogoths, was also an Arian, and persecuted the Catholics till his
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