CH IN AFRICA

[Sidenote: The Church in North Africa.]

In the middle of the fifth century the Christian power in North Africa
fell under the domination of the Arian Vandals. S. Augustine died in
430 while the foe was at the gates of his city. In 439 Carthage fell,
and Roman civilisation was extinguished. The rule of the Vandals was
not only Arian but barbarous. It is not unlikely that their victory
was won with the aid of the remaining Donatists and the heathen Moors.
With the reign of Gaiseric some degree of toleration was allowed to the
Catholic Church, but the persecution which had marked the earlier days
of the Arian power now took the form of confiscation and the
suppression of public worship. The Church suffered grievously, and not
least in the class of persons ordained to the ministry and consecrated
to the episcopate. But still the Catholics were the great majority,
and it was seen that the Arian Vandals were in danger of absorption by
the subtle influence of the truth. It was a last effort of Gaiseric's
to deprive the Catholics of their leaders, which eventually brought
about their restoration. The Bishop of Carthage and several of his
clergy were put on board a ship and told to escape whither they could.
They reached Naples, {104} and their piteous plight and the news they
brought helped to direct the attention of the imperial power to its
lost heritage. [Sidenote: The Vandal persecution.] Meanwhile the
suffering Church, enjoying now a scanty toleration, now suffering a
severer persecution, continued to make converts and to produce martyrs.
In 477 Gaiseric died. A year before his death he had allowed the
Catholics to reopen their churches and to bring back their bishops and
clergy from exile. And still their missionary efforts had never been
relaxed. Church life still continued; inscriptions remaining to-day
preserve the epitaphs of men buried in the darkest days with Catholic
rites; and in the interior ancient monasteries remained undisturbed.
Hunneric, the next Vandal king, though nominally an Arian, set himself
to extirpate heresies which he did not accept: Manichaeans under his
sway received treatment more severe than Catholics. Indeed, the
Catholics began to raise their heads under the leadership of Eugenius,
who was elected in 479 to the see of Carthage, the only bishopric in
the country which held metropolitan rank. The Bishop of Carthage was
the spiritual head of the whole province, held