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which Valentinian retained the three Mauritanias and
part of Numidia, and ceded the remainder of his African dominions to Genseric,
who divided the Zeugitane or proconsular province, in which was Carthage, among
the Vandals and kept the rest in his own possession. Universal oppression of the
natives followed. Then Genseric discovered a plot among his nobles against
himself, and tortured and executed many of them. Probably from alarm at this
conspiracy, he began a new and severer persecution. The Catholics were allowed
no place for prayer or the ministration of the sacraments. Every allusion in a
sermon to Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, or Holofernes was regarded as aimed at the
king, and the preacher punished with exile. Among the bishops now banished,
Victor mentions Urbanus of Girba, Crescius, a metropolitan who presided over 120
bishops, Habetdeus of Teudela, and Eustratius of Suffectum. Felix of Adrumetum
was banished for receiving a foreign monk. Genseric prohibited the consecration
of new bishops in place of those banished. In 454, however, he yielded to
Valentinian's requests so far as to allow Deogratias to be consecrated for
Carthage. The see had remained vacant since the banishment of Quodvultdeus 15
years before. In 455 Genseric, at the invitation of Eudoxia, Valentinian's
widow, sailed to Italy, and took Rome without a blow. At the intercession of Leo
the Great, he abstained from torturing or massacring the inhabitants and burning
the city, but gave it up to systematic plunder. For 14 days and nights the work
of pillage continued, the city was ransacked of its remaining treasures, and
Genseric then returned unmolested to Africa, carrying much booty and many
thousand captives, including the empress Eudoxia and her two daughters. The
elder became the wife of his son Hunneric; the younger, with her mother, was
eventually surrendered to the emperor Leo.
The whole of Africa now fell into the hands of Genseric,
and also Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands. His fleets yearly
sailed from Carthage in the early spring, and ravaged all the Mediterranean
coasts. When leaving Carthage on one of these expeditions, the helmsman asked
Genseric whither he should steer. "Against those," he replied, "who have
incurred the wrath of God." His object was not only to plunder, but to
persecute. Spain, Italy, Dalmatia, Campania, Calabria, Apulia, Bruttium,
Venetia, Lucania, Epirus, and the Peloponnese all suffered from his ravages.
After the death of Deogratias, A.D. 457, Genseric did not allow any more bishops
to be consecrated in the proconsular province, the peculiar domain of the
Vandals, so that of the original number of 164 only three were left in Victor's
time. One Proculus was sent to compel the bishops to give up all their books and
the sacramental vessels. When they refused, they were seized by force and the
altar-cloths made into shirts for the soldiers. St. Valerian, bp. of Abbenza,
was expelled from that town. No one was allowed to receive him into their house
or permit him to remain on their land, and he was long obliged to lie by the
roadside. At Regia the Catholics had ventured at Easter to take possession of
their church. The Arians, headed by a priest named Adduit, attacked the church,
part forcing an entrance with drawn swords and part shooting arrows through the
windows. The reader was killed in the pulpit by an arrow, and many worshippers
slain on the altar-steps. Most of the survivors were executed by Genseric's
orders. Genseric, by the advice of the Arian bishops, commanded all officials of
his court to embrace Arianism. According to Victor's account, Armogast, one of
the number, refused, and was tightly bound with cords, but they broke like a
spider's web; and when he was hung head downwards by one foot, he seemed to
sleep as peacefully as if in his bed. His persecutors, unable to overcome his
resolution, were about to kill him, but were dissuaded by an Arian priest, lest
he should be reverenced as a martyr. He was accordingly compelled to labour in
the fields and afterwards to tend cattle near Carthage.
The emperor Majorian in 460 assembled a fleet of 300
vessels at Carthagena to recover Africa. His plans were betrayed to the Vandals,
who surprised and carried off the greater part of his ships. Genseric, however,
in alarm, concluded peace with Majorian. In 468 Leo collected a mighty armament
of 1,113 ships, each containing 100 men (Cedrenus, 350, ed. Dindorf.), under the
command of his brother-in-law Basiliscus. The main armament landed at the
Hermaean promontory (Cape Bon), about 40 miles from Carthage. Genseric, by
means, it was generally believed, of a large bribe, induced Basiliscus to grant
a truce for five days. He used this time to man all the ships he could, and, the
wind becoming favourable, attacked the Romans and sent fire-ships among their
crowded vessels. Panic and confusion spread through the vast multitude, most of
whom tried to fly, but a few fell fighting gallantly to the last. After this
victory Genseric regained Sardinia and Tripoli, where the Roman arms had met
with success, and ravaged the Mediterranean coasts more cruelly than before,
till a peace was concluded between him and the emperor Zeno. Genseric, at the
request of the emperor's ambassador Severus, released those prisoners who had
fallen to his own or his sons' lot, and allowed him to ransom as many others as
he could (Malchus, de Legationibus, 3, ed. Dindorf), and, at Leo's
entreaty, allowed the churches of Carthage to be reopened and the exiled bishops
and clergy to return. Soon afterwards he died, on Jan. 24, 477.
According to the description of Jornandes (de Gothorum
Origine, c. 33, in Cassiodorus, i. 412, in Migne, Patr. Lat. lxix.
1274), Genseric was of moderate stature and lame from a fall from his horse. He
was a man of few words, and thus better able to conceal the deep designs he had
conceived. He scorned luxury, was greedy of empire, passionate, skilful in
intrigue, and cruel; but it must be remembered that all our informants are
writers who hated and dreaded himself and his nation both as heretics and
enemies. With every allowance for Salvian's rhetoric (de Gubernatione
Dei, vii. in Migne, Patr. Lat. liii.), it must be admitted that his
description of the morals of the Vandals and those of the
dissolute Carthaginians show the former in a more
favourable light than the latter.
Genseric's name is variously spelt Gizericus, Gaisericus,
Geisericus, and Zinzirichus. The sources for the above account are the
Chronicles of Prosper and Idatius (in Migne, Patr. Lat. li.);
Procopius, de Bello Vandalico, i. 3-7; Isidorus, de Regibus
Gothorum (Isid. Opp. vii. 130-133, in Migne, Patr. Lat.
lxxxiii. 1076); and Victor Vitensis, de Persecutione Vandalica, i. (in
Migne, Patr. Lat. lviii.). Gibbon, cc. xxxiii. xxxvi. and xxxvii., may
also be consulted; and Ruinart's dissertation in his appendix to Victor
Vitensis, and Ceillier, Histoire des auteurs sacrés, x. c. 28.
[F.D.]
